u/Faerie-Footman-442

My friend recently got married, and he and his new wife are obsessed with doing dinner parties. It's so cute because they haven't gotten sick of the idea yet, and so I always attend happily.

They have two small dogs: Bunny and Malloy. Malloy is very tender-hearted and shy, while Bunny is the most hell-stricken dog I've ever met in life. Bunny is the effing boss, and poor Malloy knows it all too well...

Unfortunately, Bunny hates me. She decided this the first day she met me. Even though I always say hi and smile at her, there is just something about me that Bunny finds absolutely intolerable. She is cool with the other guests, but she snarls at me.

At the last dinner party, Bunny was being a real bully to Malloy. Malloy was playing with a yellow, rubber gardening glove, and Bunny freaked the eff out when she saw it. My friend told me that there had been dog drama regarding the glove for about a week now. The climax of the evening happened when my friend's wife made a grand display of "punishing" Bunny by throwing the glove away.

Later, when I went into the kitchen to mix a drink, I covertly retrieved the glove from the trash and stuffed it in my pocket. I had a plan...

I put the glove in my car, and for about a month I dreamed of my friends' next dinner party. I dreamed of returning unto Bunny her long-lost glove, and seeing joy explode upon her face. I dreamed of Bunny hopping into my lap and looking up at me with love in her eyes...

My friend and his wife had another dinner party last night, and I brought the glove. The second I walked into the house, I rushed over to Bunny (who was on the couch), I got down on my knees, and I presented her with the glove.

Bunny seemed perturbed by the fact that I would even deign to acknowledge her. But she magnanimously sniffed at the glove anyway. I witnessed recognition dawn on her stupid little dog face...

And then Bunny effing exploded. It seems that the realization that I been in possession of her lost glove was an intolerable prospect to her. The only choice for Bunny was to go blind with wild rage.

Everyone at the dinner party stood around awkwardly while my friend and his wife kept the twisting, snarling Bunny at bay with a couple of brooms. Eventually my friend managed to lock Bunny into their bedroom.

Everyone pretended to have fun for a little while, but we were all keenly aware of the harrowing dog-screams that were coming from the other room, and the pounding as Bunny threw herself repeatedly into the door.

I left after about 30 minutes of this.

Tl;dr: I thought a long-lost glove would make a judgmental dog love me, but it had the opposite effect.

Every year they announce a new "World's Ugliest Dog," and every year it's some dog with its tongue sticking out. This comes down to laziness. Having a stuck-out tongue is a very effective way for a dog to be ugly, but it's not the *only* way. The judges should commit to finding dogs that are ugly in new, interesting ways.

My brother left one of his marijuana vapes at my house about a year ago. I don't usually smoke marijuana, because it makes me think the universe is judging me, but I had a very tiring day yesterday, and I found that vape in my junk drawer when i got home, and one thing led to another...

I started watching that episode of Futurama where Bender delivers a package to the robot planet, and it was so effing funny. I ate a banana, and after I ate it, I could actually feel the nutrients seeping into my bloodstream, and the jolt of life I got from those nutrients made the show even funnier. I ate a second banana, and the same thing happened. I was laughing and laughing and laughing.

I ended up eating like 6 bananas.

I woke up in the middle of the night and I felt like I was going to die. I raced to the bathroom and threw up a huge, disgusting banana log. I can't believe I let myself eat so many bananas.

Tl;dr: eating bananas made show funnier, but not good for digestion.

My brother left one of his marijuana vapes at my house about a year ago. I don't usually smoke marijuana, because it makes me think the universe is judging me, but I had a very tiring day the other day, and I found that vape in my junk drawer when i got home, and one thing led to another...

I started watching that episode of Futurama where Bender delivers a package to the robot planet, and it was so effing funny. I ate a banana, and after I ate it, I could actually feel the nutrients seeping into my bloodstream, and the jolt of life I got from those nutrients made the show even funnier. I ate a second banana, and the same thing happened. I was laughing and laughing and laughing.

I ended up eating like 6 bananas.

I woke up in the middle of the night and I felt like I was going to die. I raced to the bathroom and threw up a huge, disgusting banana log. I can't believe I let myself eat so many bananas.

I'm sure that some of you guys are all fully aware that chips (crisps) are one of the best snacks for hiking. They keep your sweat nice and salty. Plus, when you go to a new country, there are tons of wild, crazy new chip flavors to try. Eating tons of interesting new chips is honestly one of my favorite parts about hiking.

I go on a few hiking vacations a year, and I recently took one to the island of Menorca. Menorca is a fun place for hiking because it has a designated trail that circles the entire island. It takes about a week to do the whole thing.

I stopped at a little food mart on Menorca to grab a snack, and I started looking through the chips. There was a local-looking chip brand that I had never seen before. Like many other chip brands, it featured pictures of its flavors on the bag. One of the bags featured a flavor that appeared to be just a grey chunk of meat in a puddle of...something. It was the most unappetizing flavor I had ever seen. Just a picture of some old, forgotten piece of meat just sitting in a puddle. And I swear to effing goodness gracious there was a little fly drawn into the picture too.

I stared at this strange bag of chips for a few minutes, and then I realized I was going to have to try them. I couldn't not try these chips...

Anyway, long story short, these chips were effing divine. The strangest, most pungent flavor of aged, warm meat that felt like a miracle on my tongue. Just decadent bouquets of rotting flavor.

I was obsessed, I started looking for these chips in every new shop I stopped in along the way. They were quite rare too, you couldn't find them everywhere. One shop owner caught me looking frantically through the racks, and asked me, in English, if I needed help finding anything. I didn't even try to explain that I was digging around for the wet meat chips...

I spent a lovely seven days on the island of Menorca, hiking and eating my new favorite chips every chance I got, and then I flew home.

I've looked for those chips since, but I can't find them anywhere, and I can't remember the brand. I wish I had taken a picture. I tried typing "wet meat chips" into Google, to no avail...

I guess those beautiful chips will just have to live in my memory.

Edit: *crisps

I'm not a normal traveler—I usually just wing it. I like to hike, so I'll find the cheapest flight I can to a city I've never been to before, and then just start meandering around with my backpack, staying at a new hotel every night and getting as lost as I possibly can for seven or eight days.

I can hike pretty far in a day, usually about 25-30 kilometers. I eat a TON while hiking, and I never feel bad about it at all because I'm burning through the calories as I go. The eating is honestly my favorite part. Just stopping at every little food mart along the way and gorging on whatever foreign treats they have...

Chips are one of the best snacks for hiking, because they are salty. And when you go to a new country, there are tons of wild, crazy new chip flavors to try.

Chip bags are all pretty much the same-- they want to make sure you know what the chip is supposed to taste like. If it's a fajitas-flavored chip, they'll show a little picture of a sizzling steak sliced up with peppers and onions. They are very convincing, the pictures on these chip bags. They actually make me believe that I might be enjoying a food that is something other than salty potatoes...

On a recent vacation, I got so well lost that I ended up on the island of Menorca. Menorca is a Spanish island, and it's a fun place for a hiker like me because it has a designated trail that circles the entire island.

I stopped at a little food mart on Menorca to grab a snack, and I started looking through the chips. There was a local-looking chip brand that I had never seen before. Like the other brands, it featured pictures of its flavors. One of the bags featured a flavor that appeared to be just a grey chunk of meat in a puddle of...something. It was the most unappetizing flavor I had ever seen. Just a picture of some old, forgotten piece of meat just sitting in a puddle. And I swear to effing goodness gracious there was a little fly drawn into the picture too.

I stared at this strange bag of chips for a few minutes, and then I realized I was going to have to try them. I couldn't not try these chips...

Anyway, long story short, these chips were effing phenomenal. The strangest, most pungent flavor of aged, warm meat that felt like a miracle on my tongue. Just decadent bouquets of rotting flavor.

I was obsessed, I started looking for these chips in every new shop I stopped in. They were quite rare too, you couldn't find them everywhere. One shop owner caught me looking frantically for them, and asked me, in English, if I needed help finding anything. I didn't even try to explain that I was digging around for the wet meat chips...

I spent a lovely seven days on the island of Menorca, hiking and eating my new favorite chips every chance I got, and then I flew home.

I've looked for those chips since, but I can't find them anywhere. I tried typing "wet meat chips" into Google, to no avail...

If any of you know of my chips, or of any other fun chips you've encountered on your travels, please let me know.

Edit: *crisps

I'm not a normal traveler—I usually just wing it. I like to hike, so I'll fly into a city I've never been to before, and then just start meandering around with my backpack, staying at a new hotel every night and getting as lost as I possibly can for seven or eight days.

I can hike pretty far in a day, usually about 25-30 kilometers. I eat a TON while hiking, and I never feel bad about it at all because I'm burning through the calories as I go. The eating is honestly my favorite part. Just stopping at every little food mart along the way and gorging on whatever foreign treats they have...

Chips are one of the best snacks for hiking, because they are salty. And when you go to a new country, there are tons of wild, crazy new chip flavors to try.

Chip bags are all pretty much the same-- they want to make sure you know what the chip is supposed to taste like. If it's a fajitas-flavored chip, they'll show a little picture of a sizzling steak sliced up with peppers and onions. They are very convincing, the pictures on these chip bags. They actually make me believe that I might be enjoying a food that is something other than salty potatoes...

On a recent vacation, I got so well lost that I ended up on the island of Menorca. Menorca is a Spanish island, and it's a fun place for a hiker like me because it has a designated trail that circles the entire island.

I stopped at a little food mart on Menorca to grab a snack, and I started looking through the chips. There was a local-looking chip brand that I had never seen before. Like the other brands, it featured pictures of its flavors. One of the bags featured a flavor that appeared to be just a grey chunk of meat in a puddle of...something. It was the most unappetizing flavor I had ever seen. Just a picture of some old, forgotten piece of meat just sitting in a puddle. And I swear to effing goodness gracious there was a little fly drawn into the picture too.

I stared at this strange bag of chips for a few minutes, and then I realized I was going to have to try them. I couldn't not try these chips...

Anyway, long story short, these chips were effing phenomenal. The strangest, most pungent flavor of aged, warm meat that felt like a miracle on my tongue. Just decadent bouquets of rotting flavor.

I was obsessed, I started looking for these chips in every new shop I stopped in. They were quite rare too, you couldn't find them everywhere. One shop owner caught me looking frantically for them, and asked me, in English, if I needed help finding anything. I didn't even try to explain that I was digging around for the wet meat chips...

I spent a lovely seven days on the island of Menorca, hiking and eating my new favorite chips every chance I got, and then I flew home.

I've looked for those chips since, but I can't find them anywhere. I tried typing "wet meat chips" into Google, to no avail...

If any of you know of my chips, or of any other fun chips you've encountered on your travels, please let me know.

Obviously you shouldn't take a medication if you're straight up allergic to it! They know people are going to scoff at their phrasing, which is why they started doing it on purpose. They want you to think they're being way too overcautious in the "potential side effects" section, so that you'll laugh off all the other side effects too.

But it's not like some weird pain fetish or anything. I don't want to be stung by bees...

I want a man dressed in a bee costume to come and find me. Ideally, the costume would be made of super luxurious materials—silk, lambskin, anything buttery to the touch. And the costume should have no stinger. This man-bee has found me after he has already stung someone, and left his sting behind to rot in their flesh...

I want to canoodle on a fancy couch and drink martinis with this bee who only has a few hours left to live. We'll keep thinking of new things to cheers to, and get sloppy drunk. I'll be real cute and flirty, since it's his last hurrah. And in exchange, he can let me in on all the queen's filthy secrets. He owes no allegiance to her anymore...

When I was 13 years old, I asked my parents if I could be a paperboy. They agreed, and they seemed super proud that their son was so determined, that he had so much work ethic...

But the truth was that I was in a real jam. I had developed a crippling candy addiction, and the measly 75 cents they were giving me for allowance every week was no longer cutting it. It was only getting me through to Tuesday or Wednesday, and then I was stuck licking the insides of Snickers wrappers until the weekend. I needed to start making my own money fast.

Delivering papers sucked. The houses on my route were so far apart, and they were full of deadbeats. If every customer was paying on time, I should have been earning about twelve dollars a week. But every customer was NOT paying on time, or sometimes even at all. And when they didn't pay, that money was coming out of my bottom line.

A weekly newspaper subscription was a dollar fifty-five, which meant that just a handful of deadbeats could ensure that I was earning practically nothing.

It was bullshit. I had gotten this paper route so that I could buy candy, and now I was going fucking hungry while these assholes were at home reading their free papers.

I had grown up a nice, polite little Catholic boy, but my circumstances had changed. I was forced to become a hardened leg-breaker...

One of the worst offenders on my route was Mrs. Litro. She was probably ninety years old, and she had a little patio attached to the side of her house. She was always "forgetting" to pay, and I was always having to beat her effing door down.

The biggest problem was that she insisted on hiding her payment so nobody else would find it and take it. She had this large, hardcover bird book on her patio table, and she hid the money in there.

This bird book made no sense. Every time you turned a page, the left and right pages would be dedicated to a different type of bird, with dozens of black and white pictures of that bird. But there was no rational order to the pages at all. The page of turkeys was followed by the page of flamingos, which was followed by the page of penguins, etc. I looked once, and there was no glossary or index at all--just a random smattering of artless bird pages.

Mrs. Litro hid her dollar fifty-five on the crow page, which I still remember was page 78.

That crow page was the straw that broke the camel's back, for me at least. It was proof, beyond all other proof, that the author of this stupid bird book was just in it for a quick buck, and had absolutely no pride in their work at all.

The crow page was dedicated to murders of crows. The caption boasted that "murders of crows could number in the hundreds of thousands" and the pictures attempted to show these murders, but they were just blurry little clouds of black dots. Nobody would ever know that those were supposed to be pictures of crows if you didn't tell them.

I had witnessed an actual murder of crows a few summers before, and it had been breathtaking. It had been at my grandmothers house: huge clusters of screaming black crows had come swooping down into every tree, and they just kept coming and coming. All of my grandmother's neighbors had come out onto their porches, and we all stood there, wide-eyed, watching the crows and watching each other...

No self respecting bird expert would have ever authored a bird book with such a lackluster crow page; not if they had known how marvelous a murder could actually be...

Anyway, Mrs. Litro's money was only in the book about 30% of the time, so I was constantly having to kick down her door.

It would take her like 5 minutes to hobble to the door. Then she would ask me if I checked the murder page, and I would say yes, but she wouldn't believe me, so she would hobble over to the book and check for herself. When it wasn't in there, she would look at me suspiciously for a few moments, and then she would covertly check some of the other untold hiding places within her little patio, like behind the heater and under the rug. I assumed these were the secret patio payment spots that long-dead paperboys had once known...

Eventually she would shuffle back into her house and then re-emerge with the dollar fifty-five. She would count it out, red faced and angry, and then she'd shove it into my hand and look at me like I was a greedy little bug.

One day I started pounding on Mrs. Litro's door for my money, and some new lady answered the door. It was Mrs. Litro's daughter. She told me that she had moved in "to help her mom." I asked her about my money, and she apologized and went out to the kitchen to get it for me. The whole time the door was open, I could hear Mrs. Litro's shrill voice roaring from within the bowels of the house, screaming for her daughter to check the murders...

This went on for a few months. Mrs. Litro's daughter was much more reliable than her mother, but she still forgot from time to time. One day, probably six months after I had first met her, I knocked on the door and asked the younger Litro for my money, and she went to the kitchen to get it for me. But this time, the depths of the house were quiet...

I listened, and I heard some coins being counted out in the kitchen. And then I heard some grunting that seemed to be coming from elsewhere in the house. I saw a little movement in the shadows of a doorway way back in the house. I squinted my eyes and adjusted them to the darkness, and then I saw the dull figure of Mrs. Litro pulling herself by her walker into the doorway.

Her face emerged partially into the hallway light, and it seemed strangely younger, almost ironed of the wrinkles that had blanketed it before, and her eyes were too wide. I witnessed that same exact expression, years later, on my own grandmother's face, in the months before she died, when I had had to explain to her on every visit who I was and how she knew me.

Mrs. Litro looked down the hall at me, and then her mouth closed tight and started working hard. She slowly held up her hand. I thought I could see that she was holding something out to me. It was long and knobbly. It looked like some sort of ancient, dusty artifact.

I stepped a little bit into the house to better see what Mrs. Litro was trying to give me. And when my eyes finally adjusted, I saw what it was: It was a finger...

It was a middle finger.

Mrs. Litro's daughter came back. "Mother!" she said, embarassed. Mrs. Litro shuddered and fell back into the shadows.

The daughter paid me, and then I got the hell out of there. I finished my route and I stopped at thd gas station to grab some much needed candy...

For me it was Jurassic Park. My parents rented the VHS and watched it with me when I was way too young…

I must have been seven or eight. But really, it wasn't how young I was that was the problem, it was that I was just old enough to understand the rules. When Doctor Grant said that the T-Rex couldn't see you if you didn't move, I knew that that meant that I shouldn't move either. And so I sat there, paralyzed with fear on the floor in front of the TV, not daring to touch my pizza or my glass of milk, not even daring to close my eyelids…

But it wasn't the T-Rex that scared me the most. It was the velociraptors. When the T-Rex tried to eat the children, she was just doing it out of dumb, blunt savagery. She was eating everything in sight, and if the children were in sight she was going to eat them too. The velociraptors, by contrast, seemed to be hunting the children for fun. Getting the children was like a puzzle for them, and they were determined to solve it.

I had always understood, as most children do, that I was perfectly safe in my house and in my bed. Sure, there were some scary animals, like tigers and sharks, but those animals couldn't get me inside. My innate sense of safety was the product of thousands of years of human domination. Thousands of years of our ancestors making every single wild entity on Earth understand that we are in charge, and that we call the shots. There's not a single animal left that doesn't fear man.

But velociraptors had missed all that. They had been asleep the whole time… They had never been informed that opening doors and stealing children was just not something that animals do, and so they did it.

I'm embarrassed to say it, but I still have nightmares about velociraptors to this day. It's always the same: me trying to barricade myself inside, and them figuring out a way to open the door.

Do any of you have a movie that scarred you when you were young?

I had probably the most frightening nightmare I've ever had in my life the other night. There was some sort of magical king who knew my name and was coming after me. And somehow, I understood that whatever fate he had planned for me was an eternal fate. He knew of a place that was totally separate from heaven and hell, and he was going to take me there, against my will. Honestly, it sounds silly now, but it was terrifying in the dream.

Anyway, I guess I kind of understood that I was dreaming, and that the only way I could escape the king was by waking up, so I started screaming the most blood-curdling scream I possibly could in the dream, and I actually ended up screaming myself awake. But when I woke up, I wasn't actually screaming in real life; there was just a low, guttural buzz coming from the back of my throat. I don't think anyone else in the house would have even heard it. I sat in the dark, terrified for probably ten more minutes, but then I calmed down and fell back to sleep.

Have any of you screamed yourselves awake?

I have good oral hygiene. I do all four things twice a day: brush, floss, mouthwash, and tongue scrape. However, I find that I don't really like the way my mouth tastes after all of this. I'm pretty sensitive to tastes and smells, and the taste of all that oral care is just too unnatural.

I've tried natural, less scented toothpastes and mouthwashes, but nothing really helped. Sometimes I would chew gum after, but gum was pretty strong too.

Things changed for me when I started chewing cloves after my oral care routine. I do three cloves--I chew them for about 20 minutes, and then I spit them out. It's so nice, it's like a factory reset for my mouth. It makes my mouth taste like nothing, but simultaneously taste super fresh and clean. It's hard to describe, but I recommend you try it if, like me, you don't really love the way your mouth tastes after brushing. Tbh, chewing my cloves has become one of my favorite parts of my morning routine.

Just to add: cloves are a natural blood thinner, so if you have trouble in that department, you might want to avoid them.

I was an English major in college, which was probably a foolish decision, since I have always been obsessed with making money, and I have never been interested in working as an English teacher. But I went to a community college, so it cost pretty much nothing, at least.

I took this one class called "Performing Poetry" with Professor Caraway. It was at 8:00 in the morning, which was an unthinkably early hour for me at the time… But Professor Caraway had made it pretty clear that there was not going to be any real homework or even a final exam—it was just going to be us all performing famous poems theatrically for the rest of the class. In the end, I decided it was too easy of an A for me to miss, so I spent that semester dragging my zombie ass to class to act out some poems…

Professor Caraway was very serious about poetry. She had this philosophy that poetry was meant to be performed; to be communicated out loud from one person to another. That's how it was done in the old times, and that's how it should be done today. It was how poems gained meaning, she said.

Then she had us all go around and introduce ourselves, and tell the class our favorite poem. I don't think many of my sleepy brethren were prepared to announce what their favorite poem was. They were all saying "umm" a lot, and like four or five of them said "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. I watched Professor Caraway's eyes thin into dubious slits…

When it was my turn, I announced that "Love Calls us to the Things of this World" by Richard Wilbur was my favorite poem, and that seemed to cure Professor Caraway's doubts a bit. But I was glad she didn't ask me to share my favorite line...

Then the lady next to me introduced herself. She was older than the rest of us—50 or so—and she had big, crunchy bangs and thick glasses. She said her name was Gurli, and she was from Denmark. She had come to America twenty-five years ago to marry her husband, and now she was divorced. She said her favorite poem was "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe, "because the Raven just won't stop interrupting!!" She laughed heartily, thinking on the bird.

Every eye in the classroom looked curiously at Gurli…

It actually ended up being a pretty fun class. I only had to bear the excruciating torture of waking up at 7:45 for like 20 minutes, because Professor Caraway made sure to get our engines up and running. She started every class with stretching and yelling exercises, and sometimes she even brought coffee. After warming up, we would start performing poems. Professor Caraway would assign us our poems a few days in advance, so we could prepare a little bit, but it truly didn't matter if you prepared at all. As long as you went up there, and read off the page, and made it clear with your body and face that you were feeling the meaning of the poem, Professor Caraway was satisfied.

We all pretty much got the gist, except for Gurli. She would do the most contrived, obvious interpretations of the poems. If the word "open" was in a poem, she would act out opening a door, even if there was nothing about doors in the poem. And for whatever reason, she affected a herpy-derpy caricature of a Scandinavian accent for every poem she read. Professor Caraway was very encouraging and nice, but it was clear that Gurli was not quite getting it the way the rest of us were.

I sat next to Gurli, and we actually became pretty good class buddies, so I tried to help her out. "Don't look down at the page so much," I told her, "that way you'll be able to let your face do some of the acting, and express what the poem means to you in your heart"

"Hmm…I'm going to memorize my next poem!" Gurli said earnestly.

The next class, Gurli went up to the front, but she did not bring any paper with her. She had a big smile on her face, and she looked determined. She opened her mouth and started reciting, from memory, "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas.

I don't know if you all know of this poem, but it is a devastatingly sad poem. It's about a son begging his father not to die.

The way Gurli chose to interpret this poem was absolutely fucking insane. To this day I cannot fathom what was going through her head when she decided to perform it the way she did. She treated it like some sort of pre-school singalong. She smiled crazily throughout the whole thing, nodding and mouthing the words slowly as if inviting the rest of the class to join in. Then when she would get to the line "rage, rage against the dying of the light"—which is repeated several times throughout the poem—she would ball her fists up, stomp her feet, and shake her head, as if having a temper tantrum, and then laugh her ass off for several seconds before starting the poem again.

When Gurli was almost finished, I risked a glance back at Professor Caraway, who was sitting in the back like she always did during performances. Her face was unfathomable. It was as if every fiber of her being was focused on making the blankest face she possibly could. She was witnessing the death of a beautiful poem, and despite her efforts, her eyes showed it…

When Gurli finished, she bowed and then winked over in my direction. Some of the other students and I clapped politely.

To this day, I still think about that travesty of a performance. And whenever I read "Do not go gentle into that good night," I can't help but to read it in Gurli's crazy, laughing voice…

I was an English major in college, which was probably a foolish decision, since I have always been obsessed with making money, and I have never been interested in working as an English teacher. But I went to a community college, so it cost pretty much nothing, at least.

I took this one class called "Performing Poetry" with Professor Caraway. It was at 8:00 in the morning, which was an unthinkably early hour for me at the time… But Professor Caraway had made it pretty clear that there was not going to be any real homework or even a final exam—it was just going to be us all performing famous poems theatrically for the rest of the class. In the end, I decided it was too easy of an A for me to miss, so I spent that semester dragging my zombie ass to class to act out some poems…

Professor Caraway was very serious about poetry. She had this philosophy that poetry was meant to be performed; to be communicated out loud from one person to another. That's how it was done in the old times, and that's how it should be done today. It was how poems gained meaning, she said.

Then she had us all go around and introduce ourselves, and tell the class our favorite poem. I don't think many of my sleepy brethren were prepared to announce what their favorite poem was. They were all say "umm" a lot, and like four or five of them said "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. I watched Professor Caraway's eyes thin into dubious slits…

When it was my turn, I strategically announced that "Love Calls us to the Things of this World" by Richard Wilbur was my favorite poem, and that seemed to cure Professor Caraway's doubts a bit.

Then the lady next to me introduced herself. She was older than the rest of us—50 or so—and she had big, crunchy bangs and thick glasses. She said her name was Gurli, and she was from Denmark. She had come to America twenty-five years ago to marry her husband, and now she was divorced. She said her favorite poem was "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe, "because the Raven just won't stop interrupting!!" She laughed heartily, thinking on the bird.

Every eye in the classroom looked curiously at Gurli…

It actually ended up being a pretty fun class. I only had to bear the excruciating torture of waking up at 7:45 for like 20 minutes, because Professor Caraway made sure to get our engines up and running. She started every class with stretching and yelling exercises, and sometimes she even brought coffee. After warming up, we would start performing poems. Professor Caraway would assign us our poems a few days in advance, so we could prepare a little bit, but it truly didn't matter if you prepared at all. As long as you went up there, and read off the page, and made it clear with your body and face that you were feeling the meaning of the poem, Professor Caraway was satisfied.

We all pretty much got the gist, except for Gurli. She would do the most contrived, obvious interpretations of the poems. If the word "open" was in a poem, she would act out opening a door, even if there was nothing about doors in the poem. And for whatever reason, she affected a herpy-derpy caricature of a Scandinavian accent for every poem she read. Professor Caraway was very encouraging and nice, but it was clear that Gurli was not quite getting it the way the rest of us were.

I sat next to Gurli, and we actually became pretty good class buddies, so I tried to help her out. "Don't look down at the page so much," I told her, "that way you'll be able to let your face do some of the acting, and express what the poem means to you in your heart"

"Hmm…I'm going to memorize my next poem!" Gurli said earnestly.

The next class, Gurli went up to the front, but she did not bring any paper with her. She had a big smile on her face, and she looked determined. She opened her mouth and started reciting, from memory, "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas.

I don't know if you all know of this poem, but it is a devastatingly sad poem. It's about a son begging his father not to die.

The way Gurli chose to interpret this poem was absolutely fucking insane. To this day I cannot fathom what was going through her head when she decided to perform it the way she did. She treated it like some sort of pre-school singalong. She smiled crazily throughout the whole thing, nodding and mouthing the words slowly as if inviting the rest of the class to join in. Then when she would get to the line "rage, rage against the dying of the light"—which is repeated several times throughout the poem—she would ball her fists up, stomp her feet, and shake her head, as if having a temper tantrum, and then laugh her ass off for several seconds before starting the poem again.

When Gurli was almost finished, I risked a glance back at Professor Caraway, who was sitting in the back like she always did during performances. Her face was unfathomable. It was as if every fiber of her being was focused on making the blankest face she possibly could. She was witnessing the death of a beautiful poem, and despite her efforts, her eyes showed it…

When Gurli finished, she bowed and then winked over in my direction. Some of the other students and I clapped politely.

To this day, I still think about that travesty of a performance. And whenever I read "Do not go gentle into that good night," I can't help but to read it in Gurli's crazy, laughing voice…

When an American travels with another American--as spouses, friends, co-workers, etc--there is a strange phenomenon that happens. At some point, usually pretty early in the journey, one of the two Americans realizes that they are definitely less American than the other American.

This phenomenon is most pronounced in "fancy" countries, like France and Italy.

Both Americans will likely be speaking very loudly, and demanding ice at every restaurant. But one of those Americans will definitely be acting louder and more ice-demandy than the other one. And only the less loud one will notice the eyes rolling all around them...

It can be a very uncomfortable experience being the less-American American. One might catch oneself daydreaming about ditching their companion and sneaking off, maybe to find a little cafe where one could drink a tiny coffee and smoke thin cigarettes, and maybe even try to blend in... But that daydream is impossible for several reasons.

If you see two Americans traveling together, you may witness one of them berating the other in public for "not fitting in" or "not being French enough." This often takes the form of a wife speaking to her husbsnd. The wife may be wearing a beret...

DO NOT BE FOOLED: you might be tempted to think the one loudly trying to act more Euro is the less-American American, but the true less-American American is almost always quiet about it. They guard their companion's shame greedily, because it is all they have...

Have any of you noticed that Kelley Curran (the actress who plays Turner/Lady Winterton) very nearly breaks the fourth wall on several occasions? Her gaze seems magnetically drawn to the camera, and sometimes she even seems to stare right at it (think of the time she angrily storms up the stairs after losing her Duke).

On my first watch, I thought it was a little silly, but now I'm realizing it's a pretty brilliant stylistic choice. Turner is delusional and perhaps even a bit insane--you'd have to be to crawl into bed with Mr. Russell the way she did. I think Turner is representative of the type of madness it must require to actually pursue the American dream: to shoot for the top when you were born nothing. When Turner glances at the camera, she is showcasing that madness.

I was riding a blue bike on a side street close to Harvard Square the other day, and the bike lane suddenly got all weird. It made me go out into the middle, and then it made me cross the street.

Some big pickup truck came roaring up from behind me. The driver rolled down the window and started screaming at me. "MOTHERF*****!!!* he yelled. "F***ing bikes like you are f***ing up this city!!!"

I looked at him and I said, very earnestly: "I love you!"

He guffawed, and then yelled "Go eat sh** as*hole!!"

I looked him dead and in the eye and said, "I've always loved you! Even when you didn't love yourself!!"

The driver of the pickup truck laughed, but his eyes were nervous, and then he peeled away dramatically.

Sometimes it's funnier to kill these people with kindness...

Poor Oscar was up in his room drinking like 2 bottles of whiskey a day. Maybe Ada was (subconsciously or not) just trying to save her nephew. She's a good aunt, and she cares about her family. It's funny to dis on temperance, but maybe it came from a good place...

I was recently on a flight from Milan to Rome. It was like 99% Italians, but there was also me (an American), and a nice, quiet Belgian couple in the seats across the aisle from me.

Like 15 minutes after the plane took off, the Belgian lady started barfing into a plastic bag. She was barfing pretty hard, and she wouldn't stop, so a flight attendant came over. The Belgian husband started motioning toward his ear--I think he was trying to say that his wife had an inner ear thing that was causing her to barf.

The flight attendant called over the intercom to see if there was a doctor, and then she went back to the lady.

All the people on the plane started talking, and many of them stood up in the aisles so they could better see the Belgian lady. I pretended to read a magazine, trying to be polite, but the guy next to me started shaking me by the shoulder and pointing at the lady.

People were leaning over their seats and craning their necks. The poor lady, who was clearly embarassed, had like 45 wide-eyed, worried faces within 5 feet of her.

Suddenly there was a cacophony. Somebody was shouting. I was just able to see, through the crowd in the aisle, that a very short, very elderly Italian lady was throwing up her hands and yelling about something. She kept saying the word "limone, limone!!"

A general murmering started happening, and then other people started yelling "limone, limone!"

I deduced that the old Italian lady had decided that the barfing Belgian lady needed a lemon to help her stop barfing.

Somebody toward the front of the plane inexplicably produced a lemon. They lifted it triumphantly up above their head. A loud, very dramatic group effort ensued: people reaching over several rows of seats, shouting and grabbing the lemon from each other, and then theatrically handing it along. Eventually, a quivering hand shoved the lemon into the lady's face.

Unfortunately, it turned out the Belgian lady could find no use for the lemon.

The plane landed in Rome not too long later. The flight attendant allowed the Belgian couple to get off first. As they walked, anxiously, down the aisle, they were met with thunderous applause...