I walked once through the aisles of a Value Village store (a second hand store) and wandered accidentally into a section that sold art. This was art not from artists, but the stuff of the average person. Art taken up briefly as a hobby, perhaps… and unloosed by way of estate sale. Each piece was worse than the last. Unexpectedly, I actually started to cry when I examined a painting of a young child drawn by one of its family members. The love was deeply imprinted everywhere, but the image of the child was more like the crude depiction of a log or a Boulder, or something. I felt simultaneously… love, shame, and poignancy.

Your parents have been given a story book life. So, what do you think? Would you want the same? My mother is very much like your mum, by the way, and that makes us practically brothers. Someone once said that people live lives of quiet desperation. What are these things that are living like that? Is it us?

Due to the high cost of housing and living, and such, my retirement plans, basically, involve global warming. Do you blame me?