St. Patrick's Day

My girlfriend dumped me on Valentine’s Day. It doesn’t matter why anymore. Since then, I have done little else on the weekends other than to walk around the antique store, which is in an old factory downtown that once made shoes, they say. It has old wood floors that croak like frogs as you walk and there are exposed ceilings. It makes me feel better to see all the old-framed photographs of people who are dead. The black-and-white group photos of various associations, clubs, and graduating classes. I don’t know why it helps me. I don’t have it as bad as them, I guess I think.

I like to peruse the oddities, being an oddity myself, to see things from the olden days, the bygone era. It is as though I belong among them, laid out on a vendor table with a paper price tag dangling from my little finger. A negotiable number, if someone wants haggle over my worth. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces big and small of various ages in eighty-two different booths. Some are expensive and others are cheap. And merchandise is coming and going constantly, so there is always something new and unusual to see, it seems.

I guess I am not much different than my dad, really. When he and my stepmom divorced some years ago, he walked around the mall a lot. He made laps around it and he would look in all the windows and smile at people he didn’t know, like I smile at the antiques. I know because I saw him a few times. We had coffee once in a while after they divorced. He told me about all those other women he talked to, but he never sounded too interested in any of them. Or even when he tried to be interested, you could see it in his eye that he was insincere, trying to be interested simply to be interested.

My dad sought the fool’s gold of finding his worth in someone else’s eyes and affections. My stepmom broke his heart, as he had broken my mom’s heart. I learned early that love was simply a string of broken hearts. My ex-girlfriend broke mine. She said I broke hers first. It doesn’t matter now. It’s just the way it goes.

The antique store gives free coffee and cookies, but I never partake in their generosity, though I eyeball them every time I come in, as though I might. They’re under a glass case like the one the seven dwarves made for Snow White, a white doily for a bed. The cups are in a Styrofoam stack and a sign says, “Free! Enjoy!” I have been wary of free giveaways all my life. Nothing is free, I learned as a kid. My dad engrained that it into my head by working himself to death and dying every night on the couch.

People are wearing green because it is St. Patrick’s Day today. I am wearing a green sweater because my dad said we were Irish, though I never saw any proof of it. When I was a kid, teachers and other kids at school would pinch you if you didn’t wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. Like it was some kind of sin. But they don’t do that anymore because they would likely catch a sexual battery charge.

I am looking through a vendor’s booth of small oddities when I come across a keychain with a four-leaf clover under a clear plastic bubble inset inside a yellow oval-shaped tag. It reads “Lucky” in cursive green letters above the clover and promises below that it is a “genuine 4 leaf clover.” On the back it says, "Compliments of Grange Mutual Casualty Co., Columbus, Ohio.” It is only $2.50, so I buy it thinking to gift it to my date tonight who I am not sure about at all, but who I asked out to suffuse my loneliness because that is what people do. An elementary error in thinking. The keychain makes me smile and if it brings me some luck in the meantime, I surely can use it. I slip it onto my keyring on the way out the door.

It is raining outside as I hurry to my car. When I try to start it, it doesn’t start. And that four-leaf clover dangles from my keyring as though to mock me. That plastic bubble like a four-leafed eyeball staring up at me. “Lucky” written like a green cursive eyebrow above it.

“You gotta be kidding me, right.” No one answers.

I pop the hood and have a look, though I know almost nothing about mechanics because my dad never taught me anything. It rains harder as I step out, of course. If not for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all, I complain to myself. My mom always said that. She probably still does, even though she survived breast cancer. I don’t see anything wrong with the engine, but then a big Ford truck pulls up. The driver steps down carefully. He is a little person dressed in a green suit with tails and big gold buttons. He has orange hair and a beard and a green velvet top-hat. He has a kooky smile and big egg-shaped eyes like Spencer Tracy as Mr. Hyde in Jekyll and Hyde, only he is a sawed-in-half version. Even when he talks, he is smiling. His teeth are not yellow, but they aren’t white. He is one of those leprechaun-for-hires, I am sure, hired by some hokey bar around town for tonight’s plethora of St. Patrick's Day parties.

“Need a little help, do we?” he asks. His Irish accent makes love to a skinned cat as he speaks. I am soaked, but the rain stops as he offers his services and I think to look for a rainbow, but I don’t. He has a look at the engine, his stubby fingers hovering over the machine like a holistic healer. Within a few seconds, he tells me to start her up. It starts.

“You had ya a little corrosion on your terminal ’s all. I jus’ give’er a quick polish and, well, off ya go.”

I thank him and tell him how bad my luck has been before realizing I am standing in a street talking to a leprechaun about luck. He smiles and says, “To the contrary! Ya got ya some good luck there, boy. The problem was fixed easy like. Could have been serious engine failure, or sumptin’. Think of it that way, boy. Luck ya always have, when you think ya have none a’ tall. It’s good luck, for as bad as the bad luck could’ve been!”

I drive away, but his image doesn’t leave my mind. It is burned into my head the way Spencer Tracy as Mr. Hyde was for years. I go home with my keychain and look at it for a while. I give it a rub with my thumb. I dry off and decide to take a nap. I hardly sleep at night anymore, because nights haunt me since she has been gone. I am bereft by the moon, betrayed by the stars, and hauntingly alone with nothing to occupy my thoughts besides what she may be doing because I know she isn’t sitting at home thinking about me.

I set my alarm for 6, so I can meet my date. I wasn’t ready to date, but sometimes you must push forward, I guess. Even when you don’t feel like it, they say. I feel like my dad telling me about the girl who worked in the jewelry store who he was taking to dinner. I fall asleep thinking of those Snow White cookies at the antique store under the glass case and the stack of Styrofoam cups, though I can’t remember what the coffee pot looks like. 

I think about the faces in all those framed pictures. All those dead people looking back at me. I often wander when I am falling asleep. Then I think of my father giving me a ride on his Harley-Davidson Sportster. The gas tank is candy-apple red and the hot tailpipe is vibrating near my leg and I am afraid I might accidentally touch it and that it will melt my parachute pants. Then I think of his funeral and the music plays and I can smell the flowers as I drift away.

I wake up and it is dark. Oh, hell. I overslept. I had set the alarm for the AM, instead of the PM. I hurry to shower and get dressed, but it is after 8 and she will not still be waiting for me. We just met and no one has that kind of loyalty or patience for someone they just met. I missed three texts from her and several from my mom asking me if I was okay. My mom has a habit every year on St. Patrick’s Day of texting me on the hour, every hour after six, asking if I am okay.

My mom knows I drink and thinks I will drink myself to death. She likes to warn me that Jimi Hendrix drank himself to death and she says probably a lot of other people have, too. She panicked when she didn’t hear from me. She said she was going to call the squad, an hour ago. Then she asked an hour later, where am I.

The girl's last text says Thanks for standing me up on my favorite holiday! LOSE my number!!! I text her back, but nothing. After my shower, I check again, and still nothing. I ask her to meet me somewhere and she doesn’t reply. So, I get dressed and head out on my own. Lone Wolfing it. A few minutes later, I get a text from her saying she met someone else and they really hit it off. No hard feelings. I didn't reply at all.

Easy come, easy go.

I read the text while driving and ran a red light and nearly caused an accident, but adeptly I swerved off the road and regained control of my car. And as I collected myself, I looked down and saw the keychain looking back at me, swaying side to side as though shaking its head. That four-leafed clover eyeball, compliments of Grange Mutual Casualty Company, Columbus, Ohio.

It is my bad luck charm. I think of ripping it off my keyring at the next red light, but I don’t. How stupid it is of me to believe in superstition, good or bad. And as the leprechaun said, you have good luck for what bad the bad luck could have been, or something like that. I sit at the light after it turns as green as the clover and someone lays on their horn and I come back to life and step on the gas and go. I skip ahead to the last place I intended to go tonight. The last of three bars. The Pink Cricket, it’s called. My friend’s family owns it and it is my bar home because everyone who drinks who is worth his salt has a bar home.

The lot is packed and so I park in the bank parking lot across the street. I go inside and all the tables are full. I haven’t eaten all day and I am hungry, so I will have to stand and eat, it looks like. Hold the pizza pan in one hand and my beer in another and chew at the pan, or something. Or find a safe corner of a table to put my beer.

The band that plays every year is playing. The same songs with a few new ones mixed in and everyone is having a good time, but I am hungry and the new barmaid walks past me a few times without asking me what I want to drink, so I look at her and hold up my hand as though to hail her like a taxi, even though I know she knows that I want to order a drink. Drunk guys are laughing at bad jokes and drinking green beer and girls are looking around wearing beaded necklaces, some with medallions that blink green. Others with “Bud Light” written on a plastic shamrock, compliments of the good folks at Anheuser-Busch.

One of the older barmaids gives me a hug. Everyone at the bar talks loud because they can’t hear each other very well over the music. Particularly, when some annoying asshole plays the harmonica. The barmaid finally brings me a beer and says she will take my food order in a minute or so, because she has to refill beers down on the other end of the bar. I look down at the lucky keychain and it looks back at me. Mocking me.

And just as I think of throwing it way again, I hear a whistle from across the bar and through a green sea of people and across the calamity of someone breaking a glass and dumping a beer on a large crowded table, there sits the leprechaun at a booth by himself, back in the corner. Same bulging egg-shaped eyes and creepy permanent smile. He waves at me and nods and I wave back, reflexively. Then he motions for me to come over like a baseball manager motions for a lefty out of the bullpen. 

Without the option of anywhere else to sit, I go. I see my friend’s parents who are like my second parents on my way and I give them both warm hugs and we say it is nice to see each other and all that and they tell me to enjoy myself and they are very sorry to hear about me and my ex-girlfriend, who they loved. Then I get a text and think maybe it is my ex-girlfriend asking to come join me, but it is only my mom asking if I am still alive. It is nine on the dot, after all.

I get to the table and he, in his skinned cat Irish accent, asks me to join him, and so I do. The booth seat is comfortable and I have a good view of the band and plenty of room, so it is like an oasis. He is drinking whisky and has a half-full whisky glass that he looks at like it is a newborn child now and then. His eyes remain big as eggs and his smile is still spread across his bizarre face. Then through his whisky glass baby he spots my keychain, as I had sat my car keys out on the table because I am not wearing a jacket and my pants are too tight to put them in my pants pocket.

He asks to hold it and so I let him and he rubs the plastic over the clover as though he is polishing it and smiles even wider, which seemed impossible before then, but he does. He says it is good, very good, indeed, that I bought this on this special day. And he says it will bring me good luck. I laugh and tell him all that went wrong since I owned it and he smiles still and says again, “No! It’s good luck for all the bad the bad luck could have been!” And I agree with him, though I don’t really agree.

I have heard that leprechauns are tricksters, but I had previously known none to confirm such an allegation. The only one I knew was Lucky on the box of Lucky Charms and I didn’t know him well at all. I just saw him occasionally when my mom bought the cereal. He looked pleasant, though. I saw him in commercials, too.

I ask the leprechaun what his name is and he says, Larry. The older barmaid comes by whose name is Jean or Gene, and I order a pizza, which Larry says he will split and go half on if I get a large, that way we are not ordering two mediums, or two smalls. I say okay, but then he says he wants anchovies and so I negate the deal until he compromises and says we can just do cheese and mushrooms and he will get the anchovies on the side. The barmaid laughs and waddles off with her order book. 

The band carries on and the bar clears a little when people go to smoke, then gets full again when they come back. Larry and I eat our pizza and he looks at his watch and says he has to go to some other bar where he is going to be the judge of a wet t-shirt contest. He hadn’t done a single thing in this place besides take an occasional picture with someone who asked him for it and to eat his half of the pizza and all of the anchovies. He ate the anchovies separate from the pizza and straight from the dish, dangling them over his mouth and dropping them in like he was a dolphin. People bought him drinks, but he never collected any money, so far as I could tell. And I didn’t ask for his half of the pizza or the anchovies. I took it on the chin. He fixed my car, after all, and offered me a place to sit.

But as he is leaving, he puts his face close to my ear and tells me that I should rub the keychain a certain way, which he shows me with his thumb and his index finger, kind of like the money sign which people like strippers or drug dealers do when they want someone to pay them. The Johnny Football thing. He says if I do it, I will get a wish and it will be up to me to accept that wish, or go on to another one. But he adds, I will only get four, and all four of my wishes are wishes that I wished for at one time or another from deep in that pot o’ gold in my chest, which I assume he meant to be my heart.

These aren’t for new wishes, he says, so I can’t make one and rub it and expect it to come true. These wishes have already been made long ago when I was a boy. He says if I accept the first wish, I will never know what the next three were. 

I laugh and he smiles back at me, his bushy eyebrows arched high on his forehead like the backs of scared orange cats, as though he is in a constant state of surprise. I have had four beers at this point, so I am feeling okay and temporarily optimistic about life, but I am not anywhere close to drunk. Just enough to laugh a little. To forget my heartache for a bit and the fact that she is probably somewhere laughing and drinking with someone else.

He reminds me as he leaves, speaking soft and more serious than he spoke before, “You’re lucky, for how bad the bad luck could have been. That is your good luck. Sometimes, boy, we don’t know how lucky we truly are cause we know no different a’ tall.” His breath smells like a drunk fish.

I have another beer. I am sitting by a window that overlooks the parking lot and I watch him leave in his big truck. He sees me and waves. Some others leave and the bar is more comfortable, but still there is a good crowd listening to the band, or conversating with each other, laughing with a spouse, or other loved ones. I realize I am the only solo flyer here tonight. The band is playing softer songs, some Neil Young, some Smiths, with some traditional Irish music mixed in. Someone plays a fife alongside them for the Irish tunes and disappears when the band cuts to Springsteen.

So, I say what the hell and I rub the keychain like he told me. Nothing happens, of course, but I don’t feel any less for doing it. I smile at it and the ominous green eye, as it had appeared to me before, seems suddenly less ominous, and I think it is pretty cool and I am glad I missed my date and hadn’t gifted it to someone meaningless to my existence.

A few minutes later a man walks in and walks right up to my table and introduces himself as Aaron J. Booker. He says he is not Irish, which is funny because he is dark black and he laughs and I laugh and he sits down and orders a drink. He is wearing a nice black suit and a black overcoat that he leaves on which tells me he isn’t planning on staying past a drink. His tie is green silk and he smiles a lot and he tells me he has very exciting news. He says I entered a contest last year sponsored by Miller-Coors Brewing Company. I don’t remember entering any contest, but I was sloshed by seven, as I recall. Then he says he is pleased to announce that I am the winner of one million dollars.  

You don’t believe something like that at first. You think someone is putting you on. It is a joke somehow. But there is a camera guy with him who I didn’t notice before because he was standing behind me. Now, he is filming my face and he and Mr. Booker are across from me, smiling for me. 

There are other people in the bar from the company waiting to congratulate me, standing across the room by the bar itself. They look like corporate-types who get bikini waxes and pedicures and massages at airports. He hands me a check with my name on it and there a lot of zeros after the one. And I look down at the Lucky keychain and the green eye of the four-leaf clover looks back at me in a much different way. 

I smile and shake my head. Then I remember what Larry told me. And I also remember that when I was seven, I prayed to God for a million dollars every night for almost two years straight before I realized it was selfish to pray for a million dollars when people are starving to death and drinking from mud puddles. I chose a million because that was the largest number I could imagine at the time and I didn’t know there was any more than that out there.

I shake my head, suddenly feeling like the luckiest man in the universe, imagining what I could do with a million dollars. A new house, a corvette, season tickets to the Reds, for life! An old vintage RV to travel anywhere! What couldn’t I do? But it struck me then, that I had to decline it because in the scheme of life, a million dollars isn’t the wish I wanted more than all others. And Larry said there would be four wishes, which meant three remain. So, I decline it.

Then my mom texts. 10 on the dot. I am alive, mom. She would have told me to take the money and run and she would have had a heart attack if she knew I turned it down. 

“Excuse me?” Mr. Booker asks nearly choking on his drink. The camera man’s eyes are as big as Larry’s. Probably bigger than the boobs Larry is currently looking at over at the other bar. I tell him I don’t want the money and he should give it to someone else. Mr. Booker leaves the table for a moment and goes to converse with the others from Miller-Coors who are drinking bottles of Miller Lite with the labels carefully facing out. They all look over at me suspiciously as I drink my beer.

Apparently, they were concerned that I might be declining because I am drunk, but they say it is my right and after they all talk to me for a few minutes they decide that I am not drunk at all and so they leave. They each look at me all the way through the exit door like I am crazy.

I smile at the keychain and say what the hell and rub it again. A few minutes later, a motorcycle pulls up in the parking lot and I recognize the man on the back. I go outside and as soon as I hear it, I know what it is and who it is. It is my dad on his candy-apple red Harley. And he smiles at me as though he doesn’t know he died five years ago and he idles the bike and asks me with a grin I rarely saw from him if I want to go for a ride.

I stand there and my eyes begin to sweat and that feeling comes up from my stomach that must be something like bats flying out of a cave, and I thank him for asking me. But I decline and tell him, another time dad. And I realize as I am standing there I am seven again in parachute pants and sneakers. He smiles at me and doesn’t say anything for a minute, then he tells me he better be getting home to mom and says we will do it again sometime. And I say I really hope so.

I walk back to the bar and as I cross over the gravel of the lot and onto the pavement, I am myself again. No longer a seven-year-old boy waiting for his dad to ask him for a ride on his motorcycle. And a little sad because of it, I go inside and sit down at the table and I have another beer. Then I think about it for a minute and I rub that keychain again. I don’t even know what to expect. Maybe a Brontosaurus, or every GI Joe ever made.

A few seconds later, she walks in. Appropriately, she is wearing a green satin dress and her trademark hair and make-up. Everyone in the bar turns to look at her and the band even stops playing a song because they screwed it up as soon as they saw her. She is smiling and says hello to everyone she passes on her way to my table in the sort of way that makes it obvious she has waltzed into a crowded room and turned heads many times before.

She breaks hearts as she comes straight for my table and says hello. I stand up, and in utter awe, I stare at her before I think to ask her if she would like to sit.

“Do you know who I am?” she asks eagerly. Her voice straight from the movies.

I stutter a little like a glitched robot. “Um. Yes. Yes. I do. You are M-M-Marilyn Monroe.”

She smiles. “Good, Jimmy! I am. Do you mind if I call you, Jimmy? I like the name Jimmy. That is how I knew you when you watched all my movies on your TV. It was just you and me. I could see you! I could even hear you chewing your popcorn,” she laughs.

“You were such a cute little boy! And now, well, you are all grown up and finally ready for me! Right, Jimmy? I have been all across time and the cosmos trying to find you. And, well, here I am! And here you are. I hope you can appreciate the colossal magnitude of this moment, Jimmy,” she says sweetly.

“I can,” I reply in a robotic haze.

“I have a room at the Holiday Inn. 444. Easy to remember. What do you say we go there right now and see what we can do until morning? And by morning, I mean eternity! The sun will never rise on us, Jimmy.”

I swallow. I know I must be staring at her, but I can’t look away. Her eyes are smoky, but through the smoke there is fire. There are diamonds and pearls and every other extravagant and beautiful and priceless thing in this world I have ever coveted in them. I can’t help to feel twelve again, though I don’t change, fortunately, to that awkward age.

She sits there and waits for my answer and I grab my keys to go with her, but as I do, I touch the keychain and that four-leafed eye stares up at me as though to ask me if this is truly the wish I want more than all else. This is the third wish, so there is only one more. But what possibly could I want more than this? I am twelve again in my insides, and they are raging with hormones and desire and she sits there radiantly in that green strapless dress. Her shoulders moving lithely in anticipation like some sort of voodoo dance. Some kind of sexy table mambo.

I couldn’t have imagined while watching all those movies how beautiful she would be in person. The Seven Year Itch was my favorite and as a boy I dreamed I owned the downstairs apartment with the air-conditioning almost every night. And I couldn’t understand how he turned her away before anything more happened when he thought his wife was at the camp frolicking in the hay with that other man.

“Excuse me,” she says so beautifully, “But I caught a chill and I am getting all goose-pimply.” She smiles and shivers a little shiver that is very detrimental to my resistance.

I look around and everyone is looking. Not constantly, but they look. Their eyes, like mine, cannot believe what they are seeing. The band continues playing, but even they look our way as they play. Maybe they think she is in costume, or is an impersonator of some kind. I don’t know what they think because there is no room in my head to consider anyone's thoughts but my own.

But then I look her in those smoky eyes and I say, “Ms. Monroe, you are the most beautiful actress to every grace the silver screen. You were my heart’s desire from the time I was eleven until about five years ago. And there is practically nothing I would rather do in this world than to go with you and to live out those dreams. But sometimes dreams are better left as such, and well, five years ago I met someone who I love with all my heart. And though we are not together, I still have the faintest glimmer of hope in my broken heart that she will return.”

Marilyn sits up in her seat. Her back arched and her chest out. “Well, that isn’t exactly the response I hoped for, Jimmy.” She has a very serious look on her face. Her red lips are in a pouty apple-shape and her eyes are inflamed with even more diamonds and pearls. But then she smiles and looks across at me peacefully, respectfully.

“Well, let me tell you, mister,” she says. “If this girl doesn’t get right and see what kind of a man she has waiting for her, well, she has corned beef and cabbage for brains! And you can tell her Marilyn Monroe said so.” 

I smile at her. She is beautiful, inside and out. Much more so than I ever dreamed. And then she gets up and sashays through the bar the way she had come in. Glamorous as ever. And she is gone before I know it. And my mom texts again. 

11PM. All is well.

I wait a few minutes before I rub the keychain again. I have a drink and think about what had just happened. What in the hell did I just do? A million dollars, my dad, and Marilyn Monroe. What was left? I tried to think of every wish I ever made, but all I could remember were GI Joes and the Brontosaurus. Oh, hell! Then I remember I wished to be abducted by aliens because I didn’t want to tell my mom I failed Math in third grade.

I rub the keychain again. Wanting to get it over with the way a condemned man wants to be executed swiftly. But nothing happens. I have another drink and wait, still nothing. Another drink. I look outside the window and nothing. In only a couple hours, I just pissed away a million dollars, time with my dad, and Marilyn Monroe. Where does that rank among all-time catastrophic losses?

I go and sit at the bar and drink some more, but still I don’t feel drunk. It’s just not hitting me very hard at all. Not even the shots. I can still smell the vapors of Marilyn’s Chanel No. 5 lingering in the air like a ghost. I can still see Mr. Booker smiling at me and that check on the table between us. And I can see and hear my dad on back of that Harley. It is okay, I say to the keychain. To that friendly green eyeball. I appreciate the night. It was fun.

There is nothing quite as lonely as looking at the black screen on a phone that doesn't light up. Or a dark apartment you come home to every night. Or an empty king-sized bed with nothing but you and your pillows. But then I realize, that if I didn’t feel so lonely, I knew I wouldn’t have loved her so much. And if I never loved her, I wouldn’t have known the feeling of loving her and maybe not the feeling of loving at all. When we were together there was never a better feeling than coming home to her, or getting her calls, or lying next to her in bed, or falling asleep and waking up with her, or making love in the dark, or the light, or the backyard.

I was suddenly appreciative of those five years, rather than remorseful, and I think the final wish that I got from the keychain was acceptance. It was peace. It was love that lasts after someone that you love says they no longer love you the way they used to which shatters your heart to pieces. When did I ever make that wish as a kid, I think as I laugh to myself. The wish of acceptance? Of peace? Then I remember when my father told my mother he was leaving her, and the fallout. And on that string, was the first of my broken hearts.  

Mom texts at twelve. Still good, mom. The band calls it a night and I decide to do so as well. I say goodbye to my favorite barmaid Jean, or Gene, who I never tip as well as she deserves, and the bartender, Paul, who is an old friend and one of the most ferociously human people I know. They ask me about Marilyn and I brush it off and say she's just a friend who looks like Marilyn. A dead ringer, Paul says. Hope someone got a picture, he says. I say I do, too, and goodbye again.  

I walk across the gravel of the parking lot to my car. The keychain in the palm of my hand. Leaving the bar alone is a lonely feeling, but leaving it with someone you don’t love, who is using you to feel something in herself, or himself, is even worse. The gravel sounds nice under my shoes and I am not as lonely as I was when I came in. Maybe it is just the alcohol.  

I get to my car and my phone vibrates just when I had given up on it. It’s probably my one AM check-in from mom. But I look and my ex-girlfriend’s name is on the screen along with the beautiful phrase, “New Message.” I get in my car and it starts right up. The lucky keychain sways from the ignition like the vines of the old weeping willows at Maher Park before they cut them down. Its eye looks up at me and smiles. I hold my phone out and open the text. 

Come home.

Words will never express feelings well enough, try as they might to reflect them equally. They fail. There is nothing to say that can satisfactorily represent the elation of my heart reading those two words. And I knew then, that this was my last wish. The one I so wisely held out for. There is nothing in the world I would rather have than this. And I remember, driving home, that sometime after a Brontosaurus, and GI Joes, and a million dollars, and Marilyn Monroe, and more time with my dad, I wished for one thing which is the sum of all those parts.