I planted snapdragons in our window boxes three summers ago, and every year since, at least one plant pops up in some random crack in the sidewalk. This one is growing out of my neighbor’s house.

On the evening of Sept. 23, 1997, I put myself in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. That is to say, an ambulance and some paramedics put me in the hospital, but I’m the one who started it.

It looks kinda like this, except they dont do sprouts anymore. (Courtesy of JimmyJohns.com

I remember this much before waking up on a gurney as I was wheeled into Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Mich.

1. Thinking: Should I do those last two shots?
2. Thinking: Hell yes.
3. Stumbling home on the shoulders of two of my roommates. I didn’t so much walk as allow myself to be propelled forward by gravity and their patience.
4. Rolling off the living room couch into pure darkness to hit the floor, clutch my gut, and commence vomiting.

——

Hamm. Hamma baa baa blll. Oblaa mmm. Maaaa…

So there I was, waking suddenly, strangers on all sides, the world wheeling quickly past, bright lights stabbing at my eyes, a door closing at my feet.

Bammm bammmba laaaaa. Hummmm. Hummmm. Hummmm maa maa laaa…

I knew I was babbling. I had some awareness that I could talk if I wanted to, but I didn’t have much else to say, and a string of nonsense was easier to get out. My chief goal was to prove I was alive. I’m OK. I don’t need any help.

My surroundings in a hospital corridor slowly made themselves apparent.

Mahm mahm baah. Baa laaah.

A nurse pulling me down the hall turned to my roommate, who was keeping pace with the procession, and said, “Let me guess. This one is majoring in languages.”

Hummbaa hum—Hey! I said. “That’s nnnot fffunny.”

I was back from outer space.

My body may have been shutting down involuntary yet essential body functions, desperate to survive dehydration, but my brain could tell when there was a joke being made at my expense. Though I gave him credit for trying.

And then it hit me: How ridiculous and embarrassing! What a bother I must be to everyone! And most unforgivable: What a cliché.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, my eyes closed, addressing everyone but facing no one.

“Sorry about what?” the nurse said. Apart from his sarcasm and his unwillingness to take my shit, all I can remember of him now is his closely cropped brown beard.

“I’m so sorry,” I repeated. “For this. For all of this. I shouldn’t put you through this. You shouldn’t … have … to deal … with this.”

“What do you mean?” he said. “We love this stuff.”

——

It took two bags of IV solution before I was hydrated enough to pee. I wished I knew more biology to understand the miraculous yet completely ordinary path that liquid took. And how can I ever forget the peculiar sense of freedom that came from positioning that bed pan under my paper gown so I could let loose the rank, foul sluice of my bladder. To expunge just a hint of that poison was such a relief that I hardly considered the sensibilities of my poor roommate, sitting not four feet away from me.

If she was bothered, she did a good job of hiding it. I bet she had become well-enough acquainted with my bodily functions in the last hour. This was nothing.

The details she filled in, waiting in that room for me to recover, seem almost comical now—except for coming so close to catastrophe.

About an hour after putting me down on the couch—I guess I refused to attempt the stairs—my roommates all woke to the sound of me rolling around retching in the living room.

Upon seeing the state of me, one began pacing the floor and talking to herself. Another locked himself in the bathroom. A third just stood in his bedroom doorway staring with wide eyes.

Thank goodness this one, the one patiently watching me rehydrate, who had seen my pants come off, who had seen me regurgitate blood, had the mental wherewithal to call the hospital. She rode with me in the ambulance and dug through my pockets to find my ID and insurance card and help with admitting me.

“I hope I got all the insurance stuff right,” she said.

“I’m sure you did,” I said, grateful the bill would come to my address and not my parents’. Oh god. If I survived the night, I did not think I could survive explaining this to them. The good son—the first-born—in the hospital on his birthday! Better to pay the bill myself and hide the night’s adventure from mom and dad.

Another nurse came to check on me with a cup of ice chips for me to chew. I thought of all the times my mom stopped me from chewing ice when I was a kid.

We went home after the sun came up.

——

Jeff had left for his own place a little before my roommates ventured home from the bar with my dead weight. Someone must have called him in the morning to let him know what happened.

His first reaction was, “Oh god. I killed my boyfriend.”

So after giving me a few hours to sleep, he stopped by to visit. I was silent, nearly catatonic, choking down sips of water and staring at the television, which was not on. He seemed relieved to see me still breathing, weakly smiling.

I could see he felt terribly guilty. The last two shots had come from him. But they were only the capper. I was well on my way to nowhere good before they were poured. We had been together only about one week, and he was just trying to help me celebrate my birthday. I certainly did not blame him.

He had a sandwich for me: Provolone cheese, avocado, cucumber slices, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise on a long French roll — the Jimmy John’s No. 6. After only one week, he knew my favorite.

A moment prior, I could hardly have borne the thought of eating, but this was special. He was trying to help me, so I took a bite to be a good sport.

The effect was instantaneous. I swear I could feel each of those 673.75 calories re-inflating my cells, enriching my blood, invigorating my heart.

I had gone into the fire, and Jimmy John’s and my boyfriend were on the other side. Jeff might have slid into my house on a rainbow and given me a sip from the Holy Grail, and he still wouldn’t have seemed more angelic to me than he did just then.

It was the best thing I had ever tasted, and I have ever since associated that sandwich with that blissful moment. Nothing else on the menu holds any interest for me. The Big John? A cheap gimmick, not worth my time. The Turkey Tom? Blasphemy. The Totally Tuna? Get thee behind me.

——

Not long after that, I got a call from my mom.

“Hey, Eric,” she said. “What’s this $800 medical bill from Sparrow Hospital?”

Our office was testing it out this week. Friday was its last day with us, and I can already feel that it’s made a change all our lives.

The Latte Lounge is a remarkable little machine. Actually, it’s enormous. It must outweigh our old coffee maker 10 to 1. It stood in an underused part of the first floor like a robotic guard watching over the adjacent vending machines.

Behold the “Latte Lounge.”

It grinds beans for each order to make regular and decaf coffee of varying strengths and flavors. The lattes and cappuccinos use real milk. And for the colder months, it spits out hot chocolate and mocha. The transparent canisters of beans on top show how close we are to needing a refill.

Of course the decaf has not yet needed a refill.

The coffee-making process is a little more intense than we’re used to. Gears whir and spin, lights flash, tubes rattle and contract as they suck water and milk into the Latte Lounge’s Goldbergian innards and transmogrify the liquid into your beverage of choice.

The resulting cup is surprisingly good.

It ran out of milk Thursday. Friday it was out of regular coffee beans. I don’t see the point of decaf, so what brewed for me was more like dark urine than the “finest organic suspension ever devised.” I poured it out in the sink.

It’s time for our Latte Lounge to move on. Yet somehow I feel we’ll all be a little better off for having known her, albeit for so brief a time. It’s a theme I’ve seen time and again.

When I was a kid, all my favorite movies seemed to end with someone leaving.

How many times did I weep when Elliott the dragon left Pete in Passamaquoddy—a little happier, a little wiser, and finally with a family who cared about him?

And speaking of Elliott, a different Elliott—thank goodness I was sitting in a dark theater the first time I saw “E.T.,” surely the first time I ever sobbed over a creepy-looking space alien.

My dad had kept me home from school that day to play hookey, so the movie was already a very special experience for me. Just me and my dad, breaking the rules, making some memories, watching the government chase down a little boy and his alien friend.

And then E.T. lights up his fingertip and presses it to Henry Thomas’ forehead and says:

“I’ll … be … right … here.”

The music swells. E.T. picks up Gertie’s potted flower and waddles off toward his spaceship.

Ugh — it gets me every time.

But nothing could ever top “Mary Poppins.” Oh, my poor mother.

Even at the—what?—13th, 14th viewing?—the wind would change, that weather vane would twist around, and I knew it was time for Mary to leave the Banks children. And then those tears would start to flow. A slow build, just a trickle at first, something I could surreptitiously wipe away with my sleeve.

But soon, as Mr. Banks in his crushed bowler skipped around with his children, waving that mended kite in the air, and Mary, speaking to her indignant parrot-head umbrella reminded us that it’s ok that the children don’t realize she’s going away because they don’t need her any more and “that’s as it should be,” I would collapse into a bawling, heaving wreck until long into the closing credits.

My poor mother, rubbing my back, holding me closer, rocking me in her lap, must have found the whole thing rather startling.

“It’s ok,” she would say, laughing gently, reassuring me, reassuring herself. “It’s ok. It’s ok. It’s only a movie.”

“Yeah … b-b-but,” I would wail through a fit of sobs and hiccups, “why … does she have to … l-leave?”

Not once, mind you. I did this on repeated viewings into my second decade.

If the scene weren’t built around the triumphant and uplifting closing number, “Let’s Go Fly a Kite,” to countervail against my complete and total despair, I’m sure I would have ended up in therapy at a young age.

It’s no wonder I’m in love with Julie Andrews. I mean, honestly!

So with the departure of Latte Lounge, that theme of going away has resurfaced in my life—albeit in a far less traumatic and meaningful way. The all-too-briefly visiting agent of change, in our case, helped build a bridge between people from different departments who never speak to each other, let alone see each other. Every time I went down for a cup of coffee, a small crowd would be gathered around the Latte Lounge, marveling at its mechanical feats.

“I’m going to get the vanilla hazelnut. What do you want?”

“I’m getting a cappuccino. I think I’ll try the Irish cream next.”

First-timers would timidly approach the machine like supplicants begging audience with a great granter of wishes, gripping their cups hopefully, humbly. Helpful coworkers—strangers—would walk them through the buttons and digital readouts.

“And when that button lights up, press it.”

A press of the button, and then a step back to watch in awe as the Latte Lounge did her stuff.

Waiting for the cup to fill, people would introduce themselves, chat, crack jokes. In the shadow, and at the mercy, of the Latte Lounge, we were all equals, just seekers of some early-morning get-up-and-go, or something to fight that 3 p.m. slump.

Who knows what friendships and alliances were bonded in the midst of the Latte Lounge. Who knows what deals were made, what ideas were forged, in the time it took to brew a french vanilla latte or a decaf mocha.

We must all learn to get along without the Latte Lounge for now. She has moved on to other office buildings to challenge their castes and break down their cubicles. And wherever she is, I must wonder if she is carving smiley-faces into the froth of her cappuccinos, looking back on the good deeds she has done.

“Hey hey hey!” I shouted.

“Alex!” he called back. He knew my face but not my name. I didn’t remember his, either, so it seemed hypocritical to correct him.

There was no one around at that time of night, still and silent and harshly bright from streetlamp to streetlamp. The slightest motion would have gotten my attention: a breeze-borne takeout menu skittering across the sidewalk, a cockroach scouting from one shadow to another, a gypsy cab window sliding open. But there was nothing.

At first I wanted to think it was some kind of interesting coincidence to run into him like this, randomly, after so much time. I was so rarely in the old neighborhood.

The few still out now were either stumbling home or stumbling to their last cocktail of the night. Like me. And I had spent enough time in those bars through the years; I was bound to see someone I recognized this time of night.

It’s like every time I turn on The Golden Girls, it’s always the one where Dorothy’s lesbian friend Jean has a crush on Rose.

Well I haven’t known any personally, but isn’t Danny Thomas one?

Not Lebanese, Blanche. Lesbian.

I must pass by people I recognize all the time without knowing it, people I might notice if they meant something to me.

But whatever I thought about this one, he was gorgeous, and he was trying to get my attention.

I pulled out my ear buds. The sudden quiet, like a cold wind, made the hairs on my arms stand up.

“Remember me?” he said.

“Hey, yeah,” I said. “I do remember you.”

“From the bar.”

“Yeah. The bartender,” I recalled.

He worked—possibly used to work—at a gay bar just a couple of blocks away. He must have just finished his shift.

I imagined he was sorting through a change of clothes in his trunk, but I didn’t ask what he was doing or where he was headed.

I hadn’t seen him in years.

Armando? No, that wasn’t it.

Behind the bar he used to hide a deck of Trivial Pursuit cards. He pulled them out every time my boyfriend visited, which was more frequently than me, and probably more often than I knew.

Not that there was anything wrong with it. The bartender was straight—or claimed to be, like so many in that part of town. He was just a hetero dude slinging cocktails with his hard, round pecs and his big guns, who happened to enjoy the attention of other men. I didn’t feel threatened by him. I just didn’t have any reason not to treat him coldly, politely.

Alejandro? No.

I still couldn’t … ugh … remember. No surprise. We were never friends. He and my boyfriend had their little routine, but it was nothing to do with me.

He loved when my boyfriend quizzed him on slow nights. He wanted to show off how smart he was, but I always thought a far better test was whether he knew the answers to questions that weren’t in the cards.

I wondered if he still had that deck behind the bar.

Gustavo? I ran through my South American repertoire, trying him in a succession of names like dressing a paper doll. He must have seen it on my face, because he cocked his head and said, “Augusto.”

Yes. That’s the one. “Augusto!” I shouted. “Of course. I remember you.”

“Where you coming from?” he asked.

“Manhattan,” I said, momentarily blanking on further detail. “Duplex,” I said finally.

“That a gay bar?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I was watching a friend compete in a singing competition. Like American Idol.”

It was actually not at all like American Idol, but it did involve singing, voting, judges.

“That’s cool,” he said.

“Yeah. Eric,” I said, pantomiming a tiny wave as if I were just then saying hi.

“Eric! Right.”

So far I had no idea yet why he stopped me.

Through the years I’ve learned to understand a bartender’s friendliness. You’re such a good friend, and he’s been so looking forward to seeing you again. He has a heavy pour, because you tip well. And you come back again because he has a heavy pour. That’s just how it’s played. Everybody knows the rules.

In the bar, he had a reason to be nice to me. On the street, I guess he just wanted to say hi. But I didn’t have any Trivial Pursuit cards, so I said good night — “Well, it was great to see you” — and I continued on my way.

He turned toward the window as if he could see it, too. Out of politeness or empathy, I suppose. Just a reflex. I might have done the same thing.

I’d avoided talking to him so far. If there is anything I hate on an airplane, it’s verbosity, but we were so close, I thought I could risk it.

He wore a fedora and a black short-sleeve oxford shirt. He looked to be in his late 50s. His arms were covered with coarse brown and gray hairs, and the backs of his hands were spotty and freckled. I mention these details, because I looked at him so little, I believe it’s all I saw of him. I think he wore glasses.

I imagined he was a man who said “cat” and “cool” and “babe” a lot and who liked to sit in bars and recommend jazz clubs to tourists.

I was probably completely wrong.

It wasn’t strictly true that I could see my house — but it was possible, so I let the syntax stand. We were close enough. I could see my block. Ergo, I could see my house.

We had just curved slowly over Center City. The edges of the crystalline spires of Liberty Place glowed red that night, and the mirrored panes of glass shimmering like spangles from one to the next as we rotated past seemed close enough to touch.

From there, I could trace my way through the lighted grid below us. The streets spread out like a geometry problem. There’s Broad. There’s East Passyunk. That’s the Acme. So that’s Reed, Dickinson, Tasker, Morris, Moore, Mifflin. There’s the Catholic high school. My house should be just about… there.

Seemed a shame to go all the way to the airport to catch a cab all the way back up here. Couldn’t I just parachute out and walk home? Surely I’d land somewhere nearby.

But of course not. That would be silly. I had a checked bag that I needed to claim.

“Coming from Detroit,” my neighbor said, “this place must seem so beautiful.”

It was beautiful. And where I came from had nothing to do with it.

Thumbs down to Joy Tsin Lau, 1026 Race St. Try David’s Mai Lai Wah (1001 Race St.) or Tai Lake (134 N. 10th St.) instead.

We should have known that, on a night like this, when all our first choices in Chinatown had a long wait to get in, the restaurant without a line would probably not be all we hoped for.

It was Christmas. Jeff and I were excited about having a night out with friends in Chinatown on Christmas with chopsticks and fortune cookies and red lanterns and silly tropical cocktails.

My mom laughed when I told her. She recited that little bit of good-humored racism from A Christmas Story. ”How does it go?” she said. “Deck the hars with bars of horry…”

But the place we chose turned out to be nothing to laugh at.

I’m not one to get worked up about service. I’m vaguely embarrassed by being served — but I figure if I’m not allowed in the kitchen, someone has to bring the General Tso’s and lemon chicken, right? I usually find myself defending restaurant staff. I don’t mind if waiters and waitresses make mistakes, or if I have to wait just a little bit.

But this place didn’t even have the basics down. The food was fine. The service was horrid.

After we were seated, the place cleared out pretty quickly. It wasn’t at all crowded. I know, because I watched everyone leave as we sat there waiting for someone to notice us. But depending on who happened to walk by, we were either ignored or treated with surly contempt. No one working that night seemed to have even the thinnest hint of joy in their faces, and their misery was contagious.

Our drink order was forgotten until the food began to arrive. Then the waiter conveyed the order to the bartender. The drinks were twice again forgotten. We stopped various staff to reminded someone — anyone — that they had not yet come. Then finally, our glamorous, goofy mai-tais — “I hope they have little skewers of pineapple and cherries in them,” Jeff said with a twinkle in his eyes — came when we were half-done with our meals. They were tall glasses of iced pineapple juice with a splash of rum.

The food itself was late, each dish arriving 5 to 10 minutes apart. When all the dishes were down, and most of them were no longer hot, we had to ask no fewer than three times for steamed rice. I felt like asking the waiter: “You know you work at a Chinese restaurant, right?”

Jeff and I wondered out loud what we must have done to upset the waitstaff, because their behavior seemed almost retaliatory.

Jeff had to grab a pitcher of water from the server’s station so we could pour it ourselves. We might have asked to exchange our dirty water glasses if we thought there was a chance of it actually happening.

Even the check took forever to arrive. We couldn’t wait to get out of there so we could start enjoying the evening. No, we don’t want anything else. No, we dont need a to-go box. Just the check, please.

And then, for the … tenth time that night? … our waiter disappeared.

When we pulled on our coats and scarves and started walking toward the cashier, he ran up to me and shoved the bill into my hand. It was marked “reprint.” Where the original one was, I couldn’t say.

I think it’s immoral to leave without tipping a minimum of 20%. But not that night. I feel quite justified in leaving nothing on the table.

Visitors to Philadelphia’s Chinatown: I hope you have better luck at Joy Tsin Lau than we did.

We found it after exhausting our limited knowledge of Chinatown. It had a Zagat sticker on the front window. A cluster of people was walking away remarking how they’d so enjoyed dinner. (Did the manager pay those people to say those things?) The waiting area wall was crowded with photographs of a glamorous Chinese woman—the owner, maybe—posing with various celebrities and presidents and presidents’ wives. The place seemed like a winner.

I’m willing to believe that it is on most nights. But on this night, it was not even a contender. I will never go there again. The nice thing is, there are enough alternatives that I don’t have to.

My advice: Wait in line — somewhere else.

During a visit in the spring, my mom treated me and Jeff and a couple of our friends to some serious Polish-lady cooking: golabki, chicken stew and biscuits. The huge baking dish full of stuffed cabbage boiled over. We had a baking sheet on the lower rack, but it wasn’t placed well, and tomato soup spilled right on through to the gas valve and shorted out the electronic controls. If you’re going to go out, go with a bang, I guess—and a sizzle and a pop.

We had to bake the biscuits for the chicken stew at our neighbors’ house. They were repaid the next day with my mom’s home cooking.

In the following weeks, when we were desperate, fish sticks worked out fine in a skillet, though it was not ideal. I improvised a stovetop method for the frozen pizza, “baking” it a quarter at a time in a covered saucepan and crisping the crust with the cover off. It was a valiant attempt with not entirely disastrous results. All we had to do was relax our standards a little.

It took me seven and a half months, through a combination of laziness and a fear of spending money, to get that oven fixed. It took a failed attempt at self repair and two service calls to get it right.

There was once a time when our lives were measured out in frozen pizzas.

When Jeff and I were living in Minneapolis, we favored Totino’s Crisp Crust Party Pizzas. They were cheap—three for 10 bucks, I think, and usually on sale for  less. They were little more than big, round crackers with tomato sauce and some dehydrated flakes of something that, when heated, looked like cheese. So we fancied them up with broccoli florets and extra cheese. (We weren’t complete barbarians.) They were best enjoyed in front of the TV and served with forks, because the crusts were too thin to support our “improvements.”

By the time we moved to New York, we’d graduated to those nicer ones with the rising crusts. DiGiorno was great for your basic pepperoni pie, and Freschetta had a really good vegetable pizza with a white sauce. Twenty-six minutes after stumbling through the door on a Saturday night, I’d tease the pie off the oven rack, slash through it with a pizza cutter, and ply up the pieces with a serving wedge.

We’ve carried the habit with us to Philadelphia, but we partake far less often than we used to. Our thirties might have given us some respectability, but they robbed us of some digestive talents.

But you can bet that when we were finally once again, as they say, cooking with gas, the only appropriate thing we could bake for our first celebratory dinner was a frozen pizza and a sheet of tater tots.

The official start of Thanksgiving was always the aroma of celery and onions sautéing in butter as my dad started cooking the stuffing for the turkey. It was better than an alarm clock or a nudge to the shoulder to draw me, groggy and pajamaed and rubbing my eyes, from my bedroom.

A lot of recipes start out that way, sautéing onions, celery, some herbs. But no matter what we’re making, no matter the time of year it is, that scent — heavy, sweet and ambrosial — always means Thanksgiving.

Today is a good day to think about my dad. Thanksgiving was one day, every year, when he was at his happiest.

My dad took immense pride in his turkey stuffing. It was flawless. Even then, I never thought it was particularly unusual or remarkable. (Now that I’m older, I know that it wasn’t.) But it was damn good, and that was the point. That’s all that mattered. It wasn’t just for stuffing the turkey, it was for stuffing me.

Dad never was one for simply following a recipe. He always made it his own somehow with a phalanx of stout, little shakers of herbs and seasonings — what is arrowroot? what is allspice? — maybe to guarantee it could never be duplicated by anyone. He always made extra, praise Jesus, so whatever didn’t fit inside the bird cooked in a separate casserole dish on another oven rack.

After dinner, I would pick at that slowly cooling lump of bread and drippings and herbs with a fork every time I passed it between the table and the dish washer. Just one more bite. Just one more bite. OK, really, just one more bite.

I continued to pick at it for days and days after Thanksgiving, as it sat in the fridge, slowly waning like a cold, savory moon.

He managed the turkey, boiled the potatoes, microwaved the corn and green beans, too. Mom made the candied yams. Grandma slow-cooked the baked beans. Aunt Kay brought the dinner rolls and a pie. Uncle Dennis’ macaroni salad was unmatched.

I liked to cut both ends of the can and slide the cylinder of congealed cranberry gelatin sloppily onto a serving plate. We each took a perfectly round medallion for our plates.

As an ensemble, it was a symphony. But the standout was the stuffing.

By the time my dad died, I had survived a few years without his cooking. Jeff and I had determined to start our own traditions, hosting holidays with friends in New York. But I never was able to duplicate his stuffing. I’d had fancier versions with oysters and with mushrooms and sagey pork sausage, but the best way is always the old way, the plain old, everyday, delicious way.

I hope he knows somehow that I’m thinking about him. Holidays for me lost some steam when I lost my dad. He wasn’t a very happy man in the final years, divorced, lonely and in poor health, but when I was a kid, his enthusiasm and joy and pride were irrepressible and contagious. That was an integral part of my holiday experience, whether I spent it with him or remembered him from hundreds of miles away. One day, I hope to get that feeling back, but I’m not sure I eer really can. Maybe I should start experimenting with croutons and get some celery and onions going in the skillet.

It suggests a lot of time spent barefoot. He has the sand-scoured soles and suntanned top skin of feet that spent the summer months on the beach.

Under the skin across each foot curves a pattern of athletic veins. From ball to heel, a graceful arch slopes high and tight, like the loaded spring of a catapult.

His toes spread wide at the broad, flat, flipper-like ends of his feet. They are each distinct and squared at the tip, not a one crushed against another or mangled by years of too-tight shoes. His big toe is neither bulbous and vegetal, nor stunted and incomplete, just the next step up in a natural progression from this little piggy to the next.

The toenails are clean, neat, but not meticulous, not manicured. Maintained, you might say, but not “cared for.” Not shiny. Rather, appropriately dull and masculine, but glowing at the same time with effortless, thoughtless health.

The flesh of his heel sinks in around the Achilles tendon, taut as a drawn bow. His ankles, stony and firm, yet vulnerable, look mechanical and ready. And the region just above, at the base of his calves where the leg hair starts to grow, peeks out from the turned-up cuff of his jeans like a hint, an innuendo, a suggestion.

These are among the things you’re likely to notice when you’re a college freshman, in circumstances foreign and uncomfortable and exhilarating, suddenly free to look—in fact, encouraged to look—at the world with new eyes, meeting the guy across the hall who, like you, is sitting outside the door of his room with a book while his roommate is on the phone.

White t-shirt, blue jeans, and barefoot—a classic look. With his knees drawn up to his chest, those feet are practically on offer for examination.

For as long as I can remember caring, I have not liked the shape of my own feet.

They call it a “Greek foot” when the second toe is longer than the first. The Statue of Liberty has feet like this. This fact—and the ancient Greek sculptors’ penchant for the human ideal—should be enough to comfort me, but it isn’t. Not when I have flesh-and-blood perfection across the hall to admire and compare myself to.

I can’t decide what the deformity is: Is my second toe too long, or is my big toe too short?

Also, I have flat feet. Standing, I need to shift my weight to the outer edges of my feet to raise my arches, or I might go knock-kneed.

“You dropped your arches,” my rugby team’s physiotherapist once gruffly told me. As if, by looking behind me or retracing my steps, I might find them again. She was examining me after I came off the pitch with some injury or other. I didn’t play sports when I was younger, and I had not until then found myself in a situation where my arches would be so scrutinized. So that’s how I found out.

“You can tell,” a helpful friend later informed me, “by getting your feet wet. Step on the dry pavement and step away. If your footprint has two parts, you have a high arch. If it’s one—you know—blob … you have flat feet.”

I remember clearly her neatly proportioned bifurcated footprints; my blobs.

I don’t know I was born that way, or if I did something during that match, or throughout my life, to stomp out the natural curve of my feet. But when I started wearing arch supports, I knew my physiotherapist was right, because my feet never hurt so much.

Compensating for something always hurts, at least a little. How else will you remind yourself of what you’re lacking?

I pull the cuff of my sweat pants over my heels and tuck my feet up under my legs and continue to pretend to read.

The man in the booth answered. I couldn’t hear him, but I knew what he said.

“You put it where it says ‘coin return’?” she asked.

No. That’s the coin return button, he explained.

A newbie. Marvelous.

She looked comfortable, like she’d been standing there a while. Like she would continue standing there for as long as she needed to until she understood every nuance of buying a token, dropping it in the slot and passing through the turnstile.

The Q&A went on like that. She had questions about the price of the tokens. She had questions about the direction of the train. She had questions about timing and where to make transfers and how to make transfers.

I didn’t mind that she was a newbie. It takes some time to figure out the subway in a new city. I’d been there plenty, myself. At least she had a person to ask instead of staring at an incomprehensible sign. Let her take all the time she needed—but please, for Pete’s sake, after I made my train on time.

I stood behind her and tried to look patient.

Someone who tries to look patient rarely ever does.

A man and a woman bounded down the stairs together behind me. He dropped his token in the slot and slipped right through the turnstile. She needed to pay cash, and like me, she started out politely waiting.

Her friend started to fret. I sensed a train was coming.

“Can I buy a card?” asked the newbie.

A card. If only. While we’re at it, could they install a bloody token machine at this goddamn stop, too?

Oh, how I wished I could just tune out her incessant questions.

Just then a train pulled up.

The woman next to me jumped ahead and slapped down two dollar bills on the window sill of the attendant booth. He pressed a button, and she clicked through the turnstile.

Oh, how I wished I had dollar bills, dollar coins, quarters.

Meanwhile, Ms. newbie kept asking her questions. No pause. No urgency. Nevermind who might be behind her — Oh, there are other people here besides me? — she had questions. The attendant nodded and answered back and motioned me over. Maybe he saw into my soul and sensed murderous thoughts.

I stepped to the side of the lady and put down my fiver. “Two-pack, please,” I said.

The man gave me the pack of two tokens and my change instantly, but it was not fast enough. By the time I gathered up the change, broke though the plastic wrapper — really? a plastic wrapper? for two coins? — and dropped the token into the slot, the doors of the train were closing. Before I was on the other side of the turnstile, the train was rolling away.