While reading the newspaper not long ago, I grew depressed by the number of challenges our nation faces—the decline of the middle class, the ballooning of the national debt, underperforming schools, and a war in Afghanistan with no end in sight. They almost make my problem seem insignificant: an ongoing struggle to find good bed sheets.
I first saw my wife’s childhood home 29 years ago when I rode my bicycle from Plainfield to Paoli to stop an encounter I believed harmful to my best interests—the introduction of her boyfriend to her mother. It turns out that if a man rides 95 miles in July heat to court a woman, it tends to impress her. The next week my future wife, Joan, bid her boyfriend goodbye and began dating me.
David Letterman did not show up at our high-school reunion. Again. Had he appeared, now or at any prior gathering, paparazzi (if there are paparazzi in Indianapolis) would no doubt have stalked the premises, and the Late Show superstar would have sucked the energy from the room. Dave’s a private guy who, oddly, doesn’t particularly glow in the limelight, so we, his classmates of the Broad Ripple High School class of 1965, understand.
On my way home from work every day, I am struck dumb by an illuminated billboard at the corner of 16th and Illinois streets. In red LED numbers, the huge sign flashes the current Powerball jackpot and, I believe, the amount to be won in the Hoosier Lotto, although I rarely look at that. When $123 million is staring you in the face, it’s hard to think about anything else.
