The "O" Stands for "Nothing"
Here we are on our way to dinner at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal, at the end of a long day. Because of the terrible weather (snow, slush, ice, all served up nice and cold), we progressed from the Museum of Modern Art, where Kathleen’s law firm hosted a fête this evening, to Grand Central via the subway, which took forever but was dry and comfortable. Consider the alternative:
At one point at the party, to get Kathleen’s attention from a balcony, I tossed a crumpled Kleenex in her general direction, and it worked. The gesture wasn’t as stylish as Cary Grant’s tossing of the matchbook in North By Northwest, but I felt that I’d pulled something off, and sometimes that’s all that it takes to plumb the heights of contentment. Please don’t think that I just got lucky! A lifetime of disrupting classrooms — or at least one of distracting them behind teachers’ backs — has left me with a distinctive skill set. I may not know much about art, but I know how to pitch a tissue.
Kathleen asked me what I was giving her for Valentine’s Day, and I thought, oh, that’s next week sometime, isn’t it? “A kiss,” I answered.