HIGHLIGHTS FROM ALL STORIES

As time went on, Bud and Rosy became more competitive for the work, and the paper would come back to me in two sections. By that, I don't mean to infer that Bud would retrieve the sports and Rosy the classifieds. I had to keep a good grasp on one of their collars each morning to keep the work schedule and the newspaper intact.

Rosy spotted a stray cat. Her tugging enthusiasm convinced me to let go of her leash to see for herself if this was her missing best buddy. Each of three attempts to get close enough to play was met with a hiss and a swipe at her snout. She returned with a sad and confused look on her face, so I gave up a piece of my sandwich to distract her from the disappointment. As she digested her mozzarella and prosciutto, I did the fact that there was no yesterday or turning back.

Bud did something he had never done before. He walked behind me and pressed his barely shielded ribs as hard as could into my back. It was so forceful it was as if he was trying to push through me. I didn't feel something so familiar as his love and affection: instead I had the immediate sensation that he was trying to meld his soul into mine. I turned around and hugged and kissed him in a manner one would after being so divinely reminded it would be one of my last chances.

I would not take a bet as to whether the average guy can spell Marquise de Queensbury (the gentlemen who wrote the rules for boxing inside a ring). But here's one I'd bet the house on: If that average guy is scrapping outside of a boxing ring and he chooses to lean on the boxing rule book set forth by the Marquise, the guy will most certainly learn or relearn how to spell doom -as in his own.

It is far more nerve-wracking to watch your friend battle than to battle yourself. When you are fighting, it feels as if you are on autopilot. The mechanism is calibrated with your past training, instinctive physical aggression and focus on the opponent. More simply, you are too otherwise occupied to worry. As a spectator, your engines are all revved up to fight but it only boils down to you against your vocal chords. It's a helpless feeling.

When my turn in the bathroom line arrived, I pushed hard enough to carve my name in the porcelain. Although I think it's now clear, I haven't the control over it to guarantee my getting out of this theater alive, let alone effect typeface with it.

The characters whom I enjoyed listening to while growing up had been replaced with battalions of stroller pushers yapping between texts in coffee bars about the methods they were employing to make their children as competitive and neurotic as themselves. No easy task. I swore if I heard one more mother brag via a complaint about paying fifty K a year for kindergarten, I would never drink another coffee in public without noise-cancelling headphones.

It was schlepped brick by brick from France, back when they could afford those extravagances. I wouldn't know if French turn-of-the-century bricks are any better than Argentine ones of that era, but it sure does make for a good bragging.

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