"Kiss my ass. This is a holy site."

Between the Worlds of the Tiny and the Big

There's a boy in a branch library in an o.k. part of Brooklyn
being tutored in math by an exasperated woman.  I pass his table
 on my way to biography, and he looks up into the middle distance
to make a wry face.  This is me witnessing his one and only life.
This is him witnessing mine out of his peripheral vision.
This library is closed on Sundays due to budget cuts.  This library
has two shelves of poetry.  One day in the fall, a teenage girl
will come here after school because she needs the quiet
ruckus of a good book.  Her parents have accents.  She's wearing
the wrong jeans.  She'll sit at a table with a view of the children's
section and read Plath for the first time, and her hair will swim
on her scalp.  Kiss my ass.  This is a holy site. 

Quotes from Mom

You can't get a precision grip with salad tongs, especially mine, which are from Halloween and shaped like skeleton hands.  [About using salad tongs to get a small snake out of the pool.]

Does anybody remember the movie with the guy with a big nose and something about tea in the title?  [Darjeeling Limited]

Ethel's the name of the bunny rabbit I talk to when I ride my bike around the lake.  She's one of two I always see, except there are probably 100 different ones.

Ferns are magic, especially if they grow directly out of your house.  I just made that up.