Roughly 3 minutes and 3 seconds into Bruce Hornsby’s The Way It Is, Bruce whispers “that’s just the way it is.” So did I. But since I was wearing headphones, I said it out loud to the amusement of 3 men sitting beside me.

My sister’s hair is wet at breakfast. “Don’t go outside like that,” says my grandfather, “It’s damp nasty out!” What a perfect name for a female rap artist. I imagine her as the Ol’ Dirty Bastard of Skeezers.

I’m in line at Marshalls when the woman next to me leaves her elderly mother with the cashier. “Don’t worry,” says the cashier, “I’ll babysit!” I imagined myself in her chair. Every wrinkle earned with age. And now she has to put up with this shit.