The worst thing about being so tall is that the stars are so damn close. The second worst thing is that people -- even adults! -- feel compelled to bring up the difference in our sizes. "Say, boy, how'd you get to be so large?" No one would dare ask that sort of sensitive question of a fat man. But me? They just see me as an amusing anomaly. Don't worry about how the boy feels, just as him about the logistics of his experience. Never mind that I don't have any one to sit across from me at dinner, just ask me how I fit at the tables in restaurants at all. Forget about the fact that I'm made to sit in the back of the theatre like I don’t have the same rights as anyone else, just wonder how I fit through the door. And no one ever asks about the stars. How when you lay down on the slicked grass at night in an attempt to feel small, you can't help but feel even the stars are crowding in to get a look at you.

My briefcase seemed heavy this morning, but it always seems heavy, so I didn’t look inside. After I’d walked a few blocks, I opened it and saw an apple and an orange. I’d bought them yesterday and meant to transfer them from the briefcase to the refrigerator. I’d taken out the bagels and the snap peas, but not the fruit, because it was deeply buried. Why did I have to lug these pieces of fruit to class in Brooklyn? I asked myself. Why couldn’t I just have taken them out and thrown them at a lamppost in Manhattan? That would have gotten rid of them quickly. Or why couldn’t I give them to a student, a good student, in recognition of his or her excellence? I couldn’t do that, because I wouldn’t want to single anyone out. And wasn’t it supposed to work the other way? Weren’t students supposed to give me pieces of fruit? And why does the word “fruit” seem funny to me? Aren’t people who are fruits a little offbeat? Is there something fruity about carrying fruit?