2003-06-09 - 8:17 p.m.

My high school friend M. had two brothers, both in their twenties, who lived in her house at various times. I had minor secret crushes on both of them, though they were then and still are too old for me, which is why the crushes were minor and secret. Anyway, that's not the point of this post. The point is: both the brothers were fantastic storytellers, and one time M.'s brother E. told us this story apropos of nothing:

"I cut my finger once. Cut it deep to the bone. But I grabbed my hand, and I pushed the skin and the flesh together, and I squeezed so hard that the very molecules knit together, and I was made whole. And I said to myself, 'Thank goodness I'm so strong!'"

At this point, M. and I slowly nodded, and said, "Welll.... gooood...." which is pretty much the only response one can have to a story like that.

"But!" he continued, "But before I did that, I took a pen, and I plunged it into my veins, and filled it with blood, and I would write things in my own blood. And when you write things in your own blood, it must be true, so I would write things like 'I ate cereal for breakfast this morning' and people would come up to me and say, 'Well, you'd *better* have eaten cereal for breakfast this morning, because if you didn't....'"

The story ends there. It's still one of the best stories I've ever heard.