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Damon

I think they also separated the wastes into its different materials; forget how exactly…

I was only in Japan for a couple of days so I didn’t notice if they did that often in other fast food places.

Let me tell you: I walked by Cub Scouts selling tubs of popcorn the other day, and it went something like this:

“Hey mister!” said the peppy Wolf scout. “Wanna buy some popcorn?”

“Well, how much is it?” I asked politely, digging for my wallet.

“It’s $17!”

“No, stupid!” interjected the other Cub Scout on the scene. “It’s $20!”

“Wow,” I said, slipping my wallet back into my pocket. “I don’t even have $20 with me.” I looked up at the poor den mother who was stuck on the sidewalk, supervising her popcorn-hawking scoutlings. “Good luck out here!”

Julia

I’d been to the bus station once before (to put Mike on a coach to Florida) but I didn’t stay long, and I was outside the main facility most of the time.

This time, I was waiting inside for the better part of an hour for Kiki’s bus to arrive. I probably don’t need to tell you I was the only white boy there.

I looked around, trying to find someone who looked like me.

There wasn’t anyone.

Even though I have been conditioned all my life (like all people our age who grew up in similar circumstances) to embrace diversity and love my different-color brothers and sisters, right then and there, all I wanted to see was a familiar face.

Ironic, considering I was dating a black girl, at the time.

Kiki eventually arrived and we drove back home. I shared a joke with her about my panic at the bus station.

The visit, as it turned out, was not an especially happy one.

At one point, Kiks and I got into an argument . . . I don’t remember about what, exactly, but I do remember her talking about how alone she felt in Richmond, and how she didn’t think she’d ever belong among my family and friends.

I scoffed at this. Everyone loved Kiki, and I told her so. Hell, she was living proof that Papa Leone’s bunting baby boy wasn’t some sorta queer-ball.

Her retort made my balls and stomach fly up into my chest, like I had just ridden the first big drop of a very tall roller coaster:

“Remember how you felt at the bus station?” she asked.

I shut up after that.

Your “eye-opener,” while definitely a harsher experience, is in the same vein as my angst at the bus station.

But as you so sagaciously observed, the world is not going to change for us . . .

I hadn’t been in the office for more than 30 seconds on Monday morning when a gleeful Red Sox fan shoved the front page of the New York Times in my face and laughed.

“Twenty-one years I’ve been waiting for this!” he exclaimed with a twinkle in his evil eyes.

Of course, I went in knowing that the boys from New York town had blown it. Consequently, I had prepared myself for a certain degree of jeering and leering from the overwhelmingly anti-Met crowd at work, but this was a bit much.

Still, I concur with the sign off of this entry: the Mets have been playing some truly underwhelming baseball and it serves them right that they lost the pennant.

postcard please!!! I want to send mail to japan. I hope you are loving it.