Four dollars buys you ten minutes of laser tag action at joker’s family fun arcade on route one in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It was three days ago now and my legs are still aching. There was a good amount of running and bobbing, shouting and dying, sneaking and hiding, but the whole time I was oblivious to the workout I was getting. I would join a gym in a second if there was one locally that had a laser tag arena. It was me and three friends in there with a father and son whom we hadn’t met before. At the end of the round everybody gets a printout sheet of all the stats. It breaks down the melee for you in terms of how many times a player shot you compared to how many times you shot them. It figured my accuracy rating at a measly 9% which didn’t bother me, except I think it counted against me when the computer figured my overall rating. My philosophy is: if there is no limit to your ammo, why not squeeze off as many shots as you can?

Waiting for the train to work I was standing next to the garbage can. This guy with large scabs and half a shirt on came walking up with a sack of snacks and an open beer. He stopped right in front of me, set down his bag, and took a big pull off his beer. I was able to see he was carrying two tomatoes and umpteen individually wrapped slices of yellow cheese, which seemed a pretty sensible choice for a man on the go. He stood looking down surveying his holdings, and then poured the rest of his beer into his grocery bag and neatly placed his can in the trash receptacle.