Mo: I wish it were me instead of you. Sydney: Yeah. I'm getting the sodium pentothal. You have to go sit with my parents. - Alison Bechdel

Over the course of my life, as I have made my Houdini-like escapes from one self-imposed constraint after another, a question haunts me with increasing insistence. How many levels does this game have?

Or maybe he had gotten too inured to death, and was hoping to elicit from me an expression of the natural horror he was no longer capable of...I have made use of this technique myself, however, this attempts to access emotions vicariously...eager to detect in my listener that flinch of grief that eluded me.

Don't you kids get any ideas about dragging a trailer into the backyard. after you graduate from high school, i don't want to see you again.