“Then she turned, punched me in the arm, and ran in herbunk.” I said with a straight face.”

“Gil sat baking in the sun for at least 45 minutes before one of the tour guides noticed him looking listless and leaning to his left side. As she approached him, she noticed that he had a stupid grin on his face.“Are you all right, Mr. Cohen?” she asked as she tried to slowly help him to his feet.His shirt was drenched with sweat and his skin was mostly clammy, signally that he was suffering from the middle stages of heat stroke.“It’s not so bad?” he muttered as he struggled to stand straight up. “What not so bad, Mr. Cohen?” one of the tour guides asked.“Death,” Gil stated in a glazed response.The guide looked at the heat-stricken man who appeared to have amoment of clarity amidst all of the sweat and dehydration. “Why is death not so bad?” she pressed on. Gil took a big swig of Gatorade and replied, “Because life wasn’t so great.”

“I reached into the pile and pulled out a few connected chips and then was about to shove them into my mouth, when I saw what appeared to be the face of an angel sitting next to me. And, if it was in fact my actual guardian angel, then it probably would have been poor form not to offer a few chips to extend an olive branch.”

“I used to love that movie Wall Street and the line‘Greed is good.’ Honestly, the only thing greed got me was five years inprison, the loss of my wife and possessions, and the company I loved,”Brad said slumping in his chair with his head down.”

“Bruce looked at David and David asked, “Is that Harold?”He was wearing the same Meadow Brook Basketball jacket and had only a few gray hairs left on his round head. Harold walked up to his two favorite players and exclaimed, “Give me five!” and he extended both hands and the guys lightly slapped his palms, as the other eight ex-players chuckled in the background.The cylinders started clicking in David’s mind as Harold said, “On the other side.”The guys lightly slapped the knuckle side of Harold’s hand as David said, “Oh, shit!”

“If you told me a year ago that I would kiss a girl when I was 12, then I would have either laughed at you or started to sweat. Girls have always been a puzzle of which I have failed to connect the pieces. They are so complicated and emotional that the average dude has absolutely no chance to get within shouting range.”

“Don’t do it,” the voice calmly said from the other side of the door. “Ihave a way that you will be able to see your wife and son again.”