Today, I will discuss my ex-boyfriend Michael, a discussion that will not be influenced by the lunch he bought me when he came to town this afternoon. Michael and I have always had a friendly adversarial relationship, but he knows I love him.

Do I love him enough, however, to refrain from dishing the dirt? That remains to be seen. It will be seen, in fact, in the following paragraph.

I always thought that the most idiosyncratic thing about Michael was his ratio of bravery to fear, as he is simultaneously one of the bravest and most fearful people I know. He has lived on four continents, visited a hundred mostly third-world countries, and survived a bloody civil war. In fact, he has almost been killed on any number of occasions, and he does not seem to find these occasions especially stressful in the retelling. He picks up snakes and bugs as easily as I might pick up a pen; once, during the height of the West Nile panic, he picked a dead bird off our patio with his bare hands and flung it over the fence. He has coolly navigated situations that would have had me ripping out my own hair in terror or disgust. And yet, one small mistake on a credit card bill will send him shooting to the heights of anxiety. He is deathly afraid of buses, undressing at the gym, and suddenly realizing, while traveling, that he has brought the wrong size suitcase.

I suppose we all have moments where we either shine or panic. It is just amusing to see where some of us cross that line.

In other news, yesterday evening, I was in Starbucks waiting for Rob and Joe to show up, when an enormous woman with shockingly red hair came in with two young boys, neither of whom could have been more than five. She spoke to them rather intelligently, and surprisingly, they formed halway intelligent responses; although they sat several tables away, their conversation dominated the cafe hubbub. At one point, she asked the couple at a neighboring table if she might borrow their newspaper because, she said, she wanted to see what was going on in the world. Taking it, she began to show the photographs to the children.

"Who is that a picture of?" she asked, then answered her own question: "That's George W. Bush," she said. "President of our country."

She said it in such a booming voice that, in the current oppressive political climate, I was terrified she would burst into a rendition of "Our Country, 'Tis of Thee," but she actually surprised me. "That's George Bush," she said again, "and he's the reason we're in the mess we are today!"

A murmur of amused approval rippled through the shop (there was not a soul who could not hear her), and, encouraged, she continued: "There isn't a picture of Al Gore, the man who should have been our President. Do you remember who Al Gore is?"

"Yes," said the dutiful children.

"Do you remember our song about Al Gore?"

They did, and the three of them proceded to chant: "Al Gore, Al Gore, he's our man! Throw George Bush in the garbage can!"

I like Al Gore about as much as I would like a hole in the head, but I suppose now that he has been elected to the Board of Directors of Apple Computer, I will attempt to appreciate him in a new light.

It was in that spirit that I did not cringe as much as I might have.