I pour coffee on the floor, it leaves a stain, and I do not care.

I have two sticks of deodorant but sometimes I can find neither.

I drink things but I do not take my cups downstairs to the kitchen or down the hall into the kitchen until things are "out of hand."

I read my first piece by Katherine Anne Porter when I was a freshman in high school, it was a true story of her experiences with the events surrounding the famous trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, but I did not know that she had won the National Book Award or the Pulitzer Prize.

I allow my mind to wander when someone is talking to me about something that is important to them.

I reason justifications that I know are taken out of context, and I am not bothered too much.

I have a dog that lives under my skin but no one knows why. I do not know why either but I do not care. A long time ago people did the same thing, did not know why, and did not care. Things were so much purer then. People used to keep dogs as pets, and they loved their pets intimately. Pet owners of days bygone loved their animals with a level of intimacy that is socially unacceptable today, but I ignore the unspoken, and spoken, laws of social acceptability. I defy the cultural trends. I am a rebel. In days past, faithful pet ownership meant that a pet owner took their pet with them everywhere, a feat which was most easily accomplished by inserting the pet under the skin. It was much easier, of course, for this to be accomplished because pets, namely dogs, were much, much smaller. Also. This was before evolution. When a large dog was born it was born about the size of a thumbtack. A pet owner would make a small incision in their wrist, and, using a pair of tweezers, would, carefully, as to avoid injury, insert their small, anxious dog. Without fail, the dogs entered the skin as a newborn baby enters the world; at first hesitant but eventually, as soon as the memory of another reality diminished, at ease. NOW LOOK HERE, CYNICS: I will not let my dog die. I hope he does not die. In the days before straws, all of the dogs died within a week or two. A dead dog smells bad. This created problems like job insecurity, because employers did not like dead dog smells in the workplace, even if the workplace was outdoors. After a time, everyone stopped keeping dogs under their skin. I will not stop, because I will not let my dog die. I feed him with a straw, water him with a straw, and allow him to relieve himself through a straw. It is comforting to take man's, and my, best friend with me everywhere. His name is Andy.

I have been alive for a century or two, or a dandelion's eternity.

LETTERS FROM READERS