Sobbing My Guts Out (Or: Observations in Storytelling and Catharsis)

Here's a thing that happened to me during the Lab, that I meant to write about but didn't, because, you know, my life had been swallowed.

On the evening second day off, after nearly 13 days straight of Lab insanity, I made a curious and altogether uncharacteristic choice: I watched Boys Don't Cry. It's a movie I'd been meaning to watch for ages - essentially since the movie came out - because I felt it was an important movie. But it didn't seem like a fun movie; it certainly wasn't a movie I wanted to watch.

Boys Don't Cry is a pretty extreme film by anyone's standards, but for me? Let's just say I have exceedingly low-brow taste when it comes to movies. I don't like sad movies, or intellectual movies, or movies that are too deep or two slow. Oh, and I don't really like any of that mushy romantic stuff either. I used to, and I still make the occasional except for a supreme piece of cornball [crap], like the remake of Sabrina or Love Actually, but basically when it comes to movies, I like to watch people make jokes and blow stuff up.

So why, why on earth would I, in the middle of this blisteringly intense creative experience, want to drain myself even further by watching, OF ALL MOVIES, Boys Don't Cry?

Well, I can't quite explain it, but even so, I think from an artistic perspective it's worth noticing, and remembering:

During that time, I was so tightly wound up, so tense, so stressed from the Lab experience, that I needed a release. I needed, basically, to sob my guts out, and either couldn't or wasn't ready to do it in response to my own inner life.

That's fine; that need for catharsis is understandable and, as an artist, familiar territory. But what interests me is that, while I almost never go for a movie like Boys Don't Cry, I do crave release when I watch my low-brow stuff-blowing-up usual fare. But it's a different kind of release, in response to a different kind of emotional life: I want to get swept away in the adventure and the excitement of an experience that bears no resemblance whatsoever to my everyday life. In July, in the Lab, for some reason I craved the opposite - it's like I needed a sort of adrenaline drain.

So why is it that in one particular situation I craved a certain kind of catharsis, and in another I feel I need a different kind? I don't ask because I'm interested in parsing out the tangled layers of my psyche. I ask because, as a storyteller, I think it's interesting to take note of the different kinds of catharsis that a story can offer. And I wonder: If I can maybe understand better the kind of emotional release that is sparked by a Boys Don't Cry story, as opposed to a, say, a Die Hard story, if I could know more intimately why and when and how people crave release, maybe I could serve them better; maybe I could be a better artist.

My Favorite Urban Legend

A few weeks ago, after attending a reading, I headed to a nearby bar with some of the cast for a little post-performance celebration. As we shot the breeze, swapped our stories and jokes, a friend of mine spoke up. "Wait, wait," he said, "I know a great one. I know someone whose friends once asked her to dog-sit for their very old dog."

He didn't need to say another word. I knew where it was headed. I could have stopped him right there, said, "ooh, I know this one - this is a good one." But I didn't. Where would the fun have been in that? I love this story.

The story goes - if you're curious - like this: A girl volunteers to dog-sit for a family she knows. The dog is getting on in dog years, and while the family is away, he dies. She calls the family, distraught, but the family says not to worry. The poor guy was very, very old and the death is not at all unexpected. They tell her to bring the dog's body to the family's veterinarian. He'll know what to do with it. So she does.

But, now, the vet is a ways away, and, not knowing better how to get the dead dog there, she packs it into a duffel bag and takes it on the subway. Of course, the still old dog corpse is pretty heavy, so she struggles with it a bit on the stairs. A man, seeing her struggle, helps her onto the subway with the bag.

"That's one heavy bag," says the man when they get on the train. "What have you got in there?" And the girl, obviously not wanting to tell the truth, says, "Oh, you know, just stuff I'm bringing home from college. Books, clothes, my computer, ipod, stuff like that." And you see where this is going. At the next stop, the man grabs the duffel bag and runs off the train just as the doors are closing.

This is, without a doubt, my favorite urban legend. At this point, I have heard this story from at least four separate sources; the number might actually be closer to five or six.

I love this story. It fills me with a deep joy and fondness for my fair city. I don't know exactly why. Maybe it's because I heard the story for the first time shortly after I moved to New York, and it makes me remember loving the city with a fresh heart. Maybe it's because it's so quintessentially. Struggling down the stairs and allowing a stranger to help with us with our load; muggings, or hearing about muggings on the street or on the train; and of course, carrying something unlikely and entirely ludicrous onto the subway - these are all such familiar circumstances. it seems only a matter of time and fortune before they should align so perfectly and comically.

Or maybe it's because it feels like something communal- some kind of great in-joke, a story in which we've all partaken. It's something that we've all laughed at, loved, and shared and, for a moment, that makes this great behemoth of a city seem a little smaller.

Here is something interesting, though: the facts never seem to change. I've heard this story possibly a half a dozen times and, unlike most urban legends, the facts of it never seem to change. There's no confusion over detail or circumstance. No, "Oh, I heard it was a dead cat," or, "The way I heard it, it was her dog." No, it's always a girl, always dog-sitting, always a duffel bag on the way to the vet. It's so consistent, it makes me wonder if this is not an urban legend, but a very famous, entirely true story.

Who out there has heard this story? Do you remember who told it to you? Do you know - or know somebody who claims to know - the original source of this story? How fantastic would it be if we could track her down?

Adventures in Brooklyn

My previous temp job ended this Friday and, by some luck or grace, I managed to scare up another job that will keep me occupied for at least another few weeks. The job doesn't start till Wednesday - bad news for my pocketbook, good news for my soul - and so I thought I'd use this unexpected 4 day weekend to my best advantage and tackle some of the stuff on my New York bucket list - all the things I want to do before I leave the city. Yesterday, I decided to check off "Explore Brooklyn"; it's sort of shameful how long I've lived here, and how vague and nebulous the borough of Brooklyn is to me. Actually, they're all pretty vague and nebulous other than Manhattan, now that I think about it - I've never even BEEN to Staten Island (although that's on the bucket list too), but the fact that I know so little about Brooklyn irks me the most.

Brooklyn is a pretty large swath to cover in just one day, so I narrowed "explore Brooklyn" down to "explore Park Slope," because before yesterday, I'd never even been to Park Slope proper, not even once.

After some rather inept Googling of "where to go in Park Slope," a combination of articles from New York Magazine, Time Out, and various blogs on the subject led me to two specialty food stores, a bookshop, a stained glass store, and a cute-looking odds-and-ends boutique, all of which felicitously swung a very wide loop around the neighborhood. The stained glass shop proved to be a bust - more a workshop than a browsing store, and the odds-and-ends boutique had since closed. But the bookshop was delightful, quiet, cozy, smattered with couches and cats, with a little plate of cookies in the back bearing a sign that said, "Take some, they're delicious!" I munched on an oatmeal raisin cookie and pet a cat for a half-hour or so while I read the first chapter of a William Goldman book (The Princess Bride is one of my favorite books ever) I had never seen before. You rarely see William Goldman books in stores, I've found. I guess he's gone out of fashion. I put the book back when I left - intriguing as it was, money is tight and I don't need to go spending it on books when I have plenty to read at home. But at the last second I saw, towards the door, a new book by Yann Martel. Now, while The Princess Bride and a few others will give Life of Pi a healthy run for its money, it may well be my favorite book I've ever read. It affected me in ways I can really only describe as shattering. I could resist; I turned right back around and purchased a copy. And what advantageous timing: I read Life of Pi during Lent several years ago and it was the perfect spiritual companion for the period. Ash Wednesday is tomorrow and I'm looking forward to taking Yann Martel's haunting philosophy and storytelling with me.

At the specialty food stores, I was like a kid in a candy shop, almost literally. I kept writing down ideas for gifts for certain loved ones and friends (isn't there a theory out there somewhere that we give what we'd actually like to receive?). At one, girl at the counter caught me staring with a bit too much intensity at some marinated mushrooms. At Christmas in my house, my mother and I debate fruitlessly over marinated mushrooms. We serve them on our traditional Christmas antipasto platter; she insists that store-bought marinated mushrooms taste terrible, I feel her homemade mushrooms are raw and flavorless. So, at Bklyn Larder, I was caught staring intently at their marinated mushrooms - they looked so much better than anything we've ever bought or made - trying to divine what kind of mushrooms they had used, and to guess what they might have used in the marinade, in the hopes of bringing a better marinated mushroom recipe home for my mom to try. The counter girl asked if I'd like to try a little and they were, indeed, better than any marinaded mushrooms I've ever had. Actually, to say they were better implies that they're eligible to compete in the same category. They're not, they're worlds apart. Alas, even trying the mushrooms and viewing the helpful sign announcing they're marinated with "white wine, thyme and shallots," wasn't enough to make me feel I could recreate it. I guess now I just have to figure out how to somehow get those mushrooms from New York to our antipasto plate in Albuquerque.

I wandered into any store that caught my eye. Fancy boutiques with $500 dresses I could never afford and their funky vintage counterparts with more manageable prices - even though I wasn't in a place to be shopping no matter what the price. I saw a sundress for $12 at Beacon's Closet which thank god didn't fit because I didn't really need it and probably could not have resisted it if it had. I wandered around every little shop with shiny merchandise, peered into windows of nice-looking restaurants, and poked my head into every cafe that looked interesting from the outside. I even walked into a wine store - who knows why, just curious. When I finished my wide loop, three hours later, I ended up back where I started at Bklyn Larder, and starving. Pleased as I was with their mushrooms, I decided to try my luck with the soup, and ended the excursion with - SERIOUSLY - the best bowl of tomato soup I've ever had.

On the way out, I made a point to pass the Atlantic Yards, a point of interest since seeing the Civilian's In the Footprint, and I thought about the conversation I had with my dad after having seen it. I told him one thing that had frustrated me about the show was that they never really fully explained the details of eminent domain, but went through a lot of trouble convincing us that it was being abused. I asked my dad (a real estate attorney, so, you know, he knows about stuff) what he thought of the fact that even though it's a private developer, they're using the fact that the project is creating affordable housing and jobs to validate the use of eminent domain. He shrugged and said, "That seems about right." The comment didn't really contain any sympathy for the residents who had been who had been pushed out, but nor was it in defense of the government or the developers. It was just an observation that it seemed to him what had happened had been a valid use of eminent domain. The memory made me think fondly of my dad, about how he values logic and consistency - so much so that I think he might favor it over any moral or political ideal. Our politics don't always align, but I like that, I can respect that. I'm comforted by that.

It was a beautiful, peaceful day; I hadn't felt so… alone with myself, so independent and quiet, since I had been left to explore Boston on my own several years ago. Or, before that, Chicago. It suddenly occurred to me how much I enjoy this kind of solitary exploration, going nowhere and doing nothing in particular, letting my feet meander as my thoughts do - from Christmas to literature and philosophy to my dad's steadfast nature to a thousand other pointless and wonderful subjects that I hardly think of but, really, amount to my life. I like wandering around in stores and cafes, even if I have no intention of purchasing anything, even if there's nothing I would want to have if I could. I like taking the time to explore and consider the possibilities that exist on the inside of the storefront, possibilities that I usually consider and dismiss in the split second it takes me to walk past, on my way to somewhere else.

And then it occurred to me that with Boston and Chicago I had been left to my devices through a specific set of circumstances. I hadn't avoided exploring those two cities on my own, but I hadn't pushed it either. They both just sort of happened. Before yesterday, I had never actively planned to meander pointlessly on my own like that. I wonder why, if it's something I've enjoyed so much in the past? It doesn't matter. I find it sort of strange and wonderful that after so many years in the city, there are still so many neighborhoods that I can wander through and get lost in with total abandon - more, probably, than neighborhoods I know well. Now that I know I enjoy it so much, I'm going to have to do it more often, and I'm incredibly grateful that I can. It's almost like I can go on a mini-holiday whenever I want to new and unfamiliar place without every having to venture farther than my nearest subway.

Subway Stories, Vol. 3

Earlier this week, I rode the subway with a man named Jeff Boss. I know his name is Jeff Boss because he announced it as soon as he entered my car, along with his candidacy for President of the United States as well as for the United States Senate.

Jeff Boss, according to his flyers - and also his website, which you can view here - witnessed his sister-in-law, a top-ranking NSA official, arrange the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. Although he didn't understand the meaning of her conversations at the time, after the attacks it all became clear. After narrowly escaping his own death by arriving late to his new job (presumably given to him by the same government-connected family members?) at the WTC on Sept. 11th, he survives to tell his story, only to be thwarted by the NSA at every turn.

There are two obvious options here: either he's telling the truth, or he's not.

As I watched him from across the car, debating passionately with a young man who regarded him with patience and skepticism, I could almost see these two options stretching out in front of me, two separate but parallel stories, both passing through the same plane of reality in which Jeff Boss stands on a New York City subway car desperately clutching his flyers and his truth, while the world around him dismisses him.

Consider the first story: Jeff is telling the truth. A few days or weeks or months before September of 2001, he happens to stumble upon his sister-in-law - who actually IS an high-ranking government official - on a very confidential phone call, during which she actually IS helping plan or facilitate the terrorist attacks on behalf of the U.S. government. How he happened to simply stumble upon such a sensitive conversation, let's not ask. Mistakes get made, Sister-in-Law screwed up. She doesn't know how much he heard or understood, but she can't take any risks. Panicked, she calls a colleague, or maybe a superior. A few more calls are made, and Jeff has a new job that assures his presence at the WTC at the time of the attacks. But, as fate would have it, he is running late that day and is spared. Why doesn't the government just try and kill him again? Let's not ask that question either. Maybe now, if he had already told somebody what he knew, his death would look too suspicious. Maybe Sister-in-Law, wracked with guilt, steps in and says look, we don't have to kill the poor guy. It's easy enough to discredit him. Whatever the case, now no one will every believe what Jeff Boss - who is not crazy - knows unquestionably to be true.

Or, there is the more likely story, the one I choose to believe: Jeff Boss IS crazy. Yes, he does have a family member (maybe his sister-in-law, maybe not) with high-ranking connections, but their worst offense is a little nepotism - they happened to pull some strings and get Jeff a job when he needed one, working at the World Trade Center. Now maybe this is a better job than Jeff deserves, and maybe his family member's neck is sort of on the line for him, or maybe Jeff is just sort of a notorious deadbeat, but whatever the case, he is told sternly and insistently that he must not be late on his first day. So of course, he is late. And as it happens, his irresponsibility saved his life. Overwhelmed with survivor's guilt, he tries to give meaning to what happened. What kind of asshole is late on his first day of work? he thinks. And why was that asshole spared? From the depths of his incomprehension and shame, he creates this delusion.

The fascinating thing about these two stories is that one or neither of them might be true, but both of them cannot be. These stories define two entirely separate, both somewhat sad, worlds. And I can never be sure which one I live in. I can guess (and I have), but I can never know for sure.

A world in which the nation I believe I live in is ultimately good and free and democratic is concretely, quantifiably different from a world in which this same nation would, like a dictatorship in a captive country, murder its own people to get and retain power. And yet, from my vantage point, they both look exactly the same.

Maybe this is where I get a little too existential for my own good, because here is where I start thinking about God. With God, like with Jeff Boss, we have two options: either It exists or It doesn't. And a world without God is an entirely, unequivocably different world from a world with God. And yet, both look the same to me. I've often wondered, how is that possible? And the question has bothered me. Yet here is Jeff Boss on the subway, showing me how it is.

And what does that mean? What do I do with that, if anything at all? I don't know, but there it is, standing in front of me with a flyer in its hand.

Drums and Strings

I'm standing on a subway platform, listening to the steady, rabid beat of drums - a busker somewhere further down, obscured from my view. I notice without really noticing a melody underneath the drumbeat, a shy, thin strain on strange strings. Barely audible, but persistent.

For a moment it sounds like the two are keeping time together, and the observation calls the string melody into sharp focus. I listen closely. A few refrains more and it's clear the synchronicity was accidental. The music is not playing along with the drums, but struggling mightily against it.

The enormity of the struggle is extraordinary; the drums overwhelm the entire platform. The situation suddenly strikes me as utterly bizarre. What would compell someone to compete against such immensity of sound? But then again, what other options are there? Clear out whenever a more ostentatious act rolls in? Tap the player on the shoulder and say, "Excuse me, you probably couldn't hear me on the other side of the platform, but my music just can't compete with yours, so if you don't mind..."? Appeal to some imaginary authority for justice? I move closer to the source. It's a funny instrument that I recognize but can't name, played by a woman who hits each string with some sort of hammer. She's a small, thin, Asian woman - middle-aged, I guess, neither old nor young. Her bony body hunches over her instrument, eyes downward in deep concentration. I imagine her terrible battle against the rhythmic Goliath, bending forward, fighting to hear her own music through the roar of the drums, silently cursing with every note. Then I correct myself: she's probably just tuned it out, depending on how long she's been here.

A subway train comes through (not mine), taking even the ceaseless drumming with it. The wind off the train knocks the woman's music off its perch and she struggles - unsuccessfully - to replace it without breaking from the music.

My train still has not come, so I move toward the other end of the platform in search of the drummer. When I find him, he is in his element, flipping his drumsticks in the air and keeping time with easy expertise. You can't even hear the string music from here. Does he even know she's there?

I want to claim allegience to the woman and her strings, but the percussion is exciting and intoxicating. He moves effortlessly from beat to beat, his eyes soft, his muscles tensing and relaxing as the rhythm moves through them.

He must be improvising, mustn't he? It seems impossible, the beat is so crisp, so unwavering. I wonder what it must be like to create rhythm like that. To be so at one with it, so alive within it that the question of which drum to beat next and when becomes irrelevant, the answer is so obvious, like one's the next breath. It must be excruciatingly wonderful.

The drummer pauses to rearrange his kit, replacing one type of drum with another. For a second, before the divine cacophany resumes, you can hear the woman's tinny strains again, sounding very far away.

Tangled (Or: How I Spent My Christmas Vacation) Part II

Unbelievable as it is, I’m not quite through with Tangled. This second part of my saga is the alternate-title part of it, the part where I explain that (if you’ll recall) I saw the movie on borrowed time, and how both the movie and the time, along with some unexpected Christmas joy and a few strange and chaotic days of traveling gave a world of perspective to the addled state that was my mind in 2010.

To start, the luminarias: in New Mexico, we have a tradition (perhaps my favorite of all traditions) of setting out luminarias on Christmas Eve. They’re little paper lanterns, made simply with brown paper lunch bags filled with sand and lit from the inside with a candle. They are spectacular.

The whole city does it. Some houses, like ours, modestly line their lawns with a few dozen luminarias; other neighborhoods work together and go absolutely crazy with them, and the effect is breathtaking; an infinitely unfolding, softly glowing pathway of light as far as the eye can see.

My dad usually takes the lead on the luminaria set-up at our house, but he had a hip-replacement surgery close to the holidays this year and was thus unable to take on any holiday responsibilities other than sitting on the couch and/or shuffling about in his walker and enthusiastically delegating to me and my sisters. So, the luminaria duties (among others) fell to me this year.

Also to me: last minute Christmas Eve dinner shopping. So, on Christmas Eve morning I headed over to Smith’s to pick up the remaining items on our grocery list, stopping first at Walgreens on the way over for luminaria candles. But Walgreens, as it turns out, was out. No problem, I thought, they’ve probably got some at Smith’s anyway.

Nope. Not only was Smith’s out of candles, but the entire store was a crowded mess. And not a crowded New York City mess either, where even in the worst areas the congestion is equal parts tourist and pissed off New Yorkers trying to get to work. No, nobody in that entire store seemed to know how to walk or stay out of everyone else’s way. I called home, and asked my sisters to go out and get some candles at the hardware store down the street, since it looked like I’d be at the store for a good long while.

But when I got home, I found both my sisters plopped on the couch, in exactly the same place I’d left them.

“Didn’t you get the candles?” I demanded.

“No,” said Sarah languorously. “Luminarias aren’t really that important to me, so I didn’t want to go.”

“Well the are important to me!”

I left the house again for the hardware store. They were out of luminaria candles there too. And out at the nearby dollar store. And out at the farther-out-of-the-way hardware store. Finally, in the sixth store that I tried, I found some.

We lit the candles before church and followed their glow across the driveway as we headed out toward the car.

I noticed how ours touched against our neighbors’ on both sides, so that you could hardly tell where ours ended and theirs began. Oh, this, I thought. THIS is why the luminarias are so important to me.

I can feel the whole community through these lovely, glowing lanterns. We’ve all done this together, lit these candles in the darkness. Together they make a bright path, lighting the way toward some kind of saving grace. They connect us in our hope to our neighbors, to the whole city, to the world.

There's a beautiful scene in Tangled, in which Rapunzel watch the thousands of lanterns that are released by the kindom on her birthday in the hopes that she, the lost princess, might return. It's easily the most enchanting moment of the movie. I mean, look at it.

It's only a short sequence, but before the lanterns are released, we see the King and Queen, her parents, look sadly at one another, still grieving after all these years, before launching their lanterns into the air, an act of reckless, unfounded hope. Their lanterns are joined by rest of the the kingdom's: a mass of tiny glowing testaments to their hope, a community united, their light persevering even in the darkness.

Of course they reminded me of the luminarias. Not just in look, but also in the spirit of the action, the coming together to light the darkness in a shared expression of faith.

I thought back to the pastor’s final words on Christmas Eve: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.”

For a long time I’ve been preoccupied with the overwhelming weight and mass of darkness in the world. It leaves me icily numb, unable to see a divine order, as much as I look for it. If you took all the darkness, all the evil in the world, I often think, and put it on a great big scale against all the lightness and good, the light may well triumph. But if it did, I think it might only be for coincidence.

The awful unfairness of the world is a pretty obvious thing to be so hung up on, but there you have it. It is, and I am.

But, say what you will, whatever light and beauty that does shine in this world, it’s true – the darkness does not overcome it. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s more than I realized. The darkness does not overcome it.

In entire the 72 hours after Christmas, nowhere I ended up was where I expected to be at any given point in time. I thought I would be detained several days due to the storm, but found myself booked the following day on a flight to Newark instead. When my Denver-to-Newark leg of the trip was cancelled, and I watched passengers frantically vie for seats on flights as far away as a week, I figured I was about to spend an unplanned week-long vacation with my Grandma in Colorado Springs. And when the customer service representative bizarrely, miraculous put me on a flight – the only flight – into LaGuardia that day, never did I expect to make it all the way back to New York only to get stranded in Queens. But I did.

It was truly an exercise in patience, but I tried to be calm and accepting of every evolving circumstance. I’ve had a lucky streak of eventless flights in the past year or two, and this kind of thing is bound to catch up with you eventually. And who are you going to be mad at here, anyway? Weather is weather.

But when I finally did end up stuck in deep Queens on Tuesday, LIRR-less and unable to get to work, I was disgruntled and overcome with guilt. I would have been okay with staying Colorado Springs with my grandmother for a week, in fact (much as I DID need the money this week) I was a little disappointed to NOT see her and all my aunts and uncles and cousins after all. And I took a seat on that miracle flight into LaGuardia from somebody who really needed it. And! After all that I couldn’t get to work the next day ANYWAY.

I’ll spare the details, because they’re unimportant, but as it turns out, I needed that unexpected snow day in Queens more than I ever could have guessed. I spent the day re-defining a relationship with someone from whom I had parted on sad, ambiguous terms and without that time together, I would have been lost.

I still think spending an extra week in Colorado would have been wonderful, but it occurs to me now that perhaps anything that might have happened would have been wonderful. It occurs to me now that I needed that entire travel fiasco more than I ever could have guessed. I needed the space to discover opportunities and possibilities in the midst of total chaos, uncertainty, and inconvenience.

On the 26th of December, the day of the blizzard and my original flight, I woke up early with a lump in my stomach as I gathered my suitcase, headed for the airport, and contemplated saying goodbye to my family.

Instead I enjoyed an extra day of rest, a fantastic movie with my sisters, and an unexpected feeling of peace.

Post One. Hello.

Hello, blogging world!

Here I am. This is me, realizing something that I've been meaning to do from the moment I moved here four years ago. Literally - I even have an earlier incarnation of this blog floating around the internet from my first three or four months of living here. I posted faithful, novelesque entries for a month or two, and then... stopped. Life took over.

What I want to do - what I've always wanted to do - with this project is find an outlet for my various musings about theater and about the city of New York. Sometimes the subjects run together, sometimes they are entirely separate, but between the two they comprise the most fitful, most intense, most trying love affair of my few years. They fill my head, my heart, my mouth every our of every day; they could fill a book.

To start then, I'll tell a short story that is, to me, demonstrative of the city that I love:

In New York, in many parts of Manhattan, there are fruit stands on every corner. During my first year living here, I was shocked and delighted to discover that the fruit from these stands is actually good. Fresh, delicious, cheap. Stopping at the chance corner fruit stand for an orange or a banana is my favorite way to procure a quick, cheap snack.

Once, at a fruit stand, while buying oranges, the owner asked me, in broken English, "What mean 'conducive'?"

"Conducive?" I said, struggling to define the word. "Well, ah.... I mean, I know what it means. It's like.... agreeable... but not quite? Hmmm. Okay, I can use it in a sentence. Like... 'This weather is not conducive to having a picnic.'"

"If it were raining?"

"Yes!" I said happily. "If it were raining, the weather would not be conducive to picnicking."

"Ah, okay, I understand," he said, bagging my oranges. "These oranges..." he offered, "conducive to you have good heath?"

"Yes! Exactly! You've got it!"

Vocabulary tutorials with the guy at the fruit stand on the corner. I ask you, truly, what in the world could be better?