Reconstruct This...

I called Sam yesterday afternoon. That's what I do when I hate the world. Sam and I live on opposite coasts. We believe in opposite things (she believes in Jesus; I believe in good therapy). And we use opposite brain hemispheres (she teaches math; I manage a magazine and a company intranet). But the one thing we do share is the ability to laugh at the absurdities in our lives. And there have been a few... I met Sam at Coco's in Sandy Springs, Georgia. We both had the late shift one night, and I was cleaning the soup well while she was "marrying" bottles of Heinz ketchup. "Are you happy with yourself?" she asked me. Surprised by her question, I lied (of course) and told her that I was ridiculously happy with my agonizingly self-conscious 18-year-old self. She wasn't buying it, but instead of challenging me, she admitted to having deep feelings of unhappiness herself. A difficult statement to believe. Sam had the charisma of a Kennedy, stratospheric intel...