One thing about getting older, you come to care less and less what people think of you. When you’re young, at least when I was young, I remember fretting a lot about not being current with my peers. For instance, my interest in sports, while not nil, was only mild and passing. Meanwhile, my companions could spout statistics and exhibit a vast knowledge of athletes.

Imagine a young male attempting to keep up with the conversation at middle school lunch.

By the time I was in college music and rock bands occupied many conversations. Again, it seemed the entire world of my peers was vastly invested in musical knowledge: singers, bands, genres and sub-genres.

As for me. I liked individual songs, even bands. I didn’t care that I didn’t know individual band members names and biographies. That isn’t to say I didn’t pick up such knowledge. Just by being immersed in whatever is current at the time everyone absorbs knowledge, whether you want to or not.

Life went on and as I entered adulthood it became apparent that a knowledge of this or that often was used to impart a level of sophistication. Think of folks who love to talk about wine. All they know about wine they may have just read about, but everyone within their conversation plays along.

I like wine, but I’m no connoisseur. If it tastes good, it’s okay with me, even if I haven’t a clue what to drink it with.

And as for art, I know what I like, but would be at great pains to explain why. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy art history documentaries, so they can explain to me why I like a work of art.

Some years ago I was touring the National Gallery in Washington with my wife. She likes modern art. We’d emerged from the traditional collections, leaving me mildly euphoric, before entering the modern art building. Someone’s postcards were framed – postcards. Not kidding. Someone deemed them works of art.

Of course, there were Warhol’s works, multiple Marilyns and Campbell soup cans.

Many works comprised a blank canvas with a teeny, tiny bit of paint.

I’ll not pooh-pooh anyone else’s opinion or appreciation of what they call art, but, jeeze, I just don’t get it.

Then we entered a gallery with a paint-dabbled cloth hanging from the ceiling.

“A drop cloth,” I said. “This place must be closed.”

The remark drew sharp side-eye from the few people standing there. A pair of museum guards, huge guys, chuckled. Their big overhanging bellies oscillating with their laughter.

The Bride was mortified. “It’s a Pollack!”

After she had put some distance between us I turned to the guards.

“Hey, you guys see this stuff every day. What do you guys think of it?”

One replied in a sonorous gargle of a baritone that could have befit a Delta blues legend.

“Maaaan, one time we had one oh dese hung upside down for three months fo’ anyone noticed.”

He grinned. I smiled.

Yeah, some things I just don’t get.

Amid a tumble of weeks in which it seemed every man on the planet, except me, was being accused of or had confessed to sexual offenses against women, ranging from a pat on the behind to outright rape, the passing of Nancy Friday was little noted.

Friday wrote the groundbreaker, “My Secret Garden,” in which she recorded women’s sexual fantasies, and I’ve always thought she should be given credit for launching so-called women’s erotica. Women were stunned and elated to know they weren’t alone, much less freakish, for enjoying a panoply of erotic adventures produced just for them in the theater of their minds. And I’m sure it encouraged many women to not only spin fantasies for themselves, but set them to stories. Before long the Herotica series of erotic anthologies made its appearance.

One would think the Feminist Establishment would welcome an opportunity for women to claim and embrace their sexuality. Instead, the leading feminists proscribed the book and Ms. Magazine smirked, “This woman is no feminist.”

It was one more crack in the schism that separates feminists to this day.

Friday’s interviewees related a rich trove of fantasies, some lurid and transgressive ­‑ rape fantasies. One faction of feminism couldn’t stand the idea that women might daydream about being violated, used, controlled. But as some of Friday’s subjects explained, it was safe if it happened inside one’s head. And the idea of having control taken away allowed them to enjoy the fantasy while maintaining they were still a nice girl/proper woman. It wasn’t her fault, he made her do it. It’s a trope that made the bodice-ripper romance so popular.

The feminist faction that had begun to regard sexuality as a means to an end, and that end the subjugation of women, pretty much regarded Friday as a pornographer.

But she had freed women from shackles that bound their imaginations. And she did a favor for men too. I can only speak for myself, but it was somewhat liberating for me too, to know that women could be as nasty-minded as me.

The anti-porn (include erotica) faction of feminism regarded sexuality as toxic and the more extreme seemed to regard all men as potential rapists. With this current monsoon of accusations of sexual harassment and violations, you might even believe they’re on to something.

It leaves me wondering about how these guys got away with it. It must be a very heady feeling to know you have power over another individual, either as an employer or mentor or just about anyone who can by his position make another’s life a triumph or a living hell.

Look at Harvey Weinstein. If he had been Harvey Weinstein the guy who drove the beer truck for a living, he wouldn’t have had that sway over other people’s lives. I doubt he could have gotten a date.

But he was a powerful movie mogul who could launch careers. As for him and the others accused, it makes you wonder if they did it because they craved the sex, or they did it solely because … they could.

It also makes me wonder if anyone with that sort of power over someone else might not be tempted to exploit it. Is sexual exploitation the sole purview of men, or are women susceptible to the dark side too? I think they are because they’re human. I think the reason you don’t hear about women in authority sexually exploiting others is because there still aren’t a lot of women in authority. But the numbers are rising.

Perhaps some women fantasize about exploiting an employee, or student or someone else under their authority. Hey, that’s fine. It’s just a fantasy.

So let’s see if I can connect another dot, which is what we do as writers of erotica. We put fantasies to words, we tell the stories. There’s much ado about consent and non-consent in stories. Some editors and publishers insist consent must be explicit. I think it waters down the fantasy, and therefore the fiction.

Nancy Friday showed us all that we are human, that is, complex creatures capable of weaving a myriad of stories in which we are our own protagonists. She gave us credit for knowing the difference between reality and fantasy … and fiction. There shouldn’t be any fetters on anyone’s imagination.

Reggie Jackson was asked by a reporter of my acquaintance what would have happened if a particular game-winning hit had not gone his way. It was a stupid question, asked by someone who, while he was a very decent human being, just wasn’t too bright.

Reggie’s forbearance was admirable. The hit did go his way; there was nothing else to be said.

But the reporter persisted, “but, Reggie, what if …?”

Reggie’s patience finally evaporated. “If? If don’t mean shit. If the Pilgrims had eaten a cat instead of a turkey, then we’d all have pussy for Thanksgiving!”

Reggie’s point was succinct. What’s the point of pondering what never was?

I generally adhere to Reggie’s point of view, but still, like the rest of us, I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if only history had meandered along a different course.

I was brought up in a working-class home, but I should have been a rich kid. I don’t say that in the sense of, Well, gee, I shoulda been a rich kid. I mean, I really should have been a rich kid. My father was a rich kid. Unfortunately, he was also an orphan. His mother was carried off during the 1918 influenza pandemic. His father died just a couple of years later.

His parents were wealthy. My dad’s sisters had ponies for pets.

His father and his brothers were principles in a high-end furniture manufacturing and retail business. They sold their furnishings to very discriminating, wealthy customers. After his father died, my dad became the ward of his very rich uncle, who was president of no less than three interrelated companies centered in New York City and Boston. My dad was sent off to an expensive Catholic boarding school.

But alas, his millionaire guardian was a skinflint – the kind who tossed nickels around like they were manhole covers. He used to tell of writing to his uncle for spending money because the other kids at school enjoyed sweets and going to the movies. His uncle wrote back, stating sweets were bad for his health, and watching movies in the dark was bad for his eyes.

So my dad said he needed a new suit. His uncle had him go to Brooks Brothers in Boston and order up a suit on his account. My dad got the suit, then promptly took it down to the next street corner and sold it, and that’s how he got his spending money.

Then came the Crash of ’29 and the ensuing Great Depression. My dad had inherited stocks that, while at the time had a good piece of their value knocked out of them, nevertheless recovered. The companies that issued them survived the rough times and continue today in one form or another. But his uncle persuaded him to sign them over to him during the downturn, in the belief they would rebound quickly. They didn’t rebound quick enough. His uncle died in his room at the elegant National Republican Club in midtown Manhattan, across from Bryant Park. A will was read, but creditors pounced like locusts. My parents found themselves in the midst of the Depression dead broke, except for a couple of hundred bucks.

Throughout his life, during which he worked hard as a construction laborer, my dad amused himself by tracking his lost stocks, chuckling that we’d all be rich if only he hadn’t listened to his uncle and held on to them.

Ah, what might have been.

I like to think of myself sometimes as a dissolute scion, a playboy. Sports cars and trophy chicks sunning themselves naked on my private yacht. A one-percenter, perhaps blowing scads of dough on visits to exclusive sex clubs, in pursuit of the next shocking level of debauchery. A well-heeled, licentious libertine: Let them eat cake; I’m having my cake and I’m eating her too.

Ah, but then, would money alone make my tastes any more extravagant? This is a guy who gets sweaty and uncomfortable in fancy restaurants. Not that I frequent many of those.

Nah, I’m too pedestrian, too damned catholic (yeah, with a small c). You can only spend so much money in a lifetime. I’ll be satisfied with enough to get me to the finish line.

Still, it’s fun to imagine keeping a stable of pony girls. Nah … forget I even brought that up.

As are most people in North America, I am anticipating a partial solar eclipse next week. Not eagerly anticipating, however. I’ve experienced a couple of partial solar eclipses in my life already. They are about as exciting as a cloud passing in front of the sun. One couldn’t even call it a dimming, no more than a fine curtain dims sunlight coming through your window.

Still, my neighbors are excited. They’re buying eclipse glasses so they won’t go blind looking at it. I expect they’ll be disappointed. Like me, they’re in the right time, but the wrong place. Ah, but that’s life, isn’t it?

The other side of that sad coin, of course, is being in the right place, but in the wrong time. That was kind of how I felt on my first visit to New Orleans, a city I always wanted to visit, but didn’t get the chance to until I was in my fifties.

As my bride and I strolled Bourbon Street on a Tuesday night, it was like the height of the weekend in any other town. It was March, and it was as warm as June in Massachusetts. Trees and flowers had bloomed and the air was redolent with floral scents and the aroma of liquor.

Young people carried glasses across the street from one bar to another congealing in one place before drifting back into the general current, with various eddies swirling amongst one or two establishments in particular.

Sex was in the air too. Young women baring their bellies and thighs and young men entranced, buzzing about like gnats swarming in a pheromone frenzy.

The thought came into my head, then out my mouth: “Damn, I wish I was here when I was single.”

Then a gulp, and momentary panic. Had I actually said that out loud? A sidelong glance at the wife answered that question. But she eyed me with wry grin.

I shrugged, grateful to be off the hook. She’d felt it too.

We stopped in to one joint and had a few drinks, chatted up some very friendly strangers, then strolled back to our hotel. Later we banged each other’s brains out, like a pair of kids on spring break (another experience I seem to have missed).

I haven’t gotten back to the Big Easy, though I’d like to. There are just so many other places I want to go, and I’m not immortal. At least, I don’t think so. Of those places I do get to visit, I expect some will be disappointing in some way, but letdown or no, it’s the journey, right?

And wherever you are, it might just be the right place, for that particular time.

The dust has pretty much settled since comedian Bill Maher’s flippant use of the mother of all racial slurs and his pro forma celebrity apology that followed. I’m not a fan of Maher; his smug, smarmy style brings to mind that of an obnoxious hipster irritating everyone at the party by showing how down he is by running his mouth.

The effusion of criticism, condemnation, indignation that followed was just as irritating as Maher, due to the wholesale use of the term N-word. I can’t conceive of a sillier construct contrived to avoid saying a word out loud or written full out. What? Are we not all hearing the actual word resounding in our heads? Or maybe it isn’t resounding in our heads, and that’s my gripe.

N-word is childish: Johnny’s in trouble cuz his teacher told mom he said the N-word.

It diminishes the power and brutality of the word as well as little Johnny’s sin: Johnny called one of his little classmates a nigger!

Resorting to the N-word is like trying to ignore a pile of shit in your living room by daintily placing a paper towel over it, all the while carrying on in a calm and civil manner. But, it’s still there and it still stinks. Best you heed your nose and your gag reflex and deal with it.

The Maher affair also brought comments from numerous critics that white people have no business using that word. As a writer, that raises my hackles. Words are my tools. No one tells me which ones I can and cannot use. And like any tool, you apply it to the right job, to make a point, or advance an idea.

What idea does that word advance? Well, fear and intimidation, of course, and the notion that some human beings are less human than others. That’s the way it has been used for centuries and how over that time it accumulated its power. Today it’s a verbal hand grenade. But a deft mind can redirect its power.

John Lennon wrote, “Woman is the nigger of the world.” I think that speaks very plainly and underscores the plight of women in a way like no other.

Lennon said he paraphrased a remark by Irish revolutionary James Connolly that “Woman is slave of the slave.” And while the Irish patriot’s observation is powerful, Lennon’s packs a wallop.

Speaking of the Irish, their immigrant hordes were denigrated as white niggers by the American natives. Or even, niggers-inside-out. And well into the last century the Irish were called the niggers of Europe – at least until their economy kicked in and the Gaelic Tiger was unleashed on the global market.

The word continues to be applied to immigrant and ethnic groups. Sand nigger has manifested itself along with towelhead among ignorant cretins pouring their hate on middle eastern folks.

A powerful word, with a long and ugly history, and yet a writer can wield the word in a way that lifts humanity. Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” is among the books most likely to be banned, or suffer attempts to ban in public schools, because it is rife with that word. Its story takes place in a time and culture when the word was used casually and without much thought. Yet Samuel Clemens, probably the most humane of human beings to ever walk this planet, guides his young hero to an epiphany that a human being is worthy of respect and dignity, no matter what one’s culture ordains.

Not to compare myself with Huckleberry Finn, but as a youngster I had a similar epiphany. I grew up in a predominantly Irish-Polish neighborhood in Boston. Diversity amounted to a smattering of Italians and Albanians in the mix. Protestants were rare, and kept quietly to themselves. It was a blue-collar working class environment of triple-deckers where the word nigger popped up in casual conversation just as often as “a”, “the” and “but”.

Yes, it was white neighborhood. The niggers lived somewhere else and stayed there, just as we stayed in our own tribal environs. The only place you might encounter a black person was downtown or on the subway or bus. Or perhaps on the job. Not at school, though. This was before court-ordered busing, so everyone in your neighborhood school looked pretty much like you.

The niggers were an amorphous concept for most kids in my neighborhood, and the word was applied derisively, usually in jest or mocking of one’s neighbor. A guy who bought balcony tickets to an event was said to be seated in nigger heaven. Or a guy who came into a bit of money and started showing it off was said to be nigger rich.

My dad was a devout Catholic who took Christ’s dictum to heart: whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

He had this thing for giving rides to total strangers and it didn’t make any difference what you looked like. I remember being in the backseat when he picked up a black guy hitchhiking. The guy told him he was trying to make a job interview, but he didn’t have even the fare for the bus. My dad dropped him off and gave him a couple of bucks. We feared my dad would be robbed or worse, one day, but he’d say he didn’t worry about that because any one of those people he picked up “could be Jesus.”

I remember Dad complained about the quality of American cars, saying it had deteriorated since Detroit was forced to “hire all those niggers.”

And yet, he made friends on the job with a black man who often came to our house.  We also visited with him.

I was about five or six years old when I asked, guilelessly as a child is wont, “Dad, isn’t Charlie a nigger?” The next thing I remember was bawling my eyes out about five feet from where I had been standing and my Dad furiously warning me, “Don’t you ever call Charlie a nigger; Charlie is colored.“

It was a fine distinction lost on a little kid, but there it was. There was the amorphous niggers and the human being you took at face value was colored.

My mother made the same distinction between a “loudmouth nigger bothering everyone on the bus” and the “nice colored girl” she worked with on the job.

My epiphany came when I went to high school. In Boston there were neighborhood-based high schools where the student populations were all white or all minority. The exceptions were the so-called magnet schools. I went to one of those schools, out of my neighborhood, in the leafy Fenway area.

My school was pretty nearly fifty-fifty, white and black, with other minorities, particularly Asian. It wasn’t a place you’d want to toss that word around willy-nilly, for obvious reasons.

I was enrolled in college-oriented courses. It was the first time I came face-to-face on a daily basis with black kids. The first thing I noticed about them was they dressed a lot sharper than the white kids. Sport coats and slacks, and they carried their stuff in brief cases. I wore a tie because I had to and carried my books in my hand.

One day a week – I think it was Thursday – you had a free period at the beginning of the day. The black kids all played chess.

I made friends, they taught me to play chess, we exchanged jokes, talked trash, and carried on like any kid might with another.

Friends – that was the epiphany. Friends enough to meet downtown and see a movie or ballgame together, or ogle the college girls in the warmer months. Yet it still wasn’t wise to meet in each other’s neighborhoods, and we’d wryly chuckle about the way things were. Also, you never knew when you were back on your home turf that some knuckle-dragging cretin would challenge you, “Hey, I saw you downtown with a nigger.”

But these guys from school were my friends. Vernon, Rodney, Ralph and yes, Charlie. You don’t call your friend a nigger.

I’ve never used the word again, except as a writer.

It’s a word, a powerful word. Yes, it can be used deftly, if sparingly, in ways other than to hurt and humiliate. It can fortify irony, and even camaraderie among people who share an understanding and history others can only poorly imagine, and have claimed it as their own.

Don’t veil its power with a silly, childish truncating. That accomplishes nothing. Say it, write it. Because, even when it’s used in its most hateful way, its power needs to shake us all to our cores.

Social media … Sometimes I wish social media had a face so I could slap the crap out of it. I think 99.9 percent of what gets transmitted through social media could be filed under the category of Who gives a ____?

Even the Twit-in-Chief has taken second place to a minor uproar over a non issue. It seems one of America’s sweethearts, a girl gymnast, Instagrammed a video of herself dancing in her undies.

Really? She wasn’t even naked. And even if she were, haven’t the effects of social media made showing and viewing pictures of naked people passé by now?

If we’ve learned anything since the advent of easily processed and even easier accessed media, is that people like to exhibit themselves and others in the nude. Especially if it’s easy to do.

You might cite the advent of video cameras being made available to the public. How long did it take average folks to realize that in addition to being able to record their kids’ birthday parties and graduations, dad could also tape mom in some provocative poses in her altogethers? Or, even nastier, set the camera up on an end table or tripod and record dad doing mom doggie style, or mom giving dad a blowjob.

How much cajoling did it take for dad to get the secretary of the PTA to carry on like a porn star? Ah, but that’s another question for another day.

Of course, the so-called sex tape became a status symbol once the ex-boyfriend of a certain hotel heiress sold a tape of her giving an inspired BJ. What followed was a cascade of stolen celebrity tapes. Seriously, if you wanted to remain a celebrity, you needed an allegedly clandestine sex tape in circulation.

Long before video cameras became ubiquitous, there were Polaroids. Anyone remember them? So-called instant pictures. When I was in high school they got passed around at lunch. Some lothario had coaxed his girl into posing naked, no doubt with the promise, “No one will ever see them but me.”

I’d like to think that someone, somewhere is going through their just-deceased grampa’s personal effects and discovering some racy old Polaroids of grandma in an old shoe box. Can you imagine the shock on a millennial’s face? Well, kid, how do you think you got here?

Watch out when dad passes away and you come across some old VCR cartridges, if you can find a VCR to play them on, that is.

Being seen naked used to be so shameful. Visualize the kid with the smarmy smirk brushing her forefingers together in that once universal shame-on-you gesture. Does anyone do that anymore?

Sexting – sending a naked picture of oneself via your phone – has become routine among teens and twentysomethings. And, once they’re out there, they’re likely out there forever. But no one seems to be concerned. Sure, a few celebs have cried that their private photos were stolen or sold without their authorization. But increasingly those situations are being met with a big so-what, which is why I’m surprised when the moralists take someone to task for it. That train left the station a long, long time ago.

A couple of keystrokes and images of naked people fill your computer screen.

And why be satisfied with just pictures? Just go to the nearest beach for an eyeful of naked girl. Oh yeah, there may be a piece of fabric stuck between her bum cheeks, but by any definition, she’s naked.

It’s kind of sad, really. There was a time when seeing a naked body, if only a glimpse, was like experiencing a flash of the divine. Still, I hope it never gets old.

So
how much do you need to be drawn out of your world to enjoy a book? Any book,
any story? We all read popular fiction to escape the mundane cares and routines
of life. But how much of a leap are you looking to take?

Folks
who like police procedurals I think require a story to be severely grounded in
reality. They’re not looking for the primary detective to suddenly sprout
wings. SciFi fans, however, are ready to plunge into realms utterly alien from
our everyday world.

How
about people who read erotica? They are a bit more difficult to pin down,
because the genre itself spans so many other genres: erotic SciFi, erotic
mystery, erotic horror. Some are only looking to satisfy a yen for fantasy. The
anonymous man and anonymous woman who agree to a session of bondage in an
anonymous hotel room. Readers don’t need to know anything about either character;
they just need to place themselves in the story and vicariously experience what
the characters experience.

Perhaps
one requires a bit of embellishment to that bare-bones trope. The man becomes a
tycoon, the woman becomes the willing, or maybe just a tad reluctant sex slave
of the man as they jet off to exotic locales.

It’s
the same trope, just better dressed.

But
I’ve always wondered why a character has to have an extraordinary life to
experience extraordinary eroticism. Maybe the idea is only people with access
to wealth and power have access to the erotic. Who wants to read about Joe
Everyman having sex with Mary Everywoman? What chance do they have to visit a
penthouse, much less a penthouse bondage chamber?

But,
you know what? I think the ordinary made extraordinary is what gives the
eroticism pop.

They
say, write what you know. Well, I don’t know any tycoons. Nor am I acquainted
with the sort of women who flirt with them.

What
I know, where I’m from, is the realm of the blue-collar working class. So I
tend to write protags who occupy street level. Some examples: a city health
inspector with a suppressed domination urge, who falls into a relationship with
a tough, Chinese-American police detective with a craving for humiliation.

Other
working class protags include a baker and a long-haul truck driver, a few dozen
cab drivers, and a stationary engineer (you know what a stationary engineer is,
right?) Anyway, this stationary engineer and the love of his life are brought
together after a bout of the flu and a case of diarrhea … hers. He cleans her
up after she loses control of her bowels and nurses her back to health.
Eeeewww! Right?

Similarly,
I concocted a sweet, shy lady plumber who gets loosened up in the shower by a
young man who uses a home brew formula to rid her of the stink of sewage she
had nearly drowned in.

Really?
I bet you thought if it stunk it can’t be romantic. Well, you’re right. There’s
nothing sexy about diarrhea. But, every so often, unless you’re a romance novel
tycoon, diarrhea happens and sewage exists, and most folks make a living at
street level and get their hands dirty … and not just their hands.

But
even people like these can have a transcendent moment, an epiphany of passion
and the erotic. And the grit under their nails might just be the magic dust
that makes it all seem real.

Just
sayin’

I
am a child of the cinema. I think that can be said for most of us baby boomers.
And, although television was a big part of our upbringing, the art form that
most influenced us was the movies. It was an overlapping of a preference shared
by the previous generation, which had also been influenced by radio art,
particularly radio dramas. Radio had pretty much gone by the boards by the time
I was coming up.

I
recall lamenting the death of our television sometime in the 1950s and my dad
saying, “Why don’t you turn on the radio? Maybe ‘The Lone Ranger’ is on.”
And I remember how crestfallen he was when I told him no such shows existed on
the radio anymore.

But
movies endured, and thanks to television recycling films from the Forties and
even Thirties, we wee boomers also thrilled to the exploits of the likes of Sam
Spade and Rick Blaine.

When
I was a kid my imagination worked like the movies. I imagined myself as a
character in my own film, exchanging dialogue with other characters.

Yeah,
I was a bit of a contrarian when I was young, so didn’t make a lot of friends.
But, before you begin playing the world’s smallest violin, I recall the friends
I did make had an abiding love of the movies too.

I
can say I learned to write dialogue by listening to movie lines, and
recognizing the rhythm, appreciating the wit exchanged between characters who
shared a sophistication that made me want to emulate them.

Who
wouldn’t want to be like Bogart? But if I couldn’t grow up to be as cool as
Bogie, Claude Rains would do, or even the immense Sidney Greenstreet, whom I
adored.

The
words that came out of their characters’ mouths. No one could get the edge on
them in a battle of wits.

And what in heaven’s
name brought you to Casablanca?

My Health. I came to
Casablanca for the waters.

The waters? What
waters? We’re in the desert.

I was misinformed.

Who
talks like that? Nobody in my old neighborhood.

How
I would have liked to have told a miserable old nun, “I’d despise you if I
gave you any thought.”

As
I got older, I realized characters in movies didn’t spout dialogue
spontaneously. Someone had to put those words in their mouths. I began to
appreciate good writing, particularly dialogue writing, how to make it sound
natural, original, spontaneous.

Those
conversations continued in my head, and when I arrived at a certain age I began
to write them down.

Today,
younger folks watch movies on screens barely bigger than the palm of one’s
hand. Dialogue … clever repartee … doesn’t move the plot along as much as
explosions do.

Is
it any wonder the national discourse has been reduced to a childish tweet?