Among the many things I wouldn’t do again isn’t loving you. I wouldn’t hit my brother on the head, or call my bald grade-school president "Baldy." I wouldn’t pick my nose and put the snot between the sheets. I wouldn’t shoot a squirrel with a 22, not even if I would be sure to kill it. I wouldn’t burn frogs on a campfire, or jump on Mr. Taddywald’s haystack. I wouldn’t share a cigarette with my buddies in the dry brush behind Hill’s farmstead. I wouldn’t steal vitamin B tablets from Long’s drugstore, or break a cellophane bag of soup beans at Macy’s and walk away. It’s easy to forgo repetition of these little sins. I haven’t had many chances to repeat them. They came upon me once each and suddenly, each a special pick and flick of the hand of fate, which might happen only once in a lifetime, like seeing a dollar through a grate in the gutter, an experience that anyone would find rewarding, like but so unlike meeting you. Yes, it’s true. Among the many things I wouldn’t do again isn’t loving you.
5 January 1986, Menlo Park