COMPACT ATHLETIC BUILD
I am sitting in the park. It is a Sunday in July,
a little warm but windy enough to be pleasant.

Earlier that day I had gone alone with the paper
to a chain café. A boy next to me was reading a
large book. We began to talk, and I figured he
was a twelve-year-old studying for his bar
mitzvah. This, however, was incorrect. It turned
out he was an orthopedic surgeon aged thirty.
To recover from my shock I said:

Surgery. Is it a passion?

"Yes," he said. "Not my number one passion, but
definitely in the top five."

What's number one? I asked.

"Music. I saw Bon Jovi in the park yesterday."

We volleyed some more and then said goodbye.
Later when I was at the park I started to wonder
if he meant that he saw Bon Jovi in concert or in
passing. His tone of voice was thrilled; yet
here was a man clearly thrilled by many things:
by his egg sandwich, by San Francisco and the
origins of bone tumors, and by meeting new
people.


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