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“Most companies are either cutting long-term disability or they never had it in the first place. A car hits you, you get paralyzed. How soon do you think your money is going to run out?” He stares at me, unblinking, his mouth a hard line. “Then what?”
    I never know whether these are rhetorical questions, or if I’m supposed to answer him. Instead, his doomsday predictions fan my eternal flame of paranoia, which is always at a low burn. I imagine myself in an airless room, covered in a body cast, my arms stiffly protruding from my thin, dirty blanket. The only thing I can move is my eyes, which are fastened on my home health care aide—a recent parolee, because with my dwindling finances I can only afford someone in a work-release program. He is telling me he is quitting because I haven’t paid him in weeks. “Don’t make me mad,” he hollers, throwing down my bedpan. “My girlfriend used to make me mad.” I look on helplessly as flies gather on the pan to have lunch. Then they move to my face for an aperitif. “Please,” I whisper weakly, through cracked lips. “Get them off my face.” They crawl nimbly around my eyes.
    â€œBitch wouldn’t shut her mouth!” he screams, upending my bedside tray.
    The flies are laying eggs in my eyes.
    My father studies my face, which is hypnotized with fear. Mission accomplished!
    So it was with trepidation that he allowed me to enter the work force, where I would spend whole days away from his watchful eye. Armed with my partially completed degree in English, I attacked the want ads of the Newark Star-Ledger with enthusiasm. Hello, world! I spread out the paper on my folks’ kitchen table and studied the ads, which glimmered with promise. I knew that I didn’t want to be a teacher, the standard job assumption for an English major. Rather, my dream since I was knee-high was to be a writer for a newspaper or a magazine. As a kid, I devoured any magazine I could get my hands on. My mother’s Family Circle, my father’s Time— anything.
    To me, the height of fun wasn’t playing outside but pouring myself a big glass of cherry Kool-Aid and settling down with a nice, fresh issue of Cracked or Mad.
    I had my first subscription at nine, a monthly for kids with the very seventies name of Bananas, available through the Scholastic Book Club at school. How I lived for the arrival of my beloved Bananas ! All of my favorite stars graced its covers: Farrah Fawcett, Chewbacca, the guy who played Juan Epstein from Welcome Back, Kotter (“Bob Hegyes Is a Real Person!” read the cover line). I spent hours poring over articles like “Catching Up with Logan’s Run. ” There was an advice column, groovily titled “Good Vibrations,” and a magic trick of the month offered by Magic Wanda, a kind of female Doug Henning who wore yellow overalls and signed her column “Love, peace and magic.”
    Scholastic’s sister publication, Dynamite , contained my very favorite feature, “Bummers,” a kvetch fest in which kids sent in complaints that began “Don’t you hate it when…” If your grievance was sufficiently grating, it would run in the magazine, accompanied, excitingly, by an illustration. “Don’t you hate it when your dog gets to stay up late and watch TV when you have to go to bed?” was a typical winner. I was brimming with complaints, even as a young child, so I feverishly composed pages of gripes to the “Bummers” desk. I was sure I had some hits. Don’t you hate it when your mom makes you take a bath when you had one last week? Don’t you hate it when your parents make you eat natural peanut butter instead of Jif like all of the other kids in the United States? Don’t you hate it when you have to go to Colonial Williamsburg for summer vacation instead of Hersheypark, which has rides and a tour of a chocolate