I had taken my mother to see some kind of play in the Bronx.  It was after the play and we were in a large old fashioned looking, and down at the heels, pizza parlor.  It seemed to be about 2 a.m.  We’d been there for what seemed like hours when I suggested we get the D train to a place where we could get a cab.  My mother, dead now going on three years, nonchalantly dismissed the idiotic idea and told me to call a car service, that she could afford it.

Later, Mayor Bloomberg, not a person I admire in any way, was holding a news conference to announce that a rat that had been at large in City Hall, black and very cute, with foxlike ears, had been found.  The rat was wandering calmly on the table between Bloomberg’s hands, and Bloomberg petted it as he spoke.  “It all depends on how you handle a rat,” he told the camera.  “If you’re gentle with them they are very nice, this little fellow is very silky.”   I reached my hand into the frame and petted first the black fox-like rat and then the more common grey rat with the scary tail.  Both were indeed silky and practically purred under my touch.