“He is not that much older than us.”

I was still not really understanding most of what you said on the first pass.

“It is like a ten year difference.”

Still took me another minute. Jesus.

“Okay,” I said, “yeah.”

I was no longer checking every sentence to see if I thought you were out of your mind. I was still checking myself though.

“How do you imagine a year?”

Reading it back now, that question is pretty straightforward. Yeah? But at the time, these drive-by one-liners of yours sounded like lyrics I just didn’t know, like you’d spent time on them. Still, I was coming around.

“Um,” I said, “like.”

Jesus.

“Visualize,” you said. “How do you visualize a year?”

“Oh,” I said, just like a real brain, “okay, yeah. Um.”

“You can close your eyes.”

“No,” I said, “it’s sort of like a wheel. Like those red toys, like the goggles.”

“Viewmaster.”

“Yeah,” I was really struggling just for this, “only that little part is visible at the top…?”

“I get it.”

“Is that dumb?”

“No,” you said, thinking about it an awful lot for a right answer, “it is perfect, but…”

“Except it’s dumb as hell.”

“Hush,” you said, “it is okay.”

A moment.

“That is a good visual,” you said, “but you think that twenty-seven of those is a lot.”

“Well,” I interjected pretty pointlessly, “it’s the most I can imagine.”

“Exactly. But that is the calendar in your memory. The calendar you know is much bigger.”