Let Me Be Brief

O. and I have a kind of ongoing game or joke in which we identify very short sentences, spoken by the other, that contain whole sad stories: so far O. is the winner, having once uttered the sentence, "I used to have that watch, but it broke." What a story of tragedy that sentence seems to hide! Today at lunch, however, I discovered that exactly the opposite can happen: "I lost my room key," my FTT said, "but then I found it again." What a narrative of joy that sentence contains! First the fear that the key is gone forever, with the attendant irritation at the hassle and fee incurred, then the happy discovery that none of that will be incurred at all, for the key has been found! All that joy in eleven words.