I was talking with someone who’d been to China, lived there actually, and he was saying something about the bugs. “See, I like the bugs in Minnesota,” he said, “because they land on you and you can feel them. You can just feel them.” I slapped at a mosquito on my shoulder that was biting through my shirt. “Over there,” he said, “they land on you and you can’t feel them, you only feel them after they bite you. They’re ruthless. Yeah, I like the bugs here.”
I nodded at him and said, “Yeah, yeah,” but I didn’t believe him. I’m sure I had five mosquitoes on me that moment, and I didn’t feel a fucking thing. He didn’t know what he was talking about. He was trying to make a fact, because that’s what people do, they try to make facts, and sometimes you just have to nod and say, “Yeah, yeah,” sometimes all you can do is just say, “Yeah, yeah.”
