Q: How do you get the smell of smoke out of your clothes?

A: That smell never comes out. You're better off throwing them away. I'll get a trash bag.

I'm really sorry I started that bonfire in your car. I really wasn't thinking. Well, I was thinking, but about making s'mores, not about setting your car on fire and ruining your clothes. Man, that was weird. I didn't even have any marshmallows. Or chocolate. Or Graham Crackers. Or sticks.

Don't worry. I have something you can wear. It's not like you're going to have to walk around my place naked.

Unless you want to.

Joking. I was joking. Totally joking. Unless you want to.

Joking. Seriously. I'll go get some clothes.

Really sorry about that fire. Good thing we happened to be right by house when your car caught on fire. That sure was lucky. But you said you always wanted to come over and hang out, or at least I imagined you saying it. It sounds like something you'd say.

There really aren't any cabs around here.

Anyway, it worked out that you're here, and we're alone, and I happen to have a box of wine chilling in the fridge, and I just got Irreversible from Netflix. You like foreign films, right?

Anyway, I think this sudden irrational car fire might just be one of those stories we tell our grandchildren. Not our grandchildren, of course. Not like you and I are going to make love and fall in love and have children and they'll have children and someday we'll watch those children and they'll ask how we met and we'll look into each other's eyes and kind of laugh, and smile, and smile with our eyes, you know, and we'll turn to them and kind of argue over who should tell the story and I'll say, "Well, I really wanted s'mores ..." I didn't mean anything like that. I meant we'd tell our own grandchildren, separately, if they ever ask us about setting a car on fire. That's what I meant. I was just joking about that other thing, about making love and spending the rest of our lives together.

Unless you want to.

Joking. Totally joking. These tears are part of the joke. I have a dry sense of humor.

Q: How many people in the US die from bear attacks a year?

A: Not enough. Not nearly enough. Last year there were 4. The year before, 3. That's it. More people die trying to catch foul balls at baseball games than are killed by bears each year.*

And that's the problem. With so few deaths each year, people fail to take bear attacks seriously. Bears are celebrated in this culture. Worshipped. You can't walk three blocks without seeing a T-Shirt with a cartoon bear, or a sports team named after a bear, or comic book featuring a crime solving bear in a suit who spends his weekends doing pro-bono work in family court.

Bears should not be worshipped or celebrated or even caricatured. They should be shot. Or stabbed. Or hit with a car. Whatever it takes.

So that you know I am not crazy, let me share a personal story. I used to have a son. I no longer have a son. He was killed by a bear. Bear attacks account for 100% of the deaths in my family.**

And yet no one seems to understand the terror of bear attack. They weren't there. They didn't see my little boy dripping honey, stuck in that wood cage, suspended in the forest, his eyes full of fear as he heard the bear approach. They didn't the bear ripping him apart with its teeth and claws, cracking his skull like some kind of giant, honey-glazed Cadbury egg. They couldn't hear his screams, his cries begging me for help, begging me to drop the camera and save him. No one saw it. And they still refuse to watch, despite all the time and money I have spent editing and scoring the video. I haven't even sold a single DVD.

What will it take for this nation to learn?


*Statistic possibly false.
** Not counting deaths by erotic asphyxiation.