Long Island Compromise

by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

He couldn’t believe you could number people, but, also, he couldn’t believe that Morrie would ever let anyone see them, that he was willing to show how he had been diminished like that.

This was a young Jewish man remarking about the number tattoo on an older Jewish Holocaust survivor. Yikes. Thinking about that the numbers diminished the man, as if it was his own fault. Wow.

There has never been, in the history of all human interaction, a way for a woman to explain effectively that she’s calm when a man has suggested she isn’t.

Truer words were never spoken.