I'm a Stranger Here Myself Read Online Free

kumquats.”
    “It’s
feuillété,
” my wife explained to me.
    “And what’s that when you take it out of the box?” I asked unhappily.
    “Something you wouldn’t like, dear.”
    I turned to the waiter with a plaintive look. “Do you have anything that once belonged to a cow?” I asked.
    He gave a stiff nod. “Certainly, sir. We can offer you a 16-ounce
suprème de boeuf,
incised by our own butcher from the fore flank of a corn-fed Holstein raised on our own Montana ranch, then slow-grilled over palmetto and buffalo chips at a temperature of . . .”
    “Are you describing a steak?” I asked, perking up.
    “Not a term we care to use, sir, but yes.”
    Of course. It was all becoming clear now. There was real food to be had here if you just knew the lingo. “Well, I’ll have that,” I said. “And I’ll have it with, shall we say, a
depravité
of potatoes, hand cut and fried till golden in a medley of vegetable oils from the Imperial Valley, accompanied by a
quantité de bière,
flash-chilled in your own coolers and conveyed to my table in a cylinder of glass.”
    The man nodded, impressed that I had cracked the code. “Very good, sir,” he said. He clicked his heels and withdrew.
    “And no
feuillété,
” I called after him. I may not know much about food, but I am certain of this: If there is one thing you don’t want with steak it’s
feuillété
.

Here’s a fact for you: According to the latest
Statistical Abstract of the United States,
every year more than 400,000 Americans suffer injuries involving beds, mattresses, or pillows. Think about that for a minute. That is almost 2,000 bed, mattress, or pillow injuries a day. In the time it takes you to read this article, four of my fellow citizens will somehow manage to be wounded by their bedding.
    My point in raising this is not to suggest that we are somehow more inept than the rest of the world when it comes to lying down for the night (though clearly there are thousands of us who could do with additional practice), but rather to observe that there is scarcely a statistic to do with this vast and scattered nation that doesn’t in some way give one pause.
    I had this brought home to me the other day when I was in the local library looking up something else altogether in the aforesaid
Abstract
and happened across “Table No. 206: Injuries Associated with Consumer Products.” I have seldom passed a more diverting half hour.
    Consider this intriguing fact: Almost 50,000 people in the United States are injured each year by pencils, pens, and other desk accessories. How
do
they do it? I have spent many long hours seated at desks where I would have greeted almost any kind of injury as a welcome diversion, but never once have I come close to achieving actual bodily harm.
    So I ask again: How
do
they do it? These are, bear in mind, injuries severe enough to warrant a trip to an emergency room. Putting a staple in the tip of your index finger (which I have done quite a lot, sometimes only semi-accidentally) doesn’t count. I am looking around my desk now and unless I put my head in the laser printer or stab myself with the scissors I cannot see a single source of potential harm within ten feet.
    But then that’s the thing about household injuries if Table No. 206 is any guide—they can come at you from almost anywhere. Consider this one. In 1992 (the latest year for which figures are available) more than 400,000 people in the United States were injured by chairs, sofas, and sofa beds. What are we to make of this? Does it tell us something trenchant about the design of modern furniture or merely that we have become exceptionally careless sitters? What is certain is that the problem is worsening. The number of chair, sofa, and sofa bed injuries showed an increase of 30,000 over the previous year, which is quite a worrying trend even for those of us who are frankly fearless with regard to soft furnishings. (That may, of course, be the nub of the