Season 3, Episode 3: Pawfka-esque (The Metamorphosis by Franza Kafka): Wishbone is confused when his owner, Joe, invites him on the couch, while Joe’s mother, Ellen, yells at him to get down, putting our furry friend in a no-win situation.  With such absurdity, he may as well be Gregor Samsa going to bed a dog and waking up a person.

Because I am a proud, patriotic, ambitious, young immigrant to America who hopes to be rich someday and take advantage of all the great new tax cuts, I always try to follow the commands issued by cars bigger and better than mine, especially Hummers which are much bigger than the room I live in. This is especially true of the bumper sticker command “Support Our Troops” that I see on every Hummer on the road. I know Hummer drivers are doing their part, by burning the gasoline our troops are working so hard to keep flowing.

I was starting down the aisle to my seat on Flight 288, moving past the woman with the white hair who was holding the overfed chihuahua, past the curvaceous athletic teenager who dropped her phone under the seat, when I locked eyes with an athletic tanned man sitting in 5C. He smiled, great smile, white perfect teeth, dark almost black eyes, graying hair. Why was he sitting there like that with bare shoulders?

Transmogrify, take a ceiling beam if you wish, my words will retain their meaning whichever way you choose to hang. All I beseech you is, please, save your questions until the end. Dawn is but a few hours hence. And we must use what these new men call the “small hours” to master my last class in stakeholder management.

In retrospect, it might have been a bad idea. But Bo didn’t have the luxury of living retrospectively. He lived in the now. And what he’d done in the now, which is to say a month ago, was to buy his lover a coffee mug. On the otherwise white mug, in red letters decorated with tiny hearts, were the words Best. Mom. Ever. At first he wasn’t thrilled with the periods. Wouldn’t the message have been better without them? Best Mom Ever. Or even a full sentence: You are the best mom ever. But, as he thought about it, he began to like the periods. They made the message emphatic.