22 yo earns his Psychology B.A. then takes a construction job driving a forklift. His girlfriend of two years recently broke off their engagement, caving to parental pressure. His crew boss insists on no earbuds on the job; the work is too dangerous to risk being distracted by music. Our budding psychologists fails to follow this instruction and pops in his AirPods whenever he jumps into the forklift cab. His goal is to listen to Adele’s “Send my Love (To your New Lover)” at high volume, memorizing it so that he can head over to his ex-girlfriend’s house and “serenade” her….

16 yo preparing for her first prom notices large zits on one cheek, some close to her right orbital margin. Mortified, she applies heavy make-up, but does not pop the offending blemish. (Her mother had warned her about scaring, or worse, if she squeezed a pimple.) She attends the prom but did not have a good time (the boy was rude, picked her up late and made fun of her heavy make-up, and to cap it all off, they went to the wrong after party.) A week after the prom …

Freddy Prince, the great lead singer of Queen, composed “A Bohemian Rhapsody”, one of the most notoriously challenging songs for any vocalist. Sally Bowles was an 18 yo aspiring opera singer whose teacher always remarked that Montseratt Caballé destroyed her career as a classical operatic soprano when she joined Freddy in the duet of Barcelona at the 1992 to Olympics in the Catalan capital. (Not true - her teacher was jealous of Caballé). Sally does love opera, but she also enjoys performing gigs with friends at nightclubs where she becomes known for her rendition of a wild “Rhapsody”.

One of the oldest tricks in baseball is for the catcher to steal the ball from the hitter when they have two strikes. The catcher lunges forward as the fastball approaches the plate and the momentary forward movement by the catcher is caught by the hitter’s peripheral vision, making the hitter hesitate to swing the bat. The umpire calls a strike and the batter is out. This trick is usually deployed when the batter is sitting deep in the batter’s box and there is tension in the game: late inning, multiple men on base and a hit by the batter will score runs resulting in a win for the batting team. Clearly, the success of the catcher’s trick is predicated on the batter not swinging. If the batter swings, the lunging catcher may be struck on the side of the face/head by the batter. Yogi Berra, the Hall of Fame catcher of the 1950-1960’s Yankees, was notorious for pulling off this trick.

An aged British actor, never selected for a speaking part at the historic Globe theater is finally chosen to play a small role as a Beefeater wearing the complete regalia befitting this employment. His sole line is to yell out, “Hark, is that a cannon I hear?”, but it comes at a crucial time in the play and the words must be projected forcefully to the audience in, well, a yell. It has been the actor’s lifelong dream to enact a part on the Globe stage, even if it is a sliver of a role. Unfortunately, the COVID pandemic shuts down all theater attendance in London and the actor is laid off. To bide his time, he chooses to travel to central Africa where he volunteers for about two years as a teacher. Before leaving, he was warned to take plenty of iodine to minimize the chance that his goiter would continue to grow …

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, when he recites, “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio,” he could have been speaking about a current Senator. Hamlet is holding Yorick’s skull and he possibly could see a fracture of the cranial base,

A supreme court justice and his wife accept a generous and kind invitation from a dear Texas billionaire friend to go bird hunting. The Texan owns an expansive range where he stocks game pheasant and, more importantly, he always offers his private jet plane to the busy justice to travel. (Everyone knows that private jet transport eliminates any security risks for the justice.) On the day of the appointed hunt, the justice is assigned a spot approximately 20 yards in front of the Texan before the dogs are set free to activate the pheasants flight in fear from the canines and hunters. The justice, an amateur birder, commits the unpardonable action of turning his gun to his rear to shoot the spooked covey. The justice fires, grazing the billionaire’s face with birdshot. The billionaire feels a small sting on his face (birdshot is the size of a BB, 4.6 mm in diameter), but says nothing in the confusion. Others in the hunting party immediately see a small dribble of blood on the billionaire’s face, but he continues to insist that he feels nothing and wishes to continue with the hunt. The justice, fortunately, does abstain from shooting his gun again and is “nolo contendere” about his guilt.

When Rodin began looking for a model to sit for his masterpiece, The Thinker, he asked one of his artist friends to pose. Rodin specifically requested that the artist think “deep thoughts”, but Rodin did not specify an exact pose that his amateur model should strike. He wanted him to come to a pensive pose naturally. After numerous weeks of trial and error, during which the “model” failed to place his fisted hand on his chin, Rodin grew frustrated. Rodin also noted that the model had grown quite frail, and would hardly eat much; he would spend lots of time chewing.

A former action actor, 70 y.0., turns himself in for arrest procedures at a notorious prison in a Southern state (See image. Any similarities to living individuals is simply coincidental.) Actor is reluctant to take off his wig as requested by prison official because of the sever scalp pain, accompanied by a significant rash, that he has been enduring for several days. He claims to have had sensations of tingling or itching, then the symptoms developed into a full-blown headache accompanied by a fever and upset stomach. Symptoms started after a wild trip to New York, interrupted by a side jaunt to Los Angeles. He does not remember much of what he did …