1. My friend Kara has spent tons of time in Europe and told one story about her and her friend getting harassed all night on a train in Italy by a group of soldiers. She had some fitful sleep, and in a daze, panicked they had missed their stop, she jumped out of a moving train and got a concussion. Her friend, not knowing what to do, jumped after her. When she came to in the hospital, the Italian police said sternly “no jumping off moving trains.” Ugh.
2. I saw a play called “Hangawi” a few years ago, where a family gets together for their dad’s 60th birthday and it was like a series of depressing monologues of how the kids were disappointed by their dad. There was one actor who did such a great job playing an uptight Wall STreet lawyer type, and when he finally broke down about feeling abandoned by his father, it was so awful because it was like this broken-paced outburst of man weeping that was like horrible to witness. Afterwards, I was like: this is why you don’t have kids, so they don’t grow up and write plays about how you disappointed them.