Gregory looks not-too-closely at the babysitter in her tight jeans with her tiny teeth and tries to remember his age. When did kids get so brash with their elders? He would never have asked his friends’ parents how old they were.

“Forty-three or forty-two,” he answers. “I forget which.”

You want to know the most effort you can make, the most you can exert yourself ever? It’s Balmy asking this. Gerry Balmagia, formerly from work and now from pretty much just drinking and checking to see if anyone left money in the wrinkled bill return slot of the Lotto machine, which in my experience no one anywhere has, ever.