Dan came round to practice on the concertina for Christmas party on Friday. He plays from ear, so I play the scale for him and he picks it up. It’s an odd instrument; every second not is at the other end.

Over dinner, he told us stories of growing up, like the time his Converse sneakers, paid out of weeks of wages, were stolen out of his locker at school. He went out and bought the cheapest sneakers he could find, died them pink, and wrote on them in Magic Marker: “these are Dan’s and I’ll know if you take them.” Also the one about the time he argued about his grade with a Western Philosophy teacher who asked the students to come and talk to him about the grade they deserved. He said he thought he deserved a D because he hadn’t got much out of the readings. The instructor talked him up to a C, then gave him an A.

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