In a campus restroom: a woman approaches the sink next to me, removes a toothbrush and toothpaste from her purse, and starts scrubbing her teeth while humming loudly. You’d think the sight of a stranger’s foamy molars would be uncomfortably intimate, but it was an endearing performance. There have been so many people, lately, humming or singing in public, and I’m intrigued; adding dental hygiene makes it even curiouser.

In the stacks of a university library: a friend and I go hunting for books with the best, most distinctive Old Book Smell. We weave among the third-floor M’s, N’s, and P’s, selecting spines that look promisingly ancient. We crack them open, deeply inhale, and put each back on the shelf, bemoaning the thoughtful preservation. The books are old, we lament; they should smell like it.

And then he finds the perfect one: a multi-volume catalog, of sorts, for The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The brittle pages’ smell sparks acute nostalgia and fizzy happiness, the same pangs I get while watching A Charlie Brown Christmas. Seized by an irrational sense of mastery, I think we must be the luckiest olfactory explorers in the entire world.

Sixty miles outside the city, in a ditch: the green station wagon dies for good. It dies in the frigid rain near a field of cows, who stare speculatively at the predicament for a few minutes before ambling away. The short version of the story is this: I wait almost three hours for the tow truck, passing time by reading and, after it gets dark, singing. A kind elderly man who lives nearby invites me to watch TV, but I stay huddled in the car with a tin of butter cookies and cocooning country silence.

The initial worry of having to pay so much for the towing service and abandoning original weekend plans fades quickly. The solitude and waiting become natural, as if this were the plan of the Universe, or perhaps the cows, all along. It’s peaceful. When the tow truck finally arrives, it is driven by the nicest young man — he seems just a boy, really, though he owns a business and has a son– and we talk about our jobs, families, God, death, and cookies.

Instead of wrenched plans, the day feels like warm luck. It is well, it is well, it is well.

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