Too True

A new feature inspired by Terry Teachout's "Almanac."

"Because it was my third I was spared a lot of unnecessary discomfort. No one sent us any dainty pink sweaters, for instance. We received only one pair of booties, and those were a pair of rosebud-covered white ones that someone had sent Laurie when he was born and which I had given, still in their original pink tissue paper, to a friend when her first child was born; she had subsequently sent them to her cousin in Texas for a second baby and the cousin sent them back East on the occasion of a mutual friend's twins; the mutual friend gave them to me, with a card saying 'Love to Baby' and the pink tissue paper hardly ruffled. I set them carefully aside, because I knew someone who was having a baby in June."
--Life Among the Savages, Shirley Jackson