Hotheads

I used to think I knew my hometown pretty well, after living here on and off for thirty years. And then I encountered my boyfriend, a third-year resident in the Emergency Department of the local hospital. It turns out, you only know a place as well as you know its emergencies. We met around July 4, when his days were filled with fireworks mishaps: burns, the occasional missing finger. “If I ever have children,” he said, with the tactical reserve of an early date, “no fireworks.” Fair enough! “And no ATVs,” he added. The four-wheelers and jury-rigged motorbikes that proliferate in the streets around my apartment every summer, annoying me with their noisy revving and curiously powerful stereo systems, also keep the ER busy with head traumas.