Note: This post seems to have been mysteriously deleted. I haven't the faintest idea how to reproduce it.

Short version: My friends got engaged. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got engaged. I was once mistaken for Katie Holmes on the street.

Oh, well. I'm not Hemingway and my wife didn't leave a whole suitcase full of finished stories on a train in Switzerland. Thank goodness for small things.

SuperLefty's thirty days and thirty nights of wandering have come to an end. This morning SuperLefty awoke at 3:50 a.m. from a fitful night of outdoor sleep, pulled on borrowed rubber boots, fired up a borrwed flashlight and walked a steep quarter mile down a mountainside in the pouring rain to catch a bus she heard had dropped its steering column ten miles down the dirt road the previous evening. The sleep was fitful due to the remote but existent possibility of poisonous snakes on the dark path. Everyone kept saying they would only bite if trod upon, but for a clumsy person in the darkness this was not comforting. However, SuperLefty walked carefully into the tiny target of her flashlight and made it safely down to the bus stop, where at 5:00 a.m. sharp a bus appeared and drove her to the hot, swampy port town where she now sits, awaiting a tiny plane to bring her to a larger plane to bring her to the hotter, swampier port town she calls home. The organic farm was lovely and galloping horses on the beach while screaming, "Rapido! Rapido!" was exhilirating, but two days of rain in a place where all lights are solar powered has made SuperLefty guiltily nostalgic for fossil fuel consumption and a nightlife beyond swinging in a hammock, though SuperLefty is now concerned that when the fossil fuels run out and the apocalypse comes, those on the sustainable organic farm will be sustained and SuperLefty will perish in the escalating oil wars. SuperLefty's wounds are all healing nicely, though just today her new pair of perfect $4 aviator sunglasses from the market in Granada finally met their end on the concrete floor of a soda (cheap restaurant) that seemed to house the town's collection of weirdos and drunks. Luckily SuperLefty knows perfect aviator sunglasses when she sees them (she is rarely without them in daylight) and was smart enough to buy four more pairs. (What is an American abroad if not a smart shopper?) Other than that, casualties of this trip were minimal. Now, if you will excuse SuperLefty, she has one more errand to attend to before she boards the tiny plane. Someone gave SuperLefty a thoughtful gift she needs to disappear before she encounters any agents of airport security.

Apologies for odd punctucation of foreign keyboards. The world seems to be exploding. The evidence of the American mentality in the rest of the world is not favorable. SuperLefty has briefly emerged from the hinterlands and regrets it. She retreats there once again and will punctuate readably soon.

In response to the June 9, 2005 entry on superlefty.com, Danielle, Age 10, of The Internet writes:

Emily,

Does it hurt to get a shot or to get a cavity filled?

Tell me! I'm only 10!!!!!

Bye, Danielle

Dear Danielle,

It does hurt to get a shot or to get cavity filled. But not as much as you think it's going to hurt. What really hurts is the worry about the hurt. It only hurts for a second, and when it does hurt, it's not as bad as you were thinking it would be. It doesn't hurt much more than stubbing your toe and is far less surprising. The only part of getting a cavity filled that can hurt is getting the shot, and you might not even feel that at all. So to answer you question, kind of, but not really. One thing that I think can help when something hurts is to let it hurt. So donīt try to steel yourself and not feel the little stick of the needle. Say to yourself, "I wonder what it will feel like to get stuck by this needle and I am going to just see exactly what it feels like." My good friend Chloe is almost a doctor and she says that the human body can alter how much it feels pain, and that people whose bodies are feeling a lot of pain can eventually turn it off. Pain is not the sensation itself, but our alarmed response to it.

If you are concerned about things that hurt, I would worry more about emotional pain than physical pain. Scientists say that the pain of a broken heart is one thing that can be physically measured. A broken heart really, really hurts. That is when you love someone and they donīt love you in the same way, but you thought they might but then you realize they donīt and they never will, and maybe they do love someone else, but not you. A broken heart hurts for far longer than an injection, and can happen to anyone at any time. There is no way to avoid a broken heart except to never fall in love, and I don't reccomend that at all, because falling in love is the exact opposite of a broken heart, it is to a broken heart what an ice cream cone is to an injection.

Other things that hurt are extreme embarrassment (see broken heart), disappointment (see broken heart), hangovers (see broken heart) and climbing volcanoes if you are not in peak physical condition. Things I have heard can really hurt but do not know about personally are giving birth to babies, getting tattooed on bony parts of your body and getting kicked in the crotch if you are a male. However, it is generally agreed that while these things can be painful, everyone can get through them alright.

When I was your age I was terribly, terribly afraid of things that hurt and would cry at the mere thought of them. Now I am afraid of fear, because if you have fear, you wonīt do things, and not doing things to me is a different kind of pain.

Pain is a very complicated concept, Danielle, and everyone has his or her own relationship to it. My advice to you about shots and cavities is to pretend that they really, really hurt to get your parents to buy you stuff.

Thanks for writing. SuperLefty is happy to answer reader questions any time. Unless you specify in your email, your question may be published on superlefty.com.

Don't Let The Man Get You Down,
SuperLefty

Yesterday I climbed a gigantic volcano. I experienced pain, fear and exhaustion like I never have before.

When I got to the top, I ate a ham and cheese sandwich.

Complete reports of this and other adventures to follow upon return in mid-July.