I didn't have parents, and in my earliest years developed a combination of anger and cluelessness that would follow me throughout life.

When I was five, someone at my school suspected I was smart, so one day I was dragged out of class and told I had to take an intelligence test. I sat at a desk and some old guy showed me a drawing of a tree on a sunny day. I noticed the tree's shadow pointed toward the sun rather than away from it and thought, wow, what the hell is going on here?

"What's wrong with this picture?" the guy asked.

I shrugged. "Nothing," I said.

"Nothing?" the teacher asked.

I glanced at it again. "Nothing."

Obviously disappointed, the guy said we were done and started to write in my folder. I picked up my jacket and walked to the door before adding, "Buddy, if you don't know, then you're on the wrong side of that desk."

My neighbor has prostate cancer. I ran into him in the elevator the day he was discharged from the hospital after a four-night stay.

He doesn't speak English & my German stinks. I wanted to hug him. I wanted to say, "I hope you are feeling better. I hope the treatment you received was sufficient & the hospital staff caring. That sounds like an absolute nightmare but fingers crossed they can keep you in good health. We sincerely care about you."

Except I know the German for maybe three of those words, so I just said, "This is not good. Not good. Very very very not good."

He actually got mad at me. The words "Of course it's not good, you absolute moron!" might have been said. I wanted to explain that my German isn't good enough to discuss sensitive topics but that sentence alone would take me twelve elevator rides to translate & would probably end up as, "Best I no talk. Bye bye." I thought, wow, even when I mean well I'm screwed.

I fumed for a couple of days before I settled on a solution: a multipurpose preemptive German apology. "Hallo. Ich bin ein 68-jähriger New Yorker und mein Deutsch ist nicht gut. Für nette Worte telefonieren meinen Mann. Wenn du eine Pizza brauchst, bin ich dein Mann." ("Hello. I am a 68-year-old New Yorker and my German is not good. If you need kind words, call my husband. If you need a pizza, I'm your man.")

It is winter and in every German tree are clumps of mistletoe. I guess it's there all year round, but you can only see it after the leaves drop in winter. It grows in giant balls that are thickest at the tops of the trees.

In New York you pay five bucks for a couple of twigs, so of course I couldn't resist greenery that was more valuable than my education. One day while we were driving to a local farm stand I spotted a low-hanging ball, and I told hubby to pull over so we could get it. He jumped a small creek, crawled through a hole in a rickety fence, and waded through a muddy pasture to the tree. That night I attached a string of miniature Christmas lights and hung it on the balcony.

The next day our friend Evelyn came over to make gingerbread houses, and she said in Germany it's illegal to cut down mistletoe. I said it's a parasite that hurts its tree host, but she said it's protected like all wild plants.

"Do you know why there's more mistletoe at the tops of the trees?" she asked. "Birds eat the berries, which means there are seeds in their poop. Since they're always flying, that's where their poop usually lands."

She doesn't say why you're supposed to kiss under it. And despite her decidedly cold explanation, I still find it romantic. The next time we're walking through a forest and I see some hanging high above I still can't resist. "Hey, a bird pooped up there," I say to my husband. "Give me your face."

One night on our cruise my friend Mike got really excited about the evening's entertainment: a mentalist. He had to sit in the front row, and for some reason he'd put on a suit, which stood out among all the muumuus and flip flops. I asked him why and he said, "I had a really, really good friend, Rick, who died twenty years ago. He promised me if there was any way he could contact me, he would. And I've been waiting ever since."

I just about cried. Mike is a really sweet Southern man so this didn't surprise me, though his naivete did. "You want a medium," I said, "not a mentalist. A medium talks to the dead. A mentalist asks you to think of a number between one and a hundred, and two minutes later a chicken walks in with the number painted on its ass."

Mike was stunned. "Oh," he said. "So this guy can't talk to the dead?"

I shook my head. Mike's face fell as the realization slowly crushed him. He seriously thought he'd hear from his long-lost friend again.

There wasn't much I could, but I had to do something. "You should definitely talk to the guy, though," I said. "The skills don't seem that far apart. If he asks you to think of a number between one and a hundred, tell him, 'I will, but first do you see an older man near me whose name starts with an R or an L?"

Conversation with my fictional American husband.

FAH: "Hey, it looks like a beautiful day. Let's go have some fun!"

ME: "Great idea. What do you want to do?"

FAH: "We could stop by the flea market at City Hall and then have Aperol Spritzes by the park."

ME: "Oh, that sounds perfect. Will I need a jacket?"

FAH: "You'll be fine. If it gets too chilly, I'll keep you warm."

ME: "Aren't you wonderful? Okay, let's go!"

Conversation with my real German husband.

RGH: "Get up. At your age you need to move around or you will die."

ME: "Great idea. What do you want to do?"

RGH: "First you will use the toilet, then I will use the toilet. Then we will go out. When we come back, I will use the toilet, and then you will use the toilet."

ME: "Oh, that sounds perfect. Will I need a jacket?"

RGH: "Yes. It is not cold but you need something to absorb all of your sweat."

ME: "Aren't you wonderful? Okay, let's go!"

(Naturally I'm crazy about him.)

Opens today in France. I'm not going to see it but I'm curious how much sugar they needed for the top.

STRANGER: "Is that a Moose Knuckle?"

ME: "No, I wear thick underwear. [PAUSE] Oh, you mean the JACKET."