The reason my marriage to Charlie broke up – although by now you’re probably astonished that it lasted even a minute – was not because he slept with my oldest friend Brenda or even that he got crabs from her. It was because Arnold died. I felt really sad when Arnold died, because Charlie was devoted Arnold and had invented a fairly elaborate personality for Arnold that Arnold did his best to live up to. Hamsters don’t really do that much, but Charlie had built an entire character for Arnold and made up a lot of hamster jokes he claimed Arnold had come up with, mostly having to do with chopped lettuce. Also, and I’m sorry to tell you this, Charlie often talked in a high, squeaky voice that was meant to be Arnold’s, and I’m even sorrier to tell you that I often replied in a high, squeaky voice that was meant to be Shirley’s. You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with pets, but I didn’t care. When Charlie and I were married, I was twenty-five years and eleven months old, and I was such a ninny that I thought: Thank God I’m getting married now, before I’m twenty-six and washed-up.