Summary

In “Our Hour Is Up,” when Crosley was in fourth grade, she put signs around her school advertising her therapy services. She had not seen “the Peanuts comic strip,” and did not know she was “imitating Lucy” (203). One day during recess, the boy she liked, Jason Pakarinen, approached her table and made fun of her.

“Twenty years later,” while waiting to cross the street during the Gay Pride parade, Crosley saw Jason waving to her (206). She and her boyfriend stopped and talked to him. Despite Jason’s meanness in school, he had been popular “throughout high school and graduated from Stanford” (207). He was now “a physicist in London” (207). Jason and Crosley’s boyfriend talked chummily. Before parting ways, Jason asked Crosley if she could help his wife with her book proposal. Crosley ended the conversation...