It wasn’t polite of me to not fess up to a bad deed while vacationing in Italy. For years now I’ve been living with a tiny shred of guilt.

Shopping in an African market: It’s not your American mall, but you can get your hair done, and where better to find dried shrimp by the kilo?

To smile or not to smile? The world over, smiling is nice, right? It’s cheap. It’s easy. People like it. Well, no, sometimes they don’t.

I’m frozen in terror. Our kamikaze driver is writing, eyes down, one hand on the steering wheel. The car is drifting into the left lane . . .

Jet-lagged, I’m in a restaurant on another continent, sipping wine. No sleep in two days, a woozy vision of a semi-naked nymph . . . where am I?