I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say I've died a thousand deaths.
Then again, so have you.  Have you ever really stopped to think that
every day, you're shedding infinitesimal fragments of your former
self, portions you will never know are missing because you never knew
they were there.  Life erodes us like the surf on the shore.
Sometimes, we're collaborators in it, too, like when we sit quietly in
the barber's chair, or when I bite at my fingernails which grow too
fast, or when Mom tells me to scrub well with that sandpaper-surfaced
loofah.
	Sometimes, I wonder if we ever really disappear, if there's a
moment in time when all of the tiny blocks of our lives given to us at
birth have been washed away and we're left with only the new stuff.

	Linden definitively says "no".  After all, only the skin cells
get shed, and besides, the brain and the sex organs we have at birth
are the ones we have for the remainder of our lives.  He says this
with scientific certainty, and, to be honest, he always gets As in
science where I keep getting borderline Cs.