When my son was about three days old, I was still figuring out breast-feeding—how to do it, where to do it.

One of my worries, though, was our big shaggy Disney dog Guinness and how she would react to the baby. Guinness was my girl. She looked more like me than my own child—same shaggy brown hair, same brown eyes. She was the center of our attention for the eight years we’d had her, so I even stupidly bought a muzzle imagining her unwelcoming reaction to the baby. 

One Second: This person is in love/lust with you or is feeling guilty for something minor they did that you may perceive as major, or is in some way extremely needy on a cellular level. Could also be auto-reply.

Ten Seconds: This person is a major friend, or perhaps work underling who admires you. It could also be a person who is in love/lust with you who was pausing slightly to encourage you to believe, for one moment, that they are not as much in love/lust with you as you might think they actually are. If work underling—they clearly envy your job and would like to have it.

Your social media needs to be scraped clean of any evidence of a wild life or a connection to the public eye; celebrities prefer significant others who the press will assume is a staff member at events because they look so ordinary. You can find celebrities at their jobs—in a dugout or an international screening of their new movie—but those aren’t where you should pursue a celebrity because, there, they are at work. Instead, catch them in their element: the most exclusive restaurant in the city or the bar where, since they were in the same fraternity as one of the bouncers, they let loose without fear of repercussions. If you research them, which isn’t hard to do because their entire lives are plastered online, you will be able to find them in a place where they don’t put their public mask on like a sheet of grass where they tiredly walk their dog every morning.

I like to play around on the piano, though I’m no pro. What I don’t enjoy is pausing to turn pages, or worse, spreading them out and propping them up in front of me. Pages fly every time the air conditioner kicks in. For some songs that’s fine, but who really wants to hear page six of Hey Jude?

You’ve heard the 13-year-old’s YouTube video play noisily on the L-train. You’ve watched the 25-year-old on the platform bop his head to his favorite Travis Scott song, one that he’s decided to play on repeat via a speaker tucked into his backpack. And I know you’ve witnessed the 76-year-old grandfather seated in the Quiet Car of the Amtrak pick up his daughter’s call unknowingly on speakerphone. Each time, I imagine your ears perked up. With furious taps, you texted your friend, reiterating how you just don’t get it, you just don’t. You figured you’d shoot them a few glares, certain that the fiery red lasers coming from your eyes would signal them to move to headphones, move cars, anything. I get it.