I still own all the underwear I’ve ever bought, probably. Like, 85 percent of it. But why? you might legitimately ask yourself. The answer is simple. Underwear is inexplicably expensive. And it takes a long time to wear out, since I don’t do very many things that would cause excessive wear-and-tear, like, say, a lot of butt-scooting on the carpet or skivvy-only horseback riding. I know I’m not alone in this, because over the years I’ve shared this fact and discovered that pretty much everyone is stockpiling ancient underwear.

As a result, I own underwear that is so old that it’s vintage — essentially archaeological artifacts. I’ve got garden-variety skivvies, of course, but I also have floppy and faded high-cut bikinis from 9th grade, lady boxers whose elastic waistbands announce their brand affiliation, and transparent lacy stretch briefs that make my ass look like a low-rent bank-robber. What I don’t have is g-strings. Not anymore.

Ahhh, the g-string. The g-string came to popularity in the late 1990s, first on strippers, then on twenty-somethings, and then, finally, on Donna, the 60-year-old cashier at ShopKo who is suprisingly racy and not interested in what you think about her undergarment selection, thank you very much and have yourself a lovely day minding your own fucking business.

On the day before Thanksgiving 2018, the small airplane I was piloting experienced an engine failure.

It didn’t quit, exactly, though I wish it had. Rather, the engine’s power oscillated uncontrollably every three seconds between idle and nearly full. This is not an easy way to fly an airplane.

The arc of the oscillations slowly moved to the idle side of the curve. Eventually, as the airplane and I approached Earth without the privilege of an airport below, the engine finally gave up altogether.

Fortunately for me, the airplane was equipped with a device engineered to lower the entire aircraft to the ground in an emergency, while providing a measure of survivability for the occupants: a parachute, which is deployed by the occupants via a rocket so they may live to tell their story.

After my rendezvous with the ground, I left the disabled aircraft in a frozen field, broken and askew on a large center-point irrigator, and went home and wrote down my experience. I then posted it on the internet. A few days later, Paul Lundgren, a proprietor of Perfect Duluth Day, asked if I would share my story here. I replied, “I will. But not yet. Maybe not for awhile.”

On my way to see Burning, the Korean movie adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story, playing at Zeitgeist Zinema in January, I heard a woman yell “Somebody help me!” from the bus stop. I couldn’t see her well; she had made herself small, the way a rabbit might make itself small for fear of a predator who has entered the garden, too.

A man was looming over her while she cowered against the wall of the Greysolon Plaza. From behind, I couldn’t see much of him, either. He wore a jacket that looked not-quite warm enough; his agitated movements were likely keeping him warm. I felt my city instincts kick in.

I’ve lived in a city all my life: Milwaukee until I was 22, St. Paul until I was 32. Duluth is the smallest community I have ever lived in, and most days, it barely feels like a city. In the quarters of a city where poor people live, anytime someone calls “help,” I think, we check it out. We need each other.

Someone called for help. I needed to check it out. I started to cross the street, putting on my most booming voice.

“What’s going on over there?”