I could hear my father downstairs, whistling, as he did whenever a burst of enthusiasm came over him and he felt for a while as if he were a boy again, feeling the boyish lift of possibility in his life. I was as reluctant to join my father in building the aerocycle as I was to join him in his enthusiasm. I found enthusiasm unseemly in him. Recalling that morning and the feelings that kept me in bed, I think that I may at the time have found enthusiasm unseemly in any adult. From the point of view of my teenage self, adults didn’t wear enthusiasm well. Seeing them under the influence of enthusiasm was like seeing them drunk and telling jokes. From my point of view, my tipsy parents embarrassed themselves in attempting to be funny, and the next morning they seemed to realize that they had. I thought that they should also have realized that they embarrassed themselves in attempting to recover their youthful enthusiasm. I know that I was embarrassed for my father when I saw the signs of his enthusiasm—his whistling and bustling and the fraternal attitude that he took toward me when the fit was on him, as if we had always been great friends and he had never been the Grand Naysayer.
