It was about ten o'clock on a Saturday morning. My eldest son, who's the devil incarnate, thoughtlessly scrawled a curlicue on the door of the neighboring apartment with a piece of wire. Nothing alarming or catastrophic, just a quick little flourish, most likely unnoticeable to anyone who wasn't on the lookout for it.

I confess this with embarrassment: at first I thought about keeping quiet (who hasn't had such moments of weakness?). But then I realized that the right thing was to apologize to my neighbor and offer to pay for the damages. This decision in favor of honesty was supported by my confidence that the costs would be slight.

I gave a quick rap on their door. About my neighbors I knew only that they were new in the building, that there were three of them, and that they were blond. When they spoke, I found out they were foreign. When they spoke a bit more, I assumed them to be German, Austrian, or Swiss.

They laughed good-naturedly and gave no importance whatsoever to the scrawl; it was so insignificant that they even pretended to strain to be able to see it with a magnifying glass.

They firmly and cheerfully rejected my apologies, said that "boys will be boys," and, in short, refused to let me pay for the repair costs.

We took leave of one another with hearty handshakes amidst resounding laughter.

When I returned to my apartment later that day, I found my wife dead in the living room - who I had been with for 15 years of my life - anxiously my eyes  gazed over to what appeared to be a note on the coffee table: "Will the new carpet be expensive?"