My friend Jackie watched her parents regularly go from the frying pan into the fire. While her father departed their humble home on Frying Pan Lane in Stratham to work as a firefighter, her mother flapjacked her way through her nightshift at the International House of Pancakes. Jackie spent an ample chunk of her childhood staring at the family skillet, deeply baffled. Eventually, she refused to enter IHOP without a passport.

Concerned about her severe literalism, Jackie's parents thought relocating might open her to symbolism, simile, metaphor, colloquialism, copy writing and meaningless coincidence. The family made an exit for Exeter, but moving to Pickpocket Road compelled Jackie to scarf pocket change.

I met Jackie while purchasing a decorative boulder at a local quarry. I overheard someone who sounded like a choosy mom asking if it was true that concrete was a concrete example of concrete. The unresponsive salesperson, whose nametag read Sandy Rockmason, seemed stoned, so I stepped in and said it was. Jackie and I slowly became fast friends who took short walks on long piers. We talked about everything but the kitchen sink and her potential insanity.

When Jackie became a cashier at Store 24, everything seemed fine at first. But when I got her panicky phone call at 4 a.m., I bolted out of bed like a bolt bolting out of an abandoned and unbolted imploding bolt factory.

"It's Jackie-actually it's my voice. I need your help. A guy with a hairy face orders a beef jerky 'n' beans. He wants it nuked. I ask if he's a terrorist. He says he has no 'nukular' weapons, but he'll soon have explosive gas. Another customer, sporting an ascot and pince-nez, says it's 'nuclear' not 'nukular.' The hairy one says, 'It's a free country.' Smartypants says, 'This mispronunciation confounds a Southern pronunciation of 'nukyala'-as in 'avunkyala' for 'avuncular'-with a northern 'er' ending, illustrating intense confusion. Jack Bauer saying 'nukular' in recent episodes of '24' appeases Rupert Murdoch's plot to take over the world.'"

I could hear Jackie's eyeballs slowly cross as she pressed on. "The altercation is escalating toward fisticuffs. I need you to triangulate all cell phone signals within a two-mile perimeter. No local police yet. Contact the president and the defense secretary, whose son I'm having an affair with. Then break into the Chinese Embassy to make sure they're minding their own business. Guarantee Tony and Michelle stay together. You've got to trust me. We don't have much time. Do as I say, or I will torture you. And all of this needs to take place precisely between 4 and 5 a.m."

I told Jackie to set the microwave to "11" and use it to move back through time to 2 a.m. and when she arrived, to calmly put on the straitjacket strapped to the small of her back for emergencies. I adore Jackie the way gamblers and gluttons adore chips, but she can be high maintenance.