I used to go to New York University a long time ago, which is in Greenwich Village, that's where I started, and I was, ah, in love in my freshman year, but I did not marry the first girl that I fell in love with, because there was a tremendous religious conflict, at the time. She was an atheist, and I was an agnostic, y'know. We didn't know which religion not to bring the children up in. And I bummed around for a long time, and I met my wife, and we got married against my parents' wishes, we were married in Long Island, in New York, we were married by a reformed rabbi in Long Island, a very reformed rabbi, a nazi. It was a very nice affair, y'know, really good, and right after the wedding, my wife started turning weird. She went to Hunter College, and she got into the philosophy department at Hunter, and she started dressing with black clothes and no make-up, and leotards, y'know, and she pierced her ears one day with a conducters punch, y'know. And she used to involve me in deep philosophical arguments, and then prove I didn't exist, y'know...infuriating. And I had to let her go, was what happened, and I had to tell my parents about it. And my parents are what you used to call 'old world'. My parents come from Brooklyn, which is the heart of the old world. They're very stable down-to-earth people, who, ah, don't approve of divorce. Their, their...their values in life are God and carpeting.
I came home on a sunday, this was a long time ago, my father's watching television sunday night, he's watching Ed Sullivan Show, on television, he's watching the Indiana Home for the Criminally Insane Glee Club on the Ed Sullivan Show. And my mother is in the corner, knitting a chicken, y'know. And I'd said that I would have to get a divorce, my mother put down her knitting, and she got up, and she went over to the furnace, and she opened the door, and she got in. Took it rather badly, I felt.