Ruth dreams that she is King Midas, but instead of gold, everything she touches turns to aluminum. She hugs her father, and he turns into a tin man. Class this week moves off-campus because Levin’s schedule has become unpredictable. As a field trip, the class visits the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and Howard happily lectures despite the heat. Theo notices Ruth shifting her purse from one shoulder to another and silently takes it, putting it on his own shoulder.

On March 2nd, Ruth sees a man with enormous pectoral muscles and remarks, as she does every time she sees someone very different from herself, that they are both “born humans” (74). She thinks about how fetuses and born humans have many differences and that while people around her may appear very different from herself, they have a lot in common because they are all born humans.

Howard decides that he wants to finish the patio covering after all these years, so he and Ruth go to Home Depot. In another of her father’s diary entries, Ruth reads about the time Howard told Ruth that the magnolia tree was one of the oldest plants on Earth. Ruth asked, “Why should I believe you?” (76), and Howard reflects that it was a good question.