The best part about the one-armed bricklayer is why we remember him. It's not because of his unfortunate deformity -- that alone is barely remarkable. We remember him because he pissed someone off. Pissed him off over 30 years ago.

Cultivating annoyance for that many years is a signature Mastandrea achievement. The fact that a man with one arm had hired himself out as a bricklayer -- that fact was merely a prop in a greater morality play.

And, as ever, history repeats itself.

So it was that I was walking to my office one morning this week, alone in my thoughts, listening to The Clash through the headphones of my mp3 player. Walking ahead of me with great effort was a man with terribly turned-in legs and feet -- he wasn't using crutches, but clearly each step was a struggle. And yet he maintained a healthy pace. He was dressed for office work and was clearly on his way to his job. I felt embarrassed to have even notice his disability. Surely, he wasn't thinking about it, even as he threw his weight back and forth, lumbering ahead with each labored step.

"More power to him," I thought, and settled back into my morning fugue.

The song on my mp3 player changed: it was now the Magnificent Seven. I listened to the bouncing bass of the song's opening. And I watched the man ahead of me as he walked. He was walking to my music. Walking exactly to my music.

That's pretty much where I lost it, accepting at once through tears of irrepressed adolescent laughter that for all the trappings of dignity that I carefully cut for myself, I am at bottom just a very bad, bad person.

Morality play? I'm going to burn in hell.