Exercise in Compounds -- Answers

UNHAPPY IN NEW YORK
Two and a half years ago, my fifty-two-year-old brother-in-law, a highly respected (and, might I add, well paid) vice-president of a bank, moved to the forty-third floor of a high-rise apartment building in New York City. The building was brand-new and still about three-quarters empty. For us, this was unheard-of luxury, and I remember standing in my in-laws' living room, looking out at all those skyscrapers and down on Central Park under a full moon in a coal black sky, and thinking, "This is it! This is the best the twentieth century has to offer!"

But my sister-in-law's reaction was not a happy one. We should've known all along that our little-understood and long suffering relative would not be overly happy in that overpopulated environment. In fact, her resistance to living there was greater than expected. In a matter-of-fact moment, and in in her self-confident and thought-provoking way, she said, "When I'm fifty-five years of age, I'll be out of here."

And she was nearly right, too, for a year and a half later, they'd left behind the rat race pace and helter-skelter lifestyle of Manhattan's Upper West Side and moved back to their much loved and happily familiar suburban hideaway in Upstate New York, northeast of Albany.

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