the most everything in the world
last night my husband asked me, if you lived on a desert island and could only bring three things, what would you bring, and i said, i’d bring pen and paper and you. he said if he could bring only three things he’d bring pen and paper and cheese. i asked him why he wouldn’t bring me, and he said he didn’t think of me as a thing, plus he knew i was already there. i said, well, i don’t think of you as a thing either, but i wouldn’t want to be on a desert island without you. anyway, if you know i have pen and paper already, wouldn’t you bring something else? he said, good point, and then said he wasn’t so sure about the pen and paper anyway, because he could probably draw in the sand, or on some bark or something. so i guess i’d bring bread and cheese and wine, he said. but we don’t drink, i said. he said, i think if we were on a desert island we might want to start. i wonder, though, if we couldn’t make cheese and wine on the desert island, i said. well, we probably wouldn’t know in advance if there were grapes and milk available. i think i’d like to bring a lot of clothes, i said. those people on that tv show are only there for thirty-nine days at most and they start looking really grungy by the end of the first week. yeah, but who cares, my husband said. we could just go naked always. i dunno, i’m not that into being naked, i said. but i’m into you being naked, he said. what if it gets cold, i said. i’ll build you a nice hut, he said. okay, maybe i could go naked if we had bug spray. and sunscreen. i don’t think i’d look too sexy naked, sunburnt, and covered in bug bites. if you were sunburnt you might not notice the bug bites, he said. if i were sunburnt i might get melanoma, i said. look at it this way, though, if we moved to a desert island, my husband said, we wouldn’t have to worry about health insurance. no, i said, we’d only have to worry about health. but we worry about that anyway. this way there’s one less worry, he said. okay, but i still don’t want melanoma. you could sit in the shade. yes, but what if i got eaten by a wild animal while i was sitting in the shade trying not to get melanoma? some weird cross between a warthog and a mountain lion, i said. i don’t think health insurance would do us much good if that happened, he said. a doctor might, i said. but there probably wouldn’t be a doctor on the desert island, i guess. these are the chances we have to take, he said. so if i have you right, that if some warthog mountain lion eats my legs off and i don’t happen to die, what then? then that’s what’s meant to be, he said. we can take comfort in knowing that we are not giving our money to the man. look, i said, i don’t like giving my money to the man any more than you do, but i’m the one lying here with my legs eaten off. it’s not like i’d be immune to the warthog mountain lion, my husband said. or rare diseases that we’ve never even heard of, he added. you could be lying there with you legs eaten off and i could be unable to help you because my arms are paralyzed from poison mango syndrome. and this would be better than having health insurance how? i asked. we would lead the only truly all-natural lifestyle anywhere on the planet; we would be accepting our fate, he said. in a lot of pain, i said. that’s when the wine would come in handy, my husband said. i don’t think wine is going to do it, i said. we could bring morphine, he said…
just a sample of the book of short stories i’m currently reading
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