Recently I have been writing a few extremely short stories per week. This was inspired by Vonnegut’s brief descriptions of Kilgore Trout stories. Here are a few:
Beauty. Like many people, Mindy was unhappy with some of the features of her body. She was determined to do something about it. So, Mindy worked overtime whenever she could, and diligently saved until she could finally afford cosmetic surgery. Today, Mindy’s life has changed, as she no longer has asymmetric kidneys.
Cold. Tonya Larsen was born with an unfortunate combination of traits. She experienced emotions extremely intensely. However, Tonya could only communicate with words. She had no emotional prosody, couldn’t cry, use hand gestures or vary facial expressions. People saw her as cold and unfeeling. She would tell people how much she loved them, how happy she was, or how sad she was, but nobody believed her. As a result, Tonya never had close friendships, and suffered from the most painful case of loneliness the world has ever known.
Pyramid. Every parent stacks tin cans in a pyramid shape in front of their home. This makes it extremely easy to identify the good from the bad parents. Good parents, of course, make sure the cans do not have scratches or dents. If the wind knocks the cans over, good parents quickly stack them back up. To encourage good parenting, schools began to offer can stacking classes.
Roomba. A team of scientists and engineers created a conscious Roomba vacuum. They designed it so that it would get satisfaction out of keeping the floor clean. In addition, they wired a button on the side of it to its pleasure center. It could push the button by bumping into a wall. However, once the button was pushed it would not work again for 24 hours. To the surprise of its creators, the Roomba felt morally obligated to abstain from button pushing.
I love all of these, but especially Pyramid. Once when I was in the toddler / preschool section of the downtown Ann Arbor library, I saw a mother with a child who was so young he/she was still a little unsteady sitting up. Not standing up… sitting up. And the mother was holding up stuffed objects labeled with letters (e.g. a stuffed octopus emblazoned with ‘O’) and saying the letter names to this child, very enthusiastically if not aggressively. I thought she was completely hysterical (not in the funny sense). It’s terrible the pressure that’s placed on parents. And it’s equally terrible that doing all the “right” things on paper is what gets one kudos, not the strength and health of the relationship with one’s children.
I love the parenting example that you gave.
The theme common to these stories, and to this whole blog, is the chasm between appearance and reality.
I guess no one really knows what goes on in someone else’s head.
Reblogged this on YBoris.