170. Connections

As many times as we have talked about it, C.W. still uses my computer while I’m sleeping. I wouldn’t mind if he used it for research, but inevitably I receive these strange deliveries after one of his sessions.

By the way, does anyone know what a person might do with a used milking machine? I mean a person who doesn’t own a single cow?

But back to the matter at hand, I heard him giggling this morning and went in to see what might be up. There sat a sixteen-year old boy with oversized spectacles laughing and punching keys.

“Loookit, Big Dope,” he said. “your species just cracks me up. They are, like, weird and I’m like, about to roll on the floor.”

I needed coffee.

“No, seriously,” he said. “Are you, like, incapable of linking spots so that contact is established?”

“Connecting the dots?”

“Do you know that you, like, have an annoying habit of repeating things I say?”

As I made coffee, I slowly counted to ten. “And what dots have we not connected this time?”

“I’m, like looking at your ‘Visage Page’ and …”

“My Fa…, oh never mind. So what do you see?”

“Like weird stuff. Lookit. Here’s a woman and she’s, like, angry about people on welfare, and I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ and she’s, like, ‘No, I’m serious They should be left to starve.’ and I’m like, look at where you live, and she’s like, ‘what difference does that make?’ and I’m like, you live in one of those ‘color of snow aviation cities.’”

“Stop for a moment,” I said. He did and I poured myself a cup of coffee. “A color of … do you mean a ‘white-flight’ city?”

“Like, there you go again.”

“When is the last time you had your translator adjusted?”

He ignored me. “Lookit,” he said. “She, like, drives 30 miles into the provider city each day to work.”

“So?”

“Who does she, like, think pays for the highway lanes she uses?”

“I dunno. The Koch Brothers?”

“You make the spontaneous sounds and movements of the face and body that are the instinctive expressions of lively amusement and sometimes also of contempt or derision at me, but I am serious,” he said.

“I’m not laughing at you.”

“You, like, are too.”

“Okay,” I said. “Who builds the highways that allow her to escape reality?”

“Your state uses the sales tax partly to build commuter highway lanes,” he said. “So some of the cost is, like, paid by the least of those among you when they buy winter clothes for their kids.”

“You do have a point,” I said.

“In exact terms, without vagueness,” he said.

Sometimes I think you lack the ability to
analyze a situation and address it logically. - C.W.

“Yes, precisely. By the way, would you have them check your Galactic Universal Translator?”

“My GUT?

“In exact terms,” I said.

“Why?” he said. “I’m not sick.” He typed on the keyboard. “Now here’s a man, and he is a senator, who says that we don’t, like, need national health care since we can simply drop those lacking sufficient money to live at a standard considered comfortable or normal in a society, like, off at the nearest emergency room for their health care needs.”

“You can drop me off with them.”

“Like, what?” he said.