Inconsequential Trivialities

Inconsequential Trivialities
Dave McFalls

Once upon a sunny Sunday morning, Patrick slowly awoke, and had a lazy, peaceful breakfast while reading the paper. His narrator was unusually quiet, leaving him with no sense of foreboding or foreshadowing as to the upcoming week’s events. Mostly the day was uneventful, one might even call it a day of rest.
Somewhere, high up on a shelf in an unused section of an under-funded library, is a book titled, “ Things that should never, under any circumstances, be spoken of”. At least, it was there until Monday morning at exactly 7:30 am, when Patrick walked into his kitchen and found it sitting on his kitchen table. In certain circles it has been suggested that this book’s title should also carry the addendum, “…or read.” Since it did not, Patrick spent the day reading it. Mostly, what Patrick found in the book was information of the sort that when spoken aloud causes horribly rude things to happen. Things like the Spanish Inquisition, World Wars one and two, Pop psychology, fad dieting and the romantic comedy. Monday evening Patrick spoke them all… to his mother.
Tuesday morning Partick woke up with his head on backwards, or perhaps it was his body that was backwards. He spent the rest of Tuesday trying to get his head on straight. Success continues to be dependant upon perspective.
Wednesday… well, the less said the better, but suffice to say, his luncheon with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was not uneventful. As a matter of fact, it went about as well as one might expect.
On Thursday the machine broke down, the knots came undone, and the glue that held society together failed. Patrick looked around, shrugged his shoulders, and went back to his reading. Later, while out mowing his lawn, Patrick received an unsolicited visit from an irate group of neighbors. Evidently his landscaping did not conform to community standards. At this point, both Patrick and his narrator were wondering how such a good start could have led to such a horrendous week.
Almost everything about that Friday remains in dispute except for two things, which may have had a cause and effect relationship. The first occurred while Patrick was thinking about how horrible the week had been and that things couldn’t possibly get any worse. The truth is things can always get worse, and unfortunately for Patrick he was having these thoughts when he should have been paying attention to what he was doing with the zipper of his pants. This might be seen as the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Which brings us to the second thing, Patrick had decided he had enough and it was time to start over.
And so, on Saturday, Patrick awoke before dawn. He put his slippers on, and he walked on down the hall… into his kitchen. He went to the corner of his kitchen, by the stove, lifted the corner and began folding. He continued to fold until he had compressed the entire universe into a very neat and very tiny package, thus ending the universe not with a bang or a whimper, but rather with sharp, crisp folding noises. He didn’t even get a paper cut. This was, of course, an ending of sorts. He then held the corners of the little package and shook it out and the universe began with neither a bang nor bold proclamations, but instead with a sort of flapping noise, like those made when sheets are being spread out on a bed. It’s a very specific sound that only occurs when the windows are open, the sun is streaming through the windows, there is a light breeze to help the sheets billow, the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold, and there is a lawn mower buzzing in the distance. Or, perhaps when the universe is being created, one of the two.
Scientists would be surprised to find that the center of the universe was much closer than they surmised… actually in the corner of a kitchen, just down the street. Theologians would surely be surprised to find the belief systems from around the world were all mostly correct and that only some useless and unimportant information was either lost or garbled in translation.

Imagine that.