“LET’S FORGET THE WHOLE THING”
by OPOVV, ©2019
(Dec. 15, 2019) — “Do you believe this?”
“‘Ours not to reason why, ours but to do and die.’’”
“If not us, who? Why can’t we ask questions like, ‘What are we doing guarding these particular rocks? For what purpose? And why this pile? There are other piles, like that one over there; it’s higher and has bigger rocks.’”
“How about ‘The Sergeant of the Guard told us to guard these rocks,’ that’s why.”
“But why? I mean, who cares? I don’t care about these lousy rocks; do you? Do any of us care about these lousy rocks? Does anybody back in the world care about these lousy rocks? Does anybody anywhere care about these lousy rocks?”
“Maybe this is some sort of sacred spot; maybe these rocks have more meaning to them than they do us, is what I’m saying.”
“I think these rocks have a negative googolplex meaning to any rational person, so if anybody cares about them, let them. We should be in our racks cutting Z’s.”
“I think we’re making our presence known.”
“But they know we’re here anyway. You see any trucks around except ours? If they saw an 18-wheeler, they’d think it was some kind of elephant; these people are really backwards.”
“I want to talk about rocks.”
“I had the feeling we were.”
“But then the conversation turned to zoo animals.”
“Have you seen a zoo around here, has any one of you? I thought not: no elephants.”
“What we ought to do is import an 18-wheeler and paint it so it looks like an elephant…”
“And the air horn sounds like an elephant.”
“And take it out at 2:00 am and go for a spin from village to village, honking the horn, making loud elephant noises.”
“Our Commander-in-Chief got impeached the other day.”
“So what?”
“Oh, I agree; but still…”
“But still diddly. It’ll just give more people even more incentive to vote for him again.”
“I know I am.”
“We all are.”
“Now, about these rocks.”
“You’re beginning to sound like a sailor. You know when a sailor is happy?”
“No, when?”
“When they’re complaining.”
“Hey, that’s pretty good. You know what?”
“What?”
“I was just thinking: I never heard a sailor not complain about something. They complain about the chow, liberty, the port; where they park the ship, like at the dock or in the middle of the bay. They always complain about something, don’t they?”
“That’s right, but at least they never complain about guarding a worthless pile of rocks in a worthless country.”
“Well, you got me there.”
“Why don’t we write a letter to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and invite them to stand guard with us some night, right here, on our worthless rocks?”
“And we’ll all sign our names and put our serial numbers down; pretend it’s a suggestion, like. On second thought, let’s forget the whole thing.”