Dining on Ding Dongs in post-apocalypse 2037
If you’re reading this message, that’s good. Maybe send the pigeon back. Maybe don’t eat the pigeon. You’ll probably eat the pigeon. I get that.
We are a small group. We live near a waterfall in a game refuge. And when I say “game refuge,” I mean it’s a refuge from a game played by a tribe called the Sons of Sampson. The game involved hunting us.
I don’t want to say too much about our location because right now rabbits are plentiful, and the waterfall water runs clean, and inside our cave we have a huge magic compost heap from which Ed the Magician periodically extracts sweet, wrapped items with names such as Sno Ball and Ho Ho and Ding Dong.
How does Ed do this? It has been 17 years since 2020. Seventeen years since we had electricity or teachers or medicine that works or voting or post offices or the Hulu adaptation of “High Fidelity” with Zoe Kravitz.
That last one might not seem like it’s at the same level, but it was more disruptive than we realized at the time.
Anyway, the children often have a lot of questions about the olden times. Last night, we were showing them one of the remaining laptops, now cracked and dirty and streaked with rabbit blood.
“This was an Apple computer,” we told them.
“Like the apples we steal from the land of the zombies?” asked little Polysorbate 60.
“First of all ‘zombie’ is a kind of racist term. I think they prefer‘ consciousness challenged.’ Second, that land once was called Greenwich. Third, that’s a different kind of apple. This Apple was a box that would light up and tell you things. And you could put things into it, like a picture of a cat playing the piano, and other people far away could see it.”
“What happened to the Apples?” asked little Thiamine Mononitrate. (Note to self: we’ve gotten a little lazy in the area of naming our children based on words on the snack cake packages.)
“Well the power went off and never came back on, and the teachers all died when they opened the schools in the middle of a plague, and pretty soon we just forgot how things used to work,” we explained.
“The Orange Man did it!” shouted young Xanthan Gum. “The Orange Man killed God!”
“The Orange Man did not kill God. It’s true that the Orange Man killed the postal service and voting and democracy and public health, but it’s also true that there were systemic, long-running weaknesses in our social fabric which he merely exploit –”
“This is boring!” shouted Xanthan Gum. “Next year, after my fire ceremony, I’m going to take a pointed stick and journey to the
Free State of Elicker, where everyone has a bicycle.”
“That’s just a legend,” we said. “Also, you would have to cross the land formerly known as Hamden, which, ironically, has been taken over by wild pigs.”
“Tell us more about the old happy times and the talking machines made of fruit!” shouted the children.
“No, no, Apple was just the name of one kind of machine,” we explained.
“What happened to Greenwich? Why are they zombies?”
“Their young people had too many parties and never washed their hands. Let that be a lesson to you,” we cautioned.
“Was it like the ‘High Fidelity’ episode where Zoe Kravitz decides to celebrate her birthday against her better judgment and winds up in bars with a bunch of sketchy people?” the children asked.
“Yes, episode 5. Exactly.” “Tell us again about Zoom!” they cried.
“Well, Zoom was ... Zoom was maybe an example of something we don’t miss as much as certain other things. Time for bed.”
“What if bears come?” asked little Cocoa Processed with Alkali.
“Frankly, bears were more interested in us when we had a lot more food and didn’t eat every last scrap of it and sometimes had so much extra food that we would buy things just for the birds to eat.”
“You did what?” they all yelled.
Anyway, I’ve made my usual mistake of writing way too much. Back in the days when we had letter carriers, you could go on and on. But if you’re tying it to a pigeon, you’ve got to be concise.
If you’re reading this, the pigeon is named Susan. I hope knowing her name will make you less likely to eat her. She is named after the Great Bysiewicz, who ruled briefly after King Ned succumbed, and who made the rivers run red with the blood of meteorologists and utility company executives.
That was a terrible time. I kind of enjoy the quiet now.
Write back.