Joe Jennett is good at taking snapshots, the photographic kind and the non-photographic kind.

9:24:53 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

After the End

I have this idea about the end of the world as I know it. It is not a theory about how the world will end but rather what will happen after the end. The theory goes something like this.

We are so removed from the physical world, from the dirt of the earth, that our bodies can't handle it anymore. Antibiotics at the first hint of infection. Germ killing foams to apply every ten minutes. Abject fear of letting the baby pick up a cheerio that landed on the floor. You know, that kind of thing.

When the end of the world comes, whatever the cause, we won't have our antibiotics anymore. We won't have our cleansing foams. Heck, we won't have soap. We'll only have our immune systems to protect us from the world to which we have become so unaccustomed. And most of us will quickly die.

My demise will be different, however. I don't use antibiotic foam. I've long lived by the ten second rule with respect to dropped cheerios. I figure my immune system will do fine.

No, my demise will come in the Spring of the following year, when the flowers begin to bloom and the oaks begin to pollinate. I will walk out into the field to cultivate my berries and plant my potatoes (or whatever I'll be living on), and I won't be able to stop sneezing. With no Flonase, with no Claritin, with no eye drops to stop the itching, I will be helpless. The berries will go unprotected from the birds. The seed potatoes will never get planted. The weeds will take over. And I will starve.

And then the meek shall truly inherit the earth.

9:11:59 PM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []