Once in a blue moon, there’s a little person born at Gate D18 in the Atlanta airport. These people smell like the orange scented cleaner that Mexican ladies use on your hotel room, they have broomstick straight hair shaped like a Nebraskan haystack, and their limbs are as thin as the napkins you get at a hospital cafeteria. Ask one to dance and they’ll pull out a half empty container of Morton’s Iodized Salt and fling it in your mother’s eyes.
One September evening, while the Swiss family yodeled and the flight attendants primed the boat for explosion, one such little lady was born under the handicapped seat, next to the recycling bin. She didn’t waste any time. She packed her bags and set off for the wild mountains of Wyoming, declaring bankruptcy and renouncing all claims to basic human dignity. She was named by the janitor who’d delivered her, and her name was Dilemma. Dilemma the Doofa, as all babies born at Gate D18 were named. (Gate C33 children were dubbed Grisshoopers, Gate A42 babies were declared Tax Deductions, and babies born in Security were not spoken of in polite society.)
It didn’t take long for Dilemma to grow up. She was chewing beef jerky at one day, riding a motorcycle at one week, and estranging her friends at one year.
One day, as she was journeying through the Mountains of Mauled Mooses, down in Montana, she came across a curious person. His eyes were made of capacitors, his nose was made of a Ford Escape armrest, his body was made of the shed hair of your grandmother’s favorite armchair, and his voice was like the drone of a honeybee in unrequited love. And his soul! His soul was made entirely of electronic resistors.
“I need your help,” he buzzed and fuzzed.
“Pathetic!” Dilemma laughed, spatting spite into his sputtering face.
Anger kindled in the person’s personal, patented Anger Maker, and he stuck out a claw to clew Dilemma’s very large and pointy nose. But it would not be clew’d. It wrinkled up in disgust and bent this way and that, dodging the twisting talon.
“Lascivious loser!” Dilemma cried.
With a human shout and a gust of wind, the Doofa jumped into the air and landed splat on top of the unfortunate person. With a squelch and a belch, the curious person flattened into a perfect circle of olive oil with nothing left to see except two baleful capacitor eyes, staring reproachfully.
Dilemma wasted no time, she did what any sensible Doofa would do. She dipped a toe into the olive oil, and she found it to be good. So, in she jumped. Up, up and around she went, until she popped out of this world and into the next. It was a very blessed place, with wonderful things and kind people who never argued or hated anything.
“Ridiculous!” Dilemma the Doofa said despisingly.
And off she went to find herself another world where there was some fun to be had.