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Your Mother and I.BY DAVE EGGERS- - - - [This story, in slightly different form, appears in How We Are Hungry, a collection of short stories coming out on or about October 26. To pre-order the book, click here. Proceeds from the hardcover version of the book will go to programming at 826 Valencia and 826NYC.] - - - - I told you about that, didn't I? About when your mother and I moved the world to solar energy and windpower, to hydro, all that? I never told you that? I really thought I told you about that. Well then, sit down, little one, and lemme tell you how all that went down. Well sure, we have to take the credit for reducing our dependence on oil and for beginning the Age of Wind and Sun. That name wasn't mine, though. Your uncle Frank came up with that. Yes, Uncle Frank who lives in the garage. He always wanted to be in a band and call it that, the Age of Wind and Sun, but he never learned guitar and couldn't sing. When he sang he enunciated too much, you know? He sang like he was trying to teach English to Turkish children. Turkish children with learning disabilities. It was really pretty odd, his singing. But it was all pretty simple, converting most of the nation's electricity. At a certain point everyone knew that we had to just suck it up and pay the money—because damn, it really was expensive at first!—to set up the cities to make their own power. All of those solar panels and windmills on the buildings? They weren't always there, you know. No, they weren't. The roofs of these millions of structures weren't being used in any real way, so I said, Hey, let's have the buildings themselves generate some of the power they use, and it might look pretty cool to boot, because everyone loves windmills, right? So we started in Chicago, and they dug it pretty well, and we went from there. Right after that was a period of much activity. Your mother and I tended to do a big project like the power conversion, and then follow it with a bunch of smaller, quicker things. So in the same week, we got rid of egregious school-funding inequities—can you believe they used to pull that shit?—we banned bicycle shorts for everyone but professionals, we made everyone's hair shinier, all new buildings curvier, all new cars electric and boxier and with more chrome. Chrome, little one, is awesome. Yep, that was us, all that, your mother and I. That was right after our work with the lobbyists—I never told you that, either? I must be losing my mind. I never mentioned the lobbyists, about when we had them all deported? That part of it, the deportation, was your mother's idea. All I'd said was Hey, why not ban all lobbying? Or at least ban all donations from lobbyists, and make them wear cowbells so everyone would know when they were coming? And then your dear mom, who was, I think, a little tipsy at the time—we were at a Better Than Ezra reunion concert and they had a Zima special and you know how your mom loves her Zima—she said How about, to make sure those bastards—the lobbyists, not Better Than Ezra—don't come back to Washington, have them all sent to Greenland? And damn if that idea didn't just take off. Everyone loved it, and Greenland welcomed them warmly; they'd apparently been looking for ways to boost their tourism. So they set up some cages and a viewing area and it worked out real nice. So then we were all pumped up, to be honest. Wow, this kind of thing, the lobbyists thing especially, boy, it really made your mother ... what is the word? Horny. Yes, this is the word. Matter of fact, honey, I think you were conceived around that time. She was like some kind of tsunam— Oh don't give me that face. What? Did I cross some line? Don't you want to know when you were conceived? I would think you'd want to know that kind of thing. Well then. I stand corrected. Anyway, we were on a roll, so we got rid of genocide. The main idea was to create and maintain a military force of about 20,000 troops, under the auspices of the U.N., which could be deployed quickly to any part of the world within about 36 hours. This wouldn't be the usual blue helmets, watching the slaughter. These guys would be badass. We were sick and tired of the civilized world sort of twiddling their thumbs while hundreds of thousands of people killed each other in Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan, on and on. Then the U.N. would send 12 Belgian soldiers—nice guys, but really, you have a genocide raging in Rwanda, 800,000 dead in a month, and you send Belgians? So we made this proposal, the U.N. went for it, and within a year the force was up and running. And boy oh boy, your mother was randy again. That's when your seed was planted—I was wrong before. Your mother and I were actually caught in the U.N. bathroom, after the vote went our way. That bathroom was full of people, and at the worst possible moment, Kofi himself walked in on us. He sure was surprised to see us in there, on the sink and all, but I have to say, he was pretty cool about it all. He actually seemed to enjoy it; he stood there for sort of a long time, come to think of it, with this oddly beatific grin on his face— Fine. Fine. I won't go there again. It's just that it's part of the story, honey. Everything we did, your mother and I, started with love, a love like buckshot, just too much of it, you know, we had to direct it somewhere, everywhere, it threatened to drown us if we didn't spread it around— But you're right. That was inappropriate. I guess a lot of what we did—what made so much of this possible—was eliminate the bipolar nature of so much of what passed for debate in those days. So often the media would take even the most logical idea, like full funding for all students to have Head Start, and make it seem like there were two equally powerful sides to the argument, which was rarely the case. Not everything, we pointed out, was in perfect oppositional balance. So we just got them to keep things in perspective a bit, not make everyone so crazy, polarizing every last debate. I mean, there was a time when you couldn't get a lightbulb replaced because the press would find a way to quote the sole lunatic in the world who didn't want that lightbulb replaced. So we sat them all down, all the members of the media, and we said, "Listen, we all want to have progress, we all want a world for the grandkids and all. We know we're gonna have to pay our schoolteachers a goddamn living wage, and we're gonna need weekly parades through every town and city to keep morale up, and we'll have to get rid of Three Strikes and mandatory minimums and the execution of retarded prisoners—and that it all has to happen sooner or later, so don't go blowing opposition to any of it out of proportion. Don't go getting everyone inflamed." So we sat everyone down, served some carrots and onion dip and iced oatmeal cookies, and in a couple hours your mother and I straightened all that out. We went on a tear right after genocide, very busy. I attribute it partly to the diet we were on—very intense program of herbs and vitamins and protein shakes. We'd shoot out of bed and bounce around like bunnies. One morning, before breakfast, we painted all the roads red and yellow—it looked so much better!—and after breakfast (this was good) we sent all employees of all W hotels worldwide to Greenland, with the lobbyists. Oooh, that was fun. We took all their tight black shirts and burned them in this beautiful, beautiful bonfire. And all night we danced and danced. Around then was when we covered Cleveland in ivy. You've seen pictures. There's one in the bathroom, honey. Right, that one. We did that. We just said, Hey Cleveland, what if you were covered in ivy, all the buildings? Wouldn't that look cool, and be a big visitor attraction kind of thing? And they said Hmm. Well, sure. You know who helped with that? Dennis Kucinich. I used to call him "Sparky," because he was such a feisty fella. Your mom, she called him "The Kooch." He loved being called "The Kooch"—it made him smile like a little elf who'd wet the bed. Right after Cleveland and the ivy, we did the thing with the llamas. Yeah, we put llamas everywhere. That was us. We just liked looking at them, thought they should be everywhere, really, so we bred about 6 million and spread them around. They weren't there before, honey. No, they weren't. Oh man, there's one now, in the backyard. They're dumber than dirt, but really, isn't it a handsome thing? Now they're as common as squirrels or mosquitoes, and you have your mom and pop to thank for that. This was all part of a real productive period. In about six months, we established a global minimum wage, we made it so smoke detectors could be turned off without having to rip them from the ceiling, and we got Soros to buy the Amazon, to preserve it, and then we did some work on elections. First we made them no more than two months long, publicly funded, and forced the networks to give two hours a night to the campaigns. To really cover the issues, you know? Not the horserace aspect, not the issues of politics, but the issues of governing! There's a difference, but you wouldn't have known it way back when. So we fixed that, and then we perfected online and phone voting. Man, participation went through the roof once we did that. Everyone thought there was just all this apathy, when the main problem was finding your damned polling place! And all the red tape—register now, vote then, come to this elementary school, but skip work to do it, on and on. Voting on a Tuesday? Jesus damned Christ! We gave people a week, let them do it so many ways, and all that—the online voting, the voting over the phone—man that was great, suddenly participation exploded, from about, what, 40 percent, to 88. We did that over Columbus Day weekend, I think. I remember I'd just had my hair cut very short. We called that style the Timberlake. And that's about when your mom got all kinky again. She went out, bought this one device, you know, it was interesting—kind of like a swing, where there was this harness and— Fine. You don't need to know that. But the harness figures in, because that's when your mother had the idea—some of the best ideas happen when you're lying down, of course—to make it impossible to have more than one president from the same immediate family. That was just a personal gripe she had. We'd had the Adamses and Bushes and we were about to have the Clintons and your mother just got pissed. What the fuck? she said. Are we gonna have a monarchy here or what? Are we that stupid, that we have to go to the same well every time? This isn't an Aaron Spelling casting call, this is the goddamned presidency! I said What about the Kennedys? And she said Screw 'em! Or maybe she didn't say that, but that was the spirit of it. She's a fiery one, your mom, so she pushed that through, a constitutional amendment. That was pretty cool. Right after that was another busy period. One week, we made all the cars electric, put waterslides in every middle school, and made all elevators smell like your sixth-grade girlfriends and boyfriends. We increased average life expectancy to 182, made it illegal to manufacture or wear Cosby sweaters, and made penises better-looking—more streamlined, better coloring, less hair. About that one in particular, people were real appreciative. It was all possible, daughter of mine! With a few friends and planning and a decent Internet connection, it was all damned possible! And speaking of possible, it's possible that your little brother and Uncle Frank are coming down for the comida grande! Hola, Hermano! We didn't have to wake you up! And here's your mother, descending the stairs. With her hair up. This I was particularly proud of, when I convinced your mother to wear her hair up a bit more—at least a third of the time, I begged. When she first did it, a week before our wedding at her mother's suggestion, I was breathless, I felt as if I'd met her twin, and oh how I was confused. Was I cheating on my beloved with this version of her, with that long neck exposed, the hair falling in helixes and kissing her clavicles? She assured me that I was not, and that's how we got married, with her hair up—that's how we did the walk with the music and the fanfare, everything yellow and white, side by side, long even strides, she and me, your mother and I. - - - - Click here to order How We Are Hungry. - - - - OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES: - - - - Your Mother and I By Dave EggersHow Past Girlfriends Could Have Changed History By Brian Sack THEM!: The Play By James Erwin Nicotine Kid By Chris Ogden Music Video Ideas That Unfortunately Will Never Be Filmed By Scott Keneally |
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