edith zimmerman

A very short story.

“Tell me a joke,” I said to my husband George. “I’m feeling really sad.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Let me think.”

“OK,” I said, slumping in my chair with my head propped up on my hand.

“All right, I’ve got one,” he said. “So there’s a car driving along the highway, and the lady driving is on her cell phone, so when another car merges into her lane she doesn’t notice and drives right into it, sending both cars spinning across the oncoming lanes, which causes a bunch of other cars to all crash into one another, and it’s just crazy to think about how dozens and dozens of car accidents and injuries were all caused by just one woman on her cell phone.”

“What’s the punch line?” I said.

“What do you mean, punch line?” he asked.

“I asked you to tell me a joke, but you told me a weird story about a traffic accident or whatever instead, and so I want to know why it’s a joke,” I said.

“Because it’s funny to think about how sometimes even the smallest actions can have huge consequences,” he said.

“George, literally that’s the worst joke I’ve ever heard,” I said, slumping even further back into my chair and shutting my eyes.

“No it’s not,” he said, frowning.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 13th, 2009 at 11:52 pm and is filed under fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.