Snow death techno parade

If Dr. Zhivago had written a blog, he would have looked out from his man cave window over the same scene I see today, shades of snotty jawas pulling sleds of roadkill past snow sogged hedges. And he would have listened to an Adagio on his iLuv, too. I have not written to you, my public beloved of me, for too long, because, as I tell my parents, “I’ve been real busy, so…”
I jogged in the beginning of winter yesterday morning. When I had laced my shoes, it had been bitter autumn. When I finished my run, the walks were already thickly dusted and the snow was an impediment. We stayed inside all day, except when my wife sent me to the supermarket to buy an onion so she could make a Thanksgiving meal, and then just before the meal, when we drank warm Glogg outside our kitchen patio door. The snow erased six arduous months of sunshine and beaches, and I was happy again. I whispered to Serena, “Do you hear that?” She listened and said, “No.” I said, “Exactly. Thank God.”
But you can hear the cold season on all forms of public transportation. My tram to work sounds like a hospital ward. Coughing. Noses slathering rags. And the person I sit next to is always the sickest. I have come to believe that I am the Angel of Death. No matter where I sit, the person next to me immediately begins sneezing. So now I sit down in the first seat I see, infect the person next to me with the plague, and then get up and sit somewhere else since my black magic has been expended. It is only fair. Europe made techno, and techno is Europe’s equivalent of the Iraq War.

I am 37 years old, and right on schedule, I am having a mid-life crisis. I cannot afford a Porsche, and they don’t fit infant car seats - and my wife is still relatively hot- so I have decided to change careers. No more worrying about little kids with flies on their lips – I will speak for the trees. I am taking an online graduate certificate course in sustainable resources management from Oregon State University. My first semester of downloading readings to read at lunch will end next week. I have to write a paper today, Economic arguments and social determinants contributing to the success of decisions to adopt Reduced Impact Logging techniques in low- to transitional-income countries. Ten pages, no problem. Serena says that if I put the title as a header on each page that should eat up about half of the page requirements.
…and they whipped and mocked him. Then they got tired, what with all the work, so they five. One asked him, “So what are you doing tomorrow? A parade? Hey, cheer up, that sounds like fun!”

Engineer Mohammed and the yogurt

1.
Engineer Mohammed waited for the German outside the Taliban Minister of Health’s office. He sat in the hallway on a row of theater chairs. Engineer Mohammed’s stomach gurgled. He was sure now the yogurt he’d had for breakfast had been bad, and he was feeling sick. The German would arrive in seven minutes. He thought he had time to go to the toilet.
He scurried along the hallway and down the stairs to the men’s toilet on the first floor. It was famously furnished with porcelain holes, and its use was the privilege of the bureaucratic elite. He tried the door knob but it would not turn. Flakes of light blue paint fell around his fist as he rapped on the door. Engineer Mohammed pressed his ear to the door and heard no answer. He began to panic.
Engineer Mohammed hurried back to the stairwell, down again, and out through a side door into the yard of the Ministry of Health. The women’s clinic was across the yard. A collection of silent blue humps sat around its door, waiting for care. He called to his sister-in-law, and a hump straightened, and he recognized her high heels. He waved his hands at her and ran to her side. “Do you have your spare burqa? I have to go to the toilet!” he begged as quietly as he could.
“What? Here?” the hump leaned up to peer at him skeptically through her mesh veil.
He pointed to the rear of the Ministry of Health. She protested that she would lose her place in line, but followed him.
In the shade of the Ministry of Health, he said, “I must go to the toilet! I cannot go in the men’s toilet inside. I must go to the toilet in the women’s clinic. Please give me the burqa.”
“You will go in the women’s toilet?” Her blue cloth creased and seemed to scowl.
“Inshallah,” he prayed as she handed him a white polyester bundle. Peeping around the corner from the shade of the Ministry of Health and seeing no one, Engineer Mohammed threw on the burqa in a flourish. He fumbled with it until she straightened it for him. The cloth of the burqa was shorter in front, so he bent to hide himself. He could not see his sister-in-law or his feet well through the grill of thick white threads.
He shuffled his feet to feel the ground as they crossed back to the women’s clinic. He stepped over and between blue humps and writhing infants. “Excuse me, pardon me,” he apologized in as high a voice as he knew. He was sweating, and he could feel his sister-in-law’s creamy Iranian make-up smearing onto his face from inside the hood. He reached the clinic’s gate. They protested in a unified shriek as he slipped through.
He knew the clinic compound well. As Assistant Senior Technical Officer for Gender Programming/Finance and Administration for the Samaritan’s Sack, the aid organization sponsoring the clinic, he had guided official visits there many times. He ran to the far corner of the compound, to its dilapidated wooden latrines.
He tried to open a latrine door. He could not grasp the wooden door handle because his hand was wrapped in cloth. He snatched out his his hairy hand and opened and closed the door. He lifted the hem of his burqa above the wet floor as he squatted. Afterwards, Engineer Mohammed washed himself using a plastic water pitcher. There was no soap, a serious issue he would raise at the next day’s morning meeting. Just how he would raise it, he wasn't sure. He readjusted his burqa, and stepped back out into the sun.
His sister-in-law was silently waiting for him in line. They went again behind the Ministry of Health, and when no one was looking, he handed her the white bundle. It disappeared under her shroud. “You have -” she began to say.
“Engineer Mohammed!” bellowed the German from across the yard. “Salam Alaykum!”
“Alaykum Salaam, Dr Deeter,” greeted Engineer Mohammed. He stepped out from the shadows and reached to shake his right hand with the German. He covered his heart with his left.
“Eh, do you think that’s appropriate here?” said Deeter. He pointed to Engineer Mohammed’s cheek. “I mean, I don’t mind, but…”
Engineer Mohammed felt the smear of his sister-in-law’s make-up on the side of his face, blushed in shame, and rubbed it with the back of his hand. “It is not what you think. My wife is dead. She is my sister-in-law, Fezadine.”
Dr Deeter took a look at her and said, “I’m sorry to hear that.” Dr Deeter bowed, and greeted Fezadine. He did not reach out his hand to shake with her. He addressed Engineer Mohammed. “Is the Minister’s assistant inside?”
“No, he has not yet arrived. But he will come, Inshallah. We may go and wait.”
They left his sister-in-law in the yard, and walked together up the stairs to the row of theater chairs.
“Are you alright? You look pale.”
“I think that I have had bad yogurt today. I am having problems with my stomach.”
“Oh, no, it cannot be yogurt. No, it rarely goes bad. It must be something else."
They heard a group approaching from the other end of the dark hall. It was the Minister’s assistant and his entourage, all wrapped under black turbans. The chubby Minister’s assistant saw them and did not acknowledge Dr Deeter or Engineer Mohammed. He dismissed the others and turned into his office and closed the door.
They waited for ten more minutes. The Minister’s assistant’s assistant, a young Talib with a curly short beard and henna around his eyes, opened the office door and asked them to enter. Dr Deeter followed Engineer Mohammed inside. They were stopped at the doorway by two outstretched arms from the Minister’s assistant. He shook hands heartily with Dr Deeter and Engineer Mohammed and asked them to sit. They walked the length of the carpeted, window-lit room, and sank into leather arm chairs facing his large desk. When the Minister’s assistant sat down, Engineer Mohammed could not see him over the desk. He could only see the Minister assistant’s desktop pen set, a rolodex calendar from 1999 and the Afghan flag. Engineer Mohammed leaned forward onto the frame of the leather chair. The Minister’s assistant asked if they would drink tea with him.
“Mr. Mohammed, please tell the Minister’s assistant that I am grateful for his time,” began Dr Deeter. “Please tell him, on behalf of the Samaritan’s Sack, I am pleased to say that we continue to seek ways to work together to help the children of Afghanistan.”
Engineer Mohammed translated easily from German to Pashto. The Minister’s assistant nodded and smiled slowly, waiting to hear the eventual request that all foreigners made.
“We again welcome the Minister’s assistant to visit our child-friendly spaces in the camp. He will see the good work that we have all accomplished,” Dr Deeter continued. He was closing in on his request now, and all three of them knew it.
“The Minister’s assistant knows that we have a container shipment of donated toy automobiles being held by the customs authorities. The toys are intended to improve the psychosocial health of the children of the camp.”
Engineer Mohammed stammered, "The psychoso..?"
"Psychosocial. Mental."
Engineer Mohammed began to translate, but the Minister’s assistant looked past Dr Deeter as the tea was carried in on a tin tray with gilt handles. The Minister’s assistant’s assistant kneeled to pour tea in short orange glasses, and dipped three tablespoons of sugar in each. He handed one over the desk to the Minister’s assistant, and left the other two on the tray for Dr Deeter and Engineer Mohammed. The Minister’s assistant sipped the tea loudly, and continued to listen to Dr Deeter through Engineer Mohammed.
Dr Deeter now spoke each word more exactly, as if the Minister’s assistant might understand that his articulation was threatening. “Those toys are to be distributed to the children the day after tomorrow at our fun run event. The people in the camp know it, you know it, and most importantly, the children of Afghanistan know it! We should not let the children of Afghanistan suffer without our help."
The Talib slurped his tea.
"The customs authorities are not releasing the toys because they were included in a shipment of Superfluin, so they must be cleared by the Ministry of Health. Here is their letter. It is stamped.” He handed his evidence to Engineer Mohammed, who set down his tea to pass it to the Minister’s assistant. Engineer Mohammed very much wanted to drink his tea, as it was settling his stomach.
The Minister’s assistant could not read, but he recognized the stamp. He laid the letter on the desk and rested his hand across it. “The toys cannot be allowed.”
Engineer Mohammed was unsure if the Minister’s assistant meant that they could not be allowed out of customs, or that they could not be allowed at all by Talib law. The Minister’s assistant sipped his tea. “They represent items of man.”
So that was that, thought Engineer Mohammed. It didn’t actually echo the words of the Koran, since cars were not living things, but there was no point in arguing. He began to translate the explanation to Dr Deeter, but Dr Deeter cut him short, exclaiming, “These delightful automobiles, donated in good faith by the German people, will not be held hostage!” The Talib was amused at the German’s tone, having seen outbursts from frustrated foreigners many times. He turned to Engineer Mohammed to know if his words were as funny as they looked.
Engineer Mohammed looked at his hands and muttered, “He says that the German people want very much to help the Afghan children."
“He’s German?” smiled the Minister’s assistant.
“Yes, he is from Berlin. I am speaking German with him.”
The Talib stood up and jumped around his desk. Engineer Mohammed rose quickly, afraid for the safety of Dr Deeter. The Minister’s assistant reached for Dr Deeter, pulled him up for an embrace, and shook both his hand with delight. “Ah! You’re German!”
“Yes.”
“Boy, you really stuck it to those Jews!” He hugged Dr Deeter. “So we are brothers! If there is anything I can do, please come to me!” He gazed up at Dr Deeter, starstruck.
Engineer Mohammed did not yet translate the Minister’s words. Instead, he asked again, “Please release the toys for Dr Deeter.”
“Tell him it is done!”
Engineer Mohammed translated to Dr Deeter, “He is happy to help the German people. The shipment will be released.”
Dr Deeter beamed at the Minister’s assistant, who returned his smile. “That is wonderful! Will you sign the letter, so I may take it to customs?” He tried to reach towards the desk, but the Talib firmly squeezed his hands in his, as if unable to break their brotherly bond.
“I won’t allow you to take the trouble. You will have them the day after tomorrow at your ‘space for children’, Inshallah. Goodbye.”
He walked them out to the yard. Engineer Mohammed’s sister-in-law was still waiting there.

Red 5 going in

I’ve gotten a new job, finally. My bosses are terrified I might loose my cannon and make a mistake. As such, I haven't done much. It’s a long way from the NGO world, where they send you out on the 30-yard line with no play book, and the quarterback hands you the ball, hoping you’re at least better than George Plimpton. I haven’t done much for the money I’ve earned since July first, but I have learned how to iron shirts. Do them wet, as my mother in law says. Different from party till you puke on her back.
I was ironing my shirts tonight, August first, Saturday night, which was the July fourth of Switzerland holidays. Between booms I smoothed sleeves. My wife was passed out on the bed. We had drunk two bottles of rose at the village fair. The town brass band’s repertoire had opened with “The Eye of the Tiger”, oom-pahed through “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and climaxed with John Philip Sousa, but without the bravado of the Gulf War. Ironing midnight a major holiday. A terminal patient's disconnect from television news. A bell jar. Another shirt.
Ironing after two bottles of wine also reminded me of my drinking days in the Peace Corps, and how I’d learned to ride the momentum of a drunken lurch. Sometimes I had the grace of a John Woo shootout. After one bottle of vodka, you leaned out of the carousel to snatch brass rings as they passed by, or in more practical terms, grab your keys or the toilet basin. After two bottles of vodka, you learned to bounce off of the pitching sea deck. Three bottles of vodka, and you learned to apologize.
But those days are over, at least while I’m still married and parenting. Sunrise, sunset. In the meantime, it has been a delight to pass on my Star Wars action figures to Emma. She found the Yoda action figure, and my Yoda hand puppet, and immediately called them “Baby Yoda” and “Papa Yoda.” We watched Episode IV today. I handed her my R2-D2 action figure and my Land Speeder when they appeared in the movie. She called the Death Destroyer a “bateaux,” and already knows who “3PO” is. Serena was making fun of Carrie Fisher (“She did cocaine after that”) and I said, “I don’t make fun when you go into church,” and she said, “Yes, you do, you put Yoda in my nativity.” but I asked her to please let me enjoy the movie. She realized I was touchy. In truth, my analogy wasn’t far off. What else did a kid have for religion in the Seventies? Pete Rose?
Days before a hurricane-force desert storm had weeded three UN containers up and out of the UNMIS compound. Toukles were left untouched. Capacity building.
I remember bouncing my head off a roof. There were still lots of holes in the road.
“There's good and bad with the war,” he said. “My father, he keeps the most cattle of this area. No one can beat him for cattle. Then they come with guns and steal the cattle. I am born. A year later my father died. We have nothing. My mother takes me to the bush. We sleep on the ground. Then someone tell my brother that he saw our sheep.” He pointed out the window, indicating where they had been taken.
“Everyone tells my brother if he try to get the sheep they will kill him. My brother goes to the man who took the sheep. My brother says, 'Those are mine.' He said to the judge that they are his sheep. They put the sheep in a...” He shaped a pen with his long k fingers. “Two hundred sheep. People said it will take years to get the sheep. After three weeks, the sheep start dying. One, two sheep each day.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully.
“After three weeks, my brother say to the judge, 'Those are my sheep and he took them. Those are my sheep, and if you will not give them to me, I will kill him.' The judge gave my brother the sheep. I helped my brother. After two years, they take the cattle. Again. If we have the cattle, I will not go to school. But I go to school. So the 21 war help us to be educated.” His story shortened my trip.
That evening, I joined an Irishman from GOAL for a jog to the airstrip and back. He said, “Try to keep op!” and then was gone. I am half Irish and half Danish. The Irish in me would not be beaten, and staggered on, but the Danish would not run, only muse.

Morning story

A Schizophrenic Man lived in my Oldsmobile. I asked him why he lived in my car, and not someplace else. He grabbed my arm and said, "Did you hear that?" but the engine sounded fine to me. He was always waiting for me in my front seat. He was nervous, and picked at the tires until they frayed. One day, after I drove off the elevator of the parking garage, he was being held by two traffic police. I had to give them 29 cents of spange to set him free. I reproached him, and told him that someday he would have to find another car. "No rush," I said, "but it's better to start looking early." I asked him what his name was, anyway. "Karter Colby." I brightened up and said, "What a coincidence, my middle name is Colby."
Eventually the tires became so frayed that they blew out. The Schizophrenic Man and my son's Little League Coach, who had been very strict and misunderstood, died in the accident.
Not true. I actually abandoned the car in Baltimore. But that's not entirely true either. It actually broke down in Fell's Point, and the Blind took it. I wondered if one of them had held its trunk and said, "It's a snake," while another touched its tire and said, "No, it's a tree."
It was a big car.

Polaroids of Arnold in a bathtub

I bought a bagette this morning. Emma, who, by the way, is starting to look a lot like Corey Feldman, wanted to carry it home. The loaf was longer than Emma, and hard to carry, so she punted it.
When Serena’s parents visited us in California, they would take a morning walk to the supermarket, which advertised Bread, Made Fresh Daily. Her parents knew the bread on the shelf was not fresh. They asked the baker for the new bread. He said it was on the shelf. Italians answer corruption with corruption: when the baker turned his back, her father ran the bread to the other side of the store, then returned to say, “All the bread’s been sold. Would you make some more?” He was very proud when they woke us up for breakfast that morning.
Russians in Kazakhstan thought it was a sin to throw away bread crumbs. Eleven years ago, I was finishing my two years of Peace Corps service in a small town called Merke near the border of Kyrgistan. Here’s a journal entry. Think of this as one of those Different Strokes where they say Remember when? And then they have a flashback, and Arnold is in a bathtub getting his Polaroid taken:Boiling water. Only four weeks left of teaching English. Peanut butter and jelly on bread I bought with the twenty tenge coin. Yupi orange drink, maybe Jello? Jello? Must I respect product names in my own journal? Writing in a journal is like traveling – you think you’re making progress when all you’re doing is sitting. Right now I’m having a hard time knowing which tense to use. I want to put it all in the past perfect, like Russian.
The sky is a warm, comfortable grey, like grandmother’s breath. The sky is now brighter than the earth. The world turns over like a lake at thaw. Old people spend more time in their gardens, remembering. From bones diffuse smells of naked skin and sticky wool. Horses trot and wagons glide.
I didn’t squash a spider, and stooped to watch its peculiarities. I thought it might jump on my face. I turned to listen, then looked down, and it was charging me. I ran out of the way. I looked back down again, to an empty floor. It was scurrying up my leg! Damn! I shook it off. That was pushing it, but I still didn’t kill it.
An artist who aspires to live on through the world of communication has great faith in the prosperity and continence of humanity. A lone Creator trusting in the masses he leaves behind. A friend is a relief from the frustrations of trying to get along with people and not be rude.
“Next slide, please. Here we can see that Eastman was in a period of great searching, and hence learning. He read ravenously, finding a similarity to his own lack of inner direction to that of St. Augustine's at his conversion. It was spring, but the cold weather persisted, and though the mind of Eastman was in constant turbulence he was frozen still among the events of the winter.”
Why do I find myself so unimportant in the Big Picture but so all important every moment? “I longed for a life of happiness but I was frightened to approach it in its own domain.” This place breeds self-hate and doubt. I should love what God made of me and do what I can to make the best of it. To love myself. I really couldn’t be more far from that right now. I can’t help how I am but I wonder if it’s the best way to be.
I’m so used to being despondent and without energy that I have to sink into it to keep a sense of consistency. “For I placed myself behind my own back, refusing to see myself. You were setting me before my own eyes, so that I could see how sordid I was, how deformed and squalid, how tainted with ulcers and sores.” I’m looking for direction. I am susceptible to crutches right now, of a Godly sort.
This week at the Bishkek bus station, an old German guy pulled me to a back room where three cops sat in cramped quarters. They didn’t “believe” I was from Merke and searched me. I kept an eye on my money when they made me take it out. I began to bitch and they said it was their work. I said I was a teacher so why did they have to check me. They asked me if I knew the narcotics police in Merke and I said was “just” a teacher. They went through the bag and I folded my arms in a probably pointless babushka stance. They found nothing, excused themselves a bunch of times, and I smiled stupidly and shook all their hands.
I squatted by the magazine rack. Boobs and violence and Russian pop stars. Happy not to be hassled. I was probably too hungover to look foreign. A boy slept on a bench, homeless. An old woman was selling ice cream.
I heard a crash. A kid had tipped over his lemonade bottle cart. Other orphans helped to pick up the pieces. A babushka swept up the rest. There went his profits. He's probably malnourished already. And that's why he was clumsy.
A tea seller talked with me. I told him I was a Peace Corps volunteer. He said I was the first guy he’d met who'd work for free. Two little kids joined the chat (the little cucumber girl couldn’t remember adjectives in Russian). They said business was bad that day. Another uniformed cop, fat and polite, came to check my documents, but I stopped him short and told him that I’d already been shaken down. He went away.
On Saturday, I took a cab to Slavik and Sveta’s farmhouse. I was late, but arrived early for the dinner because Slavik and Sveta were greeting their mom, who had just arrived from Moscow. We watered tomato plants and Slav’s friend Roma lit a banya fire with a tire. Black smoke. He laughed. When Sveta saw it inside the banya she was pissed. The smoke cleared an hour later. We sat in the banya, and Roma told me about jail. He had spent four years lying with eight other guys in a cell of nine square meters. For exercise, he could walk circles in a 500 square meter courtyard. “I don’t ever want to go back. Not ever.” Slavik is a good friend to shield him from the badge.
At midnight, Slav sent me home. It was dark. A guy on a bike had to swerve not to hit me. He cursed Pizdets and I cursed the same. He came back and wanted to shake hands and then asked me if I spoke English. I couldn’t believe his audacity and had nothing to say to him. So he rode away and called me a bitch, again.

Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you

Two weeks ago I did not want to watch the last quarter of the extended version of the deluxe director’s cut platinum boxed set edition of The Two Towers (there were still 1.5 hours to go).
I needed to be alone, to read an old Economist (Obama has submitted an economic recovery plan!). It was Saturday, and I weighed an old man’s questions:
“Does lightning always strike to the north?”
“How many old New England homes were once prisons?”
“What happens to the book that comes in second place for the Pulitzer Prize?”
“My friends all have foreign wives; if we ever have a reunion and the INS shows up, would they all have to run out the back door?”
"How could the Gin Blossoms have been so awesome and suck so much at the same time?"
The next day I put my feet up by our fireplace, playing the recovering emotional invalid. My Left Brain. I read E.B. White blogs of acute observations on the rural mundane, a geek’s glorification of the farmer, the Beggar’s Banquet kneeling before the Altamont.
Serena made lunch, and I ate it and cheered up.

We have survived the weekend of Our Flu. Emma’s nanny called Serena on Friday afternoon to say that Emma had vomited twice. We picked her up early, and brought her home with remedies, Fanta and Coca-cola. We kept a vigil over Bugs Bunny DVDs, and thought that Emma was recovering, until she woke me by geysering water gulped too fast from her sippy cup. She then didn’t keep any food down for two days, and she became so dehydrated that her diarrhea blew out in stale puffs. The oral rehydration salts were not working, and I became nervous. I imagined an African mother, upon being handed a packet of ORS after waiting with her lethargic baby outside a clinic, looking up at the white man doctor and saying, “You gotta be frikking kidding me, doc. This is all I get?” But we live in Switzerland, near a pediatrician, who saw Emma on Monday morning and revived her with syringe-fulls of water, 5mL by 5mL.

Emma’s belly was flat (“like a supermodel!” Serena admired), which reminded me of when I told my first love, a sophomore who soon after nearly killed herself with bulimia, that she was looking really good, really thin. I had been in love with her since the eighth grade. She was my Winnie Cooper: she broke my heart each year, seasonally, with the onset of Washington State’s April Showers. The final heartbreaking was on a Saturday morning, when I had agreed to help my mother assemble and man a parade float to advertise her community theater group. The float was really a two-wheeled donkey cart crowded with stage set materials and some actor friends, and me, acting like I was hammering a backdrop. It rained on the parade, and no one stayed to watch. I was wheeled through town, drearily condemned.
Meanwhile, my mom’s little tape recorder squawled, “There’s NO business like SHOW business like NO business I KNOW!!!!”
The banner on the float should have read, "This season: Ingmar Bergman's THE SEVENTH SEAL... starring ETHEL MERMEN!"A year later I moved away to Terre Haute, Indiana, and Winnie ended up going out with and losing her virginity to a friend of mine who had always wanted to be in my high school rock band. Let’s call him Paul, because he wore glasses. Paul hadn’t been able to play a note, but he was one of the gang, so we loaned him a Casio keyboard. I put some masking tape above the keys, and told him to write the names of the notes so he could poke along with us. In the middle of our first song, I kept hearing a honk da daa honk, and we had to stop. We stared at him. Paul said that he was playing the H note. So that seemed to be the end of his musical career…. until the night I returned from the Peace Corps. I was eating a jetlag snack with my parents in front of the TV, and there was a familiar face playing drums. It was Paul, on David Letterman. For a moment the reptilian part of my brain took over. Maybe he was there inside the big box? But no, he was on national television, playing his band’s hit song. It was on the soundtrack of American Pie, which I had yet to see.
That was ten years ago. Serena says I should get over it.

Bedtime story

Some nights I tell Serena stories to help her fall asleep. Here is a story I told her:

A pig worked in a bank. He had gambling debts that he couldn’t pay, so his friends said that if he helped them to rob the bank, they would pay the gambling debts. On the day of the robbery, one of his friends came in earlier than planned. He asked for the pig’s car keys. The pig, too nervous to ask why, handed the keys over. His friend walked out to the car, started it up, and drove away. The pig never saw him again.