Johnny America

 

The Thing About Elephants

by

No­body un­der­stands ele­phants. Ele­phants are too big to un­der­stand. Maybe gi­ant peo­ple would un­der­stand them, but not re­al­ly. Gi­ant peo­ple feel like gi­ants com­pared to peo­ple. Ele­phants feel nor­mal. They feel re­al­ly good and not too big at all. Ele­phants on­ly wish they could af­ford moisturizer.

Ele­phants are so dry. They wor­ry about their skin crack­ing so bad it might bleed. They wor­ry about tusk cav­i­ties too. Ele­phants wish they had den­tal in­sur­ance. Some­times they wish they had den­tal in­sur­ance, but then they re­mem­ber how ex­pen­sive it is. Ele­phants hate spend­ing money

When an ele­phant is in a store, he can’t help but feel like he’s get­ting ripped off. Ele­phants hate be­ing ripped off.

I know be­cause I watch ele­phants with my binoc­u­lars. If you watch them for a long time and are very per­cep­tive, you will even­tu­al­ly no­tice the way they flap their ears. You will no­tice that they do not flap at ran­dom or just be­cause of en­vi­ron­men­tal conditions.

Ele­phants flap their ears in code. It’s ac­tu­al­ly very sim­i­lar to Morse Code. No­body un­der­stands ele­phants be­cause no­body watch­es their ears. I watch ele­phant ears. That’s how you know what they’re saying.

That one ele­phant is curs­ing a blue streak. He’s the fun­ni­est ele­phant. He tells the fun­ni­est jokes. I write them down in my notepad. I’m prac­tic­ing them so I can turn them in­to a stand-up routine.

When you watch enough ele­phant ears, you be­gin to think like them. I don’t even know what I find at­trac­tive any­more. That oth­er ele­phant breaks so many hearts. So many enor­mous pachy­derm hearts. She makes my binoc­u­lars steam up.

Ele­phants wish they had binoc­u­lars. Ele­phants want a lot of things they can’t have. Ele­phants should­n’t be so greedy, but they are. You know the ex­pres­sion “greedy like an ele­phant”? It’s to­tal­ly true.

Filed under Non-Fiction on November 17th, 2008

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