O l i v e r B e n j a m i n
“I think I’m going to cry.”
Wade, stunned, nodded in agreement. Bob smiled broadly. If his
two best friends in the world liked it, then it had to be phenomenal.
“Where did you get the idea for that?” Wade said.
“I dunno,” replied Bob, “It just sort of came to me.”
“But what does it mean?”
“I have no idea,” Bob confessed.
Leonard asked one of the birthday party revelers for a match.
Krishna obliged him and they engaged in a brief conversation.
“So what’s with the weird dresses?” Wade asked. “You guys from
the sixties or something?”
“We’re in from out of town, actually. Just celebrating our friend’s
birthday,” said the stranger mildly.
“Yeah, I noticed,” said Wade. “What a bummer, being born on
Christmas. I hear you don’t get as many presents that way. How old
is your buddy, anyway?”
“Ah—pretty old, actually.”
“Right. My foster mom doesn’t like to tell anybody her age either.
Like, when she pays for something with a check, she won’t even pull
her license all the way out of her wallet ‘cause she’s afraid someone
will see her age. You know one time she even tried to see if she could
legally change her birthdate, but they said—”
“Yeah, thanks for the match,” the stranger interrupted him and
turned back around. Wade just replied, “No problemo,” and then
raised his beer to the fellow whose birthday it was. “Happy birthday,
man!” he said. The guy raised his glass of wine and smiled back.
Nice guys, thought Bob. It must be cool to be an old hippie.
“Boy, some of these humans don’t seem all that bright,” said
Zarathustra disapprovingly.
“Yeah. And did you hear what he called you?
Man.
Ha ha!” said
Krishna, spilling some wine on the floor as he laughed.
“Oh, give him a break. He’s only a child,” said Gautama. “I
remember when you were young, you were a bit of a brat as well.”
“Will you please stop bickering?” moaned Yeshua. “I swear, a few
glasses of grog and next thing you know, we’re all acting like these
people. How can we expect to evaluate mankind if we can’t even set
a proper example?”
“Yeshua is right,” said Mohammed. “In one week, we’re going to
have to present ourselves as the divine prophets people think they’ve
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