Short Happy Stories

The first volume of Short Happy Stories is now available! The book contains 50 stories. Order here–or ask about it at your local bookstore.

Red Clay Court

A match recently ended and another match will soon begin.

You walk into the open-air stadium as a spectator. Though the court is empty, tennis players have clearly been here: the red clay provides proof: shoeprints and ball marks and lines and smudges, on both sides of the net, all over.

Under the solid blue sky a huge broom comes into view, calmly dragged across the red clay by a woman wearing a necklace that suspends an old timepiece. Methodically she drags the huge broom over all of the court, removing all evidence that the players who just played were ever here.

The woman drags the huge broom off the court and comes back with a line brush, which she moves over all of the lines: haziness becomes crisp bright white.

The woman now walks along the edge of the court with a hose, lightly spraying water across the red clay.

The woman is gone and, aside from her faint shoeprints, the empty red clay court reveals nothing. Like a piece of desert seen by human eyes for the first time in years.

But unlike a desert’s baked sand, this red clay court would not exist without humans. This red clay is here because hundreds and hundreds of red bricks were crushed into dust. And, as with everything else, there is more to the court than you can see: this red clay is supported by crushed limestone, and the crushed limestone is supported by fragments of lava, and the fragments of lava are supported by crushed gravel. Imagination and destruction were required to create this court. The point of it all: to give people the chance to hit a little yellow ball back and forth. With racquets. For intangible points that, on certain occasions, transform into cash.

Two tennis players step onto the red clay court and before long they’re running and sliding, sometimes sighing when a shot doesn’t work, really trying to maintain positivity but feeling very disappointed with God when a ball that hits the top of the net is sent to the wrong side.

Smash! How satisfying did that feel?

Air is inhaled and a ball is bounced and a target is chosen and the ball is tossed high into the air—in that player’s eyes the ball is right next to an airplane—and the racquet is approaching and the ball is propelled across the court. And then the ball is propelled back across the court. And then—

Wow! What a drop shot! There’s no way that one will be returned… But it is! And what an angle!

But a flawless moment is only a moment—and another moment will be shattered by a mistake.

Frustration is inevitable.

Both players know that a quick review of a frustrating point can be useful: it’s good to identify things to change, new things to try, to try to make the future better.

Both players also know that after that quick review, the past should be disregarded: you have to make what’s happening right now the only thing that exists, because what’s happening right now is the only thing you can control.

And there’s nobody to rely on but yourself.

One player is running, running from the net to the back of the court and, with his back to the net, hits the little yellow ball between his legs—and the little yellow ball floats through space and time and lands… Right in the back left corner! Perfection! You can see the mark, exactly where two lines meet.

The loser of that between-the-legs point is, despite his unmistakable commitment to victory, laughing.

Not far away, just at the bottom of the hill, is The Mediterranean. Bluest blue water—wonder.

The match has ended and another match will soon begin. The woman with the necklace that suspends the old timepiece is back on the court with the huge broom, methodically removing all evidence that the players who just played were ever here.

You no longer want to be a spectator. You want to be a player. You want to play on red clay and make your own marks. To prove that you’re alive and that you can do things. Sure, your marks won’t last long—but the process of making the marks could be pretty challenging and pretty fun.

Antarctic Apparition

“Look,” I say, “I could apologize or I could say it is what it is. And look: it is what it is.”

I listen for an expression of acceptance. I’m still listening. “Are you there?”

Our connection has been lost or terminated. She’s on another continent. Maybe she’ll call back in a moment. I wait. Probably I should have just apologized. But an apology seems pretty worthless next to the magnitude of my mistake.

Another minute begins to pass. Maybe she’s in shock. Maybe she hates me. But what can I do that would actually make a difference?

Considering my mistake, I probably shouldn’t be able to enjoy anything for a while—but since my time down here is almost certainly almost over, shouldn’t I at least try to make the most of it? Feeling bad, I put on a scarf and a jacket and another jacket and another jacket and another jacket and a wool hat, and lift the hood of the third jacket over the wool hat, and move through four doors, out into the brilliant Antarctic night, into the company of the aurora australis.

Enormous green and purple lights gently shift across the sky. A beauty that wouldn’t exist without the darkness…

Months ago, when I got off the airplane and took my first steps on the frozen continent, the world was brighter than I’d ever seen it: shocking bright white and shocking bright blue. I’d applied to work in Antarctica because my life in the city—life in general—had started to feel meaningless. Things were all over the place, everywhere I looked, and noises were coming from all directions, too often from unseen sources… And what was the point of it all?

But, at the same time, I suspected that life really isn’t meaningless. Increasingly I suspected that the standard human world was kind of designed to distract me from what’s actually important. And what is actually important? I wanted to find out—and since the established structure of my city life hadn’t yet yielded any satisfactory spiritual results, I couldn’t reasonably believe that I would make a transcendent discovery without a dramatic change; and since I wasn’t married or anything, I had no excuse to avoid a dramatic change. Hence Antarctica.

But, by my tenth step in the new (to me) shocking bright white shocking bright blue world, I realized something: nothing will be any different here. The thought process that had brought me to Antarctica suddenly seemed silly, adolescent.

“You’re responsible for this goulash,” said one of the researchers on my third day in the kitchen (I figured she must be one of the researchers because she was wearing a fancy badge and, even though she didn’t look too experienced, carried herself like she’d already won a Nobel Prize). The fact that she presented her question as a statement annoyed me. If you’re going to ask a question, ask a question.

“Why would you think that?” I said, frustrated that no portion of the world was devoid of snobs. “There are a lot of moving parts here. Why should I automatically be blamed if you’re not happy with your meal? Blame Tommy.” I pointed at Tommy, the old cook sitting on the counter, eating vanilla ice cream and peanut butter out of a mug. I admired Tommy because he didn’t seem to give a damn about anything.

The woman shook her head. “Tommy has been here longer than I have, and I’ve never had goulash here before. The only recent change to the kitchen staff is you, which leads me to the conclusion that you are responsible for this goulash. Is my conclusion correct?”

“Yes.”

“See how easy it can be? To provide a simple answer to a simple question?” My somewhat confrontational instinct was to tell her that I had immediately provided a simple answer to the first simple question she’d actually asked; but I managed to convince myself that it wasn’t worth the trouble. She went on: “Anyway, thank you. This goulash is the best dish I’ve had since coming down here.” She turned to Tommy. “I’m sorry Tommy, but it’s true.”

Tommy swallowed vanilla ice cream or peanut butter or peanut butter and vanilla ice cream and said “It’s a hell of a goulash. And I’ve had goulashes all over the world.”

I felt bad about my attitude, about having had such bad expectations about this woman when, in actual fact, she’d gone out of her way to praise my goulash. I thanked her for her compliment and introduced myself, and learned that her name was Charlotte.

Two or three days later I was sitting in the research station’s library after dinner, trying to focus on a book about Antarctica; but I couldn’t seem to make myself care, and was relieved when Charlotte sat across from me, uninvited. “So what made you come to the end of the world?”

Strangely, I found myself not trying to avoid a sincere answer. “I guess I feel like I’m missing something. In life. Like… Even though I can see and hear and smell and taste so many aspects of the world, there’s something really important that I just can’t perceive. And it finally occurred to me that it might be useful to get out of the city. Because… Maybe reality would be clearer elsewhere.” Listening to myself talk, I thought I sounded pretty stupid; but I told myself I shouldn’t care because I was being honest. However, I did decide not to tell her that I thought this whole Antarctica thing would be a failure. I didn’t want her to think I was a defeatist. “It seemed like Antarctica’s emptiness and quietness could be good. A helpful simplicity, maybe… and…”

“And touch,” said Charlotte. I wondered what she meant. She went on: “You mentioned taste and smell and hearing and sight. That’s four of our five senses. You forgot touch.”

I’d already noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. We seemed fairly close in age, and I wondered if she found me attractive. “You’re on one of the important scientific teams.” (Did she notice that I presented my question as a statement?)

“Neutrinos,” she said. “Do you know much about them?” I shook my head. “They’re very peculiar, these neutrinos. They fly straight through the universe like it’s nothing. For years and years they were believed to be massless—and that belief was built into our big standard model of how the universe is constructed. It’s all about particles and interactions, the big standard model. And, in that big standard model, everything was nicely balanced and sort of seemed to make sense. But then we learned that neutrinos do have mass! Which means that we have a good mystery on our hands. There’s something about the fundamental nature of matter that our standard model simply isn’t getting right.”

“Huh,” I said—because no other response was available at the moment.

“And they’re so small! Let me see… So… So probably a quadrillion neutrinos are passing through you while I’m saying this sentence. Wait… Sorry, maybe that was actually closer to half a quadrillion. Anyway, it’s a lot! On an exceptionally rare occasion a neutrino will interact with an atom in your body, but really they pretty much always go right through you without interacting at all.”

“Could the neutrinos be having an effect on us that we’re just not able to detect?”

She said “Who knows?”—and that immediate anti-definitive response made me like her more. “These things are flowing to us, through us, from the center of the sun, from nuclear activities in other stars, from supernovas… Cosmic explosions billions of light-years away. Barely conceivable violent events create these neutrinos. And we can figure out where they’re coming from because, like I said before, they go straight through pretty much everything. I’m talking about a straight line! Pretty much, anyway. Because intergalactic—OK, I’m not going to go into all of that right now. But listen to this: neutrinos that were created in the first second of the universe are probably never not moving through you, through the entire earth, through everything. I’m talking about Big Bang neutrinos!”

Some of what she was saying seemed a bit presumptuous—because how can we be sure the Big Bang even happened? It seems like a fine theory; but it will almost certainly always remain, for humans, a theory.

But mostly I was very intrigued by what Charlotte was saying. Maybe the study of neutrinos would lead to some kind of transcendent discovery—who knows?—and before I knew it she was taking me on a tour.

“So we have thousands of optical detectors embedded in that huge piece of ice—it’s one cubic kilometer—and the detectors detect a few hundred neutrinos a day.”

“It’s cool that the ice is so clear,” I said.

“Yes. I love that clarity. And that clarity is crucial because when a neutrino moving through the ice hits something, there’s a tiny flash of blue light—that’s what the optical detectors actually detect—and if the ice were too clouded, the detectors wouldn’t be effective.”

“A tiny flash of blue light.”

“Yes. And… So… So light in ice travels more slowly than the typical speed of light. OK? OK. And when a neutrino hits an ice molecule, some particles called muons are created—and since these muons move faster than the speed of light in ice, a tiny flash of blue light is created. It’s like a sonic boom, but with light instead of sound.”

“It’s amazing how much humans have been able to figure out,” I said; and over the following days and weeks and more weeks—during which I had further interactions with Charlotte—my thoughts often returned to neutrinos. The fact that neutrinos are everywhere all the time, passing straight through reality, means that every apparently different thing in the universe is experiencing the same thing (at least in one way). Are neutrinos a unifying force? Proof of inherent meaning? Or are neutrinos essentially irrelevant? Obviously I didn’t know; but I really wanted to be convinced that everything is connected in a meaningful way. I was tired of feeling adrift, alone in the universe for no reason…

Nihilism is easy. But, in actual fact… What if life doesn’t contain a single meaningless thing?

I decided I needed to be more receptive to… whatever explanation might be out there. I decided to assume there was something worthwhile to discover, and to figure out the most logical way to detect that something.

An experiment gradually emerged from a single thought: ice is very strange.

Ice floats—and wouldn’t it make more sense for ice to sink?

Ice, shaped properly, can be a lens that intensifies sunlight and creates fire (Anthony Hopkins talked about that in a movie).

A pond that freezes is still the same pond; but the ice lets you experience the pond in a completely different way. You can skate on it.

Considering ice’s known abilities, could an ice-covered continent have, just possibly, some kind of profound effect on a person? Maybe a body isolated on such astronomic ice would function as a conductor of… something. The important something—and finally allow the body’s mind to perceive that which was previously unperceivable.

I walked into the bright white bright blue world, onto a sheet of ice more than a mile thick. I tried to empty my mind—and thought and thought and thought about not thinking. Don’t think. Just be open to… whatever explanation might be out here. Don’t think.

That’s what I told myself again and again and again as I walked across the ice, as the hum of the research station faded, disappeared.

The only sounds in the bright white bright blue world were made by me.

I stopped.

The silence felt heavy.

I turned around and the research station looked small.

I turned around and looked at the pure severe landscape, unbroken by life.

I wanted something to happen.

I stood, breathing, and time continued to pass.

The bright white bright blue world seemed colossal and microscopic.

I thought I felt a slight vibration, for a moment, and wondered if it was caused by a movement of ice far below, or if I was just imagining it. Part of me wanted to take off my boots and all of my socks and put my bare feet on the ice, to feel more connected to whatever might be happening; but I didn’t want to let my body be too vulnerable.

I stood, breathing, and time continued to pass.

I hoped that nothing would stop happening.

I felt cold and stupid.

A few days later Charlotte and I were in bed and she was talking, again, about neutrinos. “Do you realize how crazy it is that neutrinos change? And it’s extremely important, too. Probably. Because—”

“Change?”

“Yes. I’m sure I told you about this. There are three types of neutrinos, and a neutrino can change from one type into another type and back again.”

“And no other known particle changes like that.”

“Right. And their ability to change is so important because… The thing is, there shouldn’t be anything anywhere. It would make much more sense for there to be nothing, because of how matter and antimatter work. When a particle and its antiparticle counterpart get together, they annihilate each other and energy is produced and that’s it. But, for some strange reason, when the Big Bang happened particles and antiparticles did not annihilate all of each other out of existence: instead, we have this dot of matter. We have the universe. And I think it was able to happen because of the neutrino’s ability to change.”

“I think I don’t really understand what you’re saying,” I said, not sure if I was being obtuse or if she was making unjustified leaps.

“Right…” Silent, she looked like she wasn’t thinking about anything. I wondered if she was getting tired of trying to explain the universe to me. But then, fortunately, her expression changed and she proceeded with maybe more enthusiasm than ever. “In Japan they beamed the same quantity of neutrinos and antineutrinos, and the neutrinos changed more than the antineutrinos. Which is amazing. You would expect symmetrical results. But that’s not what happened in Japan! So… So something unique is going on with neutrinos and antineutrinos. And it’s good for matter! Oh—the antineutrino is antimatter. Did I make that clear?”

“I understood that part.”

“OK, good. So… So, for whatever reason, the neutrino changes more than the antineutrino; and I think that when the Big Bang happened the neutrino changed too fast for the antineutrino to annihilate it. And that’s how matter got a foothold! Do you get it? The neutrino is probably the smallest mass in the universe, and it’s responsible for everything!”

“But what’s responsible for the neutrino? I mean, yes, I understand that the Big Bang probably created neutrinos… I guess… But…” My thoughts moved from the Big Bang to our relationship to ice to the city to The Beatles to goulash to kind human eyes. “But what actually made everything begin?”

“God? How the hell should I know?” She grabbed my shoulder in a strange way—it actually hurt a little—then let go. “We shouldn’t waste our time thinking about the unknowable.” By this point we’d spent quite a bit of time together—and she kept surprising me, which was nice. “What’s most important is remembering that neutrinos probably only survived the Big Bang by changing.”

“It almost sounds like you’re saying I should change.”

“Everyone should always be changing.”

A month later she and the other neutrino physicists flew to another continent to do some work at a neutrino facility in an old gold mine. Meanwhile, I broke the Antarctic neutrino facility. Unintentionally, of course. Charlotte had given me a key, so I went in there to see what the neutrinos were up to, and I pushed a button and something exploded.

Tendrils of smoke were coming out of the cubic kilometer of ice, at regular intervals. And there were eerie beautiful orange movements: flames modified by ice. At least the flames were contained within the ice, instead of leaping all over the research station, burning it out of recognition… But what did happen is still, of course, very bad…

I really hope Charlotte will forgive me.

Looking up at the aurora australis, at those gently shifting green and purple lights… This air is so cold…

I’m alive! Isn’t that bizarre?

Whether the universe does or doesn’t have inherent meaning, it’s just amazing to be here, breathing between ice and aurora, standing on the bottom of a spinning planet, embraced and protected by gravity. This is very far from nothing. Shouldn’t this be enough?

Charlotte and I were out here the night before she left, looking up at similar southern lights, and I asked if she could explain the phenomenon to me, and she did. I wish she were here now.

The possibility that she won’t forgive me is… terrifying. It’s terrifying. I’ve never felt this way before. Maybe I love her. Maybe I want to spend the rest of my life with her.

Love… Maybe that’s what this has been about all along.

The Seagull And The Sleuth

As I considered a HELP WANTED sign one autumn day, a seagull came my way.

With eyes that were curious and kind, the seagull peered through the doorway of a shop. For a moment I thought he would step inside; but he slowly turned away, continued strolling along the sidewalk—and stopped right next to me and examined the HELP WANTED sign.

The seagull turned at the approach of a woman wearing a very big hat. The seagull watched the very big hat as it passed, his head slowly swiveling. Then the very big hat was gone and it was just the two of us again. The seagull moved his eyes across the building’s façade for a few moments, then slowly turned away, continued strolling along the sidewalk.

I wished the seagull could talk, so I could learn what he thought about the buildings and businesses, about how people had shaped their lives. “It’s all fine,” the seagull would maybe have said, “but rather strange.”

The seagull turned the corner, off the main street, out of sight. The HELP WANTED sign was in my periphery, and I knew it made good practical sense to return my focus to that opportunity, to my future.

I followed the seagull.

The seagull kept strolling around town, pausing now and then to examine a shop or some aspect of a parked car—and I kept observing the observer.

Though I suspected that this was a somewhat bizarre way to spend my time, I felt uncharacteristically certain that I was making perfect use of my time. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and I was doing it. And, if following a seagull around town is bizarre, who cares? Really: who cares?

I had become, essentially, a sleuth. Why was this seagull strolling around town like this? Why wasn’t he flying through the sky like the other seagulls? Or hanging around down at the beach, fighting others for scraps?

I only felt certain of one thing: he was having a fine afternoon.

Pond, Upholstery, Firewood

A woman on the sidewalk informed us that bombs had just exploded in trains in various parts of the metropolis. We had taken a train to the museum, and this woman was talking to us right after we left the museum, when we were on our way to another train; and it seemed obvious that our plan should change, since there was no way of knowing if more bombs would explode in more trains in the very near future.

My parents and I were tourists. David—the only person we knew in the metropolis—immediately told us that nothing like these bombings had happened in the metropolis since the really big war, and proceeded to tell us about some of the terrible things that had happened during that terrible time. Since I only had one year left of middle school, I’d already learned more than a few things about the really big war; but David clearly knew a lot more about it than I did. But he was at least fifty, so he’d had a lot more time to learn.

The traffic in the street was crazy and sirens were slicing the air and people on the sidewalks were moving fast—while we stood still and listened to David talk about the really big war. As he explained the fascinating consequences of one particular decision that initially seemed so small as to almost certainly be inconsequential, Mom interrupted him. I considered myself extremely perceptive, and noticed that she and Dad looked a bit nervous. The conversation shifted from history to what we ourselves should do next, and my parents’ view was that we should just go back to our hotel, and David said “Nonsense!”

For the day was barely half over. Why should we act defeated? We were allowed to act however we wanted to act. Though the plan we’d made wouldn’t work, “at least one pleasant option is available at all times, no matter what misfortunes have transpired,” said David. “The hardest part is remembering, in the drama of the moment, that we are still fairly free to do as we please. But we’ve remembered! We know the truth, so all will be well.”

Roughly one hour later we were swimming around in a pond. The water was very cold and a little unpleasant: it made me feel happy. Green leaves were all around and I wasn’t constantly aware that we were still within the bounds of a metropolis in crisis.

Roughly sixty-five hundred days later David welcomes me into his home. Even though, unlike my parents, I haven’t seen him since the day of the bombings, he acts like he knows me well—and I feel like I know him well. I’ll be staying with him for a few days. A cat meows at me from across the room. The cat looks old and David looks old and says he thinks the cat will die very soon. He says this with a matter-of-factness that verges on cheer.

It’s nice to be in the metropolis again and nice to see David again. He made a real impression on me, all those years ago. I guess I admire how he refused to let awful events ruin a day.

You should never give up on a day.

David has a unique old balcony with all sorts of plants growing around the edges and, in one corner, a simple shower. It’s nice to use that shower in the summer sun, looking out over the rooftops.

David has a unique cooking style that seems chaotic but is, in fact, not. It’s nice to be around someone who has created his own system.

We talk about literature and history and our lives. At one point he says “Stoic Epictetus said ‘You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.’ What do you think about that?”

Some of the upholstery is tattered. A lot of firewood is already ready for winter. Priorities are clear.

The cat mostly keeps to himself.

A year later I hear that David has died.

Once in a while, when a day isn’t going well and I think I should just stop trying for a while, I hear David say “Nonsense!”

The universe of pain and frustration contains, in its exact center, a clear and pleasant pond encased in green leaves.

And every deep dark winter can be filled with warm bright fires.

Uncertain Vision

Just before class, when she’s reading the assigned material, there’s no pain at all; but then, when she starts to make her way out of the library, it’s like a nail is being hammered into the middle of her brain. It seems to happen when she focuses on something between, roughly, seven and twenty-five feet away—or something very far away, like an airplane in the sky.

Last night, in a bright box in a dark park, Nicole turned her head as John was swinging his racquet—and he hit the racquetball into her eye.

The pain was astonishing.

When she looked out of the eye again, she saw two of everything. John couldn’t seem to stop apologizing. But she really blamed herself, because she had never worn special glasses to protect her eyes despite the fact that John had advised her, several times since they’d started playing together, to wear the same kind of special glasses he always wore.

Nicole also blamed herself because there was really no good reason for her to turn her head toward John—away from the front wall—when she did. The smart thing would have been to keep her eyes fixed on the front wall while moving closer to the center of the court. Instead, she played the game stupidly and earned double vision.

Her disgust with herself was irrepressible: she destroyed her racquet.

As they were making their way to her apartment they were discussing if they should instead be making their way to the hospital. Inside her apartment a ziplock bag containing some ice was placed on the damaged eye.

By morning the double vision was gone, but she still couldn’t see with her usual clarity; and right now, in the classroom, her professor is about fifteen feet away, and when she focuses on him it’s like a nail is being hammered into the middle of her brain. This feeling may mean, for all she knows, that irreparable damage is happening right now. So, for the rest of class, she focuses almost exclusively on her notebook, in which she writes various disconnected notes, including “It is not always advisable to consider consequences” and “You must go to the doctor right after this class.”

The one-hour class feels like five hours. When it’s finally over she starts to make her way to the university’s health center. To avoid the hammered-nail brain pain, she keeps her eyes fixed just in front of her feet, on whatever surface she happens to be walking on: tile, concrete, grass, concrete, tile. Her fear of more pain is so big that she makes her world as small as possible. Countless interesting details are ignored.

The doctor examines her eye for approximately one minute. Then he goes into the next room and closes the door. Then, after approximately seven minutes, he comes back and examines her eye for approximately one minute. Then he reveals his conclusion: “You need to see a specialist.” He goes back into the next room and closes the door, and soon she hears him talking, presumably into a telephone. Unfortunately everything he says is muffled, indecipherable—with one scary exception: “I really don’t know.”

On the train to the specialist, Nicole ignores the sliding city on the other side of the windows, keeps her eyes fixed on her clasped hands. She’s berating herself for not going to the hospital last night, straight from the bright racquetball court. That was really stupid, she thinks. Then she berates herself, again, for never wearing special glasses to protect her eyes. You are really, really stupid, she tells herself. She feels like her disgust with herself is going to make all of her skin burn off. She wishes she had a racquet to destroy. Destroying the racquet yesterday had made her feel a little better, for a few moments.

In the dark room, as the specialist shines a light into her dilated eye, Nicole feels… happy? She supposes the feeling is relief. Relief that the exact problem and exact solution will soon be known. When the specialist dropped the dilating drops into her eye, he said “The truth won’t be able to hide from me.”

She’s so glad she’s in the wise hands of a seasoned professional. She’s ready for this whole ordeal to be over.

The ceiling lights go back on. This is it, thinks Nicole.

“Here’s the best I can do,” says the specialist, handing her a business card. “This is a specialist who works across the street. I’ll give her a call and see if she can fit you in this afternoon. We’re friends.”

Well I feel sorry for her, thinks Nicole, because you’re an incompetent idiot.

But she just nods and says “OK.”

“I was just about to go out for a Reuben,” says the next specialist as Nicole sits in the examination chair, “but here I am. Andy’s a friend. Do you like Reubens?”

“Not really,” says Nicole. But she’s lying: though she has only eaten three Reubens in her life, she has thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

“If I were forced to choose one type of sandwich to eat for the rest of my life, I would choose the Reuben.”

Though Nicole wants to yell at the specialist and demand that she stop talking about Reubens, she forces herself to just nod and say “OK.”

The specialist spends almost no time examining the eye before turning the ceiling lights back on. Is she rushing through this, thinks Nicole, so she can get to a Reuben?

“I’m going to give you some very special drops,” says the specialist. “They may do the trick.”

“What are the chances that they’ll work?” says Nicole.

“Maybe they’ll work, maybe they won’t. If your eye isn’t better one week from now, call me.”

Nicole begins to use the drops. One day, another day, another day. Though her clarity is improving, the hammered-nail brain pain does not seem to be going away. Could I be stuck with this awful pain, she wonders, for the rest of my life? Because of a stupid game of racquetball?

Before one week is gone the pain is gone and she can see with her usual clarity. Her eye seems to be exactly the same as it was before.

No more hammered-nail brain pain!

Usual clarity!

Actually…

She realizes that she has, in fact, achieved a new clarity. A deeper, greater clarity: gratitude.

Be grateful every single day, she tells herself, for clear and comfortable vision. Never forget how lucky you are. You can look at things in the world! Pleasantly!

She considers never playing racquetball again, but decides it would be stupid—and really kind of pathetic—to stop doing something just because something bad happened one time. So she buys a new racquet and special glasses to protect her eyes.

After the first month or so, she puts on the special glasses and plays racquetball without remembering the eye injury.

As life continues and she moves around, from here to there to somewhere else, clear and comfortable vision seems completely normal—except when she’s in a restaurant and sees the word “Reuben.”

The word “Reuben” always reminds her of that painful scary experience, and makes her feel unbelievably lucky: her eyes are fine, and she’ll soon have a Reuben.

Feel free to contact me at evanpellervo@gmail.com.