Something Happened

by Joseph Heller

A vacuum cleaner that works well is more important to me than the atom bomb, and it makes not the slightest difference to anyone I know that the earth revolves around the sun instead of vice versa, or the moon around the earth, although the measured ebb and flow of the tides may be of some interest to mariners and clam diggers, but who cares about them? Green is more important to me than God. So, for that matter, is Kagle and the man who handles my dry cleaning, and a transistor radio that is playing too loud is a larger catastrophe to me than the next Mexican earthquake. “Someday”—it must have crossed my mother’s mind at least once, after my denial and rejection of her, since she was only human—“this will happen to you.” Although she was too generous to me ever to say so. But I know it must have crossed her mind.)