So Much for That

by Lionel Shriver

Resistant at first to the Oral B’s jarring cranial buzz, at length Shep had come to relish the slick of his teeth once the tedium was complete. As with all technological advances, it felt unnatural to go backward, to resume the fitful scrub of splayed nylon on a plastic stick.

“The Chinese, the Koreans—they work hard and ignore their teachers’ sad-ass advice to wait to learn the multiplication tables until they feel like it. They’re the real Americans, like Americans used to be, and they’re colonizing all our top universities not from some patronizing helping hand of affirmative action, but from merit

although he’d grown ever less certain about ages. While he could still tell the difference between sixty and sixty-five, lately his juniors all entered an undifferentiated category of Younger Than Me, which was odd, since he had been that age before, knew what it felt like and how it appeared in the mirror.

Personally Shep always had a soft spot for medical practitioners who carried twenty surplus pounds and sneaked cigarettes in the staff parking lot. The hypocrisy was reassuring. From doctors, Shep had always sought less authority than forgiveness.

They cling to their precious employee health insurance as if it’s this great freebie. It’s not free! They don’t understand they’d be getting, like, fifteen grand more in salary if it weren’t for the damned health benefit!

It was a wonder how the Western frontier was ever crossed, their forefathers trudging between watering holes hundreds of miles apart, when after five minutes without a chug modern Americans like tubby there were parched.

As much as she might experience these domestic duties as impositions, she was utterly dependent on this feverish morning-to-night beaverishness, for she had long ago lost that vital capacity to do nothing.

I don’t understand why doctors don’t advise everybody to lay on twenty extra pounds while they’ve got the chance. I might not advocate outright obesity. But there’s a reason for fat. It’s a resource.” She nibbled a few fluffs off of the tips of the tines, and put down the fork. “It is ironic. I guess I’ve put a fair bit of effort into staying slim. And now I’m punished for it. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, though I’m not sure what it is.”

“In my view,” his father growled, “no single human being can be so gosh-darned important” (impatient) “that he’s worth ten million a year. Not one soul, not even the president.

“But if you think there’s a limit to how much you should pay any one person as a salary,” Shep speculated, “is there also a limit to how much you should pay to keep any one person alive?”