Remember When Tax Evasion Wasn’t So Trendy?

by Mark Kaplowitz | Leave a comment

The firm’s managing partner was not having a good spring. Every day there was another story about Mossack Fonseca and the Panama Papers, and generally making bad press for lawyers who earn their daily bread with offshore accounts. Just today there was a story about multibillionaire who was building a vacation home on the Moon but had not paid any tax since 1991.

An associate knocked at the half-open door and walked in.

“Sir, you wanted to see me?”

“Yes, yes,” said the partner. “Come in. Can you believe these stories? The way they write these things, you’d think that hiding assets to pay less tax was wrong. Don’t they know that tax evasion is what made this country great?”

“They should study their history, sir.”

“We need to come up with a response to this. This firm has been in this business two hundred years. Our first clients hired us to avoid taxes under the Stamp Act. We can’t very well just give up on our core business. But we can’t lead our clients into potential prison-situations, either. What we need is a creative solution, a way to hide assets that will not be noticed by the IRS or those nosey journalists.”

So began the great transition from hiding the clients’ assets in offshore accounts, to hiding the assets underneath beds.  The firm built a giant warehouse in the middle of nowhere, and filled it with beds, and stored the clients’ money under the beds.  The clients had no idea where the money was, thinking that names like “Queen Size with Headboard, LLC” were for holding companies.

To deflect any suspicion that might be raised by so many beds being shipped to a remote location, the firm established a bed ‘n’ breakfast on the grounds of the warehouse, and invited real, paying guests to sleep on the beds that, unbeknownst to the guests, hid the assets of the firm’s clients.

The guests however became very uncomfortable. They began to complain about the beds. “My bed felt like there was a large lump in it. I would like to be moved.” So the firm had to move these people to beds that did not have as much money hidden under them. This would be fine, unless the firm’s real client needed to stash assets in the middle of the night.

This happened more often than one would have believed. The firm would have to move the bed ‘n’ breakfast guest to another room while the additional funds were stored underneath the guest’s bed. The guest would usually be irate. “What do you mean you need the bed? I’m a paying guest! I was very cozy in there. I had the pillows set up just the way I like and now I have to leave so you can put someone else in there. Nice hotel you’ve got here – pulling a paying guest out of bed because you have someone more important who needs to sleep.”

Although the firm would give the guest its sincerest apologies and would even take a large percentage off the final bill, apologies and discounts go only so far in the hospitality business, and gradually the guest complaints for being moved in the middle of the night grew to such a large number that the government launched an investigation, believing that this was a case of discrimination against less-important guests.

It did not take long for the Internet outrage to arise. Hashtags like #SecondClassSleeper and #NoBedNBreakfast abounded and every day there were more and more calls from around the nation and the world for the President of the hotel to step down and for the hotel’s Board of Directors to adopt an “all guests are created equal” policy and be subjected to periodic audits and sensitivity training.

Of course there was no hotel president or board of directors because there was no hotel at all. It was just the law firm operating the hotel as a front for its asset hiding business on behalf of wealthy clients. The law firm’s management committee realized it had no choice but to admit that it wasn’t really a hotel. Perhaps they would all go to jail for tax fraud, but anything was better than sensitivity training.

When they did admit the truth, though, no one seemed as excited anymore. Once they realized this was just a boring tax evasion issue they tuned out. Even the government officials leading the investigation became bored and looked for someone else to bother.

But the law firm’s victory was short lived. Although the threat of government prosecution was past, the firm’s clients were disappointed in the business model. They had imagined their money in Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island corporations that existed not even on paper, but on pieces of onion skin. Once they knew that their money was just sitting under beds with strange people sleeping atop them, they withdrew their money and spent it all on greeting cards. The experts were all predicting a bear market that year anyway.

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Remember When Greeting Cards Were Affordable?

by Mark Kaplowitz | Leave a comment

“And when I’m elected President of the United States,” the candidate said to the adoring crowd, pounding the podium with every word, “I’m going to take on those greedy greeting card companies, and make them offer cards at a price that people can actually afford!”

The cheers were so loud that no one could hear the rest of the candidate’s speech. No one would have believed that the exorbitant price of greeting cards would become the biggest issue of 2016. But the candidate was the first to grasp the importance of affordable greeting cards to working families, and rode the resulting public response right into the White House.

In the weeks between the election and inauguration, the President’s transition team drafted legislation that certain member of Congress would be introducing on the first day of the new administration and new Congress. This particular representative owed his re-election to the President’s endorsement during the campaign season, which was made at great political risk to the President since the representative had been implicated in a “dollars-to-doughnuts” gambling ring.

With the legislation introduced, the first hundred days was marked by an intense effort to get enough votes in the House and in the Senate to guarantee the passage of the greeting card bill, which had been quickly nicknamed “Hall-Markdown.” Conservatives quickly formed a cabal against the bill and would not even allow the bill to be brought to a vote. Any time someone tried to call the bill to a vote, these obstructionists would sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” very loudly, so that no one could hear what was going on.

Finally one of the bill’s co-sponsors – a Congressman who as a child had been forced to make his own cards out of McDonald’s place mats because his parents worked for minimum wage and had to choose between food on the table and store-bought greeting cards – thought of hosting a combination pancake breakfast and gun show several miles away, and while the opposing representatives were stuffing their faces, the bill passed easily with only one “Nay” from a Congressman who did not eat gluten.

The bill was stymied in the Senate as well. One Senator who had accepted campaign contributions from several greeting card companies tried to filibuster the bill, but the President’s supporters broke the filibuster by telling the filibustering Senator that it was snowing outside, and then seizing the floor when the excited Senator ran to the window.

Even on the President’s desk the bill had trouble.  It passed the Senate just before 5 p.m. and was placed on the President’s desk late that night for signature, long after the President had retired to binge watch Season 3 of “Game of Thrones.”  The President met with foreign policy advisers early the next morning, and placed a thick confidential memo titled “More Middle East Stuff” on top of the greeting card bill and did not see the bill until just before it was set to expire along with all the President’s reward points.

At the eleventh hour the bill was signed into law where it was officially codified as the “Affordable Card Act” and ushered in new era of fairness and level playing fields.  No longer were people charged $5 or $6 or $7 for a birthday or Mother’s Day or Father’s Day card.  The Act created a new class of cards that cost only $0.99 apiece, the price proudly emblazoned on the back of each card next to a tiny picture of the President and the words, “You can thank me at the polls!”

I should know. I received one of these Hall-Mark-Down cards the other day.  And I don’t know quite how to say this, but the card just didn’t have the panache of the expensive ones.

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Remember When Genes Could Not Be Driven?

by Mark Kaplowitz | Leave a comment

Gene driving, or “Operation Mosquito” as it was originally known by insiders, is the changing or elimination of a species by changing its genes. When this technology was first announced, the scientist leading the project used the elimination of mosquitoes as an example of what gene driving could do. This scientist later issued a public apology for the insensitive remark, but mosquitoes said the apology did not go far enough and called for the scientist’s resignation.

I remember when the the New York Times first reported on gene drive technology and that people were worried about the “unintended consequences” of introducing a gene drive into plants or animals.  Unintended consequences?  It’s cute out overcautious we were in those days.  The problem was that the professional worry-warts were just thinking about how introducing gene drives into animals and plants would effect humans.  The moment they started focusing on introducing gene drives in humans directly, people saw the positives of the technology.

The first gene drive introduced into human beings eliminated the habit of sniffling all day instead of blowing the nose. This was revolutionary.  Remember being forced to sit on a bus or plane next to someone who sniffled constantly? That was far worse than mosquitoes.  If you were seated next to a mosquito on a plane, at worst you’d lose a drop of blood and have to share an armrest.

Then scientists genetically eliminated the use of certain annoying phrases like “fair enough” or “at the end of the day” or “it is what it is.”  Communication became much more precise, although there were a number of people who once robbed of their vacuous phrasing had nothing to say.

Politicians, columnists, and writers of science fiction were always broadcasting their deepest fears about using genetics to produce perfect humans. Why did they always focus on the negative? Who was talking about perfect humans? The key was to use gene drive technology to make people a little bit better, like eliminating the desire to talk on your cell phone in public, or to chat with the register clerk at the supermarket when there is a line of people behind you, or the habit of breathing in while taking a bite of hot pizza, so that it sounded like you were slurping the pizza.

And the gene driving of humans did not always need to be negative. The scientists also added positive traits, like making sure that all newborn humans would be genetically driven to respond to Facebook direct messages within 24 hours and call their mothers at least once a week.

The issue was not too much gene driving, but too little. There were so many changes that could be made – so much room for improvement – and still leave us far, far away from the race of unloving super humans that Hollywood had fraudulently led us to believe would result. Like eliminating the habit of dance party disc jockeys who played “Livin’ on a Prayer” and then at the refrain turning the music off so that instead of Bon Jovi singing we hear just the other drunken guests. Or making sure that everyone has the gene of taking the shopping cart back to the the little shopping cart island shelter instead of just leaving it there in the parking lot next to the space your car just occupied.  Did Hollywood ever make a movie about a race of super humans who return shopping carts?  No – they would not waste studio time on the truth.

Recently, though, someone has suggested that they introduce a gene drive that eliminates the motivation to publish on the internet one’s own half-baked opinions of the world.  That clearly is going too far. We must learn to respect our own limitations. There are certain powers that humans simply should not have.

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Remember When You Could Have a Private Email Server?

by Mark Kaplowitz | Leave a comment

I am going to make a confession right now. When I was a cashier at 7-11 one summer years ago, I had a private email server. There, I said it. My actions were wrong and I am sorry.

When I commenced employment in that position, I had been provided with an email account on the store’s server installed right behind the Slurpee machine. But I hardly ever used that account. At work I had to stand up and sell people coffee, cigarettes, lottery tickets, and, of course, Slurpees. It was usually so busy that I had not any time to check email, and at the end of my shift at 10 p.m., I had to quickly bring that day’s leftover doughnuts to my friends who were starving and had money only for beer.

So it was a matter of circumstance that I hired a consultant to set up an email server at my home. Do not think that it was easy. I was still living with my parents and in the same bedroom I’d had since childhood, with the Disney character wallpaper, Superman sheets on the bed, and Thundercats light switch cover that I’d obtained as a favor in a Happy Meal. There was not a lot of space in the closet and I had to relocate my comic books and Boy Scout uniform at considerable inconvenience both to myself and my staff.

After a long day at the cash register I would return home to conduct my business. As you will see from the more than 40,000 emails that have been turned over to the State Department, I never discussed anything classified or that would compromise national security. The Saudis were interested only in some Power Bars, and the photos of potential drone strike targets were in fact from a particularly tense game of Battleship that to this day I swear I played with integrity.

Much has been made of Protocol 32, which mandates, in pertinent part, that all 7-11 business must be conducted on 7-11 servers. I do not deny the text of the rule, and since that time my staff and I have worked tirelessly to come up with a decent excuse. The reason I did not strictly follow the rule is that I did not read it. The package of materials that I received during orientation was shoved under my bed, and in the midst of all my duties and feeding my drunk friends free stale doughnuts I forgot about the rules, until my mother last year served me with a demand to take all my “junk” out of my old room or else I would face environmental clean up costs.

Nevertheless, my conducting of 7-11 business on a private email server was a violation of the rules, and for that I am sincerely sorry. But I assure you that at no point was the nation put at risk. I never told anyone how long the hot dogs are left on those rotating cylinders or who was really responsible for the irritating music that was always playing over the loud speaker. You can all sleep easy, and I hope that we can now all move past this, into a brighter future where my campaign for register clerk at Pita Pan will not be dogged by distractions that have nothing to do with the real issues.

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Remember When People Liked Gluten?

by Mark Kaplowitz | Leave a comment

The Scheisskopf Gluten Company was not having a good quarter. None of the recent quarters had been good. Brayden Scheisskopf, the current president, sat in his office, at the large desk made entirely of gluten resin, and pored over the figures in the latest financial sheets that the Chief Financial Officer had emailed him. The numbers were terrible. Sales of gluten had been plummeting for years, and were now so low that even the illegal offshore shell companies were having no effect.

Brayden rubbed his face and stared at the wall of portraits, showing four generations of Scheisskopfs as they oversaw their empire of gluten. He felt their looks of disappointment. “I’m sorry,” he said to them.  But what could he do against the tide of history?  Gluten was just not being consumed anymore. “You know how these things go,” he often said to the shareholders. “First one person decides to go gluten-free, then another. Next thing you know all the restaurants have the letters ‘GF’ on all the items on the menu.”

He opened his top drawer and took out a large bag of gluten chips. He always thought better on gluten. He chewed slowly, savoring the elasticity and springiness of the wheat-extracted protein. Why couldn’t people appreciate that?

Suddenly he sat up. “That’s it!” he shouted to the stern faces in the portraits.

Converting the Scheisskopf Gluten Company’s gluten factory into a theme park took nearly a year and more than a few clever maneuvers in the company’s accounts. But once it was done and “Glutanica” opened for the first time, the critics were silenced.  No one could have anticipated the success of the theme park.

There was a gluten rollercoaster. And kids could have their picture taken with “Glutus,” a giant fluffy grain of wheat, who was really two undocumented workers, one standing and working the legs and the other sitting on his shoulders and working the arms and head, and both dreaming of a better life and a parking space closer to the entrance.

There was also ride where people were strapped into a giant raft and sent down a river of gluten-extract. The substance was far thicker and bouncier than water, and the smell was not altogether unpleasant, somehow combining the odors of corn flakes and cow manure.

In the center of the theme park was a big pit of gluten where the kids could swim and play while the parents could have a few minutes of relief to play with their smartphones, and a ride where people rode on a little carts through a fairy tale castle and shown all the different ways that gluten is used around the world, with mechanical puppets singing, “Gluten glues the world together/Good in nice or stormy weather.”

And there was a large chamber with long elastic bands of gluten, arranged in crisscrossing patterns and in many layers from floor to ceiling, so that kids could climb in it like spiders on a web.  There was a height requirement for adults, too, although this came under some criticism as being age discriminatory, and a lawyer was able to make a name for himself by arguing at the Supreme Court that there was no rational basis why an adult could not enjoy hanging upside down from large bands of gluten as much as a child.

The park’s ticket sales more than offset the loss in sales of edible gluten.  Until the company was sued by Disney.  Apparently, Disney had bought the rights for turning gluten into an amusement park from Michael Scheisskopf, Brayden’s father, in exchange for a trip to Disney World for his whole family.  Brayden remembered that trip, and although it was a shame that Glutanica had to close its doors, no one could argue that the Scheisskopf family had not gotten something valuable in return.

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Remember When Presidential Campaigns Did Not Go On Forever?

by Mark Kaplowitz | 2 Comments

Presidential campaigns were going on forever.  No sooner would one president be sworn in than people would already start talking about the next president.  It was theorized that the problem was that the campaigns lasted so long that people got bored of all the candidates, including the candidate who eventually won.

So it was decided that the Presidential campaign would last one day.  No one was allowed to do any campaigning – no speeches, no debates, no visits to factories or bakeries or diners or ice cream parlors – until Election Day itself.

Several weeks prior to Election Day, anyone who wanted to be a Presidential candidate could sign up by paying a $2 fee to put their name in the hat.  Then, the day before Election Day, the Chief Justice of the United States would mix up all the names in the hat, and pick two.  These were the two candidates – one Democrat, and one Republican.  It did not matter what these candidate’s real positions were, or what party they had been affiliated  with during their career leading up to the Presidential race.  One had to be the Democrat, and the other had to be the Republican.

These two names were picked at midnight on Election Day, and the first debate was at 5:00 a.m.  The two lucky candidates had to quickly familiarize themselves with the platform that they were supposed to adopt.  The main task was to make sure that they didn’t agree on any issues.  So as they studied their positions from midnight to 5:00 a.m., they often called each other up.  “Hey, so are you against starting that war in whatever that place is?  Oh, you’re for it?  Okay, then I’ll be against it.  Glad I checked.”

After the 5:00 a.m. debate it would be time to raise money and run commercials slinging mud at the other candidate.  Given the little amount of time available to raise funds, checks could not be accepted because of the time required to clear.  Only credit cards, debit cards, and transfers between PayPal accounts would work as valid campaign contributions.

Then at 9:00 a.m., with all the money raised, the two campaigns would set out making TV and radio ads that would cast the other candidate as a totally incompetent and unethical hypocrite who cared more about himself or herself than the American people.  Because there was so little time to produce these ads, there was only time to take an existing ad and splice in the names of the candidates.  The ads were really identical except the two names would be in one order in one video, and the in the reverse order in other video.

Then at noon the two candidates would go on their book tours.  They would appear on talk shows with their new books where they discussed how their simple backgrounds and professional adversity had molded them into the perfect President.  Since there was only one day to appear on the shows, the candidates would have be guests at the same time, sitting at opposite sides of the host’s desk, each holding up their book and sipping from their mugs of coffee.  The host’s main job was to prevent the two candidates from talking at the same time, so the host would turn to one and say, “Now you talk,” while holding up a hand to the other, and then would turn to the other and say, “Okay, now you go.”

At 2:00 p.m. there would be another debate, usually featuring at least one scandal that had been leaked at some point during the day, and the targeted candidate would have an opportunity to look grim and admit that “mistakes were made.”  At 3:00 p.m. the candidates would eat a late lunch at a local restaurant, serving locally grown food on plates manufactured in China.  And by 4:00 p.m. the candidates would be shown at home with their spouses and children so that the American voters could see how ordinary and down to Earth they were.

Finally, at 5:00 p.m. the polls would open.  Americans could vote until 10:00 p.m., at which time the vote tallies would be open to legal challenge.  At 11:00 p.m. any legal challenges had to be ended, and at midnight the new President would be announced.

Everyone would watch the announcement with great excitement.  It would have been a very exciting 24-hours.  And just after the announced winner gave the speech thanking supporters and offering best wishes to the loser, the TV stations would automatically switch to a regularly scheduled program, and no one would speak of campaigns for the next four years.

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Remember When It Was Safe to Eat Processed Meat?

by Mark Kaplowitz | 1 Comment

The President of the Happy Swine Processed Meat Company was not having one of his better days.  He sat at his desk, atop which stood an anthropomorphic plastic sausage, the company’s mascot, head in his hands.  There was a knock at the door and in walked the President’s assistant.

IMG_1065.JPG “Sir, I came as soon as I heard,” the assistant said.  “I knew we could never trust the World Health Organization.  And after all the nice things we said about it.  How dare they say that eating processed meats causes cancer?  That should be a matter of personal choice.”

The President shook his head.  “No, it’s over.”  He looked at the mascot, a sausage beaming a huge smile.  “We are just going to have to find a different way to bring people the magic of processed meat.”

The marketing campaign for the “Desk Sausage” was received initially with skepticism.  The idea of a having a real sausage on your desk to keep your papers from flying off was seen as rather unorthodox, especially since the sausage would leave little grease stains on anything it touched.  Yet thanks to a couple of intrepid celebrities, within weeks everyone had a Desk Sausage on their desk.

“I don’t know how I got anything done without it,” said one customer in one of those candid customer commercials.  “I can’t explain it,” said another.  “It just makes you want to do more work.”  Said a third, “The Desk Sausage has changed the way business is done.  We recommend it to all our clients.”

Soon the Happy Swine Processed Meat Company branched out into other products, making Desk Bacon, used to cushion one’s elbows from an especially hard desk surface, and Desk Salami, which was pulled out of dispensers like Post-It notes, and used as bookmarks, or placed between the fingers as a way to reduce stress during a hectic day.

One could travel the entire country and not find an office untouched by Happy Swine office products.  As people lunched on kale, beet greens and chard, they had sausage, salami and bacon keeping their work space organized and chic.  Desk Hot Dogs were particularly good monitor risers, and the gift that everyone wanted that holiday season was the 2016 Corned Beef Planner, known for its distinctive cover and briny pages.

By the following year, Happy Swine office products were global.  It shipped to more than sixty countries, and its products were known for surviving even the longest and most difficult journeys without a single change in appearance.  So successful was the transition, that people forgot that processed meats had once been sandwiched between slices of bread instead of staplers and paper clip caddies.  Happy Swine was more successful than ever, and it now praised the World Health Organization, for breathing life into a dying company.

And then the World Health Organization released its report on kale, and Happy Swine’s unchallenged domination of office gear was at an end.

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Remember When You Couldn’t Reconstruct a Rat Brain?

by Mark Kaplowitz | 1 Comment

The day we all knew was coming is finally here.  Scientists have reconstructed a rat’s brain.  I immediately phoned my research assistant. “Are you reading this article?” I asked. rat

“Sure am, boss.”

“They’ve really ratcheted up the competition,” I said.  “Time to show the world what we can do.”

“You got it, boss.”

When this news about the rat brain came in, we had already been working on reconstructing a cat brain for some time.  We had hoped to announce our findings before Team Rat announced theirs, but had allowed laziness and a “Game of Thrones” marathon to distract us from our mission.  But time was of the essence now.  There could be no more procrastinating.  I asked my research assistant to show me where we had left off in our work.  He led me to a cardboard box filled with little folded up pieces of paper containing mostly sketches of cats.  I recognized the pen strokes as my own.

We borrowed a neighbor’s cat, a cute little gray and black striped tabby with green eyes, and observed her for a few days. We wrote down everything she did. My assistant and I worked in shifts.

The first step was to program the eating function.  Cats have a very distinctive way of eating.  They won’t eat just anything, and won’t eat it in just any particular way.  The rat brain decision tree, I’ve no doubt, had just one branch: Is it edible? If yes, then eat. But our decision tree had branches upon branches upon branches. Is it food? If so, then is it wet food or dry food? If it is wet food, is it from one of the premium brands or is it that generic store-brand stuff? If it is the generic store-brand stuff, then walk away with nose in the air. If it is the premium brand, has it been placed on a plastic lid not too close to the toe-kick on the lower cabinets?

Next we had to program the cat’s daily rounds about the house. After eating, go from the kitchen, to the dining room, to the living room, to the basement, then circle back along the perimeter. If there was a desk or table in the cat’s path, we had to program jump. If there was anything on the table, we had to program the cat to rub her face against it.

But the trickiest part was programming where the cat would want to sit or lay or curl up in the shape of a woven trivet during the day. There were so many places in the home, and this cat that we had observed seemed to go from spot to spot without rhyme or reason.  It was just impossible to decipher why the cat chose the back of the couch in one moment, and then the owner’s bed in another moment, and then the middle of the kitchen floor in another moment. Only by resorting to Heisenberg Uncertainty and related laws of quantum physics could we introduce enough randomness to simulate the perambulations of a real cat.

At last the reconstructed cat brain was ready.  Consistent with the ethical principles of our field, we invited an audience of actual cat owners and seated them before two screens: one screen showing a text-based description of the actions of the real tabby, and on the other screen was a text generated by our reconstructed cat brain.  We did not the audience which was which.  If we could fool these humans into not being able to tell the difference between the real cat and the computer cat, then our mission would be a success and we could brag to those rat brain scientists.

The programs started, and immediately both screens described the cats as going to sleep.  And when the text “wake up and stretch” appeared 14 hours later, the audience was gone.

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Remember When People Didn’t Grow Plants on Their Heads?

by Mark Kaplowitz | 3 Comments

I was just settling down to another day at the office when I happened upon the startling flowersnews about a trend in China of people wearing plastic flowers on their heads.  Yes – taking a plastic flower and sticking the stem in the hair so that it looks as if the flower is growing directly out of the head.

The obvious question was, of course, why do the flower arrangements have to be plastic?  Surely there must be a way to grow real flowers on your head.  I went outside into my yard and got some dirt from the garden and sprinkled in on my head, and planted a seed, and watered it.  And within a few days, a sprout began to show itself.

The most difficult thing was washing my hair without damaging the fledgling flower.  At first I tried to put a small plastic bag over my head in the shower, and then shampoo around the plastic bag.  But the stream of water kept bending the small plant, struggling to grow.  So instead I went to the local florist, and was advised to just put my head under the sprinkler for half an hour every day.

As my flower on my head grew taller I thought it might be nice to add a few others, just for some variety.  Before long I had daisies and tulips and even roses.  A few dandelions showed up, but I got a good discount on a lawn service and the itchy scalp and dizziness from the pesticides lasted only a few days.

People started to stop me on the street and admire my head garden.  If I was standing in front of my house on a nice day, they would slow down their cars as they passed and look.  Often they would take photographs, and I always sure to ask that they not sell the pictures on eBay.

One day I noticed I was attracting bumblebees.  The bees would buzz in and around the flowers on my head and I was worried I or some passersby would get stung.  I went online to see if there were any methods to getting rid of bees, and I learned that the bees help the flowers grow.  So I learned to live with the bees, forcing some of my co-workers to start wearing body nets around the office.

Then there was the time the town water authority issued a warning that I was using up too much water to water my head.  I needed the water to keep the flowers looking fresh, and to reduce the watering schedule even a little would cause them to droop and bring less sunshine into everyone’s day.  I started an online campaign on one of those sites where you can raise money from complete strangers for valuable causes.  I told them about my head garden and what it stood for, and what it meant, and how I needed water to keep the flowers looking fresh and that the town was shutting me down.  The outpouring of aid was more than I ever could have imagined.  Within two weeks I had enough water money to grow my head garden for the next three years.

But then something happened that I had not expected and could not control.  The weather turned cold, and the flowers on my head started to lose their petals.  I found petals on my pillow when I awoke and in my bowl of breakfast cereal.  I kept the heat on in my home but it did no good.  Once I walked outside to go to work, the cruel autumn crept in and deflowered more flowers on my head.  By the time I was in the supermarket looking for “fun size” Snickers bars to appease the Halloween extortionists, my head garden was completely gone, leaving nothing but memories and a streak of yellow in my hair from the pesticides.

Some people ask me why I don’t just get a plastic flower, like they have in China, so that I can have my garden all year long.  I told them they didn’t understand; that what made having flowers on your head so special was that I had personally tilled my hair and watched the flowers grow, like little children into adults.  A plastic flower just wouldn’t be the same.  And the stores were all sold out.

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