The Day I Solved the Grass Whistle Conundrum

People hear I’m friends with the Universe, and they imagine it must be awesome. That we get into trouble, and Universe snaps up a wormhole, so we can escape.

And, yeah. It’s like that sometimes.

But mostly Universe sits there and stares, watching everything fall apart in relative slow motion. It’s not happy. It isn’t sad. It doesn’t intervene.

One time, Universe and I were playing a board game. We were smack dab in the middle of the biggest grassy field that exists, a few billion light years away from my hometown: Ankeny, Iowa.

Well, we’d been playing for a while. It was one of those interminable types of games where you use commerce to slowly choke each other’s ability to stay alive. We bought and sold properties, and we collected rent. We communicated through little more than nods, thumb signals, and the fractal light shows that the Universe likes using to make me feel like an insignificant, underdeveloped cricket.

Anyway, there was no end to the vast plains that surrounded us. A few multi-stomached, balloon-headed sky-monsters floated by, eating grass that grew tall enough to tickle their bellies.

Universe and I were splayed out, watching the sky monsters float by. I thought they were really cool. So strange. “Why do they have three tails?” I asked.

“Just do,” said the Universe, yawning. The Universe is perpetually bored.

“But how did they evolve that way? What’s the evolutionary benefit.”

“Oh, yuck. Let’s not talk about evolution.”

I frowned. “Why don’t we have the floating beasts on Earth?”

The Universe took a deep breath and sighed for what felt like years. I thought it had forgotten my question, but then it said, “Just don’t.”

I turned to look at the Universe. It went into these moods, sometimes, when I became too inquisitive. “You ok?” I asked.

“Mmmm-hmmmm,” it replied.

“Sure?” I asked.

“Humans ask a lot of questions.”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to make a whistle out of a piece of grass. I never could quite figure it out. “We’re just curious, I guess. Want to know how the world works.”

“You’re not on your world,” the Universe said.

“How the Universe works then.”

“The Universe? Just all the rules that don’t have to be enforced,” the Universe said.

I scrunched up my face in confusion.

“What you call relativity? Time? Gravity? The way humans ask so many pointless questions, forget answers, and kill each other when you lose sense of what’s important? You now. The stuff that’s inevitable? That’s the Universe.”

I felt the need to defend humanity.

“Don’t defend humanity,” said the Universe, sounding scandalized.

So I didn’t.

Kept fiddling with that grass whistle. The Universe told me how to hold my hands. And that I wasn’t pushing enough air past the blade of grass. Finally, a screech came out when I blew hard enough to turn my face purple. “I got it!” I yelled.

The Universe flashed its fractal lights in apparent approval.

I whistled again.

That whistle made the whole trip worth it.

Never did finish the board game, though.