Careful What You Wish For

    I often sarcastically remark, "I wish all could be as smart as me!" and imply I am the most brilliant, insightful human alive.  This morning, however, I woke up with knowledge- encased in a pounding headache- the certainty that I was now the most intelligent person alive.  It hurt.  

     As figures arranged and calculated themselves in my head, my toes curled and cramped.  As philosophies swirled, I hurled- retching over and over.  As complex chemical recipes of mass destruction weapons were illuminated, my shoulders hunched in muscled knots.  Questions of humanity were asked and answered, twisting my belly. 

    "Oh, God," I murmured.  Just as quickly, a piercing in my chest robbed me of a belief in a Higher Power and replaced faith with fact.  I ran to the kitchen and splashed water on my face.  I was about to pour myself a glass when the process of plumbing, and residual deposits suddenly made it unpalatable.  I reached for an apple from the bowl on the counter.  Knowledge of farming pesticide chemical components swam in my esophagus and threatened my gag reflex.

     I ran to the bedroom.  Walking suddenly became useless and unproductive.  Once there, I laid down and tried to collect my thoughts.  But they just swam in my head, multiplying and unable to be contained.  I picked up my phone.  Every number I thought to dial, however, became a beginning to a complex math problem.  What was the number divisible by.  How much is the square of that number.  And so on.  Oh, my head!!

     I looked at the newspaper on the bedside table.  A headline about President Trump.  Now, my head pain was excruciating!!  I folded the paper in half, no more Trump.  Palms pressed to temples, I shut my eyes.  Sleep wouldn't come.  Instead, trigonometry and modern art battled for attention in my thoughts.  (They are amazingly dichotomous!)  My eyes searched the room.  Surely, with all this knowledge, peace wouldn't elude me.  Peace couldn't elude me.  Could it?

     I could tell you how the universe started, but could no longer entertain the question- Who started it?  I could tell you the circumstances around Jesus' birth.  I could explain, scientifically, all that many espouse as miracles.  I could define for you the tenets of the world's religions.  But, none provided the solace I used to receive.

     Underneath that folded newspaper on my bedside table is a single drawer.  It was haphazardly assembled in a factory several countries away from lumber cut from a tree in Maine.  One of a depleting population of trees.  I'll spare you the number and get back to the point.  In that drawer is a gun.  Again, I'll spare you its specifications, production, assembly and bullet velocity.  I opened the drawer.  Beside the gun, unloaded (even before all this, I wasn't a moron!), was a box of bullets.  I opened the chamber and loaded a single bullet.  Solace.

     I put the newspaper, open, to my right temple.  Raising the gun, I pulled the trigger.  The bullet went right through Trump and into my skull.  Two birds with one stone.  Solace.