You’ve been doing one hundred pushups every morning for the past 39 years. Today, do only 99. When you get up from the carpet, you’ll find that your house is a run-down shack and the idyllic town in which you’ve lived all of your life is impoverished and there’s graffiti everywhere.
“All over the place,” you’ll whisper to yourself as you take in all of the graffiti. “Even on the tree which once held my beloved tire swing.”
A voice will bellow from behind you that you never swung from any tree in this town, because you were never born. You’ll turn around and you’ll see that the voice is coming from this big fat ghost.
“Is this because I only did 99 pushups today?” you’ll ask.
The ghost will shrugshe never laughed again. Are you saying that if I was never born my father would have stayed with my mother?”
You’ll watch them talk and then just before your father hops back in the truck, he’ll say something that makes your mother bust out in laughter. Then he’ll drive off.
The ghost will realize that he created an uncomfortable situation. “So anyway,” he’ll say. “If you want your mother to stop digging latrines and, um, if you wanna see all this graffiti go away, I suggest you go back and do that last pushup.”
“But then my mother and father won’t be together,” you’ll say. “She’ll be miserable. Look how happy she is without me having been born.”
The ghost will look at her. There will be a
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