Down in the dug hole

It was the last straw -- my sink was broken and I called the landlord and told him the sink was broken. He came over and said no, it wasn't broken, I just didn't know how a sink worked. Did I know how a sink worked? I was supposed to turn the faucets and then water would come out the nozzle. I was probably turning the nozzle and waiting for water to come out the faucets. I told him yes, I know how a sink works. I demonstrated that the turning of the nozzles produced no water, just a sound of air rushing through empty pipes. He hit me with a wrench. I regained consciousness some hours later (the sun had set). The landlord was still there. He told me, see, the faucet is working fine, had been all along, and demonstrated that it worked. I told him he had hit me in the head with a wrench and fixed the sink while I was unconscious and now he expected me to believe the sink had been working all along? He said I was crazy, that he had only arrived seconds earlier, and kicked over my end table and stole my mail off the floor and left.

So the sink was working, but I decided that was that, I didn't care, I was moving out. I didn't have to stand for such shabby treatment. I collected my most important belongings in a gym bag and set out.

Well I didn't have anywhere else to stay, so I wandered around for a while until I found a nice median somewhere. It was green and peaceful, except when cars were speeding by. I decided to live there from now on. But I HAD FORGOTTEN MY TENT IN MY APARTMENT! Well I could have gone back and gotten it, but I decided this would be a capitulation, and my landlord might see me and know that I had capitulated, so I decided I didn't need any old tent anyway, I could live here on this median without one. I curled up next to a bush and tried to get some reading done, but felt exposed. Someone threw a cup of orange soda at me, or towards me, anyway, and I got orange soda all over myself. So I decided to dig myself a hole.

Luckily a shovel was among the items I had salvaged from my apartment. In a few minutes I had a pretty quality dug hole for myself. I stretched out in it. It was cool and dark and comfortable and quiet -- I couldn't even hear the cars roaring past anymore, it was so quiet. I fell asleep right away and slept for hours.

Hours later, I noticed I was being moved around a lot, and so I woke up, and found a lot of other people in the dug hole with me. "Hey!" they said. "We were just driving or walking past and noticed you had this pretty sweet dug hole set up!"

"Yeah," I said, modestly. "I dug it yesterday or today."

"Mind if we chill for a bit?" they asked ("chill" being a kind of lingo-word meaning "stay at"). I said, yeah, it was fine with me.

Soon there was a whole big party down in the dug hole! There were, I'd estimate, 16-20 of us, with a long line of people outside waiting to get in when someone else got out to leave or smoke or stretch their legs (it was pretty cramped down in the hole). There were drinks and food and someone even brought party favors! We wore silly hats and had a great time meeting new friends.

Late that night a police officer came and walked up to the dug hole. "You're making too much noise down there," he told us. "We're just trying to have a good time!" we said. "It doesn't matter," he said, "because I am a policeman."

We told the policeman we couldn't hear him, so he'd have to step into the hole if he wanted to tell us something, so he did step in, and as soon as he did, he saw how great it was, and he wanted to party with us! And we let him, because that's how we felt in the hole, everyone is welcome, no matter who they are, and what they come from, and what preconceptions they had about the hole before they got in and joined.

One night I met a young woman in the hole. I noticed her at the other end of the hole, looking at me and smiling, then when I caught her eyes she'd look down into her cup, like she was shy, but she'd smile more. I made my way across the hole and introduced myself. She moved into the hole with me shortly after that, bringing a gym bag of her own possessions with her. At first the hole was a little cramped with the two of us, so I dug it a little bigger, and it was perfect. We would spend our days reading and the nights staring up at the stars, holding hands and such. Our friends were upset with us, because now with our newfound domesticity, we held fewer parties and get-togethers in the dug hole, but they were happy for us. We were married a few short months later. Hundreds of people came to the wedding, which was held at the hole -- so many people came that many of them had to stand outside the hole during the ceremony and the reception!

We had several children, and I dug the hole a little larger with each one. We settled into a peaceful life in our little hole -- every once in a while a tire or a fender or a burning hunk of metal would fly at us, but we were adept at keeping our heads down and we were rarely hurt very bad, and anyway, I know first aid.

One day, my wife said she'd gotten a job, which would take her out of the hole a lot more often. Secretly I wasn't sure I so much approved, but I wanted to be supportive. It turns out she hadn't gotten another job at all, but was contemplating an affair with a man who lived outside the hole, and had invented the job as a pretext to meet him. But she hadn't done anything, and we reconciled -- I admitted that I too was occasionally taken with a particularly fetching driver roaring past us down the highway, but as long as we were completely honest with each other and never acted on it, we would be fine. As a result, our marriage became stronger than ever!

Our children grew up -- our youngest moved out of the hole when he was 23, moving all the way to Los Angeles (so far away!) but our oldest wanted to stay close to home and so dug a hole a few hundred yards away on the median. We'd crawl over to his hole (we no longer walked -- with our atrophied muscles, we found it extremely painful, and so it was much easier to crawl) every other week or so, and he'd crawl over to our hole too. We kept the corner of the hole where he'd slept as a boy intact. One day, he was over visiting, and our youngest was over visiting from Los Angeles (his hole-corner, too, we kept intact), and we were all lying in the corner of the hole where we read and took our meals together, when my chest suddenly felt very small and hard, like it was being squeezed into a little ball bearing, and I settled back on my elbows and my wife asked what's wrong and my children looked into my eyes and I said "nothing," and I died there, in my dug hole, surrounded by my family.

Life is different in a dug hole. It has its disadvantages, sure. It was never as nice as I hoped it would be -- I always wanted a nice house with a nicely-tiled kitchen and a nicely-carpeted living room and a nicely-grassed yard, I never envisioned myself "settling" for a shallow dirt hole -- but we all want houses, and only some of us get them. It could be cramped, sure, you were always rolling into someone else in that hole. And the groundwater was polluted and sometimes caused sickness and hallucinations, and there were many worms. But overall, I wouldn't trade it. When I think of what I had before -- I had a sink that didn't work and a toilet you had to flush twice and a shower that burned and froze you intermittently and appliances that broke down and a stove that leaked gas and radiators that made loud clanking noises when you were trying to sleep when they worked at all and a tent I was always forgetting -- living in a dug hole is pretty good, in comparison, and I hope some day I get the chance to live in a dug hole again, sometime.