. . . I paddled a rolling white ottoman, lying on my belly on top of it, up a gravel hill using only my hands. The two gentlemen who lived at the top of the hill smiled when they saw me coming, but their smiles seemed to say, “Don’t even think about trying to paddle through here.”
The bald one, still smiling, said, “So you’re a through-hiker, eh?” The one with the moptop couldn’t have been more encouraging. “Well, best of luck to you,” he said. It was a lie. He said, “I know you can do it. I believe in you.” I added two baked potatoes to a pot of mashed potatoes and stirred until their burnt skins broke apart in the mixture. When Larry from the Three Stooges walked in it hit me. The two gentlemen who lived at the top of the hill weren’t gentlemen, they were stooges, Moe and Curly, and those small humans sitting at the table were their children. “Daddy, Google that potato recipe,” the youngest daughter said.
