One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

Man Finds Coat Button After Twenty-Two Years

 

KASHMIR—A soldier in the disputed region of Kashmir found a missing button to a coat he was wearing—after twenty-two years!

 

The button had been lost while his late father, a soldier in the same conflict, took refuge one night in a cave on the battlefield. The son, sleeping in the same cave, and wearing the same coat twenty-two years later, came across the button as he brewed tea.

 

“It fit perfectly,” said the soldier, Kanhaiya Makhan, 23. “The coat looks much better now.”

 

Endless war over minor ideological differences remains one of the most defining aspects of human life well into the 21st century (see Regular News).

 

Man Receives Text Message from Deceased Relative

 

INDIANAPOLIS, IN—A 36-year-old man received a text message from his mother reminding him to “stay warm this weekend”—six hours after he had paid his respects at her funeral.

 

The cell phone provider apologized, citing a rolling power outage at a cellular broadcast tower that led to delayed delivery of some messages for up to three days.

 

The company offered the customer its apologies as well as a free phone with a year’s worth of unlimited data, but the man says he may not take them up on it. “I kind of feel like the message was from her, in a way,” said Alex Rossini, 36. “Plus, it’s just a phone and a data plan. I think I’m set in that department.”

 

Indeed, most human beings in the developed world already carry a device that can instantaneously access essentially all of the recorded information in history, and the average price of such devices recently hit an all-time low (see Regular News). Nobody knows what happens after death (see Opinions).

 

 

 

 

 

Never Fall in Love

 

 

 

 

 

The day she started as a secret agent, her boss told her one very important rule.

 

“Never fall in love.”

 

But she did fall in love, almost immediately. Within a month, she was hopelessly and endlessly in love with another secret agent, a kind, warm man named Bob. He had big hands and a lot of brothers and sisters, and there was no falling out of love with Bob.

 

She went to her boss’s office and handed him a letter of resignation.

 

“Why?” he asked.

 

“I met someone,” she said. “I’ve fallen in love.”

 

“Who?” he asked.

 

“Bob.”

 

“I love Bob!” he said, lighting up. “Oh, what a great guy. That’s a perfect match, you and Bob! I’m so happy for you.”

 

He then remembered the issue at hand.

 

“But why are you resigning?”

 

“I broke the one and only rule you told me,” she said. “ ‘Never fall in love.’ I fell in love.”

 

“Oh, honey,” he laughed. “That’s not a real rule! I just knew you’d never find love if you were looking for it.”

 

 

 

 

 

The World’s Biggest Rip-Off

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a story with a happy ending.

 

I am a thirty-eight-year-old married father of two. A couple of summers ago, I took our family on our first-ever family vacation.

 

The plan was to drive from our home in New Hampshire to my wife’s parents’ lake house in Canada. On the way there, we would stop for a night at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Then a week at the lake house. Then on the drive back we would spend a couple of days at Niagara Falls.

 

The Baseball Hall of Fame was a disaster. My son hated it, and we had stopped there only for him. Basically, he spent the whole time asking if his favorite players would ever end up in the Hall of Fame, and I told him the truth, which was no, because of steroids. Maybe I should have lied.

 

The lake house was a disaster, too. My kids somehow got it in their heads that they wanted to watch the movie The Hangover. Of course I wasn’t going to let them watch The Hangover—they were eight and ten years old—but they decided to make the whole week a fight about whether or not they could watch it. My wife’s parents thought this whole thing was my fault, because they didn’t know what The Hangover was and they didn’t understand why I wouldn’t let two young children watch it.

 

Niagara Falls was a disaster. My eight-year-old daughter was the one who had begged to see it because a couple from a television show she watched got married there. But when I pointed it out to her from the car window on the drive to our hotel—“Look, Niagara Falls!”—she said it looked different than she thought it would and went back to her book. Great, I thought. We have two days here, and that’s all there is to do, and she’s the only one who wanted to see it, and she’s already bored by it. And that was all we did. And it was boring.