by FRANCIS GRECOROMACOLLUDEN, Alternate Reality News Service National Politics Writer
It's official: the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
"First it says one thing, then it says another," said the left second finger, throwing up its...well, giving off an air of one who has given up in exasperation. "I'm not a palm reader - I don't know what it thinks it's doing!"
"I'm sorry if the left hand is confused - again," responded the spokesdigit for the right hand, the middle finger, "but my positions are as firm as a splint on a broken finger."
The left second finger claimed that the right hand had agreed in principle to doing up the buttons of the shirt the body was wearing. Then, when the body actually put on the shirt, the right hand refused to cooperate.
"In this climate," the middle finger of the right hand explained, "we thought it was premature for the body to don a shirt."
"It's October!" the left second finger exploded. "It's ten degrees outside! Without a shirt, the body will freeze!"
"That's the kind of alarmist rhetoric that causes people to feel cold when they don't have to," the right middle finger responded.
Before the argument could continue, the left thumb stepped in and reminded the hands that they both wanted the same thing: what was best for the body. Sure, they might disagree on how to achieve that end, but as long as they could keep the goal in sight, the thumb was certain that they could come to an amicable biextremity agreement.
The left second finger was not entirely mollified. It pointed out that the right hand appeared to cooperate with such tasks as, say, tying the body's shoelaces, but that the laces often seemed to quickly come undone.
"Oh, that's rich!" the right middle finger scoffed. "The left hand isn't competent enough to tie a shoelace, and it wants to blame me!"
"He...he makes a good point," the left pinkie mumbled.
The left second finger sighed and pointed out that (the left pinkie notwithstanding), it was the body's dominant hand. As such, it was quite capable of carrying out any task the body asked of it.
"Then, why does the shoelace come untied so often?" the right middle finger smirked.
The left second finger decided to ignore this taunt, instead pointing to the time the right hand demanded that all of the digits swear an oath of loyalty to the body. "It was in the middle of dinner!" the digit complained. "We were about to dig in to a lovely beef brisket, and everything ground to a halt so that we could swear this stupid oath!"
"I take my commitment to the well-being of the body very seriously," the right middle finger insisted. "A loyalty oath is a simple enough matter - you have to wonder why any part of the body would object to taking it..."
"Sounds reasonable to me," the left pinkie added.
"I resent the implications that the representative of the right hand is making!" the left second finger exploded. "I was trying to get food into the mouth of the body - I was showing my loyalty by doing what I could to keep the body going! No stupid loyalty oath would make my commitment to the body any stronger!"
The right middle finger responded that insulting loyalty oaths, calling them stupid, just made it question the left hand's loyalty all the more.
The second left finger was momentarily stunned, then claimed that the right hand was doing everything in its power to make the left hand look bad. Could the right hand be trying to discredit the left hand in order to take over its role as the body's dominant hand?
"Now, now, that's an absurd accusation!" the right thumb righteously insisted. "Nobody has ever questioned my loyalty to the good of the body!"
"Utterly ridiculous," the left pinkie agreed.
The left thumb suggested that everybody turn down the rhetorical heat. It stated that it was sure that all of the fingers on both hands were loyal to the body. In any case, the thumb argued, the challenges posed by the needs of the body were serious: everything from typing out reports at work to stroking the body's lover in the evening. The only way they could meet the challenges would be to work together.
"If the right hand is so loyal," the left second finger insisted, "how do you explain its obstructive behaviour?"
Some things, the left thumb philosophized, are simply unknowable.