When I am King: Getting Older Still

When I am King...

We will all be unable to move.

Have you ever noticed how people, as they get older, move less and less? And how old people tend to move very little, spending their days in thought, in chairs, or in an intensive care unit at the hospital?

Many people think that this lack of movement is due to health issues, or simply slower physical capability. But no - their stationary positions are deliberate, coming from one of the biggest life lessons that we are all put on the planet to learn: we lose stuff.

How many times have you put down your glasses somewhere, only to wander away and forget where you put them? How many times have you similarly lost your car keys, or your coffee cup, or your infant child?

And yet we keep on bombing around our lives, picking up stuff and then putting it down, over and over. In fact, experts say that our inability to keep our stuff is the main driving force in our weak economy, because we simply have to keep replacing things.

Meanwhile, the old people sit in their rocking chairs, smiling, humming show tunes from the 40's, and watching us all through the glasses they put on in 1984 and haven't taken off since.

The key to not losing things is simply not to move; it is our unceasing movement that causes the loss. But why?

Researchers at the Intitut de Grendl Frooshtűűk in Freso, California have discovered that all things in the universe have a life force and an accompanying drive to propagate. This is evident in living creatures, where propagation involves mating, alcohol, and online dating services, but it is perhaps not as obvious with inanimate objects. These objects cannot reproduce, obviously (with the sole exception of single socks), so their non-biological imperative is simply to spread themselves around and see a bit of the world. Lacking the mobility to do this themselves, they manipulate us to do it for them, forcing us to repeatedly go out for a cup of coffee and then visit the bathroom, or to simply wander around the house in a daze wondering what we got up for. (Apparently, this mental telepathy from the objects is the source of the occasional high-pitched whine that we sometimes hear; the objects broadcast outside of our hearing range, but the broadcasting frequency varies as they go through puberty.)

And then after we've been alive and manipulated for some years, moving around aimlessly and losing stuff just becomes habit.

Old people have learned about loss and have also learned preventative measures. For one thing, their hearing starts to go, which enables them to be less prone to suggestion from random objects. But more importantly, they have learned to ignore the impulse to move, preferring to sit complacently, stuff intact, while they watch the rest of us bumble through life.

When I am King, all people will be required to stay still at all times, to prevent further loss of our stuff. Although voluntary, the program may be easier for some people to comply with the glue, staples, and railroad spikes provided.

As we all stop wasting our time wandering around, the ensuing gain in productivity will more than offset the economic loss from stuff-replacement. And ours will be a stress-free society because we can stop worrying about where we put our glasses or our car keys, or what made us get up in the first place.