Dave Eggers - How We Are Hungry

I TOLD YOU about that, didn’t I? About when your mother and I moved the world to solar energy and windpower, to hydro, all that? I never told you that? Can you hand me that cheese? No, the other one, the cheddar, right. I really thought I told you about that. What is happening to my head?

Well, we have to take the credit, your mother and I, for reducing our dependence on oil and for beginning the Age of Wind and Sun. That was pretty awesome. That name wasn’t ours, though. Your uncle Frank came up with that. He always wanted to be in a band and call it that, the Age of Wind and Sun, but he never learned guitar and couldn’t sing. When he sang he enunciated too much, you know? He sang like he was trying to teach English to Turkish children. Turkish children with learning disabilities. It was really odd, his singing.

You’re already done? Okay, here’s the Monterey Jack. Just dump it in the bowl. All of it, right. It was all pretty simple, converting most of the nation’s electricity. At a certain point everyone knew that we had to just suck it up and pay the money — because holy crap, it really was expensive at first! — to set up the cities to make their own power. All those solar panels and windmills on the city buildings? They weren’t always there, you know. No, they weren’t. Look at some pictures, honey. They just weren’t. The roofs of these millions of buildings weren’t being used in any real way, so I said, Hey, let’s have the buildings themselves generate some or all of the power they use, and it might look pretty good, to boot— everyone loves windmills, right? Windmills are awesome. So we started in Salt Lake City and went from there.

Oh hey, can you grate that one? Just take half of that block of Muenster. Here’s a bowl. Thanks. Then we do the cheddar. Cheddar has to be next. After the cheddar, pecorino. Never the other way around. Stay with me, hon. Jack, Muenster, cheddar, pecorino. It is. The only way.

Right after that was a period of much activity. Your mother and I tended to do a big project like the power conversion, and then follow it with a bunch of smaller, quicker things. So we made all the roads red. You wouldn’t remember this — you weren’t even born. We were all into roads then, so we had most of them painted red, most of them, especially the highways — a leathery red that looked good with just about everything, with green things and blue skies and woods of cedar and golden swamps and sugar-colored beaches. I think we were right. You like them, right? They used to be grey, the roads. Insane, right? Your mom thinks yellow would have been good, too, an ochre but sweeter. Anyway, in the same week, we got rid of school funding tied to local property taxes — can you believe they used to pull that crap? — banned bicycle shorts for everyone but professionals, and made everyone’s hair shinier. That was us. Your mother and I.

That was right after our work with the lobbyists — I never told you that, either? I must be losing my mind. I never mentioned the lobbyists, about when we had them all deported? That part of it, the deportation, was your mother’s idea. All I’d said was, Hey, why not ban all lobbying? Or at least ban all donations from lobbyists, and make them wear cowbells so everyone would know they were coming? And then your dear mom, who was, I think, a little tipsy at the time — we were at a bar where they had a Zima special, and you know how your mom loves her Zima — she said, How about, to make sure those bastards don’t come back to Washington, have them all sent to Greenland? And wow, the idea just took off. People loved it, and Greenland welcomed them warmly; they’d apparently been looking for ways to boost their tourism. They set up some cages and a viewing area and it was a big hit.

So then we were all pumped up, to be honest. Wow, this kind of thing, the lobbyists thing especially, boy, it really made your mother horny. Matter of fact, I think you were conceived around that time. She was like some kind of tsunam—

Oh don’t give me that face. What? Did I cross some line? Don’t you want to know when your seed was planted? I would think you’d want to know that kind of thing. Well then. I stand corrected.

Anyway, we were on a roll, so we got rid of genocide. The main idea was to create and maintain a military force of about 20,000 troops, under the auspices of the U.N., which could be deployed quickly to any part of the world within about thirty-six hours. This wouldn’t be the usual blue helmets, watching the slaughter. These guys would be badass. We were sick of the civilized world sort of twiddling their thumbs while hundreds of thousands of people killed each other in Rwanda, Bosnia, way back in Armenia, on and on. Then the U.N. would send twelve Belgian soldiers. Nice guys, but really, you have a genocide raging in Rwanda, 800,000 dead in a month and you send twelve Belgians ?

So we made this proposal, the U.N. went for it, and within a year the force was up and running. And man oh man, your mother was randy again. That’s when your fecundation happened, and why we called you Johnna. I remember it now — I was wrong before. Your mother and I were actually caught in the U.N. bathroom, after the vote went our way. The place, all marble and brass, was full of people, and at the worst possible moment, Kofi himself walked in. He sure was surprised to see us in there, on the sink, but I have to say, he was pretty cool about it. He actually seemed to enjoy it, even watched for a minute, because there was no way we were gonna stop in the middle—

Fine. I won’t do that again. It’s just that it’s part of the story, honey. Everything we did started with love, and ended with lust—

But you’re right. That was inappropriate.

We went on a tear right after genocide, very busy. I attribute it partly to the vitamins we were on — very intense program of herbs and vitamins and protein shakes. We’d shoot out of bed and bounce around like bunnies. So that’s when we covered Cleveland in ivy. You’ve seen pictures. We did that. Just said, Hey Cleveland, what if you were covered in ivy, all the buildings? Wouldn’t that look cool, and be a big tourist attraction? And they said, “Sure.” Not right away, though. You know who helped with that? Dennis Kucinich. I used to call him “Sparky,” because he was such a feisty fella. Your mom, she called him “The Kooch.”

We’re gonna need all three kinds of salsa, hon. Yeah, use the small bowls. Just pour it right up to the edge. Right. Your brother likes to mix it up. Me, I’m a fan of the mild.

Right after Cleveland and the ivy we made all the kids memorize poetry again. We hadn’t memorized any growing up — this was the seventies and eighties, and people hadn’t taught that for years — and we really found we missed it. The girls were fine with the idea, and the boys caught on when they realized it would help them get older women into bed. Around that time we banned wearing fur outside of arctic regions, flooded the market with diamonds and gold and silver to the point where none had any value, fixed the ozone hole — I could show you that; we’ve got it on video — and then we did the thing with the llamas. What are you doing? Sour cream in the salsa? No, no. That’s just wrong, sweetie. My god.

So yeah, we put llamas everywhere. That was us. We just liked looking at them, so we bred about six million and spread them around. They weren’t there before, honey. No, they weren’t. Oh man, there’s one now, in the backyard. Isn’t it a handsome thing? Now they’re as common as squirrels or deer, and you have your mom and pop to thank for that.

It’s jalapeño time. Use the smaller knife. You’re gonna cut the crap out of your hand. You don’t want one of these. You see this scar on my thumb? Looks like a scythe, right? I got that when we were negotiating the removal of the nation’s billboards. I was climbing one of them, in Kentucky actually, to start a hunger strike kind of thing, sort of silly I guess, and cut the shipdoodle out of that left thumb.