Canned

2000 Mythsteries and Other Pithy Shorts #10 or #15

Once upon a time, when there were no wires draped from the sky and no crystal screens, it was necessary to leave your hut to find out what other humans were doing. Mostly, they were hunting and gathering, but occasionally, if you looked long enough you could enter into a barn raising or a rain dance depending upon which century you wandered in.

Kings reigned supreme but mostly in a small area because they couldn’t cover large areas on foot or horseback and still be home in time for dinner or whatever.

Then one day it was brought to the attention of those kings that with a few cans and some string made from sheep hair they could virtually call on neighbors and find out what was going on without leaving hearth and throne.

Alas, this worked so well that it became unnecessary to ever leave home and people began to develop hunched backs and feeble eyesight from staying indoors bent over the can. Many of them became quite irritable from lack of outdooring and failing to move bodily about. When, for some reason, they did go out they were quite rude and rage-ous.

And it was no wonder, they had forgotten how to interact with their faces so they kept using their fingers and squinty mouths. And being accustomed to having a can to themselves they were not inclined to share anything with others.

And, it was particularly hard on women who were just learning how to can and didn’t know so much about hunting and gathering. It was hard for them to find partners clad in mail. The can escalated into a new type of messenger and when it was first announced that ‘they got mail’, it turned into a real disappointment due to a lack of good knights.

Before long, there were hundreds of people racing about, trying to find bigger cans and the whole thing came to a screaming halt and collapsed when strangers pulled each other’s strings.

And that’s how it was in the first days of canned life.