Liam Perrin

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

He thought for a moment. “Nothing,” he said.

She put her glass down too hard. “I don’t think this is working. I feel like I’m just an afterthought with you.”

“Well,” he said. “Every thought comes after some other thought, so technically-”

“You just said you weren’t thinking about anything.”

He panicked.

“Er. No, I was thinking about nothing,” he said. “It’s quite different. I mean when you think about it, nothing is really something. It’s terrifying. There’s nothing about nothing that would make me think about you after it. You’re very different from… nothing.”

They both knew it was over. They moved on. Eventually, she found someone who could keep himself distracted from nothing, and he found someone with whom he had nothing in common.

The total quantity of happiness in the universe increased. And that, as they say, is really something.

“The next one who talks loses,” he said.

The backseat became intensely quiet.

“I have deep respect for Asian culture,” he said after a moment.

“Okay,” she said. “Why?”

“Well, for example, this will work for a few minutes, but in Asia when you want some peace you send the kids to paint the fence or sit silently in the corner and you tell them you’re teaching them karate. You invent a whole philosophy to go with it and pair it with athletic training and before you know it your children have grown into peaceable upstanding citizens who can break bricks with their foreheads and catch bullets with chopsticks.”

“Huh,” she said thoughtfully.

He nodded.

“We need a philosophy,” she said.

He spotted a Dairy Queen and turned the wheel.

“Found it,” he said.

None of their children would ever catch bullets with chopsticks, but things turned out okay.