I walked through a field one day.
There was a flower in the field. "Hello," I said. The flower remained motionless, and to my great delight, did not answer. This gave me some reassurance that I was not totally insane.
Unknown to me, however, was that my boot was communicating with the flower.
"Hello," said my boot in a language called inanimatism. How foolish we humans are. We have sent men to the moon and even brought them back down again. We have found ways to kill people at greater and greater distances, but have not even put one dollar into figuring out inanimatism.
"Hello," said the flower and was nervous. "What do you want?" It was said in a pleasant way.
"I'm gonna git ya," said the boot. He was using slang.
"Why?" asked the flower.
"Why not?" replied my boot. It wasn't meant to be a question even though it is.
"What have I ever done to you?"
"Shut up ya stinking flower," snarled my boot. "I'm gonna crush you and stomp on ya and call ya nasty things."
"Why?" asked the flower desperately, noticing how much closer the boot was. This always amazed inanimate objects. They just could not understand how things are far away one moment and close the next. Flowers can never understand how they are sitting in the dirt one minute, a small seed, and a big flower the next. Trees can never understand how they are standing tall and strong one minute, dead the next, and sitting quietly in someone's living room, shaped like a chair the third. This is usually what they say when they think about it: "How odd."
"Why not?" came the rather predictable answer of the boot. Boots are known for this. Boots also are one of the rare inanimate objects that realize that they do move from here to there and back again. They have no idea why or how. They also have no idea how one minute they are sitting quietly on the back of a cow and the next moving about as a boot.
"But I just want to live my life and be happy," explained the flower.
"Shut up," said the boot.
The boot was now very close to the flower. "Nooo..." screamed the flower, quite content that this would be its last word.
"Nooo...." said the flower on the second breath.
"Nooo...." said the flower again.
"Nooo...." said the flower and then stopped.
The boot was no where to be seen. It had missed. The flower now understood why boots were so nasty to flowers.
That night I didn't get sex. I came home rather angry. On the way, I decided to step on a flower.
"Nooo..." were the flower's last words.
I slept that evening feeling rather angry.
My boots smiled.