AT THE SEASONAL GATES OF A DOLLAR, BILL

Dear Bill Gates:

Congratulations on your decision to self-outsource your job in 2008, and devote your efforts to full-time philanthropy. News reports state that you will take the same energy you once applied toward software technology, and redirect it “to global health, education and other intractable issues.”

Attaboy.

Give or take 200 billion dollars, sir, we’re not so different. As a humorist, I too am concerned about, and spend my musing hours addressing the earth’s homeostasis, humankind’s dumbing up, and issues intractable.

As for the latter, per the word defined as “difficult to manage or mold,” I consider myself the most “intractable” issue I know. My mother will confirm this, should you require authentication of this claim, by citing any number of my childhood pursuits. No doubt she’ll recount my inventions of the “aerosol can tossed in a burning leaf pile grenade,” and the infamous “lawnmower in the duck pond geyser” as my most memorable molding difficulties.

These may not have had the global impact of inventing the definitive computer operating system, but they were instrumental in helping me to define my role in the world. And, who knows, had fate been given a nudge this way or that, I might’ve gone on to patent a fluorocarbon missile system or a source of combustible hydro-lawn cutting edge technology that changed humanity, and it would be me now about to redeploy the fruits of his explosive innovations into gift-giving semi-retirement.

Thus, I’m confident that you’ll want to take my intractability under your charitable wing, consider ME one of your opportunities of Windows, and direct a portion of your beneficent funding to my foundation. I will use such an underwriting to help defray the costs of the following projects:

--- THE AMERICAN ROLLER COASTER EXPEDITION

Here, I will spend the summer months traveling with my partner to this country’s amusement parks, frequenting those with the highest & fastest roller coasters. We will carefully study and document the unbridled fun experienced by an American humorist on an extended vacation.

I will witness, in detail, the kinetic energies, launch mechanisms, inversions, loops, projectile motions and the physiological effects of acceleration of the various apparati. My partner will do the documentation from the ground, where she will take notes and wait until I’m finished acting like an idiot.

Extra funds will be needed as I make appeasements to her gentler, smarter side, by later riding the swan boats with her, taking her to fine restaurants, and for the massage therapies she’ll require to offset the cramping caused by her extended, bench-warming secretarial duties.

This project will require all the summer months to achieve a complete comparison study. I will forward the results to you, and your software developers may use the data to develop a new de-bugging program.

--- THE AMERICAN TROPICAL BEACH EXPEDITION

Here, I will spend the winter months traveling with my partner to the world’s most exotic tropical oceanside locales, where we will carefully study and document the effects of protracted relaxation upon a couple recovering from three months of amusement park research. This, unlike my roller coaster canvassing, will require an equal role assumed by her.

I will oil her feet under multi-colored beach umbrellas, serve her sweet iced drinks, take particular note of how the sun lights the day and the moon lights the night between her naps, and observe how the horizon is always the furthest thing I see. We will alternate these roles regularly, including the self-sacrificing options exercised between our awake periods of how the moon lights the night, the sun lights the day, and the horizon stubbornly remains in the distance.

We will repeat this process until we come to the dramatic and unperturbed conclusion that WE are just as likely to be someone else’s horizon, we’ve completed a global itinerary, or summer arrives back in our temperate clime and we return to begin anew.

Again, I will forward you the finer particulars of this travelogue, including details on the crab skittering patterns found in long beaches, lazy sunset beachcombs, and sand castle configurations that look suspiciously like childhood aerosol cans and lawnmowers.

I will form all these observations into my next humor book, which WILL change the world as we know it, and without blowing anything up. That alone would warrant additional funding, affording you an opportunity to promote healthy, educational and intractable laughter.

If you’re wondering why I’ve omitted spring and fall from these subventions --- even a humorist takes a busman’s holiday, and I’ve always had a Microsoft spot in my heart for working at play.

Copyright 2006 B. Elwin Sherman