"What a piece of work is a lifeform!" said God one day as She looked over Her creations of Earth.

"They take such good care of my lawn! The whole purpose of their being is to procreate, this making more of them to water, weed, and care for my lawn; and, when they die, they make such good fertilizer!"

So it was all fine and dandy until... One day, God's lawncare technicians learned to think for themselves. They thought so much that they thought themselves quite intelligent.

Then, for no reason anyone -- not even God -- could fathom, they decided that concrete was better than grass.

So they paved over paradise and put up a parking lot with those little parking meters.

And when God came down to visit, being beyond such trivial things as currency...

... She received a whopping ticket. The ticket ticked God off greatly. God began to doubt that Lifeforms were such a great idea after all, even if they did make such good fertilizer.

Thus, God gave up on lawns and decided instead to be the God of the Parking Meters...

"What a piece of work is a Parking Meter!" spake God unto the Earth. "How resilient, determined, and noble!"

"They grow where nothing else can grow, and people pay them more attention than they ever did the grass. From this day on, the Parking Meter shall encompass the Earth!"

And so it was spoken. And so we find parking meters everywhere we go, and we feed them, lest we irk the ill of a wrathful God.

All this, because we aspired to be more than fertilizer, and doubted the worth and relevance of the humble lawncare technician.

© Copyright Neena Bickram 1998 This work may not be duplicated, in whole or in part, without the author's written consent.