Around the Corner

There was once this place on planet Earth which was right around the corner from everywhere else. Even now, scientists can’t explain how or why it was there. But they do know that it was there. I’ll explain that later. Anyway, for the longest time, nobody lived there because nobody knew that it existed. That is, until the fameless explorer Sir Vasco de la Gama de la Diaz de la Cortex de la Ponce de la Deon ola Fountain de la Youth came upon it quite unexpectedly in 1561. You see, he had left Europe two years earlier in search of a recipe for really good pecan pie. He knew it was a Southern dish, but quite frankly, he didn’t really know where the south was, and so he set off north thinking he was going in the right direction. And in a curious way he was – because from his perspective the north was to the right and the south was to the left.

Five weeks into the journey, three of his ships had sunk – two had failed in bad weather and one simply couldn’t float, possibly because it had been made of lead.

Feeling a sense of desperation among the surviving members of his crew, Sir Vasco de la Gama de la Diaz de la Cortex de la Ponce de Leon ola Fountain de la Youth docked his remaining two ships on a small, uncharted island in the Pacific. For weeks his crew frolicked on this tiny island, eating shellfish and having sex with species they had never before encountered. It was a time of great revelry and keen spirit. Never before had they known anything like it.

But one day, on this tiny island, Sir Vasco de la Gama de la Diaz de la Cortez de la Ponce de Leon Ola Fountain de la Youth launched an expedition, and it turned up the most curious of results. It so happened that a crew member, a mister Ferdinando de la Isabella de la Balboa returned from the expedition with a most curious report. "There’s this place over there," he said. And if you stand there, you can almost see everywhere all at once." And so Sir Vasco went to this place, and he looked – and it was true – he could, indeed, almost see everywhere at once. And then he wondered, Why can I almost see everywhere at once, but not quite. And then it occurred to him. From the place he was standing, he was right around the corner from everyone. And so he sent his crew away and settled there. And when he looked across his lawn, he could see folks from Kenya, from Nairobi, from Chile, from Greenland – even folks from the deepest reaches of outer space – they were all right around the corner.

Being a man of quite noble means, Sir Vasco liked to party. He had many parties, and they were all big. From his lawn, he could yell to everyone, "Come to my party. I’m right around the corner." And it was true. He was right around the corner. And so many, many people came.

But one day the unexpected happened. Everybody came. Even the aliens from the outer reaches of deep space came. Sir Vasco stood alarmed. He hadn’t enough food, enough help, enough toilets. Everybody was there. What was he to do?

Just as he was about to call the entire party off, he ran into God out on the front lawn. Yes – everybody was at this party – even God was right around the corner. "Let me get my kid," he said. "He caters events like this."

And so God went into the crowd and got his kid, and his kid said, "Bring me meats and cheeses and other finger foods. I’ll multiple them. Everyone will eat. And as far as the toilets go, there’s plenty of woods here." And so the people ate, and the people danced, and the people used the woods – they used the woods right around the corner so as not to smell the place up – and everyone had a swell time. And Sir Vasco was a happy man.

But later that night, Sir Vasco died choking on a fishbone, and two weeks later the place where he lived – the place right around the corner from everything evaporated, and Sir Vasco, who was buried on that site, evaporated with it.

As I said, scientists can’t explain this place, but they do know that it existed. They know this because the folks around the corner wrote about that party.