Jane sits on her blocky pink one-seater sofa.<\/p>\n
She looks at her feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have feet,\u201d she comments, to Martin, who is trying to eat his cereal without having a discussion of feet and has, once again, failed.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you need more?\u201d Martin says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just, they could<\/em> have fallen off. Sometimes that happens. Then if I was a good footist, I could grow more. But if not, I\u2019d have to get prosthetics.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe can\u2019t afford prosthetic feet,\u201d Martin says. \u201cWe have no obvious means of income.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI could make some out of socks,\u201d Jane points out. \u201cThey\u2019d be squishy when I walked because of not having feet in them. But if I sat really casually then no one would ever know my feet were gone.\u201d<\/p>\n Martin grimly chews on his Lucky Charms. Crunch. Crunch. That\u2019s a shooting star \u2014 the marshmallow kind, not the real one \u2014 that he\u2019s chewing now. It burned brightly in his spoon but now it\u2019s just sugar to the stomach. Crunch.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not,\u201d Martin says, \u201chaving you go around in empty socks.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen gold?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe could get gold prosthetics!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow would we pay for them?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to pay<\/em> for gold,\u201d Jane says, smugly. \u201cIt isn\u2019t backing the currency any more.\u201d<\/p>\n Martin hesitates.<\/p>\n \u201cJane,\u201d he says, after a moment, \u201cI believe you were \u2018studying methods to increase your effectiveness at cleaning your room\u2019 before actually embarking on this activity. Can I ask you how this relates?\u201d<\/p>\n Jane hesitates. She looks shifty. \u201cFeet can be clean or dirty,\u201d she says. \u201cBetween the toes!\u201d<\/p>\n Martin lowers his cynicism goggles for a moment to look down at Jane. It\u2019s somehow even more cynical than when he has his goggles on.<\/p>\n Jane says, in a tightly clipped dramatic voice, \u201cIt\u2019s directly relevant because I have feet or don\u2019t have them in the broader context of my personal reality and without them my model of the universe would be subtly different in every conceivable respect!\u201d<\/p>\n There is a long pause.<\/p>\n This does not seem to have gotten Jane off the hook.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, like you<\/em> never just stop and think about your feet, \u201d Jane sulks.<\/p>\n \u201cSnot,\u201d giggles Martin.<\/p>\n They laugh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jane sits on her blocky pink one-seater sofa. She looks at her feet. \u201cI have feet,\u201d she comments, to Martin, who is trying to eat his cereal without having a discussion of feet and has, once again, failed. \u201cDo you need more?\u201d Martin says. \u201cIt\u2019s just, they could have fallen off. Sometimes that happens. Then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4803,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-5803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-11","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Jane31.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5803"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5803\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6031,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5803\/revisions\/6031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5803"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=5803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}