Are You There Margaret? It's Me, God: Flash Fiction

It's not that I'm lonely. I have millions of people talking to me everyday. But the conversation is just so one-sided. Yeah, yeah, I know people want me to talk to them, but that's not how it works. But I wish that people would talk to me about stuff that I was interested in, instead of just their own problems, you know.

But I really shouldn't complain, my twin brother Isaiah has it pretty rough over there. What with the 5,000 years of suffering and all. I think he gets a bad rap, anyways.

The other thing, is that everyone thinks that I've got all the time in the world to listen to their prayers. Do you know how hard it is to keep track of everything? Luckily I made a deal with Steve Jobs, and now I've got a nice incoming prayer podcast setup, but he still can't make a iPod that's big enough.

And it's not just listening to prayers--you wouldn't believe how long it takes to clean up the world. I've been meaning to dust the Sahara for a couple thousand years. And I really need to get around to vacuuming South America. The Amazon really isn't supposed to be there.

I'm so busy that I hardly get to enjoy my holidays. How ironic that I'm the one that has to work every Easter and Christmas. No one ever says, "Hey Joe, why don't you just call in sick today." Even Isaiah spends Hanukkah in Fiji. (He invented it, not to compete with Christmas, but to have a week that didn't mean anything just to have some time off.)

The only vacation I do get is at the end of August--the annual family reunion picnic. Everyone's there. Isaiah brings some Matza, my uncle Buddha brings his famous samosas, Grandpa Confucious has some egg rolls and fortune cookies, my uncle-in-law Mohammad brings some killer kabobs, and I make my traditional homemade bread and fried cod. We all get along but it can be really distracting. After Katrina, I decide to teleconference in 2006.

But we're all one big happy family. We just wish that sometimes you'd show an interest in our problems. Oh well, maybe next evolution.