Daniel Charms, 31 Plays, #4

A Sonnet

An amazing thing happened to me today: I suddenly forgot which comes first - 7 or 8.

I went to my neighbors and asked them what they thought on the matter.

To their and my surprise, we suddenly discovered that they too couldn't recall the counting order. They remembered 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, but they'd forgotten what comes next.

We all went to the overpriced grocery store, the one that's on the corner of Znamenskaya and Basseinaya Streets, and asked the cashier to resolve our dilemma. The cashier smiled sadly, pulled a small hammer out of her mouth and, after twitching her nose slightly left-right, said: - In my opinion, seven comes after eight, whenever eight comes after seven.

We thanked the cashier and cheerfully ran out of the store. But then, thinking carefully about the cashier's words, we got sad again since her words were void of any meaning.

What were we supposed to do? We went to the Summer Garden and started counting the trees. But upon reaching six in count, we stopped and begun to arguing: in the opinion of some, 7 went next; but in opinion of others, 8 did.

We were arguing for a long time when, by some sheer luck, a child fell off a park bench and broke both jaw bones. This distracted us from our argument.

And then, we all went home.