How the Ashtrays Became So

IT HAPPENED LIKE THIS:   [1] The God Zhoppen was a minor household deity of the Hantayi, the people who are responsible for the Goddam Desert being a god damned desert.   [2] Zhoppen ruled the east, the number 43, and unidentified sticky spots on the floor (among other things). Minor, but benevolent and well-liked, and he was disappointed when the Hantayi drove themselves into suspension.   [3] Zhoppen had a daughter named Scritzy. At the time of this story, Scritzy was not a goddess, for she was only 14 years old and in junior high and after that last report card no one was about to let her be in charge of anything except cracking open that math book and getting to work, young lady.   [4] It wasn't that Scritzy couldn't do the math. It was that Scritzy hated math, and she didn't want to be in charge of anything anyway, because she was 14 years old, and knew that everything was stupid.   [5] Everything in the whole world.   [6] Scritzy's best subject was Sculpture 101, and while that's not saying much, she didn't get in as much trouble in Sculpture class as she did in other classes where teachers wanted her to sit still and stare quietly at a blackboard.   [7] One day in Sculpture, the teacher declared they'd be working with wood. He showed the students how to make little kitchen cutting boards with surfaces "as smooth as a baby's bottom."*   [8] When Scritzy pushed her board through the bandsaw, it went crooked. When she cut out the hole for the handle, the wood splintered. When she dragged the file across the edges, she was so intent on talking with her friend Becky about Randall Morris' new hair-do that she filed a huge dip into the cutting-surface of the board.   [9] When she was finally ready to use the sandpaper, it was time to go to Social Studies, and her cutting board was not "as smooth as a baby's bottom" unless the baby in question had contracted a virulent rash.   [10] Still, she brought her cutting-board home.   [11] "Here, Dad," she said, presenting the board to Zhoppen where he sat out on his back porch smoking a cigar. "I made this for you in Sculpture class."   [12] Zhoppen took the cutting-board and turned it over and over in his hands.   [13] "Thank you Scritzy," he said, ignoring the splinters. "What is it?"   [14] "It's an ashtray," she said, and skipped merrily off to her room, where she would shut the door and listen to horrible music until it was time for supper.   [15] "So it is," Zhoppen said softly to himself.   [16] He set the board down on the table next to his chair and tapped his cigar over it.   [17] That night it rained like a sonofabitch.   [18] The cigar ashes melted away and scattered like great blobs of smoky cherry-scented mud all across the land of the Hantayi, and upon their brows and clean shirt-collars.   [19] The Shaman of the Hantayi was called to explain the meaning. This is the story that she retrieved from her trance-state (for she was a skilled Somnicist).   [20] She divined that Zhoppen had decreed that any Shape produced in a Sculpture class which had no discernible intent or apparent use would be called an "Ashtray," and serve the purpose of an ashtray, and self-identify as an ashtray.   [21] And the Hantayi saw that this was so, and they rejoiced.  

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*Which, when Scritzy thought about it years later, was kind of disturbing, but the Sculpture teacher was kind of a disturbing person in general.