This Is a Book - Demetri Martin [59]
My friend John is so good at goodbyes. He can say anything and it sounds right, like “Cheerio” or “Peace” or “I’ll see you in Hell.” That guy is prolific at goodbyes. Not me. I probably couldn’t even say goodbye to someone who was falling off a cliff. The best I could do is shrug and make a face like, “Well, what can you do about cliffs?”
It’s not all bad though. When I want to seem distant, not being able to say goodbye works well for me. One time I broke up with this girl and she said, “Goodbye.” I didn’t say anything. Then she said, “Aren’t you going to say anything?” I said, “No U-turns.” She walked away, thinking that I said something deep. But I was just reading a nearby sign out loud.
People sometimes ask me what I’m going to say when it comes time to die. I honestly don’t know. I’ll probably go “Ughhh” and make believe that I died. And then, after everyone leaves, I’ll really die. But I bet by then our society will have robots that can help you say goodbye, or there will be some sort of self-puppeting thing you can hook up to yourself to do it for you.
Hey, look! What’s that behind you?
The End.
Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
Dedication
How to Read This Book
ONE
Announcements
Hotline
Megaphone
Ideas & Opinions
Robot Test
Genie
New Year’s Party
How I Felt
Socrates’s Publicist
Statistics
Bee Sting
Who I Am
Bugle Virtuoso
Some Drawings
TWO
Dad
Titles
My Band
Pali
ndromes for Specific Occasions
Cat Calendar
Optimist, Pessimist, Contortionist
We’re Pregnant
Protagonists’ Hospital
Rain
Honors & Awards (for Which I Would Qualify)
Better Than Sex
Short Stories
Frustrating Uses of Etc.
Charts & Graphs
THREE
My Diet
Fortune Cookies
A Christmas Carol (the Deleted Scene)
WED
Fruit Vendor (Diary Excerpts)
Pets (a Conversation)
A Cappella Group Freak Accidents
My Checks
A Crossword Puzzle
Sheila
Products
A Picture (1,000 Words)
Epigrams, Fragments & Light Verse
One Phone Call
More Drawings
FOUR
My Powers
Human Cannonball Occupational Hazards
Eulogy
Flags
Painted Faces
Some Meanings
Goreburg and Spatz
Confessions of a White Guy with Dreadlocks
Spanish Teacher
Zing!
Results of Your Personality Test
More Statistics
Excerpts from My Often-True Autobiography
The Word Awards
Goodbyes
About the Author
Also by Demetri Martin
Copyright
About the Author
Demetri Martin is the author of THIS IS A BOOK BY DEMETRI MARTIN. He is currently working on his next book. He lives somewhere in America.
Also by Demetri Martin
*
* Nothing yet. This is his first book.
1 NOTE: This turned out to be the final Zing.
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Demetri Martin
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
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First eBook Edition: April 2011
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ISBN: 978-1-609-41876-2