'We're Dancing Animals'

How Kurt Vonnegut going to buy an envelope fulfilled his purpose in life.

The author Kurt Vonnegut once told a journalist this story: One day, he wanted to go out to buy an envelope.

His wife protested. “Oh,” she said, “you’re not poor. Why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?”

“And so,” Vonnegut recalls, “I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And see some great-looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs-up. And I’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, I don’t know. The moral of the story is — we’re here on Earth to fart around.”

He goes on to say that “computers will do us out of that,” and he says, “What the computer people don’t realize — or they don’t care — is we’re dancing animals. We love to move around. And it’s like we’re not…