Conjoined Twins

Have you ever seen any of those movies where people hang by one hand from a helicopter or a tall building or a little branch jutting out of a beetling cliff over a depthless gorge? What an unmitigated load of rubbish. In the first place, no one has that kind of strength. But if there are a few who do, and I certainly don't know them, the odds of being able to catch such a handhold, while falling, no less, are vanishingly slim. So here I am, hanging from a little branch jutting out of a beetling cliff over a depthless gorge. And that's not all.

No, not by a long shot. I am accompanied by my idiot brother Pug. And when I say "accompanied," I mean, well, joined at the hip. We're conjoined twins, or what they used to call "Siamese." How we could have emerged from the same egg is beyond me, but I guess the common tissue doesn't lie. So not only am I hanging by one hand, but that hand is only one of four, and it's supporting double the weight. Actually, more than double, but more about that in a moment.

"Pug!" I wail. "Could you help me out a bit here?"

"With what?" he asks, cool as a cuke.

"With what?" I cry in exasperation. "I'm supporting the both of us with one hand! If you would just contribute one of yours to the cause, we might be able to get out of this."

"Don't know what you're on about," he says dismissively. "Everything's fine." And this is the guy who's clumsiness got us into this predicament in the first place.

"What do you mean 'fine?'" I scream. "I don't call dangling over a whacking great gorge 'fine.'"

"I don't see any gorge," says Pug.

"Well, try looking down," I suggest.

He just looks up and whistles instead. So, extreme circumstances calling for extreme measures, I seize Pug's head with my unoccupied arm and shove downward. He closes his eyes, but I expected that. With a shrewd thumb-and-pinky maneuver, I peel his eyelids up.

"Hmm," says Pug thoughtfully.

"Well?" I prompt, as my entire hand goes numb. "Now, are you ready to help?"

"It is possible that there is something to what you say," says Pug. "However, it will require a great deal more study."

"We haven't got time for 'a great deal more study,'" I plead. "I'm down to four - no, three! - fingers up there!"

"Any solution must balance sound economics with plummeting avoidance," says Pug. "Anything else would be irresponsible."

"Well, how about if you just let go of the sack with one hand?" I sob. You see, he is hugging a large sack full of gold, which accounts for the more than double weight I mentioned before. Pug has always been a bit more ... acquisitive than I. "You won't be able to use a penny of that crap when you're an oil spot at the bottom of the gorge. Oh, God! Two fingers!"

And then we hear a crack and drop about a foot at stomach-lurching speed. The branch has broken. We are now hanging on by two fingers and a slim bit of bark.

"No," insists Pug. "A one-armed grip is not sustainable. But I'm a reasonable man. I'm willing to negotiate."

A-a-and ... there goes the last of the bark, which will definitely not be worse than its bite.

"We are now plummeting to our deaths at an acceleration of approximately 32 feet per second per second," I sigh conversationally.

"Unacceptable," replies Pug. "I might settle for something in the 10 to 12 feet per second per second range."

"You moron!" I cry. "You can't bargain with physics!"

"I'm sorry," Pug insists. "I just can't live with that 32 feet thing."

At least, he got one thing right.

Bye.