Not-so-free association - 3.23 #sol16 Story Challenge

As far as my story-challenge slices to date, this one feels the most like the song "Fingertips" by They Might Be Giants.

I recently finished reading I Crawl Through It by A.S. King. In the book, one of the main characters, Stanzi, quotes a favorite moment from the TV show M*A*S*H* when Hawkeye Pierce says, "Without love, what are we worth? Eighty-nine cents. Eighty-nine cents' of chemicals walking around lonely."

That quote and many other moments from King's book made me think of Kurt Vonnegut's writing. In particular, I started thinking about Breakfast of Champions and its pervasive chemicals. From there, I plunged down a research rabbit hole and came up with three more quotes from that book, thanks to Goodreads:

• People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve.
• So it is a big temptation to me, when I create a character for a novel, to say that he is what he is because of faulty wiring, or because of microscopic amounts of chemicals which he ate or failed to eat on that particular day.
• The whole city was dangerous—because of chemicals and the uneven distribution of wealth and so on.

How might all these quoted bits come together into a coherent slice? Well, I spent some time with an orthopedist yesterday poking at my knee. (No chemicals yet, but I am hoping for the quality of my life to improve.) Later in the day, I visited a mechanic who repaired faulty wiring in my car. And on that same day, Brussels stood out to me as an example of a particularly dangerous city.

So it goes.