Slapstick (or: Lonesome No More)

by Kurt Vonnegut

Extract from chapter 33:-

'As I said in my speech': I told him, 'your new middle name would consist of a noun, the name of a flower or fruit or nut or vegetable or legume, or a bird or a reptile or a fish, or a mollusk, or a gem or a mineral or a chemical element -- connected by a hyphen to a number between one and twenty.' I asked him what his name was at the present time.

'Elmer Glenville Grasso,' he said.

'Well,' I said, 'you might become Elmer Uranium-3 Grasso, say. Everybody with Uranium as a part of their middle name would be your cousin.'

'That brings me back to my first question,' he said, 'What if I get some artificial relative I absolutely can't stand?'

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'What is so novel about a person's having a relative he can't stand?' I asked him. 'Wouldn't you say that sort of thing has been going on now for perhaps a million years, Mr Grasso?'

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