Crunched
One beautiful day during the Paleolithic period, in what is now known as Alaska, Moorg and Grog were striding through the snow, hunting woolly mammoths. They had to hunt the woolly ones, because the non-woolly ones had migrated south when it became obvious winter was going to last longer than a couple months.
Moorg pointed, “Hey, look, you can see Russia from here.”
Grog looked more confused than usual. “What’s a Russia?”
Moorg shrugged, “Never mind. It doesn’t matter; the Russians won’t be around for awhile, anyway.”
Grog frowned, “Then what are you bringing it up for?”
Moorg, “I don’t know.” Then he picked something off a small branch. “Hey, check it out, a wholly bear caterpillar.”
Grog, “You mean Woolly bear.”
Moorg, “That’s what I said.”
Grog, “No it wasn’t. You said wholly bear. Wholly, woolly. Totally different words.”
Moorg, “How would you know? We’re grunting. Some dude’s just typing what we would have said if we could speak English.”
Grog, “What’s English?”
Moorg, “I don’t know. Something inedible, probably.”
Grog, “Then why should I care?”
Moorg just shrugged again.
They crossed over a small mountain range and they could see a herd of enormous furry pachyderms munching tundra grass in the valley and farting away the young ozone layer.
“Yeah!” Grog shouted.
“We found them!” Moorg pumped his fist like a skater boy after a cool pipe run.
“Is there a drive-up, or do we have to go into the restaurant?” Grog asked, shielding his eyes against the glare on the snow.
“I dunno,” Moorg said, as he started jogging down the side of the hill.
As they reached the bottom, Grog felt through the fur hide he wore draped around him. “Do you have any money?” he asked.
Moorg gave him a look. “Do I look like I have money? We haven’t invented it yet, you dummy.”
Now Grog could see that Moorg wasn’t rolling a big stone coin in front of him. “Stupid question, huh?”
Moorg sighed, “Yeah, it’s pretty exasperating sometimes. We haven’t invented money, so there can’t even be prostitution yet.”
Grog brightened, “The oldest profession, right? I can’t wait. It should be along sometime soon!”
Moorg looked glum, “It could still be millennia away though.”
“What are we waiting for?” Grog asked.
“I dunno. We have to get off our butts, and start inventing,” Moorg said.
“Yeah. We need to invent stuff like Playstation, hats and disposable diapers,” Grog said.
“And automobiles,” Moorg added.
“I don’t know. We’d better invent the wheel first,” Grog said doubtfully.
“And oil.”
“Oh, yeah,” Grog nodded. “If we don’t invent oil, we’ll never have the oil lobbyists.”
“That’d be awful. Who would run our government without lobbyist money?” Moorg said.
Grog frowned, “What’s government?”
“Nothing yet, but it will be.”
“Oh,” Grog said hesitantly.
As they walked towards the herd, they didn’t notice the big bull elephant that had approached with more silence than could be expected from a five thousand pound pachyderm.
“Ahem,” a big mammoth voice thundered, the sound vibrating the ground.
“Yeah?” the two cavemen asked, looking up in wonder at the huge animal.
“You guys come here looking to eat some elephant?”
Moorg and Grog shuffled their feet, “Well, maybe. We’re a mite peckish.”
“Hmm,” the bull said. “Have you humans invented helmets yet?”
Moorg and Grog looked at each other, “Helmets? What are helmets?”
“I thought not.”
And with that, the mammoth squashed them, wiped them off his feet and went back to the herd.
