Morning Exercise

  What's your opinion of the purple sandpiper?"

    "I have no opinion, especially not of a bird I have never seen, barely heard of, and that, quite possibly, doesn't exist except in the minds of certain people I know who will remain anonymous for the duration of this conversation."

    She smiles in acknowledgement of his ability to craft a run-on sentence with a predictable tone of authority on a topic he knows virtually nothing about. "So, you have no opinion?" she says.

    "That's what I just said. But, as you probably know, when considering sandpipers, I do prefer the Least with its small size and the characteristic downward curve to the bill."

    "Small size?"

    He nods. "As the name implies the Least Sandpiper barely weighs half a pound, yet it manages to cover most of North America, the far north and the deep south."

    "I see," she says. "Because it's the least it can do."

    "Exactly. The range of the purple sandpiper is probably so narrow that. . ."

    ". . . that it's hard for an avian expert like yourself to . . ."

    ". . . develop a sufficiently informed opinion." He pauses, raises his eyebrows and says, "Now, if you don't mind . . ."

    "Of course," she says, and they both bend to their phones, relieved to be back to the real world of more information than anybody ever needed to know.