The Toynbee Convector by Ray Bradbury

tough. I mean, it was all so new. How in hell do you describe it. You can’t, so I won’t—”
    “George, for goodness sake, cut the cackle and get us a table,” said his mother.
    “This is our table,” said the son, pointing at the empty places. He suddenly realized he had forgotten to light the candle, and did so, with trembling hands. “Sit down. Have some wine!”
    “Your father shouldn’t drink wine,” his mother started to say. “For God’s sake,” his father said, “it doesn’t make any difference now.”
    “I forgot.” His mother felt herself in a strange, tentative way, as if she had just tried on a new dress and the seams were awry. “I keep forgetting.”
    “It’s the same as forgetting you’re alive.” His father barked a laugh. “People live seventy years and after a while don’t notice. Forget to say, hell, I’m alive! When that happens, you might as well be—”
    “George,” said his mother.
    “Look at it this way,” said his father, sitting down and leaving his wife and son standing. “Before you’re born’s one condition, living’s a second condition, and after you’re through is a third. In each state you forget to notice, say: Hey, I’m on first base, I’m on second! Well, hell, here we are on third, and like your mom says, she sometimes forgets. I can have as much damned wine as I want!”
    He poured wine all around, and drank his, much too quickly. “Not bad!”
    “How can you tell?” said the son, then bit his tongue.
    But his father had not heard, and patted the seat beside him. “Come on, Ma!”

“Don’t call me Ma. I’m Alice!”

“Ma-Alice, come on\” His mother slid in on one side, and the son slid in on
    the other side of his father. For the first time, as they got settled, the son had a chance to really look at what his parents were wearing.
    His father wore a tweed jacket and knickers for golfing and high, brightly patterned, Argyle socks. His shoes were a light sunburnt orange, highly polished, his tie was black with tangerine stripes, and on his head he wore a cap with a broad brim, made of some brown tweed stuff, very fresh looking and new.
    “You look great, Dad. Mom—”
    She was wearing her good Lodge go-to-meeting coat, a gray woolen affair, under which she wore a blue and white silk dress with a light blue scarf at her neck. On her head was a kind of mushroom cloche, the sort of cap aging flappers wore, with ruby stickpins thrust through to hold it tight to their marcelled curls.
    “Where have I seen your outfits before?” asked the son.
    But before they could answer, he remembered: a snapshot of himself and his brother on the front lawn some Memorial Day or July 4 long years ago. There they were, secretly pinching one another, dressed in their knickers and coats and caps, their folks behind them, squinting out at a noon that would last forever.
    His father read his thoughts and said, “Right after Baptist service, Easter noon, nineteen twenty-seven. Wore my golf clothes. Ma had a fit.”
    “What are you both yammering about?” His mother fussed in her purse, drew forth a mirror, and checked her Tangee mouth, etching it with her little finger.
    “Nothing, Alice-Ma.” His father refilled his glass but this time, seeing his son watching, drank the wine slower. “Not bad, once you get used to it It’s not the hard stuff, though. Whiskey is more like it Where’s the menu? Hell, here it is. Let’s have a look.”
    His father took a long time angling the menu and peering at the print “What’s this French stuff on the list?” he cried. “Why can’t they use English? Who do they think they are ?”

“It is in English, dad See. There.” The son underlined several items on the menu with his fingernail. “Hell,” snorted his father, staring at the lines, “why didn’t they say so?”
    “Pa,” said his mother, “just read the English and choose .”
    “Always had trouble choosing. What’s everyone else eating? What’s