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First man did not make the clothes
One day in the Garden of Eden the First Lady decided there should be clothing. So Adam, who'd been doing all the fruit, root and vegetable gathering (with one terrible exception), was sent out to see what he could find. No problem. He came back in 15 minutes with an armful of fig leaves.
“What are these?” Eve asked.
“They're fig leaves,” Adam replied. “If you string them together with these little vines I picked up, they'll work fine.”
“Do they come in any other colors?”
Adam scratched his head. “No, I think they only come in green. Can I go now? I'm supposed to be naming some new animals this afternoon.”
“There must be different shades of green at least. Look, these two are darker, almost blue,” Eve pointed out “I'm not going to wear pale leaves. They'll make me look fat.”
“Okay, dear, I'll go back and search for a fig tree with the darkest leaves you can imagine,” Adam said.
“Basic black would be good,” Eve said, “and return these vines also. Look at them. They're all stringy and mottled. They'll clash with the leaves. I'm not going to wear just any old thing. What would people think?”
“But Eve, there are no people. There's just you and me.”
“Don't confuse me, Adam.”
So a frustrated Adam spent an entire day in the forest looking for suitably fashionable fig leaves and attractive, non-clashing vines. Exhausted, he sat beneath his 200th fig tree, forlornly chewing on a fig.
“This won't do,” he muttered. “I'll gather the food, build the shelters and fight off the wild animals, but she's going to have to do this clothes-gathering thing. I'll stand firm on that. It's either that way or I want my rib back.”
Gene Newman is a resident of Parsippany.
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