The Digital Life

Thum started tapping, merrily.

"Stop that obscenity, will ya??!!".

"Obscenity....that would be your middle name, amigo! Don't go around projecting yourself...".

"I'm the tallest around here... I can't help myself.", Mitto replied a bit woefully.

"You don't do much else, do you?"

"True, the only one who pulls his weight around here is Litto".

"He leads the sway, senor! Why are midgets called so anyway? They ought to be called littgets or shortgets or something, don't you agree?", Dexto interjected.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah... Dexto, you sound so annoyingly bookwormish!", Ringo's voice rang out.

"Well, you sound like a silly ringworm to me! Or perhaps a bee-hee-hee-tle!", Dexto buckled once in a paroxysm of derisive glee and then chuckled in bouts of whittling amusement.

"You people need to stop being such bad neighbors. I'm so thankful I only have one, even one like Dexto", Litto lamented.

"Yeah, me too! I need to start throwing my weight around so you little folks can carry on together!", Thum nodded.

"Bah! Pretensions of magnitude. Truth is we're all little tendrils bearing the weight of those hairy trunks... Why, even my name is a travesty. The real dextrous one sits way up there like a tender petal... caressing hair, playing music, writing poems, savoring food... We're the poor dregs that nobody pays any attention to."

"We get all that dirt heaped upon us."

"Not to speak of collecting more from below."

"Except for dress-up days, when we get cleaned, filed, painted... ahhh, what royal treatment! Can't wait for the next one..."

"Only fools find pleasure in being mutilated... I grow my glorious crown so lovingly for days and then in one fell swoop, they hack it away only to be consigned to an inglorious heap!!"

"Well, ours don't matter much to us anyway! Can't hardly call them crowns... more like little party hats."

"Ditto".

"Stop wallowing in our collective misery! You people ought to count your blessings!"

"How do you expect us to do that? "

"In digits."