Once there was a land where pretty, happy creatures with smiles on their faces lived. They played together all day, and had a dreadfully good time.
The sun was always shining, the air was always warm, and in the distance tall mountains shone green and the blue ocean sparkled.
The creatures were of the fortunate variety that does not have to work very hard. Delicious food grew everywhere, and other creatures to prepare it, were plentiful. The other creatures also built beautiful, spacious dwellings for them. The pretty, happy creatures were free to sit around and have good ideas, and sometimes, even make them happen.
But despite appearancs, the creatures carried with them a tragic deformity of which they themselves were unaware. You see, the creatures were each enclosed in a two-foot wide, clear, protective plastic-like covering.
Each creature was very like one of those self-sustaining universes, if you've ever seen one. If you haven't, you should sometime. They are little round balls sealed off, where miniature shrimp live out their whole lives without ever knowing about the big world we live in.
It was very nearly the same for these unfortunate, fortunate creatures. When they shook hands, or so they thought, they bumped into each other, shoulder to shoulder. The firm, clear bubble around them bounced them back, several feet away from each other even as they greeted one another.
But the worst was when the creatures tried to kiss. They bumped and bounced awkwardly. Then each waddled off in their separate directions, going back to their happy, fabulous lives, feeling as if something special had happened. And no, there was nothing necessarily not-special about bumping and bouncing, but the tragedy was that the creatures did not know that that was what had taken place.
They did not know they were enclosed in a thick layer of protective air, so they did not know what it really was to touch or feel.
They even went so far as to sometimes share air. They'd pop a little hole in each other's protective layering and suck air out of each other to refill their own layer. And still, the creatures found this normal, even fun, because it was all they knew.
And when they happily waddled off in their separate directions, going back to their fabulous, insulated lives, they didn't notice that the holes leaked a little, leaving them each a bit deflated. And so, the happy, warm creatures lived, content to be safe and warm, never knowing and therefore not caring that they did not, in actuality, know what it was to touch, and therefore know, another creature.
Until one day.
A small, exposed creature, shorter, thinner and yet with a certain, shall we say, thickness to her, at least in comparison to the clear bulbousness of the more-fortunate creature, pointed this difference out one day.
She stopped tending the plants that made the hills so green, put away her tools that made so many houses so easily, and she stood beneath a beautiful, deflating creature and looked up at him or her, she couldn't be sure, with all that bubble-wrap.
"Hey, come on out!" she said.
"What do you mean? I am out," said the creature. And indeed, in this land where 'being out' meant knowing and saying which version of creature you preferred to bump and exchange air with, the creature was correct.
"No, not out like that, I mean out here, with the green hills and the blue water, and the warm sun."
"But what on earth do you mean?" said the creature, because he was standing outside, with the smaller, skinnier yet thicker creature at that very moment.
"This is what I mean," she said, and without warning, she did the unthinkable, the unimaginable! She picked up her housing tool, and pop, pop, she punctured the protective covering and off it fell.
The creature stood in alarm. "What is that feeling?" he asked, as the sun touched his bare skin. "It's warmth," said she. And she dropped her tool to the ground, and stood on her tippy-toes and reached, reached, until she could place her lips on his. And when the creature felt what he had been missing, he forgot his so-called happy, safe life and remembered only the knowledge of touch.
And the creature knew what it was to love.