"How do you manage to live without touching anything?" he asked.
"What do you mean? I touch all kinds of things."
"Nothing important, though. You walk through your life, looking but not touching. 'Reality is a museum to be preserved,' I think you once said." He looked stern.
"That was back in high school, though. I was stupid in high school."
"It's the same you," He was glaring. "You're just older; all that garbage has had more years to worm its insidious way into your being."
"That's not fair."
"Of course its not. The question is, where's the anascarid?" he quipped.
"I don't even know what that means. Is this like your karma-wheel-o-ole thing?"
"Kamakowiwo'ole, and no." The conversation was beginning to wear on him. His attention was elsewhere. "This is just what I said it was. I don't know how you can live without touching anything."
"You said, and here I'm throwing your words back at you, 'Everything I touch, I destroy.'."
"I'll use your high school defense." His attention was back again.
"Come on, that's lame. You can't use my defense. You never finished high school."
"Whatever. I said what I had to say." And he went back to sleep.