It was a lovely, bright and almost sickeningly sunny summer afternoon. The breeze blew past the flowers and the trees and whispered sounds of peace and joy throughout the small residential neighborhood. Mike Nesmith walked down the well-kept street, enjoying the quiet and breaking the soft silence with a tuneless hum. Almost imperceptibly, his contentment was broken by the muffled sounds of crying. Just down the road, a small girl sat, head in her arms, sobbing.

Filled with concern and natural human sympathy, he asked her what the matter was.

"My kitty won't come out of that tree," she sniffed, pointing up at the offending vegetation.

Mike smiled and failed to do a number of things just then. Contrary to what people might expect, he did not laugh rudely at the child, and say scornfully, "well, that's your problem, not mine." He didn't even strip to his boxers and chant the proud cry of the Texas Prairie Chicken. Instead, his heart warmed by the pleasant day, he agreed to climb the tree and retrieve the poor feline.

He successfully scaled the tree with a minimum of trouble, and within ten minutes had gotten control of the kitten. He did not fall out of the tree. Nor did the cat scratch him beyond all hope of repair. Instead, no mishaps occured whatsoever.

"Gee, thanks mister," the girl said. "Do you want a dougnut?"

Faced with another of life's annoying little jokes, Mike did not scream at the girl for mentioning that word, nor did he smash his fist into the tree. Instead, he thanked whatever entity was controlling his existence that she hadn't also managed to shove the words wall or non-existent into the sentence, and shook his head no.

"Sorry, darlin', but I gotta go," he smiled.

Amazingly enough, nothing happened to Mike on the way home. The sky did not suddenly cloud over and strike him down with a lightning bolt, he wasn't hit by a car, he didn't even turn his ankle going up the steps.

As he reached down to open the door to the pad, his eye was caught by a little paper sign hanging from the knob. He bent down and looked at it.

"One nice day, just to prove a point. We now return you to your regularly scheduled life."