Here's an easy one for you. Sometime between the years 1979 and 1983
The New Yorker Magazine published a short humorous story. That's the
good news. The bad news is that I have no idea its title nor who wrote
it. But here's what I remember. The story takes place in a school.
High School, College - not sure which. The "I" character is a teacher
in this school. The clearest memory is the part when the "I" character
is walking in the hall and passes a classroom where the students are
discussing the statement "...if there is no God, who pulls the next
Kleenex up?" That's it. That's all I remember. I've been to The New
Yorker site, but have found nothing useful.

My interest in this story (besides just reading it again) is the
answer to the God vs. Kleenex question. I'm dying to know what the
answer is.

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Clarification of Question by beauregard-ga on 06 Jun 2004 15:41 PDT

Miss Pink,
So good to hear from you. Art Hoppe, huh? I used to read him every day
in the Chronicle because I lived in San Francisco until 1985. My
problem with Kleenex is when I pull one out and another doesn't
follow. I assume this precedes your problem, but I attribute the
phenomena to God paying attention to other people's Kleenex, but not
to mine. I've assumed it was a moral failing on my part. That is, it
is a pay back for some sin or another I've committed. I've never been
able to assign a particular sin to a particular Kleenex failure, but
this seems unimportant. I sin so often it's a miracle any Kleenexs
come up at all.

Howdy-hi, Andy. Nice to see you!

I haven't been able to locate your "New Yorker" story, but a quote
about God and the emergence of Kleenex is widely attributed to the
late columnist Art Hoppe, of the San Francisco Chronicle:

://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%22art+hoppe%22+god+kleenex

Personally, although I believe in God, I am not at all certain that
Kleenex-progression is one of His mighty works. The damned things get
stuck (and have to be pried and torn out of the box) often enough that
I suspect an infernal influence here.

That's free will vs. determinism for you.  A nonbeliever myself (or,
rather, I believe in a lot of things, but God isn't one of them), I
prefer to reach into the sort of box with a wide opening and pull out
my own next tissue rather than depending on unpredictable divine
intervention to provide for me, especially during allergy season.

Apteryx

Apteryx

I too was a non-believer until I read about the Kleenex phenomena. The
problem is that He is kept so busy popping up tissues that He doesn't
have time for other issues like poverty, war, pestilence and like
that. We've become a nation so beholden to our Kleenex that we've
diverted His attention from these more pressing problems.

I've tried the kind of tissue where I get to choose how many I take
and have found the problem only worsens. I always take too many, thus
proving the proposition that our nation is run on greed and greed
alone. The box empties far sooner than it should and I am reduced to
poverty replenishing it over and over again.

Oh, Beauregard, I think you are misidentifying this phenomenon.  What
you are seeing here is clearly a karmic effect.  Your action has been
to take too many tissues, greedily arrogating to yourself a tissual
right that you did not possess.  The action that has come back to you
is a simple denial of tissues, enacted through the medium of Kleenex,
and intermittently, so you will not be altogether deprived and so you
will also be mindful of tempering justice with mercy.  Look no
further.  Your answer is here.

Apteryx