Back when God created the heavens and the earth, he planted a garden in a place called Eden. Today, no one is really sure where Eden was, despite the strangeness and historical significance of events which took place there.
It was in this garden where the first man lived. His name was Adam. God made a variety of beautiful trees in the garden, which produced food for Adam. There were also two special trees: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
The Lord God put Adam in the garden to dress it and keep it. He told him to eat freely from all the trees but one. Adam could snack on the tree of life all he wanted, but the knowledge tree was off limits.
"Thou shalt not eat of it," God said. "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." God apparently wanted to test his latest inventions: free will and poison. He must have also simply enjoyed taunting Adam.
Nonetheless, God soon decided it was time create a woman, since watching Adam gorge on the tree of life all day by himself must have been about as interesting as the infinite time God spent in whatever mysterious nothingland he hung out in before deciding to create life.
Rather than just make a woman appear up from the dust, God decided it was time for some real performance art. Not wanting to show off, however, he first made sure he had no audience by causing a deep sleep to fall on Adam. Maybe he slipped a little flunitrazepam into the tree of life, but it was probably just simple Godly magic that got the job done.
Reaching through Adam's flesh, God pulled out a rib and made a woman out of it. This must have been pretty awesome, leaving Adam quite upset about having slept through it. Still, he had a woman now, so things were looking up.
"This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh," Adam said. "She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man." A sense of superiority was certainly appropriate for Adam to have. Like father, like son, as the saying goes.
The woman's name was Eve. Adam cleaved unto her, and they were one flesh. They were both naked, and were not ashamed. Those were the good old days, before there were any better looking people around.
Paul Lundgren is a newspaper columnist and a very nice man. His e-mail address is paul @ geekprom.com.
