Complex Human Being Reduced To ‘Gutter Guy’ For Purposes Of To-Do List

NASHUA, NH—Taken aback by the cursory and near total diminishment of the living, breathing human being’s multifaceted existence, sources confirmed Monday that a complex individual with rich and intensely personal dreams, ideas, and feelings had been reduced to “gutter guy” for the purposes of an area couple’s to-do list. According to reports, everything from the man’s wife, to his three beloved children, to his rich store of experiences, to the lifetime of memories that cause his beating heart to well with pride and regret and love, were rendered null and void in the cold and offhand stroke of a pen upon a sticky note. Indeed, sources stated that the man’s 51 years of life—more than half a century of vivid and varied joys, heartaches, hopes, and fears—were unfeelingly whittled down to a single line item and tucked summarily and without remorse between the phrases “dry cleaning” and “groceries,” as if this child born of stardust and circumstance, this being unique in the vast tapestry of cosmic time and space was but a one-dimensional, utilitarian tool and nothing more. At press time, with the pitiless writers’ gutters now cleared of blockages and detritus, reports indicated that the phrase “call gutter guy”—the man’s singular remaining facet of an individual identity—had been brusquely crossed out, taking with it the last faint echo of his luminous, vibrant, original essence from cosmological memory.