[lemming]

There's a great short story whose name I always assumed I had in my memory banks until I went to get it and it wasn't there.

It's set near the present day and involves people who've learned how to step out of their bodies and exist, like the first amphibians crawling onto land, without them. They keep spare bodies in body storage centers and use them when they feel like it (the narrator, who was a middle-aged man, was hurt that his was just scrapped). Every year they have a parade where people get into bodies, and some poor shmuck has to march in the shabby old body of the guy who first invented the technique of leaving them (his name started with a K). They're just people, but not everyone accepts the way they're living. The plot involves the narrator's wife, Madge, getting trapped in a gorgeous body that's been tied up by their enemies (for whatever reason you had to be walking to leave a body). She gets back out, I think just by bluffing that everyone she knows will inhabit her captors' bodies and march them off cliffs. The whole story has a very charming tone and is more about the idea than the plot. Has anyone else read this and know what it is?

thanks,
lemming

[dune dude]

The name of the story is "Unready to Wear" by one of my favourite writers Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. You can find it in "Welcome to the Monkey House". Hope this is of some help.

[lemming]

Thanks dune dude! That definitely is the right title. Now the weird thing is that I *own* Welcome to the Monkey House... but I didn't think I'd read the story in years and years. Here's assuming I'm wrong on that.