Before Arlo Guthrie was born, his one-year-old sister Kathy was badly injured in a fire. Badly injured as in she was going to die, and indeed she did die within a day or two. But straight after the accident she was rushed to hospital, and her parents Woody and Marjorie summoned from their seperate days. Marjorie arrived first, and had to fill in a number of forms with the nurse before seeing her dying daughter – frustrating, clearly, in the extreme.
“What religion?” said the nurse.
“Put all,” said Marjorie.
The nurse was doubtful. “I can’t put all.”
“Then put none.”
“You aren’t religious?”
“Yes, we are,” said Marjorie. “Put all.”
It was unresolved, but there was no time, and Marjorie ran to her dying daughter.
Moments later a desperate, devastated Woody ran in to the hospital. The nurse, her forms still worryingly unfilled and hoping to solve the conundrum, asked: “What’s your religion?”
He yelled over his shoulder as he sprinted down the hallway. “It’s all or nothing!”
