Short Stories (Why write them, why read them?)

For me, at least, a short story has this in its favor. Compare it to a meal at your favorite restaurant. Is it the main course, even if you put together two or three such offerings? No. Is it the dessert, to be savored after the main course? No, again. It is the appetizer. It prepares you for the main course. It lightens the atmosphere or sets it. It is the story you have time to read while waiting for a bus, or in a doctor's office or utilizing the last fifteen minutes of your lunch break. It fills a void and as such has its own merits. If you add up (over the course of your lifetime) the time spent waiting, with little or nothing to fill the void... how long would that be? Hours? Days? Weeks? Months? Years? Would you even notice it if, instead of cursing your bad luck at being in the slowest moving line, you found yourself chuckling at a short story? It now becomes a topic of conversation with a colleague or an opening line in a chat with a stranger sitting next to you on a plane. Something you can use to fill in an awkward moment when on a first date. The memory of such a story might bring a smile to one's face whilst daydreaming or sunbathing at the side of a pool. Just like humor, it has versatility, only this time in bite-sized chunks.