Category: My stories

After I finish laundry, I hang it.
No, I don’t hang it up. I literally hang it.
I put all my laundry on a chair.
Then, I tie a noose at the end of a rope, throw the other end over a tree branch, and tie it down.
When a crowd gathers, I put the laundry in the noose and ask if it has any last words before I kick the chair out from under it.
The laundry jerks around a bit at the end of the rope before it stops swinging.
You shouldn’t have rustled all those cattle, laundry.

It’s not easy being an imaginary friend.
Especially to a kid they’ve pumped full of drugs.
I feel a bit guilty, since it’s my fault they’re doing this to him.
Seeing him out in the playground, talking to me.
The teachers were concerned.
The other parents at the school.
After that, his parents.
And finally the doctors.
They tried therapy, then went to the pills.
Sometimes, the pills work, because there’s a jump in time for me.
But I still come back.
Maybe he’ll talk to me. Try to hug me.
And other times, he covers his ears and screams.

I want to clean out the big closet.
Got a lot of stuff I don’t need in it.
Trash bags full of papers that aren’t important anymore.
Boxes for things that probably won’t need boxing up ever again.
And the boxes are too big to let the cats play in.
Or, I suppose, live in if I decide to quit my job and become a bum.
I’m a little too old to make a play house out of them.
It’s strictly sofa cushions at my age.
Get the hell away from my fort.
Or I’ll burn down your cardboard box.

Back in the day, you had Sammy and Dean and Frank.
And Debbie and Elvis and all the headliners.
When they were done for the night, they went to see Don.
And Don would rip into all of them, and they laughed and laughed and laughed.
The manager would work the line, picking people out to fill front row seats.
Then, he’d tell Don: I got a fat guy, an ugly woman, a skinny Japanese guy.
“You got any Germans?” asked Don.
The manager nodded, and Don picked up his microphone and walked to the stage.
And the music began.

Tostitos ended their sponsorship of the Fiesta Bowl years ago.
I guess they didn’t want to be associated with exploiting amateur athletes working for millionaire head coaches or the serious injuries that the football industry produces.
Good for them. Nobody with integrity wants to be associated with such an unethical branch of academic institutions as gladiatorial athletics are.
Instead of the resulting concussions and CET and broken limbs that result from football, no matter what meaningless safety measures are imposed, Tostitos now focuses on promoting obesity, strokes, heart disease, diabetes, and all the other medical conditions that their products cause.

The skies turned dark, the heavens rained fire, the oceans turned red, and a chorus of angelic voices spread over the world.
“It’s The Rapture!” said someone, and, knowing that only the devout would be taken up and saved, we all fell to our knees and prayed.
All of the sudden, the chorus stopped.
I looked around.
Everyone was still there.
Nobody was missing, no piles of empty clothes, no abandoned cars or anything.
Of course, this meant we were all doomed to Hell for our sins.
“What’s new about that?” I said, and waked to Starbucks for a latte.

After my dad died, my mother came to live with us.
Under one condition:
The room she was moving into had a plant.
“You can stay as long as that plant’s healthy,” I said.
So, my mother watered that plant every day.
And it stayed green and the flowers were always in bloom.
It was perfectly fine for five years.
My mother was not. The dementia took a hold of her, and she ended up bedridden and confused.
Until she died.
When we were clearing out her things, I picked up the plastic plant.
Maybe we’ll bury her with it.