Category: My stories

I bought a sodastream a few years ago for the office.
A coworker and I made Italian sodas every few days.
Then, the coworker left, and the pandemic hit.
And I didn’t pick up the sodastream until I left that job two years later.
The bottles were missing. The canister was out of gas.
So, I swapped the canister for a fresh one, got some flavorings, and picked up replacement bottles.
The bottles didn’t fit in the machine.
They were shaped for a newer version.
I had to order the old style bottles.
All this to save money on sodas.

There are so many different pillows on the market.
Feather pillows, cotton pillows, foam pillows, and so on.
Some are hypoallergenic. Others draw heat and moisture.
They’re stuffed to varying degrees of firmness, too.
The same variation goes for pillowcases.
Cotton, silk, special fabrics.
They all serve their purposes.
And each has their special laundering instructions.
Would you combine a memory foam pillow with a silk pillowcase?
Hell no.
So, forgive me, warden, if I continue to complain about the pillow and pillowcase quality here.
And the laundry.
But this kind of shit got me here in the first place.

She’d been alone for years.
She thought she’d never find someone special.
And then, he showed up.
He was perfect.
Handsome, strong, patient, understanding.
Too bad he wasn’t real.
She’d dreamed him up.
And even though she could see him, hear him, feel him…
He wasn’t real.
But it didn’t matter.
She went to dinner with him.
She went to the movies with him.
She did everything with him.
And when she introduced him to her parents, and he got down on one knee, she said yes.
Two days later, he sat by her hospital bed, holding her hand, smiling.

I don’t think of them as Registered Trademarks or Copyright Symbols anymore.
I think of them as demonic R’s and C’s that some angry intellectual property lawyer’s wizard summoned from Hell.
Thankfully, they used the proper magic circles to bind those monsters and prevent them from running amok.
The problem is when they summon a regular Trademark Symbol from Hell.
That TM shows up without any protective circle.
Sometimes, they use protective parentheses, but that leaves the TM two avenues of escape.
I don’t feel so bad about a intellectual property lawyer getting slaughtered, but the wizard didn’t deserve it.

Shelby loved to go clubbing.
The more exclusive the club, the better.
A bodyguard at the door.
Checking a list. On a clipboard.
Or some app on a tablet, a finger to an earpiece.
That was a good sign.
Then a roped-off section with another bodyguard.
Down a flight of stairs, or up a glass elevator.
Up a mountainside, or a cavern only reachable with scuba gear.
Blindfolded and shoved in the trunk of a limousine.
And then, the greatest of all clubs.
Nobody knew its name. The city. Or the country.
Shelby searched for years, but never found it.

John Madden had three rules for his team:
Be on time, pay attention, and play like hell.
And his players were on time, paid attention, and they sure played like hell.
One of the Madden rules wasn’t “Wear a suit and tie on the plane.”
He said that kind of crap never won a damn game, so he didn’t care what they wore as long as they wore their pads and jerseys on the field.
As long as they were on time for the flight.
I wonder if Madden’s Raiders still alive will wear suits and ties for his funeral.

I started with a simple 8 crayon box.
I saw other kids with 16 crayon boxes and felt jealous.
So, I got one.
The next day, all the other kids had 24 crayon boxes.
When I got mine, they all had 32 crayon boxes.
The next day, they had 64 crayon boxes.
With built-in sharpeners, no less.
The 72 box came in a neat case.
The 120 box was made out of rich Corinthian leather.
And 152 box had a combination lock and alarm system.
We all still drew like fucking idiots.
And the crayon company got richer and richer.

It’s been over a year since I was last at the office.
I hated it when people would corner me in my office and ask for help for something they could just fucking Google or look up themselves.
And they wouldn’t take “I don’t know” for an answer.
Some would figure it out and say I figured it out, are you proud of me?
Others would say “I figured it out, no thanks to you.”
I’d snap back “Well, look it up yourself next time!”
Now, I just tell them I’ll get back to them.
And nap in my bathroom.

When there’s a tropical storm or a winter freeze, the water pressure is sure to drop.
So it makes sense to fill up the tub so I have toilet flushing water.
The problem is, I’ve remembered to fill up pitchers with drinking water, but I forgot to fill up the tub.
Thank goodness it’s raining, though.
I hooked up the rainspout to fill up the coleman coolers with water.
Sure, it’s nasty dirty water, but for toilet flushing, it’s water enough.
I dump the colemans into the tub, and it fills up.
And I slip, and trip, and fall in.