Category: My stories

I keep forgetting to start my smartwatch with my treadmill walks.
And, unlike outdoor walks, it doesn’t automatically nag me about indoor walks.
It just sees my heart rate go up and it prays I keep over so it can be regifted to someone who doesn’t shame it with a stupid cat photo as a watch face.
I had a message written on the treadmill to remind me, but I don’t look there.
So I put a post-it over the start button which I have to lift out of the way to start it.
If only I used the treadmill.

Instead of walking to the grocery store, I needed more than I could carry.
So, I drove to the grocery store.
When I got my overloaded cart back to my car, there was a flyer in my car’s door handle.
I pulled it out and read it… a flier for a psychic.
I crumpled it up and tossed it in a grocery bag.
Looking at all the fliers on the ground, I wasn’t the only one ignoring it.
I mean, did they predict that? People ignoring all your spam?
Then why bother printing and hanging all these fliers at all?

Adolphus is a kind, sweet old man.
He goes to the Commonwealth Bank every day and brings the lady at the window flowers.
And a stickup note.
The lady smiles, puts all of the cash in a bag, and hands it to Adolphus.
He smiles, tips his hat, and goes across the street to the National Bank.
Where he hands the lady at the window flowers.
And a deposit slip.
Then he goes home and takes a nap.
The lady at the National Bank brings the money back to the Commonwealth Bank.
“See you tomorrow,” she says, with a wink.

Arthur joined the crowd at the shore, staring at the whale that had beached itself and died.
Some kids had gotten up on the whale and had their friends take pictures, but the beast had started to decompose and so they fell through the skin and ended up covered in rotten whale guts.
Instead of hacking the whale to pieces and dragging them back into the water, Arthur suggested using dynamite to blow the thing up.
And they did.
It rained whale guts for five minutes, smashing car windows and mailboxes.
Seagulls and dogs went around gobbling up the offal.

Teddy had a crush on the school nurse.
It started when he scraped his knee and she put a bandage on it.
His heart swooned. (The nurse checked that, too.)
To keep seeing her, Teddy got himself into a lot of accidents.
Or he said he got into a lot of accidents.
The nurse noticed that some of the wounds looked like their were self-inflicted.
She called the principal, and the principal calls Teddy’s parents.
Now, Teddy’s off to the school psychologist.
He’s got a crush on her now.
Makes up all kinds of stories.
Especially about the school nurse.

Walt Disney cut the ribbon himself to open Tomorrowland at Disneyland.
It was meant to be a vision of the future.
Then, the future came… and went.
Some attractions stayed up-to-date, but many didn’t.
And they became Todayland. Then Yesterdayland.
Tomorrowland opened in Florida. And Paris. And Hong Kong.
And those Tomorrowlands aged badly, too.
EPCOT was out-of-date from day one.
Might as well call it EPCOY.
Then, the Obsoletelands became Retro… like Steampunk shows people an alternate steam-driven future.
Too bad the safety technology didn’t get updated.
Ouch. Poor bastard.
You grab the kid’s head, I’ll grab his feet.

Bob Hope took his show to the soldiers time and time again.
He also did NBC specials.
He’d read cue cards while his costars were expected to memorize lines.
It looked disconcerting when he’d talk to an off-camera cue card instead of the other actors.
As he got older, his vision got worse, so he couldn’t read the cards.
And his hearing got worse, so he couldn’t hear the prompts in the earpiece.
At his funeral, the eulogy was read off of cue cards.
While one blank cue card was held by the coffin.
To remind him to remain quiet.

For the most ironic words ever spoken, you have to credit Nellie Connally, the wife of the Texas Governor sitting next to JFK in the limo as they drove through the streets of Dallas.
Crowds cheering. People waving.
The people in the open-top vehicles in the motorcade waving back.
And then, she said those words: “You can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.”
Kennedy agreed, just as bullets ripped through his body.
You could say that Lee Harvey Oswald was from New Orleans.
And spent time in Russia and other places.
So maybe Dallas loved him, but that crazy jackass didn’t.

Bob Ross was a good painter.
He was also a good presenter and narrator.
An excellent teacher, too. He taught art classes around the country.
Selling his brand of art supplies.
Like a Johnny Appleseed, but with art.
Planting art in so many talented minds.
When not on tour, he painted for 30 series of his television show, all at a grueling pace in a tiny university television studio.
Popular and in demand, but exhausted.
The stress wore him down, made him sick.
The greatest painting of them all, Bob Ross had painted himself in a corner.
Unable to stop.

After the storm, the farmhands found Dorothy in the road.
Bandaging the delirious girl’s head, bringing her home.
The stories she told.
Flying monkeys? Witches?
“Madness,” said the doctors.
She spent the next ten years in one hospital after another.
Always asking about her dog. “Where’s Toto?”
Long ago euthanized by the county.
Her aunt and uncle, crops ruined, lost the farm.
They went out to California, died in the desert.
After she was released, Dorothy would watch for storms.
Running into the winds.
Screaming. Laughing.
They never found her body.
Maybe she made it back to Oz after all?