Category: My stories

I know there’s a lot of noise about competitive swimming right now.
I don’t swim. Competitively or recreationally.
And I’ve never been in a situation that the gym teachers warned me about.
Falling off of a boat?
I hate boats.
If there’s racing, I’d think you would want to outrace a shark.
Or outrace others also fleeing that shark.
As for the rest, I really don’t know.
I think a lot of people don’t know.
But they feel compelled to say something.
I suppose this is saying something.
Irrelevant, sure. Which is what a lot of what people say is.

I’ve been to a lot of shitty concerts, but the shittiest was The Pointer Sisters at the Boston Palisades.
Early Eighties. After the Neutron Dance.
They had just enough left in them to sell out and be One Hit Wonders again.
My aunt and uncle had gotten tickets and they were excited.
Of course, being selfish assholes, they’d only gotten tickets for themselves.
The rest of us were stuck wandering outside the venue, listening to badly-echoing sloppy seconds for the unwashed masses.
I sent them a Best Of The Pointer Sisters CD for their anniversary.
Well, okay. Just the case.

As a kid, I remember sleepovers.
You’d bring a sleeping bag and a change of clothes and a toothbrush.
I also remember changing my mind and asking to be picked up and taken home.
Although, sometimes, it was walking distance, so I wouldn’t bother calling.
I’d just take my things back home again.
The other kid’s parents would freak out.
Did I run away?
I got scolded for that.
So, instead of just taking everything, I’d pack some bloody clothes I’d saved from playground scrapes, and toss them around.
Let them think I was dragged off by coyotes or pirates.

Mindy was the finest event planner in the world.
Fundraisers always call Mindy. It isn’t a party without her.
Finding perfect venues, perfect caterers, perfect decorations and entertainment.
“Mindy throws the best parties,” attest many of the attendees.
They hand over checks, some discreetly, and some flamboyantly, with oversized symbolic checks to stand with and hold up and get their photo taken.
Then the perfect cleaners come to clean up.
“Sorry,” Mindy says to the fundraisers, taking her fee. “There’s no money left. But it was one hell of a party.”
As her cell phone rings… another event to plan.

The zoo has had a problem with animals escaping.
“Danger Zoo!” the headlines called it.
So, they put in better fences, and ran training drills.
Zoo workers put on lion suits and roam around the zoo.
Then other workers then implement crowd control, collaborating to contain the fake animals and returning them to their cages.
The visitors love to watch these exercises.
So much, the zoo got rid of all the animals and just displayed people in animal suits.
“Escaping” every so often.
As for the real animals, they’re roaming loose in the city.
Here, put on this lion suit.

Back in college, I called some people friends.
Every so often, we’d go to a dumpling house and order a whole table of food and split the check.
Pass plates around, maybe there was some left of what I wanted. But, usually, the others gobbled it up.
Then they’d order too much of something only they liked, or extra things to go, like vegetable dumplings.
We graduated, some of us still went there, but the bullshit continued.
Someone’s sloppy kid was knocking over plates and glasses. I blew up.
I threw a twenty on the table and never looked back.

Back in grade school, we stole a canoe from a shed and paddled out to a small island in the middle of the reservoir lake.
We named it West Muenster, even though we lived east of Muenster Texas.
And none of us liked Muenster cheese.
We only liked the name of it.
Every Saturday, we’d bring wood and nails and tools to the island, and we’d work on our clubhouse.
Until one day, the canoe was gone from the shed, and when we looked through binoculars out at the island, the clubhouse was gone.
So we used the shed instead.

Children of all ages, far and wide, love The Poppy Show.
Government stations air it twice a day.
Six and six.
Large monitors in every public square.
Everything stops so citizens can watch.
And when it is over, they applaud. And cheer.
They make such a show of applauding and cheering.
But not out of compulsion, mind you.
Everyone truly loves The Poppy Show.
They’d watch it more, if they could, but twice a day is all a person can handle.
I’ve seen what three viewings in a day can do.
I’ve seen the asylums.
And cannot unsee the horror.

Little Red Riding Hood hated her grandmother.
The old bat insisted on living in a remote cottage in the woods instead of moving into a retirement home.
Forcing her granddaughter to bring meals every day, bring medicine, do chores, and so on.
“I need to go to school,” said Red.
But her mother would hear nothing of it, smacking her daughter and sending her to the woods.
“I can help you with your problem,” said The Big Bad Wolf.
Red agreed, and the Wolf ate the grandmother.
“Oh thank God,” said Red. “Thank you.”
And then, the Woodsman showed up.

You’re supposed to call 811 before you do any digging.
That way, you can avoid hitting buried cables, or water mains, or gas lines.
Ted didn’t call before he dug a hole.
But he didn’t hit any power lines or pipes.
Instead, he uncovered an ancient stone stairway that went down beyond the range of his cell phone’s built-in light.
Strange whispers drifted up from the depths.
When Ted called 811, the city sent out a team of priests and a goat to sacrifice.
“If we’re not back in an hour, cover the hole,” they said, and descended the stairs.