Category: My stories

When you drop something on your foot and cause a bleed under your toenail, or jam your foot against something in the dark, it’s interesting to document the months it takes for the line of black to grow out from the root.
Clipping a little off every few days, taking a snapshot with your phone, the line eventually comes to the edge, and you file off the last of it. And you’re back to normal.
And swear to always wear socks and shoes everywhere.
Until you head off for bed, trip over something, and jam your toe against something else.

A lot of tech companies offer subsidized cafeterias or free delivery lunches.
Ours offers credits for snack vending machines and a daily lunch buffet.
However, with the coronavirus fears, shared buffets like that could lead to some dangerous situations.
And coming to the office may become a hazard in and of itself.
Especially when there’s one or two troglodytes who don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom.
Truly disgusting.
So, they’re having people work from home and they’re offering an allowance for meals to be delivered.
Which works out fine… until the people at the delivery services get sick.

Michael Faraday, the scientist, discovered and invented many things.
One such item was the Faraday Cage.
It’s a cage made out of electrically conductive material that blocks magnetic fields.
It is not a cage in which to keep Faradays.
That was something private between Michael Faraday and his wife Sarah Barnard.
Especially considering how if word got out about that particular cage to his Sandemanian Christian congregation.
A deacon and elder of the church behaving in such a depraved fashion?
His secret was buried with him… because, instead of a proper coffin, he was buried in that naughty little enclosure.

At first, airlines allowed passengers with disabilities to bring their helper animals on board.
You know, blind or crippled people with their dogs.
Then, people claimed to need emotional support animals.
They claimed that they were trained, but emotionally-unbalanced people lie, you know.
So, they brought cats and chickens and lizards and snakes and ponies.
To the point where their desire for emotional comfort caused massive emotional unrest among the other passengers.
That’s when some clown claimed that they should be allowed to bring their emotional support elephant.
“Get a fucking life, asshole,” said the airlines. “And take the train.”

Did I know Mindy Blake?
Yes, but I knew the Mindy Blake from a parallel dimension.
She looked the same, but the other Mindy Blake took chances, took risks.
She lived life to the fullest.
Such a shame I had to kill her.
It was either that, or the universe ending.
Because of that Mindy Blake.
As opposed to this Mindy Blake, the one here.
Craven little thing.
“You’re a disgrace to the name of Mindy Blake,” I said.
She wasn’t on my kill list, but she deserved it.
When I’m done, I’ll come back.
So you can thank me.

It was an honest mistake at the bakery.
On the same day, they had to deliver a bunch of cakes.
A graduation cake, a gay wedding cake, a baby shower cake, a retirement party cake, a birthday cake…
Pretty much, every occasion you could think of, there was a cake that had been ordered.
And the bakery labeled each of the boxes wrong.
Oh, the chaos that ensued. Hilarious, tragic… the bakery’s reputation was ruined.
The fact that nobody opened the box to look at their cake to make sure it was right, well, that was the real mistake, right?

Back in the days of video tape, I’d use the handycam to record a lot of important things.
Weddings. Birthdays. Those things.
I’d also record a lot of shows that I didn’t have time to watch or were going on at the same time as something else I wanted to watch.
The problem was, I’d run out of tapes, or I’d accidentally record over something I wanted to keep.
Nowadays, you record stuff digitally, although for a while you could run out of disk space, now you can store it all in the cloud.
Now, what was my fucking password?

Every time my dad came home from a convention, he’d bring all kinds of neat stuff.
Keychains, flashlights, strange decks of cards, and other things.
One year, he came home with a frisbee-sized foam-rubber nickel.
“It’s a flying nickel,” he said. “You two can share it.”
My brother grabbed it and threw it around the house.
I asked for a chance to play with it.
He shoved me to the floor, and I screamed.
So, my mother took it away, yelled “SO YOU TWO CAN’T SHARE?” and tore it in half.
Thank god she never did that with the dog.

When I drive in to work, there’s a billboard along the freeway that displays the jackpots for the Powerball and the Mega Millions lotteries.
I usually buy a ticket on Wednesday afternoon and don’t look at it.
Then, on the next morning, when I look up at the billboard on the way to work, if the number has reset, maybe it’s me that won the jackpot.
And I can delude myself into thinking I can arrive at work, look up the numbers, and tell everyone to go fuck themselves.
As opposed to when I tell them to fuck themselves anyway.