Category: My stories

Ted hobbled around on a bad knee, and when people asked, he said he had an old football injury.
No, Ted didn’t play football.
He was rushing to the Star Wars toys aisle at Toys R Us, but had to go through the Sports section.
Someone had left a football on the floor, and he tripped over it, hurting his knee.
An ambulance came to pick up Ted and take him to the emergency room.
He had health insurance, so everything was covered.
And when he got out of the hospital, he bought that Limited Edition Boba Fett from eBay.

In school, we learned about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.
But nobody ever taught us who were Smoot and Hawley?
I looked them up in WikiPedia
Reed Smoot was a Senator from Utah, a businessman and devout Mormon.
He was one of the church’s Twelve Apostles, but he still became a Senator.
Willis Hawley was a Representative from Oregon.
He taught and administered schools and colleges, and then he entered politics.
Neither seem to be the bumbling, ignorant ogres that modem politicians make them out to be.
Maybe that’s just to distract us from what bumbling, ignorant ogres modern politicians are?

The Mullahs in Iran shout DEATH TO AMERICA.
The crowds shout along with them.
Why hate America so much?
I know that “A Horse with No Name” has dumb lyrics, written by Dewey Bunnell, but calling for their death is just ludicrous.
Maybe it’s because Dan Peek pioneered the current Christian pop music movement?
The mullahs hate Christians. Almost as much as they hate America.
Perhaps it’s because the band members were all sons of US Air Force staff.
Who knows, and who cares? The only thing dumber than the song are the assholes who want America dead for it.

Nobody knows the exact numbers on Satchel Paige.
Scorekeeping and statistics weren’t much of a priority with the Negro Leagues.
And Paige played in other leagues and pickup games in between.
They say he’d go out to the mound all alone on the field, telling the rest of the team to stay in the dugout.
He’d strike everyone out himself.
He struck out the batters, he struck out the coaches, he struck out the umpires.
He struck out the guy selling hot dogs.
He even struck out me while I wrote this story.
Or maybe it was Jackie Robinson.
Whatever.

They say that meat is murder.
It’s just as much murder as using too much paper in the printer is.
You’re not killing trees, you’re just desecrating their corpses with a dozen useless cover pages and Hewlett-Packard test patterns.
If meat were murder, then wearing leather is like that weird serial-killer guy from Silence of the Lambs.
Instead of shouting “MOO!” out the window as you drive past cows in a pasture, you should shout “IT PUTS THE LOTION IN THE BASKET OR IT GETS THE HOSE!”
Then kill the cows, cook them, and enjoy a nice steak dinner.
Delicious!

“The cow says moo,” said the toy.
Timmy smiled, turned the arrow in the center of the toy, and pulled the string again.
“The cow says moo,” said the toy again.
Timmy clapped and laughed, and he made the toy repeat itself for an hour.
Then, when Timmy pulled the string, the toy said, “The cow says stop it, or she’ll go to the barn for an axe to hack you into little pieces.”
Timmy didn’t smile. Or clap. Or laugh.
He put down the toy and watched the door.
When his mother came home from shopping, Timmy pissed himself.

So, Cinco de Mayo is an excuse to eat Mexican food and drink.
And St. Patrick’s Day is an excuse to… is there Irish food?
Potatoes? Corned Beef?
But there’s a lot of drinking, I know that for certain.
Are there other days where we make excuses to drink to celebrate some other national culture?
Russians? Italians? French? Germans?
I sure there are, but they’re not marketed like Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick’s Day, and Independence Day.
The day we eat American food and drink. And blow things up.
Sadly, we don’t blow up the lame and weak American beer.

I took my car to the dealership for an oil change, tire rotation, and other minor regular maintenance.
I sat in a waiting room for a while before a shuttle bus took a group of other customers home.
I met some very nice people on the bus, including a researcher at the university I went to.
I looked out the window to the campus, the old familiar buildings and trees and the new construction.
Then, as the driver headed to my home, I got a text message.
My car was ready.
I laughed, and told him to take me back.

After they turn up the lights, cash out everyone’s tabs, turn off the jukebox, and put up the chairs… she gets out her guitar and walks to the stage.
Just a corner of the bar, big enough for one table.
She puts one of the chairs back down on the floor, pushes the table out of the way, and she sits down.
And she plays. She plays so beautifully.
Not like the old days, when she filled the bar, and the line went around the block.
No. Even better.
A tree falls in the forest.
And she hears it fall.

The robot served as my mother for years.
Then, when I was older, she served as my wife.
After that, she served as my daughter.
And then, she served as my nurse.
For eighty years, I was never without her.
Nor was she ever without me.
“You turn eighty tomorrow,” she said. “I have enjoyed being with you.”
As she mixed the government-supplied chemicals, I thought about her.
How she’d call for the service to pick up my body.
And whether they’d pick her up for termination.
Or recycling. To become a mother again.
Then a wife. And a daughter.