Category: My stories

Private Joseph Mongo would’ve earned himself a Medal of Honor for falling on a grenade to keep it from killing his platoon mates, but the problem was the way he landed on it. It not only exploded out fragments, but also propelled his 17 silver fillings from his teeth throughout the company. So by throwing himself on the grenade caused even more carnage than if he had run for cover like everybody else was trying to. The fact that he was the idiot who pulled the pin and fumbled the grenade only adds to the consternation of the command structure.

I remember doing a report in eighth grade history on the Doolittle raids over Japan. I went to the local college library and pulled every source I could find on it. And I looked through newspaper accounts of the attacks. My report was quite lame and copy paste from the limited sources. Just now, I finished watching a video with excruciating detail of the Japanese patrol boat spotting them early, the crew man hit by a propeller on the deck, and all sorts of other amazing details I never learned about. Middle schoolers are such lazy, ineffective researchers, I guess.

What do deaf people use as safe words?
I’m asking for a friend. Who I have tied up in the basement.
So he can’t sign out HELP. And he’s never quite learned how to talk right.
How the hell am I supposed to tell one grunt from another?
And he’s got a ballgag, so rolling his tongue won’t work either.
Never learned Morse code, so all that blinking isn’t working.
Now, when it’s the other way around, yeah, that’s even worse.
I can shout MUENSTER CHEESE! all day long, and he’ll keep swatting me with the cat-o-nine-tails.
So, any ideas?

The old general had gone senile years ago. He kept calling his caretaker, his chief of staff, and he would ask about reports from the field. The nurse would print out the same report every day, just with the weather and date changed. The general would nod, dictate orders, and the nurse would pretend to take notes so that she could give them to the brigade. This carried on for several years, and when the general would ask to inspect the troops, the nurse would say they’re being assembled and would be ready for inspection by six, past his bedtime.

Last time I went back to the old school, it was for Professor Ellsworth’s funeral. A lot of his former students came, came out for the memorial service. The poetry we read was probably some of the worst poetry ever written. Professor Ellsworth had marked it all with failing grades and bitter criticism. With occasional demands for us to read works on the same subject by Milton, Wordsworth, and other masters. But now, the old Gas bag was in an urn, and there was nothing he could do to stop us from sharing our incompetent and juvenile compositions at will.

If I win the lottery, I will call a few major symphonies and buy the oboe chair. There’s no reason for it. It’s just so strange, nobody would understand it. And that’s the point. We only write our names in sand. Unless it’s with an oboe, I suppose. And every oboist in that city will strive to sit in the chair I bought for them. Or they could remain standing or sit on the floor, I suppose. How silly that would be, dressing up, bringing out your finest oboe, and sitting on the dirty floor. Go get a chair, dummy!

I saw so many things in the city that I’d never experienced before.
The people. The lights. The stores. The streets. The buildings.
And in the middle of it all, a statue.
A tall man, his face full of hate, lashing a whip.
What was he lashing the whip at?
The plaque at the bottom of the statue had been defaced and was no longer legible.
I asked the people around it, but nobody knew who or what it was.
“Maybe it’s one of those lion tamers,” I said.
I got a coffee, saw a show, and went back home.

And the prince and princess didn’t live happily ever after.
After a few miscarriages, the princess had four daughters in a row.
The prince cheated on her with a maid, producing a bastard.
That was awkward.
And then, the princess had a son.
The king and queen lived well into their eighties, so it took a long time for the prince and princess to take power.
By then, the kingdom was a bit of a mess financially.
The bastard killed the king, queen, and their family, usurping the throne.
Parliament had him arrested, tried, convicted, and hung.
The people rejoiced.

Toby came up with really good ideas late at night. He’d be brushing his teeth or putting on a night shirt for climbing the bed and an idea we just hit them. But you didn’t have a notepad by his nightstand. So he’d forget them in the morning trying to remember what he’d come up with. He tried using the voice assistant on his phone to remember things for him, but he’d be so sleeping groggy, the voice to text would come out incomprehensible. Eventually, he put a pad and pen on the nightstand, but all he made were scribbles.

After the wildfire destroyed part of the city, the mayor and city council promised they do everything to help rebuild. But despite millions of dollars spent on planning and outreach, not a single environmental impact regulation or building code or contract was addressed. Eventually, the frustrated homeowners enlisted dozens of homeless people to raid the mayor and city council‘s homes and build campfires in their fancy living rooms. Their suburban mansions all burned down. The fire chief was lambasted for the slow response. He shrugged and said I was off duty, and the hotel I’m in has lousy cell reception.