Category: My stories

Lexie was in her pajamas when she read the memo on her laptop.
“Return To Office” was the subject line.
The managers found managing remote employees too difficult.
Despite the improvements in productivity and employee retention.
So, instead of getting better managers, they wanted all the employees back in the office.
Lexie got dressed and returned the laptop to the office.
And she accepted an offer from another company.
Who didn’t have an obsessive return to office fetish.
She left a note on the laptop:
Thank you for stabbing me in the back.
No, you cannot have the knife back.

When I got drafted out of college, I was the new kid on the team.
Some of the returning players saw me as a threat to their jobs, and they hazed and pranked me, and they did nothing to help me.
But the veterans who were at the end of their careers saw an opportunity in me.
To teach me all they’d learned and how to make me a better player and person.
Not only did it help me, but it helped them when they retired and were looking for coaching jobs.
Which is why I’m helping you now, kid.

Some professor at some university discovered a new galaxy.
No other scientist had seen it before.
Until this guy did.
I think it was a guy. Could have been a chick.
The professor did research and published it, and got a lot of congratulations for it.
And named the galaxy something, I don’t remember what the name is.
You can tell I don’t really care about this shit.
What the fuck does a galaxy millions and billions of light years away matter?
I’m here. Right now. You are too.
Has anything changed now that we know that galaxy is there?

We like to disguise interrogators as Red Cross or lawyers or reporters, and they’d ask the prisoner if they wanted to send anything out to their family or the media.
More often then not, the prisoner would try to send out a message to their group.
Didn’t matter if it was encoded. We’d broken all their codes.
Then we’d shoot the prisoner, say they died trying to escape.
And round up the people they’d given up in their message.
So, you coming in here, ready to defend me against these war crimes charges…
I know your game. I ain’t playin’.

Every four years, the theme park’s engineers build robots for the exhibit with the robotic presidents.
They build the two partys’ candidates, vice presidents too.
So they’re ready for any circumstance in November.
The mechanisms are easy, they have dozens on the shelf that can be easily adjusted for height.
And the clothes can be padded to match their build.
It’s the faces that are the hardest… sculpting and molding and painting them.
Recording the voices is also easy. These people have been reading from a teleprompter for years.
And then, the reveal… and the park guests cheer and boo.

I don’t understand why that weight loss drug needed Serena Williams as a celebrity in their Super Bowl Commercial. If you have a working and safe weight loss drug, you don’t need a celebrity to peddle it. That shit will peddle itself and make you, like, gazillions of dollars.
What are they expecting some fat viewer to think? “Well, my insurance covers this weight loss drug and I’m horribly fat and sick all the time, but I’m still not completely convinced. Hey, wait… that tennis player uses this stuff. I’d better call my doctor. Um… okay, tomorrow. Because it’s Sunday.”

The teacher put reward stars on homework. Gold for great, silver for good. If you didn’t have a star, you had a problem. My brother was two years older than me, so my mother knew that this teacher put stars on homework. So I shoplifted a pack of star stickers from the office supply store and added them to my homework. Why I would be getting silver and gold stars for homework covered with red correction pen? So I made Xerox‘s of homework at the office supply store, filled it out twice, and put the stars on the clean copy.

It takes a thief to catch a thief, they say. So the FBI made the old swindler an offer. Pose as a rich Arab and bribe a bunch of crooked politicians, and we wipe your slate clean. And it worked out great, I mean, you’ve heard of ABSCAM, right? what I love most about the case is that the old crook would order corned beef sandwich sandwiches from his favorite delicatessen. When they asked why a rich Arab was eating kosher food, he said they were so delicious, and i can’t get any back at the kingdom, even with Delivery.

On warm summer evenings, I like to walk to the abandoned golf course and stand by one of the ponds. The water is usually pretty clear, with a few lily pads floating on the surface. I can see the fish swimming around, and sometimes a heron or a pelican flies in from the beach and ducks its head under the water and comes up with a fish. I stand there, sipping my coffee, and let my mind slowly go quiet. When the sun sets, I finish my coffee and walk back home, and all is good in the world, right?

Myst is the cat who goes outside to roam and stays out so long, she makes us worry if she’s ever coming home.
You know, like Bruwyn.
Myst came home. Bruwyn didn’t.
Myst climbs on me when I go to bed, and she’ll paw my face with claws out and she’ll bite my nose.
And I tell her I wish that it had been Bruwyn who had come home.
But when she gets sick with her respiratory infections and goes under the bed, and she won’t eat or drink.
I regret everything I’ve ever said bad about her, and pray.