Category: My stories

My credit card expired, so the credit card company sent me a new card in the mail.
I opened the envelope and left it on the table to remind me to activate it.
The next morning, as I was going through my list of tasks to do before heading to work, I saw that the envelope was covered with cat barf.
“Which of you two shits did this?” I asked our cats.
Both just stared back at me, sitting comfortably, and crooking their tails happily.
I guess I won’t be using this card to buy cat treats any time soon.

I had braces when I was younger, but my teeth have shifted around, and I’m in danger of losing a few if they remain misaligned.
I’m not getting braces on my teeth again, so I just got fitted for Invisalign trays.
They’re more expensive and take longer to align teeth, but at least I don’t have to deal with braces, right?
Then there’s the gripping mounts they need to bond to my teeth… the monthly adjustments… the retainer…
My teeth will be in perfect alignment, but my bank account will be a mess, and I’ll never want to smile again.

They changed the SAT.
It had something to do with removing biases between genders and races and other factors.
So, they stripped out all the parts that gave an unfair advantage to white kids.
And they stripped out all the parts that assumed a male gender bias.
And after that, they stripped out all the parts that discriminated against poor kids.
In the end, they were left with a sheet of paper that just asked for the student’s name.
“Colleges might make assumptions based on that, too!” shouted an activist.
Colleges gave up, and went to a simple bidding process.

Her last words “I’ll see you in hell, and I’ll save you all a seat.”
She was cremated, her ashes in salt shakers to spread around.
But no matter how hard we shook, nothing came out.
Even in death, she was at her coarsest.
We had to transfer the ashes to pepper grinders.
Walking around the park, spreading her around.
Like a goddamed Olive Garden, we were.
Nobody said anything.
What was the point?
She doesn’t care what we say after she’s dead.
Didn’t care when she was alive.
Except for anything nice.
She had her bad reputation to protect.

Out at Coney Island, everyone talks about Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand.
But nobody’s talking about Walter’s Obscure fried squid.
That’s the fried squid stand behind the Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand.
People went crazy for the hot dogs. Only crazy people went for the squid.
“Pick your own squid!” said the sign out front, right next to a huge fish tank full of squid.
Squid mermaid performers swam in the tank, trying not to get tangled in the squid.
Every July Fourth, in the shadow of the Nathan’s contest, they would hold a squid-eating contest.
Nobody ate a thing.

Coughing, hacking, wheezing…
Using. Always using.
She smoked her friends down to the filter.
When there was nothing left to inhale, she spat them out and ground them under her heel.
There was always another waiting in the pack, and so many others in the mob, lining up to offer a light from their torches.
Kindly mind your pitchforks.
The more she smoked, the thicker the cloud.
Pretty soon, you could hardly see her at all.
When the pack was empty, the smoke cleared, there was nothing left of her.
They should put warnings on the packs:
“Don’t climb in.”

Ever watch those “How Stuff Is Made” videos? The french fry one is fascinating. They run potatoes through a sorter that shakes them past increasingly-larger holes in order to size and sort them.
Life is a sorting table, with holes in which to sort out how much stupidity, bullshit, and hypocrisy each of us potatoes contains.
Left? Right? Claiming to be Moderate?
We’re all just a bunch of potatoes, really
No matter what you do, you’re gonna get cut up, blanched, flash-frozen, shipped, fried, and salted so some minimum-wage pimply-faced teenager can ask someone if they want you with that.

Fred was anything but gentle with how he tried to row his boat up the stream.
He grunted and sweated as he turned the oars, and they splashed madly in the water.
But the boat wasn’t getting anywhere.
“You should be more gentle with that crazy rowing,” said Gertie.
“I wouldn’t have to heave so hard if you weren’t such a big fat pig,” growled Fred.
That’s when Fred noticed that the boat was anchored.
“There wasn’t room for me and my bags with it sitting there,” Gertie whined.
Fred tossed her overboard, pulled up the anchor, and rowed away.

The First Line consists of the hearse and the mourners.
The Second Line consists of revelers celebrating the life of the deceased.
The Third Line consists of drunk tourists confused by the commotion, looking for free beads or girls to show their tits.
The Fourth Line consists of creditors looking to collect whatever they can before the party spends whatever’s left in the deceased’s bank account. They also pick up any lost wallets or purses from those drunkasses in the Third Line.
The Fifth Line consists of people who woke up too late to make it in the First Line.

It’s been years since I was in a church, I told the old rector.
He handed me an envelope. “We have the skin from the cheek of St. Anthony,” he said.
Inside was an offering card, a photo of some guy in robes, and other slips of paper.
“Which St. Anthony?” I asked. “And which cheek? Left or right? And was it his buttcheek or from his face?”
“The information’s in the envelope,” he said. “The Vatican investigated and confirmed it.”
Unlike all the cases of child abuse, I thought.
I left the bomb under a pew, smiled, and left.