Category: My stories

If all the world’s a stage and we are merely players,
Who builds the scenery?
Who manages the rigging?
Who runs the lights, and swaps out burnt-out bulbs?
Who sits in the box office, tallying receipts?
Who sells at the concession stand, or delivers the food for it?
Who sweeps the floor? Or hauls away the garbage?
And most important of all, who is out there in the audience?
It’s hard to see them through the lights.
But if you squint, you can see them in the darkness.
Or when it is silent, you can hear them breathing.
Raspy breaths.

When my grandmother died, I tried to find something to remember her by.
Once, she gave me a white stone frog.
But I don’t have it anymore.
So, I looked online for a white stone frog.
I saw one that an Australian artist had made.
It looked similar to the white stone frog I remembered.
So, I bought it. Twenty bucks for the frog, twenty bucks for shipping.
I opened the package, poured out a bin full of shredded paper, and removed the bubble-wrap.
The frog is much smaller than the original I remember.
But, then, so is my grandmother.

Don’t you hate it when you go to a counter-service restaurant or establishment, and there’s a line for a tip on the charge slip?
Or a tip jar at the counter, begging for tips for the cash register jockey?
I haven’t gotten any actual service or food yet! Or needed my table bussed and cleaned!
How can I tip your service when all you’ve done is take my order… I don’t even know if you’ve done it right!
Why should I reward you for that?
Now, as for tipping my storytelling, that’s different.
You’ve just listened to my story, right?

The wigmaker placed the third of the wigs on Mozart’s head and held up a mirror.
“Which of the three do you like best?” asked the wigmaker.
Mozart looked in the mirror. “I love them all!” he exclaimed. “If only I had three heads!”
The head-maker went into his back room, searched through his inventory, and brought out two heads.
He held them up for Mozart. “Will these do?” he asked.
Mozart thanked the wigmaker and head-maker, and left with his purchases.
The third head ran up a huge gambling debt. It panwed the other two to pay it off.

Joe’s always saying “We agree” in response to things.
But Joe’s not speaking on behalf of others.
Well, others that exist.
Joe’s not using the “Royal” we, per se.
Instead, he’s referring to the group that consists of himself and the voices in his head.
He thinks there’s an actual group, but there isn’t.
Who are the voices in his head?
Oddly enough, they consist of several kings of England.
They’re a rather murderous lot, and tell him to kill and behead the people who disagree with him.
I mean them. All of them.
(I hope he doesn’t murder me.)

I am also a professional writer, and my work has been published many times in multiple languages.
What books have I written? None. I don’t write books.
I write technical documentation for a software company.
And many of customers use Google’s translation software to read it in their native language.
I realize that my saying that I am a writer is as much a lie as the guy who paints the lines on the street being a painter, who’s work is seen by thousands… perhaps millions.
But I never call myself an artist.
Because unlike most artists,
I get paid.

Yesterday was windy.
Now, it is not.
Did the wind die down?
Or is it blowing elsewhere?
When Daisy left town, she said we was letting the wind fill her sails and take her with it.
“I go where the wind blows,” she said, lifting her skirts, and floating with the breeze.
Nobody saw her again for thirty years.
Until the day when the tornado hit.
Daisy’s broken and bloody corpse was found on the steps of the high school.
To this day, parents fit their children with concrete blocks and heavy chains.
And feed them until they are fat.

Jenny’s leg was horribly maimed by the bomb blast at the Boston Marathon.
She vowed that she’d run it again, and for a year, doctors tried to save her leg.
But they couldn’t.
Jenny wrote a break-up letter to her leg, and it was finally amputated.
While Jenny was getting fitted with a prosthetic leg, the amputated leg went on a dating site to find someone else.
There were a few responses, a few dates. But the leg used an old photo on the profile, and you can guess how things went.
It eventually gave up, leaping from a bridge.

Legend has it that Charlie Chaplin came in third in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
What made it even worse is that second place went to the chair he was sitting on.
But the most tragic fact of that night is that Charlie was the only contestant.
All of the other contestants realized that they were competing with The Charlie Chaplin, and they resigned out of respect.
The sponsor of the contest was appalled at Chaplin. To compete in contests to see who looks most like himself?
First place went to the sponsor’s fist, which hit Charlie in the nose.