Every year, we go to the lavender festival.
You’d think there’s only so many things you can do with lavender, like grow it in a pot or dry it for a scented pillow, you’re wrong.
We cook with it.
We clean with it.
And we even bathe with it.
But most importantly, it keeps away the alien invaders.
No, not the retirees from California.
Real aliens. From outer space.
And they’re deathly allergic to lavender.
We offer pamphlets about them, but don’t beat anyone over the head with it.
Except for the aliens’ human agents, I suppose.
Are you one?
Category: My stories
Dishwasher Safe
Tina was one of those “special” kids.
Looked totally normal from the outside. No limp or big forehead, or tubes sticking out of her. Okay, maybe going everywhere with her Betsy Wetsy was a bit off.
She was just kinda slow.
Her parents tried hard to “mainstream” her with routines and chores: clean her room, vacuum the floors, do the dishes. That kind of thing.
When her dolly got messy from being dragged in the mud, she could run her through the dishwasher herself.
As for the kids she was supposed to be babysitting, that’s for a jury to decide.
Fire Bill
Moments before Lily Mason burst into flames, she set her husband on fire.
Then her kitchen. And after that, her house. And her neighbor’s house.
There wasn’t much room between houses, so the fire jumped from house to house quickly.
The whole neighborhood was a raging inferno by the time the fire department arrived.
There was nothing they could do but watch and keep people back.
The fire burned for hours, until the whole neighborhood was nothing but embers and ashes.
“Should have paid her fire bill,” said the crew chief. “Too bad.”
They rolled up their hoses and left.
Slippery When Lard
Usually, The Girl Scouts sell cookies to fund their troops and overhead costs.
But the boxes of cookies don’t offer much of a profit margin, and sometimes people flake out on their orders.
Meagan, who has an Entrepreneurship badge, suggested that her troop sell something with much greater profit potential.
So, they did the market research and came up with a plan to sell titanium hip replacements to the residents of the nearby nursing home.
“Installation not included,” she said with a wink.
The troop giggled with her, and they went back to wiping the floors down with slippery Crisco.
Air Force None
No, it’s not true that any aircraft that The President is on receives the designation of Air Force One. It’s the designation of any Air Force airplane.
For instance, the helicopter that ferries him from The White House to Andrews Air Force Base is Marine One.
And the hot air balloon that Professor Moriarty uses to take The President off to his hot tub and Texas Hold ’em weekends is just a hot air balloon.
The President’s a lousy gambler, and he usually ends up handing over a lot of money.
But he can never hand over Air Force One.
After Brown
After Encyclopedia Brown went off to college, the next kid to become the town know-it-all was Glossary Jones.
This kid knew a whole bunch of obscure terms and jargon, but he kept them to himself until the other kids would solve the mystery.
Then there was Footnote Martin. Every now and then, he’d make a comment about something, or provide some obscure reference that nobody had time to look up.
Finally, there was Almanac Lewis. He was always blithering useless trivia and weather tables.
“Just call the goddamned police,” people say now. “They’re incompetent, but at least they’re not annoying.”
The Empties
Every container full of stuff they send here, we have to ship back so they can send us more stuff.
Some, we fill with trash for recycling.
Others, we put coal or other raw materials.
And with the rest of the empties?
They call it human trafficking.
Fifty to a container.
Thousands of containers on a ship.
Sex slaves?
Organ donors?
Cheap labor?
No. Hardly.
They feed them to the Trakha.
It’s part of the peace treaty.
They give up technology. Chemical formulas.
And what do they do with it?
Make stuff. To sell to us.
Just for the empties.
She Lived Seven Days
Our baby lived seven days.
She never breathed on her own.
Seven days of tubes. And wires. And beeps.
So many beeps. And then.
She never breathed on her own.
When they asked us if we wanted to hold her, we just sat there. We said nothing.
They opened the glass door, pulled out the tubes, pulled off the tape, unhooked the wires, and took her away.
We watched without watching.
The Sisters Of Mercy came, and they asked us if we needed anything. Do we need anything, they asked.
We just sat there. We said nothing.
Just seven days
Free Brochures
When I was growing up, you could order free government brochures on all kinds of subjects.
Running a business. Nutrition. Car repair.
You name it, they had it.
All you had to do was write to Pueblo, Colorado, and they’d mail them. Free.
These days, you can download them from a website.
So, I did. And I read them all.
Thanks to the government, I am now 17 trillion dollars in debt, involved in two wars and countless other international disputes, and my home is constantly invaded by illegal aliens.
But, hey: I can change the oil in my car.
Candidate
Our modern word candidate comes from the Latin word candidatus, which means white-robed.
Back in Roman times, office-seekers covered their robes in white chalk to stand out in a crowd.
It’s certainly easier than filling out hundreds of forms and gathering up thousands and thousands of signatures on petitions.
We should return to the old style of politics. Instead of suits and dresses, put every one of these fuckers in robes and cover them with chalk.
About thirty or forty tons of it.
Then, pave it over, and let the good people of this country get on with their lives.