Whenever I had to fly somewhere, there was something wrong with my seat’s in-flight entertainment center.
Sometimes, the screen is broken, so I don’t see the movie.
Other times, the audio jack is broken, so I can’t hear the movie or music.
Or it’s a cheap airline, and there is no in-flight entertainment.
That’s when I bought a smartphone that could play music and movies.
Of course, you have to turn off the phone antenna for these things. They call it “Airplane Mode.”
I flip the switch and match the airplane icon appear… and then the screaming baby sounds start.
Category: My stories
The flight
I don’t know what is shaking harder: this plane or me.
I hate flying. I really hate flying.
Well, okay, it’s not the flying, as much as the taking off, landing, and turbulence.
It scares the crap out of me.
I’ve tried hypnosis, music, pills, and booze. None of it works.
So, I just suffer and write.
In fact, I write my best work while on a flight.
The worse the flight, the better the writing, my publisher says.
She pays for my tickets, pills, and booze.
The airlines all want me as their resident writer.
I want to retire.
The Hat
I bought a deep green OREGON ballcap at the Portland Airport so I could blend in.
Nobody wears them here. It’s all hoodies for the locals.
Nobody uses umbrellas here. I guess it’s so people have both hands free to order coffee or apologize.
We went to a Trail Blazers game at the Rose Center, and that’s where I lost my hat.
It’s okay, though. Someone will find it, and it’s a one size fits all hat, so it will fit them perfectly.
If someone sees this story, please do not return the hat.
It’s not mine. It’s yours now.
Flying Reindeer
There’s nothing I hate more than when parents lie to their children and make them believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, and Ben Affleck movies that don’t suck.
They’re all a lie.
North Pole? Santa?
All the crap we buy and give as gifts really comes from China.
Based on the wretched environmental conditions in China, imagine how much worse the North Pole would be.
It would be a toxic nightmare of a wasteland.
But then, it would explain the flying reindeer.
Would you want to step in any of that chemical crap?
I’d mutate and learn to fly, too.
Holiday Letters
The Post Office started Operation Santa Claus a few years back, where people could volunteer to answer letters that kids wrote to Santa Claus and stuck in a mailbox.
So, I signed up for it.
Now, I get stacks of letters to read, asking for all kinds of things.
I respond to every one of them with a simple form letter:
SANTA DOESN’T EXIST
And I sign it with my name, then I stick my response in the mail.
My son thinks I’m nuts for wasting my time on this, but it sure beats the hell out of answering prayers.
Nobles
They’re called nobles because of their hereditary titles, not because of how they act.
The Duke beats his servants with a mahogany cane.
The Baroness ordered her chef to be boiled alive in his cauldron.
The Earl had all of his gardeners planted in her garden.
And then there was… The King.
Oh, the horrible, cruel and disgusting things he did.
I swear, he could have walked from one end of the kingdom to the other on the backs of all of his victims.
One day, we will be free.
One day, we will own our lives.
Until then… survive.
Mistake
Mother said that bread always manages to land buttered side down.
So, I buttered all the bread we had and, slice after slice, dropped it on the kitchen floor.
Some of it landed with the buttered side down, and some of it landed with the buttered side up.
I asked my mother for more bread, and she asked me why.
I took her into the kitchen, and she saw the mess I had made.
She gave me the spanking of my life.
These days, I look back and I laugh at my childish mistake.
I forgot to toast it first.
Thanksrobbing
Over the river, and through the woods to the prison where grandmother’s serving time for armed robbery.
“Social Security and Medicare suck,” said grandmother. “But if you’re in prison, you get everything covered.”
Prison food’s bad, and it’s actually better than the crap Meals On Wheels brought to her run-down apartment every day.
So, instead of clipping coupons and looking at cans of cat food at the end of the month, she robbed a bank.
We brought a pumpkin pie. She pulls out the file, and throws it at me.
“Don’t do that again,” she says. “I like it here.”
Shrink
Richard Matheson’s book “The Shrinking Man” was retitled “The Incredible Shrinking Man” by his publisher.
I suppose it’s possible for someone to think a shrinking man is not incredible unless told so bluntly.
Go ahead and try it yourself. Walk up to people at random and shout either “I’m the shrinking man!” or “I’m the incredible shrinking man!”
See which people are more impressed, stunned, or horrified.
If someone calls the police on you, forget about bail or calling anyone. Just wait until you’ve shrunk enough to fit between the bars.
Feel free to shout that out at the guards.
Awareness
Remember when people wore yellow ribbon pins to raise awareness of AIDS?
Then came ribbon pins of other colors for other causes.
Red for this.
Green for that.
White for some other thing.
I don’t remember all the colors and their meanings.
So, I stopped wearing any ribbon pins.
“Don’t you care anymore?” people would scream at me.
“It’s bullshit,” I said.
So, they gave me a hemp ribbon for Bullshit Awareness.
Well, not as much a ribbon, as a rope.
A hangman’s noose.
And they put it around my neck.
The other end just went over a tree branch.