Of all the priests and monks in the world, we are the clumsiest by far.
The Church calls us “The Order Of Saint Bactine.”
Not a day goes by where one of us doesn’t trip over a cassock, knock over a chair, stumble on the steps, or get a paper cut in the library.
Some say it’s an expression of the stigmata, but Christ was nailed through the ankles and wrists, not dragged around on his elbows and knees.
A demon, perhaps?
Unlikely.
Instead of an exorcist, we need ergonomics consultants and an interior decorator.
And elbow and knee pads.
Category: My stories
The Evil Clown
Walking home from work, I saw a strange sight.
An evil clown was at the corner, waving a sign advertising a costume shop.
Halloween is next week, you know.
Anyway, I watched the evil clown dance and wave his sign at the passing traffic.
Not the most dignified of jobs, I know, but it’s still a job.
Plus, it’s unlikely that it’ll be outsourced to India, since there’s no point in some clown in Bangalore waving a sign around there when the store it’s advertising is in Houston, Texas.
“The economy’s looking up,” I said, and went along my way.
Smith’s Crooks
The Smith Administration was the most corrupt in modern history.
Congress is still trying to sort out the books to figure out where all the money went.
The largest chunk of it wound up in the pockets of Smith’s old college friends who he’d appointed ambassadors.
Unlike the campaign contributors who received the plum assignments of France and England and Berlin, these guys were posted to Oz, Narnia, and Mordor.
That’s right. They’d picked the names out of children’s books.
Sure, these crooks should be tried, but Justice won’t get involved because we don’t have extradition treaties with those places.
Billy Hill
My name is William Hill.
Call me William.
Do not call me Billy.
In school, the teacher would read the roll call.
So, he’d read my name as Hill Billy.
And everyone would laugh.
They’d ask me if I bathed in a creek, slept in a pig pen, or if my dad made moonshine.
Yes, I bathed in a creek.
Yes, I slept in a pigpen.
And, yes, my dad made moonshine.
It was the best moonshine in the state, and when he got a distillery license, we got filthy stinking rich.
(Okay, so maybe the stink was the pigs.)
Bobby’s Teacher
Bobby grew up in a place where there wasn’t enough of anything, so they had to make do what what they had.
Instead of sugar, they’d substitute honey.
Instead of milk, they substituted powered milk and water.
And chicken was a substitute for turkey on Thanksgiving.
The school was staffed entirely by substitute teachers. Not a single real teacher in the district.
Bobby raised his hand. “You’re not substitutes if you’re doing all the teaching for the year,” he said. “You’re the actual teacher.”
The teacher gave Bobby detention, and told him to be quiet and eat his turkey sandwich.
Mixed Blessing
She’s always saying bad things happening, like lost keys or a chipped tooth, can turn out to be mixed blessings, but when you encounter the good and the bad so clearly, I don’t think the blessings have been mixed thoroughly.
She’s also bad with mixing oatmeal, and I hit dry patches of unmixed oats among the lumpy mush in my bowl.
If you chip a tooth on oatmeal and you’re told “Well, don’t think of it as a trip to the dentist, but think of it as a day off of work” that’s not a mixed blessing. That’s badly-mixed oatmeal.
Her Mother’s Eyes
She has her mother’s eyes.
Samsung Spectrals. A few generations old, sure, but they’re reliable. A classic.
Plus, the Zeiss optics are far superior for standard spectrum vision than the digital ones these days.
Too many artifacts. Too much smearing. Too many crashes. Too many new features to make up for poor design.
What good are polychromatic irises when you get headaches from the synchronization frequency?
The latest models use cheap structural resins warp and melt from elevated body heat.
If only her mother could see her today, achieving so much.
(Her eyes are in the shop again. Damn digitals.)
Marshmallow Town
Marshmallow Town is under martial law.
Campers with sticks, graham crackers, and chocolate bars are roaming the streets, abducting Marshmallowites and dragging them back to their campfires.
To impale them.
To hold them over the fire.
To stick them between the crackers with the chocolate and…
OH MY GOD! THE MARSHMALLOWITY!
Sadly, marshmallows can’t fight back, so they’re hired a brute squad from Butterville.
The butter brutes patrol the streets, looking for campers with sticks.
“Your sticks are no match for our unsaturated fats!” shout the butter brutes.
So the campers pull out their knives and warm them with lighters…
rhombus
once upon a time there was a rhombus named sam. he was a loud rhombus. He was a very loud rhombus. in fact, he was the loudest rhombus of all the rhombuses. but rhombuses don’t have any ears, so he didn’t know he was so loud. and all the other rhombuses didn’t know either. which is why nobody ever invites rhombuses to their parties because they’re so goddamned loud, and when you try to tell them to stop being so loud, they can’t hear you telling them to stop being so loud because they don’t have any ears. the end.
Rich
Some parents tell their children about the birds and the bees, but Richie Rich was taught about the bears and bulls.
This made for a troublesome learning curve when it came to dating.
Where others were making out in malt shops, movie theaters and Lookout Point, Richie had a hard time convincing any girls to play “Red Capes And Picnic Baskets.”
Until he started paying them to do it.
I mean, come on. The kid was loaded. He could by the finest ass available.
Instead of graduating from Wharton, Richie mastered Whoredom.
Cadbury the butler saw it all.
And wept.