I took my girl to the county fair
Winning games with such manly flair
She coveted a gigantic balloon
But instead, I got a big baboon
Despite all the ululation and wails
It picked out the bugs from her pigtails
A commotion resulted from all the fuss
Then it climbed up a pole and threw dung at us
I apologized, admitting defeat
We abandoned it out in the street
When I tried to play all the games again
They were rigged, there was no way I could win
I lost my girl at the county fair
As
If
You
Care
Category: My stories
Triple
Vinnie Double Chin’s laid up in the hospital.
Another heart attack.
Which isn’t such a surprise, because he’s at least five hundred pounds and eats five times a day.
When they tried to sink him in the river, the cement truck ran out before they could make his shoes big enough to fit.
Doctor says he needs a triple bypass.
So what does he do?
He calls up Cousin Vito, tells them they can bury witnesses under the freeway they’re building in his chest!
I hope he makes it.
Because I don’t want to be a pallbearer lifting that coffin.
Ears
Our first four cats never cleaned each others ears.
They didn’t bond with each other.
Then, when Nardo was alone, the last cat standing, I found Bruwyn the kitten in the rain.
He bonded with Nardo, and tried to clean his ears.
Nardo freaked out, thinking it was an attack.
When we got Myst, she and Bruwyn cleaned each others ears.
And tried to groom Nardo’s.
Over time, he let them, and then would poke his head at them while they groomed themselves.
When he died, Bruwyn and Myst cleaned his ears, a final sign of respect to their mentor.
Whisper
“He’ll tell you when it’s time,” the vet had said.
After scrubbing so many sticky sprays of vomit out of the carpet and bedsheets, I kneel down and whisper into the old cat’s ear…
“Is it time?”
He gives no response. He doesn’t look up, ears back, eyes closed tighter, and I wait…
Slowly, he struggles to his feet.
Looking up, he meows. Twice.
Tail crookedly lifted high, he stumbles to the food bowl again.
Past the bottles of carpet stain remover.
The spat-out pills hidden in half-chewed treats.
I’m exhausted, and I feel guilty for wishing he’d say:
“Now.”
Umbrella
We’re in a drought. It didn’t rain all summer.
Until now.
I can hear the thunder… the rain… the screech of tires…
Going to work will be interesting. People forget how to drive.
And other things. Like how to use an umbrella.
I looked around for mine, but couldn’t remember what it looked like.
“Honey,” I said to my wife, holding up an object. “Is this an umbrella?”
“No, that’s a cat,” she said. “Put her down. She doesn’t like being picked up. Or getting wet.”
I put the cat down, let her scamper off, and resumed my umbrella search.
Out Of Network
Growing up, my pediatrician was Dr. Mengele.
Yes, it’s true. The infamous war criminal who did medical experiments in the Nazi concentration camps.
Sure, he went under the name Dr. Sherman, but he couldn’t fool me: he was Mengele.
How did I know?
Well, instead of “Feed a cold, starve a fever” he’d say “Gas a cold, gas a fever.”
When I sprained my ankle, he prescribed gas.
Same with upset stomach, chicken pox, and everything else that happened to me.
The worst part of it was that he was outside my Dad’s HMO network, so the co-pays were murder!
Freedom Riders
They called themselves the Freedom Riders.
No, I’m not talking about the brave who rode interstate buses to break up segregationist policies.
I’m talking about the passengers on Kendargu freighters who, despite paying a fortune for passage, suffered cramped and horrible conditions in the ships.
So, they put together a plan to break out of their tiny cabin mid-voyage.
The cabin was cramped because temporal and inertial dampers take up a lot of room.
Those that didn’t get phase-shifted to jumpspace ended up as that messy paste spread out on the cargo bay walls.
Oh well. Go get some mops.
The Prank
It was your typical kindergarten classroom.
Art supplies, colorful dangling mobiles, and a lot of construction paper cutouts.
On one board, a bunch of colors spelled out:
Red was red
Green was green
Blue was blue.
That weekend, Mom dragged me to a hobby shop.
I begged for construction paper letters.
When April first finally rolled around, the teacher left the room, and I took down the colored words.
Then, I added my own:
Blue was red
Red was yellow
Yellow was green
I got sent to the principal’s office.
But not for the prank.
They thought I was color-blind.
Mother’s Day
We watch the suntigers weave among the clouds, chasing each other.
Every so often, they fight, and a glinting tooth falls from the sky.
Picking through the underbrush, we collect them in baskets and return to the archmage’s hut.
He looks over our harvest, tosses away the fractured ones, and spots a good solid crystal.
“Perfect,” he says.
He places it over the eyes of our mother’s corpse, chants something, and then holds the crystal up to the light.
Mother’s battered face appears on the opposite wall.
“Parker the Butcher,” it says.
The killer is arrested, and justice is done.
Change Bulbs
Instead of going out to lunch, I eat carrots and celery at my desk at work.
Then, when I get my lunch break, I go for an hourlong power walk through the tunnels under Downtown Houston.
During one of my walks, a crew of three men had spread a tarp on the floor and were changing lightbulbs.
But they were moving the ladder out of the way when people approached, not rotating it as one guy on it held the bulb.
Why they had the tarp on the floor, I never asked. I just walked back to work and pondered.