Category: My stories

The teacher put reward stars on homework. Gold for great, silver for good. If you didn’t have a star, you had a problem. My brother was two years older than me, so my mother knew that this teacher put stars on homework. So I shoplifted a pack of star stickers from the office supply store and added them to my homework. Why I would be getting silver and gold stars for homework covered with red correction pen? So I made Xerox‘s of homework at the office supply store, filled it out twice, and put the stars on the clean copy.

It takes a thief to catch a thief, they say. So the FBI made the old swindler an offer. Pose as a rich Arab and bribe a bunch of crooked politicians, and we wipe your slate clean. And it worked out great, I mean, you’ve heard of ABSCAM, right? what I love most about the case is that the old crook would order corned beef sandwich sandwiches from his favorite delicatessen. When they asked why a rich Arab was eating kosher food, he said they were so delicious, and i can’t get any back at the kingdom, even with Delivery.

On warm summer evenings, I like to walk to the abandoned golf course and stand by one of the ponds. The water is usually pretty clear, with a few lily pads floating on the surface. I can see the fish swimming around, and sometimes a heron or a pelican flies in from the beach and ducks its head under the water and comes up with a fish. I stand there, sipping my coffee, and let my mind slowly go quiet. When the sun sets, I finish my coffee and walk back home, and all is good in the world, right?

Myst is the cat who goes outside to roam and stays out so long, she makes us worry if she’s ever coming home.
You know, like Bruwyn.
Myst came home. Bruwyn didn’t.
Myst climbs on me when I go to bed, and she’ll paw my face with claws out and she’ll bite my nose.
And I tell her I wish that it had been Bruwyn who had come home.
But when she gets sick with her respiratory infections and goes under the bed, and she won’t eat or drink.
I regret everything I’ve ever said bad about her, and pray.

The explorers search for the peppers.
The botanist identifies the peppers.
The agricultural conglomerate seeds the peppers.
The tractor plants the peppers.
The rain waters the peppers.
The farmers grow the peppers.
The migrants pick the peppers.
The truckers haul the peppers.
The factory processes the peppers.
The chemist extracts the peppers.
The manufacturer weaponizes the peppers.
The factory cans the peppers.
The warehouse stores the peppers.
The distributor stocks the peppers.
The armorers hand out the peppers.
The police use the peppers on the migrants.
The migrants wash the peppers from their eyes.
And board the buses back home.

When the pandemic hit and schools were closed, the classes got on Zoom or specialized distance learning apps.
Teachers who were tired of teaching the same stuff to multiple classes a day began to pre-record their lessons and play them back for the classes.
They used the extra time to focus on helping the students with questions or problems with the material.
Students were doing better, and parents figured out which were the good teachers and which were the bad ones, demanding that they be fired.
The unions caught wind of the whole thing, and shut the whole system down.

My mother has a younger sister.
And she’s a thieving, conniving bitch.
Robbed my grandmother blind and sent her broke ass to drain my parents dry.
But I’ve always known she was garbage.
You see, when I was little, her husband repeatedly tried to molest me.
Nobody believed me, and I was punished for lying about it.
Ah, memories.
A year or two later, she divorced the creep and found a new guy.
It turned out that she wanted kids, but her first husband didn’t.
I beg to differ… the guy wanted kids, just not in the way she wanted.

If you keep a device constantly charging, or top it off every night, the battery has a chemical memory to it and will hold less of a charge.
So it’s important to regularly deplete the battery, and then charge it up.
Thankfully, batteries don’t remember when you swear at them when you need a device the most.
If your phone has a healthy battery, the people who find your body at the bottom of the canyon can charge up to call your next of kin.
Who can sell your phone for more recycling value, knowing that the battery is healthy.

Once upon a time, our people built great space ships.
The space ships, they flew so fast. Faster that light.
And we flew between the stars.
So many worlds out there.
But never any civilizations like ours.
Just plants. And some animals.
Nothing intelligent, though.
Just us, in all the universe.
We’re the first. We grew up before anyone else.
So, we spread out to every star.
And we watch and wait.
When a species evolves and grows, it develops tools, language, and…
That’s when we destroy it.
Because existence belongs to us and us alone.
As God made us.

My friend just got a 10 dollar an hour raise as a contractor.
I remember when I was making less than 10 dollars an hour working in a fast food chicken shack.
Heck, I was making eight bucks an hour doing tech support for a cheap webhosting company.
It started as a dialup internet company, and the dialup people treated us like trash.
Until webhosting took off and dialup went away.
These days, anything beyond my basic expenses goes into the 401k, and anything above that goes into investments.
And, no, I don’t eat fast food chicken. Or use dialup.