Instead of walking to the grocery store, I needed more than I could carry.
So, I drove to the grocery store.
When I got my overloaded cart back to my car, there was a flyer in my car’s door handle.
I pulled it out and read it… a flier for a psychic.
I crumpled it up and tossed it in a grocery bag.
Looking at all the fliers on the ground, I wasn’t the only one ignoring it.
I mean, did they predict that? People ignoring all your spam?
Then why bother printing and hanging all these fliers at all?
Bank run
Adolphus is a kind, sweet old man.
He goes to the Commonwealth Bank every day and brings the lady at the window flowers.
And a stickup note.
The lady smiles, puts all of the cash in a bag, and hands it to Adolphus.
He smiles, tips his hat, and goes across the street to the National Bank.
Where he hands the lady at the window flowers.
And a deposit slip.
Then he goes home and takes a nap.
The lady at the National Bank brings the money back to the Commonwealth Bank.
“See you tomorrow,” she says, with a wink.
Whaling
Arthur joined the crowd at the shore, staring at the whale that had beached itself and died.
Some kids had gotten up on the whale and had their friends take pictures, but the beast had started to decompose and so they fell through the skin and ended up covered in rotten whale guts.
Instead of hacking the whale to pieces and dragging them back into the water, Arthur suggested using dynamite to blow the thing up.
And they did.
It rained whale guts for five minutes, smashing car windows and mailboxes.
Seagulls and dogs went around gobbling up the offal.
The crush
Teddy had a crush on the school nurse.
It started when he scraped his knee and she put a bandage on it.
His heart swooned. (The nurse checked that, too.)
To keep seeing her, Teddy got himself into a lot of accidents.
Or he said he got into a lot of accidents.
The nurse noticed that some of the wounds looked like their were self-inflicted.
She called the principal, and the principal calls Teddy’s parents.
Now, Teddy’s off to the school psychologist.
He’s got a crush on her now.
Makes up all kinds of stories.
Especially about the school nurse.
Obsoleteland
Walt Disney cut the ribbon himself to open Tomorrowland at Disneyland.
It was meant to be a vision of the future.
Then, the future came… and went.
Some attractions stayed up-to-date, but many didn’t.
And they became Todayland. Then Yesterdayland.
Tomorrowland opened in Florida. And Paris. And Hong Kong.
And those Tomorrowlands aged badly, too.
EPCOT was out-of-date from day one.
Might as well call it EPCOY.
Then, the Obsoletelands became Retro… like Steampunk shows people an alternate steam-driven future.
Too bad the safety technology didn’t get updated.
Ouch. Poor bastard.
You grab the kid’s head, I’ll grab his feet.
Weekly Challenge #839 – TRAIN
LISA
Happily ever after
She jolted to a halt halfway down the aisle. Smiling faces looked on worried. Her sister sent what she hoped was a sympathetic look from a flower festooned pew.
The best man approached.
“Y’alright Rach?”
“Erm.” She turned, about to say that her train was caught on something and could he go to unhook it.
“C’mon. It didn’t mean anything. It was only one night…he’s not going to see her again” He’d whispered it so her Dad couldn’t hear.
At that bombshell the butterflies she’d felt flew off and she turned to release her own dress and left the church.
ED
Deflating Ride
My boss called me in before three. I was being promoted, getting a hefty raise, and being told to take the rest of the day. I called my wife, who had off from school. My excitement contagious, we decided to meet and celebrate at our favorite spot.
I flew out of the office, down the subway stairs, and immediately onto a train. What luck! And then I looked around. Not a single smile or joyful face. No eye contact from anyone.
This can’t be right, I thought. I blew out a breath, deflating as the happiness seeped out of me.
RICHARD
Train Driver
I always wanted to be a train driver.
I don’t know why, it just appealed to me, maybe because I was a bit of a train nut at the time, and I figured that if trains were cool, then driving them would be even cooler.
So, I’m living my dream. I’m a train driver.
And let me tell you, it sucks. Big time!
Antisocial hours, constant mind-numbing health and safety checks, and the boring routine of the same routes, same places, every single day.
I always wanted to be a train driver, but now, I’d rather be anything else!
LIZZIE
“The pilot wasn’t trained properly,” said the inspector.
“I trained him myself. I’ve been training pilots for 30 years, as you know.”
“I think you’re losing your… skills.”
Silence.
“How about the huge hole on the side of the plane?!”
“It’ll go in my report, but it wasn’t the cause of…”
“Not the cause?! Five people were sucked out.”
The inspector smiled and walked away.
Thirty years. He waited, thirty years. He had always wanted to be a pilot, but the idiot flunked him again and again. He ended up becoming a mere scribe. This is how you get even.
SERENDIPIDY
They say that those with tormented souls may be called to wakefulness in the dead of night, by the evocative sound of a distant, mournful train horn, echoing through the still night air.
Those called, are drawn, with faltering steps to the old railroad crossing on the edge of town, to await the arrival of the train of the damned.
None will return.
That’s what they say, anyway.
The truth is, nobody goes down to the old railroad crossing in the dead of night…
There is no railroad crossing.
Which begs the question.
Where did all those missing people go?
NORVAL JOE
Still holding his bed sheet to him with his left hand, Billbert reached out his right. “Okay. Take my hand and let’s get this over with.”
Sabrina smiled, took his hand, and leaned forward for a quick kiss.
“Hey!” Billbert shouted, jerked his hand from hers, and wiped his lips. “You said we only need to make contact to be protected.”
“I also said that kissing is better. I’m just trying to train you properly.” Sabrina headed to the door.
Billbert slumped back in his bed and grumbled, “I don’t need training.”
“Right,” Sabrina laughed. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”
PLANET Z
I like going to baseball games, but I hate driving Downtown.
And parking there is an absolute nightmare.
So, I’d take the bus, since there’s a bus stop nearby.
But the bus doesn’t go all the way Downtown anymore.
Now it terminates at the main train line, and you take the train Downtown.
There was a another bus line that went Downtown about 15 minutes away.
But it stops at the same train station now.
For a few bucks more, I can order an Uber or a Lyft.
I shrug, turn on the TV, and watch the game from home.
Bob Hopeless
Bob Hope took his show to the soldiers time and time again.
He also did NBC specials.
He’d read cue cards while his costars were expected to memorize lines.
It looked disconcerting when he’d talk to an off-camera cue card instead of the other actors.
As he got older, his vision got worse, so he couldn’t read the cards.
And his hearing got worse, so he couldn’t hear the prompts in the earpiece.
At his funeral, the eulogy was read off of cue cards.
While one blank cue card was held by the coffin.
To remind him to remain quiet.
Dallas Loves You
For the most ironic words ever spoken, you have to credit Nellie Connally, the wife of the Texas Governor sitting next to JFK in the limo as they drove through the streets of Dallas.
Crowds cheering. People waving.
The people in the open-top vehicles in the motorcade waving back.
And then, she said those words: “You can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.”
Kennedy agreed, just as bullets ripped through his body.
You could say that Lee Harvey Oswald was from New Orleans.
And spent time in Russia and other places.
So maybe Dallas loved him, but that crazy jackass didn’t.
Bob Ross Greatest
Bob Ross was a good painter.
He was also a good presenter and narrator.
An excellent teacher, too. He taught art classes around the country.
Selling his brand of art supplies.
Like a Johnny Appleseed, but with art.
Planting art in so many talented minds.
When not on tour, he painted for 30 series of his television show, all at a grueling pace in a tiny university television studio.
Popular and in demand, but exhausted.
The stress wore him down, made him sick.
The greatest painting of them all, Bob Ross had painted himself in a corner.
Unable to stop.
Somewhere under the rainbow
After the storm, the farmhands found Dorothy in the road.
Bandaging the delirious girl’s head, bringing her home.
The stories she told.
Flying monkeys? Witches?
“Madness,” said the doctors.
She spent the next ten years in one hospital after another.
Always asking about her dog. “Where’s Toto?”
Long ago euthanized by the county.
Her aunt and uncle, crops ruined, lost the farm.
They went out to California, died in the desert.
After she was released, Dorothy would watch for storms.
Running into the winds.
Screaming. Laughing.
They never found her body.
Maybe she made it back to Oz after all?