When the war came, Mother yelled “RUN!” and we ran to the docks.
The boat was crowded and leaky, and the captain said we needed to shed weight or we’d sink.
A dozen mothers and fathers jumped overboard and sacrificed themselves to save us.
Or so they thought.
The captain waited until dark before tossing the rest of the adults overboard and turning the boat around.
“I’ll sell the rest of you to the factories.”
Except me. I hid under some ropes and waited, and when he set out again, I slit his throat.
Now what? I ask the sky.
Tag: childhood
The Old Teacher
My grandfather taught me how to play Scrabble.
Somewhere on the shelf with the golf and pool trophies was his masters points notebook.
But all those years ago, he’d never sit at the dining table to play.
Instead, he’d circle the table, looking over shoulders, shaking his head when my mother or grandmother would look for help, and he’d rearrange the tiles.
“Where does that go?” they’d say.
He’d point at the board.
“Oh!” and they’d smile and place the tiles.
These days, I imagine him screaming more than frowning.
I probably shouldn’t play Scrabble on my phone while driving.
Midnight Showing
If you’ve ever said “Nothing ruins a movie more than a screaming baby,” you should look at the headlines coming out of Colorado this morning.
That’s right: someone brought a 3-month-old baby to a midnight showing of the final movie in the Batman trilogy.
Don’t you hate it when that happens?
It totally ruins the movie.
And if you call the ushers in on them, you end up looking like an asshole.
“We can’t find a babysitter this late at night!” they whine.
Why are they bringing a baby to a midnight showing in the first place?
That’s just sick.
The Y
Unlike the Catholic Church, we here at the Y act quickly when we discover an employee behaving in a disgusting manner with a child or doing something inappropriate, like collecting child pornography.
It doesn’t happen very often, because we have a screening process and keep our staff under observation. Nobody is ever left alone with a child.
Plus, when one is caught, we don’t sweep them under the rug like the Church does.
We bury them under the baseball field.
By the way, the pitcher’s mound is getting a bit high. Better dig it up and quicklime the corpses again.
The Killer Pool
Every week, I have to fish a dead neighborhood kid out of the pool.
No, they don’t drown in it. The coroner’s made that perfectly clear after every autopsy.
No water in the lungs.
And the fact the children have had their throats cut.
The blood. I don’t know if that gets taken care of by the chemicals and the filter. And I don’t care… I drain the pool, scrub it down, and replace the water.
The water bill is killing me.
One more, and I’m just going to fill the thing in with dirt and raise a vegetable garden.
Chicken Soup
My mother always said that chicken soup cures all ills.
When I got older, I had the temerity to question this.
“Yes. Every one of them,” she said.
“What about crazy people?” I asked.
“Hit them in the head with the can until they shut up,” she said.
That night on the news, the Supreme Court was debating legality of chemical castration of a rapist.
“I bet chicken soup couldn’t cure him,” I said.
“Mine would,” said my mother.
And she poured the hot soup in my lap.
She handed me the phone. “Feel like calling your shiksa girlfriend now?”
DNA
The DNA test results came back, and my father is not my father.
“Who is my father?” I asked.
“We have no idea,” said the lab technician. “But if you get us a DNA sample, we can run tests on it.”
So, I’ve been gathering up DNA from every man in the world.
Living or dead.
Well, except for the man who I thought was my father.
“I raised you, son!” I heard him say. “Come take a sample from me! It’s the least you can do!”
So, I took a scraping from his cheek.
And closed the coffin lid.
A Good Magician
I love doing my magic act for the kids.
After all these years the tux still fits me, although it and my cape, hat, and wand look a bit worse for wear.
And then there’s Pete, my bunny.
How long do they live?
Because I’ve had him for over thirty years.
No trick here: rabbit food, the occasional carrot or radish as a treat, and free reign of the house.
Perhaps he’s magical? Or some kind of government superbunny.
I offer him a carrot. “Are you a secret superbunny, Pete?”
Pete is silent.
A good magician never reveals his tricks.
Where The Wild Things Aren’t
The night Max wore his wolf suit
And made mischief of one kind or another
His mother called him WILD THING!
And Max said “I’ll eat you up!”
While sending Max to his room
His mother had a stroke and collapsed
Max stood there, confused
He tried to wake up his mother
But she didn’t move at all
So, Max picked up the telephone
And called the emergency number.
They arrived a few minutes later
Put his mother on a stretcher
Covered her with a sheet
And took her away.
Child Services picked up Max
He never wore costumes again
Creepy Crawlers
When I was growing up, I remember having one of those creepy crawlers bug-making factories.
You poured a resin called Plastigoop into molds, put it in a hot plate to cook, then let it cool and set.
It was really fun trying to make the creatures look realistic with different colors of the Plastigoop.
They changed the formula around so that instead of heating the resin with the hot plate oven, you’d heat the resin, then pour it into the molds to cool and set.
These days, if I want creepy crawlers, I just leave the dishes out for weeks.