As the old man sat on the stump of The Giving Tree, he pondered all that he had taken from his beloved friend.
Her leaves to make crowns.
Her apples to sell for money.
Her branches to build a house.
Her trunk to build a boat.
And what had he given her?
Nothing.
Clutching his chest, he let out a gasp, and died.
The Giving Tree laughed. “Serves you right, you greedy bastard.”
She laughed for hours, until the old man’s sons dug up her stump and carved a coffin from it, as the old man instructed in his will.
Tag: childhood
The Shrine of the Bloody Flower
The Shrine Of The Bloody Flower features a blood-soaked flower, taken from a girl who was shot during the uprising.
What the shrine doesn’t say is that the girl wasn’t shot by the soldiers.
She was shot by the rebels.
“Carry these flowers to that checkpoint,” they said. “Or we kill your parents.”
So, she did, but when she reached the checkpoint, she dropped the flowers and began screaming.
That’s when the shooting began.
How did they preserve the flower?
It was plastic. Because they needed it for the shrine they were planning.
Just needed the blood.
Sick, bloody bastards.
Robby
We trained Robby to never leave his teddy bear behind.
So, years later, every time we tried to throw the thing out, Robby would rescue it from the garbage.
We dumped the horrid thing in the neighbor’s trash can, but somehow Robby found it there and dug it out.
One block down… two blocks down…
He always found it.
I sent him to his room, and as I tore the thing apart, something fell out:
The waterproof GPS tracker, in case Robby ever got kidnapped or ran away.
Oh. Right.
I went to Robby’s room and…
He was gone.
ROBBY!
Not just another pretty face
Sure, she’s a famous model now, but when she was a teenager, she was crowned Miss Connect The Dots of the Schenectady Summer Fair.
Worst case of acne you could possibly imagine.
She tried every cream, treatment, and torture imaginable.
None of them worked.
Do you ever wash your face?
Don’t eat so much chocolate.
Go easy on that greasy food.
Humiliated, she ran away from home.
Today, she’s in hundreds of magazines and catalogs.
Oh, her face is still a mess. More hideous than Medusa herself.
But then, who needs a pretty face when you’re a famous hand model?
Red Book
Whenever my parents fought and I had to stay overnight at my grandparents’ house, Grampa pulled a red book from the shelf and read bedtime stories to me.
They fought a lot, so I was over there once… twice a week.
And a new story each night, one I’d never heard since.
When I was a senior in high school, there was a carbon monoxide leak, and Grandma and Grampa died.
I found the red book of Grampa’s stories, opened it, and saw it was full of the raunchiest pornography I’d ever seen.
I guess Grampa was a good improviser.
Cries
The baby’s crying. And she won’t stop, no matter what I do.
I remember my mother telling me that there’s no crying over spilled milk, so I rush to the refrigerator, get the milk, and spill some on her.
And, like magic, she stops.
Through the silence, we stare at each other for a while.
She has my eyes, but the rest is so Jason.
I smile, and she smiles… and laughs.
And laughs. And laughs.
She cannot stop laughing.
What did mom say? Ah: “No laughing at the misfortune of others.”
What? How the hell do I do that?
No rest for the wicked
The Book Of Isaiah says there is no rest for the wicked.
But I know of a rest stop for the wicked.
It’s in Ohio, along the Turnpike. Just outside of Akron.
All kinds of wickedness happens there.
Children disobey their parents. And eat dessert before dinner, if they eat their dinner at all.
And I know a writer who goes there in the summer to dangle participles and split infinitives.
After Labor Day, we dress in our finest whites and parade around the dog-walking lawn shamelessly.
Not that people walk their dogs there. They poop all over!
Truly wicked!
Max
Max is five years old, and he can heal machines.
No, he can’t explain how they work. But when he puts his hands on a machine and closes his eyes, the machine starts working again.
Blenders. Dishwashers. Lamps.
He even healed a motorcycle, but that took a lot out of him, so we gave him a fruit juice box, and let him nap in the corner for a while.
We took him to the train museum once, and he touched a steam train.
The whistle screamed to life as Max collapsed.
Two week coma.
We go to the zoo now.
Punching Santa
Why do children sit in Santa’s lap and tell him what they want for Christmas?
Because it’s a lot nicer than tripping him up, sitting on his back, and punching him in the kidneys until he gives you what you want.
This doesn’t just apply to Santa Claus and Christmas.
Stop beating the crap out of the other kids in school or you’re going to get expelled. Or put in juvenile detention.
And that counts double for your little brother during dinner.
Why can’t you say “Please pass the potatoes.” like other kids?
And don’t punch the damn potatoes, either.
Fruitcake
Tina is in the Christmas Pageant in her school.
She’s been chosen to be the Fruitcake.
That’s right. A fruitcake.
She’s going to get rolled on stage while the kids sing about how horrible fruitcake is.
I know that kids pick on other kids, especially ones in wheelchairs, but the school was supposed to stop this bullying crap.
So, we made the fruitcake costume, stuffed with fireworks.
When it was Tina’s cue, they rolled the Trojan Fruitcake out.
I pushed the remote and… it exploded.
Hurt a bunch of kids. Some permanently.
Oh well. More fruitcakes for next year’s pageant.