It doesn’t take long to make a fresh pitcher of iced tea.
I strip 8 teabags from their packages, drop them into a pitcher, and then put a kettle of water on the stove.
Turning the dial to High, I walk into the living room and sit for a while.
I guess this is the superstitious part of me, not watching a pot because a watched pot never boils.
I wait 5 minutes… 10 minutes… 15 minutes…
No whistle yet?
I go back into the kitchen.
Great. I turned on the wrong burner.
I guess those pots don’t boil either.
Tag: silly
Choice
It’s not easy for a person to cook with their arm in a sling.
Visions of setting my left arm on fire convince me to stick with simple foods, like carrots and hummus.
Yogurt, too.
But I find myself unable to choose from the many flavors in our refrigerator. The pain meds make it hard to make arbitrary decisions like this.
I stand there, confused, and getting hungrier… hungrier…
I reach out and freeze.
“Close your eyes,” a voice says.
So, I do.
And I pull out a yogurt! Success!
Uh oh.
Now I need to pick out a spoon.
The Cruelest Puzzle
Vindal Mumford was a famous puzzlemaker, so it was no surprise that his will was in the form of an intricate puzzlebox with no apparent solution.
Experts examined the box for weeks, twisting and turning it and subjecting it to x-rays and other modern scanning technology.
But the box was still impenetrable and unsolvable.
Weeks… months… years went by, but no solution to the puzzle was ever found.
Not that Vindal left anything to be won by the solver of his final puzzle.
There’s not much money in creating problems without solutions, you know.
(Unless you’re a politician, of course.)
Perfect Timing
I stuffed my arm back into its sling, walked out of the physical therapist’s office, and crossed the street to the theater.
Looper had already started, but the box office girl said there were twenty minutes of previews.
I bought a ticket, the doorman tore it in half, and he checked my bag for weapons.
“Just drugs,” I said. “Painkillers.”
There was no way I could carry my large soda and popcorn myself.
“Jeremy,” I said, reading the boy’s nametag. “Got a minute to help me to my seat?”
He carried my drink, I thanked him, and the movie began.
Open For Dinner
I wanted some chicken in my vegetables, so I pulled out a can of chicken and fumbled with the can opener in my one good hand.
I can’t close it and turn the handle at the same time.
And wishing I had an electric can opener doesn’t do squat for me right now.
So, I use the can opener to rip around the lid, taking five minutes to get it open.
Then, I poked a fork into the lid, prying it off.
And dropping the can on the floor.
Chicken… everywhere…
“Dinner,” I call to the cats, eating my vegetables.
The Meal Plan
Back in college, the meal plan covered weekday breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
On weekends, there were just the noon brunches, and we were on our own for breakfast and dinner.
Most of us slept through breakfast, or we loaded up on beer at the tailgate parties for football games, but the truth is I never grew out of having milk and cereal.
Sometimes, it was corn flakes, but usually it was Lucky Charms.
Whatever the cereal, the cockroaches always found their way into the box.
Green clovers.
Blue Diamonds.
Yellow stars.
And brown insect corpses.
Yeah, they were magically disgusting.
Taps
Regulations state that every burial gets a bugler.
The problem is, the enemy took out Rogers and Menendez – the only two guys who play the bugle.
“Who knows anything about playing music?” shouts the company commander.
Washington stood up. “I scratched a bit in clubs.”
“Sit down!” shouts the commander. “Anybody else?”
I nudged Washington. “Think we can rig something up?”
He nodded.
And I stood up.
Washington and I rigged up a bugle to play a track out from a speaker in the bell.
And it worked great
Until it rained, and the damn thing shorted out the camp.
Play The Ponies
My uncle Dexter would disappear every Friday night, and then return for Sunday brunch.
Sometimes, he’d have cash stuffed into his pockets, and other times he be flat broke and sporting a black eye or two.
“Your stupid Uncle Dexter plays the ponies.” my mom would say. “Stay away from him.”
So, that night, I followed him from street to street, until he reached the racetrack.
He wired up all the horses to a massive keyboard, turned on the power, and played them like a pipe organ.
It sounded awful, but not as bad as my sister practicing her violin.
Gremlins
The nurse told me that I can’t eat anything after midnight because I am having surgery early tomorrow.
But the truth is that I am a gremlin.
Feeding a gremlin after midnight turns them into an evil scaly predator that causes havoc and mayhem.
And getting a gremlin wet causes them to pop out warped clones.
I smile, close my eyes, and say “wet or dry, a sponge bath is a sponge bath.”
It’s certainly better than the food, which explains why there aren’t any evil scaly gremlins walking around causing havoc.
Or is it because visiting hours are over?
That’s Super
Remember when Superman would hear someone shout “HELP,” and he’d run into a phone booth, and then run back out as Superman to save the day?
Well, there are no phone booths anymore.
So, how does Superman change?
Potable toilets.
Which, if you think about it, is what he should have been using all along.
Unlike glass phone booths, portable toilets have opaque walls, and no matter how fast Superman is when he changes, there’s still the possibility that someone’s going to catch a subliminal dose of Supercock or Superass.
I assume that’s how Lex Luthor became such an asshole.