Did I ever tell you about my friend Diana Fire?
Parents can be cruel, choosing names.
When she was a child, she liked to play with matches. Every year, she’d ask for a new Barbie Dream House, but by Valentine’s day, Barbie would be back in her shoebox, hair singed and skin scorched a bit more.
Through the years, she blazed a trial through homes, jobs – burning every bridge.
I got a call this morning. Had to identify her body.
Froze to death after getting locked in a walk-in cooler. Ruined the irony potential there.
So we’ll have her cremated.
Tag: childhood
Laminated
Flat Stanley became flat when a bulletin board fell on him.
You believe that he went on a series of wild adventures, right? Catching art thieves, sliding under doors, and mailing himself to far-off distant lands?
What really happened was a quiet, closed-coffin funeral.
His little brother Arthur was traumatized, shipped off to a mental hospital.
Every time his parents visited, he’d hand them another book he’d written about Stanley.
Alive. Adventuring.
Under his hospital bed, they found crushed and laminated mice.
“Experiments,” said Arthur, grinning
He escaped last night. Stole a steamroller.
Oh my God! The Mall!
Stop him!
Pulsation
“Pulsation: Pulsation is the act of pulsating,” mumbled Dictionary.
Dictionary is Steve’s little brother. He’s retarded or something, but special.
You can tell him a word, and he’ll give you the definition.
We ask him a few bad words and laugh at him.
Then we ask him a few nonsense words, and he holds his head and screams.
But then, hearing “Zuatha” he stopped.
“Zuatha: Zuatha is a insectoid hive-mind species that has developed faster-than-light technology and routinely observe-”
That’s all Dictionary said before the room was filled with a bright white light.
The light vanished.
And so did Dictionary.
Robot Replacements
The owner of the factory looked at the productivity reports and sighed.
His workers were shiftless and lazy, so he decided to replace them with robots.
The robots tried to get the work done, but their output still wasn’t what he’d hoped for.
Then, the idea struck him: What if the robots were shiftless and lazy?
He had them reprogrammed and started the factory back up.
The robots turned out to be even more efficient than humans at shirking their duties. One robot could shirk the duties of ten men.
He gave up on the factory business, building politicians instead.
Twins
I was so simple before.
If you have two genetically identical children at the same time, they’re called twins.
But if you take one embryo and implant it in another woman, are they still twins?
What if you take one egg, replicate it a few times, and implant them all together?
Twins? Triplets? Quadruplets?
And what if you don’t implant them all at once? Maybe wait a year or two between pregnancies?
Are they now clones?
It’s so confusing. Makes it hard to buy just the right card, too.
Are you my brother?
Are you my mother?
Are you… me?
Baby Brother
Lisa’s parents knew what would be on the Christmas List.
The same thing she’d asked for every year: a baby brother.
Her birth had been difficult. The doctors had performed a hysterectomy to stop the bleeding.
And her parents didn’t want to adopt or hire a surrogate.
“You’re plenty enough,” they said to Lisa.
So, she took matters into her own hands.
Sure, the paper said it was an electrical short from the tree.
Lisa said she saw smoke, rescued the neighbor’s baby first, couldn’t go back in because of the flames.
Just wait until she wants a baby sister.
Advent
I never understood the concept behind the Advent Calendar.
To me, it was just an overpriced fancy package of candy.
Not really much of a calendar, because you shred the numbers to get to the candy, and once you eat the first one… there’s always the second one… and third… and fourth…
Pretty soon, you’re sitting there on the first of the month, face covered in chocolate, and the whole calendar’s been torn to shreds.
There’s supposed to be Bible verses in there, something to do with the shapes of the candy treats?
Whatever. Hand me another calendar.
I’m hungry.
The Not So Merry Go Round
Here we sit on the merry-go-round.
Where some aren’t so merry at all.
Some kids are reaching for brass rings.
Others hold on and laugh.
And then there’s those crybabies, clutching with fear and screaming:
Moooooooooommmmmmmyyyyyyyy!
I’ll just sit on the bench, wondering.
All those tattoos on the arm of the operator.
The smoke oozing out from the machinery.
The gears grind louder.
Which the music almost covers up.
It’s a lot happening at once.
I just want to sit here on the bench.
And watch everything go by.
And listen to the music.
With a few folks, humming along.
The Missing Story
I read a bedtime story to Lisa every night.
It’s always a new story. She never wants to hear the same story twice.
She cries when I box up the story books to take to the used bookstore. She wants to keep them all.
Her bookshelf filled up quickly.
And three more I bought her.
The books are in piles from floor to ceiling, filling every closet and room.
I can’t get down the stairs to the basement anymore. It’s also full of books.
So, we switched to eBooks.
I read a story from the Kindle, and she falls asleep.
The Bully
The Bully watches the playground, grinning.
Kids are swinging on the swings, sliding down the slide, and they’re all having fun.
Nobody is fighting or crying.
He can’t remember the last time there was any trouble in this playground.
The other bullies are gone.
Back then, he had heard kids crying, and instead of bullying them, he bullied the bullies.
And won.
A girl runs up to him and puts a flower in his lap.
“Thank you,” she says.
The bully reaches for the flower with his good hand and smells it.
It’s wonderful.
Then he steers his wheelchair home.