Tag: childhood

The Milkman Cometh

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I remember when milk was five cents a carton and chocolate milk was six.
I always bought chocolate.
Years later, working at the milk processing plant, I now know the truth.
It’s just brown coloring we put in.
Per ounce, it’s less expensive than actual milk.
The packaging costs the same to print. Chocolate milk has a brown carton and the regular has blue.
My son starts his first day of school tomorrow.
Regular milk is 75 cents, chocolate milk is a buck.
So, he’ll get his classmates to pay the extra quarter.
Chip off the old block, he is.

Metaphysical Therapy

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Mother was a Freudian psychiatrist.
Every time she tried to analyze me, she’d say “Tell me about your mother.”
And I’d say “Um, mom? That’s you, stupid!”
She’d nod. And then I’d be sent to bed without dinner.
Later, after I busted my knee and had surgery, I ended up with a metaphysical therapist.
Instead of building strength in my knee with exercise, we debated the nature of all existence and if it was still my knee or something entirely new.
Not only did I end up totally confused, the damn thing still hurts like a son of a bitch.

Wth Daddy

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Little Terry was only five, but when mommy asked her what she wanted to do, she said “Go to the moon with Daddy.”
Her mommy smiled, made sure her daughter’s wig was on straight, and checked the IV.
Terminal cancer, while Joe was training.
Two years later, he was wrestling with the controls of the lander.
The retrorockets weren’t firing.
The vessel was falling.
Alarms screaming in his ears, lights flashing everywhere.
Everyone watched on TV.
Except for his wife and daughter.
She’d been cured of the cancer, his wife had divorced him.
She still would get the life insurance.

Cookies

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My mom always made the best cookies. I have recipes, but it’s not the same.
It was so hard to resist them. They never lasted long.
When she made plates of them for others, she had to hide them, or wrap them with several layers of foil and plastic to keep the rest of us out.
She put a plate on the front bench to take to the neighbors, but the next morning all that was left was the plate.
No foil, no plastic, no cookies.
The dog had eaten them all.
Or, at least, that’s what we told her.

Turning Blue

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Tracey shouts that she’s going to hold her breath until she turns blue if she doesn’t get her way.
Fine, I say. Go ahead and do that.
So, she does. She holds her breath and after five minutes she turns a bright shade of blue.
She stares at me, her eyes bulging.
I stare back, sticking my tongue out at her and breathing normally.
“This air sure is delicious,” I say. “Since you’re not using any, all the more for me.”
I walk around, taking deep breaths, sighing with satisfaction.
Tracey’s passed out on the floor, turning pink again.
Dumbass.

Funeral barge

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I watch a milk carton boat float down the bayou, a dead hamster laying inside.
I walk upstream until I come to a house.
A boy on the front steps, crying.
“What’s wrong?”
“The hamster died,” he whines. “Mom beat me.”
I knock on the door, and a woman answers “What do you want?”
A younger boy is behind her, also crying.
“Why did you beat a kid for his hamster dying?” I asked.
She says “It was his little brother’s. Now butt out.” And slams the door.
I walk down the steps, and punch the kid in the face.

Static Wave

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Instead of saying her first word, my daughter opened her mouth and a wave of static filled the room.
The lights flickered for a few seconds before they caught and stayed lit.
I was expecting a Mommy or Daddy, like most kids, but the doctors warned us that the high percentage of nanoparticles in her system may alter her development slightly.
My wife and I said “Good, Marcie!” and tried to be supportive, but her grimace matched mine.
Still, despite the setback, not bad for 5 days old.
We’ll finish uploading Calculus tonight and start work on her Quantum Physics.

Baby Jane D’oh

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Usually, we find any abandoned babies at the back door of the hospital.
Once or twice, they been left in a dumpster. The mother’s afraid of being caught on tape, and they call from a pay phone to let us know.
And then hang up.
This was the first one we’d found in the parking garage, happily sleeping in her carrier, in the middle of an empty parking space.
The carrier was rather expensive.
Too expensive.
While we waited, a Lexus drove up and screeched to a halt.
“I must have put her on the roof, reached for my keys…”

Fourth Pig

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You’ve heard about the Three Little Pigs, right?
They made their houses out of straw, wood, and brick.
There was another pig. A cousin, who was in The Big House, made of stone and iron bars.
When he heard what happened to his cousins, he broke out.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he asked the cowering pigs. “Did you spend all of my money on these stupid houses?”
The three pigs nodded.
The fourth pig made his house out of bacon, ham, and pork chops.
Nobody, not even the Big Bad Wolf dares to fuck with that psycho.

The Forgotten Birthday

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When a school is named after someone famous, the staff usually goads the students into some kind of birthday celebration to commemorate all the things that person did for society.
However, when that birthday falls on a holiday like Christmas or comes up during the summertime, it usually passes unobserved.
Not on my watch.
When I was named principal of this school, I took on a sacred oath.
Yes, he was born on the Fourth of July. Fireworks, right?
Wrong. The city hosts the fireworks display elsewhere.
I will do them here, at Yankee Doodle Dandy Elementary, do or die.