Count Me Out

The dirt road leads to a single ruinous trailer home. No mailbox or shiny metal numbering indicates I’ve made it to the right place, but of course there was no street sign to help with that either. I glance at the crinkled map in the passenger seat; a pattern of X’s marks off the homes I’ve already visited. It’s been a hell of a journey so far.

Dust swirls, and gravel and dried mud crack and pop as I bring the car to a stop. It’s just as well — I like to make some noise so I don’t take anyone by surprise. That’s a good way to get your head blown off around here.

The land around the trailer is a graveyard of rusted Fords and Chevys, some with their hoods standing erect like giant tombstones. Their epitaphs would read “flipped into a ditch,” “lost a demolition derby,” “dissected for parts,” or “just couldn’t go on.”

A curtain flutters beyond a cracked window of the trailer, and I know I’ve gotten the attention I was waiting for. I step out onto a dusty pathway, then slam the door behind me, just in case I haven’t been noticed yet.

A dog takes me by surprise when it leaps around a corner of the trailer, roaring like a lion. Its huge paws pound into the weeds of the front lawn as it sprints straight for me. I freeze like a stupid gazelle, able only to press back against the car as if my life depends on how much surface contact I can make with the molded plastic and glass. I made a rookie mistake, not checking for a dog, and now I’m going to pay for it.

Whelmed

I woke up this morning to the sound of paintball splatters. A local gang had been cornered in my lawn by a rival, covering my house in red and blue. After negotiating a peace treaty, I forgot to eat breakfast.

My commute to work nearly resulted in five fender benders, three fatal collisions and two ostriches through my windshield (all separate incidents, narrowly avoided).

A fist fight broke out between two co-workers over a parking space as I cruised the lot, so I took one of several spots just past their disputed claim. I found out later in the day they were actually fighting over a heated eBay auction, not a parking space.

Shortly before lunch, my cell phone rang and I noticed my home phone in the caller id. Since no one was home except my dogs, I became intrigued enough to answer. Over the line, I heard the dogs howling and a duck quacking. I decided to go check things out and was glad I did because my house sat inches away from catching fire by a sparking power line severed when a yacht fell from a blimp advertising a new yacht-transportation service. There was also a duck in my kitchen.

Needless to say, I didn’t get a chance to eat lunch which left me grumpy for the rest of the day. My grumpiness became apparent to the boss when I inadvertently threatened his family with the plague. That landed me with a week-long data entry project that a high school intern would have been insulted by.

After a few hours of transcribing random letter sequences, the clock struck five and the boss asked if I could work on the project for another hour or so. At this point, someone anonymously emailed me an extremely incriminating photo of the boss with an asian or hispanic looking hermaphrodite. He saw it in my inbox and let me leave for the day, saying he would finish up the project himself.

On the drive home, I witnessed a commercial airliner forced to land on the highway. It was quite a site to behold, though, of course, it did a number on traffic. Eventually, I hopped out and helped to direct traffic around the stranded nuns emerging from the airplane. With a compact car, I could only carry three at a time but eventually got them all safely to their recital, baptism or whatever it was they were screaming at me about.

A few minor incidents later, I returned home and found my wife with her usual stack of evening papers and gossip magazines. She shoved an Us Weekly at me and pointed out an article on celebrity cellulite. Could I believe that Angelina Jolie had let herself go, she asked. Then she told me about the latest crisis in a country I’d never heard of: hundreds dead thanks to a ruthless dictator. The Steelers quarterback embroiled in controversy. The president’s embarrassing faux pas with a Chinese delegate. A new species discovered living in deep sea trenches. Brad Pitt visited a local Krispy Kreme. An entire day’s worth of newsworthy happenings.

I shrugged it off, and she asked about my day instead.

I told her a few of the highlights, knowing she would continue asking until I did. As usual, she overreacted and asked for more and more details. Finally, I told her I didn’t want to talk about it any further.

She asked how I could possibly not talk about it. Crazy things happened to me today, and how could I be so calm?

I responded with my usual philosophy: Ask yourself if will it affect you a year from now. Will it affect you a week from now? Will it even affect you tomorrow morning? If not, don’t worry about it. Forget the small things.

If we forget all those small things, she said, what’s left? Nothing’s left, she said, you’re just numb. She said amazing things happen every day in this world and we need to be aware of everything that’s going on so we can keep our heads above water.

I responded that amazing things do happen every day, and we’d drown just trying to keep up with it all. If you worry about every little thing, how do you cope when something big happens? If I’m numb, I told her, then she’s overwrought.

She blew up at me for calling her names and threatened me with divorce. She stormed into the den, and I heard her crying on the phone with her mother. How could he do this to me, she sobbed.

Unable to find anything worth doing, I went to bed early. My wife eventually hung up the phone and resumed her reading late into the night.

The next day, I walked out to retrieve the paper but found it hopelessly lodged under the landing pad of a small spacecraft.

A Car Without Volition

There once was a car lacking ambition.
In assembly, they skipped the ignition.
Though his headlamps shone bright
and his steering was tight,
he was a machine with no mission.

Merely Players

Henry stormed through the small living room.  ”You know, Shakespeare was prophetic,” he said, nearly shouting. ”‘All the world’s a stage,’ and now with iTube, all the men and women really are players — whether they like it or not!”

“It’s YouTube, dear,” Nancy winked at her worked-up husband.

He struggled out of his soiled shirt and continued ranting.  ”With all the cameras and recorders being carried around these days, there’s no such thing as privacy anymore.  I can’t even walk out to the dumpster with any level of anonymity.  All public spaces should have big, red signs posted which read, ’Warning, you are on a live movie set and may be recorded at any moment.  These recordings will later be played back for millions who will all laugh at you mercilessly.  If you do not wish to have your likeness used, please move to a remote island.’”

Henry, now shirtless and beet red, stomped into the bedroom and over to his closet.  ”And you know what?  It’s not just limited to the public, either.  Every time your son comes over, he’s taking videos with that damned camera phone.  And the other night at Karaoke, Lacey and Bob brought that huge camera of theirs.  You know, there’s a reason we get a private karaoke room, and it’s not so our hip friends can share embarrassing singing pictures of us with all of Facepage!”

“Facebook,” Nancy helped.

“Whatever it is, I should be getting royalties for my performances.  Someone’s making money off this stuff, and I want a piece of it.  Or at least a new shirt out of the deal.”

Decaying Conveyances

With no notion of the past,
I think I’d live forever.
With no memories of better days
they would all just lie ahead.
I am who I am right now
and was never any more,
my mind and body always peak
with nothing for compare.
For though I may hobble so
and forget what I once knew,
these things go without notice
and I remain unchanged.

With no notion of the past,
I think I’d live forever.
For only in our memories
and in faces of the young,
do we see how far we’ve traveled
in declining, sloping bodies.
This new hurt I feel today
brings longing for my youth.
Eventually I grow so weary
I just quit pushing on.

With no notion of the past,
I think I’d live forever,
but future without past
is no eternity at all,
just a new day to experience,
forget, and start anew.
Each day would be like dying
on every single night.
I’d rather live one day that mattered
than spend them all in vain desire.

Bored in Heaven

I died a grisly death;
I’ll not bore you with the details.
The doctors couldn’t save me
with their stitches and their needles.

My soul flew from my body
to a brand new place above.
A perfect home I found there
pre-filled with all my stuff.

I settled in and looked around,
met the friendly neighbors.
And in this perfect Heaven,
I grew bored four hours later.

I tried to play the harp,
but I knew it wasn’t me.
I flitted around on my wings
Until they grew heavy.

It became quite clear then
when facing eternity,
one really ought to take up
their own Heaven hobby.

So I thought real hard,
and a notebook fast appeared.
I took some time to write some lines,
but they all just sounded weird.

I closed my eyes again.
They opened to an easel,
but my attempt at Mona Lisa
looked more like a painted weasel.

I tried to learn to juggle,
I tried to learn to knit.
Before I accomplished anything,
I gave up in a fit.

I moved on to watching movies,
but I couldn’t sit through one.
I grew bored of carnivals
before the rides were done.

I made no friends at all,
they couldn’t keep my interest;
keeping up a dialogue
was like going to the dentist.

Centuries passed by.
I tried a million things,
from sports to arts,
they all proved passing flings.

My attention span,
it was now clear,
not much on Earth,
was shorter here.

Days grew long and soon I lagged,
so tired of even trying.
I must admit I moped a bit
and quite regretted dying.

Eons on, it’s obvious,
though no one could fortell,
that Heaven, while so lovely,
is in fact my living Hell.

With eternity laid bare for me,
I know there is no help.
For Hell is not a place or thing,
but a person like myself.

Bless You

Margaret sneezed.  ”Oh no,” I thought, “Here we go.”

She sneezed again, but I remained silent.  Her sneezes were the high-pitched, drawn out type that always gets a laugh from new friends.  They begin as an almost inaudible gasp for air, “ahh,” followed by the smallest, most adorable mouse squeak of “cheewww.”  After enough of them, those same friends think to themselves, “Really, she’s gonna do that every time?”

But I still loved those little sneezes.  My wife and I first met six years ago around Easter at which point I immediately took to reenacting her cute sneezing fits with yellow marshmallow Peeps.  She thought I was making fun of her, but really I was just falling in love.

Margaret peeped out a third sneeze, though so little mucus escaped I couldn’t understand what purpose it served.  I stared downward and fingered the next page in my book, trying to show how little I noticed what was happening right beside me in bed.

“Cheewww,” came a fourth and final sneeze.  She reached for a tissue, though there was nothing for it to absorb.

“Bless you,” Margaret said, but not for her own benefit.  She glared at me.

“Yep,” I mumbled, still pretending to be engrossed in my book.

Margaret turned back to her television show.  I thought I was in the clear, but a few seconds later she continued to press, “Tummy, I wish you would just say it.”

She only used that nickname when being affectionate or trying to get her way.  I set the book down and prepared to rejoin an old debate.  ”As I’ve said before, honey, blessing someone for sneezing is a silly, old-fashioned tradition.  There’s no point, and I don’t want to partake in it.”