Archive for ‘Stories With Morals’

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October 19, 2011

Desserts

Once upon a time, some very important people had a very important business lunch. Business lunches were salmon or chicken Caesar salad and Diet Coke, and jewel-toned suits for the women and charcoal or black suits for the men, forced laughter, and a cup of black coffee at the end, everybody knows that, but at this particular business lunch, the manager of the restaurant brought out a complimentary tray of dessert.

It was amazing! It was a huge tray of tarts piled with glazed fruits, and little glass pots filled with trifle and mousse, and chocolate-covered strawberries the size of eggs, and a pastel rainbow of macarons, and in the center, there was this giant brick of cake, which the server split open to reveal a sort of geologic formation with strata of chocolate and caramel and raspberry and whipped cream.

Everyone was thrilled! But because it was a fucking business lunch, they each had to ooh and aah, and then take one paltry macaron, profess fullness and vague disinterest, and go back to talking about business.

The dessert tray wilted in the middle of their tiresome conversation, like a giant, neglected monument to everything that was colorful and interesting about life.

After they left, the manager hauled the nearly untouched dessert tray back into the kitchen, and the cooks and the bussers and the barista and bartender and managers and food runners and servers had the best afternoon ever! They turned up the kitchen radio and shoved cake in each other’s faces like they’d just been married, and they all got totally hammered, too, because why the hell not? Later, a lot of them went out dancing.

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October 17, 2011

Rick’s Cafe

Once upon a time, there was an old man named Rick who liked to read the paper at a certain Starbucks, which was in a Barnes & Noble. He liked to sit there and read the paper, and then read some sports magazines, and then just drink his coffee and stare at the tabletop, and he liked it to be quiet, damn it!

But the cafe was full of noisy couples, people with babies and young children, businessmen who’d get on their phones and shout for everyone to hear how important they were, hippies who ate with their mouths wide open and smacked and slurped, crazy people who muttered to themselves with many a sibilant ‘s’, and all kinds of nonsense from all kinds of people who didn’t understand what a cafe in a bookstore was clearly for, which was to sit quietly and read and relax.

Rick had lived a long time. In his younger days, he’d served his country abroad, and when he got home, he’d worked hard all the rest of his life for very little pay, and now that he was retired, he wasn’t shy about telling others what he thought about what they were doing, and what he thought they ought to be doing instead.

“If your child can’t control himself, miss,” he’d say to a young woman whose toddler was screaming and mashing brownie into his hair. “Perhaps you’d best keep home with him until he’s older.”

“Well, I suppose we all know you’re quite the fellow!” he’d announce to a man in a suit who was braying into his Bluetooth. “In my day, someone with such important business to conduct was wanted in the office.”

“Would you turn off that infernal racket?” he’d say to a teenager, who was playing a game with beeps and sound effects on her phone. “Or I’ll take that device and throw it into the street, and you after it! Does your papa know you’re out displaying yourself in such an indecent sweater?”

“It’s all in your head, you loon!” he’d bellow at a homeless man who was muttering to himself. “Take yourself in hand.”

Everyone in the café was used to Rick. They thought he was quite a character. When Rick’s birthday came around, the barista had an idea for a surprise. She knew it was his birthday, because he’d had to fill it out on a form for his ‘buy 9 get 1 free’ coffee card. She spoke to each person who came into the café about her idea, and they all agreed to it.

At about 1 in the afternoon, Rick came in and set his newspaper and magazines down on a table. He went up to the counter and bought his usual macchiato – the real kind, espresso with a dot of foam, like they do in Italy, none of this caramel cream womanly nonsense that was on the menu. He took his drink to his seat, spread out his paper and began to read.

All of a sudden, a baby started crying. Rick looked up angrily, but before he could say anything at all, the baby’s mother had rushed it out of the cafe.

It was then that Rick noticed something. The café was silent.

No one was talking.

No one was rustling their papers or slurping their coffee.

No one was texting or gaming or talking on the phone.

No one was fighting with each other, or telling loud stories.

No one was snoring, or blowing their nose, or hacking up a lung.

No one was doing anything annoying at all.

Rick suddenly felt extremely uneasy. What was going on?

“Hey now,” he said. “What’s this, then? What’s the trick?”

Everyone ignored him, but he could see some people smile to themselves.

“Oh, I see,” he said. “I see what’s going on here. You’re all having a laugh at the old man, is that it?”

“Shhhh,” said a young woman sitting next to Rick, and a couple of people tittered.

“What’s the meaning of this?” yelled Rick, starting to sweat. “What, you’re all in it together, putting one over on me, is that it?”

“Calm down, Rick,” said the barista. “We just all thought that for your birthday, we’d—”

“What do you mean, my birthday?” said Rick. “How do you know my birthday? How do you know anything about me?”

“Well—” she said, but Rick couldn’t hear what she was saying. They were all laughing openly at him, now – all of these fools laughing at him! And what was there to laugh about? What had he ever done except exactly what he should have? Meanwhile, they were disasters, every one of them, poorly dressed and poorly behaved, loafing around all day with their silly computers and their phones and their sugary coffee abominations and their fat little children.

“What’s so damned funny?” Rick screamed. “I’ll show you what to laugh at! I’ll show the lot of you!”

And with that, Rick ran out of the café as fast as he could go.

And he never went back again.

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October 14, 2011

Stick In the Mud

Once upon a time, there was a stick in the mud, and he was up for anything!

He was interested in singing, and storytelling, and pin the hat on the stick, and picnics, and enjoying the rain, and holding his breath, and deep conversations, and star-gazing, and I Spy and pretty much anything else that could be done from amongst the mud. Which was a lot of things! An endless variety of activities!

“Life is meant to be lived!” he’d often shout to the surrounding trees and rocks and grass and mud.

But no one else ever wanted to do a damn thing.

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October 12, 2011

Donna and Her Beanie Babies

Once upon a time, there was a woman named Donna who worked at the front desk of a dentist’s office and who loved Beanie Babies. She had about a million of the things – they were all over her desk, and all over the window where patients signed in, and all over the counter where patients came to pay when they were done. Her car was like a traveling Beanie Baby shop. Her house was like a Beanie Baby warehouse.

For Donna, every new Beanie Baby was more precious than the one before. She never got sick of the things. Each new acquisition brought her such joy. She would unpack, say, a seasonal Boo Baby, and hold it up to the light as if appraising a diamond. Then, she would coo and squeal and crush the Beanie Baby to her as if it were her own real baby. She would show it off proudly to everyone in the office and to each client that came in, and she’d call her mother and her sister and her friends from the local chapter of the Beanie Baby Buddies Official Beanie Babies Club and tell everyone the story of how she’d found that Baby and what great condition it was in and what she’d paid for it, and what it meant in the overall context of the production and collection of Beanie Babies.

One day, she won an eBay bid for a very rare Princess Diana Beanie Baby and you’d have thought she’d won the lottery, been carried out of the dentist’s office by Richard Gere, and been raptured all at once.

Needless to say, her coworkers in the office did not think incredibly well of Donna. They hated hearing about the freaking Beanie Babies, they hated seeing the things everywhere, they’d be happy if they never heard another damn Beanie Baby story again, and they pitied and looked down on Donna’s bizarre, single-minded devotion to the things, her unquestioning and never-ending delight and immersion in Beanie Baby collection and culture.

They thought Donna was pretty dumb.

But even though they never knew it about each other, every single person who worked in that dentist’s office, and a number of the patients as well, had all had a singular experience. Every one of them had, on some particularly dark, bad day – a day when something had gone wrong in their personal lives, or when work had seemed particularly overwhelming or soul-killing, or when they’d suddenly looked at their lives and wondered what the hell they were living them for – they had done a very peculiar thing.

On their way home, they’d pulled into the parking lot of a nearby Hallmark store. Without even really being aware of their own actions, they’d entered the store and drifted over to the Beanie Baby section. They’d picked up a tiger, or a unicorn, or a bear, or a pumpkin. They’d squeezed it, put it back, picked up another one. Then, they’d carried a Baby over to the counter and paid for it.

Back in their cars, they’d sat for awhile with the Beanie Baby on their lap, staring at it intently, as if waiting and hoping for it to activate.

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October 10, 2011

The Sad Fate of a Lonely Hamster

Once upon a time, there were two little hamsters who lived together in a burrow, and they were very much in love. Every night, they combed each other’s hair and then cuddled up together to sleep. But one day, one hamster told the other that he’d found another hamster and he wanted to go live in her burrow.

The remaining hamster was very sad and lonely and went into a deep depression. She had a number of friends, and they all tried to make the lonely hamster feel better, but eventually, the lonely hamster still had to go home alone and sleep in a cold burrow all by herself.

One day, the lonely hamster was foraging around near a stream, and she met a snake.

“Invite me back to your burrow,” said the snake. The snake thought that he’d have a snack, and then also have a burrow to move into, because things had recently gone pretty sour back at the hollow log where he’d been living.

“I don’t know,” said the lonely hamster. “Aren’t you a snake?”

“Let’s take things slow,” offered the snake, and the lonely hamster began to meet him at the stream every day.

The lonely hamsters’ friends were horrified.

“That’s a snake!” they all cried, when the lonely hamster called them up to dish. “That. Is. A. Snake. Once a snake, always a snake. And if you don’t believe me, Ralph says so, too, and he knows snakes.”

“Sounds like a snake,” agreed Ralph, after first pushing the phone away and saying he’d rather not get involved. “You should probably stay away from him. I might know a hamster I can set you up with. I don’t know, let me ask around.”

It was the weirdest thing, though. Even though all her friends said that the snake was a snake and to stay away from him, the lonely hamster was so lonely that what she heard them say was, “Given the right opportunity, snakes can be really nice hamsters sometimes.”

The lonely hamster invited the snake back to her burrow.

“Listen, you’re a sweet hamster,” the snake said, before coming in. “So, I just want to be clear about the situation here: I’m a snake. I can tell you that we’ll get in your burrow there, and I won’t act like a snake. But I will. I’m going to be a snake. And you know what happens between snakes and hamsters?”

Even the snake told her what he was all about!

But the lonely hamster was so lonely that what she heard the snake say was, “I just haven’t met the right hamster yet.” She heard the snake say, “Save me!”

So, she invited the snake into her burrow, and the snake ate her immediately and without any dithering or remorse. He lived in her burrow for a few months, until a honey badger that had been looking for him sniffed him out.

Moral: It’s probably more dignified to be a lonely hamster than to be snakefood…but sometimes being snakefood is more interesting.

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October 7, 2011

Big Dog, Little Dog

Once upon a time, there were two dogs who lived together in one house. One of the dogs was big, and he had a self-assertiveness to match his size. The other dog was little and nervous.

Every time the big dog saw the little dog, he would run over and step on his head.

“Haw, what you gonna do about it? Whatcha gonna do about it, little dog?” the big dog would say.

“Please stop,” the little dog would whimper into the floor. “Quit it. Why do you always do this?”

“Because,” explained the big dog. “I’m a big dog and you’re a little dog, and so I can step on your head and you can’t do anything about it. Haw!”

“But you don’t have to do it just because you can,” said the little dog.

“How you like that, little dog? How you like having your head stepped on?”

The little dog tried to reason with the big dog. Then, he tried to avoid the big dog. Then, he tried to distract the big dog. Then, he tried to endear himself to the big dog. Then, he tried to see things from the big dog’s point of view. Then, he tried to fight back against the big dog. Then, he simply waited for the big dog to grow up, mature, develop some other interests.

But nothing worked. Every time he ran into the big dog, the big dog’s dull eyes would light up, the big dog would make a beeline for him, and before he even had time to say a word, the little dog would be kissing the carpet.

Now, at this point in the story, you’re probably waiting for the little dog to get some kind of revenge or outsmart the big dog somehow, or for the big dog to have some realization and become a more complex and sympathetic dog, or for the big dog to develop respect for the little dog because of some particular incident, and for their relationship to improve.

You’re expecting this because that’s how stories usually develop.

But I think you’re all old enough for me to tell you a truth: it’s not how life usually develops.

Try to be a big dog, if you can. And if you can’t, try to set your life up in such a way that you never have to interact with big dogs at all.

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October 5, 2011

Marie and Don

Once upon a time, there was a woman named Marie, and she was married to a very healthy man named Don. The two of them got married young and Marie gained a lot of weight while carrying their first child and she never really lost it. Her interests were mostly sedentary – she liked to knit and write children’s books and she loved movies. Don liked to run and hike and rock climb. Fitness was very important to him. He wanted to live a long, healthy life, and he wanted Marie to live it with him.

Don never gave Marie a hard time about her weight or her activity level, but once their kids grew up and moved out, he decided to talk to her about it. She’d gained more weight than she had before and she’d been having some health problems, and she got winded walking upstairs to their bedroom.

He told her that he thought she was beautiful no matter what, but he worried about her health and he wanted her to live to a ripe old muscular age with him. He suggested they get fit together.

“I could stand to tighten up a bit myself,” he said, drumming on his fatless abs.

Marie knew that Don was right, and that he’d gone about it as diplomatically as possible and had waited as long as he could, and that he had every right to approach her about it. If he’d been a chain smoker or a drunk, she’d have said something.

Still, even though it wasn’t reasonable of her, his comments had crushed her and she deeply resented him.

Over the next several months, Marie took long walks and hikes with Don, and then she started jogging. She lifted weights. She ate better. She stood up every hour and trotted up and down the stairs. In six months, she lost 15 pounds. She felt much better.

Except, she didn’t really feel that much better. She didn’t feel as better as all the time she was putting in should have made her feel. With the amount of time she was devoting to fitness, she should have felt like a wispy, hyperactive 20-year-old. Instead, she felt like a clear-breathing but middle-aged woman who spent the lion’s share of her day squeezing into and out of multiple sports bras, moving around pointlessly and showering a lot. She mostly felt very bored. Healthy and bored, true. But bored.

Thing was, Don really loved running in circles and hiking up hills. He genuinely enjoyed it. Whereas Marie kept waiting for the plot turn, the punch line, the satisfying conclusion.

Things went on this way for a few more years, and then Marie and Don divorced. It was pretty amicable. Soon, Marie met a sweet-tempered, fat man named Peter who had diabetes and sleep apnea and loved video games and cooking. The two of them watched movies every night and rarely left the house and were as happy as any two people can be. And Don met a carefree, rangy woman named Grace who loved skiing and windsurfing and kickboxing, and who vibrated with energy and life even while she was fast asleep. The two of them took adventure vacations together and were as happy as any two people can be.

Marie and Peter lived happily into their mid-60s, and Don and Grace lived happily well into their 90s, and none of the four of them would have done things any differently.

(Although their kids weren’t thrilled with their choices.)

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October 3, 2011

The Most Important Horse

Once upon a time, there was a horse named Bocephus* who lived in a stall, and who hated standing in his own pee. If you’ve never been around horses much, you might not know that when they pee, it basically smells as if someone has upended an entire bottle of ammonia onto the ground. Horse pee doesn’t smell as bad as, say, human pee, but you can’t miss it.

Anyway, Bocephus was particularly bothered by the smell of ammonia and every time he peed, he would throw a screaming tantrum, whinnying and kicking the walls of his stall and just basically making a federal case out of it. He couldn’t believe he could really be expected to stay in the stall that smelled so strongly of ammonia. He figured his owners were lax or sadistic.

In fact, the owners of that barn took very good care of the horses, and the stablehands cleaned up Bocephus’s stall every day, and shoveled the whole thing out weekly and replaced all the old shavings with fresh. Bocephus lived very well for a horse, and this was because he, like a lot of the horses in that stable, was a grand prize winning show horse. In fact, he was the most famous horse in the state.

One day, Bocephus was kicking up his usual ruckus, and an old goat who lived in the stableyard passed by. This goat’s name was Lyle, and he’d actually grown up in the mountains surrounding the stable, and one day, he’d wandered into the stableyard and helped himself to some hay. He’d lived there ever since, trying to keep a low profile, and everyone at the barn assumed that he belonged to someone else. In this way, Lyle had clung on for a long time, and he’d seen the rise and fall of many prized horses, but none of those horses had what Bocephus had. Bocephus was a real star.

“You know,” said Lyle to Bocephus. “You’re being a real ass about this pee business.”

“I’m sorry,” said Bocephus. “But maybe you don’t realize that they have me just standing around in my own pee until late morning, or sometimes even afternoon! It’s inhumane.”

“Well, maybe you don’t realize a few things,” said Lyle. “Do you realize that your stall gets cleaned out weekly, and all these other horses’ stalls only get cleaned out monthly? Do you realize that you get nicer hay than everybody else, extra grain, more carrot and apple treats, you get bathed and brushed more, and you have nicer tack that fits better? Do you realize that no one else has their own fan? Do you realize that everybody else tiptoes around you, that the horses on either side of you are barely allowed to breath for fear of disturbing you? Do you realize that there are horses here who live out in the paddock and have to stand in the rain and cold and ignore the flies and only eat whatever old dead grass is out there, and never get any grain or get any petting or brushing at all? Do you have even the first clue how incredibly fortunate and spoiled you are?”

“Hear, hear!” hollered the horses on either side of Bocephus. They kicked their stalls in celebration. “Oooh-hoo-hoo, someone finally said it!!!”

Bocephus hadn’t realized any of this. He was very embarrassed. No one had told him.

“Well,” he tried. “I train a lot harder. And my winning brings prestige–”

But this attempt was quickly shouted down, and Bocephus hung his head.

“Listen,” said Lyle. “You’re a nice enough fellow, but it’s about time you realize that, rockstar or not, you’re just a horse who pees between his feet just like every other horse. And you have it pretty damn good.”

After Lyle left, and the snickering of the other horses died down, Bocephus thought long and hard about what the goat had said.

He thought that it wasn’t his fault he didn’t know how other horses had it. No one had ever told him. He hadn’t been allowed out to see. He also thought that it wasn’t his fault that he lived in the nicest stall and ate the nicest hay. He had no choice in the matter.

And then, although he would never have admitted this to anyone, he thought that if he’d had any choice in the matter, he might have preferred to be one of the plugs who lived out in the pasture. Sure, the weather was probably uncomfortable, but they could run and play. They never had to know the anxiety of show day. No one ever expected them to perform, no one was ever disappointed in them when they failed. They weren’t subject to petty jealousies. Other horses weren’t too intimidated by them to be friendly. They didn’t know loneliness.

And when they peed all over the ground, they could just walk away.

Still, Bocephus would hate to eat grass exclusively. A mouthful on a trail ride here and there was all well and good, but to replace grain with grass entirely? No thank you. He didn’t even think he could survive on that. And what happened when one of those horses lost a shoe? How long till anyone noticed?

…Did those paddock horses even have shoes?

Bocephus decided Lyle was right. He was very lucky. He should count his blessings and never complain. As if to underline the thought, he suddenly peed a steady stream, which bore into the shavings at his feet, creating a small, pungent lake.

“That’s okay,” thought Bocephus to himself. “That’s okay. It smells, yes, but it’s nothing compared to what the paddock horses have to deal with. It’s no big deal. Think about something else. Breath through your mouth. You’re very lucky. You’re a very lucky horse. You’re much luckier thaaaaooooh, MY GOD, IS NO ONE GOING TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT THE STINK IN HERE? I CAN’T STAND IT! I CAN’T STAAAAAAAAAND IT!!!!!!!”

And Bocephus kicked his stall and screamed until the stablehands interrupted their lunch early and came running with their shovels to accede to his demands.

 

 

__
*Well, Hank Williams is in the news all of a sudden for comparing Obama to Hitler. This morning when I wrote this, I just thought Bocephus would be a funny, random name for the horse, and now it seems like I’m trying to be topical. Anyway, lest there be any doubt, this isn’t about Hank Williams at all.

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September 29, 2011

James, the Rational Man

Once upon a time, there was a man named James who believed that every apparent mystery has a rational explanation, but some we just haven’t figured out yet.

“Every apparent mystery has a rational explanation,” James often said. “But some we just haven’t figured out yet.”

There was only one mystery in James’s life that he couldn’t figure out. Once, he’d been sound asleep and his bedside lamp had switched on out of nowhere in the middle of the night, waking him up.

It was weird, but he was sure there was a rational explanation. He just had to figure it out.

Years after that happened, James was going to sleep one night and he reached up to turn off his bedside lamp. But he had just put on a lot of moisturizer and so his hands were very slick and he couldn’t get a very good grip on the switch of the lamp, which was the kind that had to be twisted until it clicked. Because of his poor grip on the switch, when he twisted it, it didn’t click all the way into the off position. It just went far enough to turn the light off and then, a minute later, it slipped back and the light turned on again.

Does that make any sense at all? It did to James!

“Ah ha!” shouted James, getting out of bed and jumping up and down. “I knew it! I knew there was some explanation.”

“Everything, everything, has an explanation,” James murmured contentedly to himself, as he drifted off to sleep.

Later that night as James slept, a man with a gun broke into his apartment and shot James in the head for no reason at all.

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September 28, 2011

Susan’s Last Day

Once upon a time, an imp appeared to Susan and said, “I strongly advise you to live today as if it is your last day on Earth, because I have it on good authority that tomorrow you will die.”

“But how can I have any fun at all with that hanging over my head?” said Susan, putting down her sandwich.

“I’m just giving you the information. What you do with it is up to you,” said the imp, and it disappeared.

Susan thought a lot about what she’d really want to do on her last day on Earth.

“My last day,” she mused. “My last, laaast day. Now, Susan, don’t think about what you should want to do. Think about what you really do want to do.”

So, Susan went to the drug store and she bought a magnifying mirror and a strong light and a sharp pair of tweezers and a box of pore strips, and then she went home, and she just picked the shit out of her face. I mean, she just destroyed it. She opened up every last pore, and had a really satisfying time, and by the time she was done, she looked like an actress in the last scene of a horror film.

The next morning, Susan was dead. See, the imp had tricked her – she died of joy.

And blood loss.

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September 26, 2011

The Man Who Loved TV

Once upon a time, there was a man who loved to watch TV. He found it was more relaxing than participating in any other activity, but also, it was more interesting than resting or sleeping.

At first, when he realized he was going to be the type of person who would mostly just want to watch TV for as many hours a day as possible, he fought it. He judged himself. He set limits. He berated himself for getting old and fat and tired.

“Don’t watch TV,” he yelled at himself. “Quit watching so much TV, you asshole!”

Then, he turned on the TV and felt better about himself.

Then, he turned off the TV and felt worse.

But as the years went by, he grew more forgiving of his own TV watching. He worked hard during the day, and he wasn’t a drunk, and he didn’t set buildings on fire, or kick cats. He just watched TV.

Eventually, he watched freely, with joy and abandon.

And every night at about 11 or 12, when it was time to turn off the TV and go to bed, he’d sit on the couch for another half hour or so, just looking at his reflection in the darkened set and wondering what it was all about.

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September 24, 2011

No One’s Hiring Elephants Right Now

Say that you’re trying to get work as, I don’t know, an elephant. Because, while it wouldn’t be your dream job or anything – maybe you’d really like to be a tiger – you’ve actually been working as a vole for the past however many years, and elephant would be a big step up for you, and you think you’d be a really good elephant, because every time you’ve done it for free, everyone’s been really happy with you, but it’s impossible to get work as an elephant if you don’t have over 5 years of professional experience as an elephant, and it’s really frustrating and makes you feel like a total idiot.

So then, you meet someone and/or read some article by someone who’s like, “Oh, I’m an elephant. It’s so embarrassing to admit, because everyone’s like, ‘Oh, you’re an elephant? Wow. That’s lame.’ I try not to tell anyone I’m an elephant. I never wanted to be an elephant at all, but it’s just what I fell into while trying to be a tiger, and any stupid fool can be an elephant, it’s just the easiest crap job.”

And so then you’re like, “Yeah, being an elephant sure is humiliating. I’M A DAMN VOLE*!”

This advice holds true for all the time, but particularly in this recession: Don’t speak disparagingly of what you have, because your fall-back job is someone else’s ten year end goal.

–
*At which point, you offend a nearby flea who is trying really hard to break into being a vole.

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September 23, 2011

Stop!

Once upon a time, there was a stop sign who existed in a near constant state of panic, having no control over anything at all.

“Stop!” screamed the stop sign, as children skateboarded by.

“Stop!” he screamed, as people drove to work, and “Stop!” he screamed, as they came home again.

“Stop!” he screamed, as dogs came up, sniffed at his pole, and lifted their legs.

“Stop!” he screamed, as older couples walked slowly by in the evenings, pointing at the birds.

“Stop!” he screamed. “Stop! Stop!”

Late one night, some teenagers came up to him.

“Stop!” he screamed.

The teenagers didn’t stop, though. One had a can of black spray paint, and they were all giggling and up to no good.

“Top!” screamed the top sign, and then he screamed “Op!” and then he didn’t scream anything, but his eyes were big and wide, and in his head, it was “Stop! Stop! Stop!” all day and all night, and he suffered nothing but fear and horror until ten years later, the city came and replaced him with another sign.

The new sign said, “Poodles!”

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September 21, 2011

The Buns and Their Nest

Once upon a time, there were a couple of birds who lived in a nest and their names were Mr. and Mrs. Bun. Their nest had been fully built in 1979, and reinforced with string and mud, and there was nothing wrong with it, thought Mr. Bun, but Mrs. Bun kept bringing home junk and adding it to the nest. Pretty much every day, she brought home bits of ribbons and different leaves and other birds’ feathers, and little rocks, and she wove them all into the nest, and banked them up against the sides, and soon (according to Mr. Bun, although Mrs. Bun said it wasn’t true), there was only a tiny little sliver of nest you could actually sit in. Mrs. Bun was renovating them out of house and home.

“Quit bringing home all this junk!” squawked Mr. Bun on a typical day when Mrs. Bun arrived with a beak full of detritus and started to spread it out for his review.

“What I want to do,” explained Mrs. Bun. “Is take out all these ribbons and replace them with rubber bands. Because the rubber bands won’t get soggy when it rains! Plus, they stretch, so we can sort of develop them into an annex, maybe, for all your dead bugs.”

“Well,” conceded Mr. Bun. “That is a pretty nice rubber band, actually. Where’d you find it?”

“There’re lots more. I’ll get them all eventually.”

“Hmm. Oh, yeah, this here’ll hold up really well.”

“So, then,” said Mrs. Bun, killing their dinner. “Do you want to work on that this Saturday?”

“I’m going to watch the game.”

“Well, now, that sounds like fun,” said Mrs. Bun, pleasantly.

The Buns liked each other pretty well, but all the other birds only liked Mrs. Bun, because she tended to pitch in in an emergency, whereas Mr. Bun was one of those birds who’d always tell you why your problem was your own fault – “See, that’s why you always want to build on the lee side,” that kind of stuff. They all quietly waited for the day when disaster would befall him.

But it never did, because Mr. Bun was careful and deliberate about life.

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September 20, 2011

Polly and Her Damn Tea Parties

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Polly, and her favorite thing to do was have tea parties* with her dolls. When Polly first became a little girl, tea parties were a big thing and everybody enjoyed them. She had lots of friends, and they’d all get together with their dolls all the time and have water tea and plastic sandwiches.

But then gradually, Polly’s friends all started to lose interest in tea parties. First, she noticed a distinct drop in enthusiasm, a sort of going through the motions, the way her parents were when they played tea party with her. Then, one by one, her friends stopped showing up, or they started saying things like, “I don’t know. Want to play Barbies instead?” Or “Let’s play supermarket.” Or “You want to go outside?” Or “I really have to do my taxes this week.”

“You guys,” Polly said. “Why doesn’t anyone ever want to play tea party anymore?”

Her friends looked at each other.

“Listen, Polly,” said Susy. “Tea parties…they’re really boring. They always feel like something we should do? But they’re not really interesting, and anyway, nobody has tea anymore. It’s so old-fashioned. It doesn’t speak to us about our lives.”

“But…but I really love them,” said Polly.

Polly tried to interest herself in other, more popular activities, but none of them came with plastic sandwiches. She felt depressed and lonely. Surely somewhere, people were still into tea parties.

“Maybe in the city,” suggested her mother, and so Polly went to the city and sniffed around.

“Tea parties?” said the first man she asked, a man with a briefcase and a brimmed hat. “No, I don’t think anyone’s doing that. My daughter and her friends play fancy ball sometime. It’s like a tea party, sort of, but with dancing.”

“Ugh,” said Polly. “Dancing.”

Polly went all the way to our nation’s capital and asked the President.

“Oh, wow, tea parties,” he said. “That takes me back. I don’t think you’ll find much of that in the US these days. It’s sort of…I don’t know, froofry and precious. Maybe in England. Let’s check with the UN.”

So, Polly and the President went to ask the General Assembly, who were all playing fancy ball together.

“Tea parties?” said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, carefully setting down his glass of water champagne. “God, I have no idea. Guys? Are any of you aware of anyone still doing tea parties? Like, with dolls and plastic sandwiches?”

There was a lot of murmuring, but Polly could see where this was going.

“Maybe somebody in Brooklyn? There’s got to be someone doing it.”

“Uh, sorry, no,” piped up the Brooklyn delegate. “There was this guy who was doing them two years ago, but he lost his space, and now there really isn’t anyone. There are some little girls in Bushwick who play school every other Saturday, and they have dolls and I think there are sandwiches? But I guess that isn’t really the same thing.”

“No,” said Polly sadly. “It isn’t.”

So Polly went home, and tried to forget all about tea parties, but she enjoyed them so much – more than she enjoyed anything else, really. So, she sat in her room and played tea party all by herself until she was a very old woman, full of regrets and resentment and water tea.

 

–
*I know I mention the President and everything, but this isn’t some sort of veiled political commentary. This is about the kind of tea party you have with dolls.

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September 19, 2011

A Man Named Piddly-Poo

Once upon a time, there lived a man named Piddly-Poo, but before that, he was a boy named Piddly-Poo, and that was no fun, either. His peers were every bit as cruel as you’d expect, and his teachers tried to find a suitable nickname for him, but try as they might – Piddle, Poo, P.P. – they only made things harder for him. His best friend, Jacob, called him Pid, and when he grew up, this was the name he introduced himself by, but the truth always came out in the end, at which point, he was castigated for his own shame.

“I mean, if your name is Piddly-Poo, you should just own it,” said a disgusted barista in one such circumstance, seeing his credit card after having written “Pid” on the cardboard cup. Pid ran out of the Starbucks crying and never drank coffee again.

He couldn’t afford it anyway, as he couldn’t get any sort of well-paying job with his name. He worked as a maintenance man, and he had to wear overalls with “Piddly-Poo” embroidered above his left pec. The old ladies in his building gave him the stink eye. They thought it was some sort of fresh joke.

He had an online dating profile, in which he called himself P. McAllister, and he got a few dates this way, but at some point in the relationship, the woman would find out, and Pid could see the interest slide off their faces, as if they had become suddenly fatigued or mournful. He wished he could find a woman named, say, Tinkly-Bittles, but deep down, he knew he wouldn’t want to be with a woman with a stupid name.

One day, Pid was moaning to his friend Jacob about how his name had ruined his entire life and damned all options before he’d even had the chance to make his own mistakes, and Jacob said, “Why don’t you just have your name changed? I don’t think it’s really that complicated.”

Pid had never thought of doing that before.

It was weird that he hadn’t, but it never occurred to him. He’d just collapsed under his name and let it smother him as if he had no choice in the matter at all.

So, he changed his name to “Paul.” “Paul McAllister.” Jacob was right – it wasn’t very hard. In fact, it was insultingly easy after all the pain and trouble Pid – Paul – had been through. He should have done it years ago.

He found, however, that his life did not steadily improve under his new moniker the way he’d hoped it would. He still had a shitty job. People were still dismissive of him. He still had trouble with women. And beyond all that, he felt weirdly lost. He no longer had a very clearly defined enemy.

On the one-year anniversary of his new name, Paul walked through a park near his house, down to a little river, where he liked to sit and think. He realized there was really no one in the world he could talk to about his problems, and he wished that a fish would come, or a squirrel, or some sort of being that he could address. But none did, so he took a little rock from nearby and settled it in his lap.

“The thing is,” he said to the rock. “I’ve always been Piddly-Poo. Much as I hate it, I don’t know how to be a man without a stupid name. I don’t know who I am now. I don’t know what to do.”

The rock just sat there, though. As it happened, the rock’s name was Larry, but Paul was too self-absorbed to even ask.

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August 29, 2011

A Story About a Fox and a Sandwich That He Wanted

Once upon a time, there was a fox who decided one night that he really wanted a Swiss-cheese-and-ketchup sandwich, but he didn’t have any Swiss cheese or ketchup in his burrow. It was really too late to go out, plus he didn’t feel like it, so he made a peanut butter sandwich and ate it. But it wasn’t what he wanted and it didn’t slake his craving, and then he got pretty irritated that he didn’t have Swiss cheese or ketchup right then when he’d thought about it. So, he called out for delivery and he called a few different places, but of course, they didn’t have Swiss-cheese-and-ketchup sandwiches, so he ordered some pizza and some sushi, and while he waited for it, he ate a few bowls of cereal and drank a lot of whiskey and got pretty drunk. By the time the delivery got there, it was about 2:00am and the fox was like, ‘This was so stupid. I’m going to be exhausted tomorrow.’ So, he ate as much of it as he could and then he fell asleep on the couch without even brushing his teeth.

But by then, he was too drunk and full and uncomfortable to sleep very well, and he kept waking up periodically and being like, ‘Damn it! Why’d I do that? All I wanted was a Swiss-cheese-and-ketchup sandwich.’ And then he promised himself that he would get the makings for such a sandwich on his way home the next day, and he just had to hold out until then.

The next day, the fox felt terrible all day long. He was hungover and his stomach was doing that weird, stretched-muscle thing that happens after you really overeat, where he felt like he was a Slinky that someone too young to play responsibly with a Slinky (but at the same time very strong for her age) had stretched to the point that it was just basically a very long, thin metal strip. And the fox really wanted to lie down on his stomach and moan, and also, he still really wanted a damn Swiss-cheese-and-ketchup sandwich and there was just no way to get one for lunch, so he ate this giant club sandwich thingy that cost over $8.00 even though he was still full from the night before, so he really didn’t know why he did that, except that it was lunchtime and so something that felt kind of good was supposed to happen.

But after work! He went to the minimart that was on his way home, because he was positive they had that thin-sliced Alpine Swiss cheese, but when he got there, they only had this really shitty knock-off ketchup that the fox knew from experience was so cheap and thin, it tasted like instant tomato soup powder mixed with water and that wasn’t what he wanted at all. But he also didn’t want to go out of his way to go to any of the bigger stores that were really far away because he was really tired, and it’s not like he was shopping for some specialized gourmet food, or some kind of hot sauce you can only get on certain Indonesian islands, for God’s sake, there was really no reason why the minimart should only carry that terrible ketchup that nobody – NOBODY! – would ever want to buy, and it’s not even like it was that much less expensive than the regular ketchup. It was like maybe $.30 cheaper.

And right about then, something really weird happened to the fox. He suddenly felt as if he’d wanted a Swiss-cheese-and-ketchup sandwich for his whole, entire life, even though he’d really only thought of it the night before, and he felt that he’d been trying to get a Swiss-cheese-and-ketchup sandwich for a thousand million years and everyone and everything had been taking every possible measure to thwart him, even though he had really only tried that one minimart.

So, he went home and killed himself out of sheer frustration, when, if it had been me, I would have just gone into a McDonald’s and gotten a whole bunch of ketchup packets.

Moral: Swiss-cheese-and-ketchup is a disgusting combination, and if that’s what you want out of life, there’s something really wrong with you.

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