Tom Oatmeal

“Actually, why don’t you let this little old lady go first,” I said to the barista.

“I’m forty,” said the little old lady.

“Well I guess you just have that angry old lady face,” I said with a cheerful grin.  “It’s like when old people are just so exhausted by life that the default position of their face sort of turns into that permanent scowly face.  You know?”

But she was done listening.

After I got my coffee, a woman and her young son approached me.

“It was really nice of you to let that woman go first,” she said.

“Oh I’m no hero!”

“I try to teach my son here about those kinds of manners.”

I laughed and looked at the young boy.

“Take my word for it, young friend.  You do nice things for other people and nice things happen to you.”

I smiled again and took a sip of my coffee.  But the lid popped off and the scalding hot beverage splashed against my face and chest.

I screamed.  “ARRRRRRGGHHHH…..FUCK!  FUCKING SHIT!  OW!”

The boy and his mom recoiled in horror.  It was still burning.  I ran to the center of the mall and dove headfirst into the wishing well.  SPLASH!

When I emerged, there were pennies stuck to my boiled skin.  I opened my eyes and saw a wall of wide-eyed children.

“I’ve stolen your wishes!” I screamed.  “And I’m taking them to hell with me!”

I ran out of the well and into the parking lot, where a minivan ran me over.

“Does this mean my wish won’t come true?” a young boy asked his mother.

She sighed and reached into her purse.  “I don’t know.  Probably not.  Here.  You might want to toss another one in there, just in case.”

The young boy tried again, but his wish didn’t come true.  However, to be fair, it was a stupid, implausible wish.  A live dog that’s also a skateboard?  Come on, man.  You think the weight won’t be hard on his back?

THE END.

“Come on baby!  Let me come on out of the cold for a minute!”

-Lounge Singin’ GuyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyYEAH!

What worried me about my basket was that the items were large enough to take up all of the space and then some.  A couple of cans were actually balancing on top of a cereal box that was sticking out of the basket.  But it was fifteen items.  I knew it for a fact because I counted them.  But did the other customers know?  Probably not.  Fools.

In my fantasy, the guy behind me says, “Hey!  It’s fifteen items or less, buddy.  Wrong line!”

And then I go, “Yeah?  Well let’s see what I have here!”

And then I place each item from my basket onto the conveyor belt, counting them one by one in a patronizing tone.  Sure enough, it’s fifteen.

Why not dream big?  They’re selling calculators by the gum!  I take a calculator off the peg and stare at the humbled naysayer as I throw it into the pile.

“Tell you what,” I say like a total jerk.  “This one’s on me.”

Everyone in line laughs, including this really attractive woman who is also incredibly smart, but not so smart that she’s automatically repelled by mediocrity.  In fact, maybe she finds it enticing.  The intangibles.  Kind of like when you coax a stray dog into a shopping center after they refuse to let you return something because they think you opened it.

“That’s sixteen items,” says the checker, snapping me out of my second daydream and back into the first.

And I think, “Oh no!  The calculator!”

“Umm..I guess, uh… I’ll just leave the milk here,” I say.

On the walk home I try to justify leaving the milk behind.  I think about how I heard that humans aren’t supposed to drink milk anyways.  I think about how I’ve heard it’s bad for you. 

But then I remember all of the cereal I have at home and my heart feels like it’s melting into my stomach.

“Well surprise, surprise!” I think to myself.  “Real tough stuff back there.”

“Oh shut up!” I scream.

I think of kicking the fictional guy from the line.  He has this condition where he dies after one kick.

THE END

The divorce had ruined me financially so if I was going to be the “cool dad,” I knew it was going to have to be achieved without the crutch of expensive gifts and fun activities.  I would have to actually become a cool person.

“Someone who people feel naturally drawn to,” I explained to Dr. Glovings, my stuffed bear.

The opportunity presented itself the very next day when I arrived to pick my daughter up from school.  She was standing with her friends on the curb and as I drove by, she waved.  I smiled and waved back, but then I pretended that the brakes to the car weren’t working.

I rolled along with a look of panic on my face, just fake pumping those breaks.  I could hear my daughter and her friends kind of freaking out and it was hard not to laugh.  Then I realized that the brakes really weren’t working.  I crashed into a tree and the car lit on fire.  Then, I lit on fire when I was trying to escape the car. 

The flames engulfed my entire body and so I began to stalk forward, blindly and in the direction of where I’d seen my daughter and her friends.  I tried to be cool and act like nothing bad was happening.

“How was school?!” I screamed.  “Do you feel like ice cream?”

I felt like ice cream.  I also felt like water.  Like, a big trashcan full of water.  I was burning alive for Christ’s sakes.

There were screams all around me, but I continued to lurch forward until the police gunfire eventually made me lose my balance.  Okay, fine, Mr. Cool Guy.  It was more than losing my balance.  I was dead before I hit the ground.

THE END.

My mom used to read us this story every year.  ”The Little Match Girl,” by Hans Christian Anderson.  The ending always made us sad and my mom would tell us that if nobody on this earth loved you, you just died automatically.  It was scary at the time, but now that we’re older, my siblings and I are very cognizant of population rates and know that it’s pretty hard to strike out THAT bad.  But still, it’s a good reminder to get out there and network from time to time.  

NeighborhoodEye

You don’t have to be a parent to understand the horror of walking into a room to discover that the baby crawled out of his crib and onto that pottery wheel you forgot to turn off.  And while the baby is spinning around and around, the dog is sitting there all calm, like a person, gently using his paws to fashion the baby’s soft cartilage head into something a little more modern.  It might be the classic tale of bad parenting, but let’s see where the dog is going with this.

Imagine my surprise when the Two Pack rapping guy said that, yes.  I could participate in the white elephant gift exchange. 

“Most of them voted against it,” said Two Pack.  “But I’m the lead rapping guy and I said yes.”

“Well, thanks,” I said.  “That’s super nice of you.”

Up until that moment, the event had been limited to rapping guys, backup rapping guys, hoes, and that one guy who dials a phone at the beginning of some of the rapping songs.

On the big day, Two Pack tore into my gift and didn’t say anything.  He didn’t even touch it; just sort of balanced it on his thighs and stared at it, with his arms hanging limp to the sides.

“That’s a big book!” shouted one of the rapping guys.

The Two Pack rapping guy was silent.  He didn’t even look at me.

“It’s a thesaurus,” I said nervously.  “You know.  In case you’re working on a rapping song and you get stuck on something.”

Nobody said a word.  Even the hoes were silent, which was rare.  The Two Pack rapper put the gift under his seat and then gestured to the rapping guy sitting in the chair next to him.

“Go,” said Two Pack.

The young rapping guy opened his gift and held it up proudly.  Even though it was another gun, the fourth that night, it drew strong praise from everyone in the circle.

I watched them from the rooftop that night.  They were walking to the parking lot with their gifts.   Suddenly, the Two Pack rapper lifted the thesaurus and began thumbing through it in silly, theatrical motions. 

I was too far away to make out what they were saying, but I could tell from smiles and light shaking of the surrounding rapping guys that they were laughing. 

“Oh, no!  He’s doing me!” I thought.  “Two Pack is imitating ME!”

To witness an interaction from that kind of distance is to submit to something that stretches itself along the distance between light and sound.   And though the sensory experience is still that of seeing sights and hearing sounds, taste might be a more accurate way to describe what transpired in that moment.  Taste.  The shock of the awakened sense.  The flavor of something, changing, taking shape.  The aftertaste.

I watched them laugh.  They shook gleefully, bent back and doubled over, but it wasn’t until they were already starting to climb into their cars that the sound of their laughter reached the rooftop; a cruel confirmation that I’d blown it.

THE END.