The garage was stacked to the ceiling with boxes, the U-Haul ready to cart them away on that windy Tuesday morning. I was wearing sweatpants and my hair was tied up in a bun, ready to move the hell out of there. I had only lived in that white suburban house for two years. I remember the day I moved in it was mid-February. That was two years ago. Then it became May 19th, Tuesday, and windy. I held back tears as I drove away from that house, the one we were supposed to live in after the wedding, raise...
Nothing worse than weak coffee to start a Monday morning. I don't know how many times I've had to tell her, it's 2 scoops per cup of water and even then you aren't going to get a jolt when you drink it. I use three and a half scoops per cup of water and that right there is a coffee that will wake you up and send you out the door. No sense in drinking coffee flavored water, now is there.
So I poured out my cup and felt her eyes staring into the back of my head and I...
Sometimes I am shocked at the state of America today. The young people just have not respect - no decency at all. They go around and do whatever they wish - guided, though, not by their wishes but by the pulsing masses. Every time that I see it I am disgusted. I see it and shrink. I don't understand it entirely. But this one thing is like my only weakness. Maybe I am like them. I just following a whim of someone else - or something. I'd like to think that I could have a justification for something that hits...
Potatoes.
That's all the six year old girl would eat. And it seemed that no matter what else I tried to serve her, potatoes was it. She wouldn't try anything else. Wouldn't look at anything else. All she ever wanted? Potatoes.
"Honey, what are we supposed to do?" I sighed, sliding into bed that night. "We went out to the Olive Garden. And she asked for potatoes!"
My husband chuckled a little. "Well, look on the bright side: at least it's a vegetable she wants. Could be worse."
"This is bad enough! No protein! No grain! Heck, even sugar would...
Fred wanted the puppets. He wanted all the puppets, man. If Fred couldn't have puppets, he'd be a miserable SOB. All he could ever think about was puppets. He wore his socks on his hands. That's how much he loved puppets.
So when he saw the Punch and Judy set on ebay, he knew he had to act. Problem was: Sylvester Stallone was coming over for lunch. He'd slaved for hours over the meal (pickles on rye bread. And figs.) He wanted to impress Sylvester Stallone with stories of how he rubbed Cheez Whiz into the hair of his buttocks,...
The lamp wouldn't turn on. Of all the times for the bulb to burn out, it had to be right now? The noises were getting closer and closer to Sam's bed. Whatever they were, they weren't human.
Sure, it was most likely just the wind -- or something equally silly. All Sam needed was half a second of light to confirm that theory, and he'd sleep happily. But no, he couldn't have that. Instead all he had was his imagination to build horrific images for every creak and thud he'd heard all night.
If I just write something, what if I reveal something unsavoury about myself?
What if I mess up the spelling?
What if I am under so much pressure to knock something out in six minutes that I don't write anything? A single blank page permanently appearing on my profile as a record of my inneptitude?
What if I write about something uncool, or unninteresting? First impressions count, after all. I'll be an outcast before I've even started.
Maybe I could just leave here and never come back. All this would be a brief, awkward memory. I could add it to...
The stories rarely stop when the party does.
He was not tall, or lean, but he was fashionable. He had the bushiest eyebrows, like tiny mink stoles pasted to his forehead, and a strange (but familiar) teetering gate to his walk as he meandered like a river through the empty park lawns.
"I hope I didn't insult her," the man worried to himself as he kicked an empty potato chip bag across the path. He spotted a bench looking out over the old friend, duck pond.
There our lonely man sat. Contemplating the emptiness of it all. No ducks, even....
He had been happier when he was unhappy.
It was difficult to fully explain; his days of being an asocial shut-in were, upon reflection, paradoxically better than his life now. The words had flowed then, from his mind to his keyboard to the story, he could see and imagine vividly what he did not have.
Now, with a college degree, a good job, a new car, a girlfriend and a house in the hills, he was a markedly happier, and thus unhappier, man. He couldn't finish anything he set his mind to. His efforts were as half a page of...
"Is it me, or are getting text messages tinier and tinier?" Without her glasses, Jen was practically blind. She searched her purse, but they weren't there, when suddendly her phone rang. "Great. I can't even see who's calling me. Hello?!" The voice on the other line was distortet, heavily breathing, and uttered: "Looking for something?" "Who is this?" The voice let out a quite and diabolical laugh. "That is for you to find out. At the desk right across from your's sits Jim. He knows everything. If you ask him, you will never see again... Because I will break you're...