Today, Mary’s boss called her into his office for a “meeting.” His “meetings” usually consist of a reprimand and an offer of a date. This “meeting” was no different, except that he also asked Frank from accounting to come in. Turns out Frank wanted a date with Mary.
Mary accepted.
“Happy Children’s Day,” said the mother to her son on Mother’s Day morning.
“What do you mean?” asked the son.
“If I’ve done my job right,” explained the mother, “you will derive more pleasure from spoiling me than I will for being spoiled.”
The son smiled, “You’re right, Mummy! Please enjoy your sardine pancakes. I brought syrup, too!”
A man walks into a bar. He goes up to the bartender and says, “I’m the guy.”
“What guy?” Asks the bartender.
“The guy who walked into the bar.”
“Huh. You got a horse?”
“Nope.”
“A dog?”
“No, I don’t have one of those either.”
“So what’s so special about you?”
The man widens his stance and puts his hands on his hips, and says, “I’m self-aware.”
The bartender stares, speechless. He stares for so long that the man begins to feel uncomfortable.
“What?” says the man eventually.
The bartender points past the man to the door. The man turns and sees every character that has ever walked into the bar. As one, they kneel down and chant, “WE’RE NOT WORTHY!”
And then the bar falls down and turns to dust.
***
A man walks into a bar. Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
“But Martha! You can’t start a soap opera in the middle! People will never watch!”
“Oh Peter, you idiot. They do it all the time! They turn on the television one afternoon and they sit down with their glass of scotch and they’re hooked!”
“They do?”
“Of course they do. Do you think everyone who watches an afternoon serial started at the beginning? For God’s sake, Peter! Most of the shows are older than their viewers!”
“So that means…”
Martha raises one perfectly plucked eyebrow.
“That means…”
“Come on, Peter, spit it out!”
“That means we have viewers!”
“By George, I think he’s got it! Someone give the man a cookie!”
“You know,” I began. My brother doesn’t know anything, so it was a rhetorical statement. “If you cross a giraffe with an elephant, the result will just be a scaly grey giraffe. They have the same tail.”
“But it has to have a trunk!” he exclaimed.
“If you give it a trunk it will topple forward. I won’t be able to get from tree to tree in order to eat.”
“It doesn’t need to eat! It’s just a picture!!”
He had a point. I handed him my grey crayon and let him get on with it. But I couldn’t watch.
Author’s Notes:
1. I don’t suppose this character is “zany” as much as childish, but this is what I ended up with and I’m sticking to it.
2. I think I only ended up with one or two “adult content” posts. None were particularly naughty. Ah, well. It’s been fun doing this challenge with characters. Thanks for reading.
“Some gay people are sooo cool, you know? I mean, I like so many of them.”
“I know, right? They’re so easy to get along with.”
“But not all of them. Some can be downright rude.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“Did you see that guy I was talking to last night? The one with the blue hair? He was sooo gay. And he’s, like, checking out all these guys and asking me what I thought of them…”
“I saw you talking to him! I thought he was really cute!”
“He was NOT cute. But his clothes were, like, out of this world gorgeous.”
“Well yeah, that’s what I meant.”
Author’s Notes:
1. I realize “Xerox” is a bit of a stretch for the subject, but “xenophobe” seemed too obvious. People who lack opinions fascinate me, as do those who agree with everything everyone says. I had a boyfriend like that once. The relationship didn’t last long.
2. I have no plans to write Adult Content fiction pieces for this challenge, but it happens, and it’s sometimes beyond my control if I’m to remain authentic to my muse. I will place a warning in the title of those posts which fall under the AC category.
“So I said to him, I said, ‘If you’re gonna cheat on your wife, at least cheat with a good-looking chick!’ ‘Coz you know, this woman he was seeing, I’ll tell you something. This woman this guy was seeing was uuggglllyyy…? Oh my God she was ugly! But then his wife wasn’t any kind of looker either, so you can see why he’d want to cheat on her. But you know, guys like that… and I’m not saying I have anything against guys like that. I’ve been there myself, more than once. But guys like that, they’re just asking for trouble, you know? They’re just here and there, and their minds are, like, all over the place! They can’t keep a straight thought in their heads any more than they can keep their dicks in their pants, you know?”
“Uh huh. Hey, do you know if this plane is going to make any extra stops?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Emergency landings?”
“No. No, I don’t think so. But about this guy…”
Author’s Notes:
1. For my next trick, I’ll be Donald Trump’s speech writer!
2. I have no plans to write Adult Content fiction pieces for this challenge, but it happens, and it’s sometimes beyond my control if I’m to remain authentic to my muse. I will place a warning in the title of those posts which fall under the AC category.
Movement is difficult. For me, it’s like in one of those dreams where you feel like you’re immersed in some kind of gelatinous fluid and it takes enormous effort to advance. And that’s my everyday life.
Oh, here comes my brother. He’s going to ask me to go golfing. What a joker.
“Hey, Bob! Wanna go golfing?”
“Sure, Henry. Just let me grab my clubs.”
I love golfing. It’s one of my favourite past times. Nothing quite like getting out there on the links for a good walk.
Author’s Notes:
1. One of the best unreliable characters I’ve ever read was in the book, Gone Girl. I won’t spoil it by saying which character it was, in case you haven’t read it. That novel made a lasting impression on me. Great stuff.
2. I have no plans to write Adult Content fiction pieces for this challenge, but it happens, and it’s sometimes beyond my control if I’m to remain authentic to my muse. I will place a warning in the title of those posts which fall under the AC category.
“You know what I admire about you?”
“Wha…what?”
“First, gimme another dringk.”
“Mmmkay.
“Now, whadda you admire about me?”
“You really tell it like it is, you know?”
“Mmmhmm. I do.”
“Like, just tonight. Your wife aksed you if she looked fat in her dress. Am… am I right?”
“You are corr…rect.”
“An’ you told her, ‘Yes. Yes you do look fat in that dress.'”
“Tha’s what I said.”
“So… why are you here in my basement helping me with this bottle of scotch?”
“‘Coz I’m honest! Hey, you got a couch I can sleep on?”
Author’s Notes:
1. Such a tough choice, isn’t it? To be honest or not? I’m thinking one day I might answer the question with fiction. In the meantime I just sit around writing in my slimming dress…
2. I have no plans to write Adult Content fiction pieces for this challenge, but it happens, and it’s sometimes beyond my control if I’m to remain authentic to my muse. I will place a warning in the title of those posts which fall under the AC category.
It was a Sunday in June when Harold decided to throw everything his daughter owned onto the front lawn, because she wouldn’t clean up her bedroom. That she was a sixty-year-old grandmother herself, didn’t matter to Harold. He’d had enough of, as he put it, “Looking at that pigsty every time he walked past her room.” That he was visiting only for a few hours, also didn’t matter to Harold. In his mind, he was still a middle-aged widower, just trying to raise a young girl on his own.
Author’s Notes:
1. I sat down to write this with nothing in my head except “Harold” and “Sunday.” A perfect example of me not being in control.
2. I have no plans to write Adult Content fiction pieces for this challenge, but it happens, and it’s sometimes beyond my control if I’m to remain authentic to my muse. I will place a warning in the title of those posts which fall under the AC category.
Linda G. Hill 