Tagged: flash fiction

On Noble Pleasure

Anyone else, for whatever reason—be it environmental considerations or energy (mine is energy)—refuse to turn on hot water to wash their hands? And given this state of play, then, every so once in a while, wash them right after someone who isn’t so aware, and, for the briefest of moments, feel just regal as the still-warm water hits? For my part, I imagine the pleasure is exactly comparable to what it must have felt like to sneak a dessert made with the richest, purest, and freshest ingredients right off the King’s china after he had departed—and before the other (reckless and shifty as they were) servants entered—the hall.

On Being a “One Mistake” Man

It just occurred to me that I am a “one mistake” man. The way this came to mind just now was while driving. Picture me in the classic post-stoplight intersection need to merge right (to get to Freddy’s) and there are cars zipping into the new right lane with whom I need to merge. Rather, we all need to zipper merge.

If you drive a good car and can’t merge, I respect you—you’re probably just decompressing from a hard days work. If you drive a disproportionately small car for an adult man who can grow a decent beard and can’t merge, then that’s one mistake too many. And I do not respect you anymore.

One mistake at a time please.

Two Updates on the Boy Child

First, during my attempt to get more of the cookie for myself, when I told him that the cookie was very big, J- innocently said, “My mouth is big!”

Second, we have this game Poop Tracks which is actually a pretty fantastic board game for little kids (if you care to have them turn into Tom Brown Jr.-like trackers). You spin a spinner and do what it says. The options are, “Draw 1 (or 2), Trade, Swipe, or Skip.” Naturally, I take it upon myself to teach my progeny the proper way to trade and swipe. And, naturally, the proper way to swipe is through distraction. So my kids now look forward to the spinner landing on “swipe” so they can say, “Look at that, Dad!” before proceeding to take one if my cards. Well, just now, as J- and I (A- is now in kindergarten 😦 ) were having a donut, he says, “Look out the window, Day-ad!” Obviously he was priming me for the take, but for what? I played along and then he swiped my napkin. What a guy!

A Lesson that Requires Pocket Change

My friend, an older, heavyset gentlemen, keeps his story going with, “It’s about listening. You gotta teach the kids how to listen.”

Here he pauses and apologizes as he needs a break. He often needs to take a break, but doesn’t seem too concerned with the underlying medical condition.

The cloudiness disappears and he resumes.

“I teach my grandkids how to listen by placing a penny on the palm of my hand right here-” here he holds out his left hand, palm facing me, and points to the spot where I have always assumed street magicians palm the coin.

He continues, “Then I place a nickel next to it and a quarter next to the nickel. Then I tell the kids, ‘Johnny’s mom had three kids. Penny, Nick, and ??’”

The man turns to me, and I open my eyes larger than normal, while raising my eyebrows. I mean to merely indicate that I am not ready for an interactive moment, but I also admit that I don’t yet understand anything from this listening lesson.

“It requires the coins. Who has some coins?”

I follow him to the table where some other men are sitting and my friend asks the leader and most responsible of us, “Jim, do you have any coins? I need a penny, a nickel and a quarter.”

Surprisingly, and as predicted, Jim pulls a 1986-sized fistful of pocket change out of his shorts’ pocket and finds the required coinage.

My friend then places the coins in his palm, penny, nickel, quarter. Jim is paying attention, but the previous conversation he was apart of continues to unfold as well.

“Johnny’s mom had three kids. Penny, Nick, and ??”

Wishing to show my language prowess, I forget about the spelling of ‘quarter’ and begin to contemplate every name that starts with the ‘kwart’ sound.

“Kwart? Kurt?” I guess.

Shaking his head in shame, my friend repeats, “Johnny’s-”

“JOHNNY!” I exclaim, joyfully. “Johnny,” I then repeat, with a pronounced note and loud look of playful disgust.

Jim knowingly smiles.

My friend says to him, “You’ve heard this one before, huh?”

A slow nod from Jim answers.

“You see, Pete, someone has to teach them how to listen.”

****

Here’s the catch, faithful reader. Anyone who gets the right answer already knows how to listen. The all important and usually lacking skill in the human, imho, that my friend taught his grandkids (and I) is humility.

Just Have To Smile

When you work at an airport and shortly after arriving see and hear a brightly colored colored biplane suddenly appear from behind your hangar on what, by altitude and position, must be its base turn, looking like it is the one that needs saving from the opening scene of Disney’s The Rocketeer, you just have to smile.

Rougher Work Week

In Heat, the cop played by Pacino returns late to the ritzy bar his wife lingered at and she starts in with, “And I bought into sharing. But this isn’t sharing. This is leftovers.” (Or what is the same.)

Pacino responds, “Oh I get it. You want me to come home and tell you that some junkie just put his baby in the microwave because it was crying too much. And somehow this will…” and on and on. (Or similar.)

Later in the movie while desperately trying to keep someone he knows alive, he says, “Not you, baby.”

Suffice it to say, these scenes, not the particulars but the emotions and complications, come straight from real life—which I would say is exactly why I love that movie and have always loved that movie.

In real life, as I have written before, my own reaction is a sudden and unaccounted for need to cry. I didn’t this time. But all the necessary variables were in play.

There is a great desire to ask, “What can fix the scene(s)?” Or “How can we help people?”

But I have come to believe, “This is the scene. You don’t fix it. You don’t help. You just play your role. And you hope that your society has good roles.”

From the earliest age I knew my role was “anonymous, systematized, called-in relief”.

It’s mostly rewarding.

My 4-Yr Old Recognized Beauty

She FT’d me as they were walking into the garage to leave for mega-church. The door opened, and the way she holds the camera it was difficult to not notice the barely cloud-speckled blue sky. Then I saw she did too. And without prompting she said, “It’s a beautiful day,” and faded almost into a hum, “in the neighborhood,” which is of course from Daniel the Tiger or whatever the name of the Mr. Roger’s-based show is called. (Not that she has seen it in several months since I tossed the TV, but I feel like being clear that she isn’t an abstract idea floating around in the aether, but a little girl.)

Anyhow, it’s true.

And that’s the point I want to make to all you anxiety-driven, suicide-prone, depression-claimants. Take a look at the lilies of the field. If my four year old can see them, then surely they are there.

The Pathetic Way To Go

They were all in his bedroom.

His brother was the family’s steady anchor, permanently tarred to the deep floor of the ocean of unknown outcomes. He had flown in four years ago, without stopping—without even thinking—to even pack a carry-on. He had stayed bedside throughout the recent wars, throughout the fires, throughout the droughts, throughout the pestilence, throughout the famine. Nothing had moved him; nothing could move him. Nothing would move him. In the four years that had passed, he aged ten. He was worn threadbare. He was balding. He was broke. His wife had left him after the first year. His children hardly knew him. But he was there. And there he seemed destined to remain.

But it was his sister, whose lightest smile always seemed to be returned as though seen through the closed eyes, that wove the siblings together. It was his sister who fed both brothers, his sister who changed the sheets, his sister who replenished the water and flowers of well-wishers, his sister who put on a happy face—indeed never once betrayed an awareness that today wasn’t the best day.

And today, this day of days, was about to be the best day.

His mother and father had arrived last night, cutting short their long-delayed vacation to some distant paradise without hesitation. He was their son. They had only ever left his side, for the first time in years, after finding in his Bible a single page of scripture with a note indicating that “their happiness” was his “heaven”.

All his cousins and aunts and uncles had rushed to be there as soon as word had spread. It had not mattered to any how many planes, trains, boats, or cars it took. No matter the skyways and byways, no matter the cost, they were there.

His wife sobbed and sobbed. Her life was miserable before him and had been perfect with him. She did not know, she could not imagine how she would ever carry on after. So she wept, she cried, she sobbed, she cried, and finally she wept some more. Everyone who knew him and knew of him understood her pain.

The room went silent as his eldest daughter appeared in the doorway. No one could remember the last time he had heard, let alone seen, her. But somehow she knew. Somehow she came. The dim, flickering candlelight revealed the jewelry that had first confused her identity. But when she turned and tossed her backpack aside, the sweet jingle of countless keychains she had affixed, along with the rustle of laminated letters that hung from every zipper confirmed what all were hoping—after so many years away, she came.

His other children were still on their way. The current project that engaged the pair, the world’s two greatest, most creative, most motivated, and most delightful members, had necessitated their delay. In fact, it wasn’t until the world heard and fed the wildfire rumor of the gathering in that room—and for whom and wherefore—that the people pleaded, risking their own detriment by forestalling the work, for the siblings to now travel to where all knew their hearts already lay.

“He’s awake.”

The barely audible whisper was first heard by his sister, as she was handing a fresh coffee to its speaker, her weary, ever so weary, brother—one that never did arrive.

The porcelain mug’s landing on the plush carpet pronounced a soft sound at which his wife, the ever inconsolable and fairest of all to assume that noble title watchman, raised her tear-streaked face. When her fingers rose to wipe all evidence of unhappiness away, the visitors communicated the only news that such action could betray throughout the room as quick as light, yet as soft as feathers.

Right when his brother turned to repeat the announcement, his eyes landed on them. They had just arrived.

“Come! He’s awake!” He repeated as he motioned the children to come and directed the crowd to open a path.

“My dad!” his daughter said, her cheeks uncontrollably wetted with tears of joy.

“Father!” his son declared. Revealing a relationship that transcended time and space—indeed one that could not be rocked by consciousness itself—he added, “We did it! The world is saved.”

Seeing him seeming to make an attempt to raise his head, his brother said, “Rest. It’s no time to exert yourself, good brother.”

“As always, good brother,” our hero began, acknowledging their secret greeting, courageously and with a knowing smirk, one long-since absent and missed, “You’re wrong. It is time; for time is short.” His breathing was burdened with immeasurable truth.

In the history of time, the tides of all oceans had not swelled so much as to fill what all present saw pour forth from this dearest, this loyalist of companion’s eyes. Turning to the room, he cried with exuberance so far only matched by the warming Sun, “He’s right!” he declared. “He’s always right. It’s why I love him.” The very walls joyfully echoed the contagious rapture spread unto all. And then feeling along the bed until his hand touched the familiar, strong, able, and trustworthy hand of childhood, he squeezed with a tenderness not unnoticed by our hero and turned back and said, “You’re right. What would you have us do?”

“Bring her to me.”

At once his oldest now became the focus of the room.

“Help me up, brother. One final time.”

The room gasped as they watched. His mother fainted.

At last he was sitting at the head of the bed. And she was there.

“Da-”

“Shh—” he interrupted, eyes earnestly declaring the sad truth that all were too kind to admit. “Don’t speak. Know that in all these years, wherever your travels took you, I was there too.”

“Oh, daddy,” she cried. “I knew you never abandoned me. I always knew. I just didn’t know how to come home.”

“There, there, my beautiful girl,” he said, bravely keeping his tears at bay.

“I kept everything,” she added suddenly. “It’s all there. Every gift. Every letter. Every book. All the socks. It’s all in the bag. I wanted you to see it.”

As his eyes followed her gesture to the bag she had worn in, the answer to Earth’s oldest question, “Is there anything this man can’t do?” was finally answered. The levy broke. The man couldn’t hide his joy.

(To be continued…)