A Letter of Welcome to Our Fascist Overlords

Dear Amazing Fascist Overlords,

Thank your god you’ve arrived! Just in time, too, because things were getting out of hand, what with people flaunting their human and civil rights, reading whatever they want and doing things in the privacy of their own bedrooms that I personally find icky.

I know you’ve been working hard on eliminating this pesky democracy, and I wanted to be the first to write a letter of gratitude for your perseverance. We haven’t been that easy to subvert, and you are to be praised for your dedication to the task. (Please remember how much I admired and supported you from the get-go when you’re deciding which of us should be put into camps in the desert.)

Having one leader for the rest of his or her life (only kidding! I know it will be a penis-haver who will always be in charge) could not make me happier. I was tired of voting. It. Was. So. Hard! Who has time to try to figure out which candidates are human beings who want to improve our lives and which are lifelike robots like Elon Musk who want to use us as crash test dummies on flights to Mars? Not to mention how those “I Voted!” stickers always left glue on my good sweater. I had to make a special trip to that one drycleaner I don’t like because he didn’t say “Good morning” back to me that time, but he’s the only one who could get the gummy stuff out.

If history is right (and by history, I mean white, evangelical, male history, of course), you’ll probably soon be replacing all of our wardrobes with something utilitarian and drab. Finally! I can’t tell you how tired I am of scrolling through Etsy into the wee hours of the night to find a blue zip-up corduroy jacket, only to be shown jackets that are not blue, zip-up, or corduroy. Do they think I’m stupid? Give me a nice gray jumpsuit that looks just like what everyone else is wearing so I don’t have to worry about whether I wore the same thing the last time I went to a party. Not that I anticipate there being parties in my future, and that is just fine with me, what with my social anxiety and ADHD. If my jumpsuit is made in a sweatshop by children from Arkansas and Iowa, I won’t complain. Tiny hands are so much better at detailed stitching.

A lot of my fellow Americans are worried about what the future will hold now that you’re in charge, but I’m excited. For example, I can’t wait for the day when I no longer have to work out. We all know that everyone from Idris Elba to Idris Elba’s slightly lesser known and chunkier brother Whodis looks equally schlumpy in a gray jumpsuit, so why should I worry about muscle definition or cardiovascular health? No more leg days and arm days at the gym for me! I’ll be happy to sit on the sofa eating the one potato you graciously ration to us for the day’s caloric intake.

And I can’t wait to see what you do about sex. It’s been like one giant porn movie shoot here for the past several decades, what with everybody rutting like bunnies and putting things into other things that are clearly sinful, not to mention, dirty. I blame Sex in the City. As a woman who has passed her childbearing years and has no reason to have sex any more, I’m hoping to be assigned a job policing what other people do with their junk, as the kids call it these days. If you need a Martha, I’m ready to serve. I’ve never had Botox and can scowl with the best of them.

Before I go, I should let you know that I have two children and they are, well, not bright. Their grades in history, math, and science embarrass me as well as everyone in the school district. I’m hoping those subjects will be eliminated and replaced with something more to their abilities, such as memorizing the lyrics to the Kid Rock songs Wax the Booty and  Killin’ Brain Cells. This seems more suited to their intellect. They are, however, good at avoiding gunfire. I know that will probably come in even more handy in the future.

In closing, I prostrate myself at your feet in gratitude. I just know that you will make our lives so much easier. Having too many choices causes stress. Having no choices about anything ever will finally bring me to that Zen state that has been eluding me for so long despite my many attempts to meditate and/or find the right strain of weed for blissful peace. Now that I won’t have any problems to solve or  decisions to make, I’m sure I’ll sleep deeply. As long as I’m not in a camp in the desert. I have back pain that requires a pillowtop mattress, and I need some place to plug in my sleep apnea mask.

Signed,

Your Fan Forever (or Until the Next Coup)

Up In Smoke

Ron was wearing a trucker hat with the phrase “I ❤ titties & beer” on it when Anna first met him at Thanksgiving dinner. There were oh so many things she wanted to say to him in that moment, but none of them would have helped her fit into with her new in-laws, so instead, she stuck out her hand to shake his.

“Shit, darlin’, this ain’t no high-falutin’ business meeting,” he said as he grabbed her with his thick, hairy arms and pulled her into his sweaty chest. “Welcome to the family, Anna. Who knew little Billy could snag such a hottie!”

Billy was her husband of three months. She looked around for him, but he was nowhere in sight.

She extricated herself as gracefully as possible from the unwanted embrace and headed into the kitchen where the “wimmin folk” as they called themselves were busy putting the final touches on dinner. As much as Anna hated falling into traditional gender roles, she felt safer in the company of the women in her new family, even though one of them, Paulette, had chosen to marry Ron.

“Anything I can do to help?” Anna asked, hoping it would be something that wouldn’t require her to go back into the living room where her father-in-law and two brothers-in-law had congregated around the television and yelled their disappointment with the Dallas Cowboys every few minutes. She still wasn’t sure where Billy was, but guessed he was visiting his old room, reminiscing about his high school days.

“If you wouldn’t mind getting the pies out of the garage, that would be so helpful” Dorothy said. Dorothy was her new mother-in-law, a woman whose domestic skills were on full display today, from the flour in her hair to the grease stains on her apron.

“Sure,” Anna said.

“There’s a pecan pie and a pumpkin pie in the chest freezer cooling off. Time to get them out before they freeze.” Dorothy was stirring the gravy by hand and overseeing the rest of the meal preparations.

Paulette and Bobby Sue were both busy chopping vegetables and tasting things.

“Get your finger out of the sweet potatoes, Bobby Sue!” Dorothy warned, holding the gravy spoon up as if it were a weapon.

“Two pies coming up,” Anna said as headed towards the door connecting the kitchen to the garage. With a car, a fishing boat, a full-sized refrigerator, and a chest freezer squeezed inside, there wasn’t much space to move around, but Anna was grateful for a few minutes alone, away from the strangers that she had invited into her life by marriage. She leaned against the refrigerator and took a few deep breaths, relishing the silence and trying to get up the strength to make it through the next two days that she would have to be on her best behavior.

She was so deep in thought that she didn’t hear the door from the backyard open and close.

“I was hopin’ I would get you alone,” Ron said menacingly as he lumbered towards her. He had clearly had too much to drink, and it wasn’t even noon yet.

Before Anna could say a word, he trapped her between the boat and the refrigerator, put his hands on her backside, and yanked her into him, crotch first. She was so shocked, no words came out even though her brain was screaming. He kissed her hard on the lips. He tasted like cheap beer and cheaper cigarettes.

Finally, she managed to wedge one arm between them and with all her might, pushed against him.

“Come on, you know you want me!” he said with a laugh.

“Get the fuck away from me,” she said as threateningly as she could muster. She stomped as hard as she could on his foot.

“Bitch!” he seethed, although he didn’t move away from her.

“I’ll scream if you don’t get out of here!”

“Well, you’re no fun at all,” he said as he dragged himself dejectedly back out the rear door.

Anna took a few minutes to center herself and try to decide what to do. If she told her new family what had just happened, would they believe her? And if she didn’t, would he keep trying to get her alone? If she told Billy, would they get into a fight? Because that would not end well for her husband who was better with his brain than with his hands. There didn’t seem to be anything she could do to make things better, so she decided to stuff her feelings down deep inside with other memories she didn’t allow herself to think about.

Anna grabbed the pies and headed back into the kitchen. When she got back inside, Dorothy was rubbing Crisco onto the skin of the turkey.

“It makes it crispy,” Dorothy said, noticing the unspoken question in Anna’s eyes. “Thanks for fetching the pies. You were out there for a while. Everything okay?”

“Yes,” Anna said. She worried that if she said much, the truth would tumble out and ruin Thanksgiving. “I was just lost in thought.”

“I do that too,” Bobby Sue said. “Once I drove 15 miles past my exit on the way home ‘cuz I was thinking about macaroni and cheese.”

They all laughed.

“Mama, don’t put the Crisco so close to the burner. You don’t want a repeat of two years ago,” Paulette warned with a laugh.

“What happened two years ago?” Anna asked, trying to get caught up in everyday conversation instead of her own thoughts.

“Oh nothing. Just that mama ‘bout burned the kitchen down with a grease fire,” Bobby Sue chimed in. “For the first time ever, we ended up eating out for Thanksgiving.”

Dorothy carefully moved the three-quarter full container onto the countertop away from the stove. “You worry too much, girls! I got this.”

Later that night as they were all finishing up dessert, Paulette glanced out the front window and noticed flames coming from the driveway. She stared at them for a few seconds. “Ronny, I think your truck’s on fire,” she said with concern.

Ron jumped up from the table like he’d been shot out of a cannon and ran outside. But by the time he got there, the cabin of his new truck, the one he’d been bragging about during dinner in between shooting lascivious glances towards Anna, had already been destroyed.

When the fire department finished their investigation, among the mostly burnt fast food wrappers, beer bottles, and half-smoked cigarettes, they found part of a Crisco label on the floor of the cabin. Ron couldn’t remember having had a can of the stuff in his truck, but he was about seven beers over the legal limit and busy answering questions about whether he’d consumed any while driving. The firefighter in charge guessed Ron had dropped a lit cigarette on the floor and it  caught the grease and the trash on fire.

Anna stood next to Billy in the driveway. She squeezed her husband’s hand gently and despite the smoke still coming from the truck, she was finally able to breathe again.

Greyhound to Missouri

“Have you seen my brother?” Hope asked everyone in the small café next to the Greyhound station in Oklahoma City. She held her sister Suzie’s left arm tightly, practically dragging her around from booth to booth. “His name is David and he’s only six. He has blonde hair and blue eyes. We don’t know where he is.”

No one had seen him.

Hope’s tears rolled down her hot, red face. Meanwhile, Suzie decided to protest the whole interrogation process by going limp and falling to the floor. She was 10 now and wasn’t going to let her 13-year-old sister force her to do anything, even if it meant she had to sit on the sticky black and white checkerboard floor of the lame diner in the middle of nowhere.

Dad is going to kill me, Hope thought. We’re not even halfway to Kansas City and I’ve lost David!

Her father had driven the three kids to the Greyhound bus station in Abilene, Texas early in the morning for the 17-hour stop-and-start bus ride to their mother’s house in Missouri. “I’m counting on you. You’re a teenager now,” he had said to Hope as he handed her three tickets. They were stamped “Departure: 8:17 a.m., Saturday, June 27, 1970.”  Hope had memorized the date and time just in case someone asked her. She tucked the tickets into a book so they wouldn’t get lost, like she’d seen grown-ups do.

As the bus had pulled away a few minutes later, Hope and David returned their dad’s goodbye wave through the dirty bus window. Suzie had been too busy fiddling with the dial on her transistor radio, trying to find American Top 40 to notice they were pulling out of the station.

The trip had been mostly unadventurous – except for Suzie’s whining about being bored and David’s kicking the seat in front of him so much that the man sitting there glared back at them in a way that scared Hope. When the bus driver pulled into the station at Oklahoma City, he said they could get off to use the bathrooms and grab a snack. Hope walked David to the men’s room and then went into the ladies’ room with Suzie. When the girls were done, they stood outside the men’s room door and waited, but David never came out. An older teen boy who had been on their bus had checked inside and reported that there was no one there.

“What are we going to do?” Hope asked as she slid down onto the floor next to her sister.

“I’m not the one in charge,” Suzie replied with her usual snark. “When are we going to get to mom’s house?” she asked.

“We have to find David!” Hope said with exasperation.

Suddenly, Hope leaped up. “You don’t think he got on another bus, do you?” She grabbed Suzie’s hand and yanked her to her feet. Hope might only be three years older, but she had 15 pounds on her sister, and it came in handy at times like these. Not that there’d ever been a time like this before.

“Ouch. That hurts!” Suzie complained.

“Quit complaining and come on! We’re going back to the bus station!”

Hope ran as fast as she could, pulling Suzie behind her. When they got back inside the depot, they both shivered as the air-conditioned air blasted their skinny arms like some frost-breathing dragon.

They walked over to the front counter, where Hope asked the young woman selling tickets, whose name tag said “Donna”  whether she’d seen a small, blonde boy who looked lost. “Did he maybe get on another bus?”

“Honey, there’s only two buses coming through here this afternoon. The one for Kansas City left 12 minutes ago and the one for Dallas leaves at 1:47. I don’t know where your brother might have got off to.”

“The bus to Kansas City left already?” Hope asked, crestfallen.

“Yes, dear. Right on time,” Donna said with the pride of someone who helps keep everything running on schedule. “Was that your bus?”

Instead of answering, Hope broke down in tears again. She walked a few steps and collapsed onto one of the hard wooden passenger benches. Suzie followed but sat at the other end of the bench and shivered, wishing she hadn’t left her sweater on the bus.

A gray-haired woman sitting on the opposite side of the terminal looked up from her crossword puzzle after hearing Hope’s sobs. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?” she asked loudly. Her voice echoed in the mostly empty building.

Hope wasn’t sure she should talk to a stranger in the bus station, but the woman seemed nice enough and kind of looked like someone’s grandma. Not her own grandma, who was big and mean and always smelled like mothballs, but maybe a grandma from a fairy tale.

“I think my brother got on the bus alone. I don’t know what to do. And all our stuff is on there too. And the bus left without us!”

“Aren’t there any grown-ups with you?” the woman asked, sizing up the two young girls.

“Dad says she’s a grown-up now,” Suzie offered. “Not that you could tell by looking at her now, all snotty and red.”

Hope shot her sister a look, the kind of look that older sisters often use, but younger sisters usually ignore.

The woman got up and walked over to where Hope was sitting. “Well, let’s get Donna to radio the bus and see if he’s on it. By the way, my name is Erma, Mrs. Dinson. What’s yours?”

“I’m Hope. That’s my sister Suzie,” Hope replied as she reached out to shake the woman’s hand like her father had taught her to do when being introduced. “They can really talk to the driver on the radio?” All Hope knew about radios was that her sister had hers on every waking minute and was always singing along in her off-pitch and too-loud voice. No one could ruin a Carpenters’ song like Suzie and her caterwauling.

“Sure! I’m positive this isn’t the first time someone has gotten separated from their family while riding the bus.” Erma walked over to Donna’s window. Hope grabbed Suzie’s arm again and followed the stranger.

“Quit yanking me around!”

“I am not losing you too. Although most of the time I wish I would!”

Suzie stuck her tongue out.

“So mature!” Hope said.

“I don’t have to be ‘mature.’ I’m just a kid.”

“I’m just a kid too, you know,” Hope said as she stuck her tongue out at Suzie. They both giggled for a second, but they were interrupted by a question from Donna.

“What’s your brother’s name?”

“David Grant.”

In a matter of minutes, the bus driver had been contacted and confirmed that David was indeed on the bus. And sound asleep.

“Where’s the next stop?” Erma asked.

“Edmond,” Donna replied quickly, proud of having memorized every stop of every bus that stopped at her station.

“Can the driver wait there?”

“It will throw the schedule off. The company won’t like that.”

“Please,” Hope chimed in. “I’ve got to get my brother back. My dad’s gonna be so mad!”

“Honey, this isn’t your fault,” Erma said. “Your dad shouldn’t have put you in charge of your sister and brother. What was he thinking?”

“I’m thirteen,” Hope said, standing up straighter to appear more grown up. “We’re going to my mom’s house for two weeks. Dad can’t drive us ‘cuz he has work, and our stepmother is drunk most of the time, so that wouldn’t work either. And our real mom has her new family to worry about, so she can’t come get us.” The words just spilled out like water gushing from an open fire hydrant.

“I’d like to give your dad a piece of my mind, but first, let’s get your brother,” Erma said. Her face got stern for a second, but then she was all smiles again for Hope and Suzie’s sakes. She noticed Suzie shivering, removed her sweater, and handed it to the young girl.

“How are we going to catch that bus?” Hope’s imagination was already taunting her with scenarios in which David got off at the next stop and wandered around looking for his sisters and then got kidnapped by someone with a  van full of candy. David would do almost anything for candy.

Erma turned to Donna. “Can you ask the driver if he’s willing to slow down a little and not leave Edmond until we get there? It won’t take that long. Tell him it’s an emergency.”

Donna radioed the bus again. When she clicked the radio off, she gave Erma the thumbs-up.

“Okay, kids, let’s go!” Erma led Hope and Suzie out into the parking lot where she had parked her purple Mustang convertible.

“This is your car?” Hope asked with amazement.

“After my husband died, I treated myself. He would always put his foot down and insist I would kill us both if I ever got behind the wheel of a sports car. But so far, so good!” Erma folded the top back and they all got inside. Hope and Suzie shared the passenger seat. It was a tight squeeze, but neither wanted to sit in the back and they were small for their ages.

“Can I turn the radio on?” Suzie asked.

“Sure, hon, but keep it low.”

Suzie fiddled with the knob trying to find some pop music, but all she could find was country. She turned it off sullenly.

“Won’t you miss your bus, Mrs. Dinson?”

“That’s all right. I can get to my sister’s tomorrow. For now, we have an important rescue mission! Buckle up and hold on!”

Erma floored the accelerator and sped out of the parking lot.

Suddenly, Hope’s terrible, horrible day of adulting had turned into an adventure with a wild old woman who had magically appeared when she needed a miracle. It was good to be a kid again, if only for a little while.

Compromise

As Cheryl sat on the edge of the tub and waited for the stopwatch on her phone to count down to zero, she could hear her therapist’s words bouncing around in her brain like ping pong balls.

“Compromise is the key to any good relationship.”

Compromise is why Cheryl was in this mess, waiting for the pregnancy test results and hoping that her husband’s sluggish sperm had failed to hook up with her middle-aged egg. She visualized the sperm as little stoners, getting lost in the dark of her fallopian tube or giving up halfway because they got bored.

The word compromise kept ricocheting around the room, bouncing off the white subway tiles she hated but had compromised on.

There were so many things she could have said to the couples’ therapist in response. “How about we get him pregnant since this is his idea?” was the first thought she’d had. But she had just sat there quietly on the therapist’s lumpy avocado-colored couch, partly because her husband Phil was right next to her. And he had flashed his sad brown eyes at her just like he did every time he felt he wasn’t going to get his way.

“Please say Not Pregnant,” she whispered to the pee stick lying on top of the toilet tank. She felt guilty for wanting so desperately to be without a bun in the oven, especially considering how much money they had spent on infertility treatments this month. She also felt guilty about how much of a doormat she was and how long it had been since the bathroom had been cleaned. But she was too anxious to even wipe the counter down with a washcloth, and she wasn’t going to solve her people-pleasing habits in the time she had left on the pregnancy clock.

How can I be a mother if I can’t say NO to anyone? she wondered.

And Cheryl had already been a mother – of sorts. She had raised her sister and two half-brothers in between her dad’s divorces and girlfriends. Her siblings had turned out okay – except for George’s short stint in juvie for arson. But having been mom to three kids while she was a kid herself felt like enough mothering to her. She had made a decision in college that she wanted a child-free life. And between fastidiously taking the pill and keeping a supply of condoms in her nightstand for the past 20 years, she had made good on that promise to herself.

Long before she said “Yes” to Phil’s proposal and ‘I do” during their wedding, she had repeatedly asked if he would be okay with not having kids. He had told her that he was fine with a future with just the two of them in it.  

But three years later, he’d changed his mind and had begun a campaign of wheedling and coercion that would not let up. Between his begging and withholding sex unless “it’s for a purpose,” she had reached her wits’ end.  So she suggested couple’s therapy. In the back of her mind, she was sure the therapist would agree with her, and she and Phil could just get on with the lives they’d been living before his every sentence started with “When we have kids…”

But it hadn’t worked out that way.

They went to therapy once a week for a few months, and she began to feel that the young counselor whose degree in psychology was printed in Helvetica, the second-most annoying font in the world, was on Team Phil. The therapist clearly had babies on her brain and couldn’t wrap her head around any woman not wanting to become a mom.

Cheryl felt that the word compromise was like one of those foam bats and she was getting hit by both of them.

But how do you compromise between “I don’t want kids, and he said he didn’t either” and “I feel incomplete without a ‘real family.’ (That didn’t make Cheryl feel unloved at all.)

Once again, even with the stakes so high, she had compromised. And they started trying to get pregnant. When nothing had happened after five months, she agreed to get tested to  see what the problem was. The results showed that Phil’s sperm were “lazy” (which seemed right to her) and she had a severely tilted uterus. She had jokingly started referring to it as her “Slip ‘n Slide” and threatened to show the sonogram pictures of it to anyone who asked how things were going.

“Well?” Phil yelled from the other side of the bathroom door. He was pacing back and forth like cats do when you close the door for a moment of privacy on the toilet.

“It’s still not time,” she said forcing calmness into her voice. “Why don’t you fold some laundry while you wait?” she asked, knowing full well he would not, despite the fact that his doing more around the house was part of the “baby deal” they had agreed on.

She watched her phone count down: 0:04, 0:03, 0:02, 0:01, 0:00.

Quietly, Cheryl reached for the stick and braced herself. She stared hard at the little window that would hold the key to her future. But instead of displaying the words “pregnant” or “not pregnant,”  there was a red dot with the words “Press here for Option 3” beneath it.

“Are we pregnant?” Phil asked as he rattled the handle of the locked door.

“Give me a second,” Cheryl said.

Cheryl wondered if the stress of the past few months or the guilt of trying but hoping to be un-knocked up was causing her to hallucinate. She looked around the room and nothing seemed odd or out of place, so she shook the pee stick like a thermometer. The message was still there. She wiped her glasses on her t-shirt just in case they were smudged and that was causing her to see things that weren’t there.

But the message still appeared. “Press here for Option 3.”

“Okay. Why not?” she thought. “Let’s follow this hallucination wherever it takes me.” She pressed the red button, expecting nothing to happen, but hoping for a miracle nonetheless.

“Let me in!” Phil said. His tone was both demanding and whiny. Not her favorite combination.

Apparently, Cheryl was due a miracle because the bathroom started to fade away in a blue mist. Phil’s voice sounded like he was at the bottom of a well far, far away. And as she gripped the pregnancy test stick in her right hand, she felt like she was being swept up in a vortex of cool air. It smelled like rain and lavender.

When the swirling stopped, she found herself in the church they’d gotten married in. She looked around and recognized her wedding day. She was wearing the dress she’d bought at the thrift store, the one with the lace that scratched the skin under her arms. Holding her right arm was her best friend Pam who had given her away that day. This day? Cheryl wasn’t sure. Rain pelted against the stained glass windows. The pianist played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. The pee stick had turned into a bouquet of tulips and lavender, the same arrangement she had carried four years ago.

As the mist inside the church began to clear she could see the priest with his untamed red hair standing at the altar, shifting from foot to foot like he’d forgotten to pee before taking his place. Phil stood next to him in his tux and turquoise sneakers. He looked so handsome and so ready for this to happen. He flashed her a goofy grin.

She felt the same knot in her stomach she had felt on their wedding day. Only this time, it was bigger and heavier. Oh god, I bet I’m pregnant, she thought.

The small crowd of friends of family gushed and told her how beautiful she looked as she slowly placed one turquoise-sneakered foot in front of the other on her way to the front of the church.

She stopped for a moment, not understanding how she could be reliving her wedding day. “Did I somehow buy a time-traveling pregnancy test?” she wondered. She snorted quietly at just how ludicrous the idea seemed. And as she did, for a brief few seconds, everything came to a standstill. The crowd hushed, the music ceased, and everyone froze in place.

Cheryl half expected the hallucination to fade, and she braced for her return to her bathroom quandary. Instead, she heard a deep voice whisper.

 “Option 3.”

Then everything in the church un-paused and she found herself walking down the aisle as the music played on.

But before she reached the steps up to the altar, she came to an abrupt stop on the well-worn pinkish-red carpet in the church she had agreed to get married in despite not being a fan of organized religion. She had compromised in order to please her mother-in-law.

“Is something wrong?” Pam whispered.

“Yes.” Cheryl replied.

“Honey, come on up and let’s get married,” Phil said nervously.

But Cheryl literally could not will her feet to move forward. They felt like she had powerful magnets in her shoes and the church floor was made out of steel.

“Can you give us a minute?” she asked everyone in the room, even though she wasn’t sure they weren’t just figments of her imagination.

Pam took a seat in the front pew.

Cheryl motioned for Phil to come down the steps, and he practically bounded towards her like a puppy who had been offered his favorite toy.

“Nervous?” he asked with a smile.

“Phil, honey. I’m sorry. I love you, but I can’t marry you,” she said feeling like every runaway bride cliché in a book called What to Say When You’re Expecting to Leave a Guy at the Altar.

“It’s just cold feet, Cher. I had them too. We’ll get through this together. You and me.”

Cheryl shook her head slowly. “I know this will sound ridiculous, but I have seen the future and you and I want different things. Big. Different. Things. Getting married isn’t fair to either one of us.”

She willed herself not to cry. Because if she started crying, he would too, and she doubted her ability to resist him with tears running down his face.

A baby started bawling in the back row. Cheryl’s brain registered the sound, and it bolstered her will to do what she knew was right.

Phil stared blankly at her. He was devastated and confused. He stood there trying to understand how this could be happening .

“I’m sorry. I can’t give you what you need. And you can’t give me what I need. I love you.” She kissed him on the cheek and then handed him her bouquet.

He stood there, clutching the flowers as she hiked up her skirt and started running for the door, happy she had decided to wear sneakers. She could hear the shocked voices from her friends and family as she jogged down the steps and into the world of Option 3.

Back inside, in Phil’s hands, Cheryl’s bouquet had transformed back into the pregnancy stick.

Head Over Heels

(A short-short story in which I reimagine an event from my life)

In the split second after the Jeep finished its second roll-over down the mountain and came to a stop upside down at the base of a large fir tree, many thoughts flashed through Tina’s mind. Am I screaming? Shouldn’t I be screaming? Why the hell did I let a virtual stranger drive me up a dark mountain road on our first date? Am I hurt? Did I really put on my good bra for this?

But because her life was not flashing before her eyes, she figured she wasn’t going to die tonight. And that provided some comfort. Hanging from the floor of the Jeep by her seatbelt, however, was definitely not comfortable.

Tina stared at the broken glass scattered on the roof below her. It sparkled like the stars above them. Ah, there’s the romantic part of the evening, she thought.

She looked over at Jim in the driver’s seat. He seemed to be startled, but not visibly injured. At least she didn’t see any blood. He, too, was hanging upside down from his seatbelt.

“I’m going to see if I can get down,” she said to him. As she unbuckled her seatbelt, she fell into the glass below. Because the night was chilly, she had worn jeans, a heavy jacket, and gloves, so even though she crashed into the hundreds of shards of the broken windows, she didn’t get cut. Once grounded, she was hesitant to move for fear the Jeep would continue to slide downhill.

She looked at Jim again because he still hadn’t said anything. His eyes were open, and he was  breathing. Maybe he was berating himself for having taken his eyes off the unlit mountain road – if you could call it a road – to change radio stations. Maybe he was trying to cobble together an apology of some sort and the words weren’t coming to him.

Tina plucked slivers of glass from her pants and asked, “Are you okay?”

He moved a little. He was trying to his own seatbelt but having no luck. “You’ll have to help me. I’m stuck here,” he said. It did not escape her that his first utterance after imperiling both their lives was not an apology.

She warily crawled under him and pressed his body towards his seat with her own, taking some of the strain off the seatbelt. He was much heavier than she was, and she struggled with his weight on her shoulders.

Finally, he was able to unbuckle the seatbelt. She barely got out of the way as he crashed into the glass.

“Shit!” Jim groaned and he slammed into the glass below. “You could have swept some of the glass out of the way first!”

And there it was. In her 43 years on the planet, one thing Tina had found to be true is that a person’s true self will expose itself in stressful situations.

“I didn’t want to rock the Jeep,” she said. Then she felt guilty for sounding apologetic. She had nothing to apologize for.

Jim tried his door, but it was wedged shut. “Try yours,” he commanded.

Tina did, but it was stuck too. “Why don’t we climb out the front window?” she asked.

After several minutes of maneuvering past glass and sharp pieces of metal, they were both able to escape the wreck and scramble back up to the road mostly unhurt.

Tina noticed that her heart was beating like a hummingbird on meth, but on the surface, she exuded a Buddha-like calm. Jim, on the other hand, now that he had had a chance to see the wreck from the outside of the vehicle, seemed to be hyperventilating. Or was he having a heart attack?

A heart attack. Wouldn’t that be the perfect way to end this lovely first date? Me all alone in the middle of nowhere with a dead guy wearing a choking amount of cologne!

“I can’t drive it out,” he whined as he surveyed the damage.

“Duh,” is what she wanted to say. But she was a nice person, too nice sometimes. She bit her tongue and suggested they start walking.  He grunted something that sounded like “Okay.” Or maybe that sound came from one of the many bears hiding in the woods.

“Second wreck this year! This sucks!” he said as much to the world in general as to her.

Tina inhaled deeply. Maybe he should have his driving record tattooed on his muscular biceps instead of that barbed wire.

They were mostly silent on the walk down the mountain, a walk lit only by the glow of their cell phones. She tried singing Bonnie Raitt songs to stay calm and pass the time, but Jim told her to stop. It will just rile up the mountain lions and bears, he claimed. He, on the other hand, jumped at every noise coming from the woods around them. Tina was more afraid of the large angry animal next to her than the ones hiding in the trees.

When they finally reached the main road almost an hour later, bars showed up on both their phones. She called her roommate Patti to check in. She didn’t tell Patti about the wreck, just that she would be home in about an hour. Visions of what might have happened to her three tail-waggers had she not made it out of the woods alive flashed across her brain unbidden. The hairs on the back or her neck stood on end.

Jim called a friend. At least Tina thought it was a friend. It was hard to tell from the barely suppressed rage in his voice as he yelled orders into the phone. Finally, he clicked his phone off.

“Roy’s coming to get us, but it will be a while. He’s 45 minutes away,” he grumbled. “I’m going behind those trees to take a whiz. It may take a while. My damned prostate!”

As she watched him leave, Tina saw headlights coming towards her. She made a split-second decision and flashed her cellphone light. The car pulled over. The driver was a woman, so she hopped in.

“Thanks so much,” Tina said breathlessly to the young, green-haired woman behind the wheel. “I’m Tina.”

“I’m Kenzie. What are you doing out here alone?”

As Tina was about to answer, Jim started walking towards the car.

“I’m not alone,” Tina said. “But I want to be.”

“Say no more!” Kenzie said as she locked the doors and sped away, leaving Jim to wait alone on the side of the road.

“Thank you so much,” Tina said.

“Hey, sisters got to stick together, right?”

“Damn straight!”

Tina laughed for the first time since leaving home that night. It was good to laugh. And good to be alive.

“Where are you heading?” Kenzie asked.

“My place is about 20 miles from here, but you can just take me wherever you were going. I can call an Uber from there.”

“Well, I was going to a bar to meet up with friends, but I don’t mind dropping you off at your place first. It’s still kind of early.”

Tina looked at the time. 11:23 p.m. Ah, to be young enough to think the wee hours of the night were  early. “That would be amazing. And I’ll pay you for the gas. Word of warning: If an older dude with a barbed wire tattoo and a crumpled brown hat full of glass shows up at the bar tonight, stay far, far away.”

“Okay,” Kenzie said with a laugh. “But to be honest, I tend to avoid dudes in general.”

“You are a wise woman, ”Tina replied, smiling in the dark of the car’s cabin.

Jim called her twice the next week. She let both messages go to voicemail and erased them without listening to them. If only erasing the night she almost died in the woods was as easy.

Apologies

(A short-short story in which I reimagine my real life experiences)

“You don’t owe her anything,” Amy said as she brought her Camry to a stop at the light.

“I’m not doing this for her,” Kelly replied, staring out the window aimlessly.

“Then who are you doing it for?”

“I haven’t figured that out.” Kelly chewed on the inside of her cheek, an old habit she always fell back into when she was anxious. That and stress-eating had gotten her through many of life’s horrors so far.

“Anyway, I thought you were coming along as moral support.” Kelly nibbled on the end of a granola bar she had tossed in her purse earlier that morning as she was trying to decide whether to go through with it or not.

Amy harumphed. “I’m driving you. I held your hair back last night when you puked out practically an entire lasagna. That sounds pretty supportive to me.” She put on her left blinker. “We’re about five minutes from the hotel. There’s still time to back out.”

“No. I’m doing this. And thanks. I didn’t mean to say you weren’t supportive. You’re a great friend. I’m just stressed. And confused. And I think my right ovary dried up last week, so there’s that.”

The women laughed, but it didn’t bring much relief.

“You haven’t talked to your mom in how long?” Amy inquired.

“Three years. Except for the occasional phone call where she would ask me to call the manager of the last retirement home she got kicked out of because she was such a pain in the ass. Five homes in all!”

If there was one consistent fact about her mother, it was that she had always been a pain in someone’s ass. Four husbands, five children, two roommates, and a half dozen cats would agree.

“She sounds like a winner,” Amy said with a shrug. “Sorry.”

Both women took sips from their coffees, so the car’s cabin was almost silent for thirty seconds, except for the sound of Elton John singing something very quietly that came from the speakers in back. It was impossible to make out what song it was.

“Do you think I should have dressed up?” Kelly asked as she stared at her t-shirt and yoga pants. “Maybe something more serious?”

“I honestly don’t know, hon. This is not something I have any experience with.

“Maybe I should have baked some cookies or something.”

Amy shook her head. “That seems excessive. Just showing up is more than enough. It’s not like you’ve ever had a relationship with her.”

“Well, she was busy with her other families and trying to decide when to leave them. That can take up a lot of time. I think the 31 years she didn’t communicate with me may have been the best thing she could have done for me.”

Kelly smoothed out a wrinkle in her t-shirt. The truth is, no matter how hard she’d tried in the past five years to establish some kind of relationship with her mother, she had failed. Her mother canceled lunches and dinners, berated Kelly for not paying enough attention (or paying too much attention) to her most recent feline roommate, and was unable to have a conversation that wasn’t completely one-sided. She’d once screamed at Kelly in a mall parking lot for buying her a puzzle for her birthday. A puzzle! What had she been thinking?

Why then, Kelly wondered, do I feel any sense of responsibility or guilt? Her mom had hung up the phone on her mid-conversation because “she was done talking” at least a hundred times. If Kelly had been a more empowered daughter, maybe she would have gotten the message long ago.

Deep in thought and doubt, Kelly felt the car make an abrupt turn. She looked up and saw the hotel sign out her window.

“Well, we’re here,” Amy said with resignation. She parked the car and shut off the engine. “Good luck in there.”

Kelly felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. “You’re not coming inside with me?”

“No, ma’am, I am not.” She took another swig of her now lukewarm coffee. “But I will be here if there’s any fall out. But I do not promise to go through the whole lasagna experience again tonight.”

Reaching for the door handle, Kelly noticed that her fingers were damp. She wiped them on the seat of the car.

“Sure, clean your sweaty palms on my seats. I’ll just add it to the bill,” Amy said staring hard at her friend.

“Sorry.” Kelly seemed glued to the seat.

“I can turn the car around right now. We could be at the garden center shopping for plants in ten minutes.”

“No, no. I just needed a sec. Thanks for waiting for me. I don’t think I’ll be more than a half hour.”

“Whatever it takes. I’ll just be here listening to light rock and finishing off my coffee.”

Finally, Kelly got the door open and strode purposefully across the parking lot. At least she hoped she looked purposeful. Inside she felt angry, confused, sad, sleepy, grumpy and in need of a doc or maybe a gummy.

She noticed the hotel lobby smelled heavily of air freshener and stale cinnamon buns as she made her way to the front desk. It made her happy that she no longer traveled every week for work.

“Checking in?” the young clerk whose name badge read “Regina, she/her” asked.

“No,” Kelly replied. She took a deep breath and had to hold her hands to keep them from shaking. “I’m looking for Anna.”

“Sure. She’s just in the back. Let me get her.”

Before Kelly had time to chicken out, a young woman with red hair and long, thin fingers arrived at the desk. She wondered if Anna might be a pianist or play the guitar.

“I heard you were looking for me,” Anna said.

“Yes. I’m Kelly Pine. My mother committed suicide last night in Room 136. I heard you found her body and I’m here to apologize.”

Toss Out the Dictionary

Throw Out the Dictionary

Language is funny. And I don’t just mean those unusual words that all comedy writers know will elicit a smile or a giggle – words such as caddywumpus, pantaloons, spelunker, wenis, and zamboni. And if you imagine a spelunker in pantaloons riding a zamboni, just try not to crack up until you’re sitting caddywumpus on the floor.

Accidentally making up words is a favorite pastime of mine. For example, I once told someone their dog had the “swaggliest” tail. Clearly I meant “waggiest,” but some dogs’ tails hang in a drooping curve as they wag, so I think “swaggliest” is a fine addition to the English language. Much better than, say, “twerk,” which as far as I’m concerned means “throw you back out doing something stupid.”

I don’t consider myself a mis-speaker; I’m a language development leader.

In recent years, dictionary editors (those dusty folk with smudged John Lennon glasses and permanent scowls — or so I imagine them) have had to kowtow (another excellent and funny word) to the hoi polloi and accept such words as bling, bromance, chillax, d’oh, infomania, jeggings, and mankini. At the same time, other words that had been common have disappeared. What ever happened to malagrug (a dismal person), brabble (a noisy squabble over nothing), or supererogate (to do more than is expected or required)? I guess with the latter, there are so few people who fit the category, we substituted “slacker,” a word that means the opposite.

As a wordie myself (imagine a foodie, only with language instead of edibles), I have a list of words I’d like added to dictionaries everywhere. These include (I do have more):

• Addendumb – Anyone who reads books from cover to cover, including the copyright registration and addendum in order to quell an abiding fear than they aren’t as smart as they let on.
• Aprius – Any car stuck behind a Prius.
• Bathematics – Quick calculations of how much weight wet hair adds before stepping on the bathroom scale.
• Deppth – A thorough and complete understanding of the subtext of the movies of Johnny Depp.
• Dispurrage — To demean and belittle all of humankind, especially those nearby, for not attending to your feline’s needs quickly enough.
• Flingerie – Flannel lingerie; very popular in the Pacific Northwest.
• Fobia – Phear of things that aren’t spelled like they sound.
• Gendrification – The manner in which women will take over the world.
• Gloatee – One who experiences euphoria upon realizing that yet another hipster trend has gone the way of the too-tight skinny jean.
• Palindrone – A professor whose lectures sound the same forwards and backwards.
• Schadenfriend – Someone who only likes you when your life is awful.
• Silly string theory — The hypothesis that the universe consists of random acts of silliness connected by invisible strings that don’t stick to your clothes
• Snee – An incomplete sneeze.
• Zumbarrassment – The feeling that comes over anyone trying to follow Zumba moves for the first time.

Come on, dictionary peeps — let’s do this!

Third Time’s a Bitch

As a comedy writer, the “rule of three” means you string together two normal things (say, 2 cups of flour and 1 tsp. of baking soda) and then add an unexpected third one (e.g., 1 gallon of tequila) and voila, you have a template for writing one kind of joke (or making one really delicious, albeit runny, cake).

As a human being, however, whenever something happens to me three times in a row, I’m fairly certain the universe is trying to tell me something. Unfortunately, I think I accidentally donated my universal decoder ring to Goodwill last week, so I’m struggling to figure out today’s turn of events.

Before I tell the story, it’s important that you know that when I walk my three dachshunds, one is on a flexi-lead, while the other two are attached to a belt around my waist on bungee leashes that extend to 6-feet fully stretched.

Thing1: While walking the dogs along the river today, I heard the sound of geese flying near, so I turned around to look. Three geese were flying at eye level to me, straight at me. I semi-panicked, but I figured if I swerved, I’d swerve right into a goose because my self-defense instincts are always off by about 30 degrees. About 6 feet before the eventual collision I was predicting, one goose — let’s call him Gary — suddenly veered left. I have never been so close to a wild animal in flight and it was awesome.

But if Gary had flown straight into my head, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this blog. I’d probably be in a hospital trying to remember my name while my doxies roamed around the park begging strangers for handouts.

Thing2: Still on the walk. The dogs are thrilled that the squirrels are out in full force. We’re running here and running there to smell the trunks of trees that the much faster and smarter squirrels have run up before we arrived. At one point, I’m looking west, when suddenly Katja — the most squirrel-obsessed and also the strongest — pulls me due north. She is attached to my waist so even though she’s small, she can yank me off course easily.

I immediately spot a Doug fir tree coming at me at dachshund miles per hour. I barely avoid running into it, head first.

Already, I thinking, I should wear a helmet from now on.

Thing3: Finally home and mostly in one piece, I am unhooking the dogs from their seatbelts, which are attached to their leashes. I get Murray out, then Katja, but when I try to grab Sanders, his bungee leash seems to be stuck between the seat and the car door on the opposite side. So, being a real “hindsight is 20/20” kind of girl, I yank on the bungee, it frees itself and smacks me right in the face. The metal clip causes my bottom lip to swell up like I’m a Kardashian.

So, the question is, with two near-misses and and one direct strike to my head all in the course of an hour, what is it the universe would like me to know? Am I supposed to let my brain rest? Learn new and different cursewords? Avoid ever leaving the house? Go back to the park and ask Gary?

Come on universe, make yourself clear. But please don’t give me a concussion in the process.

Don’t Try This at Home

Like many Americans, every time the new year rolls around I semi-commit to getting more exercise than I did in the previous 12 months. Long ago, my resolutions were specific and detailed, e.g.: “I will run 20 miles a week and try not to sweat on the people in my office when I’m done, especially if they’re eating lunch.” These days, I don’t have resolutions; I have musings, such as: “Maybe I could hula-hoop between phone calls. Or I could just eat a handful of almonds. Protein is important for muscle development, right?”

Once upon a time, I was athletic. I owned three gold Spandex unitards and matching headbands and I am NOT ashamed! But even then I never enjoyed going to a gym. My idea of a fun time does not involve using damp equipment and listening to men grunt loudly. It’s seems that to some guys, grunting is a courtship ritual. They look around a room full of potential sweaty mates, clang their free weights together, and release deep vocalizations in the direction of the ones they desire. When it comes to flirting, I much prefer the frigate bird’s display of his red throat sac or the whooping crane’s leaping, dancing, and flinging objects across a meadow. Perhaps this explains why I don’t date.

Fortunately we don’t have to leave our houses to get all the exercise we need. So many pieces of home exercise equipment, so little time to put them together and then sell them a month later on Craigslist! Some of the exercise “devices” I have tried in the past include:

• The Ab Roller, a small wheel with handles that was meant to flatten your stomach, but was more effective at leveling out dirt before laying down sod. My main problem with this device is that even when I had abs like a washboard (today, I have abs like a dashboard – soft and padded, with a built-in airbag), I could roll forward on the wheel, but once fully elongated, I could not roll back. So I would usually just collapse, face-down, whimpering, onto the floor and one or more wiener dogs would jump on my back. And you thought goat yoga was difficult.
• The Thighmaster. For those of you who don’t remember, this was a padded, spring-loaded, device that you were supposed to squeeze between your thighs to build muscle, just in case you might need to crack open walnuts while stranded on a desert island without a nutcracker. Sidebar: It was also great at shooting full force across the room at random intervals and occasionally destroying the kneecaps of passersby. Sometimes you can still find one of these weapons of minor destruction at a thrift store, but the cashier will make you sign a liability release form before you plunk down your $1.99.
• I’m embarrassed to admit that I once owned a Super Glide Slide. This piece of “equipment” consisted of a 6-ft. long plastic mat and some shoe covers (think those footies nurses wear in operating rooms). The goal was to slide in your shoe covers from side to side, kind of like an Olympic speed skater. Despite giggling the whole time I used it, I never got any real exercise, but I did build up high amounts of static electricity. When I’d finish a “workout,” my hair was so big I looked like I had put my head in a cotton candy machine and turned it up to turbo-boost.

Fortunately, I haven’t fallen for every ridiculous fitness device that ever hit the market. For example, I never tried one of those belts that zap your abs with electricity. I don’t know about you, but tazing my belly seems like more of a form of torture than a way to get rock-hard abs (which, by the way, my dogs would HATE).

Recently, I’ve avoided buying the Treadmill Bike (a street bike that you “pedal” by walking on a treadmill. I’d need to update my will before ever street-testing it. Last, but definitely not least when it comes to exercise equipment that is better for a laugh than a workout, there’s the iGallop Horseback Riding Core Builder Exercise Machine (here’s Ellen Degeneres demonstrating it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th3zCNIMOiw; forward to 2:45). I’m certain it didn’t sell well because no one could type out the full name to order one. And with its side to side and bucking motions (there’s a saddlehorn-like handle in the front for you to hang on), it was too reminiscent of the mechanical bull that was popular in bars in the ‘80s. That’s what kept me from buying it – I met my second ex at a bar with a mechanical bull. I didn’t want to accidentally marry the guy who delivered the device to my house.

I think I’ll just stick to the tried-and-true way of getting exercise. I’ll laugh at everything and occasionally eat a handful of almonds (which, thankfully, I don’t have to crack with my flabby thighs).

New Year’s Resolutions You Can Keep

Let’s face it – chances that you’ll break most, if not all, of your New Year’s resolutions by mid January are as high as chances that Donald Trump will lie in the next three minutes. This is likely because you always set the bar too high, promising once again to eat more kale (because you read on Facebook that kale will make you poop normally again), lose 417 lbs. by Valentine’s Day, and stop spending money on frivolous items such rent and electricity.

One of the best things that comes with getting older (besides no longer caring if my eyebrows have taken on a life of their own) is having a better understanding of who I am and what my limitations are. A few years ago (or perhaps decades, I can’t really remember), I started coming up with resolutions that I was likely to be able to stick to. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have the willpower of a dachshund with a cookie on her nose. In fact, not putting cookies on my nose was one of the first New Year’s resolutions I was able to keep for an entire year!

Now when I set goals for myself at the beginning of each year, my first question is, “Is this something I—someone who has created more new life forms on rotting vegetables in the back of her refrigerator than any genetic engineer and who has hung laundry from every piece of home exercise equipment ever sold in an infomercial—can reasonable achieve this year?” If you adopt this same strategy, I think you’ll be able to end 2019 on a high note, knowing that you were able to successful achieve your resolutions. In fact, I’ll share a few with you to get you started:

I resolve to:

• Find more creative excuses for being late to parties;
• Go to more parties;
• Learn to curse in sign language;
• Close the front door before calling politicians and yelling at them;
• Stop eating stuff left behind at a restaurant by strangers at the next table even if it looks yummy;
• Never send an e-mail before my third cup of coffee;
• Stop texting anyone I’m in the same room with;
• Wear comfortable shoes to my next protest march;
• Quit lying to the dental hygienist about how often I floss my teeth;
• Stop using straws and learn how to drink out of a cup (or get a sippy cup, in a pinch);
• Not marry anyone (especially important if you are currently married);
• Resist ordering products I see on TV that have the word “pajama” or “lazy” in them, even if they are for dogs, pigs or goats;
• Put up curtains in that one window in the bedroom that faces the neighbors’ house;
• Read more than just the comments section on Twitter;
• Stop licking my paws after every meal. Oops, that one is for the dogs…
• Work less, play more, make real time for real friends, savor what I eat, get more sleep, and be the most fun I ever had.

Okay, now you add your own. Just make sure to keep the bar low.