Baby Brother

I hated my baby brother when he was born. I tried to ignore him. I unhooked the safety pins on his diapers hoping he’d get hurt. I ran away from him after he could walk well enough to follow me around.

My baby brother is 63 years old now. I no longer hate him. I must depend on him. He does all the things I cannot do. He mows my lawn, cleans out the gutters, moves the couch. He brings his wife on days I need my laundry done. So now, I simply resent him. It’s . . .

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Pot Luck

The woman in line ahead of me moved slowly down the table. She talked to me as if we had been in mid conversation when we lined up at the pot luck table.

“Lordy, I remember when a pot luck dinner was a big event. You know? Why, women used to make their best dishes. People took pride in their cooking in those days. Why, look at this. Buckets of chicken and trays of vegetables chopped up at the supermarket.” She clucked under her breath. “Why it’s a disgrace, don’t you know. A sad state of affairs.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. I didn’t want to be rude. I was wondering if the dish she brought was homemade. I myself brought brownies. Homemade from a box. Would she give me any credit for actually cooking them myself?

Hard Road

I smiled at the young twit interviewing me for some magazine or other. I secretly wished him a hard road to the top while smiling and answering his inane questions.

I thought back to some of the interviews I’d had when my first best selling novel came out. Thought with painful longing for an in depth talk with someone from the New York Times or National Public Radio. Where were the lovely questions I’d fielded before I married a celebrity and became something I’m not. Questions about my characters, my symbolism, my plot lines. Those were the things that mattered to me. . .

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Yesterday

Yesterday I watched Letters from Iwo Jima, the Clint Eastwood movie. I’ll be watching the companion film, Flags of Our Fathers soon.

There is so much to be said about a movie like this. I think about the danger of accepting cultural values blindly. The unexamined lives we live cause so much needless loss. What defines heroism? Courage? Hope? Faith?

I think after I’ve seen the second of the Eastwood films, I’ll agree even more with the bumper sticker I saw the other day: “I’m against the next war, too.”

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Share the sunlight

Venezuela is changing their whole time system by half an hour to 4 1/2 hours off GMT so that school children can share the sunlight “equitably.” OK. Sure. That makes sense.

Why not just start school half and hour later? Now everyone in Venezuela and all around the world will be confused about what the time is there. The way the world works now, knowing what time zone someone is in is almost the most important fact of doing business.

This is not the first country to pull this stunt. Stop it, I say.

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Forebearance

“I hate your forebearance!” I shouted. I think I actually shook my finger in her face as words burst from me. “You judge nothing. You condemn nothing. You’re a real nothing.”

She smiled. Trying to be soothing. It didn’t work. “Judgment and condemnation are not the only responses to life,” she said. “There are other ways to move in the world.”

“I need an opinion, a rule, a guide. You can’t just tell me to accept things.” I stood up and paced around the room…

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Read the manual

New phone. Lots of fun.
Play with the settings.
Take some photos.
Make a phone call.

No one can hear me.
It’s the mute button.
Accidentally touched it.
Go read the manual.

Mute ain’t in the manual.
The phone can do it,
But the manual don’t know it.
How ya gonna un-mute?

Touch the same button again?
Yeah, maybe, or maybe not
It un-mutes for a sec
Then all is lost again.

New phone. Not so fun.
Hard to grab.
Gotta watch out for the
damn mute button.

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Going like sixty

“Hello, 9-1-1? Yeah, I’m calling because this woman just went through a school zone going, like, sixty at least. I caught some of her license plate. It was an Ohio tag and started with ZTY 3. I couldn’t catch the rest. But the car was a dark blue SUV.

“Huh? Why do you need my name? No, I’m not calling from a mobile phone. You have me located where? Well, I saw it out the window. What do you mean? But . . . “

“Okay,” the trainer said. “The caller hung up at that point. What would your responsibility as a 9-1-1 operator be at that point? Should you do anything?”

I stole the Username from one of the frequent posters here at First 50 Words for today’s topic. Please leave a comment with your first 50 words on the topic “going like sixty.”

And another thing

I imagined a glass wall between my ears and her words. They were bouncing right off. Yep. I mentally sang “lalalalala” through every word. Then she stopped talking. I sneaked a quick glance her way, to see if she’d really run down so fast.

She was merely gulping down a swig of beer. “And another thing,” she began again. She slurred a bit and spit out a few drops of her precious beer. I expected her to get down and lick it up, but she just kept sending syllables of invective in my direction.

It wasn’t safe to try to leave the room. I had the bruises to prove it. So I just sat. Built my glass wall. Tried to be in some alternate reality that . . .

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Phone Call

I answered the phone call and got a cheerful, “Hello, this is Stacy,” in my ear. This set me back just a bit.

“Aren’t you dead?” I asked.

“Yes. I’m calling you from heaven.” She did sound a lot stronger and healthier than she had the last time we talked a couple of weeks ago–right before she went into the hospice.

“Why?” I said.

“I’m worried about . . .

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