52 Short Stories

"No, I don't know what I want for dinner because I'm not even sure I've ever eaten dinner before.  In fact, it's possible that I'm incapable of consuming food.  But I guess, the shrimp in marinara sauce sounds good enough."     That used to be a typical daily conversation for me in the beginning -- if we go ahead and change a few details. Namely, that I was living alone in the woods and had never heard of "sauce" let alone marinara before, but of course I knew about shrimp -- no, wait...my mistake, that can't be right, let me start over. Some people think it would be rather nifty to have lived ten thousand lives. And maybe that could be true if they were all reincarnations and you couldn't remember any of them. Or even if you could remember a few of them, it was only  a few of them, and they were relatively neatly organized in your mind. You might say, "Oh yes, in this my current life, I had Mrs. Gellstahlt as my 2nd grade teacher. I...

 "I went to the bathroom at the little one's school the other day," Carl Finklebakker, President of Wooden Pallet and Shipping Enterprises , said to an auditorium full of all, every single one of WP&S Enterprises' employees. "There was a paper printed in the bathroom, this was in one of the teachers' restrooms, not the children's because of rules and such," he continued, "and so I couldn't help but to read this sign, flyer, what have you -- call it what you like, it said the following, well rather first, let me describe the image associated with it because the whole experience was rather very profound for me, the image was of Elmo, the furry red puppet from Sesame Street, and he, she, whatever Elmo is, Elmo was sitting on a hopper, struggling it seemed to have a bowel movement. And the text on the sign said, 'Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, so that's why I poop on the Company's time.'" Carl paused. He observed so...