52 Short Stories

 "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...

Poetry is not my forte, but I haven't yet been able to spin this into a story: I spent the day planting flowers, natives such as milkweed to attract pollinators -- bees and Monarchs. The neighbors cut two trees down, I saw the void when I came home. When I came home from planting flowers for butterflies and bees. In a book about beavers, and how critical they are to saving the planet, I read a quote, "when you're down to trying to save the insects, you know you're buggered." It had inspired me to plant the flowers, because trees take so long to grow. I walked in my neighborhood of "well-maintained" lawns. The sidewalks are covered with fluorescent fertilizer pellets to keep the grass an artificial green.  Gas-powered mowers growled, motors trimming, manicuring.  When Bradbury talks of colors, he describes carnivals and soda fountains, but he can describe the snow, the way it curls upon branches and crunches underfoot, as if it had all the vividness of a ...

After completing the reading assignment, the students avoided looking up at their teacher. Instead, they opted to make as many disgusted, eye-rolling, or otherwise disapproving glances that they knew of to each other. One student however, chose instead to stare at a point roughly eight to ten inches through the teacher's head. Increasingly uncomfortable, Mr. Keisher decided to turn the tables, but in then end it failed spectacularly. "And what do you think of the Halu-hawthi people?" he asked her. "Buncha savages." She shrugged and continued staring for no better reason than that making Mr. Keisher uncomfortable was a more interesting thing to do than acknowledge that around her existed smelly, sex-obsessed classmates who kept snickering about the naked photo of some Hello-whatever  women grinding food with rocks. "That's an extremely offensive thing to say," snapped Mr. Keisher.  "Doesn't make it less true." The girl smirked, and Mr....

 When I was 7 years old, my great-grandparents decided to renew their wedding vows for their 65th anniversary. And this quickly became a family affair given the rarity of such an occurrence. They decided they wanted the entire family together for the ceremony: grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, anyone remotely connected to the family by blood, marriage or adoption. And the only venue big enough was a cruise ship, which made the whole celebratory event that much more exciting.  I was really looking forward to the trip -- a giant family reunion vacation -- where I could hang out with all of my cousins, eat all the food I wanted (and whatever kinds of food I wanted -- dessert first every single night even!) and try out all the fun activities both on and off the boat. Obviously the percentage of rooms booked by my family and relatives was a small percentage compared to all the rooms available on a giant cruise ship, but by sheer force of numbers, we had quite a bit of...

Here are some Books I wish I had been assigned in Middle School and High School I used to hate rating. So much so in fact that for most of high school, I got by reading SparkNotes alone. When I went to grad school, I lived on campus my first year, but that proved to be financially impossible to maintain so I decided to commute...3 and a half hours round trip, 4 days a week. Music and thinking about life worked for a while, but sitting in traffic day after day left me feeling like I was wasting my life -- or at the very least, doing something wrong. Enter, audio books. Which eventually led me to actually finish reading my first novel in about a decade, and I was so proud of my accomplishment that I decided to start keeping track of every single book I read or listened to. The list has grown long now because I discovered that there are actually in existence quite a lot of books and authors I enjoy reading -- I just had not been introduced to them or at least not introduced properly. So i...