It was a bad day for Frank. It was a good day for me. I didn’t like Frank.
Beautiful Lamp
Overheard: “My lamp! You broke my beautiful lamp! I’m going to kill you.”
Battling Demons
They say we all have our demons to battle. I tried my hardest, but I grew tired of losing so I gave up.
I think I would have kept fighting if I had a cool demon slaying sword. You know, maybe one of those demon slaying swords that is forged from the souls of the dead and gilded with the tears of angels on the great anvil that burns hot with molten lava in the center of the earth. Maybe not exactly like that, but you get the idea.
The only sword I could find was a plastic one from my Halloween Pirate costume. The first time I used it against a demon he was surprised to see me with a sword and ran away when he realized he wouldn’t have another easy fight. A great victory for me! Unfortunately, the next demon knew better and easily destroyed my plastic sword. To add insult to injury, he melted my plastic sword with his fiery breath, cooled it off, and reshaped it into a plastic golf club. He beat me with that golf club until I begged for mercy and promised not to try fooling the demons with plastic swords again.
So I hope you can see why I gave up. You aren’t going to win those demon fights without a cool sword.
Small Wine Glasses
It was just another dinner party. Much like the dinner parties we had every month. We invited the same guests we always did. Burton was there, like he always was. But the memorable thing about this dinner party was our new wine glasses. My wife bought them at an antique shop. Everyone agreed they were beautiful wine glasses. Though a few people remarked on how much smaller they were than our old wine glasses.
After the dinner party, we never heard from Burton again. This was strange because we had known Burton for many years and he never missed our dinner parties. Most people blamed the small wine glasses for Burton’s disappearance, but I knew it was because I punched him in the face.
It wasn’t that I hated Burton. I just had to punch him in the face. Know what I mean?
Snake Charming
I worked my way through college as a snake charmer, working nights and weekends in front of convenience stores. You might think a snake charmer would earn a lot of money, but most people don’t understand that a snake charmer has to rely on donations from people passing by. Many people see your little wicker snake basket and assume that is where the money goes. Unfortunately, once they threw money in the basket I was never going to see it again. That snake could swallow lots of coins!
I think I probably would have made plenty of money from donations but people tended to donate less when they saw me screaming at the snake to stop biting me. I don’t know why screaming at a snake rubs some people the wrong way. I guess they don’t understand that snakes have tiny ears and it helps to yell as loud as you can if you want to be heard. Some people may have thought I was screaming at them, at least that’s what that red-haired guy thought. He seemed angry until the snake popped out and bit him. After that he laid down and took a nap next to us. He was still asleep after several hours so I got up and moved to a new convenience store since he was getting in the way of people who wanted to donate.
In spite of the snake swallowing most of my donations, and the rumors that my snake had killed a red-haired man from the audience, I still managed to make enough money to pay for college. I would have continued snake charming as a full-time job, but the more hours you spend charming snakes the more the snake bites you. After a while, the cost of snake bite antidote increased so much that I was spending more money on antidote than I was making from donations. There comes a point in your life where you have to ask yourself if it’s really worth spending more money than you earn just to cure snake bites when you could stop charming snakes and go get a regular job.
To this day I wonder if I made the right choice, but I couldn’t say goodbye to my little friend in the wicker snake basket. That’s why I had him killed, stuffed, and placed on my mantle at home. I even paid the taxidermist with the money that the snake had swallowed. I guess you could say it all worked out in the end. Except for the snake. And I guess not for that guy with red hair that died. But looking back on it now, the taxidermist and I wouldn’t have done things any differently.