The things I do for cheese

I like cheese. There’s something, “Are you kidding me” about it. Maybe it’s the sweet softness that curdles my longings, and makes me forget all injustices. Or simply I like a product a cow had something to do with.

Anyway, I like cheese and the general store was out. They said it would be three days, or Thursday before they got their next shipment. I couldn’t wait that long, so I went home, got in my time-machine, and zipped to the general store on noon Thursday.

I could feel my mouth water as I walked to the cheese section. I was thinking about getting a big hunk of mozzarella and eating it like an apple out in the parking lot. I was upset though when I found the cheese section empty. I asked a grocery associate what time the cheese shipment would be arriving. She said sometime in the afternoon. Frustrated I got into my time-machine and rode to 3pm and the general store.

Again, no cheese. I asked a different associate what time he thought the cheese would be arriving. He said the cheese came out at 2 and was completely bought out by one person. I thought, “What the helI’s going in?!”

I got in my time-machine and rode to the general store at 1:55. I waited a handful of minutes outside the empty cheese section. At 2pm a great amount of cheese was brought out on a couple of carts by store associates. I told them not to bother putting it on the shelves. I would be buying all of it. There was no way I was going to let whomever it was purchase the lot.

I put $3,851 worth of cheese on my credit card. A handful of associates helped me push the carts to my time-machine in the parking lot. They helped with the packing. Some of the cheese went inside the time-machine, but a bunch of it had to be bungee corded to the top and the sides. Pretty soon there was no more room and I still had a half cart of cheese sitting out in the hot sun.

I got panicky thinking that the person who had previously bought all the cheese would swoop in and grab the remaining cheese. I paid each of the store associates ten dollars each to stand in a circle around me and the cheese, arms intertwined, facing outwards, while I proceeded to eat the remaining cheese.

I started with a large wheel of brie. Then I devoured a five pound square of Gruyère, and slurped down a party-sized tub of pineapple cottage cheese. By the time I gorged half a package of single prepackaged slices of American cheese I began to get a stomach cramp. I got down on my knees and tried to get back my bearings. One of the store associates turned around and asked if I was okay.

That’s about when I heard the scurrying. At first it was faint. But soon it picked up to a roar. The smell of melting cheese had attracted masses of mice from all quarters of the neighborhood. Most of the associates took off running. One remained, but after few bad scratches ran away.

The mice descended on the cheese. I tried to stand up, but the cramps overtook me. I curled up on the asphalt and passed out.

I woke up to the sound of purring mice. I was covered with hundreds of sleeping critters. I felt like I was laying under a vibrating rug.

Suddenly I got a craving for carrots.

Trying to make up for lost time

When I was in sixth grade, I played the part of Confederate General Robert E. Lee for our school play about the Civil War. I wore a wig on my head and a painted beard on my face. I was dressed in a gray suit and had a sword at my side. I came out on stage, pulled the sword from its scabbard, held it aloft and yelled, “Charge!” Somehow pulling out the sword busted the button on my trousers, and they fell to my ankles. The audience of parents and kids laughed, including my parents. I saw that my mom and dad tried to hold it back, but then burst out with a howl. I attempted to walk off stage, but tripped and fell. The laughter doubled.

The effects of this debacle rippled throughout my life. I spent years avoiding any kind of public speaking or performance. When anyone laughed anywhere, I assumed it was at me. Even if it was a movie theater audience watching a comedy. Whenever I met someone in the military, I’d compulsively drop my pants and apologize over and over again.

When I got my first time-machine in 1982, I decided to go back to source of the rupture. But I first went further back to the night of April 9, 1865, and Prowsner’s Lodging House and Saloon, in Appomattox, Virginia. There in the lobby sat General Lee, hunched over, sullenly sipping a glass of bourbon. He was feeling down because earlier in the day he surrendered the Civil War to General Grant. I felt sorry for him. Not because I supported his cause, but I can relate to humiliation and loss.

I put a compassionate hand on his shoulder and offered an opportunity to feel better. He inquired what that might be. I said we had something in common and told him my miserable tale from the beginning of this story. He offered his sympathy. I said he could help me and himself by time-traveling back with me to that infamous day. Lee took me up on this and away we went in my time-machine.

There General Lee and I were, in the back of my elementary school auditorium. Suddenly on the stage appeared the younger me, arm and sword held high. Down went my pants. Up went the laughter. Down I tumbled.

The real General Lee marched swiftly up and onto the stage. He yelled, pulled out his sword, and slashed it through the paper backdrop. The laughter suddenly stopped.

The younger me looked in awe at General Lee, who helped me up, and raised and fastened my pants.

Then General Lee proclaimed to the audience, “Your impudence knows no bounds! What has this lad ever done to you? Has any of you forgotten the fumbling innocence of your childhood? I’m ashamed of the fetid decay of the conscience of my country.”

My neighbor, Mr. Browdster, stood up and said, “I’m not going to sit here and be preached to by a traitor!”

General Lee sighed and was silent. He took the younger me by the hand and brought him to the back of the hall. Everyone was looking when the younger me turned around to the audience, gave them the middle finger, and said, “Up Yours!” General Lee smiled and patted his head.

The three of us went outside. I revealed who I was to the younger me, who believed it 100%. General Lee said, “I want to thank the both of you. I was crestfallen. Now I’ve regained my esteem.”

The younger me and I dropped General Lee back to 1865 and the lodging house.

After that the younger me and I went forward in time to May 13th, 1887, Menlo Park, NJ, and the inventing workshop of Thomas Edison. That was the day Edison invented the banana split!!

This one’s timely

My Great-Great-Grandmother Blynth was single when she gave birth to my Great-Grandmother Reginow. When asked who was the father, she was mum.

Last Sunday at the family picnic, my Great-Great-Grandmother Blynth took me aside and asked if I could keep a secret. I said I could, even though I’d never ever been able to. For instance, when I was seven, my best friend Billy Beaver once made me pinky swear not to tell anyone he was in love with his cat, Miss Mercy, and one day hoped they would marry. By the end of the day, via me, everyone at Bollswigger Elementary knew. That night Billy ran away from home with Miss Mercy. About a year later they were found on a shipping freighter at a port in Guangzhou Harbor, China. Billy came back to school, and during lunch asked if was the one who told. I said I was. He asked why I broke the pinky swear. I said I have a problem with keeping secrets, but I have a hard time admitting it.

Anyway, my  Great-Great-Grandmother Blynth shared with me that from 1904 to 1906 she was White House secretary for President Theodore Roosevelt and Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks, and sometimes did it with both of them. She got pregnant and they fired her. Six months later she gave birth to Great-Grandmother Reginow. I asked why she decided to tell me. She said I seemed non-judgemental. I said I wasn’t and listed the low opinions I had of every family member at the picnic. She said I was spot on, then reiterated I’d promised to not tell anyone. I said I’d keep it private from the family. (They don’t read these posts, so I think I’m finally turning the corner on keeping a secret.)

When I got home that night, I got in my time-travel machine and went back to the White House in 1907. There in the Oval Office were President Roosevelt and Vice-President Fairbanks. They asked what I was doing there. I said I was a visiting relative. They asked of which of them. I said I was the great-great-godson of their former secretary Blynth. They asked how that was possible, and I showed them my time-travel machine. They asked how that was possible. I said eventually everything is.

Here’s that damn story I wanted to tell you

I’m extremely impatient. Just typing these words, I’m thinking to myself, “Why couldn’t you have been with me when the story I want to tell you happened so that I wouldn’t have to tell it to you?”

Anyway, here’s the story. I got tired of listening to Chopin on Spotify. It’s a tinny sound. I imagine it’s what it would be like to see a copy of a Picasso printed in dot matrix. So, I got in my time-machine and rode instantly to Chopin’s home in Paris in 1837.

I brought a really big watermelon with me. I read on Wikipedia that its Chopin’s favorite food. I knocked, Chopin answered, saw the watermelon, and quickly invited me in. We walked briskly to the kitchen, where he got out a big knife  and cut the watermelon in half. He gave me half and a spoon. Then plunged his face into the other half. He was savage in his ravishing of the fruit.

I was just eating my second spoonful of watermelon, when Chopin finished and stood up, his face glistening with red juice. He didn’t seem to mind that it ran down onto his jacket and shirt. He asked me if I was going to finish my half of the watermelon. I said no and handed it to him, and he proceeded to disappear into that as well.

When he was done, Chopin asked me if I had any more watermelon. I said I didn’t and asked if he would do me the favor of playing some of his selections on piano. He got upset and said I was holding out on him. I said it would be obvious if I had more of the fruit. He said it was highly possible I was hiding other watermelons in my horse and carriage. He left the kitchen and went out the front door. He came back, frustrated there was no such vehicle parked outside.

I asked Chopin again if he would kindly play me a song or two of his. He said that he was in a fowl mood and that I needed to leave. I said that if he played me the songs, I would go out and come back with more watermelon. Chopin said that if I went out and came back with three more watermelons, he would play me three songs.

I agreed and left. I took my time-machine to today, went to the store, bought three watermelons, and returned to 1837  and Chopin’s home. I watched while Chopin fervently devoured the fruits, one after another. By now, his entire outfit was drenched in the juice. He began rambling incoherently. I chalked that up to blood sugar overwhelm.

I took Chopin by the arm and guided him from room to room, until we came upon his piano in the solarium. I sat him down at the piano. He sat still in a stupor. I put his hands on the keys and began making a metronome sound by repeatedly clicking my tongue. He slumped onto the keys and began to snore.

I got upset at myself for needing things to be perfect. Why couldn’t I be satisfied with the way things are?

Chopin rolled off the piano and slumped to the floor. I picked him up and carried him upstairs to the bedroom. I got him out of his fruit soiled outfit, and into a night shirt and night cap. I laid him in bed, and pulled up the cover.

I took a moment to watch him sleep. It was soothing to observe the breath come and go.

Better than having a job

I don’t like to work. I’ve given it a try a few times. But when you realize something isn’t for you, you do yourself a favor by stopping it at once. I do other things like wander around, sleep, sit and look out the window, and have long discussions with my dog Rexy.

The thing about not working is that you tend to not have enough money for things that you want to buy right now. Such was the case this morning when I realized I’d run out of dog chow and couldn’t feed Rexy. Rexy said, “I’m pretty hungry, so you’d better go back in time and find us some money.” I said she was coming with me. If nothing else, while out and about in time we might come across a meat cornucopia that would do the trick.

I got in my time-travel machine, Rexy sat on my lap, and I punched in the time-space coordinates for 28th January, the year 814, and the city of Aachen, Francia. We were there in an instant. Time-travel suits my deliriously lazy nature because it takes about the same amount of time and energy to get anywhere as it does for me to pick my nose.

We caught a ride in a dung cart. We dragged the time machine behind on a rope. I equipped it with wheels a ways back because wheels make everything easier. We got off at the Royal Palace. We went in and walked to the master suite where King Charlemagne was laying on his death bed. He was bemoaning that he was dying too soon, leaving behind a great deal of unfinished business. Further evidence that living an ambitious life is on the same level as repeated self head-hammering.

King Charlemagne asked who we were. I said Rexy and I were angels, ready to carry him to the great beyond. I said the sooner he left, the better he would feel. King Charlemagne sighed and concurred. I said that he would need to bring a big chunk of gold to pay the fare to cross the River Styx. He got out a hammer and a chisel, and from a refrigerator-sized block of gold, knocked off a brick-sized piece. Rexy put it in her mouth, and the King, Rexy, and I got in the time-machine and came back to today.

We took a detour and stopped off at a hospital and admitted King Charlemagne. Then Rexy and I took the time-machine to the Safeway to the present time. I don’t have a car, so I use the time-machine to do errands.

I got a can of Rexy’s favorite, Gravy Train with Beef Chunks, and we went to the register. The total was $1.29. I took the gold brick from Rexy’s mouth and gave it to the register person. She said they didn’t accept gold. I said she could have the whole brick, but she said no deal because she would get in trouble. We left without the can, went outside, and sat on a bench.

I asked Rexy if she was still hungry. She said that her stomach shrunk and she was okay.

Just then King Charlemagne wandered by. He said they gave him an aspirin and he was feeling better. I said that Rexy and I weren’t angels and asked if he wanted me to take him back to 814. He said that while sitting in the hospital he reassessed his life, and decided to give the idle life a chance.

He sat down on the bench with us. We watched cars drive by.

Water speaks up

I stood on the beach, looking out at the ocean.

The ocean said, “Hey, why you looking at me?!”

I said that it was comforting.

The ocean said, “Not to me it isn’t.”

I said I was sorry and walked back to my car. I drove home, went in and began to prepare dinner. I washed lettuce under the faucet.

The water coming out of the tap said, “You think you can make me do whatever you want?!”

I said I was sorry and turned off the water. I dried off the lettuce, put it in a bowl, and added dressing. I sat down and began eating the salad. I realized I was thirsty. I almost got up and got a glass of water from the faucet, but I didn’t want any trouble.

I finished my salad and put the bowl in the sink but didn’t wash it.

I watched some television. After a couple of hours I got drowsy and turned off the television. I got up and changed into my pajamas. I brushed my teeth, but I didn’t rinse off the toothbrush.

I turned out the light and got into bed. I lay there and was almost asleep when I heard a, “psssst” coming from the wall behind my bed.

I said, “Yes, what is it?”

From the wall I heard, “It’s me, the water in the pipes. I’m sorry I was harsh with you. Sometimes I get crazy from the constant demands. I promise I won’t get upset again if you need me.”

I accepted the water’s apology. I got up and went into the kitchen. I got out a glass and turned on the faucet. I drank the glass of water.

I went back to bed. I lay there and shook my hips back and forth. I could hear the water slosh around in my stomach.