High School Reunion – Foreshadow

“It’s a special drink he made for the, you know, this occasion.”

The funeral director spoke awkwardly. How do you describe a party for the recently deceased? Merle was someone almost no one knew in high school, but here we were some 20 years later at his funeral. Everyone who’d come were friends of his because he didn’t have any family. And those of us from high school weren’t his friends back then.

No, but he’d proven himself as a wonderful person afterwards. Lending a bit of money at the right time, being there with kind words when we needed them. Never asking anything of us, but always being helpful in the neighborhood.

Granted, he wasn’t the friendly sort to start with. Always said he was destined to be a witch, or a warlock. We knew he was weird back then, always dressing in crazy emo style and way too much eye shadow. Even the teachers considered him creepy.

Yet, here we were, saying thanks to the weird friend who’d grown on us over the years, and now looking at the shimmering liquid in our fancy glasses.

“Do we really want to drink this?”

“He drank it all the time,” the director said. And I’ve had some, it’s quite good.

We toasted and drank, all while some of the strangest music played around us. Apparently he was quite the composer. We clinked our empty glasses, and I passed out.

When I opened my eyes I found myself on a school bus. My heart began racing. I looked to my right and saw my big brother. I wanted to scream, because he died when I was 30. But I’m on a school bus, and I looked at my hands. I’m not 40, not even 30. I’m 17. I looked at him again and he looked at me. Called me a lazy idiot for sleeping the whole ride and he was gone off to his first class. I wanted to tell him how I missed him, and how I loved him, and how he shouldn’t join the Navy, how he was going to die in a carrier accident.

Everyone got off the bus, and I walked off in a daze. I ran into Zelda in the hallway near my locker. My old locker. My feet took me there without even thinking. I was still in a daze, but Zelda stopped me. She’d been right next to me at the funeral only moments ago, but now she stopped me and looked me in the eyes.

“I’m having the weirdest dream. I’m not sure if this is the dream, or if…”

She didn’t finish, but she didn’t have to. I finished it for her. I wasn’t sure either. But we knew we were both living like 17 year olds, with 40 year old minds.

“My hormone’s are raging, I’m having cramps like a champ, and I want to scream about what I know is going to happen, but I can’t.”

I agreed. We weren’t supposed to stay together, at least we didn’t back then. But we decided to stick together. Then her boyfriend showed up. He kissed her, and she tried slapping him, but she couldn’t. I saw the whole thing, her hand was frozen. He took off, and she gasped that he’d ended up abusing her while they dated in college. It had taken her 10 years to get over the trauma, and she couldn’t do anything to her 17 year-old self to stop from kissing him back. She looked at me with horror. I told her I had no idea what we were going to do.

We were freaking out, but I’m going to cut this short as I’m running out of time. You’ll see why in a minute.

All of us from the funeral found each other. The teachers tried to separate us, but we were solid. And we finally found Merle. He was buried in the chem lab doing things that back then we gave no thought to. Now, we approached him very carefully.

“Hi guys, I’ve been expecting you.” He drank some shimmering liquid. “This is great stuff, and I hope you enjoyed yours.”

One of our group, he was a natural leader spoke up, quietly.

“You’ve known all these years what was going to happen? But what’s going to happen to us?”

“Yeah,” Merle said equally quietly, eyes cast down. “I’ve had this sort of curse, since forever, and I know I’m not going to last long. But I knew that I’d grow fond of you guys over the next few decades, and wanted a chance to say thanks again.”

Are we stuck here forever? I wanted to know. He said that we would be able to play out the entire school day, and when we left the school, we’d reappear back in the funeral home.

Will we remember all this? Is there any way to change anything? Zelda wanted to know.

“No, nothing can change. And no, you won’t be able to remember anything, I’m sorry. It’s not the way the universe is supposed to work. When my body burns, you’ll forget any of this happens.”

Zelda began crying. I joined her. And he was right. I walked out the doors a few hours later, and saw my friends all staring into their empty glasses. The funeral director announced that cremation of the body was going to begin soon, and Merle’s request was that we could be there to see it. Everyone followed, except me.

I sat down at a table and started scribbling, fast. I’ve recorded almost everything but one thing happened with my brother that I don’t ever want to forget. We passed each other in the cafeteria.

The End

*PS – I’m writing these shorts just to show that these are wholly my ideas, and NOT inspired or copied off of others. If there’s any resemblance it’s wholly my fault and I take the responsibility. But it’s also entirely a coincidence and I admit no liability. So there.

Funny After Death

One of my yoga buddies told this story about her recently departed Dad.

He’d turned 91, and had a clean finish.

Turns out he’d been a practitioner of transcendental meditation for 50 years, but that’s not the funny part.

Apparently, part of being a TM devotee meant visiting your local watering hole on a daily basis.

You heard that right.  Every day he’d perch upon his favorite bar stool at TGIF and have a few.

Every day.

Every day since 1985.

As of this writing, that was a smidgen over 12,000 days ago.

TWELVE THOUSAND DAYS!

That’s a lot of days.

That’s a lot of drinks.

And, here’s the best part.  Guess how his good buddies from TGIF decided they would honor his memory?

You got it.  His ashes are sitting high up on the bar, in his favorite mug (sealed, I’m sure), with a little plaque on the mug and on his favorite barstool.

There you have it.  A good way to transcend death is to make sure you’ve etched yourself into someone’s, or something’s, life.  And her Dad did exactly that.

What’s your barstool going to say?

 

 

My Haunted House

There’s an apparition in my house, the scariest you can imagine.

It taunts me whenever it can.  It always looks me in the eye, and reminds me that I’m rather ugly, that I’m untidy.  Worse, it keeps telling me that I’m getting old, older, oldest.  If I look away, it reminds me that I’m getting flabby, or gray, or worse.

It only appears in certain rooms, so I tend to avoid those rooms.  It only speaks when there’s sufficient light, so I have no problem keeping my house dark.

Full disclosure here, I’m not a vampire.

I don’t play one as an actor, and I’m pretty sure I don’t sleep-vamp.  I’m also good with sunlight, even though I prefer moonlight.  Topping it off, I’m totally ok with garlic.  I love garlic.

You see, my house doesn’t have many mirrors.  Sure, there’s one in the bathroom.  But it’s only there to make sure I don’t slice off my nose while shaving, or that I’ve scraped my tongue correctly.  That’s about it.

I’m convinced that the mirror is one of the greatest sources of life’s stress.  Every time I peer into my own eyes, I can only see what’s wrong, and what’s going wrong, and what can go wrong.

I’ve heard of people who become so worried, so stressed out while looking in the mirror, they spend HOURS peering into its seductive message.  I’m pretty sure none of those people are truly happy.

What was it like before?  You know, before there were mirrors everywhere?  I have a feeling people were a bit messier, but also happier.  First of all, your friends would get your face in shape, so that’s social.  And you wouldn’t spend all that alone time faced with your greatest fear.

Death.

Because that’s what your mirror delivers.  You’re looking into a cold, glassy surface that  reflects your own image back into your eyeballs.  Your hopes, your dreams, your accomplishments aren’t there.  Only you.  Just like when you’re lying there in a coffin, unable to move, with all your friends and a few enemies coming to pay their last respects.

You’re cold, and stiff.  You might as well be made of glass.

So the next time you glance at yourself in your favorite mirror, give yourself a big smile.

It may be your last.

Happy Halloween

 

Units of Measure

Recently, these people decided that a lump of metal wasn’t good enough as a standard weight.  They decided to lose the lump and create a standard based on fundamental theory.

This got me thinking.

No matter what discipline you’re into, you have to have a basic unit.  It can be a tooth if you’re a dentist.  Or a dollar if you’re an economist.  It can be a stone tool if you’re an archaeologist.

What if you are trying to understand politics?  Or medicine?  Or your dog?

Let’s face it.  Trying to figure out a politician might be easy if we use a unit based on dollars of influence.  Votes are secondary.

As for medicine, how many units do you have to have before you’re healthy?  Or happy?  Maybe the units are negative, as in, how many aches and pains DON’T you have?

Finally, Fido.  How do you measure your dog?  Licks and wags?  Barks at the neighbor?  How well he cuddles while you sleep?

So, the next time you and your friends are complaining about something,

and you KNOW you will,

take a second to think about what kind of unit is involved.

Man problems?

Woman problems?

Boss problems?

Coworker problems?

I’ll let your imagination handle those.

It’s more fun that way.

By the way, Fun?  Measured in groans and smiles.

 

Au Contraire

I was taught once, a long time ago, that contradicting someone was considered impolite.

No it isn’t.

Perhaps it’s a matter of culture.  Having recently returned from the English pre-Victorian years described in Pride and Prejudice, I was jealous of the rules of society.  If you said you would attend a party, you would.  If you couldn’t, you would tell the host ahead of time.  And if you were late you apologized to the host and asked forgiveness.

Recently, I witnessed some instances where the husband was immediately “improved” by his womanly loved ones.  Both wives and daughters are featured here, but the identities have been altered to protect the innocent.

Oh, who am I kidding?  It’s to protect me!

The first instance was during the telling of the sale of our first home.  I mentioned that a large family was buying it, and would have to live in all of 890 square feet.

“No, it was 980,” said the wife.

I noted that I wasn’t going to argue and pressed on.  No matter that it interrupted the flow of a great story, and there were lots of other family sitting around waiting expectantly.  No matter that I am a numbers person and work around machines that use numbers all the time, and she is a manager of people and also works in a pet shelter.  Besides, no matter which number is correct, it was still a small house for a family of five!

Later, I mentioned that we watch relatively little TV.

“No you don’t,” corrected the daughter.

I was telling a story as to why we don’t have a dedicated large screen TV.  We have a large-ish computer screen and stream everything.  Even then, the few hours we see a night is nothing to the average of 5 hours a day.

But what’s the point of arguing?  I was only saying that to reinforce the fact that we use the computer instead of a big screen.  What did our daughter think she was doing, correcting the official record?  Or perhaps she feels we watch more than we should?

I didn’t argue it then, and I don’t think I’ll ever bring it up again, except here.

What’s the point?  Why is it these contradictions have to be made so immediately and so publicly?  Is there some kind of vendetta going on against men by their loving women?  Or does it have more to do with setting a pecking order?

Watching behavior is not only fun, it’s my profession.  But sometimes, at the level of the individual, things happen that not even I can explain.  And I’m not even sure I want to.

Any of your insights would be greatly appreciated.

Yes, yes they would.