Tag Archives: human interest

Getting Some

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At the ripe old age of nine, Karen Whignett was convinced she had adults all figured out.

Karen lived in an apartment in a high-rise building in New York City. Because of her lifestyle, and more the lifestyle of her parents, her access to other children was limited outside of school. She considered Paisley Barnes, a classmate who lived six floors below to be her best friend. It was mostly a ceremonial title for when Karen’s mom thought the girl needed someone to play with, she called Paisley’s mom. If Paisley was available, and she was always very busy herself, the girls sat around Karen’s room drawing or playing with dolls as Paisley talked about how she was going to be famous. Karen mostly listened.

Karen was a good listener. It was one of the reasons adults didn’t mind having her around. She never said much and because she was quiet, the adults normally forgot about her. They would talk, she would listen, she would learn.

Based on what she heard, three basic things drove all adult problems, money, time and whether or not anyone was “getting any.” The last of the three was the most confusing. Karen understood money and how there was no such thing as having enough. She understood time and how, like money, it was a valuable and rare commodity. But the concept of getting any was vague and seemed to be not only the source of consternation, but also an odd way to forget about problems for a while.

She recalled several conversations between her mom and Aunt Petrina where the vagueness of “getting any” came to light. At first she thought it as a redundant reference to the notions of time and money, but it quickly became clear that it was something more unto itself.

“Ugh,” Aunt Petrina would say, “On top of all that, I’m not even getting any.” To which Karen’s mom might nod or agree or say nothing.

On the other hand Petrina has also said, “Things are in the dumps as usual, but at least I’m getting some.”

Karen could only guess that in the pursuit of all things, the better answer to the problem of getting any was that it was to be getting some.

She pondered the question a good long time.

Karen spent the early evenings after school and school days off with her Grandma Bets, who lived two floors up. They talked and laughed and had snacks. Grandma Bets was an adult, but not as much like an adult as the others she had access to. When Karen finally decided to ask Bets about the concept of getting any, Bets didn’t bat an eye. She just kept on doing what she was doing, in this case crocheting, and explained it as only she could.

“Honey,” which is what Bets called her. “It’s a lot like cookies. If you have a bad day and things seem to go off base here and there, a simple thing like a cookie can make all that feel like a little less of a burden. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“And if you have a bunch of bad days and you don’t have time for a cookie, or there aren’t any around, you don’t have anything to distract you from your troubles. So you just focus on them more and they just seem to get worse. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“Well there you go then. It’s better to have cookies when you need them than none.”

“Can you ever have too much?” which to Karen, seemed like the next best question.

“Well, can you recall a time when you ate too many cookies?”

“Not really.”

“That’s right! I’ve heard people complain about not having any, and people are usually happy having some, but I have yet to hear too many people complain about having too much…of anything… but troubles.”

Evan

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Evan Caulder started writing about unsolved crimes when he was young. His boyhood dreams of becoming a police officer where initially dashed by his poor eyesight and profound asthma. After “life” happened a few times, his hopes of his becoming any kind of investigator faded into the background, waiting for a chance to shine like the odd man out at a high school prom.

The writing stuck though, it was a good solid habit, like smoking he supposed. He could give it up, but why? He trolled through magazines, newspapers and endless Internet pages seeking out and cataloguing the various details of various crimes. He’d developed quite a collection of well documented cold case files that some small part of him still hoped he might have a hand in solving one day. His records were meticulous, in his mind.

He probably had what the police had overall, but what set his information apart, he felt, was the way he organized his documentation. Every page was built off a basic three column template. Dates and titled evidence to the left, details and descriptions in the middle and his unique ‘patented’ brand of insight and supposition related to the details, in his special form of short hand, on the left.

He had no special education, or measured mental agility that would help him solve these crimes. He wasn’t Sherlock Holmes or anything. He didn’t pretend to be. He did have a good brain and was convinced that his way of looking at, and interpreting case facts and circumstances would make him competitive and an asset to any crime team. When he matched his information against that of many closed cases he followed, his interpretations and predictions led him to the primary suspect about 92 percent faster than the authorities.

Few people knew of his ‘hobby.’ He kept mostly to himself in a small apartment in Kensington. He had yet to share any of his information with authorities because he felt if he ever did, he would have one shot at it, and it had to be a good one. It would be way too easy to brush him off and keep him at bay. He never even really considered the possibility until he started following the A case.

The A Case, as the media called it, was unique in that it was happening in his own backyard. Kensington was a medium-sized city emerging from the deeper woods of Western Virginia. Someone was killing people in and around town at about one every one or two weeks. Tensions were high and the tasty morsel the media decided release as a possible motive is that the killer wrote a letter A on the forehead of each victim. It was an odd clue to leave behind, until someone surmised that the victims, six in total so far, were mostly unsavory characters. They surmised that the A stood for absolved and that the murders where the work of some vigilante.

The A Case killer was a hero to those wronged by the victims and a menace to the rest who found the theory weak. Evan followed the case closely from the moment it broke. There was some validity to the vigilante theory, but there was something missing. A bigger piece of the puzzle yet to be realized was out there. He felt it tugging at him a bit, gut it was still too far for him to fully embrace.

Amber

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Edna Mae McSworley flipped slowly through the pages of Fashionista Bravo! magazine, smirking at the photos of airbrushed girls with impossible figures wearing impossible clothes.

Anorexic.

Anorexic.

Clearly unhappy.

Anorexic.

The sky outside held the promise of a very full day of rain. Even though it was still dry now, the churning clouds above were just looking for the precise time and place to release the deluge. This made for a very slow day at the Epic City Bike-O-Rama where Edna Mae worked. It seemed few people thought of bicycles and fine accessories when such a promise of profound rain lingered in the air.

“Amber” looked up at her from the next page. Tanned and taut, she sat, perched precariously on a large rock by a waterfall wearing a Scott Trumane tube skirt, a light linen button down from Kale Fa­­shion, shoes by Colby Adams and accessories from Any Girl Unlimited.

“Amber, honey, who put you up on that rock wearing those shoes,” Edna Mae muttered. “And would it kill you to eat a cheeseburger once in a while?” She looked closer at the image, at the shoes. She was convinced that if Colby Adams himself had to climb up that waterfall in those shoes, poor Amber would be wearing an entirely different ensemble.

Before she could officially label Amber as anorexic to move on to the next pixie, the bell over the door jangled drawing her attention. A woman entered, relatively tall and slender with her hair pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. She began to walk the line of bikes to the left of the door.

“Hello and welcome to Epic City. Can I help you?” Edna Mae said as she was trained to do.

The woman turned quickly flashing a smile, “Not yet, I’m just looking.”

There was something familiar about that smile, the eyes. Edna Mae looked down at the magazine and then back up to the woman. Then down again. Then up.

That woman was tube skirt Amber.

Blaze

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Blaze tumbled behind a cluster of bushes and forced his girth into a ball the best he could to hide himself. He tried to hush the harsh, rasping breath coming from his chest. His heart banged around in his chest as if it were trying to escape. He imagined an angry heart-shaped gorilla trapped in a tiny cage.

It was at that moment, inconvenient as it was, where his brain, his conscience, decided to confront him. “So, this is what you have become? The great Blaze Banks.” The voice sounded a little bit like his mother, God rest her soul.

“Shut up,” he dared to whisper. The truth always stings a bit.

Randall Banks acquired the name Blaze during his glory days on the high school football field. Days and glory he has since squandered, playing video games, drinking beer, working to make ends meet at Gil Towdy’s used car lot during the day and performing “odd jobs” at night that others found too unsavory to discuss in anything more than a whisper. When he was younger, he was an imposing figure, but time and carelessness just made him…doughy.

“He’s this way!” The call came from just over the hill.

Blaze stopped his breath completely. Despite the rhetorical essence of his brain mom’s question, the short answer was, yes. This is what he has become and if he didn’t figure something out quickly, this is where he would end. 

Time

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The quiet settled in, really set in, to the point where you could hear it for the first time since they left.

Devlin eased himself back into his chair and closed his eyes. The visits were growing fewer and farther between. He noticed it mostly after his Marie passed. It was partly the time and the sense of sadness he was sure, but also because everyone was getting older and working to control the things in their own lives that often steer people far away to places unknown.

Wrapped in the quiet, he played his favorite moments of the long weekend over in his head, creating memories like photographs he hoped he could recall later, their faces, their smiles, their laughter.  Not just the images, but the warmth as well. He drew a deep breath and smiled.

The laughter was good, so were the hugs, but the laughter was like medicine, especially from the small ones.

He didn’t want a pall of sadness to settle over their visits, so he tried his best to compensate for Marie’s absence, though he was admittedly lost in the kitchen.

He looked over at that last family portrait, the one where Dex insisted in using his “TV smile,” and Alex, who at the time insisted on being called, “Jayne” because it was more grown up.  They never had another one done. They talked about it, but it never happened. He studied the faces, the eyes. He missed them already.

Where does the time go?

Smoke

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Mert smelled smoke. Not a strong smell as much as a hint, a whiff. And not the acrid smell of something that shouldn’t be burning, something amiss. Rather, it was a transporting scent that triggered a mental postcard of people camping and laughing, of cooking s’mores and perhaps a few singing around the burning centerpiece of a communal gathering.

Someone somewhere was sitting down to an ice-cold beer, ready to dig into something his doctor told him he probably should cut back on, but figured he deserved after the day he had.

Someone somewhere was holding a hand and saying nothing while watching the wind play in the leaves.

Someone somewhere was laughing so hard they were finding it hard to breathe.

He seemed to hate the notion that someone somewhere might be having more fun than him…any fun in fact while he was stuck doing this. Still, he let the images and thoughts linger.

He pulled the truck to a stop and slid the door open. Even with the sun dropping, it was hotter than he liked it and the gush of heat slapped him like a big wet towel. The weatherman on WFRX labeled the day a “scorcher.” All Mert knew was that it was hot and if it was a hundred degrees it might as well be 200 degrees for all he could do about it.

He grabbed his tools from the back, slid the back door shut and headed to the door, wiping the droplet of sweat that was forming on the tip of his nose away with his sleeve.

Another hint of smoke, made him pause. This time it carried with it the image of grilled cheeseburgers and icy blender drinks.

Once at the front step, he rang the doorbell causing a whir of commotion inside; dogs barking, kids running and yelling, and a mom trying to hold the chaos at bay. Tracing the barely audible footsteps, he counted the seconds off until the deadbolt clicked and the door swung open.

“Mom” stood there before him, hair up and sweating, and waving a paper plate before her face with a ferocity that said if she didn’t get some relief quickly, she was probably going to kill someone. Not literally of course, but she meant business.

“Finally,” she said in a tone which was part relief and part pent up frustration. “Let’s get to it! Do you have any idea how horrible it is to have your air-conditioning crap out on one of the hottest days of the year?”

The images of camping, and cheeseburgers, and beer evaporated in a puff.

Voices

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The post accident recovery seemed to go smoothly. Sure, it took time. But with time, Cliff was able to regain all of his cognitive abilities, his blurred vision cleared, pretty much as the doctors said it would, and even the limp was going away.

In fact, because the ordeal cost him a few pounds and gained him some much need sleep over the past few months, Cliff could admit that he might feel better now than he had before the crash.

The only exception was the music.

His speech was fine. His hearing was fine. All was well in his world now until he listened to music. Not all music, mind you. Orchestral, or anything instrumental was fine. But when it came to lyrics, there was some disconnect, some quasi-organic algorithmic bio flaw in this thinking that prevented him from hearing or understanding all the words as they were intended. He forgot how the doctors described it, and it really didn’t matter because they didn’t have a name for it anyway.

Sometimes it was every other word. Sometimes it was every third, fourth or fifth word. There didn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason to it and despite more testing, the doctors were stumped. They said it might be a frequency thing. It might be altered brain waves or patterns. But no matter the condition or cause, they agreed that as long as he wasn’t suffering any ill effects from the phenomenon, he was still considered fully recovered.

Cliff was not as convinced, for while the doctors said he was fine and that the condition might very well pass with time like his limp, music was changing for him.

If the condition were regular or something that could be easily recreated, it might be easier to write off, but it wasn’t. The music now held different messages for Cliff. It spoke to him in different ways.

Where others might hear songs of love and adoration, the glories of summer or the wonders of the moon, he received…different messages…darker ones. Strands of broken lyrics reached out to him from everywhere.

The average person probably doesn’t realize how much music they might encounter in a day, in even a short stroll. Cliff was well aware…now. Songs weren’t just songs anymore. They were messages, like voices, but from where and why? More importantly, how could he make them stop?

Photo Bomb

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Biggs passed the photograph back to Chance, “I’m sorry. For the tenth time, I don’t see him, and you’re starting to freak me out.”

Chance snatched the photo from Biggs and held it in front of his face peering at it, into it, as much as he dare, for to him is was clear as day.  The trip out to Billing’s Pass was one of the best days ever. In the photo, as he remembered taking it, were his three best friends in the world, Biggs, Toad and Captain Don.

The three stood by the sign that labeled the site of the falling water as Ellinger Falls. Captain Don was holding out his hands to the sign channeling Vanna White. For the first dozen times he looked at it, the image seemed fairly normal and mostly like he remembered it, but after that, a face, no – the likeness of a whole person began to appear as if it were some time delayed photo bomb coming to life.

It was a man whose face was pale with dark eyes, or at least there were dark circles under his eyes. He was taller than the three of them, and yet he looked hunched over as if he was standing on a rock or something behind them and was forced to bend in to avoid having his head cut off by the frame. The grinning face was wedged between Toad and Captain Don while hands had formed on their shoulders as if he was just one of the gang, one big happy family.

“You have to see it,” Chance urged holding out the image to Biggs again. “He’s right there!”

“Sorry man,” Biggs said waving away the image. “I see what I see, or don’t see.” He got up and moved into the kitchen.

Chance looked at the image again, but again…it changed. As he looked at it, watched it, the image began to shift in his hands. It wasn’t the gradual sort of, hey I don’t remember that being there before kind of change. This time there was real movement.

The hands on the boy’s shoulders grew longer. The fingers seemed to wither into what looked like claws and the grip seemed to increase with the finger tips drawing into points like claws that began to dig into the boy’s flesh. A small trickle of blood dripped from Captain Don’s shoulder as he stood there smiling with his hands reaching out to the sign. Ellinger Falls. Captain Don didn’t seem to notice or care.

The skin on the face drew taught to render a bonier appearance and the simple, sly grin grew wider and wider until it sat disproportionately and nearly all-consuming on the face. The lips pulled back incapable of maintaining their hold over the emerging fence of teeth behind them. The teeth were jagged and broken in spots, yet also pointed and sharp as if they were filed into dangerously sharp points.

Chance watched silently as the strange image of the man began to sway as if he were held back from him, trapped in place by the images of the boys before him, his friends. It pulled and weaved looking for a means of escape. Finding none, he stopped to find Chance’s gaze and held it. The clawed fingertips dug deeper into the soft shoulders they perched upon.

Chance’s arms quivered with a cool ripple of bumps as the hair stood on end.

If it were even possible, the thing’s grin grew wider. The rows of dangerous teeth opened, yet remained loosely connected by thin quivering strands of saliva and what looked like what might be blood.

As the dark eyes held his gaze, Chance was helpless to look away. Behind him, as the mouth of the thing in the image moved, a soft, gravel-filled whisper rose up from what sounded like just behind him. A hot light ‘breath’ brushed against his ear that carried with it the stench of garbage and rot.

“You’re mine!”

Lists

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Like a kid stuck in math class who looks longingly out the window at the playground swings, Jaxon stared at is paints, his canvas, his brushes.

His ‘to-do’ list was a hundred miles long, but his ‘want to-do’ list was vastly shorter. It seemed the safety and care of the entire world stood on the success of his completing the to-do list. What did he stand to gain from working his want to-do list?

The to-do list was self-perpetuating. Items seemed to appear on the list in bunches like rabbits in springtime.

His want to-do list remained short, manageable, contained, and yet just as seemingly impossible to conquer.

At the end of the day, he would look at both lists only to find that despite what he felt might be progress, was actually very small and insignificant steps toward accomplishing anything. Tomorrow, the lists would lay in wait for him. He would start with the to-do list and try to get as much done on that as quickly as possible with the hope of getting to the want to-do list, but already, he knew how that would go. 

Slow Learner

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It was hot, too hot.

And he knew that even before he put it in his mouth. It was burning his fingers, so clearly the next obvious step to avoid damage to his fingers was to get it in his mouth, which was the ultimate part of the plan to begin with.

He had all the time in the world. There was no reason for him not to wait for it all to cool down to something easy to handle and easy to consume. The only rationale was that there was no rationale. He had to get this hot molten thing in his mouth right now for fear that it might vanish, or that the flavor might evaporate or that someone will see him eating this thing while it was clearly too hot. The need was primal.

Now, there was nothing but hot consuming his mouth. Burning, not flavor and the roof of his mouth would punish him for days for doing such a stupid thing. Even the mouth knew it was too hot, but the mouth has never had the strength to fight the hands, especially when the fingers are in jeopardy.

Saliva rushed to the rescue filling any space not taken up by what the brain could only surmise was lava. It seeped a bit from his lips.

“HOT, HOT, HOT,” the brain screamed, “WARNING!”

He tried to push the glob to his teeth, but his tongue protested, “HOT!”

He stood there, sucking in air and feverishly waiving his hands in an effort to cool the thing, end the pain, and minimize the potential damage.

There was only one choice left. He tossed his head back moving the thing to the back of his teeth where he chewed maniacally, sucking in cooling air as fast as he could and hoping by breaking it down quickly and cooling it at the same time, the horrible ‘hot’ would go away.

He swallowed.

As if determined never to give up, the evil glob of hot fought for life all the way down, burning everything it could touch, before it ultimately vanished into the stomach.

He grabbed his glass and chugged it down, not even remembering what it was. The cooler liquid did little in the moment to provide relief and seemed to instead, highlight each spot the hot glob touched in its battle for survival. Each spot a tiny reminder of his silly and fruitless behavior.

He sighed.

He was sweating a little.

He looked over at the pan.

Maybe now it has all cooled down enough for another try.

Rage

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The rage swelled up inside him, pressing heavily against the worn and rusty latch where he kept it. To say it was in his mind was wrong. The rage dwelled in the dark shadows and recesses near his soul, but when triggered, the mind was its playground.

He had mere seconds for rational thought as the feeble latch, grown weaker from years of valiant service, held admirably. Decision time and the question was simple. Do I suppress the rage or release it?

Suppression meant calling upon some form of energy cavalry to rise up and quell the insidious rage, a force that generates instant thoughts of perspective and common sense into the brain to combat the swell. Are you really getting this mad over this?  It’s an unexpected bill. It’s a spilled bowl of taco dip. It’s just not that big a deal.

To release? To release meant working the latch just enough to undercut its integrity and allow the rage to do the dirty work. It meant setting free the full on raw emotion of all things wrong and unfair. Yes, it’s taco dip, but that’s just one thing, the camel’s straw, the tip of the ice burg of all things wrong and dysfunctional in this world from the second that bowl tumbled from the refrigerator and on and back to when his bike was stolen when he was nine and a half years old.

The rage was primal, raw, irrational, immature, greedy and…exquisite.

The rage always came with consequences, something to fix, an apology to make. But those moments, drenched in pure human emotion, writhing and contorted by unadulterated anger and fearless of self or other of exhaustion and tears, could be cleansing. It could be a welcome release, a way to drain the tank of frustration and woe that might give the latch a chance to fight another day.

He looked down at the dip that had splashed across his sock covered foot, the floor and started a short climb up the cabinet wall next to him. His foot surrounded by broken glass.

Thud

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There was a loud thud, followed by silence.

Chince looked up from his book and gave the room a quick once over. Nothing drew his attention. He was alone in the room. Everything was as it was before the thud, but at the moment everything seemed just a touch quieter. He froze for a moment wondering if everything was all right or if he should investigate. Chester had been up in the attic for nearly an hour. It was a warm day, but it was always warmer in the attic.

Chince listened to the quiet, squinting a bit as if that would make him hear better.

A sudden scraping noise cut the silence followed by another profound thud. Then, an exuberant exclamation of the name of our lord and savior and the wish that he condemn all things to Hell rose into the air from above him.

Chince sat a bit longer. If Chester needed help, he would ask right? He closed his book and laid it softly on the end table. He listened to the returned quiet, squinting and moving his eyes back and forth a bit like a cartoon spy.

“Dammit to Hell!” came another roar from above.

Chince looked up. “Are you all right?” he called out.

Silence.

He sat up a bit and inched to the edge of his chair. “Chester?”

“WHAT?!” Chester’s voice, muffled a bit by the layers of the house, rained down upon him dripping with frustration. Another thud rang out to which Chester responded with an even more frustrated, “DAMMIT!”

“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” Chince called up to the ceiling.

Silence again.

THUD!

“CRAP!”

“Chester?”

“Wha…”

THUD

“SHI…

THUD

“I’M FINE!”

Relief

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Ezra plunged his head down.  After the initial roar of the water and ice settled, the sounds of their voices, of their laughter, faded into the soft rattle of the ice cubes tapping against the walls of the steel sink.

The water was bracing, yet refreshing. He closed his eyes and held himself there as he worked to push everything from his head. It was too much.

A very faint, soft ringing rose up into his head as the body started to react to the time it had gone without a fresh breath. His hands gripped the edge of the sink for a bit of stability. He forced his head down to where his forehead rested gently on the sink floor. Another cold tap of relief greeted him when his skin touched the metal.

He thought about pulling out, taking another breath and plunging back in again, but he didn’t want to break this string of relief. In the water, there was nothing but the water. Outside of the water, at the point where the water now lapped against his neck, the world lay ready to pounce, to kick him again when he was down.

For this moment, for as long as he could hold his breath, he was safe, sober, alone, awake and in some sort of sense, home.

Icon

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Tobias clicked through pages and pages of old photos of Marilyn Monroe.

He couldn’t say for sure if he ‘liked’ her or the photos, or even that he ‘enjoyed’ looking at them, at least not the way others seemed to look at them. It was probably more accurate to say he was drawn to them as an odd curiosity.

Yes, she seemed to be a naturally beautiful woman, a representative of what may seem like an antiquated definition of beauty, rooted in a time where beauty was less prone to artificial maintenance and enhancement.

And he was not a fan per se. He couldn’t recall one of her movies that he may have watched end to end. He didn’t read much about her or follow the random tidbits of information that may pop up about her in the news. The anniversary of her death is likely the most common, along with persistent lore and rumor. He didn’t discuss her or defend her. He just looked.

His intentions were not voyeuristic or base. He didn’t study her form or seek fuel for fantasy. Rather, it was her face that drew him to her.

Her time was different from his, so the information he had access to, the fragmented bits and pieces that he pulled together formed a persona in his head of a sort of sad soul. It was harder to see in movies, because people who are directed represented more of that direction than of their own self, but the photos…

Her eyes drew him in. Matched with her smile, he moved from image to image seeing the joy and the history of the moment, and yet, if he looked closely, there lie a tinge of sadness, perhaps a touch of loneliness behind the glitz and the glamour.

Yes, it could be his own thoughts and ideas projected onto those moments that may taint them to some degree, but while Marilyn offered some of the most compelling examples, he saw it in other places too. Faces tell stories. Smiles hide pain. Glances betray joy.  He’d seen it a thousand times, his grandmother, his sister, the Marquet family photo of 1993.

That was the gift of photos. Even that which we try to hide, and hide well, can be captured, and even if only a hint of it is caught and frozen it can reveal the truth of ourselves.

Claimed

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Billy pulled the bag from the freezer. As he looked down, his brow furrowed.

“What the hell,” he muttered to himself while inspecting the bag further.  He yelled out, “Jason?”

“What?” Jason bumbled down the stairs to the kitchen where Billy stood with a puzzled look plastered on his face and a bag of frozen hot dogs in his hands. “Those are mine.”

“Yeah,” I gathered Billy said. “Am I seeing these right? Do they all say, ‘Exclusive Property of Jason Schwartzman’ on them?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Each one individually?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?” Billy asked.

“They’re mine.”

“I get that. It’s clearly indicated on each and every hot dog that they’re yours. How did you do that?”

“With a Sharpie®. I started with a plain one, but then I switched to the fine point. That made it much easier?”

“Why?”

“Duh, the fine point is not as thick, so the letters look better.”

“Why did you use a Sharpie® at all?”

“Well, I figured they would work best, they‘re permanent and non-toxic.”

“No. Why did you feel the need to write on the hot dogs at all?”

“They’re mine.”

“Right, fine. They’re yours. I’ll get to that in a second, but wouldn’t it have been easier just to write on the bag?”

“Well…I didn’t want you to get confused.”

“What, in case some hot dogs I might have somewhere decide to infiltrate your bag somehow and we can’t tell them apart?”

“You don’t eat hot dogs.”

“Which makes this even more bizarre.”

“But yet, here you are in the kitchen hold my bag of hot dogs.”

“Do you really think I wanted to eat your hot dogs? I was looking for something else. I saw these and I clearly remember thinking, ‘What the hell?’”

“I don’t see how it’s so bizarre. You write your name on stuff so I don’t get confused. You have a carton of eggs in there you marked as yours.”

“Right, but you have your eggs and I didn’t go through and mark each one the “Exclusive Property of William Jennings Cooper.’”

“Of course, not.”

“You see my point then?”

“Yeah, you prefer ‘Billy.’”