269. Anniversaries

I took C.W. for a ride yesterday to get him out of my wife’s hair. Given a chance, he can start to annoy her. This time, he found an old photo album of her high school days and, using a secret process he calls “enphasing,” began to appear in the form of one after another of her old classmates. Just imagine what might go wrong.

Let’s just say that it was good to get him out of the house. I told him to take on the form, more or less, of a typical person you might see at Walmart. His first attempt wasn’t too good. He appeared as an unkempt man with a belly extending nearly a foot over his belt, a backward NRA cap, and a sleeveless tank top revealing tattoos on both arms, one stating “The South Rools,” and the other “Remember Gettisbirg.”

“Whut?” he said when I shook my head in disapproval. “I’ll fit right in.” He picked at his nose. “Better’n you anyway. Remember the time you wore your ‘Support Our Public Schools’ tee-shirt and they asked you to leave?”

“Back,” I said. “Try again.”

“This time he looked quite a bit like an old Navy buddy from a photo of the two of us after we had used our day off to visit some enlisted clubs. I frowned in disapproval but let it slide.

Once in the car, he instantly started to get on my nerves.

“What’s wrong with Mrs. Big Dope?  

I just looked over at him and said nothing.

“Did you mix paint with her favorite measuring cup again?”

It didn’t seem worthwhile to respond.

“Don’t tell me you spilled more wine on her ZZ Top CD.”

“No,” I said, “and that wasn’t me, if you will remember. Someone lied about it.”

He ignored me. “You didn’t badmouth Matthew McConaughey did you?”

“Could you ever imagine,” I said, “that it might be something you did?”

“Me?”

“You.”

He didn’t speak for almost a minute. “Can’t imagine a thing.” He said, after the pause.

“That last shape you took.”

“Oh,” he said, “that real pretty girl with the big …”

“That’s the one.”

“Weren’t they good friends? I mean back in high school?”

“Hardly.”

He truly seemed dumbfounded. “Why … what … how could it be? You mean they weren’t best friends?”

“That’s what I mean.”

“They didn’t like each other?”

“Bingo.”

“What was the the cause, explanation, or justification for the action or event?”

“The reason, as I understand it, was a boyfriend. I learned long ago not to ask.”

“She had another boyfriend before you?”"

“Well yeah,” I said, mimicking the young folks.

“How could that be? You’ve been married for how long now?”

“Tomorrow marks 43 years,” I said. “That’s where we are headed: to buy her a gift.”

And Big Dope tells me that you see
some weird-looking people at Walmart. - C.W.

“Hey,” he said. “Maybe she would like a new Astrocelestial Sound Synthesizer. You know how much she likes to mimic that woman with all those kids.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I read where the women in California all want a new A…”

I cut him off. “Forget it,” I said. “I think she wants a new tool box and a set of metric wrenches.”

“A true romantic,” he said and we continued in silence.

Later, at Walmart, I had to rush over and intercede when I heard him tell a vacant-eyed adolescent “associate” that he wanted to buy a card for “the yearly recurrence of the date of a past event.”

Would anyone like to keep an alien for a while?

Click some ads. I spent all my money on an anniversary card.

Oh, and see www.wattensawpress.com

And ... www.allhatnocattle.com

Finally, buy Big Dope's book so he'll shut up about it.
- C.W.

Available at major on-line retailers, or
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253. Longings

Oh no. It was happening. On a sleepy early spring day, C.W. was homesick. He gets that way every couple of months when he starts thinking about his native planet of Falloonia. He assumes the shape and demeanor of a pretty young girl of thirteen or so with sad eyes and a look of longing to be somewhere far away. He, she, lounges aimlessly on the couch and won’t eat, read, or even watch TV, all odd behavior for a teenaged girl.

That’s not the worst part.

 He yodels.

Yes, yodels. He says it is the closest thing on earth we have to what Falloonians call music. Any dogs that may be hanging around flee the moment he assumes this mood. My wife locks herself away. We’ve actually had neighbors call to see if someone is having a seizure.

Sometimes, not always, I can tease him out of his mood by discussing current affairs. So, on this day, I gave it a try. In between yodeling episodes, I interjected a question.

“Been keeping up with the news?”

“It’s all, like, boring,” he said. Then he let loose with a shrill vibrato that bounced around the room like musical marbles.

“But what,” I said during a brief break, “about the man in the news who admitted to molesting his sisters and some other young girls when he was a teenager?”

The yodeling stopped.

“He what?”

“He sexually molested young girls.”

“Like me?”

“Well,” I said, “like what you appear to be at this moment.”

He shook his head and a long, blond pigtail swung into his face. “What does that mean, ‘he molested them’ anyway? It, like, sounds creepy.” He drew a breath to begin yodeling again.

Quickly, I said. “It means that he touched them in places that were inappropriate for him to, uh, touch them.”

“On their heads?”

Oh, I forgot to tell you that, in the Falloonian culture, it is considered a grave insult to touch one of the heads of another creature.

“Oh no,” I said. “They weren’t Falloonian girls.”

“Where then. On their gudascnifamoor++?

“You know our species doesn’t have those. We detect smells through our noses.”

“Oh,” he said, “I, like, forgot.”

“No,” I said, “he touched them where their mammary glands will be when they mature, and where they will produce babies.”

There was a long silence, then, “Euuueew.”

“Quite so,” I said.

He looked down and crossed his legs, smoothing his dress and scooting back on the couch. He eyed me with a look of suspicion I had never witnessed from him. “I thought,” he said, “that was considered, like, a crime in your culture.”

“Oh, it is,” I said. “It is.”

“So the perpetrator is in jail now?”

“Uh, no,” I said.

He began to yodel again.

Sometimes I just don't understand
the human species. - C.W.

“But,” I said, interrupting him in mid screech, “he did lose his job.”

The yodeling stopped. “What job?”

“He had this high-paying job with a group that exists to teach us proper moral behavior.”

He started yodeling again, this time with more enthusiasm.

“And,” I said, “apparently he was given a stern talking to.”

“Was he, like, painted bright orange and driven from the tribe with ‘ribbons of remorse’ draped around him?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “We don’t follow that tradition on this planet. His tribe blamed the whole thing on the girls.”

This time I knew there was no stopping the yodeling, so I joined the dogs outside.

Please click some ads. That's the only way I'll get my new computer.

Oh, and see www.wattensawpress.com

And ... www.allhatnocattle.com

Finally, buy Big Dope's book so he'll shut up about it.