Topic: Landscape

Author: Chris Dunn

Kellin sat for a long time in his peaceful spot on the forested hill. He loved this place because there was a rare break in the almost absolute canopy that blanketed the hills, and through it he could see the entirety of the village and the many peaks which ringed the isolated, and nameless, community. Kellin knew each house and had climbed every peak in his field of vision. He could almost picture the activity going on in every house he beheld. It was getting on toward evening and smoke was springing through the chimneys from cook fires all over town. He imagined the various families busy at their evenings, each cast unique, but much of the action playing out the same, just under different roofs.

Kellin located his own house, nestled under the giant oak which showered the roof with acorns every time the fall winds blew. Its chimney was still cold. Inside his mother would be waiting for him to return – as was her way - before starting the meal. She would cook, and he would sit at the table and tell her all he could of his studies that day as the small room filled with the familiar salty, boiling scent of stew. And she would smile and nod, like she understood, which always bothered him a little bit. He didn’t even fully understand half of what he was learning! He would soak in her approval and bask in her pride, and they would eat and guess at what the next day would hold in store.

This time, however, would be different. This time, he knew exactly what he had learned, and he knew precisely what tomorrow held. On the morrow he was going to leave, head off up the twisting river road which stretched out of the valley, this valley whose familiar confines were all the world he had ever known.

There, on that steep hill, not far behind his house, he had taken a bad spill years ago. The rocks had slipped under his feet as he had scrambled toward its summit. He had fallen, sliding and scraping, his limbs flailing, until he came to an abrupt halt against a half-buried boulder.  Lying there crying in pain, but too scared he would be punished if he called out and his father found him. He wasn’t supposed to be out exploring by himself, but youth and vanity are friends at the start. They had convinced him he could reach the top and return in safety. At that time, he had thought it amazingly fortunate that his father had been able to locate him. To his mind, he was miles away lost in distant hills. Today, from his current vantage, he could see just how close the house had been – just a short stroll up the hillside, really. His parents probably heard him cry out as he fell and come straight to his aid, but it had felt like hours of agony, lost and alone. Even now he couldn’t remember exactly how his rescue had occurred.

All his memory held was his father’s strong arms cradling him with ease as he carried Kellin back to the house. His wounds had been superficial, and the dreaded punishment for his disobedience never fell. Oh there were lectures, stern words about the dangers of hills, bears, rocks, wolves, bandits, wild cats, insects… The list was long and overflowed with the stuff of children’s nightmares, but he wasn’t restricted or restrained, in fact, it was from that day his parents began allowing him  more freedom. Once his wounds had healed, mother had sent him off to Widow Freyna’s to pick up some herbs. All by himself! All the way across town! It had been meant as part of his punishment, but Kelvin had never before been permitted to go so far on his own, nor had he been entrusted with a task of any such importance.

Now as he looked, he could see how short a trek it really had been. His parents could probably have watched him almost the entire way. How old had he been? How huge the village had seemed. And now here it was, full in his vision, a tiny, insignificant, little valley town. Nestled here in the bucolic landscape of cramped hills covered with trees dyed a thousand different hues as fall took their leaves. Unknown to most people, this place was Kellin’s whole world. And now, just as he had come to be able to see it, he had to leave…

An Unexpected Guest...

Thom Dunn

(1) THE HIGHWAY

I got home  from school where I teach just in time to see the house across the street being torn down with a backhoe. I had not known that was possible. Later I saw the former occupant, Mr.Brumbaugh, relocated further up Joseph Court, while Dunns and Streckers remained the last two families on the now snubbed off end of the street. All shortly became clear: The Cross-County Highway was finally in the process of being finished, After the houses were removed, day and night bulldozers raked back and forth over the ground tearing up an entire creek bed and all foliage on either side. Word spread quickly: "The Cross County Highway's going through " We didn't call it the Ronald Reagan highway because we were among those Democrats whose hatred for Reagan bordered on the visceral.  After a while we got to calling it simply The Highway.

(2) FIRST CONTACT

Not long after the building of the Highway got going, we had our first contact with a "guest":  about 5:00 AM something entered our attic. Sounding like a drunken sailor, it clomped across the floor of the attic just over our heads. It didn't take long to guess it was a raccoon, a big one it sounding like--perhaps a half-ton or more. We learned later that raccoons do not LIVE through the day, they HARBOR, picking out a convenient spot to spend the day in preparation for night forays. After days of this, the entrance point became clear while the harbor was a spot over the porch we came to call, "Club Med". Club Med for the raccoon, or course, something less expansive for us. At this point it was all in fun--except for the 5:00 AM wake-ups. We were still relatively young and ready for adventure. Well, this was the start of one.

(3)  CRITTER CONTROL

The way Bill explained it to me, you want to trap the raccoon OUTside the house to avoid leading other raccoons Inside. Bill was tall and rangy. The name of his outfit (Critter Control) appealed to me. The trap was two feet long. Rocky walks in the open end going after the bait. As he does he triggers a deadfall that closes behind him. Bill nailed a trap to the roof and the next morning a big raccoon went straight for it: When Bill came to take Rocky away I asked him What happens now ? To the raccoon, I mean. Bill said that it would be taken far away and released.  I didn't inquire further, hoping I was being told the truth. Within a week we had captured three raccoons. I say "We" because I was paying for it.

Unexpected Guest Pt.1

Author: Aaron Collins

Today I went over to my Mamaw's house. I had called her out of the blue the other day to see how she was doing; that and I felt guilty having not really spoken with her more than once since December. I was driving down the Norwood lateral when I decided to give her a call. Her phone rang and she answered with a tired,

“Hi, Bubby,” to which I responded,

“Hi, Mamaw.”

            It was probably more than fifteen years ago that I asked her to call me Aaron, most likely when I was twelve or thirteen and felt I had outgrown the nickname. But it was so difficult for her to call me by my name. Many times she would call my name,

“Hey Bubby—I mean, Aaron! Sorry honey I keep calling you Bubby. I’ll try to remember next time.”

I’ve always reassured her that it’s no big deal, she can call me Bubby if she wants. But she’s never forgotten this bratty request of mine and I’m now almost thirty. I wish I had never told her to call me Aaron. She’s still struggling after all these years to call me Aaron, forgetting that I’ve told her it’s okay to call me Bubby.

She said over the phone that today was a difficult day.

“I have my days,” she said.

Only six months ago her husband, Raymond, my Papaw, had passed away after his lungs stopped working. She said that some days were good and that other days she couldn’t get out of bed. Today was one of those days.

“Melissa and I would like to come by and see you this Thursday,” I encouraged.

“Okay babe, what time?”

“How does three o’ clock sound?”

“That’s fine with me honey. I’ll be home all day. Don’t forget now. I know how forgetful you are,” Mamaw reminded. She’d also never forgotten the times that I’d flaked on her.

“Okay, I promise I won’t,” I reassured her.

We pulled up to the house which is next to some kind of factory near I-75; they are literally her neighbors. I had brought over a small charcoal grill that she’d let me borrow like two years ago. I assumed she’d given me the grill, but she refreshed my memory, telling me she’d loaned it to me until I got my own and would like her little grill back.

“Mamaw likes charcoal,” she referred to herself in the third person, “I don’t like those gas grills.”

Raymond and Rachel had been married for over fifty years and lived in the same house for over thirty.

“That’s why it’s so hard to move on, Bubby. I been with him almost my whole life.”

            Mamaw spoke with a little bit of a twang. Some remnant of her Appalachian roots. Where she came from, everyone was Bubby, Sissy, Mamaw, and Papaw. All the boys are Bubby, all the girls are Sissy, and grandparents are Mamaw and Papaw.

            We sat at her kitchen table which still had the same lazy susan which held keys, lighters, vapour refills (which would have been cigarettes back in the day), loose change, pens, a pocket knife and a deck of cards. While the lazy susan was the same, I noticed that the table and chairs were different. She told me she gave the old table and chairs to Ashley my cousin, but that she misses it now and wants them back. She told us about her new male friend, Jim. She said he meets her at Frish’s once a week for dinner and at the VFW hall once a week for country music and drinks.

            “I just tell him everything about Raymond and I cry, but he just listens—Bubby, he’s such a good listener. Then I tell ‘I’m sorry for crying, sorry for talking about Raymond so much’ and he says ‘that’s okay, Rachel, I was just like you when Luanne died.’ Luanne’s his wife, she died thirteen years ago. Your Aunt Missy and your Dad make fun of me, say that I have a boyfriend, but he’s eighty years old for christsake! He’s just good company, that’s all. He’s my friend. Sometimes I’ll talk for a whole hour and he won’t say a word. Then he’ll pat my shoulder and say ‘it’ll get better, Rachel’.”

Raw Vegan Visitors

Sometime in the late 90s I received two very welcome visitors to Guerrero. I was in between jobs at the time so had plenty of free time to hang out. Bobby and Tonya had driven out from Cincinnati. They’d been camping up north in the redwoods and Tonya made me a painting inspired by the redwoods. I found a nice home for it on the wall in my kitchen/living room. The three of us hung out and ate some burritos. We passed a very pleasant 24 hours. Both Bobby and Tonya were living very simple on their journey: camping/staying with friends and eating quite cheaply. Just your normal hippy vegans out on the road.

Besides coming to San Francisco to see me and the city, they were also meeting Tonya’s sister Renee who was flying in from Amsterdam.  She lived with her rich boyfriend and was a “kept woman.” I said Renee is more than welcome to crash at Guerrero too - it’s a very welcoming place for visitors, even unexpected ones. Tonya’s response was a very quiet: “We’ll see . . .”

The sister arrived the next day and Tonya and Bobby went to pick her up. She arrived with a flourish and fancy luggage. I welcomed her to Guerrero and within about 5 minutes she managed to disparage the apartment and my furnishings. Tonya looked pained but I found it funny. She was such an odd creature and such a stark contrast to the mellow and easy going Tonya and Bobby -  I wanted to see more. 

Renee then went to to say how she ONLY ate raw fruits and vegetable and would need a constant supply of those to maintain her health. She also needed some very specific organic face creams and some other sort of cosmetics which she was sure wouldn’t be sold in the backward and unenlightened town of San Francisco. My fascination for her only grew with these pronouncements - she acted like a caricature of a rich lady! I was dying to know more about her life as a “kept woman” in Amsterdam! 

I told Renee that actually San Francisco, and California more generally, was one of the few places you can easily get farm-fresh fruits and vegetables year round. Being located right next to where all these fruits and vegetables are grown definitely has its advantages. Why just one block away was an amazing but tiny grocery store that had a produce section to die for. And if that wouldn’t suit I knew several high-end grocery stores and organic beauty emporiums which would absolutely be able to provide her with the very special creams and ointments required to keep her raw vegan complexion in tip-top shape. I figured with Renee’s special needs, the whole crowd would be staying on for a few days and I was thrilled! I looked forward to blowing the sister’s mind with how much more advanced San Francisco was than chilly old Amsterdam. 

The plan was for the sister to join Tonya and Bobby on their further cross-country adventures - which sort of made my mind boggle. How were they going to be able to keep Renee in vegan raw fruits and vegetables on the road? Tonya and Bobby were eating ramen and cans of soup to save money - never mind the fact that trucks stops and gas stations were not really big on selling raw organic produce. All this is why I figured they’d linger in SF for as long as they could. Maybe stock up on some less perishable produce before taking off? But unbeknownst to me Tonya was mortified by her sister’s arrogant tone with me and decided that they couldn’t stay one day longer. 

The next day when they said they were leaving I was very disappointed. I genuinely was looking forward to spending more time with this strange creature. Raised up from the trailer in Claremont County Ohio to the rarified heights of raw vegan jet-setter in Amsterdam! I wanted to take her to Rainbow Grocery and the crazy hippy/Wiccan cosmetic store in my neighborhood. Yes she was condescending and extremely high maintenance, but meh, I wasn’t working or dating anyone at the time.  I had plenty of time and lots of “anthropological” curiosity! But alas as soon as they arrived they were back on the road again. I wished them a safe journey and couldn’t WAIT to hear how it all went down on the road.

Months later when I was back in Cincinnati I asked Bobby about it. He said: well it was a very unhappy 48 hours or so with her in the car. She mostly laid in the back seat napping and complaining - in between farting out the most disgusting raw vegan gas you ever smelled. We quickly got fed up and dropped her off at the Greyhound station in Tucson. I told him they should have stayed in SF a few more days at least, but he said Tonya was just too embarrassed by her behavior to stay. 

- Drew Oetzel

An Unexpected Guest

Icing my black eye, I took time to reflect upon the possibility that my wife may not always appreciate my sense of humor. You see, I had come downstairs to drink my morning coffee and sulk for my traditional thirty minutes before heading off to work. But when I got to the bottom of the stairs I saw a large pile of what appeared to be dog shit. So I yelled upstairs, “Damn it Bridgid! Did you shit on the floor again?!” She was not amused and, after showing her appreciation of my joke, asked what the hell I was talking about.

There, on the living room carpet, was the aforementioned excrement, surrounded by several brown stains. This was odd, because we only have cats. And they usually hit the litter box quite reliably, or at least get damn close to it. But this was a few rooms away from their box. Looking about further, it became evident that all the kitty’s dry food had been eaten up. And their water dish was almost empty and there were several pieces of dry cat food deteriorating in what was left of the water in the bottom of the dish. 

We realized that an intruder must have come in overnight. We have an automated cat door which allows the cats to come & go as they please. It’s triggered by ultrasonic signals emitted from special collars that they wear. But if the door hits something on its way down, it opens up again for a little while. So we theorized that some animal must have come in this way, trailing closely behind one of the cats. Then we both thought no more about it & went off to work.

That night, I wondered if the trespasser had been a raccoon. And, I idly wondered, if so could it still be here? Then I went upstairs to change out of my work clothes. One of our cats followed me to my closet. He poked his nose in and froze - it was like he was pointing at something, like a dog might. I slowly slid the closet door open and looking up at me, with a most malevolent glare, was  a huge raccoon!

I gingerly shut the closet door, then got myself & the cat out of the room and shut its door. Then I hurried downstairs to tell Bridgid. It turned out she was involved in a phone call which I was reluctant to interrupt. So after she finally finished her call I told her, “There’s a fucking RACCOON in my closet!” After we were both done freaking out, we Googled “animal removal” or something similar & luckily found a company who would come out right away and catch the little bastard.

The animal remover guy got here in about a half-hour, took his implements & went upstairs. Shortly thereafter we heard an ungodly shrieking and about fifteen minutes later he came back down with this enormous, very annoyed raccoon in a cage.

He carted the animal off to be disposed of. And we shut off the cat door!

Topic: An Unexpected Guest..

Author: Chris Dunn

With the spray can clutched in my right hand and a mask over my face, I make a quick count to three to steel myself before the horror that is to come and throw open the door. What follows is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever been a party to…

See, it all started a few weeks back when Karl arrived for the game. “There’s a strange smell on your porch,” he said as he entered. This is not a typical greeting in our culture, so I took it as Karl being his normal, weird self and ignored the comment for the most part. In the back of my head, I assumed he was suggesting, back-handedly, that the cat litter boxes needed to be emptied. I made a mental note to check on that and tried not to take offense.

Then two days later while leaning out to get the mail, I noticed the smell too. It was certainly stronger outside, but the stench I found out there explained what had been teasing my nose all day up in my office. It wasn’t a smell I would call “strange”. I’d definitely label it carrion.

“Oh shit!” My mind raced back to week’s further still when I was sitting alone watching TV in the early evening hours of a thunderstorm. The rain was falling steadily, punctuated by brief flashes and booms, and I was just hoping the power would stayed on when I detected a sound that couldn’t be coming from the television. I muted the TV, and sure enough, the sound persisted. It was a faint, plaintive meow emanating from my front door. Miranda, my cat, was seated on her chair next to me seeming wholly oblivious to the intruder, so I rose slowly and cracked the door, figuring to find a sodden feline from the neighborhood riding the storm out huddled on my porch, but strangely, raven-like there was only darkness and rain beyond the door. The meowing stopped as well, so I pet my cat as I returned to my seat assuming my approach had scared away the interloper. I lost myself in whatever, cop-drama-sci-fi-explodey show I was watching to while away the evening, until the sound came again. This time I rose quickly, but when the door opened the meowing persisted, coming from under my very feet.  “Oh, shit…” Now I know what’s going on. There’s a crack in foundation of my porch and the tiniest crawlspace that runs all along the front of the house. Every now and then, possums like to crawl in there, scratch away and make their bizarre possum noises, but this was clearly a cat, and from the sound of it, a cat in some distress.

I returned to my living room pondering how I could help the animal without stressing it further. What was I to do, go out with an umbrella to stand in my neighbor’s driveway with a handful of cat food and try to coax beast to come out into the rain. “Hi, there… I’m a stranger and there’s a ton of water out here, but are you hungry?” That wasn’t going to work. My best hope was that the cat was just wet and scared and would leave of its own accord - perhaps at storm’s end. When the continued meowing got to be too much, I decided to retire early, and promptly forgot about the whole affair.

But the stench brought it all back. The cat hadn’t left of its own accord, and it hadn’t been merely seeking shelter from the rain. Likely injured by one of the commuters who use our back streets to avoid the gridlock of the nearby main thoroughfare, the poor wretch had found itself a nice, dark hole in which to die. Right under my front door! Yes, I felt a momentary pang of pain for the beast and a twinge of guilt that perhaps I should’ve done more, but those feeling were quickly pushed out by the power of the lingering stank of its rotting corpse. Now what was I to do?

If the likelihood of extracting the injured animal from the depths of my porch recess during a thunderstorm, was slim. I had to put the chance of removing its dead body from roughly 15 feet down a 4 inch wide crack in my porch, at none. I resigned myself to wait it out. Two days in, my resolve gave way and I called everyone I could think of, animal control, building contractors, my brother Marty, anyone with an ounce of handiness. They all sounded hopeful and helpful until I laid out the particulars.

“Wait, so it’s how far in? And how big is the whole?”

“Yes, yes. That’s what I figured. How long do you think… Two months!”

Yes, two months of stench. “You get used to it,” I told people. It was true. It’s amazing what you can come to ignore. Each night my gamers would arrive with looks of revulsion on their faces, but shortly after sitting down to play they stopped smelling it. There was nothing to be done outside of complaining. I researched alternatives, powders and sprays to nullify the stink but the issue was always, how to get them to the body. I envisioned a long pole with a flash light and a pouch, a pouch with some sort of catch-release, but honestly, I’m not a mythbuster. I just watch them on TV.

Weeks went by with the smell lessening a little each day, and it was all but gone when the true horror began. First it was one fly. Then two. Then five! Big, fat, enormous, slow-moving flies that seemed dazed and confused. It was easy to coral them into corners and the downstairs bathroom and swat them by the dozens. They barely tried to evade the swatters. I’d open windows to offer them escape to the wild as an alternative, but too many decided to they wanted to move in. I went to the hardware store and bought all the equipment: fly spray, swatters, fly paper rollers, citronella and a weird plastic contraption which claimed to kill for up to 3 months. I went to work making a couple passes each day. I figured it couldn’t last much longer. The smell had stopped, I could swat a few more flies and it would all be over.

Until the morning I came downstairs to find that the smell had returned. This struck me as odd, but what really bothered me wasn’t the smell I detected, but the sound. There was a buzz, a significant buzz coming from under my living room. I knew immediately what it had to be, but my mind refused to accept it. Even as I climbed down the basement stairs through a new thick cloud of flies, I hoped against all evidence and reason that what was coming could not be reality. Creaking open the door to room which once contained the ancient coal furnace, I shuddered in revulsion as my eyes beheld the entire ceiling of the small room covered in a carpet of thousands of buzzing insects. I beat a hasty retreat and fought desperately for a plan of action. Lighting a fire and walking away was high on the list! But no, it was my house, my responsibility. These are the kinds of things they don’t mention in realtor ads. “Own your own home! But remember, anything that goes wrong there is now YOUR responsibility. And when we say anything…”

Another trip to the hardware store, and I procured a couple more cans of industrial strength bug killer and some respiratory masks, and this takes us to where we started. The spray was powerfully effective on the newly spawned flies and their dead and dying bodies rained down on my by the hundreds. I remained for as long as I could stand the pelting, then fled to the safety of the upstairs shaking my hair clean of corpses over the sink. I cherished the gulps of poison-free air while simultaneously trying to banish what I’d just experienced and also searching for the courage to face the realization that I would need to do it several more times before they were all gone.

I did it. Today, that’s what the kids would call “adulting”, but really it was just a simple question of what else could be done. The basement floor was so thick with dead flies that I removed them with a shop-vac. This was years ago, but the scars remain, and every so often I’ll move a piece of dust-covered furniture in the basement and find a small pile of dead flies, a continuing reminder of that rainy night and my unexpected guest.

Topic: Shopping

Author: Chris Dunn

Have you ever found yourself stuck in a moment, pinioned by fortune with nowhere to run, where all you can do is concede and accept that you are trapped this time, and that the easiest way out is to take your punishment and try to recover? Sure, right... Many times, but each one leaves its particular mark on your memory.

I was a month or two into my first retirement somewhere in the early 00’s. Anderson Publishing had grown too big in its small pond and rather than allow the tiny upstart to make waves in the online ocean, LexisNexis had come swimming along and gobbled us up. The buyout price on shares of stock was substantial, and I had managed to negotiate a nice bonus for my tech team on top of that. By negotiate, I mean, I went to the Lexis partner in charge of the transition and told him, “Curtis is about to walk. I can’t do it without Curtis.”

“How much does he want?” asked the unnamed suit.

“Like $10,000,” I opened with. Curtis had initially thought the transition job was worth closer to $50,000, but we knew such high numbers were beyond the pale, so we agreed I should start at 10K and accept 8K.

“We can make that happen,” said the suit, adding on that we should likely make similar - though smaller - accommodations for the rest of the tech team including myself. Damn! I’m an awesome negotiator.

Anyway, along with cashing out my 401k, it added up to an estimated three year ride without needing to make another dollar. I was living in the latter days of my commune at the time and my monthly nut was in the low hundreds. I took it all as a sign. It was time to write my novel.

Back in high school, we did one of those, “Where do you see yourself at 35?” essays, and in addition to a naively optimistic view of my social life, I predicted for myself that I would be working on my “Second novel…” by then. As I at this time 33, and had yet to write the first one, I saw this as an issue. Remember, I was a math major at one point. But fate had intervened! A window was open, and all I had to do was jump out. What else was I waiting for?

I committed to the project. I already had an outline for an extensive fantasy series based around a campaign which had just ended. 150 pages of notes, places, and storylines surrounding El’aNac and his adventures. I’d write a page a day. In 300 or so days, BAM! I’d have a novel. It worked! It worked amazingly well. I had two novels done by 35, and 6 finished before I had to go find another job. They were some great, and productive years, but this story isn’t about that.

You see the downside to writing a page each day, is it doesn’t really fill up a whole day, more like an hour. All I was really doing was fluffing up the outline into a more cohesive narrative. My players had already built the characters. The major scenes were all set. They just need some dialogue and some framing material. Once the hour of work for the day was completed, what was left to do?

I decided to get in shape. I bought myself a gym membership at the local tennis club. Ostensibly, I had planned to build stamina playing racquetball. But after 20 minutes on the court left me gasping for air and clutching my chest, I decided I would need to work up to that. Fortunately, the tennis club had a gym, and a near perfect one at that. Lots of machines, free weights, treadmills and nearly nobody in sight. I never had to wait for my turn or reserve a machine. I could go from the elliptical to the treadmill to the weight bench, according to the whim of the moment. I stayed mostly on the treadmill. “Cardio, that’s the key. Build that stamina…” I told myself.

On most days my dad came along and walked on the treadmill next to me. He did wonders for my confidence and sense of productivity. We’d put in thirty minutes a day, three days a week and even at such a meager pace, it was beginning to show dividends. Each day, I found I could a little longer without walking breaks, and I began to even fantasize about maybe doing a 5K run that coming Spring. I wasn’t hoping to win, or anything, but I felt confident I could finish, and that was saying something considering where I had started in the late fall.

One winter’s morning, my father and I trudged through the slush in the parking lot headed to our latest exercise appointment. As usual, dad wore his exercise attire to the gym - his technique did not involve sweat, so he headed straight to the treadmills. I, however, was all-in. I had the gym bag and a key lock for the locker. I brought my own towel and a change of clothes. My method involved sweating so badly, I needed new socks at run’s end. But this day, after I found an empty locker and opened my bag, I realized, “Crap!” I had forgotten to pack my gym shorts.

It would take me over thirty minutes to go home and get new ones. By that time, my dad would be finished and wondering whatever happened to me. I could go tell him, take him home, but that just seemed like a hassle. WAIT! This place is a tennis club. They’ve got a shop that sells all kind of gear. I’ll just go buy a pair of shorts. I needed a new pair anyway. Sure enough, though the place was little more than a 10 x 10 room at the front of the facility, they had plenty of shorts to choose from, and in my size as well.

“Okay, if that’s all,” said the attendant as she rang up the garment. “That’ll be $43…” And some change, I’m sure, but my mind was stuck on $43! For a pair of shorts? I didn’t need special tennis shorts with some animal logo, I just need a pair of drawstring, sweat-catchers to avoid the scandal of running in my boxer briefs! $43?!

“Fine,” I said, hoping my face did not look as stunned as my mind was. “Can I charge that?”

I still have those shorts, mind you.