What I Did on My Summer Vacation
by Macaroni McSpoon
illustration by Greg Prindeville
I sat in a lawn chair in front of my summer cottage and read a book. I like reading. It helps me to relax. It helps me to get away from my problems and all the stress. I like horror stories best. They relax me. Silly readers, life is the horror story. I like sitting in lawn chairs, too.
Especially outside. I don’t really have a lawn, though. I have a gravel parking lot. Calling it a gravel parking lot chair makes it sound so uninviting… So I lie. I didn’t lie about sitting in front of my summer cottage. I did. If I sat behind my summer cottage I’d be in an alley two feet wide. Or two feet narrow, depending on how big you are. I’m not very big. My back alley is depressing (and small, as I’ve already mentioned). It’s filled with rubbish and smells like cat piss. Sometimes I piss back there just for fun. Quality entertainment is hard to come by. I’ve called it “my” summer cottage… another lie. I kinda share it with four other people. Well, there are only five of us paying rent, let me put it that way. It’s not really a summer cottage, either. It’s four walls of dry-rotted wood held together by cobwebs and spackle with a leaky roof (that I tan on sometimes when the weather is nice). Now that I’ve thoroughly explained the first sentence, I’ll continue.
As I wasn’t saying; I sat in a lawn chair in front of my summer cottage and read a book. It was a nice, clear day. The sky looked pretty. Hmmm. I sat and pondered many things. I wiggled my toes in the sand and hummed nursery rhymes. They relax me. Someone stood beside me and talked. I couldn’t hear them. I was watching the birds. Pretty white things flapping, flapping in the sky. Pretty. I heard people walking up or/and down stairs. People laughed in screened-in porches.
Whoever had been talking to me had stopped. Only a cat sat beside me now. Maybe the cat had been talking to me. Maybe whoever had been talking to me had turned into a cat. Maybe it was my fault they had turned into a cat. Oops. I look at the cat, but it pretends to ignore me. Pretty kitty. I apologize, but the cat seems disinterested. So I hit it on the head with a rock.
Space condenses and a figure stands in front of me. Its shadow falls across me. Suddenly, I’m a negro. Wow, neat. I extend my arm beyond the reach of the shadow. Now I’m white. I pull my arm to my chest. Black. Hey, fun. White. Black. White. BlackWhite Black WhiteBlack – Now I’m dizzy. And confused. Which did I start out as? What color am I supposed to be? What if I chose the wrong one? Will people recognize me? Will I recognize me? I hate not knowing who I am. I have to walk around and nod stupidly at everyone until someone who knows me recognizes me. Oh well. The figure whose shadow I’m splashing around in is calling me, “Dude.”
“Dude.” He repeats. (Clever tie-in from the previous paragraph, huh?) OK. I feel better now. My name is Dude. I look at the figure before me in puzzlement for a moment. This condensed space reminds me of someone I should know. But who? Hmmm. Think. Think. Think. Think. Think. Think. Think. Think. My head races in 20 flavors at the same time. What a mess. Wait a minute.
Waitaminutewaitaminutewaitaminutewaitaminute. My Roommate! That’s who it is! Somehow the startling revelation is a let-down. This is my roommate. I see him all the time. Big deal. He asks me if I know I just threw spaghetti all over the place. I say, “No, thank you, I just clipped my toenails,” with a sly smile. I realize he’s wet, so I pour ice tea over my head so he wouldn’t feel alone.
I go inside the cottage because the squirrels are bothering me. Nag, nag, nag. That’s all they do. If you stare at them long enough they explode into little blue ice cubes. You know, the useless ones where you’ve gotta empty the whole rack into one glass to make your drink cold. Jesus, what a silly invention. I guess it wasn’t just the squirrels in polka dot tuxedos that drove me inside. It was the screaming, too. I closed my mouth so I wouldn’t have to hear it anymore. I went to the cupboard and grabbed a handful of generic corn flakes. Then I went into the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet. I hate breakfast cereals. They annoy me. I feel better when I dump them down the toilet. Flush (ring, ring). I like watching the flakes float apart and get all soggy. “Bad case of the soggies.” I giggle. I look around nervously to see if anyone heard me, but the horse seems to have moved out and the ducks are nowhere to be found. My dinky-doo tries to squirm over my waistband to watch. He’s a little too short to see for himself, so I help boost him up. He watches the soggy cereal go round and round and round and then spits at it just before it disappears. I sometimes wonder where the magic hole takes things when you pull the enchanted lever. It doesn’t take everything, you know. I tried to feed it a brick once. It threw up shit all over the floor. Now I just feed it small things. I grew tired of kicking shampoo bottles and throwing wet towels on the floor, so I got a piece of bread and went into the bedroom. Easier said than done.
Let me explain (No, too much, let me sum up): I saw the over-sized spatula sitting uncomfortably on the back of the toilet. I asked it what it was doing in the bathroom. It didn’t want to talk about it, and I don’t think I really wanted to know, anyway. Some people are weird. I brought it into the kitchen and got a piece of bread. Everything ceased to exist for a second, so I ran in circles and barked like a dog. Someone threw a Q-tip at me and that helped redefine things. I still like my eggs scrambled, dog shit is gross and should never be used in the place of building blocks, and I was being an asshole again. I bonked my head three times on the floor to say I’m sorry. There was stuff all over the sofa and I nearly killed myself getting to the bedroom… Enough.
The End, or at least, The Bottom.