Squirrel!
My wife and I were driving around, dropping off books at Little Libraries. So far, we’d dropped off twenty-five books at five Little Libraries. Only one stop remained.
I turned off East Main. It was sunny but rain was falling on the windshield.
“Squirrel!” my wife shouted.
I’d seen the squirrel bolting into the street and was braking before my wife said anything.
The squirrel and I both stopped. They turned and ran back to the sidewalk but stayed there.
I edged the car forward.
The squirrel edged forward.
I increased my speed.
So did the squirrel.
“Damn, dude, what are you doing?” I asked the squirrel through the window.
It turned right.
I accelerated away.
Thoughts From the Bottom
The birth center
Closes
But
It’s alright
Price of beef is
Out of sight
Gas is higher than
We ever thought
Normal
But we’ll be alright
Cause
We got streams
And games
And color
TV
Things like virtual
Reality
Artificial
Dreams
It’s a blast
It’s a scene
Get the highest score
Be
Number
One
Game might be over
But your day
Just
Begun
The Writing on the Page
I keep spying on the woman to my right.
Sounds quasi pervi, doesn’t it?
I just want to see her book, a small paperback. She flips through it, pen in hand, underlining passages.
I’m horrified and fascinated. Writing in books? I know others do this and it’s permitted under certain circumstances, but it’s something against my personal coda. Unless…is it a puzzle book?
What is this book she’s defiling? If only she’d put it down so that I can see it.
She left while I was busy writing. I never saw the book.
It’s another unsolved mystery.
This Old Thing
My wife carries a small Casio calculator in her purse.
Solar-powered, made of black and gold plastic and black vinyl, the calculator folds. When it’s folded, it’s about the size of a credit card and is as thick as two stacked cards. We bought it for a few hundred yen when we lived in Japan on Okinawa between 1981 and 1985.
We used it last night to balance the checkbook. As we finished, we talked to each other about how amazing it was that the little inexpensive still worked. Back then, the yen to dollar ratio was about 234 to 1.
Over forty years later, it’s a little worn but works perfectly. As I reflected on that, I wondered how many other things I’d ever owned that I could say the same about.
Michael Seidel, writer 