Tag Archives: Funny

KILLERS DON’T WEAR FLIP FLOPS

18 Replies

Tuesday, my mid-life crisis reached Code Blue status as I boarded a plane for Denver to check out a vintage camper I’d seen on-line.  Yes, you heard me right. A vintage camper.

Who am I you ask?  I can’t honestly answer that anymore.  For example, it wasn’t until I was all the way through airport security before I realized I’d walked on the floor with bare feet.  Can you imagine?  BARE FEET!

This mid-life crisis is pulling me forward, out of my rut, faster than I can think, because here I was with $5,000 cash in my purse ready to drive up to a remote cabin to meet a strange man to buy a 1955 Aljoa camper.  Sounds like the beginning of a bad slasher movie doesn’t it?

Reason returned to me before I boarded the plane and I made arrangement to meet him at a storage facility on edge of town. Except then I realized he could kill me, stuff me in the camper and store me away for eternity.

I walked down the aisle of the plane in a stupor, wondering again who I was and what I was doing. I came across an entire row of empty seats and climbed over to the window.  A little towheaded face popped up from the seat in front of me.

“Peek-A-Boo,” she shouted before disappearing.

I was pretty sure I’d figured out why this row was empty.  The piercing scream that made my ear drums vibrate in pain, confirmed my conclusion.

The little girl emerged again. I grinned and waved at her.  Most people are turned away by a screaming child, but not me.  In complete contradiction to my OCD ways,  I gravitate toward them like a fly to honey.  I love kids and everything about them.  From their chubby toes to their drooling mouths. I mean, who wouldn’t smile when a two-year-old looks you in the eye and asks with the seriousness of a nuclear scientist, “Do you have a penis or a vagina?”

But I digress.

Part-time Murderer

We landed in Denver.  I got off the plane, rented my car and headed out to meet up with Ed, the part-time vintage camper renovator/part-time murderer.   I drove straight to the storage facility (also, as it turns out, not a very good place to be carrying $5,000 in cash.)

I huddled in the corner of the office wondering which way I was going to die when the camper came into view.  As Ed emerged from his tinted windowed black pick up truck I noticed he was wearing flip-flops.  I sighed with relief.  Everyone knows killers don’t wear flip-flops.

He gave me a quick tour of my new camper.  I said it was deal and rushed him through the paperwork.

“What’s the big hurry?” he asked.

“I have a flight back to Kansas City in a couple of hours.”

“Wow.” He looked at me with admiration.  “You’re an adventurer.”

I grinned and stood up a little straighter and said “Yes.  That’s exactly who I am now.  I’m an Adventurer.”

Me and Ed-Not-A-Part-Time-Murderer

I’m Not Judging…but…

2 Replies

HA-HA-HA-HA

The emotions surrounding my inability to write about my Crazie Aunt Kathleen aren’t quite clear to me.  Composing stories about her big brother (my father) has been easier, perhaps because he prided himself on his uniqueness.  Often times Dad knew his choice of actions or words would appear odd, but took that path anyway.

On the other hand, Aunt Kathleen doesn’t seem to recognize the peculiar things she does as…well…peculiar.  I guess what I saying is, I have a harder time laughing behind her back than I do the rest of my family.

I mean, who am I to judge that it would be Crazie to ask your niece to stop her car on the side of a busy highway and get out to pick up a shoe that’s lying in the ditch because “You never know when someone in the family might break their leg and they’d need just one shoe.”  And, in as much as I’m not judging, I didn’t point out that they’d have to break their left leg, and they’d have to wear a size 13 shoe.

Or who’s to say that it isn’t important on your way home from the hospital after an extensive stay in ICU to ask your niece to stop at the dollar store so you can buy ten bottles of lilac scented hand lotion to add to your vast collection at home?

This week she called to say the dentist told her she’d need to have all her teeth pulled and dentures made.  The cost would be approximately $5,000.

“So, of course,” she said.  “I called around to see who could do it cheaper.”

“Okayyyy,” I said, knowing the conversation was going to take a bizarre turn but not sure where that would be.

“There’s a place that advertises in the paper.  They’ll pull my teeth for $85 and make the dentures for $500.  What do you think?”

“I…well…”  I stuttered.  “I don’t even know where to start with my questions.”

“I know, it’s great, right?”

I’ll pause here to mention that Aunt Kathleen is not in the best of health.  She’s extremely obese, uses an oxygen tank and, because her joints no longer support her, she maneuvers around as slow as a snail with a walker.

“I’m not sure ‘great’ is the word I would have used,” I said and switching to my best adult-speaking-to-a-child voice I asked,  “Don’t you think it’s a little odd that one place wants $5,000 and one place wants $85?  That doesn’t seem right to me.”

“Exactly what I thought.  That dentist is ripping me off.”

I rubbed my forehead – a habit formed over years of trying to make sense of zany conversations with my family – and asked, “So the problem is the money?”

“Oh, I have enough.  That’s not the problem.”

“Then, what is?” I asked.

“Well, I’m afraid it will be a waste of money.”

“A waste?”

“I mean, what if I pay the $5,000 for the surgery and new teeth, and then I die next year?”

I am sorry to report that laughing behind her back was not the issue.  I laughed so long and so hard that she hung up on me.