Raised By Wolves Day!

You were raised by wolves since birth, and you’ve recently been rescued from the woods and now you’re in the process of being socialized to live with humans. For science.

No one can understand why you’re fighting them so much, and you can’t explain it since all you can do is growl and slash at people who get too close. Finally they call in another guy who was rescued from wolves so he can interpret your growls.

“He fell in love with a wolf from another pack. He wants to be set free to go and be with her,” the other raised-by-wolves guy explains to them after you snarl at him a bunch.

“Cool with us as long as we can watch,” one of the scientists says

“For science,” the other adds.

They release you back into the wild, then you spend the next six years being videotaped by some guys in trees while you have sex with a female wolf. For science.

The videotaping ends when the female wolf dies and you’re rescued from the woods again. Once you become socialized enough to understand stuff you find out millions of humans have watched video recordings of you having sex with your dearly departed wolf girlfriend, so you activate your primal wolf instinct and murder lots of scientists. For love.

Happy Raised By Wolves Day!

Play The Bar Game “Just Me” Day!

“Who thinks they should have died in someone else’s place?” shout.

There will be a show of hands. Six or seven at least.

“Who says the words ‘It should’ve been you’ in the mirror every single morning?”

Another show of hands. Four or five.

“Who’s here solely to drench in liquor the part of the brain that remembers the year 1986?”

Only a couple hands.

“1987?”

Lotta hands.

“Who here feels like every single day he walks on this earth is an affront to nature? That the only way to pay for a misfortune that happened to someone you loved is to inflict it upon yourself?”

Two hands. Yours and the redhead’s.

“Who’s all done? Who’s had enough of trying to believe what everyone insists, that it wasn’t your fault? Right now. Tonight. You can feel it in your bones. Who’s all done?”

One hand. Yours.

“Just me! I won!”

Big cheers for you. A few slaps on the back. A kiss on the cheek from the redhead.

You did it. You won.

Happy Play The Bar Game “Just Me” Day!

Jeff Died Yesterday The TV Show Day!

You are the star of a fun new show called “Jeff Died Yesterday.” The show takes place on the day after you died, and everyone is sad, some more so than others. Your Mom and Dad are very sad. Your younger brother Dan is a little sad. Your older sister Jen is not sad at all. Your friends aren’t sad at all either. They’re attractive and they’re trying to have sex with your older sister Jen, who’s always saying, “Pssh. Not over my little brother’s dead body” which gets a laugh from the crew. Your older sister Jen does sometimes have sex with your friends though. Ratings.

The challenge in each episode involves everyone at your funeral having to try and comfort your Mom and Dad or your aunts when they burst into tears. Every week, another of the mourners is kicked off the show. Yes it’s a reality show and you’re really dead. Sorry. This week your friend Pete gets kicked off when the judges say he was the worst at the funeral for getting a boner while your coffin was being lower into the grave. Pete says this isn’t the last we’ve heard from him and we’ll see big things from him at future funerals one day.

Happy Jeff Died Yesterday The TV Show Day!

Wish Upon A Couple That’s Breaking Up At Dinner Day!

When you see a couple out at a restaurant and they’re clearly in the middle of breaking up, go and stand next to their table, put one hand on each of their dinners, and make a wish.

It’s a guess-wish, in that you don’t really know if what you wish for is possible to come true. The way it works is you can wish for their future to be transferred over to you. The only wishes that will come true are when you wish for something that would have come to pass for that couple had they stayed together.

For example, if you wish for a billion dollars, the chance that it will come true for you is as wild as it coming true for them had they stayed together. Probably not very likely.

But if you wish for a gradually declining romantic interest in your partner, until you find yourself middle aged and wondering why you decided to decline into a joyless marriage with someone you should have broken up with all those years ago in that restaurant that one night when you mustered up the courage, there’s a very good chance it will come true!

So go make your wish. And remember, you do have to touch the food on both their plates. To get the full potency of your wish, wait for the entrees, not appetizers.

Happy Wish Upon A Couple That’s Breaking Up At Dinner Day!

The Boyfriend Your Dad Chased Away Day!

You still think about Dewey, your boyfriend from when you were seventeen, the one who made you feel as rare as a diamond, as light as a breeze, as free as a supermarket sausage sample.

You now know that you settled for your husband. As you grew older and you dated more men you gradually accepted that no one would love you with the strength that Dewey loved you, so you settled for less.

“All through this divorce,” you tell your Dad. “All the time, I keep looking back on Dewey, and how even though it’s ridiculous, I wonder what would have happened if we just kept on loving each other. I wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t chased him away.”

Your Dad and Mom share a look.

“Tell her,” your Mom says.

You ask what she’s suggesting he tell.

“Tell her,” your Mom repeats.

“I didn’t exactly,” your Dad begins. “I didn’t chase Dewey away, if we’re speaking literally.”

You burst out crying. Of course. Your parents only told you that Dewey was chased away to spare your feelings. Because not even Dewey loved you. No one ever loved you the way you dream of being loved.

“No, no,” your Dad says when you stop crying long enough to listen. “I didn’t Chase Dewey away. I paid him to go away. And I’ve been paying him ever since.”

“Your father pays Dewey $71,500 per year,” your Mom says. “All to keep him from ever dating you.”

“But why?” you ask.

“Never liked that long hair of his,” your Dad says. “Or that car he drove. Too fast. Not letting him drive around my daughter.”

Over the course of fifteen years your father has paid your high school boyfriend a middle-class salary to prevent him from dating you. His starting payment was $46,300, but your father continued to give him increases commensurate with the average cost of living inflation.

“He’s still not dating anybody,” your Mom says with a smile. “Never did move on from you. Just lived off your father’s money and waited for the day when—”

“When the checks would stop coming,” you say.

Your Dad looks unsure of this.

“Please Daddy,” you say. “Cut off the checks.”

Your Dad doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know how to stop being a Daddy to his little girl.

“I know the love I’ve settled for and the love I deserve,” you tell him. “Dewey can give me the love I deserve.”

Your Dad thinks for a second, then says, “I’ll send him just one more check, so he has the money to cut that hair of his.”

You throw yourself into your Dad’s arms then you Google Dewey and find out that he won’t be needing that extra check to get a haircut after all because Dewey’s completely bald now.

Happy The Boyfriend Your Dad Chased Away Day!

Telling People How Much They Hurt You Day!

Got someone in your life who is capable of hurting you more than you thought yourself capable of being hurt? Presently staring across a table at a lover or a spouse or just a sexual passer-by who can’t stop ripping up your heart and tossing it into the recycling bin? Today’s the day to let him or her (or them, polyamory is getting more respect every day) know how much power they have over you. Say the following:

“You know I’ve dropped all my defenses and basically placed myself emotionally at your mercy. I’m in the palm of your hand. So when you do [whatever they do that sucks], you’re pretty much just clenching your fist and squeezing me into gummy scuzz in your palm. Stop it?”

They’ll probably respond with, “I had no idea.” That’s because they aren’t as vulnerable to you as you are to them, because they don’t feel as much for you as you do for them. This is love. One party always loves the other more than they are loved back, which blows.

The most important thing to remember is this: If the person who hurts you says they don’t like being confronted the way you’re confronting them, apologize. Apologize quickly, before they decide you’re not worth the headache. Hurry, before they go.

Happy Telling People How Much They Hurt You Day!

Apologize For Falling Out Of Love With Your Boyfriend Day!

“Sorry,” tell him. “Sorry I’ve grown.”

He’ll say he appreciates the apology, but it doesn’t make up for anything.

“I just wasn’t thinking,” explain. “For a long while there I was in love with you. Then I had a bunch of life experiences and learned new insights and new possibilities for who I can be. I knew letting all that stuff happen would change me, but I never thought it would make me fall out of love with you.”

Your boyfriend will tell you should have considered it. You should have at least worried about how changing and growing as a person might affect your ability to stay in love with him.

“You’re right,” tell him. “I was inconsiderate. Especially when my father died and I let my grief and my subsequent maturation into an adult with a deceased parent get the better of me. I wasn’t thinking about how those emotional developments would make me grow bored with what you and I shared.”

Your boyfriend will pace the room in front of you. He’ll look like he’s jumping out of his skin. He’ll ask how he can be sure you won’t do this again.

“Well I really don’t think you have to worry about it,” tell him. “I doubt I’m going to fall back in love with you or anything.”

“You better not!” your boyfriend will shout.

Make him say he’s sorry for raising his voice to you. If he says he isn’t sorry, tell him you’ll devote the rest of your life to making sure he’s sorry.

Happy Apologize For Falling Out Of Love With Your Boyfriend Day!

In His Car Day!

Get in his car and let him drive you to his current girlfriend’s house. “That’s where she lives,” he says. “More rooms than anyone would know what to do with.”

You note that it doesn’t look like anything could ever go wrong in there. He confirms that nothing ever does.

“The promise of a girl who grew up in a house like that,” you say. “I can see why you’re with her.”

He says, “Then why at this moment do I want nothing more than to speed away, leave that house and this whole town, and earn a living driving across the country robbing small-town general stores with you.”

Kiss him and he’ll step on the gas. He’s already made his choice. He’d rather live on the road making love at 70 mph with you than die safe and warm in the biggest house you’ve ever seen. Kiss him and you’ll be on a highway putting every memory over your eastern shoulder. Kiss him and he’s yours.

“But I want to be a veterinarian,” you say. “I love animals.”

He shrugs and says, “Suit yourself.” Then he drives you to a corner where you can catch your bus.

Twenty years from now when you’re treating a sick cat for fur balls you’ll remember the choice he gave you. You’ll Google him and discover he’s fat and sells ad space on roadside billboards.

“You made it to the highway,” you’ll whisper at your computer screen, before returning to the cat sitting on your examination table waiting for his dropper full of medicine.

Happy In His Car Day!

Quit Putting Off The Important Stuff Day!

You’ve been sitting on the couch all day long watching Netflix and dicking around on the internet knowing full well you have to get out into the world and bury your roommate’s dead body in a shallow grave before dawn (you two had a fight over the fact that you’ve been using his conditioner and things got out of hand so you stabbed him to death). This is always the way. Every time you have a big project you end up putting it off until the very last minute, glueing your eyes to whatever screens will accept them, and then you find yourself scrambling to find a store open in the middle of the night that will sell you some lime and a shovel. Oh Christ what are you doing now? You’re calling Jeff? Don’t call Jeff.

“Hey Jeff can I borrow your truck? Zipcar only has compacts.”

Of course he’s going to say no, at least until you lay a guilt trip on him. Why didn’t you just reserve the Zipcar pickup or SUV as soon as you killed your roommate? And now you’re going to try and rope him into helping you dig the grave too, aren’t you?

“I’ll pay you forty bucks. I just gotta get Brad into the ground. Kind of a last minute deal.”

This is how terrible you are at time management. You think you saved yourself some time getting Jeff to help dig but now that Jeff’s an accessory you have to dig two graves, and bury him in the second after you hit him in the head with your shovel.

“Yeah but I get to keep his truck so free truck.”

Okay fine that’s a good point.

Happy Quit Putting Off The Important Stuff Day!

Wedding Vow Day!

You and Larry were always best friends. Ever since college, when you two would stay up all night long watching bad movies together. Or when you’d run to each other for a shoulder to cry on after a bad breakup, or a sympathetic ear after a terrible date.

After college you moved in together and spent a couple years living as roommates, but you were such close friends you might as well have been an old married couple. Each of you felt like it might be impossible to find someone you enjoyed being with as much as each other, and so one night many years ago you made a vow.

“If neither of us finds someone before we’re 35, we’ll marry each other,” Larry said. He even got down on one knee when he said it.

“35?” you said. “Okay, that’s about when I’ll have given up the search. Deal!”

You consummated the vow by microwaving some popcorn and sitting down together to watch a DVD of Lost Season 2.

For a while there, it seemed like you two might end up honoring that vow you made, until three years ago when you met Stephen, who was an usher at your sister’s wedding.

You fell for Stephen almost instantly, and you knew you’d fallen for him based on the one true test of whether you love someone or not: you couldn’t wait to introduce him to Larry.

It wasn’t long before you moved out of your apartment with Larry and into one with Stephen, and after a couple more whirlwind years Stephen got down on one knee and asked you to join him in a for-real marriage vow. The date was set for this weekend, when you will be exactly 34 years and four months old.

“Just under the wire,” you told Larry. “Guess you won’t have to marry me after all!”

“Guess not,” Larry said. “Looks like Stephen’s going to beat me to it.”

It did look like that. Until yesterday, when Stephen’s body was found floating in the river. His head had been bludgeoned, his wallet gone. Appeared to be a mugging gone too far.

You ran to the only person you’d ever run to for comfort at such a horrible time.

“How! How could this happen?” you cried into Larry’s lapel. “Just days before we were to get married!”

That’s when Larry chose to provide you with some words of comfort that proved to be rather strange.

“Well I promise to keep up my end of our marriage vow, even if Stephen couldn’t keep up his.”

You were a bit thrown, but you managed to ignore that he said it. People say odd things to someone in grief, and better just to move past it. But when you left his apartment that night, his words kept repeating in your head, and they chilled you a little more every single time you recalled them. You ended up telling your cab driver to change routes to take you to the police station.

“There’s our motive,” the lead detective says. “People have gone to way more extremes to make sure they got married. The only question is, will he do it again?”

The sting is on. You’re going to go away on what you’ll tell Larry is a vacation to get your head about you, but really you’ll just be hidden away in a safehouse. When you come back they’ll pair you up with Detective Donald Lawrence, a handsome undercover cop who you’ll pretend to have met in Playa Del Carmen and you were both so swept off your feet that you decided to get married.

“Then we wait,” the lead detective says.

This sting operation will hopefully uncover nothing at all. But deep in your heart you know that Larry really wants to get married, and he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you remain unwed for just a few months longer, just long enough to guarantee that you have to honor your vow to marry him. God be with anyone who wins your heart before you turn 35, because they’ll be saying their prayers for a quick, painless death at Larry’s bloody hands before they ever get the chance to say, “I do.”

Happy Wedding Vow Day!

If You Two Go Home Together Tonight People Will Die Day!

Go ahead. Go find an empty booth and talk to each other. Find out how much you both have in common. Find out how easy your conversation feels, how it feels like you’ve known each other for years. How it feels like you two intended to meet each other here tonight, almost like you’d planned it. Or someone did.

Go ahead and lean in for that first kiss. It will lead to a second. Then you’ll just fall into his body, your head against his chest, listening to his heart. It will be disarming to your friends who see you. It will look like you’re already boyfriend and girlfriend. It will look like they’ve seen you clumped up together in a booth like that every Saturday night for years. It will look totally expected, completely natural, and they’ll wonder if it’s always been this way.

Go ahead and leave the bar. Wander the streets telling each other the truth. Hold hands even. Fuck it. You already feel like you should, like it’s perfectly acceptable for two people who just met a couple hours ago to walk around your city holding hands. Stop occasionally to kiss. Stop occasionally to just press yourselves together. Stop occasionally.

Go ahead. Go on home to your apartment or his. Go ahead and fall into each other’s embrace before you even get through the apartment door. Go ahead to the bedroom and spend the next 72 to 96 hours absolutely devouring each other’s flesh, only to find that you’ve barely even begun to sate your hunger.

Go ahead and go home together tonight. Just know that if you do, people will die.

Not saying who. Not saying how. Not saying why.

But if you two go home together tonight, people will die.

Not saying if the people who are going to die are just fine with that, since they know your love is worth their lives coming to an end. Just saying what’s to be said.

You go home. They go away. It’s only fair that you know what’s at stake. Sometimes, there are repercussions to two people falling in love.

Happy If You Two Go Home Together Tonight People Will Die Day!

Your Dying Dad Wants To Talk About “Inception” Day!

It was on his hospital room TV last night.

“It was ingenious,” he says.

You nod and try not to say anything.

“So well thought out, the way it moved among all those levels within levels of consciousness,” he continues, rasping now.

Say, “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“And just a riveting action movie to boot,” he adds. “Maybe the smartest, most exciting action movie ever.”

“Can I get you anything from the cafeteria?” you ask, trying to change the subject.

“You didn’t like it?” your Dad says.

You shrug coyly. He gets the picture.

“I can see why you might not have liked it,” your Dad says. “You were always a simpler kid. Never really interested in being challenged by a movie.”

That’s it.

“Look, I spent half of 2010 listening to idiots tell me that because I didn’t like a movie that had to use clumsy exposition to spell out what was happening in every goddam scene, I’m the one who’s not intelligent. Maybe people who liked Inception are the ones who aren’t smart because they’re so easily manipulated by a movie that’s more concerned with insisting to the audience how smart it is than with being entertaining.”

Your Dad is silent for a minute. Then…

“I’m on my fucking deathbed here.”

“I know, it’s just…”

“You tell me you don’t think I’m smart? When I’m on my deathbed? Just because I liked a movie I saw on TNT?”

You’re ashamed.

“I’ll admit all that snow shit looked like an assy Bond movie,” your Dad will say.

“Thank you!” you’ll shout. Then you’ll hug him. Everything will seem okay but he’ll die knowing what your opinion of him is.

Happy Your Dying Dad Wants To Talk About “Inception” Day!

Bottle Of Live Bees Day!

Your new roommate left a bottle of live bees on the kitchen counter with a note that reads, “This bottle of live bees is mine! No one should eat or otherwise make use of any of my live bees! I know exactly how many bees are inside and how deep the aerated cork is inserted into the neck of the bottle. Sharing a living space is about respect so please respect me and my bees. Also I threw out your yogurt. -Joan”

Spend a good hour writing Joan a strongly worded response letter explaining how throwing out your yogurt constitutes a violation of your personal surroundings and kind of amounts to assault. You’re only going to be roommates for so long so you might as well go apeshit on each other in insane kitchen notes while you can.

Happy Bottle Of Live Bees Day!

Your Cat Made Dinner Day!

Today you’ll be surprised when you come home to find a romantic dinner for two waiting for you on the table.

“Did you make this, Mr. Paws?” you’ll ask your cat.

“Yeah,” your cat will say. “I think I fucked up the sauce a little.”

“I’m sure it’s just delicious,” you’ll say as you take off your coat and sit down at the table.

Mr. Paws will pour you some wine and then sit down with you. You’ll start eating right away.

“You’re home a little late,” Mr. Paws will say.

“Not this again,” you’ll say as you stuff lamb into your mouth.

Mr. Paws will throw his fork on the plate. “No, this again, dammit! I slave away all day making you dinner, I don’t deserve a phone call telling me you’ll be late?”

“You can’t answer the phone! Remember? There’s a reason I didn’t name you Mr. Opposable Thumbs!”

“That’s not my point.”

“What is your point then dammit,” you’ll shout. Your fork will fall off your plate and onto your skirt. “Great, now this has to go to the cleaners.”

“Poor you!” your cat will yell. He’s starting to cry now.

“You know I could have you put to sleep,” you say. “Just take you to a shelter and say I’m done with you. It’s totally legal.”

“You’re a monster!” Mr. Paws will scream, running from the table to cry into his cat bed.

“You’re right. This is the saltiest fucking sauce I’ve ever eaten!” you’ll shout at his retreating tail.

Finish eating the meal and then go in and apologize before he takes out his anger on the upholstery of your easy chair.

Happy Your Cat Made Dinner Day!

You Steal Coats From The Chair Backs At The Library Day!

Today you’re going to steal a sweet London Fog from the chair of a college student who headed off to the men’s room. You’ll be halfway across the reading room when you’ll hear, “Dad!”

You’ll keep walking. Calmly. Can’t be for you.

“Dad stop!”

No way that’s for you. Unless…

“Security, that man has my coat!”

A guard by the door will grab you and tug the coat from your arms. He’ll turn you around to face the kid you stole it from.

“You don’t even recognize me, do you,” the kid will say.

You lost your glasses in a fight a month ago so you have to squint to see. Then you squint harder, hard enough to be sure you’re seeing what you’re seeing.

You can’t be blamed for not recognizing him. Last time you saw him he was ten. The only thing you recognize about him is the look in his eyes as he recognizes you. He’s looking at you like a kid would a father.

“This wasn’t a coincidence. I tracked you down here. A private investigator told me you steal coats from this reading room.”

“I wouldn’t have been any good to you,” you tell him. “You don’t want me back in your life.”

“I don’t,” your son says. “Mom’s dying. It’s her wish that you come back with me. Do that and you can keep the coat.”

Your son takes the coat from the guard and puts it over your shoulders, then he holds up two plane tickets. The two of you fly back to Michigan where you’re escorted to your ex-wife’s hospital bed. She wakes from her drugged sleep, sees your face, and starts to laugh.

“I have such a good son,” she says.

“Hi Muriel,” you say.

Your ex-wife says she’s tying up all her loose ends, and yours was the loosest.

“You left without saying goodbye,” she says. “Just disappeared. So I wanted to have the chance for us to have a proper farewell so I can say what I never got to say.”

Your ex-wife calls you a son of a bitch and spits in your face.

Your son leads you out of the room and hands you your plane ticket back. You fly home feeling good to have some of the guilt of your leaving washed away with your ex-wife’s spit. And you’re excited to have a warm new coat to help you get through this bitch of a winter.

Happy You Steal Coats From The Chair Backs At The Library Day!

The Gambler Day!

They call you “The Gambler” because you just bet your child’s college tuition on roulette. You put it all on black and the spin came up red so you lost everything.

“My God what have I done,” you shout as you fall to your knees by the table.

A few people will take pity on you by throwing chips on the floor around you. You’ll grab at them and bet them on black, but it will still come up red.

Finally you’ll crawl on all fours off of the casino floor, crying about how you’ve ruined your family.

“There goes The Gambler,” other casino patrons will whisper as you crawl past them. “He’s a legend.”

“So long Gambler!” a waitress will shout.

“Hey Gambler, where you heading next?” a boy will ask.

“I’m going to jump off of a bridge,” you’ll tell him. “The money I bet on that table is nothing compared to what I owe to the bookmakers.”

“Good luck Gambler!” the boy will shout as you crawl out the front door and make you way toward the bridge.

“I have a disease,” you’ll whimper.

Happy The Gambler Day!

There’s A Hidden Code In Your Daughter’s Finger Painting Of A Pony Day!

A Harvard art professor is in your kitchen aiming a black light at the finger painting on your fridge.

“Do you have any idea what this painting means?” the professor says.

“She’s very talented,” you say.

“We think she might be a prodigy,” your wife says.

The Harvard professor scribbles something in his notebook. Then he pulls some parchment out of his portfolio and compares the sketches on the parchment to your daughter’s pony finger painting.

“My God,” he says.

“Do you think she should be transferred to an accelerated program?” your wife asks.

“Or…” you say. “You could maybe write her a recommendation.”

“Your six-year-old daughter’s finger painting has proven thousands of years of Western society to be built on nothing but lies,” he says.

You and your wife high five. Some monks burst through the kitchen window and steal the finger painting before escaping into a waiting helicopter. The Harvard professor tries to chase after them but you manage to delay him enough to get a brief but effective recommendation letter.

Happy There’s A Hidden Code In Your Daughter’s Finger Painting Of A Pony Day!

You’re The Only Ones In The Restaurant Who Are Still In Love Day!

All the other couples gave up the ghost hundreds of dinners ago. But the light still burns for you two. Everyone can see it in the way you offer each other fork-fulls of food to try, in the way you reach across the table to touch each other’s hands the minute the bus boy clears your plates for the next course. They can see their past selves in you and remember when they felt like you feel. Some of them want to warn you of what’s to come, to tell you to try to hold onto how you feel for as long as you can, to not take it for granted. Others just want to sit as close to you as possible in the hope that your affection for each other might rub off on them and bring them a little closer to each other tonight. Unfortunately, one couple just feels way too pissed off at your happiness and they tipped your waiter a hundred and sixty dollars to let them take your food into the rest room and sprinkle it with urinal water, so you’ve been eating urinal water all night lovebirds.

Happy You’re The Only Ones In The Restaurant Who Are Still In Love  Day!

Be The Princess Who Remembers Where She Came From Day!

You were excited to be plucked out of poverty and away from your cunt step-sisters when the Prince saw how hot you were and fell in love with you. Once in the palace as his princess, though, you discovered just how little regard the monarchy has for the villagers and farmers who comprise their kingdom. You’ve tried to talk the prince into enacting more compassionate legislation but he doesn’t want to upset his father. So you’ve been coercing him to act by witholding sex from him. You first went a month telling him you were just too depressed to have sex thinking about all those high taxes your family has to pay while you’re living in that big castle, until eventually the prince got the message that lowering taxes meant he’d get some action. Then you told him you were too distracted to perform fellatio by the knowledge that so many people were in debtors’ prisons unjustly because of unconscionable lenders, so the prince convinced his father to have all debts under a certain threshold forgiven. You even got the palace whores in on it. They have family in the villages too. He’d go to them but they’d perform horribly to make sure he continued to long for you as his best sex ever. You only have a few more years before you get too old for the prince to find you as desirable as you are now, so make them count. Get the kingdom to subsidize farming and build some schools in the villages, then make him enact a law that makes it illegal for knights to rape commoners. You can do it. You can use your puss to make this kingdom a wonderful place.

Happy Be The Princess Who Remembers Where She Came From Day!

Throw Everything Out Day!

Your possessions are disgusting and today’s the day to stop possessing them once and for all. Throw out all of your furniture, clothing, erotic figurines, human ears, and children that you own and start fresh with all new ones. No sentimentality! Understand? No crying about how you don’t have any money to replace everything. No complaining that a lot of the stuff your husband paid half for. No worrying about how you’ll live without a bed, clothing, a refrigerator, a toilet, salt and pepper shakers, or your medicine. You have to get rid of everything because everything is filthy and you need to get clean.

This is the only way to get clean.

Happy Throw Everything Out Day!

God’s Big Date Day!

God’s got a big date tonight with Diana, the girl who works at the magazine store.

“What should I wear?” God asks some saints.

They suggest the white robe. Then they tell him not to be nervous.

“Don’t be nervous?” God thunders. “I haven’t been on a date since Shannon.”

Shannon worked at Borders back before God caused them to go out of business. She cheated on God with someone else he created.

“Getting cheated on with my own creation? I’m just supposed to bounce back from that?”

The saints tell God he should just be himself.

On the date, things are going really well. Then in the car God makes a move on Diana. They kiss. God puts his hand on Diana’s breast. They undress. Diana performs fellatio on God and then God performs cunnilingus on Diana. Then God does something weird with Diana’s feet but she’s okay with it. There’s some spitting. Diana demands of God, “Tell me I’ve been disobedient.” God enters Diana from behind and the intercourse lasts several minutes.

God drops Diana off at her place and promises to call her. Back at heaven the saints ask God how it went. God just smiles.

“I know that smile!” one of the saints says. The others high five him.

God waves them off and goes to his room to think about Diana. Does he really like her for her, or is he just excited to feel something for someone again? He likes thinking about her. He kind of can’t wait to see her again. Just before bed he causes a massive earthquake in Southeast Asia, killing hundreds of thousands.

“But Diana’s safe,” God thinks as he turns on his white noise machine to drown out the screams coming from Earth. “Diana’s safe.”

Happy God’s Big Date Day!

You Explain Divorces To Kids Day!

Divorcing parents pay you to come by and tell their kids that their parents are splitting up. You get a thousand bucks a kid. Today you’re doing the MacDougals. Two kids.

“Listen up,” you tell them while driving. You always break the news in your Cutlass. “Your parents are getting a divorce. Your mom fell in love with some guy she works with.”

They want to know what about their dad.

“He hasn’t met anybody yet, far as I know.”

They want to know why.

“He seems to still be in love with your mom. Seems like he expected it to last forever. The whole thing’s kind of knocked him on his ass so go easy on him.”

You’re driving them by the river. Life keeps flowing. That’s the message of that river. They get it.

“Why’s Mom doing this to Dad?” Bobby MacDougal asks.

“When you’re older you’re going to realize that you have to make a lot of decisions in life, and you regret all of them just a little bit. Some you regret more than others. You can’t go back and reverse everything, so you have to pick the decisions you regret the most and try and make a change.”

Debbie MacDougal asks, “So Mom regrets marrying Dad the most?”

You slam on the brakes behind the car in front of you. The kids are startled. Life can end at the drop of a dime. That’s the message with stopping short like that.

“Don’t try to read your parents’ minds,” you tell them. “Just let them overcompensate with presents and stuff. Here are some iPads.”

You throw the iPads into the back seat and they lose their shit.

“See, being children of divorce ain’t so bad right?”

They’ll be lost in their iPad screens. Drive them into a heavy, chaotic traffic jam, one with a burning car by the side of the road. Things might feel okay right now, but life is a slow crawl through chaos and suffering, is the message with driving into a chaotic traffic jam with a burning car by the side of the road like that.

Happy You Explain Divorces To Kids Day!

Transfer Student Day!

The transfer student makes everything possible. You think it’s just a fresh start for you, but the transfer student represents a fresh start for the entire school. You’re the fresh eyes who never saw anyone crying through lunch, the fresh ears who hasn’t heard the thousands of derogatory nicknames those students have been wearing like nooses around their necks since elementary school. For them, for everyone who sees you, you are a new beginning.

You have no idea the power you possess.

Make a friend today. Lure girls in with your stories of what teenage society consists of outside of their district. Tell them tales, tell them lies, tell them whatever it takes to win their trust and make them want to claim you as theirs.

Get a boyfriend. Lure one away from his long-term girl. Tell him what love was like where you came from. Tell him boys do things to girls where you came from, things you can teach him. You’re pretty sure he can learn, because he seems just as mature as the boys you used to know.

Introduce your classmates to a new synthetic drug. Show them a dance they’ve never danced before. Make them watch a Youtube video they never even heard of, and they thought they’d already seen them all.

You are the open door they can’t wait to storm through. You can lure them anywhere, even to their ruin.

You know your mission. You know what this means to Lower Hamilton High School that you infiltrate and demolish Washington East. This rivalry has gone on too long. It’s time to stop trying to settle this on the football field.

You’re our chance to take them down from the inside.

Happy Transfer Student Day!

Family Road Trip Day!

Take a road trip with your family. Get your kids into the back seat and your husband in the front and hit the fucking road.

“WHY ARE YOU DRIVING SO FAST? IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! WHERE ARE WE GOING!” your kids and husband will shout. Tell them to shut their goddamn mouths or you’ll drive through a guardrail and into a gulch.

“Road trips are supposed to be spontaneous,” you explain once they’re all quietly cowering. “We’re going to drive and have dangerous adventures until something about us changes.”

You pull into bars and pick fights.

You break into vacation homes and steal silver and electronics.

You transport crystal meth and you pick up hitchhikers who remember seeing the ghost of Elvis Presley and you come to the aid of a crashed crop duster, managing to rescue the pilot before his plane bursts into flames.

You drive for four more months, and when you pause to celebrate your daughter’s eleventh birthday and your son’s ninth by the lip of the grand canyon, you all finally agree that you’ve each discovered something about yourselves that has changed you forever.

“I hate the road,” your daughter says.

“I hate America,” your son says.

“I hate being in a car,” your husband says.

“I want to spend the rest of my life in a tree,” you say.

Your husband hoists you up into a tree then he and your two kids wave goodbye as you climb higher and higher. Your husband says he’ll come back in a few months with divorce papers, but that he’s glad you’ve discovered yourself, and that you won’t be in his life to drag him on another awful trip like this one ever again.

Happy Family Road Trip Day!

The Lobby, 3:45 AM Day!

“Nightowl,” he says.

You look up from your book and smile a weak smile. “I just can’t stay in bed with my husband through the night,” you explain before returning to your book.

He should just go back to his work, whatever work a graveyard shift hotel desk clerk might have, but he’s not going to. He just got married and he wants to know if his wife does that. “Do all women do that?” he asks.

You tell him you’re sorry you bothered him and you’ll move to the business center.

“Do all women do that?” he asks again.

“I’m just a light sleeper,” you say, trying to put some comfort into your voice.

He asks if you were always a light sleeper. You don’t answer, which gives him your answer loud and clear.

“What stirs you?” he asks.

You close your book. “My eyes snap open like someone flicked a light-switch,” you say. “And I slither out of bed and watch my sleeping husband, feeling like I’m in control, like we’re engaged in some kind of war of wits and by waking up and living a few hours of conscious life without him even knowing it, I’ve got the drop on him.”

He’s terrified. “What do you think will happen if you sleep the whole night through,” he asks.

You shrug. “Not sure since I haven’t let it happen one time in the past fourteen years of marriage,” you say.

He asks again, “Do all women do that?”

“I don’t know if your wife does that,” you say. “Maybe she doesn’t need to since you work nights.”

“I’m just filling in tonight," he says.

Go to his desk and place your hand on his. "I love my husband,” tell him. “I just don’t want him to win.”

“Win at what?”

You can’t help but smile, he’s so adorably naive.

“Why, win at marriage of course,” you say.

Let go of his hand and go to the business center so he can make a frantic phone call home now.

Happy The Lobby, 3:45 AM Day!

He Cries More Now Day!

When you bump into him it’s the first time you’ve seen him in ten years. He looks the same.

“You look even better,” he says.

You do it at his place. He isn’t married, just like back then. He’s barely employed, just like back then. He’s still good in bed, just like back then. You tell him he hasn’t changed at all.

“I cry more now,” he says. “Sometimes for days at a stretch. Normal I suppose.”

You cry less.

“I also have more trouble going into buildings sometimes now,” he says. “Occasionally I’ll just start walking toward a building entrance and I’ll have to turn around and run. Part of aging I guess.”

That hasn’t happened to you yet.

“I also find myself following men who look well put together to see how they live and find out what they figured out. Is that something that just happens after 35?”

Yeah you don’t really do that at all.

“Anyway want to meet my squirrels?” he asks.

You tell him you have to head home.

“To your squirrels?” he asks, a little uneasy.

You don’t have any squirrels but just to calm him down you say, “Yes. They’re waiting for their nuts.”

He breathes a sigh of relief. He gave you a taste of your past, and you gave him the false hope that his present isn’t as off-course as he suspects it might be.

Happy He Cries More Now Day!

Senator Outside Your House Day!

He’s in love with your daughter.

“She’s in college,” you remind him. “And you’re married.”

“Which is why I have to keep it a secret,” he says. “Up for reelection.”

Your daughter comes running outside and into the Senator’s arms.

“Now you know about us Daddy,” she says, kissing the Senator all over his face.

“Still not going to vote for you,” you say to the Senator.

The three of you laugh very hard, then your daughter and the Senator start making out as you look up at the sky, puffing on your cigarette, wondering whether there’s someone out there for you to love, the way the Senator loves your daughter. It’s been so hard since her mother died.

Happy Senator Outside Your House Day!

Who Dies First Day!

You and your boyfriend are playing Who Dies First, the fun game where lovers tell each other which of them they wish would die first.

You tell your boyfriend you wish you would die first because you could never wish for your boyfriend to die. You’d gladly go before him given the chance.

“I wish you would die first too,” your boyfriend says. You run from the room and don’t talk to him for days.

When you finally speak to him again you demand that he take it back.

“Nope,” he says. “I want you to die first.”

You go silent for a couple more days. When you confront him again, you’re certain he’ll change his tune.

“I’m playing by the rules of the game, which is to say who we want to die first, and we have to be honest. I want you to die first.”

You ask him why.

“I want to die knowing I shared as much of your life as I could,” he says. “I want to die knowing that there won’t be an unknowable future for you without me, a future that I could have enjoyed had I not walked in front of a bus or whatever kills me. I want to die knowing that the only thing I’ve lived for, that being you, is no longer around to live for any longer. That will be a peaceful death, knowing that there’s no point in staying alive any longer because you’re gone and the world is awful. I want to make sure you’re dead, then I’ll kill myself one minute after you.”

Tell him you get it now. Tell him he won the game.

Happy Who Dies First Day!

Your Wife Is Leaving You For The Superhero Who Saved Her Life Day!

She was abducted by a super-villain and used as a human shield when the super-villian (calls himself “Irradiation Man”) snatched her from a crosswalk and pulled her to his chest just as the superhero (calls himself “Steel Aaron”) arrived for the big showdown. Steel Aaron managed to snatch her from Irradiation Man’s grip and fly her to safety on a nearby rooftop. He asked if she was okay, he called her “ma'am,” and by the time he flew away she knew there was absolutely no other man in the world she wanted to be with. Certainly not you.

“But does he even want to be with you or was saving you just some protocol given to him before being sent to this planet by his alien overlords?” you ask, understandably, seeing as you always figured you and your wife had something deeper going on than just providing each other safety from evildoers.

She’ll explain that it doesn’t really matter if he wants to be with her. “You don’t understand,” she’ll say. “I was rescued. Valiantly and impossibly. This man–”

“He’s not a man,” say.

“Exactly,” she’ll concur. “This being, knowing that he exists, having been held and protected in his arms, I can’t just go back to cuddling in the flimsy limbs of an ordinary male like you. I’m sorry.”

Your wife will leave as soon as she can get her things packed. She’ll spend her days and nights tracking Steel Aaron, trying to pin down his next likely location, hoping to catch his eye and remind him of the time he rescued her, remind him that he might have felt something that day.

She’ll soon run out of money, and out of sanity. Before long she’ll be indistinguishable from any other street vagrant. How many women out there have gone mad from being saved by a superhuman? How many have found themselves ruined for any other man, ruined for all other human relationships after a brief taste of what it’s like to be cared for by an otherworldly being of impossible strength and unknowable powers? There’s no telling.

You’ll remarry. You’ll occasionally see your first wife on the street staring at the sky, searching for her hero. You’ll hide your face and move on, not that she’d care. She had her love with you and she had her brief moment with a superhero, and spending the rest of her life just barely living in the hope of having another brief moment with a superhero is what she chose. And she still thinks she chose wisely.

Happy Your Wife Is Leaving You For The Superhero Who Saved Her Life Day!

Dating A Sub Day!

You can’t do it. You can’t let it happen. You can’t date another substitute teacher.

“Been through this before,” tell him. “Promised myself never  again. Full-time teachers only, tenured preferable. No more subs, no, no more.”

He’ll kiss you gently.

“Just like the others, they were just like you. Here today because someone teaching third grade language arts has the flu, gone tomorrow to stay home and do whatever it is you do”

He’ll caress your hand sweetly.

“Just don’t do that to me,” you say and you pull your hand away. “I know how it works. It’s not temporary. You’ll say you’re here to stay. Being a sub’s just your job, not your romantic inclination.”

He’ll tug a bit of your hair in his fist.

“Tenured only,” you’ll whisper, your lips closer to his. “Tenured only.”

“Give me tenure then,” he’ll whisper. “Lifelong tenure in your heart”

“I need to think about the school,” you whisper. You’ve kissed him once already, just now. Kiss him again, right now.

“I’m thinking about the school too,” he’ll whisper. “I’m a narcotics officer.”

He’s a narcotics officer. He’s undercover as a substitute teacher trying to get drugs out of the school.

“You’re a narcotics officer,” you’ll whisper into his mouth.

“I’m a narcotics officer he’ll whisper into yours.”

Kiss him without even checking to see if there are any students spying on you. Kiss him just to thank him, to thank God in heaven that you fell for a sub who’s secretly a narcotics officer, that you fell for a sub who for once is not a musician on the side.

Happy Dating A Sub Day!

Henry’s Alive Again Day!

You’ve just gotten word that Henry is still alive all these years later, that when his car went off that cliff he wasn’t in it, that for one reason or another he needed you and everyone else to believe he was dead.

“Guess we need to get a divorce,” you say to your second husband, Brad.

Brad won’t be happy. “You don’t have to go back to him! He’ll understand that you thought he was dead and moved on.”

Tell Brad you didn’t move on. Tell Brad he’s a really sweet guy and he’s pretty great in the bedroom department and you’ve had a fun time these six years during which he helped raise your kids as his own, but he’s no Henry.

“But you don’t even know why he faked his death,” Brad will say. “For all you know he didn’t even care how his death affected you. For all you know he faked his death to get away from you.”

Explain to Brad that that might be the case, but now that Henry’s letting you know he’s alive again he clearly changed his mind so you have to go to him tonight.

“Tonight! What? You’re just going to…Ow!”

Apologize for dropping your suitcase on his head while trying to get it out of the closet.

“Sorry Brad,” say. “I’m just in a hurry. Want to try to get Henry to see me naked before he changes his mind again.”

Brad will be exasperated. “You’re supposed to be conflicted about this kind of thing! You’re supposed to be searching your heart to find out if you still love him or if you having mourned him and married someone new has effectively closed the chapter on that part of your–”

“Sorry, not conflicted. Henry’s alive! Thanks for subbing in as my husband for a while!” you’ll shout from the window of your car as you speed out of your driveway.

Brad will go inside to find your kids packing their things. “You’re not our Dad anymore! You’re just Brad now!”

Brad will go into the bedroom and try to get used to just being Brad now, just being Brad now that Henry’s alive again.

Happy Henry’s Alive Again Day!

You’re All Out Of Love Day!

Explain it to your husband.

“I’ll keep hanging around and we can still have sex and stuff, but it’ll be totally physical. I’ll have empathy for you if you’re in pain, but no more than I would for a character in a movie.”

Your husband will shrug and go back to his model WWII plane. Tell your kids.

“I’m basically going to have as much interest in watching you grow up as I would the Obama girls. Kind of just want to check in and see what kind of adults you’ll start to look like, but as far as feeling you pulse through my veins like you were my life’s blood, that’s all over.”

Your kids will wander off to process their feelings by smoking cigarettes in various areas of the woods behind your house. Tell your dogs.

“The unconditional thing you feel for me, it’s not reciprocated. You’ll get fed and walked, but my connection to you is no stronger than my affinity for the pillows decorating the sofa. How you taking this?”

Your dogs will turn on each other, each blaming the other for draining the love from you. They’ll lunge at each other’s throats, tearing them open to send blood gushing to the floor. Just one will remain, but he’ll run off into the streets, under the impression he is undeserving of shelter in your home if he can no longer inspire love in you.

Clean up the mess and take the dog carcasses out back where you should bury them quick before Sunday night TV starts up.

Happy You’re All Out Of Love Day!

Steal The Hearse Your Best Friend’s Body Is In Day!

Emma’s dead. Emma your friend, dead at 27. The two of you were supposed to stay friends as you grow old, marry, have kids, get divorced, mourn the kids that go before you, then die and be buried in the same cemetery. But now Emma’s dead and you’re still alive. She had a bad year and she got drunk and drove her car into a pole, and you’re still alive.

“I think they need you in the rectory,” you tell the hearse driver after the pall bearers get Emma into the back. Once he’s gone you climb behind the wheel and tear ass away from the church. The other mourners aren’t even in their cars yet. No one will be able to catch up to you. Drive to the cliffs looking out over the lake.

“I’m still here with you and you’re still here with me,” you whisper into Emma’s dead ear. After parking at the cliff you got the coffin open and climbed inside with her. Her body’s barely the same, it feels nothing like it would when you’d climb into bed with her and hold her until either you or she stopped crying over whatever it was you had to cry about.

“We all have our reasons to stay alive and you were mine,” you whisper. People will say it’s a tragedy, that you were silly girls, that a friendship isn’t worth all this.

“They’ll say I had so much more to live for but I don’t want to miss you Emma,” you whisper. They’ll say it from their unhappy homes. They’ll say it with angry voices. They’ll say it tired because no sleep because worry because there’s no guarantee tomorrow is ever worth sticking around for.

“I’m still here with you and you’re still here with me,” you whisper.

You get out of the coffin and close the lid and climb back behind the wheel. You start the engine and accelerate the car over the cliff. It lands nose-first on the rocks a hundred feet below. You were afraid it might not explode, that that was just on TV, and you’d just be a couple of dead bodies in a smashed car, one dead since a couple days ago and another dead just now. But it does explode, and you both burn, turned into ash and carried on the wind bursting from the same big ball of fire that ate two best friends whole.

Happy Steal The Hearse Your Best Friend’s Body Is In Day!

The Tragic Double Life Of Your Taxi Cab Passenger Day!

You drive a taxi and there’s a guy in the back of your cab and he’s dressed to the nines. He wants you to take him to meet his girl, Iona. She’s waiting for him in an old factory somewhere in the messed up part of town.

“Step on it,” he says.

At the old factory the guy gets out of the cab and tips you fifty bucks and asks you to wait a few minutes in case he needs another ride. “In case it doesn’t work out.”

You ask him if she’s never seen him before.

“It’s complicated,” he says. He takes his duffel bag and goes into the warehouse.

A few minutes later the same guy comes out of the warehouse, now dressed as a woman, full makeup, in a wig and everything. She asks, “Were you waiting for Lenny to come back out here?”

You nod.

“I’ll take the cab instead,” she says.

In the car she says her name is Iona and she and Lenny love each other deeply but it just tragically isn’t meant to be. You tell her you assumed she was the same person as Lenny, except now she’s wearing women’s clothes and a wig.

“Exactly,” Iona says. “When I am Lenny, Iona is gone. When I am Iona, Lenny is gone. We are both so in love, yet we can’t exist in the same moment. It’s doomed without time travel.”

You pull the cab over, so overwhelmed you can’t do anything but turn off the engine and cry.

Happy The Tragic Double Life Of Your Taxi Cab Passenger Day!

You Murdered Henry Day!

Tonight at your twentieth high school reunion you and your old friends will start talking about Prom and someone will mention Henry Potter.

“His ghost still haunts me,” you’ll say. “But still I think I was in the right.”

No one will know what you’re talking about. Explain that you murdered Henry that night. Then you put him in his car and sent it off the bridge making it look like he had a drunk driving accident on the way home from Prom.

“You guys all knew that though, right?”

Their shocked expressions will make it clear that they did not know that.

“Oh wow, I assumed everyone was cool with it and you all ran with that drunk driving story just to keep me from having to go to jail,” tell them. “No one liked Henry. Figured you all were grateful.”

Emily, the former cheerleader/current veterinarian will point out that your high school class had the highest number of students killed in drunk driving accidents in the nation.

“We were way above the national average,” Emily will say.

“Yeah I killed all seventeen,” tell them.

“But there were eighteen,” Emily will say.

“I never laid a hand on Louis Biederman. He was a full-on alky,” say.

While they appreciate you trying to make their student body better by removing undesirables, they’ll be upset that they had to spend so much of their senior year attending anti-drunk driving assemblies.

“Sorry I made your senior less fun,” tell them.

Was that so hard? Why is it so hard for you to apologize to people when you know you’re in the wrong?

Happy You Murdered Henry Day!

You Ferry Teens To Makeout Point Day!

The Makeout Point in your town is across a raging river and up a rocky slope to a narrow and slippery mountain ridge. Many teens don’t make it more than a few hundred feet up the slope before losing their footing and tumbling down to stain the rocks with their blood. The ones that do make it to the top are often too dehydrated and weak to actually make out once they get there. And getting up to the Point is only half the journey. Getting back down is so treacherous that it’s said some teens have chosen to stay on Makeout Point and live out their lives there.

It used to be that teens wouldn’t even make it to the ridge because they’d all die trying to cross the river in makeshift rafts. That was before you started your ferry service. You wanted to give lustful teens a fighting shot.

“I deserve just as much a chance at getting some tongue as any of my peers,” your son is saying to you, one foot on your ferry, one hand clasped around the bicep of a blonde classmate of his named Gina.

“Your peers aren’t my son,” you tell him.

He tells you that he and Gina feel lots of lust for each other, and they’re going to make out with each other whether his father gets them to Makeout Point, or they strap on some floaties and cross the river themselves.

“Let me be a teenager,” he pleads. “Please. I can already taste the inside of her mouth I want it so bad.”

You know you can’t dissuade him. You raised him to be the kind of young man who won’t be dissuaded. You raised him to be a survivor. If anyone can get up that ridge, scarf down some tongue and maybe cop a little boob, and then get back down to the river safe and sound, it’s your boy.

“Get on if you’re coming then,” you say, stepping out of their way to board the ferry.

“Thanks Dad,” your son says as you guide the ferry against the current to find the safest spot to dock and start him on his brave adventure in Frenching.

You Ferry Teens To Makeout Point Day!

You’re The Last Of Your Friends To Get Divorced Day!

None of your friends believe that you two are still in love. They think you’re refusing to get divorced just to try and be different. They’ve all been divorced for years. Your house is the one they’d all come to in tears when they decided it was time to make the big split. Many of them even came to you two and asked you to witness their divorce papers. That might be why they resent your marriage so much. Because you were there for the sad dissolution of theirs and none of the debris so much as bruised your bond. They’re starting to think you just consider yourselves so far above everybody that you can look down upon them and judge them as their marriages shatter. They’re angry that you’re still together and they’re outside.

“We’re not leaving until you two get divorced,” says Pam, divorced three years.

“It’s bullshit. You guys never even seemed that right for each other,” Arthur, divorced two years, says.

“Split up or we bust your heads open,” shouts Laraine, divorced seven months.

You tell Laraine she’s being crazy and Laraine comes running at you with a baseball bat. She swings and you duck, but her bat hits Arthur in the head and kills him. You and the dozen or so divorced friends carry Arthur’s body into the back yard, chop him up and bury him.

“We’re all accomplices here! You all let us stay together or we tell the police what happened here tonight!” you shout.

Your divorced friends reluctantly agree to stop pressuring you two to split up. You send them on their way and you and your spouse head up to the bedroom and make love to each other with more passion and fury than you’ve felt in years. You haven’t spoken it out loud but both of you have been having doubts lately, until tonight. Burying Arthur woke something up in you and you feel like your love has been reignited as you scratch at each other with the soil of Arthur’s grave under your fingernails. Murder has made your marriage stronger, and you’ll need more blood if you want to continue to lord your everlasting bond over your friends the way you have been.

Happy You’re The Last Of Your Friends To Get Divorced Day!

You Know The Plotlines For The First 100 Episodes Of “Guys With Kids” Day!

They came to you in the middle of the night last night. Like they’d been beamed into your head. The plotlines for the first 100 episodes of Guys With Kids. When you went to sleep you weren’t even thinking about Guys With Kids. You knew it existed, but you figured it doesn’t need you to think about it to continue existing. Now that you know the first episode is about how even though the guys have kids, they’re still just guys (or are they?), and in the second episode the one guy with a kid asks the other two guys with kids for help moving an armoire, and in the third episode all three guys with kids have to go to the post office but the kids haven’t eaten in days, and in the fourth episode the guys with kids meet two other guys with kids but their kids end up being dolls (American Girl), and in the fifth episode the guys with kids get condescended to by a barista so they follow him home and set fire to his car (a Civic), you’re thinking maybe Guys With Kids actually does need you to think about it in order for it to exist.

Maybe if you stop thinking about it, episode six won’t be about the trouble with sippy cups, and episode seven will be about something other than anal polyps, and episode eight won’t address online gambling addiction, and episode nine won’t be the one where all three guys go to take their kids to a little-known catholic counsel to have their kids exorcized “just in case,” and episode ten won’t feature a Blythe Danner walk-on.

Maybe you’re the autistic kid staring at a snowglobe full of the characters from Guys With Kids.

That could explain why you know episode eleven is the one where they find out one of the kids can stop time, and episode twelve is the one where they go to Sweden to personally return an Ikea crib to the factory, and in episode thirteen one of the guys with kids decides to leave the group and the other two are secretly excited to be done with him but at the last minute he changes his mind, and episode fourteen is the demolition derby episode, and in episode fifteen the guys listen to the 9/11 phone calls, and in episode sixteen guy #2 doesn’t trust guy #1 so he tries to have him wacked but guy #3 gets killed instead, and in episode seventeen we find out guy #3 was never who we thought he was, that the real guy #3 (and his kid) are CIA and the guy #3 who got killed was just a North Korean spy wearing a disguise, and in episode eighteen the guys remember the first seventeen episodes and spend the last ten minutes sobbing, and in episode nineteen one of the kids starts a race riot and the guys try to help everyone keep a cool head but they can’t so the city burns and they have to move to Vancouver, and in episode twenty there’s an AIDS scare, and episode twenty-one is the Christmas episode, and episode twenty-two is the mole people episode, and episode twenty-three is the Ghost of Steve Jobs Is Haunting The Kid Of Guy #2 episode, and in episode twenty-four one of the guys loses his kid’s teddy bear and he spends the rest of the episode screaming at God.

Are you still dreaming? Or are you awake and you really do have all this knowledge? Could it be aliens?

Could it be that you really already know episode twenty-five is a tribute to the life of Jared from Subway and episode twenty-six is a parody of “Steel Magnolias” and in episode twenty-seven there’s just a black, silent screen for twenty-two minutes because sometimes we need to remember the vastness of empty moments, and episode twenty-eight has the guys trying to sell their kids to Colombians and episode twenty-nine sends the guys to Fiji for a lifestyle festival (sex thing), and in episode thirty the guys finally learn how to change a diaper?

The bigger question is, are you the only one? Do you alone know that episodes thirty-one through forty address gun control, hickeys, good cell phone service vs. bad cell phone service, car salesmen, flesh-eating viruses, getting thrown in “the dog house” by your “old lady,” naptime, the politics of hipster kickball leagues, denim washes, and whether or not the moon landing was faked? If not, how many others were chosen to know that episodes forty-one through forty-three comprise a three-episode arc about sexual promiscuity amongst the residents of senior communities, and episode forty-four is the one where the creator’s dead dog is fed to the guys with kids “as a warning,” and episode forty-five is the Yom Kippur episode, and in episode forty-six no one says the word “is,” and episodes forty-seven, forty-eight, forty-nine, fifty, fifty-one, and fifty-two will all be shot on a military base with the scripts written solely to hypnotically activate brain-washed black ops sleeper agents?

Why were you chosen? For what purpose?

What use can it be to anyone that you know episode fifty-three will be about the creation of an Edie Brickell-type folk superstar, and episode fifty-four will be a funny spin on Revelations, and episode fifty-five has the guys competing to see which of their kids gets the last spot in the good day care, and episode fifty-six is kind of a scene-by-scene response to the episode of Cheers where Coach has to keep his daughter from marrying the wrong guy, and episode fifty-seven is about how guys with kids have to buy their ladies maxi-pads sometimes and it’s embarrassing, and episode fifty-eight shows what it would be like if the guys and the kids switched bodies, and episode fifty-nine has the guys worried they aren’t as cool as guys who ran off on their kids, and episode sixty is just a blood-bath, nothing but gore and shoot-outs, no explanation?

Why would someone need you to know all that?

Maybe you knowing episode sixty-one sends the guys with kids on a cruise will help stop a war one day. Maybe you knowing episode sixty-two is the all-nude episode will be necessary to keep the sun from exploding one day. Maybe you knowing episode sixty-three is about happy meals will help the President ease the tension in the Middle East one day.

Who knows?

All you know for sure is in episode sixty-four the kids find a bag of flame-throwers and the guys have to outrun the ATF or give the kids up, and in episode sixty-five none of the guys’ babysitters show up, and in episode sixty-six there’s a brief, alarming, but ultimately contained Ebola outbreak in the kids’ day care center.

You know that sixty-seven is about the collapse of Greece and sixty-eight is about a smores competition and sixty-nine is about whether or not to send the kids to Scouts, but you don’t know if all this information will disappear from your mind as quickly as it came into it.

Is it a tumor that lets you know episode seventy takes on dudes with too much nose-hair and not episode seventy-one, since in that one the guys with kids buy a Native American dream blanket and summon a vengeful spirit from beyond? Is it some kind of fever that makes you certain that seventy-two is going to reveal who the kids’ real moms are?

Seventy-three, seventy-four, and seventy-five: puppies, Katrina, and whether Latin should still be taught in schools. Why do you know this? If you die tonight, will someone else take over the task of knowing this for you? Should you write it all down?

You should write it all down. Write it in a letter to your little brother. Tell him not to open the letter until you’re dead, but let him know episode seventy-six of Guys With Kids is going to be about the day Macho Man Randy Savage died. Let him know episode seventy-seven is going to be about homelessness, and in episode seventy-eight the guys with kids buy a storm shelter to escape what they believe to be the coming wrath of Christ.

If you tell someone else, if you tell your little brother, maybe that will help make sure it all comes true.

Tell him seventy-nine is going to be Loretta Swit’s comeback cameo, and episode eighty is about the guys feeling sad because the training wheels are starting to come off the kids’ bikes. Tell him episodes eighty-one, eighty-two, and eighty-three all include subliminal flashes of footage from the Jodie Foster movie Foxes. Tell him eighty-four is about inhalants and eighty-five is the one where the guys and the kids all learn a little bit about tolerance.

Your little brother needs to know. When you’re dead, which will probably be very soon considering the strangeness of all of this, your little brother is our only hope that someone know eighty-six is the groin pull episode and eighty-seven is the painting party episode and in eighty-eight all the guys die and the kids have to go to an orphanage. Your little brother must carry with him the knowledge that in eighty-nine the kids realize the orphanage is run by a mysterious benefactor, and in ninety we find out the benefactor is you.

That’s right, by episode ninety, long after you’re dead, you’ll have your own storyline on Guys With Kids. It’s the story-line that carries the show over the syndication mark. You know all the plotlines of every episode because you run the orphanage that will usher the kids into manhood. You always have. In episode ninety-one you teach the kids about honesty. In episode ninety-two the kids have their first crushes and you help them through the heartache. In episode ninety-three you teach the kids to drive. Episode ninety-four is the one where one of the kids runs away but you chase him down and let him know he’s loved, and you can’t run from love. Episode ninety-five has the kids taking their SATs and episode ninety-six is prom night (one of their friends dies, they learn about drinking). In episode ninety-seven you find out you have cancer. In episode ninety-eight, you tell the kids that you are glad you ended your life in the corporeal world so that you could live here in the TV world and watch these beautiful kids grow up to be brilliant young adults, only to die again, but to die happy and proud. In episode ninety-nine the kids go off to college and in episode 100 the kids get word that you passed away, but you left them each a letter, and in each letter is the plotlines for the second 100 episodes of The Mindy Project.

Happy You Know The Plotlines For The First 100 Episodes Of Guys With Kids Day!

Sink Your Dead Dad’s Boat Day!

Your Dad died and in his will he left you a yacht as well as a staff and food supply for you to live on it for the rest of your life. He left your brothers the family business and all other assets. For you, just the yacht. It can’t be sold until you die or you disembark and step back onto American shores. He wants you to live in the ocean.

“Away from my step-mother,” you tell the lawyer.

The lawyer doesn’t say anything. It’s just you and him. Your brothers and step-mother heard the will separately.

“So I have to either live on the Ocean for the rest of my life, or I stay on land and get a job.”

The lawyer nods. Your Dad played this perfectly. He knew you and your step-mother had fallen in love, he knew you were sleeping together behind his back, and he took precautions to make sure you couldn’t marry her once he was gone by ensuring you could never provide her with the life to which she’s accustomed. A life where a yacht is an added luxury, not the limit of her assets. She’ll never live on that yacht with you, and she’ll never live with you if all you’re doing is earning ends meet at a day job.

“You win Dad,” you whisper out loud.

The lawyer slides another pile of papers your way.

“These are the insurance documents,” he says. “Should the boat sink, you’ll need these to collect the insurance payment, which would be approximately ten million dollars.”

Insurance payment?

You scan the documents, and your solution is plain as day. You ask the lawyer, “Why you doing this?”

“I’ve been your family lawyer for a long time,” he says. “I saw your father and step-mother together. I think you two make a better couple.”

Shake the lawyer’s hand, then race down to the dock, get on board your yacht and start crashing it into some rocks until it sinks and you can buy your dead Dad’s third wife a brand new house to share with you.

Happy Sink Your Dead Dad’s Boat Day!

Baby Namer Day!

You’ve been making a fortune as an artisanal baby namer. Forward thinkers bring their babies to you, you look at them, bounce them a little bit up and down, then you say, “Name him Pete.”

Today your business is going to go under. You’re finally going to be shown a baby you can’t name.

You won’t even look at the mother. Not until you stare at the baby for a few seconds, just long enough to know exactly where he got those eyes.

“Lauren?” you’ll say to the mother, without looking up from the boy.

She wasn’t sure if she wanted you in your son’s life. It was just a fling for you obviously. She was just a woman you met in a hotel bar. It was her fault she got knocked up, but getting knocked up is nothing but a biological process. Being a family is something a whole lot more, something you don’t want to do with strangers.

“Then I found you on the internet and I saw that you’ve built your entire life around babies. I knew it could only benefit our child to have you as a father,” she’ll say.

Your son will feel heavy in your hands. Though he’s not very big, he’ll feel heavier than any baby you’ve ever held.

“Name him,” Lauren will say.

And that’s when your business will fold. You had a talent for naming babies who mean nothing to you. Now that you have one of your own, naming him feels impossible. You’ll suddenly realize there’s so much in a name. You’ll stammer and struggle but you simply won’t be able to give your own son a name, and the pressure will extend to all the other babies that are subsequently brought to you, until you finally close up shop.

Since Lauren primarily came to you because she knew you were loaded, when you no longer have an income because you’ve lost your talent for naming babies she’ll fly back west and you’ll have to sue for visitation rights. You’ll get one weekend a month and every other Christmas. With no help from you, she’ll name your son Elliot.

Happy Baby Namer Day!

Cabin Fever Day!

You and Clara’s husband Tim stayed behind because you both have leg injuries, while Clara and your husband Paul went hiking through the snow to try to find food and hopefully a ranger who can find a way to get you all down off this mountain.

“They could be gone for days and they might not make it back,” Tim says limping around the cabin. “We should start having sex now.”

“How can you—”

“Oh spare me!” Tim shouts. “The longer you play this game of being the loyal, loving wife grateful to her husband for risking his life for you, the less sex we’re having.”

“But they’ve barely just left,” you say. “Look, I can still see them. They’re waving.”

You motion for Tim to come to the window and wave back to them. Tim slaps you.

“Dammit you need to think realistically,” he shouts. “If we wait to have sex until we’re sure they’re dead, we might be too weak to even feel sexual, not to mention we’ll be trying to come to grips with the reality that our spouses have died somewhere out there in the snow, possibly never to have their bodies found by anything but packs of hungry wolves. Think you’ll be up for boning with the image of your husband’s corpse being torn apart by wolves on your mind?”

You concede that no, you would not. Neither would Tim, he says. He loves Clara way too much to cheat on her while her body is being eaten by animals.

“And supposing we do wait,” Tim continues. “And when we manage to have sex we find out we are the perfect mates for each other, that the sex is the best we’ve ever had. But, oops, we waited too long and we’re too dehydrated and hungry to have sex a second time. Almost more tragic than if we’d never had sex at all! We’d die regretting that we waited, regretting that we stood on formality instead of grabbing as much erotic opportunity from what little time we had left.”

You’ve spent too much of your life regretting things. Tim’s right. You love Paul, but waiting to be sure he’s dead before you have sex with Tim is just another instance of you living as if tomorrow is some kind of guarantee.

You take off your clothes and Tim enters you for approximately 30 seconds before Paul and Clara burst into the cabin with a half-dozen park rangers. The rangers had been hiking up the mountain when they bumped into Paul and Clara having frantic sex against a snow bank around 200 feet from the cabin’s front door.

Happy Cabin Fever Day!

Urban Outfitters Robbery Spree Day!

When you get up to the register to pay for a book called Faces People Make While Farting, the cashier will notice you’re nervous.

“You have no right to be nervous when you’re so cute,” he’ll say.

You’ll be flattered when you pull the gun on him and tell him to empty the register.

“A girl as cute as you shouldn’t need to commit crimes,” he’ll say.

You’ll blush as you whisper for him to empty the cash faster.

“If I knew armed robbers might look like you I’d have started working as a cashier a long time ago,” he’ll say.

Smile at him. He’ll smile back.

“You just live your life robbing Urbans then?” he’ll ask.

“And a few Madewells,” tell him.

He’ll hand you the bag of money. Your hands will touch.

“Can you run in those skinny jeans?” ask him.

He’ll nod.

Wrap your pinky around his thumb and command, “Let’s go then.”

He’ll hop the counter knocking over a display of iPhone cases that look like old tape cassettes and the two of you will run outside to your car and speed off on a cross-country spree of youth-marketed clothing chain robbery.

You’ll become folk heroes when during a robbery of an Urban Outfitters in Atlanta you win the favor of customers still in the store by giving them free armfuls of leggings and hoodies and copies of “Wreck This Journal.” That’s when the Feds will take an interest, when it looks like you’re getting the Robin Hood label, when you start handing out for free the youth that’s supposed to be sold to them.

The excitement for your outlaw adventure will build when security tapes hit the news, the two of you always making a point of kissing once, kissing sloppy, just before taking off with the money from every single store. Customers begin showing up at Urbans and Madewells just to kiss while snapping phone pics of themselves that they can post on Facebook.

Copycat robberies start popping up at J Crews and Forever 21s and even a few Gaps. Parents demand the police double their efforts to capture you. Magazines display you on their covers under headlines blaming the economy and pornography for your crime spree. In the midwest citizen militias voluntarily guard clothing stores intent on proving to their young ‘it can’t happen here.’

“How’s it end?” he asks you in a Super 8 bed in Sacramento, his arms wrapped around your naked body.

“We have to be gunned down,” you tell him. His kiss tells you he’s on the same page.

You’ll be shot to death outside an Urban Outfitters in San Antonio, TX. More than 600 rounds will be fired by more than three dozen police officers and you’ll each be hit more than fifteen times. Your fame will skyrocket and you’ll be idolized by kids for years to come, and Urban Outfitters will make millions selling tee shirts with your gun-toting silhouettes silk-screened across the chest.

Happy Urban Outfitters Robbery Spree Day!

External Hard Drive Blues Day!

You’re a new hire in an IT department and you’re sitting in a music venue listening to your boss sing a terrible original blues number called “External Hard Drive Blues.”

The song is about how his “old lady” found his “girly movies” on his external hard drive and now he’s got “the blues.”

You want to keep this job so you didn’t think you had a choice but to come see him play when he handed you the flyer. At the end of his set your boss is going to come and sit at your table.

“You’re the first of my staff I could ever get to come out and see me,” he’ll say. “They don’t like to mix the personal with the office. They don’t think it’s right to work under someone after you’ve witnessed their art. That’s what they say anyway. But you’re different.”

Tell him, “You looked like you were really having some fun up there.”

He’ll say that you get him and he’ll ask if you want to make love to his wife while he watches.

“Come on,” he’ll say. “Don’t make me write a song called the Rejected Request To Have Sex With My Wife While I Watch Blues.”

Follow him home in his car and make love to his wife while he watches. Anything to keep him from writing another song.

Happy External Hard Drive Blues Day!

The Crush Is All Day!

Stacey wants to know why you think you love her so much, she says it’s just a crush. You’re only 14, she’s only 15. It’s a crush.

“You can move beyond it. It’s a crush.”

Tell her the crush is all.

“Man loves for a day or a lifetime, it’s a crush,” you say. “On that day, in that lifetime, the crush is all.”

It’s all he breathes. It’s all he thinks about. His first thought on waking is the crush. His last thought at bedtime is the crush.

If a man finds himself thinking he’s going to die.

“If I find myself in trouble tonight,” you tell Stacey, ignoring her friends waiting and laughing by the door, her friends who want her to return to the dance. “In danger. If I find myself with a gun to my head or trapped under something that isn’t going to budge, or in a car crash or a plane crash, I’ll think about you.”

It’s what all the men think about in every movie ever made. The man in danger has someone he needs to return to, a love, a crush. It keeps him alive. It keeps him going. He stays alive thanks to the crush, because the crush is all he has to live for.

“The crush is all there is,” tell Stacey.

Tell her she can go back inside and spend the rest of the dance with Ron, if she wants, but it’s not going to change what you feel. It’s not going to give you a different thing to live for.

“You could save my life tonight, Stacey,” you tell her. “I’d be a fool not to love you tonight.”

Turn around and walk away. Walk like you still think she might go back inside. There’s no way she’s going back inside.

Happy The Crush Is All Day!

Maximum Helen Day!

Today’s the day you look in the mirror and say “Look out world, you’re about to get a dose of Maximum Helen.” Then you’re going to go out into your city and live your life in such a way as to impact your fellow man and your environment with the maximum expression of your personhood.

Start by going to the park, sitting in the fountain, and peeing. Then tell your coffee cart guy the names of every boy and man you ever loved who didn’t love you back, making sure to pee on his coffee cart while you do. Next, climb the fire escape of a building until you get to the top and start screaming at the people below a list of the skin rashes and infections you’ve had in your lifetime to distract them so they won’t realize you’re peeing on them until it’s too late. Then, go to work and spend eight hours filing with the greatest precision your coworkers have ever seen while making sure to dab just a droplet of your pee on every file-folder. When it’s time to clock out, join your coworkers for happy hour but don’t pee in their drinks (save it for the blue cheese dressing that comes with the buffalo wings). Finally, flirt with a man until he asks to go home with you. When you get back to his place, hold him down and pee on him unless he says he’s into that sexually because ew.

When the day is finally over, get some much needed sleep because giving the world a dose of Maximum Helen can be quite draining.

Happy Maximum Helen Day!

He Exhibits All Ten Warning Signs Listed In Yahoo’s “Ten Warning Signs That You’re In Love With A Cheating Man” Day!

He’s working a lot. Yahoo says when he works a lot it means he might be working on loving someone new.

He’s showering a lot. Yahoo says when he showers a lot it’s because he’s washing off the lingering scent of someone new.

He’s constantly singing love songs out loud without any cause for a love song to be sung. Yahoo says if he spontaneously bursts out into love songs it’s because those love songs are songs he has to sing when he thinks about someone new.

He occasionally shows up covered in mud. Yahoo says when your man shows up muddy it’s because he had to dispose of the bodies of the people who witnessed him giving all his love to someone new.

He bought seven new cars. Yahoo says a man has no reason to buy a lot of new cars unless he’s going on long moonlight drives with someone special, someone young, someone fun, someone who is anyone, anyone at all, anyone at all but you.

He has crabs. Yahoo says there ain’t no other reason for a man to have crabs unless those crabs side-glided off the body of someone new.

He’s been spending a lot of time in his secret second apartment and according to Yahoo a man should spend an average of no more than two nights a week in his secret second apartment unless he’s using that secret second apartment to spend secret time with someone secret and new.

He can sometimes be found with his penis inside another woman. In the immortal words of Yahoo, “There is simply no reason for your man to place his manhood upon or up inside the womanhood of a woman who, for all intents and purposes is not you, unless your man is interested in the womanhood under the operation of a woman other than you, AKA a woman who happens to be someone new.

He’s gone. Yahoo says when a man is gone there’s a very good chance what’s "gone” to you is actually the “arrival” at the doorstep of someone new.

He says he met someone new. If Yahoo is correct, a man never says he met someone new unless he’s decided that you are someone old and there’s another one, a different one, a one who in your man’s eyes is someone who alleviates that “I’m scared of not mattering anymore” feeling, a one who can only be described as someone new.

Since your man meets all ten criteria, it’s time to tell him that you wish him well but you understand that the heart cannot be tamed, girlfriend.

Happy He Exhibits All Ten Warning Signs Listed In Yahoo’s “Ten Warning Signs That You’re In Love With A Cheating Man” Day!

Your New Boyfriend Has A Laser Target On His Chest At All Times Day!

He didn’t mention it in his profile. You’re glad he didn’t. It might have deterred you from meeting him, and though it’s early, you’re starting to think meeting him is the best thing that’s ever happened to you.

“You don’t know who it is?” you asked on your second date, when you finally started discussing the elephant in the room.

“Nor do I know why,” he said.

You stared at the red dot as it flickered ever so slightly closer to his heart.

“How long has it—”

“Eleven years.”

“And he’s never once fired?”

Just once. It was late. He was in an unfamiliar neighborhood. He heard the shot and turned around to find a man with a knife in his hand dead on the ground. A mugger.

“He protected you,” you said.

“He wanted me to know my life is his to end. Not some mugger’s. His alone.”

You watched the red light flicker some more then you demanded he take you home.

That’s been the pattern. You stare at the dot on his chest until you’re so certain there’s about to be a gunshot that you can’t even breathe, and you need to be brought someplace and made love to as quickly as possible. It’s better with the dot. It makes you want to be as close to him as you can, so intertwined that you can feel the dot wander onto your skin too.

“I want to be with you to the end,” you tell him tonight, after.

“To the end?” he asks. “Or at the end?”

Both. One and the other. You need to be there when the shot is finally fired, when the dot finally turns into a bullet hole, when the gunman is (hopefully) finally identified. If that’s the main reason why you’re willing to spend the next fifty years with him, so be it. People have stayed together for a lot less.

Happy Your New Boyfriend Has A Laser Target On His Chest At All Times Day!

Drop The Act, Kevin Day!

It’s time to ditch the whole “Say hello to the new Kevin, world” thing and accept the you that you are. We’d all like to think that with a single epiphany or a determined vow to break old habits we can suddenly change the course of our lives and start living the contented, drug-and-disease-free, not-having-to-sleep-with-a-flare-gun-under-our-pillows existence that we always dreamed we could live. But after a certain point you just have to face facts. You are where you are because you are who you are.

“But I already introduced the new Kevin to the world,” you say. “The world already said, ‘Hello New Kevin,’ back. And the world heard me promise to get a job, stop selling my mother’s prescription pills, and to always consider all of my options before making hasty decisions. How can I make it up to the world?”

You have to make the world an offering as penance for making a promise in vain. Either chop off your right hand…

“Done!” you say, wrapping the bloody stump in a bread bag as you dial an ambulance with your left hand.

…Or if that doesn’t appeal to you you can just do a few hours of community service and the world will be satisfied.

“Fuck!” you shout.

Hey world, Old Kevin’s back!

Happy Drop The Act, Kevin Day!

Secret Admirer Hunter Day!

You didn’t make it as a cop so you became a private dick. But tracking cheating husbands for rich wives was making you way too cynical for your taste. So you pared down your agency to focus solely on helping young girls and, to a lesser extent, boys, determine the authors of the secret admirer letters they receive from classmates.

“The thing you want to be sure of is, do you wanna know,” you tell the girls (and occasionally boys) who show up in your office. “Getting that anonymous love letter is big boost to the spirit. No one can blame you for hoping, even assuming, it was written by the hottie who’s filling up the pages of your diary. But invariably, the kind of person who won’t sign their name is the kind of person who assumes their name won’t be welcome at the bottom of a love letter.”

Their response is usually the same. “I need to know for sure, in order to know how to proceed.”

Today’s the day you meet a client on the field hockey field with an envelope full of pictures, handwriting samples, and covert audio recordings.

“Here’s your guy,” you’ll say.

She’ll pull out the photo and say what they always say: “Ew.”

“Give him a shot?” you’ll say. “Maybe read the letter again.”

“You didn’t mention your retainer included relationship advice,” she’ll say, forging her mother’s name onto a check.

Stuff the payment in your coat and get back in your car. You can’t make them give these anons a chance. All you can do is introduce them and hope they’ll give their lovers from afar a closer glance.

Happy Secret Admirer Hunter Day!

Need Friendship Day!

He saw your flyer at the coffee shop with the words “Need Friendship” in 24 point font at the top, and a photo of you holding a wiffle ball bat just above a trim of tear away phone numbers.

“I choose my friends very carefully,” he’s saying. His name’s Jenkins.

You insist that you’re the same way. Which is why the flyer.

“For me it’s all about your survival abilities,” he says, letting you know that this is another human hunting situation.

“Makes sense,” you say. You know it’s just a guy who wants to shoot paintballs at you while you run through a cemetery, but you’re really lonely.

“Meet you behind the Dairy Queen then,” he says. “My shift ends at 1 AM.”

You’ll be there. They always go for the eyes, and they never want to hang out after, but you’ve gotten so few responses that you don’t want to be choosey.

Happy Need Friendship Day!

Can’t Crack The Rock Day!

Your foreman wants to know what the holdup is.

“Just can’t do it Jeff,” say. “Just can’t crack the rock.”

Jeff will walk away from you to the sidewalk. You’ll shout at his back that you’re sorry but you just can’t do it. He’ll keep walking, not hearing a word. Lug your jackhammer after him.

He’ll be positioned right over the heart, staring down at it, his hard hat in his hands.

“Reverence,” he’ll say. “Take your hard hat off. Even if it was your love you show some respect.”

Take off your hard hat and hang it on the handle of your jackhammer.

“BT,” he’ll say, reading the initials that aren’t yours. “What’s that stand for?”

“Beth Turner,” you tell him. You were thirteen. She had red hair. This sidewalk was outside her house.

“Until she moved away,” you say.

“First love lost,” he’ll say. You’ll nod.

Your foreman will get down on all fours and scream at her initials, “WHERE ARE YOU BETH TURNER?!”

He’ll demand you join him. The two of you will scream at the initials you carved into wet cement twenty years ago, “WHERE ARE YOU BETH TURNER?!” You’ll scream until you’re in tears, until you don’t have anything to scream anymore.

“Thanks,” you’ll say as you ready your jackhammer.

“All part of the job,” your foreman will say. He’ll pat you on the back as you ready your jackhammer to bust up that heart containing yours and Beth Turner’s initials forever.

Happy Can’t Crack The Rock Day!

He’s In Love With A Liar Day!

He’s got you blindfolded and won’t let you peek because it’s a big surprise. When he finally lets you peek you’ll see he bought you a rare, early edition of Villette by Charlotte Bronte because one of the lies you told was that your senior thesis at the college you claimed to have attended was on Charlotte Bronte.

“Read me some,” he says. “Read me your favorite part. I love you, but that’s not enough. I also want to love what you love.”

You flip through the book looking for a section that looks like it might have some good lines and you luckily end up on a description of some snow which works pretty okay in the making it seem like you’re not completely faking it department.

This is getting harder. He stares into your eyes like his life depends on it. He doesn’t caress your skin so much as celebrate it. He has become one hundred percent convinced that loving you is the reason he was put on this planet, and he intends to make sure he lives up to his destiny. You’re ashamed to admit it, but the sex is some of the best you’ve had, and you think the thrill of knowing his passion for you is founded on utter lies is doing something special for you.

Or, you’re falling for him too.

That can’t be, though. If it is, you’d better give up everything right now. Don’t even leave a note, just discard the whole plan and disappear without explaining why. The deception felt like it was reasonable means to an end before you realized just how much he’d come to cherish you, and how much you enjoyed being cherished. Falling for him wasn’t part of the plan, and if that’s what’s happening you should probably walk away.

“My father’s coming back to the states in October,” he says, fiddling with the book in your lap. “I can’t wait for him to meet you.”

“He’s coming back?” you confirm, trying to keep your voice level. “He’s coming here to America?”

He nods. You close the book and you kiss him. You make love to him convincingly. You thank him for your birthday present with your body. You use all of your talents to make him believe he should go on loving you, and he should introduce you to his father, the assassin who murdered your father eleven years ago in Belgrade. You will avenge your father’s death by making his assassin’s son love you until you can take that assassin’s life and, reluctantly now, break his son’s heart.

“I can’t wait to meet your dad,” you tell the assassin’s son when you’re resting your head on his chest once the sex has ended. “I hope he likes me.”

Happy He’s In Love With A Liar Day!