Keep Away Day!

You and your coworkers went too far and now you’re all in the hospital emergency room, waiting to get stitched up. A policeman is asking you questions.

“We were just bored so we decided to have some fun,” you tell the policeman.

“Fun,” the policeman repeats.

“Our boss was looking for his staple remover,” Mary adds, holding a napkin to the bloody gash in her forehead. “So Louis found it and he shouted, ‘Keep away!’”

Louis says, “I didn’t expect it to go the way it did.” Louis’s arm is definitely broken. He’s constantly sucking in air from the pain and can barely speak.

“How did it go?” the policeman asks.

Louis threw the staple remover to Mary. Mary threw it to you. You threw it to Louis. Then repeat that a few times, with your boss chasing the staple remover from person to person.

“Then he kind of lost it,” you say.

Your boss first punched you in the stomach. Then he grabbed Mary by her hair and slammed her head into a desk. Then he grabbed Louis’s arm and twisted it up behind his back and dropped him to the floor.

“He was crying the whole time,” Mary says. “Yelling, ‘No fair!’ And just sobbing uncontrollably.”

“Over a game of Keep Away!” Louis exclaims.

The policeman shoots Louis a look. “Keep Away is not a joke,” he says. “Keep Away among adults is lethal. It’s the leading cause of non-alcohol related violent assaults. You can’t dredge up that kind of childhood feeling of exclusion and expect to walk away unscathed.”

“We’re sorry,” you all three say.

“Tell that to him,” the policeman says, pointing to your boss, still crying in the examination room. You can’t hear him through the glass, but you can see he’s telling the other officer, “No fair! They were playing Keep Away.”

The three of you go inside to apologize to your boss for playing Keep Away. He says he accepts your apology, but he doesn’t stop crying. He never stops. In the years to come, when you’ve all left for different jobs, you’ll stay in touch, making sure at least one of you visits your boss in the hospital every week where he continues to cry and repeat, “No fair.” You just sit by his bed and tell him he’s right, it’s no fair. It was no fair at all.

Happy Keep Away Day!

Hammock Day!

Your boyfriend doesn’t understand why you won’t have sex with him in the hammock. You try to tell him it just won’t be that comfortable, but he’s not buying it. It’s your last day in the rental cabin and he wants to make sure the two of you get the most out of it.

“Come on,” he says. “We’ve had sex in the lake. In the outdoor shower. At the top of the hiking trail. Even in the papasan chair in the cabin. The only place left is the hammock.”

“Godammit!” you scream at him. “I just don’t want to!”

Your boyfriend goes and mopes by the fire pit. It’s not his fault he wants to have sex with you in the hammock. He just wants to celebrate how much he loves you. You’d better go to him and tell him the truth.

“My Dad died in a hammock,” you tell your boyfriend. “He fell asleep. Then he had a nap nightmare, twisted himself up in the hammock and choked to death. We found him there, wrapped up and blue.”

Your boyfriend hugs you close. He apologizes. Had he known, he never would have suggested it. He should have been more sensitive.

“No,” you say, pissed at yourself for ruining the vacation. “No I need to get over this. My dad dying can’t affect my relationship with hammocks forever. It’s time for me to move on.”

You drag your boyfriend by the hand to the hammock and you take off his clothes, then yours. Gingerly, you climb in, then he climbs in after you. You kiss, carefully, trying to maintain your balance, then before you know it, you’re making love. Passionately, wonderfully. You can’t believe you feared the hammock for so many years. You’re having better sex than you have had all week, until you’re just about to come, and the hammock flips in on itself trapping you both in its net. You’re both dead within seconds.

Happy Hammock Day!

The Temps Aren’t Hitting It Off Day!

Bring them into your office and let them know their assignment is ending.

“But I was told this was temp-to-perm,” Larry, the boy temp says.

“And I’ve received no complaints about my work thus far,” Lesley, the girl temp says.

Explain that it’s not about their work. The work is beside the point.

“We were just hoping you two might fall in love,” explain. “Or at least, that you might have a nice steamy fling that we’d all get to watch ignite and them flame out.”

Tell them that everyone in your office is married or hopelessly single, and you’ve all already mixed and matched each other, engaging in every possible workplace affair that can be dreamed up and there’s just no one left to excite the imagination anymore.

“So we were hoping a couple young temps might be brought in here, share a cubicle, maybe share some lunches,” you say. “Before we knew it, you’d be shooting each other dirty looks across the conference table and we’d all be reminded of what it’s like to be young and still feel anything below the waist.”

“So,” Lesley says. “You, like, wanted to watch us have sex?”

“God no,” tell her. “We’re not pervs. We just wanted to share some floorspace with two people hungering for each other. Unfortunately, you two were a bust.”

“We were just being professional,” Larry protests.

“Yeah, I noticed,” tell him. “I mean, I noticed until I got so bored that I clocked out and went home to be with my kids. How boozed up did you two get on Beer Fridays, and not so much as a grope?”

“We thought we were here to help out with the Emerson account,” Lesley says.

“Nah we made that up,” tell them. “You’ve just been refilling old files we pulled out of storage to pretend we had something for you to do. We assumed it’d be so dull that you’d have no choice to but seek stimulation in each other’s pants, but no dice.”

Lesley leans across her chair and starts kissing Larry. She massages his chest awkwardly. Larry tries to reciprocate.

“Embarrassing,” tell them. “Sorry, I been married 24 years and I know what it looks like to fake it.”

Stand up and escort them out of your office.

“Don’t feel so bad,” tell them. “Chemistry isn’t something you can manufacture. Good luck finding a real job.”

After they go, head down the hall to see if those legal proofreaders are feeling any sparks. They’ve been on contract for only a week, but last time you walked past their cubes you thought you heard the girl giggling. Things could be heating up.

Happy The Temps Aren’t Hitting It Off Day!

Public School Kids Day!

When she transferred out of private to public school, you thought it best to let her go. She’d fallen below your class. It was time for you to find someone new.

You didn’t count on missing her.

You started showing up at her new school after the bell. She’d come into your Jeep and you’d talk and you’d tell her you might have been wrong.

The poor kids from her public school were always watching. Especially one kid. A guy. He couldn’t take his eyes off the two of you. You asked her about him, but she said he’s just a boy named Jack.

“Does he like you?” you asked.

She shrugged. She blushed a little.

One day when you arrived, a crowd of poor kids swarmed your Jeep. They told you to stop coming around.

“She belongs here now,” they said. “She belongs with Jack. And you’re in the way.”

You laughed at them. You admit it, you looked down on them. Public school kids. You told them you’ll come and see her until she says not to. You told them she’d be a fool to stay with the likes of them when a private school kid was giving her a second chance.

They said you were confusing things for her. She belongs at their public school, and she and Jack are in love. She just can’t let it happen until you’re out of the picture.

“Out of the picture?” you asked with a laugh. They didn’t laugh with you. Eventually, she got in the Jeep, confused by all the classmates surrounding it. When you pulled away you glanced up at one of the classroom windows and you saw him, Jack, staring down at you.

A few days later, a Friday, you were driving home from your private academy and you noticed a car following you. It made turn after turn with you, until you finally stopped on an empty street and the car sped up and rammed your rear bumper.

You got out. You went to look at the damage. You saw the driver, one of the public school kids, a girl, who crowded around your Jeep. You called her a bitch. She stepped on the gas and crushed your legs against your Jeep.

The girl got out of her car and stood over you, pinned between the two bumpers.

“She’s a public school girl now,” the girl said. “She belongs to Jack. Stay away from her if you don’t want to lose the top half too.”

Now you’re in a hospital room. You won’t ever be able to walk again. She hasn’t come to visit. You spend your nights alone, wishing to God you had never tried to get in between the love of a couple of public school kids.

Happy Public School Kids Day!

Fist-Bump Forever Day!

You and your buddy Greg are best friends and you always have been best friends and last night you both died in a car wreck. Your wives just found your wills.

“Greg’s will has a weird request,” Greg’s widow tells your widow.

“Oh God, his too?” your widow tells Greg’s widow.

You and Greg, in a fit of friendship one night, went to an all night lawyer and had your wills changed to read that if you and Greg both die at the same time, you’d like to be buried in a two person coffin with your right fists sewn together in a fist-bump.

“This way if we ever get dug up by grave-robbers or archeologists, future generations will know we were bros forever,” your wills read.

“Do you think they committed suicide just to make this happen?” your widow will ask.

“This is embarrassing for us,” Greg’s widow says. “Everyone at the funeral will think they loved each other more than us.”

“Oh God, it’s—“

Greg’s widow confirms with a nod. “Bros before hos.”

Your widows, feeling angry and betrayed, honor your request nonetheless, and everyone in the funeral pays their respects to your fist-bumping corpses, frozen in an eternal bro-out.

Your widows remarry hastily.

Fist-Bump Forever Day!

All Of Them Cheaters Day!

Today Sam’s cheating on Joan with Mary, a library science grad student he met at a Chipotle. Joan’s cheating on Sam with Morris, some guy who owns a gun store and who is cheating on Luanne, an attorney who doesn’t realize her firm reps the mob yet. Luanne’s cheating on Morris with Kevin, a major beltway insider who is cheating on Debbie, a homemaker with a limp. Debbie is cheating on Kevin with this motherfucker with a big-ass beard who hangs out at the Muddy Deuce (they don’t use names) and who is cheating on Vivian (advertising copywriter). Vivian’s cheating on the motherfucker with a big-ass beard who hangs out at the Muddy Deuce with her favorite Starbucks barista, Pam, who’s cheating on Lisa, currently unemployed but big into clowning. Lisa’s cheating on Pam with Oliver, a guy who sells weed at the Sunoco, who is cheating on Geraldine, a disaster preparedness expert who is cheating on you. You’re not cheating on Geraldine. You love her and don’t want anyone else but her and you don’t know what you’d do if you ever found out she wasn’t true to you.

Happy All Of Them Cheaters Day!

Dance Lessons Day!

She doesn’t understand.

“He thinks bad things happen when he dances,” she tells the instructor.

“Everyone’s nervous the first time they try to dance,” the instructor says to you. “But we all have the movement of the wind in our limbs. We just need to grow comfortable with allowing it to take control.”

You tell the instructor it’s not the first time you danced. You tell them both, bad things happened the last time.

“So are we not supposed to have a first dance at our wedding then?” your fiancé pouts.

“Don’t disappoint her,” the instructor says. “I’ll help you. Now first, let me just put on this waltz and see what you do.”

You insist that they need to take you seriously. They roll their eyes.

“Fine,” you say. “But both of you need to move to the other side of the room while I dance alone.”

The music begins. You take a step. Then another. Then another. Then you raise your arms. And you spin.

When you come out of the spin your fiancé and the instructor are naked and ravenously fucking while growling like dogs. The mirrors have all been scorched a solid black as if by fire. Out the window you see people covering their ears to block the sound of police horses yowling like housecats in heat. It’s 2 pm, but the sky is night. The floor of the dance studio opens and Satan rises from the gap like a geyser of black oil gushing in slow motion to form a many-winged beast. The walls of the studio explode outward and Satan releases a howl that instantly sends everyone within a thousand miles into madness. The reckoning has commenced.

You stop dancing and say to your fiancé and the instructor, “See?”

Happy Dance Lessons Day!

You’re The Captain Of A Cruise Ship Day!

“Captain,” your first mate says. “All of the passengers are gone.”

“Gone?” you ask. “We’re in the middle of the ocean.”

“I’ve looked everywhere,” he says. “All 1,426 passengers are missing.”

Walk around the ship yelling, “Passengers! Passengers, where are you?” No one will answer.

“Well fuck!” you shout when you return to the Captain’s deck. “Everyone on shore is gonna be so mad!”

You return to shore and apologize for having lost so many family members and colleagues. You say you understand if no one ever wants to board one of your ships again.

Overnight your next cruise sells out.

“You’re our golden goose,” the chairman of the cruise company says. “Everyone assumes you sailed through a door to the next dimension. People want to know what other realms of existence are possible. You’re going to travel the exact same coordinates as you did when all your passengers went poof.”

The cruise line changes their advertising to specifically sell journeys into the unknowable. Cruise after cruise sells out until most of the North American population has disappeared and the cruise line goes bankrupt. You spend the rest of your life feeling lonely because everyone’s gone.

Happy You’re The Captain Of A Cruise Ship Day!

Get A Room You Two Day!

Meet him at a parade, it doesn’t matter which one or what it celebrates (nothing racist). You’ll both be alone. You’ll grow comfortable with his appreciation of certain floats, his awe at certain balloon designs, his disappointment with certain marching brigades of local organization members.

“Knights of Columbus need to step up their game,” you’ll say to him, and he’ll high five you. You’ll let your palm linger on his for a second too long, a moment too right.

“Let’s go,” tell him.

In the room, agree to stay on either sides of the bed for at least an hour. Discuss television favorites and your online social networking policies—what earns your add, what makes you unfollow—until you feel you know each other well enough to kiss. Then kiss.

Retreat back to opposite sides of the room, this time switching placement. Share a secret you’ve kept from someone indispensible in your life—a parent, a spouse if you have one, a pet. Tell each other what you can’t say to the one you can’t live without. Now strip.

Stand up and study each other’s bodies for thirty seconds, then sit down on bath towels. If you have anything that’s a dealbreaker during the act, make it known now.

One full minute of no talking. Just waiting. Anticipating. Panting for the starting gun.

The minute complete, move to the center of the bed, take each other’s naked bodies in each other’s arms, stimulate each other (with full consideration of each other’s dealbreakers) until you’re both ready to commence intercourse (unless “no intercourse” was a dealbreaker for either of you). Finish up. The entire act should take between three and seven minutes.

After, spend ten minutes telling each other stories about your childhood. Then shower separately.

Get dressed and decide who leaves first. The person who leaves second should be the one whose credit card was given for incidentals, just to be sure the other person won’t take the opportunity to rack up a huge minibar bill.

Don’t kiss goodbye. Share a smile from five feet away. Remember that just a few hours ago you were strangers. You may never see each other again. You might walk out and forget all about each other, or you might become obsessed with each other and today will completely upend the rest of your lives. In this moment, it’s just a shared smile.

You know each other as well as anyone could expect you to know each other after a single afternoon in a hotel room. You’ve done all you can. It’s out of your hands now.

Happy Get A Room You Two Day!

Convenience Store Rescue Day!

You signed up your convenience store to be on a show called Convenience Store Rescue, on which the host, a loud, alpha male who claims to be a convenience store expert, helps store owners turn things around for their businesses.

“What’s the problem with the store?” he asks in the parking lot.

“It’s been kidnapped,” you tell him. You point to the spot on the ground where the store used to be. “They said they want a million dollars or the store gets killed.”

The host walks around the parking lot. “First of all, you need to repaint the spaces on this parking lot.”

You tell him your wife was working in the store when it was kidnapped. She’s still inside it and time is running out.

“Also, that sign. You got the wrong bulbs in there. Lighting is key to get people on the road to pull in and check you out.”

You tell him that they put the store on the phone earlier and it was screaming.

“I can get you a deal on Techsmoke Electronic Cigarettes. You need new, younger clientele. E-Cigs are the way to go.”

You ask him if he’s going to do anything to rescue your store from kidnappers, or if he’s just going to make marketing suggestions.

“Don’t worry,” he says as a helicopter lands. He hops inside and picks up a machine gun. “I’ll rescue your store. And I’ll make sure they pay for what they did.”

“Think you Convenience Store Rescue Man!” you shout as he flies away, en route to bring your store back safe, ready to make those kidnappers feel worse than the hot dogs on your store’s spinning heat rollers.

Happy Convenience Store Rescue Day!

Get Kissed Day!

Today on the plane ride home the woman in the seat next to you is going to kiss you. She’s just going to lean over the armrest and plant her bright red lipstick on your mouth.

“I’m married,” tell her.

“Not anymore,” the flight attendant will say. She’ll be holding a special sky phone out for you to take. “It’s your wife. She knows.”

You take the phone and your wife tells you she wants the house, but custody of the kids should be shared pretty evenly. “The kids need both of us. There’s no reason they should have to suffer because you accepted that kiss.”

You hang up the phone, newly single. You lean over to kiss the woman in the next seat. She pulls away. “The moment’s passed,” she’ll say. “Besides, I don’t want to be the step-mom trying to win your kids’ affection.”

When the plane lands, a divorce attorney is waiting at the gate for you to sign papers.

“Hope getting kissed was worth it,” he’ll say.

You don’t wash the lipstick off your mouth for at least a month. That kiss is all you have left, and you don’t want to let it go.

Happy Get Kissed Day!

Take Him Day!

Burst into his parents’ house at dinnertime.

“He’s mine,” tell Mr. Herbert. “All mine.”

Mr. Herbert will drop his cutlery to his plate with a clank.

“The boy is going to run the hardware store,” Mr. Herbert will say.

“The boy is going to come to the city with me and marry me,” tell Mr. Herbert.

“The boy is going to do what I did and my father did before me,” Mr. Herbert will say. “The boy is a Herbert.”

Step to the table. Pick up a piece of pork chop off of Mr. Herbert’s plate. Take a bite. Drop the chop, then grab Mr. Herbert’s knife and hold it to Mrs. Herbert’s throat.

“Marilyn!” Mr. Herbert will shout. “Marilyn stay calm!”

“Let him go or Marilyn meets her maker,” shout.

“Just let the boy go!” Mrs. Herbert will shout.

“The boy will run the store, Marilyn!”

Press the knife deeper.

“For God’s sake, Lewis,” Mrs. Herbert will shout. “I want more years with you!”

“Please let my wife go,” Mr. Herbert will shout. “And let me keep my boy.”

Tell him it’s over. “And you know it,” say. “He’s going, and you can’t stop him. He’s going to leave with me, he’s going to love me, and he’s going to one day try to hold on to a boy of our own the way you’re trying to hold on to him, but he’s going to settle for holding on to me.”

Mr. Herbert will sink into his seat, let his head drop, and nod slightly.

Remove the knife from Mrs. Herbert’s throat. She’ll throw her arms around her husband. Grab the boy’s hand and yank him from his seat. Drag him out the front door and put him in the car. As you pull away, he’ll try and wave to his parents.

“Don’t wave,” tell him.

He’ll stop waving.

Happy Take Him Day!

Kid Bunker Day!

You’re on Day 34 of shooting on the reality show Kid Bunker, where a bunch of kids live together in a bunker deep underground, completely unsupervised, and none of you know that the world ended on the surface last week.

“Jeff had better watch his step,” you’re telling the camera during your Confession Session. “If he plays with my PSP once more without asking, I’m going to break his dumb face.”

You and Jeff have been going at it from day one, and when there were still viewers of your show, before everyone was incinerated in a nuclear blast, fans of the show sided with you.

“I don’t know why Jeff thinks it’s okay to be a poophead, but he does.”

“Poophead” is your signature dis. It was sweeping the nation almost as fast as the wall of hot white light and flame stormed from sea to sea after the silos were remotely infiltrated and detonated. Thousands of people bought “Poophead” t-shirts and wore them proudly. All those t-shirts are ash now.

“I think today I might tell Emily I like her,” you say to the camera, your face turning red.

Emily is a ten-year-old brown-haired girl who likes to draw with you. You two have been having an adorable will-they-won’t-they relationship. Before millions of pairs of eyes burst like grapes in a heat that rivaled that of the sun, all eyes were planted on the screen whenever you two played together, waiting for one of you to lean over and plant a kiss on the other’s cheek.

“Okay that’s all I have to say. Bye mommy I miss you!”

She used to love watching you sign off all your confessions with that.

Happy Kid Bunker Day!

Shower Cam Sheldon Day!

It’s 2046 and you’re in a nursing home. Someone is standing in your doorway. A woman in her 50s.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” she says. “I was visiting my father down the hall, and I noticed your name written on the chart outside your room. Sheldon Pendleton?”

“Pretty nosey,” tell her.

“Sheldon Pendleton,” she repeats. “Many years ago, and excuse me if I’m wrong, but did you ever go by the name…Shower Cam Sheldon?”

Oh great.

“Look, what I did when I was young and needed money I’m not going to apologize for,” tell her. “You’ve never done anything to make ends meat?”

The woman will leave without saying a word. She’ll return holding a balloon. The balloon will read “THANK YOU.”

“Where’d you get that?” ask her.

“Gift shop,” she’ll say. She’ll step into your room, cross to your chair, and hand you the balloon.

“You gave a lot to me,” she’ll say. “When I was in my first marriage, a marriage I had no business being in. In the years following my first divorce…”

“You got off to me,” say. “You’re welcome.”

“Yes, occasionally,” she says. “But most of the time, I was just grateful to be invited in. Watching you shower and masturbate on camera, it was an escape from the unbearable confines of my own life into the intimate, closed off, completely anonymous confines of someone else’s. When I turned on your shower feed, I felt like a little kid sick of her parents fighting and running off into a tree-house.”

You’ve been recognized off and on through the years, but most people just think it’s a lark to meet someone from the world of porn. They see you as a tourist attraction. This is different.

“Do you have family?” she asks.

You shake your head, no.

She’ll visit you weekly. Every time she visits her father, she’ll spend an hour with you. Then after her father dies she’ll continue to visit you. She’ll be there on the day that you die.

“Why did you visit me all these years?” you’ll ask her with some of your final breath. “Was it pity?”

“It was selfishness,” she’ll tell you. “Through your shower cam, I felt I knew you, intimately. I felt I had a friend in you. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted you to know me. When I found you here, Shower Cam Sheldon, all these years later, it gave me the opportunity to make you know me. I took it.”

You feel her hand tighten around yours. The room is graying. You seem to go in and out of sleep. You can’t know how long it takes you to respond to her when you say, “I’m glad you did.”

Happy Shower Cam Sheldon Day!

Make Love To Your Husband’s Old College Roommate, Dave Day!

Your husband’s old college roommate Dave is staying with you for a week. You’re sick of hearing them reminisce about college. You wish you had something to reminisce with Dave about that your husband could be sick of. Your husband’s at work today, so you should make love to Dave.

“Why?” Dave will ask.

“We just should,” tell him.

“I need a reason,” he’ll say.

“You’re here. I’m here,” you say, taking off your top. “My top’s off. Boobs.” You point to one of your boobs.

“You’re just reciting details about the present,” he’ll say. “Not why we should have sex.”

He drives a hard bargain.

“You knew my husband when he was younger so you represent a part of his life that I don’t know,” tell him. “Having sex with you will let me lay a claim of my own on that part of his life.”

“So it will bring you closer to him?” Dave will say. “Well, if it helps my old college buddy’s marriage, okay.”

When your husband comes home early and finds Dave inside of you, he’ll pull you both into a group hug.

“I hated you not having some claim of your own on that part of my life,” he’ll shout.

Later, your husband and Dave will reminisce about college, and you and Dave will reminisce about the sex you had earlier, and everything will be even.

Happy Make Love To Your Husband’s Old College Roommate, Dave Day!

Herbert Day!

He’s in the shower. Take the bag you packed and run down into the basement and find the cat. Put the cat into the carrier then run back upstairs and say goodbye to your daughters.

“Your dad sucks,” explain.

“Can we come?”

Tell them you don’t have the money.

“You’re taking Herbert?”

Nod. “You want mommy to have something to keep her company don’t you?”

They ask if you could maybe just date.

“I feel like I need to be off the dating scene for a bit,” tell them. “Your dad really soured me on dudes.”

They suggest that you could find a support group or something.

“Look, I want the goddamn cat,” tell them.

They’re crying now. Weird, you’d think if they liked the cat so damn much they would have changed the box once in a while. Wait. Wait, tell them that!

“Funny,” you say. “If you liked Herbert so much, maybe you should have expressed your appreciation by changing his cat box every once in a while.”

Burn.

“Leave the cat,” your daughter, Laura, says. “Or I’ll run upstairs and tell Daddy you’re going.”

“You wouldn’t,” tell her.

She would.

“Herbert stays, or you both do,” Laura says.

You open the carrier and set Herbert free. Then you climb out of your daughters’ window.

You’ve never been prouder of your ten-year-old girl. She’s not going to be pushed around by men like you were. She’s going to get what she wants.

Happy Herbert Day!

Time To Be Honest With Your Roommate Day!

Say, “Roommate, I am in love with you.”

Roommate will say, “This is music to my ears. I have loved you since the day you were added to the lease.”

You’ll go to him, but he’ll push you away. Even while refusing your embrace, his hands on your shoulders still make your heart flutter.

“What of the Roommate oath?” he’ll say. “Whether spoken or not, we entered into it the day we began sharing a living space. We will bring shame to this apartment if we engage in romantic relations.”

“Then let’s get rid of the apartment,” tell him.

Thirty minutes later your apartment building is engulfed in flame. You pulled the fire alarm to try and get everyone out (only four perished). Your apartment is gone. There’s nothing left to be shamed by your love.

“We’re free,” you say. “With no apartment, we’re no longer roommates.”

“Free to love,” he’ll say. “With no roommate oath to stand in our way.

“My Alice!” an old man will cry upon realizing his wife didn’t make it.

Happy Time To Be Honest With Your Roommate Day!

You’re In Love With Your Driving School Instructor Day!

He says it’s not real. It’s just a common pitfall of the driving lesson.

“I’m teaching you how to maneuver your way through the world,” he says. “I’m helping you to see that something you thought was scary really isn’t scary at all. I’m making sure you can go wherever you want to go without getting hurt. How are you supposed to not fall in love with a man who’s giving you that?”

Tell him he’s wrong, it’s more than that. It’s the hair on his wrists. The way every time you successfully parallel park he shouts, “Blammo, that’s a keeper.” The way he always offers you an altoid when he takes one from the six tins he keeps in his glove compartment.

“I think we were made for each other,” tell him. “I think I want to marry you.”

He says he’s been hurt before. He’s had girls tell him while they were behind the wheel that he was the one they always wanted. Then when it comes time to step out of the car, maybe introduce him to their friends, suddenly they aren’t so excited to date a 56-year-old driving instructor when he’s not in the passenger seat reminding them when to signal.

“Then maybe we’ll never leave the car,” tell him. “When we’re here, in this car, we’re married.”

It’s a wonderful marriage. You pay attention to each other and understand each other. You look out for each other. You’re a team. The sex is dizzying, if a little cramped. If only it wasn’t all poisoned by the growing dread of that driving test on the horizon.

You cry on the morning of the test.  “I don’t want a license!” you shout. “I want us.”

He says the license is “us.” That little laminated card represents everything the two of you have built over the last twelve weeks.

“Get your license, or we might as well have been nothing,” he says.

As you drive along the route with the DMV grader in the passenger seat, everything feels wrong. You feel like you’re betraying him with every correct turn. You want to crash over the pylon cone then run to the parking lot and into his arms again.

But you don’t. You pass the test. You honor your time together with a perfect grade. When you look for him in the parking lot, he’s gone.

You still look for him when you’re out on the road. You search the cars ahead for his rooftop Student Driver sign. You worry you’ll find him one day, giving instruction to another young girl. You don’t know if you could bear it.

Your license feels warm in your wallet. It’s an heirloom. A sweet memory. And every time you take it out to flash it at the doorman of a bar, you feel like you’re making a declaration. “I loved once,” you’re telling him as he checks your date of birth. “Look at the face in the picture. That’s the face of a girl who loved.”

Happy You’re In Love With Your Driving School Instructor Day!

Time To Get Your Buddy Greg Laid Day!

Satanists want your buddy Greg.

“We want to sacrifice him,” the HSIC (head Satanist in charge) will tell you.

You’ll try to shake Greg awake. He fell asleep on the bar an hour ago.

“Why Greg?” you ask.

“The Dark Lord demands the sacrifice of someone pure,” the HSIC answers. “If you catch my drift.“

"A virgin?” you ask. “Are you crazy? Greg’s 25. He’s bragged about banging wads of chicks.“

"Apparently, your friend doesn’t trust you enough to be honest with you,” he says. “We will take him one week from tonight when the red moon burns bright.”

When Greg wakes up you relate what the satanists told you, expecting him to laugh.

He doesn’t.

“I just never got around to it,” Greg says.

“Well now look what your laziness got you. We have one week to get you laid or you’re going to be sacrificed to the devil!”

“Shit,” Greg says.

So begins a madcap week in which you try to hook Greg up with various women hoping for an erotic connection (Greg won’t go to prostitutes as he doesn’t want to contribute to the human trafficking economy), and the satanists constantly show up to cock-block Greg right when it looks like he’s about to get some.

Don’t give up. Don’t slow down. Get your friend Greg laid. The Dark Lord craves him.

Happy Time To Get Your Buddy Greg Laid Day!

Teen Date Day!

Parents pay you to chaperone their teenage kids on their dates. It’s usually a pretty easy gig. Parents give you cash to drive their kids around, let them make out in the backseat, and you just have to pry them apart if they go to third or higher.

Tonight you’re chapping two rich kids, Wallace Edmonds and Ashley Van London. A couple blocks from the house, Wallace leans over the front seat with a wad of bills.

“We’re not going to the movies,” Wallace says. “We’re going into Pottersville.”

You tell him he’s mistaken. “That’s the wrong side of the tracks.”

“And it happens to be the hometown of the girl I love.”

“And the boy I love,” Ashley says.

Wallace and Ashley going out is their parents’ idea. Because Wallace’s parents know he’s in love with Betty June, a girl well below his station in life, just as Adam Wilkes is below Ashley’s.

“Our parents won’t let us love the boy and girl we want to love,” Ashley pleads.

“There’s a thousand dollars in that wad,” Wallace says, dropping the bills in the front seat.

You don’t say anything.

“Give him another grand!” Ashley shouts.

“Wait,” Wallace says. “Sir, have you never been in our situation? On either end?”

You’re back there again. Prom night. Standing on Georgiana Turner’s front step, her father yanking your boutonnière off your jacket to stuff a hundred dollars in your breast pocket, telling you he found his daughter an appropriate prom date and you should find yourself someone else to dance with.

“Someone from where you come from.”

You accepted the money. You were respectful to Georgiana’s father and walked away. Georgiana never spoke to you again.

“Keep your money,” you tell Wallace. “I’ll take you to Betty and Adam.“

Wallace and Ashley cheer for you from the back seat. You might be making a very bad move, business-wise, but poor kids deserve a fair shake at winning a rich kid’s heart.

Happy Teen Date Day!