Liars and the Lottery in Louisiana

She had big dreams and told me all about them when the billboard announced the lottery jackpot was over $100 million. "What I wouldn't do if I won that kind of money."

She'd buy a new house. She'd buy her son new football equipment since he wants to play in the NFL and he's good enough if she could afford the right gear and the schools with the best coaches.

She'd give one million dollars to her church and tell the pastor, "Reverend, don't look for my envelope no more!" At the pearly gates St. Peter would say, "Let her in. She already gave."

On she went until I said, "First you'd have to hold a press conference and say you'll keep your job. That's what they always do."

"Anybody who wins that kind of money and says they're gonna keep working is a willful liar who doesn't love Jesus."

Amen.

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One Thanksgiving

It's a cliche but they really had forgotten to turn the oven on and our happy hour lasted much longer than planned. My sister had brought a college friend from Nebraska so she wouldn't be alone on Thanksgiving. My brother latched on to her midwestern roots and went deep into a story about tasseling corn. Children in corn country apparently pull the hair, which is really the flower, off the top. It prevents the corn from breeding and makes the ears grow bigger (or something like that).

The story had no particular point. Nebraska girl who, in fact, had never tasseled corn, tried to be polite.

Then Dad interjected. "I've just always wondered how they get them spinning in opposite directions."

Mom rose from her chair, pointed her index fingers straight out from her breasts, and began spinning them in opposite directions. "Wheeeeee," she sang.

The turkey was ready soon after.

An (Awkward) Toast On the Occasion of My Cousin's Engagement

Their mouths froze around hamburgers, drinks, and stifled cheers. It was so quiet you could hear an hors d'oeuvres drop. All because my uncle gave a toast.

"Hello everyone," it began. "For those who don't know me, I'm lucky enough to be the father of the bride."

(It was an engagement party but that's a technicality.)

"I want to start by thanking Trudy for hosting this great party."

Not bad.

"As many of you know, Trudy and I got divorced many years ago."

Uh-oh.

"And it was nasty. A lot of things were said and done that were really mean. One of them I'll never forget."

This isn't good.

"It was when Trudy screamed at me, 'I'm sick of you and all your goddamn shanty Irish relatives!'"

Silence.

"So I just want to say, hey Tom Murphy, welcome to the family!"

I think the next person to speak was a caterer.


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My Life of Crime: Technically I Was Only Assaulted That Night in Denver

SMACK! My glasses went flying (they were already missing a temple). I went to the sidewalk to find them and two guys started yelling at my coworkers.

One attacker had a gun. They began mugging us, one by one (while I crawled around thinking, "Hey, watch out for my glasses.")

The first guy handed over $5. One woman gave her wallet. Another gave her purse. I found my glasses as another—brave, crazy or both—pulled her wallet from her purse and her cash from her wallet. She threw the bills on the ground. "You can have my money but there's stuff in here that I need."

The unarmed one stooped to pick it up. "I could kick him in the face," I thought, "...And that guy would shoot me."

Once they'd gathered the cash they ran.

The cops rounded up a bunch of Hispanic men. Not one fit the descriptions we'd provided.

(Don't worry, friends. This happened years ago.)

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Born to be a Bellhop

He spoke slowly, sure. There were odd pauses and pronunciations but by and large he sounded pretty normal. Except when he answered the phone. Then he slowed way down. "Lodge Bell Service. This is Larry." "Lodge" was "laahhdge." "This" rose like a question and fell to his name with a lazy drawl. It took three seconds.

If you were calling to say you'd be late or had issues at the airport, you had to wait. When the front desk called, they had to wait. When guests called for more glasses or even an emergency, they had to wait.

A front desk girl used to the staccato "Bell Service!" from the rest of us finally asked. "You see," he said, "I wasn't here long before I realized that a lot of people who call the Bell Desk are angry about something, and they'll yell at you. But if they think you're retarded...."

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The Last Summer Night in Charlestown

They don't know it's the last one. How could they?

Tomorrow they'll close their windows, trapping the click and clank of forks on their plates inside again. The low murmur of their conversations and unexpected bursts of laughter will be private once more. The breezes won't flip through the magazines on the counter or chase the napkins across the table. Happy dog barks and little babies' cries will grow quiet, taking some joy with them into the silence.

Soon, they'll draw the blinds at sunset — streetlight-torn darkness is no fun to look at and strangers can peek inside too easily.

The smell of barbecues (and fresh pops of new beers) will disappear, replaced by nostalgic smoke that falls from the chimneys to the streets.

Temperatures will drop, the jackets will come out, and we'll all wait for the snow. And for summer's inevitable return.

As My Buddy Lay Sleeping

He flopped over and passed out in her lap. She turned to me and asked, "You know what celebrity you look like?"

"Well, the only one I've ever heard is Andrew McCarthy which is funny. I've always thought he was kind of dorky looking."

"I think he's hot," she said.

"Yeah, right. Especially in Weekend at Bernie's."

As her boyfriend slept, she talked about how hot she thought I was, too. The cabbie said nothing. Neither did our friend Curt, who sat there silently in the front seat pretending to hear nothing.

Desperate for a new topic I blurted, "Hey, look. That's the field where I play soccer."

"You play soccer? That's sexy." She ran her fingers through my hair and added, "You know what I think? I think there's an animal in you that you never let out."

Thank god she didn't work out. He's marrying someone great this month.

What's everyone doing on their phones all the time?

White sneakers, blue jeans, and a brown sweater. Dirty blonde, shoulder-length hair. Just another anonymous 40-something at a conference of over 1,000 people, most of whom were white women from outside the country's Internet hotspots.

I sat next to her against the back wall for the simple reason that I was late, it was crowded, and the chair was empty. A presenter from Instagram had the room laughing, and leaning in, as she explained how she convinced a bunch of irritable programmers and designers to care about the writing, too.

My unremarkable neighbor was typing on her phone faster than a teenager. For a while I was oblivious. Then impressed -- such diligence. And, inevitably, curious.

I glanced. It was email. I looked again. There it was. In the middle. In Helvetica. "I have some of the traits many Dominators look for in a Submissive."

You just never know, do you?

One Date Forgotten, Another One Lost

"Wait, you're Ali B? I just deleted you from my phone last week."

"What? Why?"

"Because you were always at the top of my address book and I didn't know who you were. I figured I should either call and ask or delete you. So I deleted you. You'd been there a long time."

"We met a few years ago. At The Rattlesnake. A friend of yours introduced us. We had a drink."

"Really? Who was it?"

"I don't know. Kevin? Scott? I'd only met him once or twice. You knew him from work."

"Oh man, so many people cycled through that place it could've been anybody. Do you remember anyone else you met that night? Who else was there?"

"There was nobody else there. It was just us. It was a date."

"Oh...Oops...How did it go?"

"I'm embarrassed for you, you idiot," interjected Jen, who'd been resisting my advances anyway.

The Old Texas Goat

Locals gathered on the bench outside the only store to watch another dry Terlingua day fade down. You bought your beer inside, took your seat, and let the scraggy south Texas desert set the pace.

An old man who'd been there for hours, maybe years, began telling tales. As a pretty young mother with blonde hair and warm skin walked by, he said,

"Her name's Summer. When she was younger she was really something. One day she had on short shorts and a tight top and my buddy said, I wish I was 20 again. I told him, You wish you was 20 again? Shit, I wish I was 60 again!"

Down the bench, on the other side of my brother and me, a skinny guy in jeans shorts, a dusty white t-shirt, and Coke bottle glasses, leaned forward. "I wish I was 60 again?" he cackled. "You old fuckin goat!"

Savages to the Left, Africa All Around

They turned left. She was English, he Australian. Tired of the safe, typical tourist route through South Africa ̶ Cape Town up the coast to Kruger then across to Johannesburg ̶ they drove into the country's interior.

Hours later, they stopped in a small village to ask about the nearest gas station. While he spoke with some guys on the corner, a man approached her. There was menace in his walk. His eyes were yellow. His cheeks were scarred. He locked her into a stare and walked slowly.

She wanted her husband's attention but was afraid to look away. She cleared her throat but he didn't hear. The man kept coming, his face a stone. She wanted to run or scream.

The man stopped right in front of her and spoke: "We're not savages, you know." Then he burst out laughing and apologized. She laughed, too, and they stayed for hours.

Estivation

I'm pretty sure several guys at the party were wearing loafers without socks, weathered nantucket red shorts, and oxfords with the sleeves up. If any of the girls didn't have a pastel sweater around her neck, I didn't see her.

While I didn't exactly feel uncomfortable -- I'd known some of them for years through my cousins -- I didn't quite fit in either. They grew up among big money in Watch Hill and Westerly, RI. There was probably a Chip there. Maybe even a Muffy or Madison.

But I was new in town so it was nice to meet people.

One dude came over and we went through the usual questions: name, connections to the party, jobs. Then he said it. "Where do you summer?"

Without meaning to be a jerk I said the first thing that came to mind. "I didn't know it was a verb."

He walked away.

Introducing 151 Word Stories

From now on, every post here will be 151 word story. Why? Because you can light the rum on fire. Because it's a prime number and a palindrome. R.E.M. sang about it and I still don't know what it meant. It's a psalm, a sonnet, a song in a hymnal and the total number of Pokemon in the first set. It's about 5 months, which feels right. It's been 151 years since Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg, which hints at triumph.

There have been a few disasters that took the lives of 151 people, which makes it newsworthy but also limited in the grand scheme of disasters. It's slightly longer than a rule-of-thumb length for good marketing emails, and these are better than spam. It's a lucky number. The first story had 151 words and I needed a rule. It worked for Twitter. I'm more creative with restrictions. Why not?