Humor

Huey Lewis & the Tux

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Tails.” I spoke the word out loud with my indoors voice. I ordered white tails to wear at my high school prom.

For many American high school students, senior year means at least two things: Graduation and Senior Prom Night (and the morning after). With no research, I can tell you that “prom” is short for “promenade,” which is long for “prom.” For naive bookworm me, the prom, far more than graduation or even theconstantthinkingofthoughtsabouttherestofmylife, was the source of many anxieties.

(There is an ancient cliché about how native peoples who live in the Arctic have 1000 words for snow because they know snow so intimately that they have 1000 words to describe 1000 unique realities. Replace the word “snow” with “anxiety,” and you have me. A thousand different anxieties.)
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Me and Mr. Claus

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I know Santa Claus, which I know sounds like a tall tale …

I do not remember the moment I learned that the many Misters and Missuses Claus that we encountered in person or saw on TV were “not real”; the fact that there was no “a-ha” moment leads me to assume that I never bought the story. Maybe so, maybe not. There is at least one photo of my sister and me in a “portrait with Santa,” and I remember the typical session. I knew, just knew, that the fellow was not Santa, and I did not feel betrayed by this; I knew it was a guy overheating indoors in a snowsuit for reasons related to “things grown-ups do.” It did not make much sense to me, to be a grown-up wearing a snowsuit indoors, but I did not envy adults the many things that they did, said, claimed, acted as if, and always eventually emphatically insisted made sense.
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An Ideal Reader

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

(First, a note on the photo: I have attempted to set up photo shoots with Ángel, el gato de amor, my girlfriend’s cat, that feature her with my glasses and a book. Because hilarious. Ángel has made it clear—by pushing the glasses off the bed slowly, very slowly, super slowly, threateningly slowly—that if I could get away with this, the price would be very steep. I would be getting away with my life and it would be a cheap life from that day on. Thus the photo of the unknown cat above. Because hilarious.)

This first appeared in “Message in a Bottle.”

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Everyone who writes has an imaginary friend.

There is an ideal reader in my imagination, a figure who finds even my shopping lists and notes in the margins of books interesting. I have not yet actually met anyone who fits this description, but I keep writing, just in case.
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