daily prompt

Objets D’Obsolete

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Each of the three cars I have owned … hold on, was it three? Let’s count.

My first car exploded into a fireball and melted into a big mound of car before my eyes precisely 23 hours after its long-standing overheating issue had been repaired. Making so many repair shop visits about this concern had been annoying, but some quick fixes are neither. The next car was also prone to overheating—steam, not flame, in this case—and I perpetually thought it was ten minutes from an explosion as well. When one has owned a car that one watched meet its end via self-immolation, one develops a sensitivity to over-heating. PTSD, even. But I saw that car on the roads of my town for a full five years after I sold it. My last car was repossessed because I was not an adult back then, and banks like doing business with adults. So, yes, three cars.

The tools of life and I do not have a functional working agreement.
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I’ve Always Depended on …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Angry, barking angry. “Ass-hat angry,” neither of my grandfathers would have called it, because neither of my grandfathers ever said “ass-hat.” The kind of angry that both of my departed grandfathers in the hereafter would have been forced to come up with pretend back-country colloquialisms to describe their grandson, also known as me. That frustrated and angry.

The story has a happy ending, of course. And the anger departed the moment it was expressed at the anonymous Newark-ian who knocked me over. It was a night in which Jen and I discovered that there are no short-cuts on the path to meeting good people.
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On the Beach

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

This was a year without spring in upstate New York.

Technically, this is incorrect, as spring-like things transpired: trees bloomed and pollen burst from them like toys from an overstuffed piñata, and now summer is here: insects are everywhere—which would be adorable if they were kittens, but they are not, they are buzzing insects—and the deer and the bears are hanging out wherever their fancy takes them, because there is food everywhere and invitations that were not sent out by humans were ignored because grass in fields and berries on bushes is invitation enough. But winter snows and cold dreariness extended past their usual expiration date, and today is only the second day above 70°F since summer arrived last week. It is raining as I type. I am wearing a sweater. This feels like a hostage note … send heat.

Jen and I may go to the ocean this weekend, hence this re-written piece from months ago:
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