A Story By My Daughter

The Moon’s A Balloon

by April Duchene

 

The white balloon waited, its head tapping the ceiling.

    Waiting for the boy to come and play.

    The balloon remembered when it first met the boy. It was with all its balloon friends, waiting to be chosen. Chosen for what, it didn’t know, but it did see other balloons bob with happiness when they had been chosen.

    Most were chosen by little children, little children who held onto the strings happily in their tiny fists, but it was a woman who chose this balloon. When she put it inside her car, it stayed there, very well behaved, wondering what was going to happen next.

    When she took it out of the car, a little boy ran up to greet her, his father standing close by. They had both been watering the bushes in the front lawn.

    “Happy birthday!” the mommy joked, handing her son the balloon

    “It’s not my birthday,” the balloon heard the little boy say.

    “Does that mean you don’t want the balloon?” the mommy asked, smiling.

    The little boy ran off laughing, with the balloon following right behind.

    They had a great time together the next few days. The little boy, never letting go of the balloon’s string, would bring it along wherever he went. The balloon got a nice tour of the house that way. The living room, the kitchen and dining room, but best of all the little boy’s room, which is where the two of them slept. The balloon was glad it had this little boy as its friend.

    The little boy slept with the curtains of his windows open, so, just before the balloon drifted off to sleep, it could see a big white object in the sky. Not quite a circle--more like an almost circle--and it was white, just like itself. Every night, the balloon noticed, the thing got rounder and rounder.

    “What is it?” the balloon thought. “What is this thing that looks just like me?”

    Days passed and soon the balloon was by itself, ignored in one corner of the little boy’s room. Left alone, with nothing to do but look out the window at the big white thing in the sky, now fully round.

    “Wow,” the boy said, also looking out his window, “the moon sure is bright tonight.”

    “So that’s what it is,” the balloon realized. “A moon.” And then, after a pause, “What’s a moon?”

    The boy walked over and grabbed the balloon by its string. He opened the window, wanting to see how high the balloon could go.

    And go it did.

    The balloon travelled higher and higher, higher than it had ever thought it could travel before, and discovered…

    “Hey,” the balloon thought to itself, “the moon’s a balloon. Just like me.”

 

 

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What Happened Next

When all the hubbub was over and my father was back sitting in his favorite chair, happily eating the very same snacks that he almost choked to death on, my mother wanted to know why he got mad at her for turning off the TV, and my father quite reasonably answered, "Because, if it was my time to go, I wanted to go watching my favorite TV show."
 
 

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What Happened First

Back when my beloved mother was still alive, she told me about something scary that happened to her and my father when they were home alone.
    Not scary in the “Boo!” kind of way, even though the house I grew up in was supposed to be haunted. Nothing frightening or supernatural ever happened to me, unless you count the spooky noises and noxious fumes that emanated from my brother’s side of the bedroom we shared, if you get my drift.
     If you don't, that's probably for the best.
     Anyway...
    They were sitting in the den, watching TV together. She was sitting on the couch and my father was in his favorite chair, when—all of a sudden—my father began to choke.
    “Honey!” my mother screamed as my father began to turn purple.
    In a panic, she picked up the remote and turned off the TV, and then began to slap him hard on the back, trying to dislodge whatever it was he was choking on.
    It didn’t help,
    My father’s hands were clawing at his throat and his eyes were bulging out of their sockets. Passing out, he fell to the floor.
    THAT helped.
    The obstruction moved and my father was able to breathe again.
     “Honey,” my mother was crying as she hunched over him. “Are you okay?”
    My father was gasping for air.
    “Why did you turn off the TV?” he wanted to know.
 

 

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Super Bowl LII

I always like to say I enjoy sports as much as the next guy, as long as the next guy doesn't enjoy sports at all.
     For example, yesterday I spent the afternoon doing yard work. When I was done, I asked my sixteen-year-old daughter, "Who won Super Bowl LII?"
     "Philly, dad," she told me.
     "Yo, Adrian!" I said, using my best Sylvester Stallone voice. "We did it!"
     And then I started jumping up and down with my arms up in the air like Rocky Balboa at the top of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's steps.
     You know the saying: "I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you."?
     Well, I'm pretty sure my daughter was laughing at me.
     Keeping that in mind, this is the email my brother sent me today:
 

When you talk to your buddies at work, remember... yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday.

     1) It was not the last game of the World Series.

     2) It was not the Horseshoe Throwing Championship.

     3) It was not a great bowl of soup.

     4) It was the Eagles vs. the Patriots, not the Dreamers vs. the Trump Supporters.

     5) It was not an excuse to get drunk and riot, although that's what Philadelphia fans seem to think it is.

     6) They score touchdowns in football. Not home runs, goals, or holes in one.

     7) New England is located in North America, and not where the next royal wedding is taking place.

     8) A Hail Mary, at least in football, is not a prayer, although some praying may be involved. What it is, is a long pass into the End Zone.

     9) The End Zone is not a reboot of the old Rod Serling TV show.

     10) The Eagles won the Super Bowl.

     And that's what happens when Tom Brady can't deflate his footballs properly.

 

 

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No Good Deed

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine

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I don’t know what it is about newspapers, but they must think their readers have unlimited time and money to cook the recipes they feature in their pages.

    Most of us, we have jobs. We don’t want to come home and spend hours fixing something that can easily be bought at Sam’s or Costco or the corner gas station. Not to mention the cleanup afterward. Also, if I fill my refrigerator with food, where am I going to keep my beer?

    The recipes always seem to require a cornucopia of ingredients that you probably don’t have and will never use again. I don’t think Jesus multiplied the fishes into a number that high. It just seems to me that newspapers should acknowledge that we live in a different world now, and there’s no longer enough hours in the day for us to prepare these extravagant meals.

    Recently, my local newspaper printed something by The Culinary Institute of America. By recently, I mean I’m too lazy to look up the actual date. It was an article on how to cook Mole Poblano.

   The recipe, if you can call it that since it's about the same length as Moby Dick, required twenty-six--TWENTY-SIX!--different ingredients. The Institute assured it’s readers it would only take an approximate three hours to prepare and cook from start to finish. That much and that long just to feed eight people.

    Five, if you include my mother-in-law.

   The way I figure it, the time the article says the dish requires to prepare is a best-case scenario, because I know for an average guy like me it would take closer to six hours, maybe more. Six hours, because you have to factor in the time I’ll spend driving to Walmart.

     Why Walmart?

     Because I’m cheap.

    Anyway, in addition to that, there’s my wandering around lost, going up and down the food aisles, searching for the ingredients I don’t have, which is ALL of them, and finally ending my adventure standing in a long checkout line, stuck behind someone with their shopping cart filled to overflowing, because I always have at least one item too many to enter the Ten Items Or Less line.

   Throwing good sense to the wind, I decided to surprise my wife and cook her an early Valentine’s Day dinner. She LOVES mole, so I knew it would be a real treat for her. She might even desire to reward me later with an early Valentine’s Day present of her own, if you get my drift.

    If you don’t, that’s okay, too.

    So I left to purchase what I needed. As it turned out, the total came to $94.93.

     For ONE meal!

     I opened my wallet and saw a lonely moth fly out. Once home, I had to find all the required measuring equipment and cooking utensils. With twenty-six ingredients to prepare, what were the odds I had all the necessary equipment?

   Turns out, I didn’t.

   Once back from Walmart, after buying the one cooking tool I didn’t have, I began to prepare my twenty-five ingredients.

   Twenty-five?

   Darn.

   Okay, I’m back.

   I began to prepare my twenty-six ingredients.

   If there’s one thing in life I’ve learned, it’s that everything takes longer than it’s supposed to. That was especially true in this case. When I was done and the mole was simmering, I put the leftover ingredients away for when I might have an occasion to use them again. In other words, I’ll be throwing them away a year from now.

    My father shuffled over to take a look.

    “What are you doing?” he wanted to know.

    “I’m making dinner,” I told him.

    “I’m not eating that,” he told me back.

    This, from a man who used to catch and cook lizards in the Philippine jungle during World War Two.

   My wife seemed to enjoy my efforts.

    “It’s good,” she said, just before excusing herself to go throw up in the bathroom.

    She thoughtfully only spent half the time in the bathroom than she did when she got Montezuma’s Revenge on our last vacation out of the country. As it turns out, you really aren’t supposed to drink the water in Mexico.

    I put what was left over into my father’s dog’s food dish. Dogs will eat anything. Anything, that is, except my cooking. He took one sniff, and then waddled out of the kitchen. If he  had fingers, I’m sure he would have done something interesting with one of them.

   By the end of the affair, I was disheartened. With the amount of time and money I spent, I would have been better off taking my lovely wife out for a nice dinner at her favorite restaurant. No fuss. No muss. No reason to cuss.

    By being romantic I had the whole kitchen to clean up, dishes to wash, and an empty bank account to replenish. Not to mention a wife politely trying to keep her volume in our bathroom on low so it wouldn’t interrupt my father’s television viewing.

    She’s thoughtful that way.

    Briefly, I wondered if she’d fall for the old “I cooked, you clean.”

    Probably not.

    Well, chalk that one up to experience.

    I looked around for some cleaning supplies.

    Darn.

    I had to go back to Walmart.

      

Visit JimDuchene.BlogSpot.com, RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com, or @JimDuchene and learn important cooking tips.

Such as not leaving chicken out too long. 

   

 

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