It Ain�t No Thing

At 5:45 AM my alarm blares in my ear, and as usual, I jump to a start and swing my arm over to smack the off button. As my eyelids flip back and white light shines in, I notice an odd smell in the room. I hear a scratching sound beneath me and the culprit exposes himself: a skunk. I shoo my tuxedo-clad furry friend out of my kitchen and back to where he came from.

I open the coffee jar to find a note rolled up inside reading:

�Sorry, there was only enough for one cup left. �Dan�

Well nothing new there. �Wake up and smell the skunk� isn�t an uncommon phrase in this house, after all. My lazy three-legged dog hides whenever the skunk comes in, but shits on the couch if I don�t leave the dog-door open at night.

I grab her leash, and because she won�t come to me, I walk over to her and attach it to her collar for our daily morning hobble around the neighborhood. As we make our way down the steps, I notice something different about the front yard. Something missing. Ah, of course, my car. Only twice this month so far. Not bad, really, considering it was four times last month, and that was February, the shortest month of the year. I bet at least two of those thefts were some poor bloke trying to get some money to buy his girl a Valentine�s gift.

I don�t celebrate Valentine�s Day anymore since last year�s bad chocolate incident. Poor Julie. I really loved that girl�thought she was the one. But I guess dying of uncontrollable toxic flatulence isn�t that uncommon, and it�s no use dwelling on the past.

I bring Tripod back into the house and call the police to report the theft. They know the car so well now they tell me they can probably get it back within a few hours, but I can�t be late for work, so I call a cab anyway.

I walk into my office to find my monitor in broken pieces scattered on the floor, and my ex-wife screwing my best friend on my desk.

�Hello Annie. Hello John. Could you please move? I need to get to my phone so I can page Lucy to order me a new monitor.� I tap John�s shoulder.

�Lucy�s�oh, John! Oh, oh, oh! Lucy�s gone to Cancun, and she�.oohh�she left me the key. So I smashed your monitor and poured apple juice in your hard drive. I�oh, oh, oh baby, oh don�t stop, oh! I gave her�oh, your credit, oh, oh, your credit card.�

�Hmm, that�s the third secretary of mine that�s run off this month. I guess I�ll just write another ad in the newspaper and cancel that credit card again.�

Annie grabs the picture of us with our late son Jimmy, who fell into the crocodile pit at the zoo when he was four, and chucks it into the window, shattering the glass and sending the picture down thirteen stories. Toward my car�presumably left abandoned just below my office. A pigeon flies into the picture frame, knocking itself unconscious and entangling itself with the now bent metal. The entire feathery-metal mass hurtles into my car�s windshield, the only window left on the car, and the one that I just replaced last week after the kid who missed a jump on his skateboard tumbled through the glass while I was sitting in traffic, fracturing his ankle, wrist, and both elbows.

I almost laughed at that one, but ever since that rollercoaster cart I was on derailed last Tuesday, the whiplash has made laughing difficult�especially with the neck brace. At least we landed on the astro-jump across the park. Only one little girl was crushed from the impact, so damages were minimal at least.

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