Sleeping Safe 

A stop sign, tired of playing the know-it-all, bossy-pants hall monitor, felt forever lonely and uncertain, until uprooting its cement block.

Time for a break, it thought.

Hopping its way to Goldy’s diner, it got cheerful. That’s the place passersby rave about for fixing hunger pangs.

Goldy’s was two miles away, but what is distance with adequate reward?

Two steps in, its red octagonal face moved awkwardly and brought it down onto asphalt. Misery was obvious in this facedown fall, but the sign was relieved. No longer must it order the whole world around. It could sleep and forget about them.

Fortunate

I had my first Chinese Food Christmas Dinner a few nights ago. Me, Mom, Dad, Kate, Jordan and I made Jewish jokes as Kate picked at the food on everyone’s plates. My plate of Mandarin Eggplant with meatless chicken came last, after a long pause while my family’s food chilled out. 

Kate said, “Usually, the vegetarian plate comes out first.”

I wondered if my attempt to order a Mongolian Eggplant instead of Mandarin had started a tribal war in the kitchen. It’s likely.

My fortune cookie told me that I needed to live every moment as if it were my last. 

Bliss for an Instant

Boredom was depressing the bobble-head turtle into oblivion.

With practice, the bobble-head thought, I can whip my neck three hundred sixty degrees. Then I can see out the front windshield instead of facing the rear. Instead of staring into the pimply eyed faces.

Winding its head two and fro, two and fro, it succeeded in a month’s time, but only in throwing its decapitated cranium out the window on the way to Hackensack. 

“The sights! Every which direction!” that young bobble-head cooed, elated at its tumbling view. Before landing facedown in the mud, it was truly happy for the first time.