Skinny Dipping Among Snapping Turtles

We were driving around late at night looking for something to do when one of us I forget who said hey let's go skinny dipping in the pond an idea met with derision until it became a challenge: what are you afraid Snapper's gonna bite off your boyhood and render you a virgin forever? Snapper being the giant snapping turtle rumored to have been living in the pond since the last ice age and the reason why neighborhood cats mysteriously disappeared from time to time. So we ended up at the pond in the dark and one by one as the bullfrogs drummed we shed our clothes and trudged into the water pale as ghosts and started to swim something hard to do with all the pond scum and water weeds and other stuff you bump into when swimming in a pond. The goal was to swim from one side to the other back and forth until the challenge wore off so that's what we did and it was rough going except for the stretch in the middle where all the scummy stuff slipped away and you were really swimming but that was when you most feared the jaws rushing up from below and I wondered why on earth we were doing this: what would happen if Snapper mistook my thing for a nightcrawler and how would I explain that to my parents? Sorry Mom your grandchildren are in the belly of a snapping turtle at the bottom of the pond, I'm sure I would have named one of them after you or Dad at least their middle names would be yours like you did for me. None of the others seemed to worry about this at least you couldn't tell from all the commotion like when someone said ooh something went up my butt and we started laughing nervously at first and then we all exploded not so much with laughter but the howling of wild things crawling through warm water sixteen years old and naked with scummy things between their toes and no reason to get up early the next day for it would be a Saturday. I guess we were pretty loud because a light swept over the pond and someone boomed what are you boys doing and we ducked our heads in the amoeba-rich water terrified at the prospect of a trip downtown in a squad car our bodies coated in smelly mud and then we saw three slight shapes shining a flashlight at us and the shapes started laughing like girls and the cops became Jessica and her friends and fear turned to relief until it hit me that they might steal our clothes like in a movie but they didn't in fact the next minute they were stripping down and leaping in I guess like us figuring they had nothing to lose.   

The Fall Guy

Two men stand atop a stone column rising five hundred meters above the sea. One of the men is bad but the other doesn't know this as the bad man is hiding his intentions. Both men are a step away from the edge and the bad man is talking about how this column attracts people from all over the world to take daring selfies at the edge and just last week one man from Italy fell to his death while filming a video for his highly popular YouTube channel. Is that so says the other man peering down at the frothy waves below too high to make out the rocks. Yes that is so says the bad man thinking now is the time and fast as a ninja he taps the other man on the chest pulling out a pen from his breast pocket and holding it up saying now it is your turn. His arm goes back and he points it like a dart and the other man realizing he has been betrayed says no please don't my grandmother gave me that pen as a graduation gift but the bad man laughs the way villains do in movies and tosses the pen into the sky but the other man reaches out and grabs it his feet on the edge and he drops down so his body is parallel with the sea and then springs back up like a punching bag holding the pen and grinning. He tosses the pen over his shoulder and says I was only kidding about the pen and I take it you know nothing about my channel. The bad man realizes this was all a set-up and that the black helicopter on the horizon isn't coming for him.   

Summer Day

In the morning when I go downstairs the crickets are still chirping and the first thing I do is check those grasshoppers the kids caught the day before to see if they're still alive and sure enough they're lying on their backs black stuff oozing from their mouths though their legs are still moving crawling at the air and I'm thinking we do not need a bunch of dead bugs in this house, I've got to get them outside and let them go but these grasshoppers are intimidating creatures as large as parakeets and oh how I am loathe to touch them. Amphibians and reptiles I can mostly handle but not arthropods. Anyway this is something the kids should do if they're to learn any responsibility but it's a Saturday and they're still sleeping and waking them up now would cut into my quiet time so I steel myself knowing there are times when a father must take action and this is one of them. I remove the cover and pick up a couple of them and am trying to open the sliding glass door with my foot to release them on the deck so they can go join the crickets or possibly eat them when the grasshoppers I'm clutching kick my wrists with stunning force and break free and the remaining grasshoppers burst from the container and fly about the kitchen making clicking sounds and banging against the walls each one gleaming like a summer day and all the commotion wakes the kids who come charging down and now they're leaping with the grasshoppers legs clicking and there goes my time before the sun.   

The Dolphins of Detroit

While downtown running some errands I happened to meet Mark and as usual he started talking about the trip to Detroit we were planning or at least that he was planning. He'd been talking about it for years and now that he'd officially retired from all his part-time work and had some time on his hands he was devoting some real energy to the planning and as we walked through the arcade in our masks I realized the time had come to put a stop to this. Mark was a lifelong bachelor with no children unlike me who still had a number of kids in the public school system and whose weekends were not islands in the sun like Mark's. He said what we can do is spend a day or two on Lake Huron to shake off the jet lag and then head to the city to check out this and here had printed some stuff out and he pulled the crumpled papers from his backpack which was sad to see and I said look, Mark, with travel restrictions as they are there's little chance we'll be able to make it to Detroit next spring or probably even all of next year and even if we did make it back we might not be allowed to re-enter this country which would be a problem for us both. I didn't mention that I'd never even discussed the idea with my wife knowing it would never happen. He stared up at the ceiling and said yes to tell you the truth I'm starting to come to the same conclusion. This caught me off guard. I know how much Mark who hailed from the San Diego area wanted to get to Detroit. For all its natural beauty, I added, I don't think we want to get stuck in Detroit. I know, said Mark, it's just, it's just that I always wanted to see the dolphins. There are dolphins elsewhere, I said. But none like the dolphins in Detroit, he said. That is true, I said. I'm not getting any younger, he said, and soon afterwards he ambled off though I was starting to think we might stop somewhere for a cup of coffee but without Detroit and its dolphins I suppose we didn't have much to talk about. Detroit means in the straights and was derived from French, not a native American language like the state names Michigan or Ohio, where I'm from. I have Mark to thank for this knowledge. Without him I'd have nowhere to go but Cleveland.    

Buried in the Snow

I was trekking across the tundra when something burst out of the snow rushing up and knocking me down a polar bear kind of smallish maybe a juvenile and the bear pressed its head against my chest as a prelude I assume to devouring me but rather than struggle or scream I reached up and pulled the bear's head down to my chest and started scratching behind its ears saying it's okay it's okay as the bear grumbled deep in its throat it's okay it's okay this went on for a while it's okay it's okay grumble grumble until finally the bear stopped grumbling its head heavy on my ribs and I couldn't tell if it was awake or asleep or if any moment now it would rise up and slap me with those seal-killing paws and break my neck but then the bear rose only now it was not a bear but Kodiak the Alaskan malamute we kept many years ago and I rubbed Kody's neck the way she used to like it saying it's okay girl it's okay and she got the same serious look on her face and if I stopped I knew she would growl demanding more and I'm marveling at the detail I mean it looked and felt just like a malamute though maybe it was a bit too fluffy and gray for Kody anyway there was no way for me to tell whether this was real or not though when I looked into the eyes I knew I mean it was obvious they can never get the eyes right still I kept rubbing saying it's okay it's okay as the shadow came from behind and I knew it wasn't okay a man in a white jacket with a needle was coming and my role was to hold her head as her nails scratched the stainless steel bed and calm her down pretend this wasn't really happening and why do they have to dig this up now?  

Bowling Armadillos

No one bowls any more so to bring people back the bowling alley got rid of all their bowling balls and replaced them with armadillos. They could do this because safety features on modern cars have dramatically reduced the amount of roadkill and thus the armadillos no longer having any natural predators were overpopulating and getting sick and the state was thinking about an annual cull so no objections were raised to the bowling alley's plan. The plan was that patrons would use armadillos rolled up into balls to knock down the pins. It turns out this brings no harm to the armadillos. In fact they rather enjoy it, though how much they enjoy it and willingly participate in the game depends on how much they like the person hurling them. That is the twist. If a player is rough with an armadillo or curses it after it goes into the gutter then the armadillo will become upset and do something like unravel itself halfway down the lane and scurry off in search of grubs. But be nice to your armadillo and good things happen. If you rub its back or give it a beetle every time it lands a spare or just speak to it in a gentle voice before rolling it then it will get into the game so much so that even if you have a bad pitch the armadillo will roll back on course and nail a strike nine times out of ten. I was lucky enough to find an armadillo I got along with and my score shot up thirty points on average. I call her Lucky. She tends to roll to the left but she hits the pins with the force of a tornado. Thanks to this new style of bowling I would say I've become a more empathetic person, a more attentive husband and father though you'd have to ask my family for confirmation. The alley also tried something with pill bugs and tiny pool tables but that didn't go down so well. The armadillos keep eating them.   

Shark Attack

A father whose daughter was bumped by a great white shark leapt into the water as the shark was about to bite the girl's leg and started whaling on the shark pounding its nose with his bare fists startling the shark so that it backed off but this did not satisfy the father oh no something inside him snapped and he kept on punching the shark even as it retreated and the dad shouted to his wife get her back in the boat and kept coming at the shark pounding its sides until the shark felt an emotion it had not felt since it was a pup lingering near the shell-littered seafloor fearful of the shadows above and down it dove back to that place it barely remembered but there was the dad sticking to the shark like a remora arms still swinging pounding cracking the shark's toothy skin and breaking it sending up little puffs of blood that caught the attention of other sharks in the area who watched as one of their kind was beaten to a pulp by this gangly creature which had probably mistaken the shark for a surfboard something known to happen in the summer months.

Awkward Moment

Those cats were at it again wailing up a storm. I went out to the balcony to see a bunch of them on the strip of lawn between our house and the neighbor's doing a rugby scrum, their chunky short-tailed butts wriggling in one mass over the dark grass. As I watched I realized this was no scrum but a complex dance, with one cat at a time climbing into the middle as the others let out a wail until all of them had a turn and then it started over again. I'm not even sure if dance was the right word. This was something no humans would do, except maybe on an improv stage or in an old technicolor movie with a lot of singing and dancing. Watching them I felt an odd emotion rising within me, something elemental, and when one gray tabby took its place in the center I just had to cry out with them. At once the cats stopped and gazed up before dispersing and dashing separately into the darkness, leaving me to wonder what came over me.