Short Stories To Tickle Your Funnybone (5 page)

Three weeks to go and this is just the first
day. What have I done?
**********************************
An excerpt from Lady Justice Gets Lei'd
http://booksbybob.com/lady-justice-getsleid_309.html

Since
Maggie had been planning
our
‘healthier’ meals, it had been awhile since I’d
darkened the doorway to Mel's Diner.

I needed a fix of real 'comfort food'.
Reluctantly, Maggie agreed.
I had a chicken fried steak and mashed

potatoes smothered in white cream gravy. Yum! It
doesn’t get much better than this. I can’t
remember what Maggie had, but whatever it was
I’m sure it didn’t fit in her diet. We were, after all,
at Mel’s.

I was enjoying a mug of steaming coffee
with a piece of chocolate cream pie when a sharp
pain in my back hit me like a bolt of lightning. My
arm involuntarily jerked, and I slopped steaming
coffee
into my
lap.
That got
my
attention. I
couldn’t decide which hurt worse, my back or Mr.
Winkie.

“What in the world is wrong with you?”
Maggie cried. She’s used to my idiosyncrasies, but
this was outside the box, even for me.

“Wow! Don’t know,” I replied. “It felt like
someone just hit me in the back with a rubber
hose. It’s easing up now. I’ll be okay.” I started
drying myself with a napkin. Good thing I had on
dark trousers. At my age, someone might mistake
my little accident with incontinence.

I had just polished off the pie when the
pain in my back intensified and spread around my
left side. It would subside and then return with a
flourish. Every
time
it
struck again, I
would
squirm. I finally was squirming so much I was
distracting everyone around us.

I paid the check and we headed to the car
with me wincing in pain every few steps.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Winkie and I had
discussed the possibility of him becoming Mr.
Happy, but as we drove home Mr. Back had the
final word, and the message to Mr. Winkie was,
“No way!”
I spent most of the night pacing the floor in
pain. In the morning I dressed and went straight to
Doc Johnson’s office.
After spending what seemed an eternity in
the waiting room, the nurse called me back, took
my temperature and blood pressure, and had me
stand on the scale. She took the reading and gave
me a glance. “It’s the chicken fried steak,” I
muttered.
She asked what had brought me into the
office, and I told her of my night’s ordeal.
“Here,” she said, “go pee in this cup and
wait in room three. The doc will be right with
you.”
First of all, I don’t like doctors. Not Doc
Johnson though. He’s okay. Just doctors and
hospitals in general and all those places that smell
funny. And I especially don’t like peeing in a cup.
I don’t really know why. When I was a kid, my
buddies and I would write our names in the snow
and see who could pee the highest and farthest.
But somehow that’s different than peeing in a cup.
One reason I like Doc Johnson is that he
doesn’t have the ‘God complex’ that is the
dominant personality trait of many physicians.
He actually has a sense of humor.
I
remember one
of his comments that
endeared him to me: “There’s more money being
spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on
Alzheimer’s research. By 2030, there will be a
large elderly population with perky boobs and
huge erections and absolutely no recollection of
what to do with them.”
Anyway, I finished and waited in room
three. Pretty soon Doc Johnson came in. “Got
blood in your urine, Walt,” he said. “You might be
passing a kidney stone. I’m going to send you
across the street for a CT scan. Let’s see if we can
find the little bugger.”
Swell!
I’d heard about these things, and nothing
I’d heard had been good. In fact, I didn’t know
anyone who had said, “Gee, I wish I had a kidney
stone!”
So I went to the radiology lab and was
escorted into a little room. The nurse said to strip
and put on this little gown hanging on the door
and someone would come get me. Who invented
these gowns, anyway? Why don’t they go on like
a robe, with the slit in front? And why is there
only one tie and it’s in the back? You put the thing
on and then you have to walk around with your
hand clutched behind your back so your butt won’t
hang out.
Then Nurse Ratchet walked in. Why do all
my nurses have to look like her? My hiney did a
little pucker as I watched her prepare for my
ordeal.
She led me to a room with a sliding table
that I was to lie down on. The table would then
slowly carry me forward into this giant tube with
whirling lights. “This won’t hurt a bit,” she said.
“Yeah,”
I thought, “
that’s easy for you to
say!”
As the table slowly moved me toward that
gaping hole, all I could think of was James Bond
in
Goldfinger.
He
was strapped in a
similar
machine that was moving him and his privates
toward a burning laser.
I closed my eyes and gripped the side of
the table. The machine whirred and I disappeared
into the depths of the huge cocoon. Lights flashed
and as I felt myself being pulled out, I reached
down and gave Mr. Winkie a quick pat.
It was
over, and I still had my equipment. What a relief.
I returned to Doc Johnson’s office and
again waited in room three. The doc came in and
said, “Yep, Walt, you’re about to give birth to a
4mm kidney stone.”
Lucky me.
“So what do I do?” I asked.
“Just drink a lot and pee a lot,” he said. “It
will naturally come out by itself. I’m going to give
you a prescription for an antibiotic. We don’t want
you getting an infection. And also a pain killer, if
you need it.”
Great. Painkiller. Just what I wanted to
hear.
So I
took the
prescription to Wally
Crumpet, the pharmacist at Watkins Drugstore. I
handed Wally the prescription and said, “What’s
he giving me, Wally?” I can never read what a
doctor writes. They must have a special class at
pharmacy school to learn to read doc-write.
“Well, it looks like Sepra and naproxen.”
“What is it and what does it do?”
“Well, the Sepra is an antibiotic, and
Naproxen is Aleve, a painkiller.”
“Why didn’t he just say Aleve?”
“Most drugs have two names,” he said.
“Tylenol is acetaminophen, Advil is ibuprofen,
and Aleve is naproxen.”
Right.
He thought for a moment and with a sly
smile said, “I bet you don’t know the other name
for Viagra?”
I shook my head.
“Mycoxafloppin.”
Pharmacist humor.
“Oh,” he said, “you’ll be needing this too.”
He whipped out a tea strainer. “Use this to catch
the stone. The
doctor will
want it
to have
it
analyzed.”
Great. Now I get to pee in a strainer. That’s
worse than a cup.
I paid for my prescriptions and returned
home.
Willie was sitting on the porch. “Hey, Mr.
Walt,” he said. “Where you been all day?”
I told him about my physical impairment.
“Oh, Mr. Walt, I knowed a guy had dem
stones. Like to damn near killed him. He moaned
and groaned for days. Had to pump hisself full of
dat Valium stuff to keep from scremin’. When he
finally passed ‘em, it was like shootin’ BBs out his
wiener.”
Willie, you’re such a comfort.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and early
evening drinking and peeing through a strainer. I
had just started a stream when I got the feeling
that someone had put a blowtorch to Mr. Winkie.
Then
plop
, there it was. Right there in the strainer.
I had given birth to a tiny little piece of gravel. My
very own kidney stone. It looked like it might be a
girl, so I named it Pebbles. You know, like Fred
and Wilma’s kid
****************************************
An excerpt from
Lady Justice Takes A C.R.A.P.
http://booksbybob.com/lady-justice-takes-acrap_308.html

Mary’s arrest and trial had affected
everyone in our little circle of friends.
Naturally, we were concerned about her
and all of us were in court every day to give her
moral support.
The trial ended five days before Christmas,
but with everything going on, holiday preparations
had taken a back seat.
Now that Mary was off the hook, we were
free to turn our thoughts to more festive pursuits.
We
decided to have
a
get together on
Christmas Eve.
Everyone was invited including Ox’s new
squeeze and Ed, our new recruit.
Our little circle was growing larger.
The only no show was Vince who was
going to Arizona to spend the holiday with his
sister.
It was to be a simple affair. We would
order pizza and Maggie and I would serve the
drinks and everyone
else would
bring
their
favorite holiday goodies.
Jerry wanted to do the ‘Secret Santa’ thing,
so we all put our names in the pot.
Maggie and I
started
assembling
our
assorted libations.
She mixed up a batch of holiday punch and
I made sure there was plenty of Arbor Mist --- it
goes great with pizza.
Of course there was the traditional eggnog
and we had a bottle of Kahlua on hand in case
someone felt that their nog needed an extra kick.
Ox and Judy had spent the day baking
cookies. It was hard to imagine my robust friend
rolling out dough, but I sensed that their domestic
time together was a positive thing.
The Professor brought a fruitcake. I guess
that was a throwback to his generation. I just
hoped that somebody would eat a piece so that he
wouldn’t feel bad. I knew it wasn’t going to be
me.
Jerry
brought a
cake
from the Price
Chopper bakery that said ‘Happy Birthday J’. He
had rubbed out the rest of the name.
His justification was that Jason’s family
hadn’t picked up the cake, so he got it for a really
good price.
He then reminded us that Christmas was
really a celebration of Jesus’ birthday and that’s
what the ‘J’ stood for.
How could we argue with logic like that?
Willie brought a sweet potato pie.
He said that when he was a kid growing
up, there were some years when all his family had
were
the vegetables
that they had grown
and
stored, and his momma would bake that pie for
their Christmas dessert.
I guess each of us have our own special
memories of Christmases past.
Ed had stopped by the Cheesecake Factory
and bought a Butterfinger cheesecake.
My mouth started watering the minute I
saw it.
Dad announced that he and Bernice had
spent the whole day making her fabulous ‘female
fudge’.
“What the heck is female fudge?” Jerry
asked.
“No nuts!” Dad replied.
“So how do you know it’s female fudge
and not eunuch fudge?”
“Because we didn’t make the fudge with
nuts in the first place and then pick them out,
smart ass. This fudge was born without nuts!”
The pizza guy showed up bearing boxes of
the tasty pies and we all dug in.
As we were filling our plates, Jerry asked
Willie if he knew what would happen if he ate the
Christmas decorations.
Willie, of course, didn’t have a clue.
“You’d get tinsel-itus!
“You’re crazy, man! Get away from me!”
When we were all stuffed to the gills, Jerry
announced that is was time to exchange gifts.
Apparently he had drawn my name and he
looked on expectantly as I opened my gift.
It was a little box that had a guy on the
front with the word ‘Poof!’ coming out his rear
end.
I looked at him quizzically.
“It’s a fart machine!” he announced.
“Remote control
--you
can
put
it
under
someone’s chair and make it fart from across the
room. Very
high-tech --much better than a
whoopee cushion.”
Maggie gave me the ‘look’. “Don’t even
think about it!”
“Maybe you could use it at your squad
room. I’ll bet it would be a big hit.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it would. Thanks, Jerry,
I’ve always wanted one of these.”
He beamed.
Dad had drawn Bernice’s name and
judging from the box, he had spent some time in
Victoria’s Secret.
Bernice squealed as she pulled the lacey
thong from the box.
I had to look away. The last thing I wanted
was the image
of eighty-six
year old Bernice
wearing the thing burned into my memory.
Ox had drawn Judy’s name and everyone
‘awwwwed’ when she pulled a charm bracelet
from the box.
The charms were all miniature handguns,
revolvers and automatics of every description.
“I love it!” she gushed and gave Ox a big
kiss.
He blushed.
After all the gifts had been exchanged,
Jerry strode to the center of the room with a small
tablet in his hand.
“I wrote something special for our evening
together. I hope you all enjoy it.”

Twas the night before Christmas
And my friends are all here.
We’ll laugh and have fun
And spread holiday cheer.

We’re all overjoyed
To see our friend, Mary.
She just went through a trial
That was really quite scary.

There was a good lesson
That each of us learned.
Don’t mess with this gal
Or you’re gonna get burned.

There’s Dad and Bernice
And I hope there’s a chance
That before they arrive
He’ll zip up his pants!

This year our friend Ox
Has got a new squeeze.
From what I’ve been told
The girl’s quite a tease.

She’ll laugh and she’ll giggle
And call you sweet names
But if you get her pissed off
She’ll blow out your brains!

And here’s to Ed Jacobs
Our newest recruit.
He can kick a guy’s ass
And he really can shoot.
As a brand new cop
He could sure raise the ante
If he could somehow arrest
That old vigilante.

And who could forget Willie
The guy from the street.
He’s mended his ways
And he’s really quite sweet.