Know When to Fold ‘Em, Know When to Set Fire to a Potted Plant
“Fire, fire!” the cries rang out through the hall.
Billy reacted quickly, grabbed the water bottle off the top of the water cooler, and ran down the hall. This was difficult for him, for a few reasons:
- He was short. The water bottle, believe it or not, kept bumping off his legs as he ran. This made it very uncomfortable to run, and the bumping kept throwing off his stride, threatening to dump him to the industrial-grade beige carpeting.
- The water bottle, being turned the wrong way down (that being the open end), was leaking water all over himself and the aforementioned carpeting. He had never realized he had an aversion to running whilst water rushed in great gulping torrents down his leg. But it turns out, upon experiencing just that, that he did have an aversion to running in those circumstances.
- Shiela, the cute girl from accounting who spelled her name with an ‘i’ before ‘e’, because it stubbornly came after something other than ‘c’ and whom Billy had had his eye on for quite some long, silent time, was standing at the water cooler, in the process of getting a drink of water. Dismounting a nearly full water bottle from a water cooler is not the most graceful or easily controlled task, and is best practiced, it is probably mentioned in the manual, without on-lookers present.
And while this part wasn’t difficult, by the time Billy made it to the breakroom, from which the shouts of “fire, fire!” were ringing the water had completely drained from the bottle, so he threw the empty water bottle on the mini-inferno that was the toaster oven with half a sandwich from the supermarket wedged firmly into the heating element. The plastic began to burn, and melt, and this kick-started the immediate evacuation of the office, due to the plastic fumes coursing throughout the halls.
This single episode in his life outlined to him how very valuable his father’s advice was, when he said: “Son, never get involved.”
RedRoom.com update: We’re dropping, folks. We’re dropping like a rock in a pants-dropping festival. Our dear founder is now 87 out of 962 authors on RedRoom.com. That party for cracking the top ten may just have to wait.
Enjoy your week.
SPONSOR MESSAGES:
Support Sane:
Our Founder’s RedRoom.com page: Matthew Michael Hanlon @ RedRoom.com
Tshirts & clothing: The Sane Magazine formational Shop at Cafe Press
A Book: Fenway Fiction
A Second Book: Further Fenway Fiction
For you writerly types: Download Writer.app (now at version 1.4.1! Skeow!)
Or, visit our store at Amazon… check out some of the books that inspire or otherwise provoke the Sane Magazine writers.