"Bringing Back the Draft"

In bloggerdom, you can create new posts or save them as drafts. Seems yours truly has a good bit of forays I began but never finished. Here is a sampling of a few of them:

I was asleep on the couch that fateful Monday when the phone rang. It was Briggs, my boss.

"How was that Super Bowl party?" he asked.

"I didn't have a party, Briggs. I watched the game with Kitty."

"I need you to meet me at the [ Bates ] motel tomorrow at 11 a.m. You know where it is?" was his next response.

"Yeah, I'll find it." I said not asking him what it was about. I think I knew. My heart dropped into my stomach.

"I'll see you tomorrow," Briggs said ending the conversation.

The next morning I dragged myself out of bed, smoked a few cigarettes and drank a coppola cups of coffee. Bathed, shaved, dressed and adorned my winter coat. It was the dead of winter. I cranked old Betsy; soon we were tooling down the road to meet our, er, destiny.

"Old Betsy," I said to my faithful companion. "This may be our last day at the rodeo."

"My faithful paymaster and owner," she began, "fork 'em if they can't take a joke. You worked hard and did your best."

"Thanks, Old Betsy." The conversation ended as we both became mired in our thoughts....

"All right, you rowdy grandkids. You want a bedtime story, well, shut the fork up, and I'll tell you a tale from back inna day."

"Yea, Granddad. Tell us a story, puhleeze! One about hoots, please, your friend who was once a semi-retired flower child of the 60's. Or the bbq man! Yea! Or one about Slippery. Yea. Or Uncle Demosthenes. What's it gonna be, granddad? Huh? Huh?"

"I'm not quite sure where this story's a'gonna go. Hoots, bbq, Slippery, Uncle Demosthenes....hadn't thought about those fellas in years."

"What happened to 'em, granddad?"

"If you little forkers will be quiet for a minute, I might just tell you....if you recall, hoots became an ambassador to Iran during those tenuous times involving the H bomb! President Rice appointed him to the post even tho' he was a died-in-the-wool liberal. But he had the kind of mojo that was needed to stem the tide of nuclear holocaust."

What's a liberal, granddad?"....

Squint, Scooper, and Grodie are sitting on the cook's table, not far from the bain marie. Scooper takes a long pull from a bottle of Squint's home brew. Squint is railing at them, all a little smacko.

Scooper to Squint: "I know this is a bit insensitive, matey, but what happened to your freakin' eye?"

Squint: "Huh? Oh, this! Chicken livers what happened. Was frying up a mess of 'em and one swelled and burst and hit me square in the pupil. Damn, nasty things.

Squint squints through a checkerboard of scar tissue.

Scooper: ( handing back the bottle)

Scooper: "You've got the monopoly, eh?" Here! Scooper pulls up his trouser leg boasting a crescent scar on his calf. Eight-foot moray eel -- right through the suit, buddy...."

Squint: "That ain't nothing." Pulls off his shirt, tie, and undershirt to reveal a long, hideous scar. "Team member cut me when I wouldn't give him a raise. Damn boney knife. Sharp, real sharp, yes it is!"

Scooper: Shows yet another. "German roach scraped me. I was down getting samples, and he -they're the most ferocious of the species. Can live 7 days with his head cut off. Seven days!"

Grodie: Not to be outdone and feeling somewhat out of the equation shows a small nick on his finger: "Cut myself sharpening the roast beef knife June 18, 2001. Took 3 stitches it did and cost me a mint in worker's comp premiums."