May 2, 2009
My Old Girlfriend
It’s always tough for me whenever I see my old girlfriend. It happened again just today when I was walking from my
car into my house. Suddenly, without any warning or indication, there she was. She hobbled along the sidewalk
using that same old cane she’s had for about a decade now and she was wearing those comfortable shoes she
buys, the ones with the Velcro and soft soles. Her blue hair, rheumatism and harlequin glasses always bother me,
as do her false teeth and impending death. She’s my girlfriend. And she’s old. -- TK
May 1, 2009
Lars the Unlikable Luddite
My neighbor Lars sits in his old leather chair and breathes deep sighs, looking very much like an ambulatory
corpse. Perhaps he’s just an asshole. Lars wears a gray and faded cardigan sweater, black midwale all-cotton
corduroy pants, brown patent leather loafers and a resigned frown which silently says “all I need is a hammer.”
Lars sips milk from a bottle while also gulping gin from the same bottle. It’s an old bottle. He smokes a pipe that
once touched the lips of Lionel Stander and uses a Parker model 75 fountain pen to scratch out his thoughts on
three rough sheets of carbon paper. “All I need…” Lars writes, “is a hammer…and possibly some hard candy.”
Lars will make many copies of his writings and put each copy in an envelope and slide the envelopes under the
doors of homes throughout our neighborhood. Lars thinks about this while moving the arm of his record player back
to the edge of the record which lets out at an awful cacophonic protest. I use the word “cacophonic” because I know
Lars dislikes it. Lars is listening to the music of his ancestors whom, as he has written in previous neighborhood
missives, are from places like Cleveland and Phoenix. Lars has a cousin in Indiana who has no genitalia.
Lars will put the letters in an old, worn sack that used to carry rice and beans but never potatoes and if you ask Lars
why this is he will only laugh and tell you that you look like “someone from the moon…or some place like the moon.”
Lars will deliver the letters late at night and will use an old, hand-held kerosene lantern to light the way. There have
been times when Lars has held the lantern too close to the sack and it has caught fire and Lars screams in Ojibwe
and beats the sack against the ground and then has to walk back home and write a bunch of new letters. These are
the “Lars moments” I enjoy the most because it’s my school of thought that if someone hates technology they
should be made to suffer serious burns on their palms and wrists.
Once I received a collect call from the post office and the operator said the person who was calling only wished to be
identified as “Lars,” so I’m pretty sure it was Lars. However, when I said I would accept the call Lars, or whoever it
was, didn’t seem to know what to say and so, after several seconds of silence, I hung up and then, yeah, I cried a
little bit. Poor Lars.
It could be that one day instead of letters Lars will fill his sack with hammers. All kinds of hammers, though all old
hammers for certain. I hope this happens because I’m pretty sure at some point I’m going to run Lars over with my
Chevy Silverado and, if he dies, it will be easier for me to explain to the authorities that I was trying to kill a hammer
thief and not some retrograde postman. Poor Lars. --TK