|
FOURTEEN SHORT SHORTS
Elizabeth Costello, a fourteen-year-old Brooklyn girl, felt a slight but unmistakable kick in her stomach that morning as she was
eating breakfast - yet another sign that she was pregnant. She excused herself to go upstairs. Weeping softly in the bathroom,
she had no idea how she would find the strength to tell her mother about her condition. Edgar Kirschenbaum, a physics teacher
at a Bronx high school, accused a student of cheating on a pop quiz. The student, a belligerent sort, responded by yelling
threats and profanities at him. Twenty minutes after the incident, the student was suspended for three days. A Stamford,
Connecticut woman threw a bagel with cream cheese at a guard posted outside a TV studio at West 67th and Columbus Avenue.
The woman was irate; the guard would not admit her to an airing of the "Live with Regis and Kelly" show because she had
no ticket and the venue was filled. In Little Italy, a taxicab almost struck two tourists from Maine when the driver
swerved to avoid hitting a fat Siamese cat.
The Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor of New York City, received a letter from a community organizer requesting an
increased police presence in a specific neighborhood. In a Staten Island luncheonette, a thirty-three-year-old woman
found what she believed to be a human toenail fragment in her tuna fish salad. The manager, she was told, would be in
a little later so she decided to wait to confront him with the evidence. Britney Sklar cut classes at Columbia to
attend a matinee at the Palace Theater. She was flabbergasted to sit next to Robert Downey Jr. who, during intermission,
asked if she was enjoying the show and introduced her to his wife. During a paralegal seminar, student Cara Schulman wrote
a gushy fan letter to her favorite actor, the star of a new mega-hit vampire movie; she requested a signed photograph and a lock
of his jet black hair. Sarah Gendelman fell asleep during her ninetieth birthday party at the Perelman Retirement Home on Long Island;
it happened just moments after everyone danced the "hokey-pokey" and sang "Happy Birthday To You..." A pole dancer, whose stage
name was Tina Amandola, could not find her ticket to the Yankees game; she planned to meet her boyfriend there in an hour or so
and, since he was possibly the only New Yorker who never owned or ever used a mobile or cell phone, she had no idea how she
could reach him about her predicament. Kathleen, a young, beautiful, blonde nurse with a Miss America smile, took the train
from Philadelphia to New York for a visit with friends. During the journey, she finished reading a remarkable novel about
a young woman who only fancied literary men. Kathleen's favorite character in the book was a man who penned endless poems
about his beloved soul mate; this, she decided was the epitome of genuine, romantic, true love. Before heading
into his second staff meeting that day, Barack Obama stopped in a White House corridor to compliment his youngest
daughter on her latest report card. An obstetrician from the Upper East Side, married with three children, confessed
to a confidante that he had fallen madly in love with one of his patients, a thirty-five-year-old unmarried woman pregnant
with her first child. Benjamin Tyler, a security guard working nights at a midtown bank, was fired when he was caught on
tape sleeping for two hours at his desk instead of "making rounds." Elizabeth Costello, the fourteen-year-old Brooklyn girl,
woke up suddenly that night, haunted by harrowing dreams, wondering what her mother would do when she told her she
was pregnant. She then heard her mother sobbing in her own bedroom just up the hallway. Elizabeth ran and burst
into her room. Her mother sat up, held her arms open, and embraced her daughter. Elizabeth broke down. "Momma,
there's something I must tell you, something important." But her mother just continued to hold her tightly.
"You don't have to say anything. I know what this is about. It's something I went through myself a long time ago...
just remember we'll get through this...we will."
Vernon Waring's poetry has appeared in The Writer, The Iconoclast, Alabama School of Fine Arts Quarterly,
Midwestern University Quarterly, New Dimensions, and Anthology as well as on the Prairie Home Companion's Web site.
His light verse has been published in the Saturday Evening Post, Philadelphia Daily News, and WRITE ON!! Poetry Magazette.
His short fiction and poetry have also been featured online in Ascent Aspirations Magazine. He resides in King of Prussia,
Pennsylvania.
Email: Vernon Waring
Return to Table of Contents
|
