Free It Looked Different on the Model by Laurie Notaro

movie was playing in my husband’s head, and it was of him, fast asleep and drooling all over the chocolate stars, then, in slow motion, rubbing and nuzzling his face all over it. And my version is the same, but he is even smiling, which I know he is not doing in his, and mine rounds out nicely with a laugh track behind it, too.
    Because it was true, and I knew it was true. He could have buffed that pillow to a shine with all the rubbing he’d been doing against that thing. I offered to have a lineup so my husband could identify the right butt, but he quickly declined.
    “Oh, honey,” I said reaching out comfortingly. “I’m sorry that I didn’t lie to you and that I repeatedly told you the truth, and that for the past four nights you’ve been sleeping on a pillow that your cat shit-stamped on both sides with his leaking asshole. Maybe now you should change your pillowcase.”
    “Shut up,” my husband said, as he shot off the bed and stomped down the hall and stairs to the linen closet. “I’m probably going to have cholera!”
    “That’s good,” I yelled back. “Because it’s still in the jar in the fridge.”

Instant Karma

    M y dentist looked at the X-ray and then looked back at me.
    “How’d you do it this time?” he asked.
    “Trying to teach a hippie a lesson at Trader Joe’s,” I answered.
    “Well, not only is that a waste of your time,” he replied, “but it’s going to cost you twelve hundred dollars.”
    I nodded in agreement and rolled my eyes. Sure, I should have known better, but sometimes the moment arrives when you do or die; either you take a stand or you shrink away and shut up forever.
    When we first moved to Eugene, I understood that it was my duty to adapt to my new environment instead of expecting my new environment to adapt to me. But that proved far more difficult than originally expected, because, you see, we moved to a place that is the homeland to the horror of FaerieWorlds. It’s an annual Eugene festival in which anyone can spend twenty dollars a day to wander in and out of crafts booths staffed by people who decided they could make a better living weaving fairy crowns out of polyester ribbons and dead grass than investing in a couple of semesters in community college.Pan is hanging out on every corner, the prosthetic-elfin-ears vendor sells out, and no one there has ever heard of hair conditioner. It’s similar to a Renaissance Fair but with more demons and flutes. (And if you can even explain the difference to me, you win. I happen to think the two are rather synonymous.)
    However, that’s not to say this is Eugene on a daily basis but rather to show what the petri dish that could birth something of the magnitude of FaerieWorlds looks like. The challenge I was up against was somewhat larger than initially estimated, but I convinced myself I could do it.
    While Phoenix certainly isn’t a bastion of normalcy—you can take your gun anywhere you can take a baby, and that’s the law—it seemed far easier to make friends there. I found it difficult to fit in when we arrived in Eugene but naturally thought it would pass and that I would eventually find my people. They had to be out there somewhere, right? I clearly recall the exact moment I realized how much trouble I was in and when I first felt hope flush away. My husband was also trying to make new friends and had invited a cohort from grad school and Shakespeare scholar, Bennet, to a baseball game at the historic WPA stadium down the street from our house. I was on the phone with my sister when Bennet arrived, and when my husband announced that they were going to go, I hung up the phone to meet my husband’s new pal. He was very nice, very polite, on the reserved side, but that’s fine, I was meeting him for the first time. Shy is fine. His name is Bennet and he studies Shakespeare, I reminded myself. So I decided to break the ice a little bit by relating a story that my sister had just told me on the phone.
    It