Bathroom Ghost

 

All my life, I've had an irrational fear of bathrooms. Once I wondered if perhaps it was religious in nature. After all, we're trained from birth to be ashamed of nudity and anything involving a toilet. Upon closer inspection, I realized that couldn't be the case. I didn't have an issue relieving myself in the woods and there I had no walls for privacy. No, my specific fear was ghosts in the bathroom, no doubt a result of countless horror movies. Bathrooms in horror movies are always grim, terrifying affairs with rusty pipes and flickering florescent bulbs that wash out all colors but blue and gray. For years, I convinced myself that this was an irrational fear, that while doing my business, I didn't need to cast my eyes about at every sound, peering deeply at every shadow, begging it not to move.

A year ago, as I finished bathing I found myself staring down a ghost, a skeleton hanging there in the shower where I had been only seconds ago. I trembled in terror. All of my fears, all those years of worry. They had been justified. How long had that ghost been there, I wondered in horror. Did he only now manifest, or had he been in the shower with me, my eyes too full of suds to realize. Did he see me? Had this suicidal skeleton been watching me? Only then did I realize the true nature of my fear. Maybe it wasn't the ghosts at all. Maybe all this time it was just the fear of someone walking in on me.

- Originally mailed to L. Sims in Hattiesburg, Mississippi

Rival Insurance

Attorneys Jerry Goliday (“Putting the I in Goliday”) and Phyllis Meeks (“Seek Meeks – Inherit the Earth) realized they had stumbled upon a gold mine when rival insurance agencies set up shop on opposite ends of the building. For reasons no one could prove, the rivalry between Martell from Progressive and Helen from All State soon escalated into a full scale war of words, with each attorney comfortably kept on retainer. On a good day, Goliday and Meeks made small fortunes on out of court slander suits, sometimes as many as ten before lunch.

Within five short years, Goliday and Meeks made enough to have their dream wedding in the Bahamas and retire someplace sunny. Helen was sent upstate after shooting Martell for saying some things that were not so progressive.

- Originally mailed to C. Sawyer in Ocean Springs, Mississippi

Skeletons Wait

Lawrence had a loyalty to his wife Shirley that could never be matched, so when their short trip to the grocer's for low fat, low sodium garden vegetable water crackers took longer than expected, he waited. When she searched the whole cracker aisle and came up empty, he waited. When she asked every employee, every manager, and eventually every customer where to find them, he waited. He waited while she personally checked the entire inventory, and waited when the manager told her there might be some on the truck next Tuesday. He waited through the salmonella scare, the factory strike. He waited through product discontinuations. The company went bankrupt and closed down and still he waited. After seven years, when another cracker company, Whitman's Wafers, created a similar product, his waiting paid off. His wife returned to the car, tried one, and lamented that they were not as good as the old ones and she would have to find a different sort of snack to satiate her craving. His ghost agreed and he waited while she returned for the store for a quick peek around.

- Originally mailed to  H. Ainsworth of Gulfport, Mississippi