I used to write hundreds of short stories, to help release my massive imagination from my overly active brain.
This is a story from, I think last summer,
I shall call it,
A Tale of Barbaby and Walking Down the Sidewalk.
Well you see, one day I was walking along my street in my hometown of Guelph when I saw a thing. It was such a thing that if you saw it you would stop and think, “Wow! That is such a thing that I am stopping to think of it!”
I carried on with my day in similar fashion until I arrived at my neighbor’s house. One may ask why the walk took so long as they were only my neighbors in the relatively small city of Guelph; to this I would reply that they should indeed fuck off because I hate answering stupid questions as I have stated on may occasions and will most likely continue to do so.
My neighbor is a kindly man of the gentle variety, and he continued to be such a gentleman that he won some award somewhere. I could not tell you what that award was for as I am hoping that I implied it enough in the sentence before this one. His name was Barnaby. I had always gotten along with Barnaby, even after twenty-four years of knowing him.
But this is one of the more intricate details of my story; Barnaby was not always my neighbor. You may be thinking ‘Well no shit, Jon, it’s impossible for somebody to be your neighbor always as that implies living beside them for the entirety of both their and your entire lives. In which case I would call you an asshole for not understanding what I meant. I simply meant to acknowledge that I had known Barnaby long before we were neighbors. Barnaby and I fought in Vietnam together, much to the displeasure of the American soldiers who had nasty habits of firing at anybody with squinty eyes. At one point I think we even decorated a Christmas tree at his family’s house, but I cannot remember when or why this might have been as the regulations of Vietnam’s alcohol distribution at the time of the war were particularly non-existent; therefore resulting in me being completely smashed almost every day. I think we won the war in the end, but I’m not one hundred percent sure about what even went down throughout those years of gunfire.
Holy shit cocaine-flavored Jello messes you up. I swear to God I’m not doing that again.
More to the point, that is why I had known Barnaby for twenty-four years.
Now as I arrived at my neighbor’s house I looked at my watch and ran home as I realized Big Bang Theory was on.
I came back the next day and knocked on my neighbor’s door. Upon answering the door, I punched poor Barnaby in the face and ran away. To this day I am not sure why I did that, nor is Barnaby, even after the following three years of weekend relationship counseling. I have always considered that Barnaby’s affair with my wife might have been the cause, but he was far to kind of a gentleman so that really doesn’t make any sense.
It was decided during those long counseling sessions that Barnaby and I were to go on a road trip to Colorado. While packing for the trip I was reminded of how much I would miss Guelph, as it had always been my home. Henceforth, I decided to go for a walk down my street. You would not believe the sights I did see as I walked along the sidewalk for the fourth time in this story. This is the story of what I saw on my short venture down my homely urban street in Southern Ontario.
Once upon a time I saw a kangaroo. If you ask why I’ll knock you out considering I just typed about a full page introduction explaining what the context of me seeing what I said I was going to say I saw was. It was the most extravagant of all kangaroos I have ever seen. I remember when I was a child in Guelph (at the time it was a small village of hippies, socialists and more hippies) my elders told me of a man called Jesus. They went into great detail of his magnificence, but all I ever paid attention to was them saying that Jesus could be whoever we need him to be.
An amigo of mine at the time, Max, lead me to believe that this meant Jesus was a badass shape-shifter and described his version of Jesus as a purple stegosaurus with a beard, six legs (each with Converse shoes with wings on them), wearing a halo and na robe. My point is that the magnificence of this kangaroo reminded me of the magnificence of Max’s Jesus and I found that really cool.
Being momentarily stunned by the coolness of such a magnificent animal I wandered on down the sidewalk (the context of which was stated in the intro) and saw Barack Obama.
Now why in Max’s colorful Christ’s name was a candidate for the presidency of the Unites States strutting his African-American stuff down my lowly street in Guelph?
Well, it occurred to me that he was campaigning, and if I know anything about campaigning the most successful tactic is always to hunt down everybody who fought against your nation in a war over ten years ago and challenge each individual to a fight to the death. I noticed he was heading towards Barnaby’s house.
Poor Barnaby had injured his left cranium three years earlier when his neighbor had punched him in the face, so I knew he would not be a match for the sheer destructive power of Barack Obama.
I realized I was the only one who could stand between the future-president and the certain demise of my close, affair having, Vietnam-war-fighting, friend. I walked right up to Barack Obama and tapped him on the shoulder. He halted his steady pace, and turned to me, but as he turned to me while he halted his steady pace I punched him in the face.
The following seconds were quite the blur. From Barnaby’s retelling of what he saw through his window, it seems that I was shot about eight times by Obama’s bodyguards. It’s a damn shame that somebody as amazing as me would get shot.
The end.
I shall try to find more of my old stories, but since most were on paper there's a good chance they're lost forever.
Some of the most memorable titles were the likes of 'Ali Baba the Kangaroo', and my personal favorite, a parody and satirical twist on the history of anti-semitism and genocide, 'The Last Korean'.