As I Bit Into the Sweet Nectarine, I Appreciated its Crisp Juiciness--Until I Realized It Was Not in Fact a Nectarine--But a HUMAN HEAD!!!

Thank you, Jack Handy. If I actually had any friends, we would stay up all night in a fort we made out of bedsheets, reading his jokes late into the night with a flashlight. We'd laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. We would laugh until tears came to our eyes. Then my friend would say, "I'm bored. Do you want to play doctor?" And I'd say, "But I like doing this!" And he' say, "Too bad. We're playing doctor. I'm the doctor and you're the patient. Drop your pants!" And I'd shout out and run to the hallway bathroom and lock the door and he'd be chasing me all the way there, screaming, "You have to do what the doctor tells you! Let me see your penis!" And I'd jump inside the bathtub, hide my head in my hands, and cry softly. And he would keep shouting that same thing over and over again. Then all of a sudden it would get real quiet. I would be so petrified I would hold my breath. I would wait for fifteen minutes, absolutely silent, waiting for him to make a sound. After those fifteen minutes, I would tiptoe to the bathroom door, take a deep breath, and yank the door open. There, standing in the middle of the hallway with a top hat and red scarf, would be a snow man, slowly melting on the hard wood floor. His mouth, made of raisins, twisted into an eerie smile.

I know some of you guys have been telling me that all of my posts have been total bullshit lately. I'll have you know that all of my posts are based on a kernel of truth. So each and every one of my posts is like a giant piece of popcorn--salted, heavily buttered, and white like the luscious belly of an albino baby elephant. But if you nibble away at it like a little hamster or bunny rabbit, then you'll eventually discover the kernel. And it will get stuck in your teeth for a few hours, and when you do finally swallow it, it will go down into your stomach and grow into a watermelon.

But even so, I thought I might surprise you all with a totally true story about something that happened to me last week, just to give you a nice break from all of my posts that sound like acid trips I had while listening to the Beatles album Revolver. And I don't think you'll mind either, because this story is so insane it's going to sound like a lie.

Last week I was driving around downtown looking for a place to eat. I had been spending the whole day with this girl I met at Barnes & Noble who was nested in one of those big red armchairs reading a book by Neil Gaiman. I told her that I love his work, we talked for a while, and after lots of crooning noises and avoidance of sudden movements on my part, I finally convinced her to go get coffee with me. Turns out she goes to the same school as one of my best friends.

We had fun, and we spent a lot of the day wandering around Piedmont Park, but after a while she had to leave because her aunt, as it happens, was having a baby. We exchanged numbers and the whole deal, but I was left alone for dinner considering I have no friends and I couldn't go home because my mom's book club was there and they always want to do weird stuff like talk to me and ask how I am.

So there I was, driving around looking for perhaps a Panera Bread or Panda Express. It had been pretty cloudy and dismal for the entire day, and there was the sort of icy, ghostly mist hanging in the air that you get on those kinds of days. It was around that time, though, that it started raining. Like, really hard. Cracks of lightning and the earth-shaking thunder too. The whole deal. It got to the point that I didn't want to be driving in the middle of the city in that weather, so I pulled off into a sort of subdivision where I could just cruise around slowly until the worst of it passed over.

I could hardly see the road ahead of me as I drove on. The rain was pounding onto the roof of the car so loudly I could barely hear myself think. I don't see how it was possible, then, but I saw a little kid walking down the sidewalk with his head pointed to the ground.

It took every ounce of willpower in my body to do it, but I slowed down and rolled down the window, flinching as the rain flooded in onto the passenger seat. But I noticed then that the kid was sobbing and that he didn't have a rain coat or anything, so I decided I had no choice. Plus, he couldn't have been seven-years-old.

"Hey, kid!" I shouted out. "Need a ride?"

He was white, and like I said before--he didn't have an umbrella or rain coats or one of those ridiculous ponchos that my mom, at least, used to make me wear when I was that age. I could practically see the words "stranger danger" forming on his lips, but after a minute of standing there and gaping at me like an old donkey, he nodded his head. I reached over and pushed open the door, and he hopped in.

After he shut the door and I rolled up the window, I started driving again. Fortunately, the rain was starting to let up just a bit by that time.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Kevin," he said in this tiny, barely audible voice.

"Kevin. That's a good name. I'm Christopher," I said. "How come you were wandering out in the rain like that? Where are your parents?"

"Vienna," he said.

It took me a while to process the word. After a few moments I finally spoke.

"Vienna?" I asked. "So who are you staying with?"

"Nobody," he said calmly, looking out the window.

I couldn't believe it.

"What do you mean you're not staying with anybody?!" I asked with incredulity. "Your parents just left you in your house alone?"

"We don't have a house," he said.

This was getting worse and worse. Firstly, what was the deal with this kid? Secondly, what the hell was I going to do with him?

"So you're in Atlanta alone? With no grown-ups?" I asked.

He was a silent for a moment. Then he said, "There are no grown-ups."

I was sort of freaking out, but I tried to keep it together so I didn't freak out the kid as well. I glanced sideways at him and then said in a voice as calm as I could manage, "Okay, are you hungry?" It sounded pathetic, but it was all I could think of.

He paused. Then:

"Yes."

"Okay, is it too late for pancakes? No, it's never too late for pancakes. Let's stop by Waffle House and grab something to eat for dinner. Then after that, we'll...we'll...we'll figure out what to do then. Is that okay, Kevin?"

"My name's not Kevin," he said, turning away from the window to look at me.

"What?" I asked, glancing at him. "You said your name was Kevin."

"No," he said with a sigh, turning back to the window. "It's Toby."

I was confused.

"Oh," I said, unsure of whether or not he was joking. "Okay, Toby. Do pancakes sound okay?"

"I don't know," he said. "Let's ask Kevin."

With that, he turns to look in the back seat and is silent for a moment. Then he nods his head, swivels back around, and says, "Kevin says pancakes sound good."

Considerably freaked out, I drove the rest of the way to Waffle House in the drizzling rain. We sat in silence, the kid looking out the window and sniffling for the duration of the ride. When we got there, we walked into a Waffle House that was more or less deserted and found a booth near the back. I told him to sit down and not move a muscle--that I was just going to run the bathroom and be back in a minute.

I jogged to the bathroom and locked the door behind me as I entered. I looked at myself in the mirror in exasperation, running my hands through my hair again as I always do whenever I'm stressed out. I even thought about calling my mom or dad, but then I decided against it. Instead I just splashed some cold water in my face and thought about what do do.

Go to the police, I thought. That's all there is left to do.

With my mind made up, I took a deep breath, unlocked the door, and walked back towards our booth. What I saw there nearly gave me a heart attack.

The boy was nowhere to be seen. The booth was empty.

Empty except for a large, buckeye hen perched motionlessly on the table. I gazed at it in horror. It cocked its head to the right and clucked twice.

"Toby?" I said, terrified.

The hen stared at me with its beedy black eyes.

"Kevin?" I tried.

It clucked three times and then cock-a-doodle-dooed.

Without a second thought, I scooped it up into my arms and rushed out of the restaurant, ignoring the stares of the other customers as I sprinted past them. I ran to the car, pulled open the trunk, tossed it in, and shut the door as quickly as possible. I hopped into the car and drove away, trying to the best of my ability to ignore the clucks of the hen that was flipping out in the trunk of my car.

Fifteen minutes later, I was sitting in the waiting room at the nearest police station, clutching the hen to my chest and staring resolutely at the wall opposite me. I waited for probably half an hour, sitting there with the hen in my arms as the police lady behind the desk signed papers and made phone calls and gave me uncomfortable looks.

I had started to doze off when I felt a hand clap onto my shoulder.

"That's a nice-looking chicken you got there," a man said.

"TOM HANKS?!" I shouted. And it was. He sat in the seat beside me, wearing a pair of nice jeans and a checkered button-up.

"Yup, it's me all right," said Tom Hanks. "So what crime is the chicken guilty of?"

"Well," I said with a laugh. "I'm not taking it here to arrest it. It's a long story, really. It all started earlier today when..."

"Forget about the goddamn chicken," said Tom Hanks. "Do you like outer space?"

"Do I!" I exclaimed.

Before I hardly knew what had happened, we were getting suited up in orange astronaut jump suits. Man, were those things cool or what! The helmets were just like in the movies--like big old fish bowls. Speaking of fish bowls, did I mention Aqua-Man was there too? Yeah, he was. That guy is such a joker. Did you know he's Jewish?

After we had left the atmosphere, Tom Hanks surprised me by letting me take the wheel.

"Just make sure to watch out for babies," he said very seriously. "There are a lot of those floating around out here. And you don't want to get caught having run over a baby with your space ship. Very embarrassing ordeal."

"Sure thing," I said as I took hold of the wheel, not even bothering to suppress my smile. I dodged not only babies but also astroids and balls of space fire and hovering road signs like in the movie Space Jam. He even let me fly at light speed, which was fun, but I had to stop after a while because it gave me indigestion.

"Look out!" my stunningly beautiful monkey assistant named Angela yelled at one point. "A space alien monster!"

Sure enough, there was an enormous polar bear-tiger-shark hybrid space alien bigger than the planet Jupiter coming right at us.

"Quick!" Tom Hanks said. "Press the big red button to the right of the steering wheel!"

So I pressed it, and the space alien monster exploded into little pieces.

"Nice shot!" he said, patting me on the back.

"Oh, Christopher," Angela said seductively, caressing my face with her monkey foot as she said so. "You're so amazing and attractive and brave."

"All in a day's work," I said modestly. And then we kissed, but soon Tarzan showed up and asked me what the hell I was doing landing a big smooch on his smokin' hot monkey wife. I told him I didn't mean nothing by it. But then he challenged me to a show-down. So of course I had to accept.

And then we were at the fight and the whole Universe was invited because it was such an important fight and we were in a giant wrestling cage. As it turned out, it was a sumo-wrestling match. And whoever won would win both Angela's love and the entire Universe to rule over as emperor.

At that point I realised it was not in fact Tarzan I was wrestling but a two-headed lizard man, kinda like one of the bad aliens from Men in Black 2 except it had two heads. Which was cool, but it would only make it harder to wrestle him because one head could try to bite me while the other could whisper insults in my ear.

So a second after the alien referee blew the whistle to begin the match, I whipped a lazer gun out of my sumo wrestling pants and vaporised the two-headed lizard man into a pile of dust. The crowd, which consisted of all of the Universe, cheered and cheered as I kissed my new monkey bride, Angela, and was crowned as Emperor of the Universe. Don't worry, Tom Hanks caught up with me later and I thanked him for giving me the ride in his space ship.

That, more or less, was my story. Like I said, no more spilling out nonsense on this blog. I know how that annoys you guys. From now on I'm Mister Honest. No longer am I the boy who cried wolf. No I'm the boy who made the wolf cry because he was just so honest. Honesty. That's me. Honest Abe. Oh yeah, did I tell you my name is Abe?

Cheers,
That Blond Guy