Oyster Hoisting

"That's the way that it is." His beard blows in the salty wind.

The young man squeezes the netting knots in his hand. "Yeah, but that blows! It shouldn't be like that! We shouldn't be be able to hoist the oysters!" he voices. He throws down the net.

"Tough. That's how it is. Do you want to just save the world?"

"What?"

"Yeah? You want a utopia where shit doesn't happen?"

"It just doesn't feel right to employ the oyster hoister near adjoining groynes!" He points to the nearby beach structure, buoy.

The tanned fisherman sucks his pipe with sour lips. "Ain't no choices when our boys is foisted to hoist moist oysters, of coise."

"Even when they're that moist?!"

"YES!"

"It needs to change!"

"Oh phooey. That's the way the world works, son."

The young man turns around and grapples.

11/12/13

 The woman woke up at 5am as she always did, screaming. She didn’t even look at her calendar, she knew which day it was. She screamed and ran down the attic steps and into the tiny second landing’s bathroom. She ran inside, her cold feet on the bare tiles. She brushed down her hair. She watched individual strands with each stroke to make sure they were in line. When they weren’t, it was a simple tug of the finger. 5:08AM was approaching according to her red blinking digital clock. She screamed. Frantically she straightened the strands. She was usually almost done with this process by the first ten minute block! Her hair had gotten particularly messy! She was very stressed overnight. She hated 11/12/13. It was neat and orderly, which was her addiction, but it started at an odd number! It felt like everything was off. It was bad enough to be in an odd numbered month to begin with, but then to keep stacking the numbers in order one after another, it should be aborted and killed. It was like a monster number, looming over the sky that day. Nothing would go right.

                She wasn’t done until 5:11am, so Kathy made up for it by stepping her foot into the tub and cranking the water with her feet. That counted but she was still not full because the last strains weren’t quite down – ah and there! They were finally done. She threw the hairbrush into its place and jumped in the shower and let the water rain down all over her perfect strands. The water cascaded down her head in perfect “umbrella formation” as she described it in her head. Water fell almost evenly along a 360 degree perimeter. Her hair had been cut to perfectly match half sphere shape when wet. She kept two batchy bushes that nearly perfectly filled in for two larger divots in her skull. The water droplets feel around her. Suddenly a clump of her hair fell out: one of the clumps in the divot. Water dropped out of that divot and favored that side.

                Kathy screamed “NO!” and tried to compensate by lowering her head to the left and letting the water hit the divot first. She balanced her body in the right way so that the water would hit the crater and then flow out evenly. After what felt like minutes on end, she found it. Finally it was time to shampoo. She held the shampoo bottle up past her shoulder. It was very difficult at this uneven angle. She poured it on the back of her head. It missed the divot and splattered behind her ear. She started crying.

                When the whole debacle was over it was 5:22! She was already into the second 10 minute time block and hadn’t even started the lawn mower yet! She rushed out of the bathroom naked still and ran into her yard to start it. It the lawn mower was at least on, it sort of counted so she could go back inside and get dressed.

                “Mommy, I want Cheerios!”

                “In a minute darling!”

                Yes 11/12/13 would be a horrendous day. But at least she could look forward to the glorious prophetic day a year and 31 days from now…