Blind Date
Robert had recently broken up with his fiancée after a ten-year engagement. Not to be discouraged, he heeded a friend’s advice and found a blind date online named Susan. He suggested they meet at the corner of Hubbard and Clark next Saturday night at eight. Extremely anxious, having not dated in years, Robert was hopeful that he would now meet someone better suited to his personality and vision for the future. Robert was open to all possibilities.
Robert arrived early to meet his date. As he checked his watch to see if it was already eight, he noticed a tall, statuesque woman with long blond hair walking toward him. As she approached, Robert greeted her, “Hi, are you Susan?” “Are you Robert?” she said. He replied, “Yes, I’m Robert!” She replied, “Well, I’m not Susan,” and continued walking down the street.
Devil on the Bus
Speaking of the devil, I was riding the bus on 63rd Street when the devil got on and sat down beside me. Mind you, he didn’t have his normal disguise, like he wears when he goes out in public, trying to fool people. He actually had his old red jumpsuit with his tail and horns right up there on the bus for everybody to see exactly who he was. Guess what? Nobody really paid him any attention. As my grandma would say, nobody didn’t pay him no nevermind.
And then I said to myself, “I can’t believe the devil got on the bus and decided to sit right next to me…why me? Then I thought, well, hell, if everybody is pretending not to see him, then I’m going to pretend like I don’t see him, and maybe he will leave me alone.
Sure enough, he saw an old lady reading the Bible sitting a few rows ahead of me. He jumped up and went and sat next to her, and then she looked up at him and said, “You old debil, git on way from here!” Then the devil snatched the Bible out of her hand and ran out through the back door, leaving it open so others could sneak in without paying.
Eddie
If Mr. T was born to wear gold and Sylvester Stallone was born to mumble, then Eddie Weiss Jones (my aunt Maxine’s boyfriend) was born to lose money.
Eddie regularly played the numbers and later the lottery. He bought Irish Sweepstakes tickets, invested in pyramid schemes, and, if there were Nigerian email scammers around during his time, he certainly would have given to them, all in the hope that someday his ship would come in.
One day, he bought my aunt a Sony Color Trinitron television in a brand-new, sealed box for $25.00, straight off the truck parked in the back of the Community Discount Store parking lot. It was so heavy that I had to help him carry it inside. (This was in the late 60s, when everyone had a black-and-white set with rabbit ears.) We were about to congratulate him for snagging the deal of the month until he opened the box and found that it was full of bricks. That was Eddie.
He continued for the next twenty years, buying fake Rolex watches, radios that didn’t work, and cars that didn’t run. He was a sucker for the lotto, even though he never won a dime. He was eventually moved to a nursing home, and one Saturday night, he was in the day room watching television when his lottery numbers appeared on the screen. Eddie jumped out of his wheelchair, shouting, “I won! I won!”
Then he fell on the floor and died of a heart attack. The ticket was never found.