Thursday, March 20, 2008

A Shitload of Baseball Bats

This is a little piece of dialog from a story I'm working on. As usual, the narrator is based off all my worst impressions.

My brother called a few hours after I posted the ad. We were both a little drunk.

“What's up?”

Muting my television, I moved the cellphone a little further from my ear. “Didn't you say you'd stop asking that when you called me?”

“Maybe I just wanna know whatsup with my brother.”

“But you're calling me. Wouldn't it make more sense to wait for me to ask how you're doing?” I followed this point with a second point, equally reasonable. “You know I'm just going to say 'not much,' or, 'nothing' – why do you even ask?”

“Because you're my brother. I'm just trying to be polite.” Stepping momentarily into a heavier accent, my brother spoke again, “Nah man, I'm onna phone. Tell'im to come back later.”

“If you were trying to be polite, you wouldn't say 'what's up,' you'd talk to me the way I talk to you.”

“Did Tim drop off those baseball bats?”

“Yeah, last week. I couldn't sell them on ebay, so I've got'em on Craigslist as 'A Shitload of Baseball Bats' – no serious replies yet.”

“Cool. I gotta talk to this guy. Lemme know if they sell.”

“Sure.”

I went to sleep drunk, and I remember waking myself up several times throughout the night, speaking to the people I'd been dreaming of just seconds ago. I woke up that way in the morning, telling an imaginary customer, “I could sell you five for $12 each.”

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

illegal AND unethical. and very entertaining.

Ben Grad said...

You know what's entertaining?

Public blogs.