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Category: Humor
Description: Jerry's life hasn't been going well, but just when he thinks things can't get any worse ... they do. This is not a true story. It's not about the author's own life. It just seems that way.
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, 1990
Wildside Press eBook Store Release Date: May 2006

2 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [39 KB], ePub (EPUB) [69 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [15 KB], Portable Document Format (PDF) [214 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [16 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [67 KB], Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [88 KB], hiebook (KML) [99 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [82 KB], iSilo (PDB) [13 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [17 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [58 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [25 KB]
Words: 4792
Reading time: 13-19 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Jerry in the kitchen, commands the action on the home front. The first sortie begins, a direct frontal attack on the surface layer of loose ground beef and noodles. Splash, circle, rinse. Heavy casualties in the rinse sink! Small globs of Hamburger Helper swirl in brown water and wash down the drain with a crackly sucking sound. Jerry moves the washcloth, coated in brown sludge, over to the wash sink and splashes into the grease-scudded water, bits of food flotsam bob in the lukewarm liquid. Jerry squeezes the cloth, releases. Bits of slime dislodge. Squeeze and release. The cloth brightens, the water darkens. The cloth is ready. Three more sorties and the surface layer is gone, exposing the blackened mounds of burned-in, stubbornly resisting food from God knows when.

This isn't supposed to happen, thinks Jerry. He reaches for a tattered plastic scrub pad. Nothing sticks to a T-Fal pan. One or two wipes with the cloth and the pan gleams metallic gray and clean. And so it does, along the rim where the protective coating is still intact. But below that, the coating has long since been scrubbed and burned away, its stick-proofness striated and peeled, forming a powerful magnetic for food. Jerry attacks harder with the scrub pad, softens the entrenched black mounds, bits of them falling into the water to join bobbing wads of meat and pasta. Into the rinse. Down the drain. Assess the damage. Why can't they make glue this strong?

Incoming from the rear. A piece of cookie flies by Jerry's head, sticks with saliva wetness to the window above the sink.

"Da," from the baby, sitting in her highchair in the middle of the kitchen floor.

"Nice try, Little Red," says Jerry, looking at her reflection in the window. The baby's tuft of bright red hair reminds him of his younger brother. Jeez, even the shape of her head. He feels a chill, watching his little girl sitting out there in the cold dark of her reflected image. He turns quickly: "Ho, ho! There's my little food-chucking girl." He reads impatience in the wide blue eyes above the pug nose.

"DA!"