Once upon a time....

It was bright and sunny out but it was cold and Nicholas couldn’t get the door open to go inside the place where his Mom was because it was too heavy.

A lady came by and stopped and watched him.

She laughed. “Why do you want to go in there?”

He stopped pulling on the door. “Mom,” he said.

“Your mom’s in there?”

Nicholas nodded.

“Does she work in there?”

He nodded again.

“Does she know where you are?”

He started to nod, stopped. Started to shake his head no, stopped. He didn’t know what the right answer was.

The lady looked at him. Her eyes were pretty but her hair looked weird and there was something shiny stuck through her nose so she was a little scary. “What’s your name?”

She was a stranger so he didn’t know if he should tell but it was too late and he heard himself say “Nicholas.”

“What’s your last name, Nicholas?”

He shook his head, looked down. The lady had the same black and white canvas sneakers he did, only hers were dirtier.

“Well, what’s your mom’s name?”

She wasn’t very smart. “Mom.”

She laughed. “Well, let’s go find her.” She opened the door for him.

Inside it was dark and it smelled funny. Like burning a little bit. Like bathroom a little bit. And something else. Like how his Mom smelled a little bit when she got home from work and woke him up to hold him and tell him she loved him and she’d never let him go. Funny like that. Like how her breath was when she did that. That was how it smelled. Funny.

Nicholas had never been in there so he looked around but it was too dark to really see anything except there was a counter with a lot of bottles behind it and a big TV up on the wall. There were some stools at the counter and people sitting on two of them. There was someone standing behind the counter, too. It was too dark to see if any of the people was his Mom.

The lady led him to a padded bench next to a table. She told him to sit down and she went over to the counter.

There was silver tape on the bench and Nicholas started picking at it. He had just pulled up a corner of the tape when the lady came back.

“Your Mom’s on her break,” the lady said. “They’re going to see if they can find her. You just stay right here.” She went over to the counter and sat down on one of the stools and someone gave her a glass of something.

Nicholas kept pulling at the tape. He was going to see if he could get it to come up all in one piece without tearing or anything but it was hard because it was wrinkly and sort of soft and dirty like it had been there for a long time.

Uh, or was that not what you had in mind?

You type fast, dersins.

I just need a way to make the NEVER-ENDING DAY FROM HELL to pass a little quicker, that's all. I like the word 'interminable'. Except when it's used to describe this day. I went to lunch for an hour and a half and I still feel like this cubicle is my own personal oubliette. I also like the word 'oubliette'.

How are you?

Wanna know how bad it is? I'm reading the blue.

Once upon a time you were adopted. The end.

My dad used to tell me that one. Sorry, I mean my "dad" (he insists I put it in quotes).

My mother always told me she found me under a cabbage leaf...

there once was a man from nantucket

My mother always told me she found me under a cabbage leaf...

Oh my "mom" told me that one too. Well except her version went "Once upon a time we found you under a cabbage leaf in an adoption agency. The end."

You know what I hate? Doors that automatically lock when they shut. I used to live in a bedsit in Swiss Cottage in London that had a door like that. There were several bedsits and flats in the building and we all shared a pay phone in the hall. One cold winter night, I heard the phone ring and excitedly jumped up to go see if it was for me. There is nothing like that sinking feeling of dread when you hear the "click" of the door locking behind you. When it happened to me I had on shorts, socks and a t-shirt. No wallet, no money, no keys. The only thing I could do was walk to my landlord's house several streets away to get the spare key. In December. In socks. Only to find she wasn't home. So I trudged, downtrodden, back to my locked bedsit, with no way to even get in the building now. Luckily, I just happened to catch one of my upstairs neighbors coming back from the store. I'd never talked to her before, but I told her my sob story and she offered to let me use the phone in her flat (they had a large flat on the third floor and a private phone line). Turns out the flat was occupied by what seemed like 20 Australians, who were all sitting around drinking beer. They were hospitable enough to share their beer and let me use their phone to keep trying to call the landlord, who eventually got home at some point in the evening. I've had a soft spot in my heart for Australians ever since.

Adults used to like telling us kids that we were picked up from "under a bridge," teasing the target about their foundling-hood until the kid was crying. Not only until I was older and wiser in the ways of the world did I realize that the Korean word for bridge was a homonym for leg ("dari") and it was apparent that this was just a pun that actually meant we were picked up from "under legs." Har, get it? Mean old bastards.

Here's the story, of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely girls. All of them had hair of gold, like their mother, the youngest one in curls.

Here's the story, of a man named Brady, who was busy with three boys of his own. They were four men, living all together, but they were all alone.

Till the one day when the lady met this fellow, and they knew they was much more than a hunch, that this group, must somehow form a family. That's the way we all became the Brady Bunch.