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PEMDAS #1
by David Amerman
To the Waaklesky School District Board:
Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally.
Let me explain.
You see, my family was dealt a heavy blow when my father injured himself last Saturday afternoon. We went to McDonald’s for our traditional Saturday brunch, only this time we went to the new Mickey D’s downtown, just to check it out.
Unfortunately, this one was really different. It had this gigantic freaking playground at the front of the store. You could barely even tell there was a restaurant behind such a behemoth of a playground.
My little brother Shannon went apeshit. Excuse me. Let me rephrase that. My little brother Shannon became excited. For someone accustomed to slipshod, low-budget grade school slides and swings, coming face to face with a three story playground was like seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time. Minus the scattered snail corpses and persistent body odor, you know.
So my dad let Shannon play for a little bit before the meal was ready to eat. Once we got our food, though, Shannon was so into this colossal playplace that he didn’t want to stop and eat. We set the tray of burgers down on a table near the shoe cubbies and called his name. He was at the very top of the structure and refused to get down.
So my dad gets the bright idea to climb up and get Shannon himself. I was surprised that he even got past all those other little kids and made it all the way up to the top. But just as he was crossing the last cargo net tunnel, his weight caused him to crash right through the net and fall thirty feet or so where he landed on some fat guy’s table.
He scared the shit out of that fat guy. What a sight it was. One second this lonely lard ball is staring at the eleven Filet-O-Fish sandwiches he bought and the next second, BLAM! An explosion of North Pacific cod and tartar sauce, and what looked like a 350 pound man flailing his arms as if he were trying to take flight.
We had to pay $450 to pay for the broken cargo net tunnel and another $30 for that fatso to buy some more sandwiches. Worse than that , my dad hurt his back. He didn’t break anything, though. The doctors said that those stacks of fish sandwiches probably cushioned his fall. Maybe obesity has its advantages after all!
Well, even though my dad didn’t suffer any major damage, he was still in a lot of pain so the doctor gave him some Vicodin.
Three days later, my dad’s sister, Aunt Sally, came all the way up from Cheyenne to visit us for a few days. This was the first time Shannon and I have ever met her. I wish we could have kept it that way. All Aunt Sally wanted to do was sleep on the sofa, smoke glass pipes, and eat my Snickers Kudos bars that I like to pack in my lunch. Kind of like what our Uncle Saul used to do before he died.
Yesterday Aunt Sally came to school to pick me and Shannon up. She was eating my dad’s Vicodin like Crunch ‘n Munch and she kept saying she wanted to go spelunking with Mark Ruffalo or something. She looked kind of dizzy, but that’s how she usually is anyway.
Then she grabbed my backpack, found my AXE deodorant, and started spraying it everywhere. Then she tried to light a cigarette and when the flame hit the aerosol spray she wound up lighting the art class display on fire.
Aunt Sally says she’s sorry for destroying everyone’s project. She says she needed to take all that Vicodin (which is why she got so dizzy) because she cut her pinky on a dried up orange peel.
It won’t happen again.
Sincerely yours,
Graham Mackenrow
5th Grade
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