by: David S. Atkinson
I spent the better part of the afternoon packaging up my excreta in cardboard boxes and clear packing tape again. It’s time consuming, but there isn’t a whole lot of choice. Given my particular situation, I have to dispose of it through the mail.
A piece of advice: don’t try to get money off a leaky sink faucet repair by challenging a plumber to single combat. They are much better trained on the Bolivian balloon Theremin than one might imagine. Also, if you accuse them of cheating, neither they nor any other contractor will come to your house ever again.
My toilet broke the next day.
At this point, I wish I’d just paid the requested $20. Who will install a toilet for me now? I attempted the operation myself but somehow ended up with a new concrete patio instead. Those directions are so confusing. I don’t even live on the ground floor.
This left me in dire straits, nothing to go on and all. I was barred from the Rotary Club hall down the street within a week and needed to come up with another solution fast. That’s when I stumbled across those remote medical testing services.
Seriously, those are a Godsend. I get cancer screening for my colon at least once a week now. I’m pretty sure I’m clean after so many, but it gets rid of the feces all right. No one has complained that I send thirty times the indicated sample amount. The procedure does get expensive, but until I’m forgiven there’s not much else I can do.
At least I get a deal on the spectrographic body composition urine analysis I send to that place that usually serves pig farms. I don’t know how they haven’t figured out that I’m not livestock, but I’m not asking any questions. It’s enough work to let the liquid evaporate down a bit to save on shipping as it is.
Regardless, we all do what we have to in life. That’s what mama always taught me—though she was also the one who started combatting tradespeople instead of coughing up the fee. Perhaps I should have been a bit more judicious on which of her lessons I learned.
It might have helped.
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David S. Atkinson is the author of books such as Roses are Red, Violets are Stealing Loose Change from my Pockets While I Sleep; Apocalypse All the Time; and the Nebraska Book Award-winning Not Quite so Stories. He is a staff reader for Digging Through The Fat, and his writing appears in Spelk, Jellyfish Review, Thrice Fiction, Literary Orphans, and more. His writing website is http://davidsatkinsonwriting.com/.
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