On Any Forgotten Sunday

 Okay, I'm going to dispense with this title first and foremost. Yes, there is a dumb joke involved. Scratch that... there are two dumb jokes involved and I admit my guilt right off. There was no way I was not going to be able to use this title as soon as its faintest ghost crossed my mind. As for those two jokes, I'll get to them. I just want to get to important things first because I'm a very serious person.

Man, that's gonna come back to haunt me when I'm done with this. This is possibly one of the saddest Tales I've written... but it's also the one you would expect to see in a creep-show type program, a very dark humor playing throughout. Seriously, this is a very sad little story and I feel bad for the levity in my keys right now, but I also can't help it. It is meant to be darkly humorous... and very sad.

Some time ago when the world was still only troubled by the need to obsess over Iraqi tea and who controls the teapot, my dear little sister was running a business providing in-home care CNAs. She had assumed this business she worked for after it just one day closed and she was not going to let the patients and their families have to flounder trying to find a new service. My sister is one of the most noble people I know for a little bit, I did some help for her company in what limited capacity my skills allowed. I did get to meet the clients and honestly, I don't know how medical field workers do it. I can imagine all sorts of things that freaks my kid sister right on out... but she does things without blinking an eye that I could not bring myself to imagine. This here is the hero of the family.

It was one of these clients who I had on my mind one day as a story from the List came calling even before I went looking. The working title of "Sunday Drive" was just that... a really bad yet informative working title. It was an early one, probably within the first two dozen ideas written down, and it was based off a day when my father and I were rolling around the gullies in the desert foothills at the base of the southwestern corner of the Bradshaw mountains... I believe it was the day we found the sad and lonely grave of Annie May White... but it was as we were making our way alternating between being in the wash and hanging onto a tenuous track over the gully that we had to make room for an SUV coming the other direction. That image of the elderly couple out on their Sunday drive (for that is what day it was) for some reason stuck with me and when I was first beginning these Tales, made its way as a potential set-up for a story and had sat thus titled in the List ever since. Now I had an overpowering urge to write this story because for some reason, this client still pops up in my memories.

They were both around 90 years old and while he had a determined strength about him, she was long past her expiration date and her pain was constant. Their apartment was painted all a bright pink with pink everything. There was very little evidence this man lived in this domicile... yet there was very little evidence outside of the bedroom ruled by his wife that anyone else lived there either. There was nothing to even indicate that he had a hobby of his own. He did not have friends and did not engage with anyone else in the community. He had no allowance to. He had not had friends either for a long, long time, nor had he any remaining family either on his side or hers. They never had children. Her funeral was attended by him, my sister, and I. I do not know what happened to him after that day, one which he looked strangely lighter than I had seen him ever before.

I think about that every now and then... or I did before I wrote this story. See, they were married in their early 20s and not long after, her physical condition deteriorated and now, in their 90s, he had spent his entire life caring for her. There was nothing beyond that and I often wondered how sad that was because she was mean. I mean, this woman was cruel. I could hear her from the other room... hell, I could hear her as I neared their apartment. I know that the pain was a lot of it, but I know that was no where near the justification. He had no friends. It takes a long and concerted assault upon a person to weaken them so much that they will eschew their entire life to the point of even having the ability to choose their own entertainment options. It is cruelty and a selfish, bitter heart that seeks to dominate another in anywhere near such a manner.

This is what I had to work with and 11 days after finishing "Needles and Dust", on October 11th, 2019, I finished "On Any Forgotten Sunday" at 4,523 words. It is a very sad story, both the set-up and the conclusion... although I couldn't help snickering to myself as I finished it 'cause it was just so darn wrong yet so darn right.

Now, as for that title...

Back when I was 15, the kid next door was my regular pal because he was next door. He was into motorcycles and trucks and such and I was into books and dungeons and dragons. For roughly 4 years we were best of friends but then I graduated (I was a year ahead) and the world happened. I last saw him about 30 years ago. I did get him to read some books in the cultural exchange of those years (it was the Robert E. Howard Conan books available then) and he got me to go see a documentary, in a freaking theater, of people riding dirt bikes in desert sands. That theater isn't there anymore (I snuck in to see "Stripes" there along with "Road Warrior"... they didn't watch beyond the entrance well) but I remember that day and I remember that film. It was called "On Any Sunday II" and Slade did not let off talking about how rad it was for the longest time.

Now, I'm not a sports guy. I honestly don't know the rules to baseball, basketball, volleyball, football... hell, any of them. I seriously could not tell you the rules of those games. Part of that is because of having an older brother who was obsessed with that but also wanted to keep all such knowledge to himself because, who the hell knows. I just know that very early on I lost any interest in watching men stand around, scratch their nuts and occasionally roll around in the grass an dirt with each other while playing with their balls. It's just not me. Doesn't matter the game, I just don't get it... but I am not immune to the language of the games. It is hard in this culture not to be. Indeed, even language surrounding the games is known to anyone awake in this land. For example, there's this phrase you might have heard. It starts, "Any given Sunday..."

And that is the title...

Oh, one last thing before we go... "On Any Forgotten Sunday" was the 18th story of 2019, eclipsing 2018's 17 stories in the month I am usually finishing my 12th.