First, congratulations to Stu! He was the 9,999th visitor to this blog. I would have given a prize to visitor #10,000, but they never revealed who they were. Oops. Congratulations, Stu!
Next, we move on to the contest of lolcyruses. There were only four entries. Needless to say, this makes me sad, but there will be more contests to come.
Onto the entries!
This one comes from the aforementioned Stu:
This one is from Alyssa:
I should note, Cyrus actually hates when I touch his belly, hence why he is biting and clawing me. Naturally, I do it often as revenge for when he annoys me.
This one comes from Hannah:
And finally, what you’ve all been waiting for. Winner winner, chicken dinner, goes to Emily:
I loved this one because it makes reference to a multi-armed Norse nautical terror. How. Awesome. Is. That?
Finally, a bit of a story:
I was on the road on Saturday, and singing at the top of my lungs with a song. It may or may not have been Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher.”
My car was starting to be kinda tough to control and making a strange noise, so I pulled it on over and got out. Sure enough, Mr. Left Front Tire was sagging badly and clearly not going to get me back home or even to a service station for more air. Now, this wouldn’t have been much of a problem, but I was in Indiana. Rural Indiana.
Feeling self-reliant, I got out my jack and tire iron and went to work on removing the tire. I got all the bolts off and began tugging on the tire. Which wouldn’t budge. At all.
Now, I’ve never had this happen to me before. I was mortified, worried that something might really be badly damaged, and if so, would cost me a fortune to fix. So I called for help, and a friend said he’d come right away, and that we’d call AAA if we needed to. Only problem was it would take him 45 minutes or so to get to me.
So I sat in the car and waited. And slept a little. After about 40 minutes, I cracked my eyes to see if my friend was there, but instead there was a truck in front of me, backing up. It had Indiana plates and a bearded, somewhat scruffy man emerged from it.
“I saw that you were having trouble. Need a hand?”
I extended my own hand and shook his. I’m a firm believer that you can learn more about a man from his hands than you can from half an hour of conversation. His hands were leathery, cut and scratched and scarred from a lifetime of hard work. Turns out he was a carpenter and builds log cabins. I have his card and hope to be able to give it to someone very soon.
I gratefully accepted his help and he was able to remove the tire in five minutes with the use of a hammer and some knowhow. Apparently, rust had formed where the wheel meets the hub and simply made the wheel stuck. A few blows from the hammer cleared that right up and we had my spare on in five minutes.
“I must have helped change 10 tires in six years on this stretch of road. I figure if I need help one day, someone will help me, so I’ll give while I can.”
Good words to remember and live by. Thanks Mr. Thompson. I hope I can repay your kindness someday, or at least pass it on.
Dialogue