The Library Now Has Basketball Hoops (But You Have To Supply Your Own Court)

I was hunched over as I shuffled creakily to the meeting room. Jonah jauntily came up beside me.

"Cheerio! What's this, old sport? Got a hitch in your gullywog?"

I rolled my good eye up at him. My mouth formed a rictus of belated raillery. "Thanks for talking me into playing basketball with you and Justron."

Jonah laughed heartily like Errol Flynn on Red Bull. He slapped me on my tender back. "Come on, didn't you like it?"

"It was my own personal Shoah," I gasped.

"So we'll see you out there tonight?"

"I'll see you in hell, you welp," I muttered.

"What was that?"

"Er... Watch out for the Shaq attack."

Coughing, paralytically groaning, I made my way to the meeting. I sat next to Todd, freshly back from Sweden and the biggest Gay Pride Party ever. I wanted to talk further about all the hot dudes he had met (yum), but Todd's eyes kept drifting downwards... downwards...

"What's up with that, hooker?"

"Huh?"

He tilted his beard at my crotch--where my hand was resting on my thigh. It turned out my thumb was imprisoned twixt my index and middle fingers.

"Why do you hold your hand that way?"

"Hm." I raised my hand, looking at the Borromean knot of my fingers. "Maybe an incipient stroke. You can thank Jonah, the monster."

"Okay," Karen said. "Okay, okay. Listen up. Okay. You guys? Listen. Okay. Okay! Now... Okay. Is everyone listening?"

She stood before the giant window where Reggie used to put on his cleaning theatrics. We all looked with nostalgic fondness at the phantom.

"Okay. You guys, okay. Now. Okay. Now, okay. You guys, we need to... Okay. Are you listening? Okay. Jay's wife had their baby, a beautiful baby boy." Karen turned to me. "Greg? You know more about this matter?"

The muscles around my mouth were sore, but I opened it all the same. "Yes. Jay called me yesterday to let me know the baby was a breach... was breached... uh, had a breach?" I vaguely formed my hands in the air, trying to draw the shape of a fetus. "Anyway, I think she needed a C-section? Of course, in my case, I was a C minus minus section."

Jonah groaned loudly.

"Ha!" I said. "Got you back!"

"For that, you're playing the next seventy nights."

Todd was still staring at my fingers. "Do you shoot the ball with your fingers twisted up like that?"

"Well, I--"

Just then someone walked outside the library, passing Reggie's memory shadow. It was my niece, Toots! She was there to get her Toni Morrison on. My core cracked as I got up and hobbled to the entrance in shambling, Shoahesque footsteps. I opened the door, but Toots was gone!

"TOOTS!" I yelled.

 Nowhere. And I was no shape or content to run after her. I deduced that perhaps she had gone around to the back. In the parking lot was a blazing blue Tesla. My brother, Les, was behind the wheel.

I gripped my lumbar and shuffled forward. "There you are! I have the book..."

Toots waved at me from the passenger side. "Hi, uncle!"

"Hello, young lady. I was just out front. If you had waited thirty seconds... well, five minutes or so..."

"We're in a hurry," Les said. "We have to get a CPAP for the dog."

"Really? Your dog snores that badly?"

"What? No, it's just a cool accessory." Les revved the Tesla turbo duel batteries. Vvvvrrrroom went the volts as it went from Stalin Tractor to Carrot Top Ultra. "Gotta go! Thanks!"

The car screeched away in a cloud of, uh, electrons. I turned back to the library, feeling like a breach myself. Once I slathered myself from head to foot in Australian Dream, I was good to go for the rest of the meeting. But when I got there, everyone was gone.

"Your little 'joke' ruined everything," Jonah said, his Errol Flynn heartitude deflating into a putrid soup with Paul Giamatti's face. "So... Well done!"

"Gosh. Thanks."

And that's the story of how I ruined a meeting at work.


NEXT WEEK: Anniversary post--it's been six awful years! It goes without saying this blog has been my own personal Shaq 'n' Shoah Shake (now available at Good Times). Wait, did I say that?