Spitball Army

Thin, flat, square: record album. Large, circular, centerless: hula hoop. Envelope: money.

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Dirty Santa office party spoils: one bright red sock monkey. Anonymous gift on neighbors’ porch swing: one bright red sock monkey.

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Gliding silently, the satellites record the planet, its ice floes, coral reefs and Conestoga wagon trails, and harbor no judgment.

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Unlike her mum staff, the library director engaged me in conversation about her mission to serve the “underpoor,” then blessed me.

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New Year’s Eve 1944. “Send some snapshots, and those cigarettes,” he writes from his bunk. “And kiss one, before they get stale.”

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She felt odd writing her heart in a V-mail, so she chronicled the weather lovingly: in Iwo Jima ash, he read of her Michigan snow.

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The fountain pen, of crushed oyster shell, wrote with a gold nib. The note, on a telegraph form, began: I’ve been a damnable fool.

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His new job revealed the most vital topics of inter-office gab: cars, kids and sex. He was willingly conversant in one of them.

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I feel comforted and far from alone when my telephone identifies a missed call as TEXAS, as if one-fiftieth of America wants me.

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“I love Christmas,” said the woman, ankles wrapped in plastic bags, “It’s the Lord’s time.” Her companion rummaged in a Frito bag.

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