Back to Childhood

Asian supermarket, Thanksgiving Day.

Package of cookies showed me a blue cartoon cat with no ears.

Are you kidding? Is that cat still around?

Maybe he's Taiwan's Mickey Mouse.

Checking out, I wished I'd learned some Chinese at my friend's house while reading that cat's comic books.

Just enough to tell the cashier, "Thank you."

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The Gift 55

I've gotten some swell gifts in my life. Some from people, some from luck, or fate, or the Divine, if you believe in those kindsa things. 

What's the best gift ever, for me? Well, there's being alive, of course. But everyone gets that. 

The best gift

just for me? 

It's when she said, 

Be you.

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Vinyl Repair Kit 55

Phil had a thing for blow-up dolls. Not cheap ones - painted faces, seams in wrong places. Good ones: molded features ... realistic hair ... blue eyes.

His dream? A life-size silicon woman to hold him and listen.

Phil had a thing for blow-up dolls. And it had taken him just one passionless marriage to get there.

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