Roku!

Lumber floating down a flooded street, there’s a stop sign in the yard.  That’s where it ended up.  Do I obey that stop sign or just let the lumber flow on through?

It made its way down through the gutter when suddenly the lumber felt a little hankering for some convenience store ingestion.  So lumber turned around right there in the middle of the street, not even looking both ways, and took a Louie at the stop sign without even giving it attention

Lumber has some concerns at this point, because he could swell and rot, but he was treated well at the mill and should be able to handle the elements.  Perhaps his only concern should be for splintering things upon others.

This thought soon passes his mind as he sees the convenience store sign sailing high above the tree line and so lumber doubled his effort in getting there.  Passing him by were cars full of Mexican hat dancers; they had just come from a rat infestation conference at the VFW.  When lumber came around the corner he had to manage his way around a couple of concrete objects and a little bit of garbage, but he saw Martin playing space invaders instead of delivering his newspapers.

This issue of space invaders vs. paper route is something that lumber and Martin were going to have to work out between them.  You see, back when lumber was just a twig, Martin was a three year old boy who just arrived from Peru and the first thing he saw when he got here was twig.  So he stopped and looked twig straight in the eyes and said, “Teach me to speak English please”.

Twig responded by sharing his favorite alphabet songs and once Martin learned his ABCs, he could speak the English just as well as twig.

I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but if a Peruvian and a twig exchange any sort of intelligence, they are bonded for life.  This is where lumber now sees a problem with Martin not delivering his newspapers.  Martin has an addiction to space invaders.  It is a very sensitive subject and he will only discuss it while changing dollars into quarters or with his elementary school janitor.  Those are the rules, it’s just the way he likes it.

So lumber finds his regular parking space and drops the kick stand.  Martin sees him coming out of the corner of his eye and is feeling shame for brushing off the newspaper delivery for the cold comfort of red and blue plastic and immediately pumps piping hot nacho cheese into the palm of his hand.

Lumber, empathetically pats martin on the shoulder and tells him that the cheese blisters will become infected if he doesn’t put his hand into his baseball glove.  “Fine” he says, “I don’t need baseball anyway” and just at that moment, Martin remembered his newspapers and began selling them on the street corner for a nickel apiece.  “Slawrkothy!” he would yell, Slawrkothy to all of you who do not understand the magnitude of what I sell.

Lumber usually lets it go but this particular day he was a little on edge so he kept on going, one by one, down, down, down.  Soon there were only three and lumber was naked!

Once they arrived back at home they took off their disguises and had a good laugh about the whole thing.  Lumber would always remark about the way people used him as a door stop or to get a little extra leverage, and Martin’s newspapers helped when the leverage became too complicated.

Those space invaders came flying by, just about the way Aunt Dixie performed her corncob mating ritual with Mike Douglas.  Boy weren’t those two a team!  They only lasted a month but they had potential.

Lumber put his disguise back on and peeked out the peephole.  “Whatchie whatchie!” he spouted while flicking his earlobes.  This kept the grave robbers away from the porch monkey bicycle as Frank Zappa soon learned to play.