I still remember the day I asked Uncle Joe: "Am I alive?"

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Uncle Joe took a puff of his old briar pipe, hooked his thumbs in his suspenders, and laughed gently. "Why, of course you are, my boy," he said in his deep, melodious voice.

Then I asked: "Uncle Joe -- are you alive?" At that point, Uncle Joe's demeanor turned dark. "Why no, my boy," he intoned ominously. "I'm quite dead. In fact, I should've been buried a long, long time ago."

With that, Uncle Joe's skin shriveled and darkened, pulling away from his teeth as his eyeballs shrunk into their sockets and his withering corpse slowly collapsed into a putrid, decaying heap of detritus.

Ah, the cycle of nature.

I still remember the day my dad pointed out a father/son go-cart competition in the local paper.

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"We could use the wood from the old rabbit hutch, that way Fluffy's memory can still live on in the cart" he chimed. Times had been hard since mum had run away with Uncle Tony, although I knew I'd never win with that fat bastard riding with me, at least building the cart would cheer him up.

For three weeks we toiled away in the shed, sawing bits of shit-stained rabbit hut and nailing them together again in a kind of molested car shape. In the end we surprisingly had something that resembled a go-kart although I was sure that it woudn't hold dad's weight.

I arrived home from spending the weekend with my mum and Uncle Tony to find my dad slumped in his chair, he had been dead for days and from the stench his bowels had clearly collapsed. I couldn't understand the suicide note as it was written in his intelligible child-like handwriting.

When mum and Uncle Tony came round to pick up my stuff, Tony saw the cart and asked me about it. I told him about the contest and he laughed a long loud laugh before tossing the cart in the trash and buying me an Atari games console.

Billy Keane won the race.

Kajun, if you've never read the short stories of Raymond Carver, you should. If you would have added whiskey and cigarettes somewhere in there, I would have accused you of plagiarism.

I have no idea who you're talking about, perhaps I should.

I envy your warm recollections.

I don't remember my childhood.

Maybe it was just so traumatic that I blocked it out.

Maybe I have amnesia, and am robbed of my precious past.

Or it might be because I was a bio-weapon engineered in the mid 90s, and relegated to the trashpile because of my tendency to fly off the handle and destroy small communities with the least provocation.

Whichever.

I still remember the day I asked my Dad where Grampa went after he died...

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"Why, Grampa is in all of us, son.", he said. I looked at him skeptically, because even at 7 years old I was smarter than he was.

"Oh yeah?", I asked, indignantly, "Then does that mean every time someone dies, they are inside of us?"

"Why, yes, son.", he replied, "Every time someone passes on, they live forever in our hearts."

I looked at him and nodded. "Thanks, Paw!", I said, and scampered off to take a dump on my neighbor's cellar door. When I came back, my father was plopped down in front of the television with seven T.V. dinners balancing precariously atop his swollen gut. "Son", he said, "Sit down over here. I was thinking about this, and wanted to let you know that it's not just people that live on in our hearts. It's everything we love." He punctuated that statement by hurling a chunk of undercooked Salisbury Steak from his flapping gums into my left eyeball. Then he farted and forgot I was there. I scampered off and pissed in his Kaopectate.

Later on, mom came home and I asked her the same question. "Where did Grampa go after he died, momma?", I asked, giving her the sorriest 'puppy-eyed' look I could muster. She looked at me strangely. "Why?", she asked, "What did your father tell you?" She looked tense and ready to pounce. "He said Grampa lives on inside of us." My mother visibly relaxed, smiled, and said, "Why, yes. Inside us all." I was satisfied with the answer my mother gave.

Later, the next morning, after my mother awoke to find me digging through the fat-packed intestines of my father's flayed belly with a dull pair of safety scissors (man, was THAT hard work!), she asked me what the hell I was doing. "Looking for Rover.", I said. I never did find my dead childhood dog in the steaming midst of my daddy's ropy guts.

Kajun joo magnificent bastrad

quote:

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I still remember the day I asked my Dad where Grampa went after he died...

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I dont really remember the story behind this...but all I know is that I wanted to be a dinosaur when I grew up...And make all animals friends.

I still remember the day I asked my Dad how to become a dinosaur when I grew up...and make all animals friends.

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It was the longest pistol-whipping of my life.

I remember this time...
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Oh, wait, no, that was an episode of Full House.

I remember the day my daddy took me hunting...

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He never got over that humiliation. I TOLD my parents a Nintendo was educational!

True story.