At the funeral, few spoke in honor of my uncle. The shame! After all the man had done for everyone present! When all those tender spoken anecdotes added up to so little, such a mite in a man’s eye, I decided to liven up things in the dead man’s name. Having died almost childless, half-friendless, a loner in a small town far from the bustling metropolis he’d been born into, the thought of him going into oblivion without a proper sendoff, haunted me. So I stood up unsteadily.

When Jonathan was born, I knew that something inevitable was coming. It was something that I dreaded more than anything else. It was something so sinister, so evil, so clearly designed to oblige a parent to act against their will just to fit in. It was the baby dedication.

I wanted my baby to walk this earth with Jesus by his side; don’t get me wrong. But I didn’t want to have to tell everyone in the church because quite frankly, it gets boring hearing all of these people wish the same thing for their kids. However, I wrote the dedication, and I gave it in front of the congregation with the pastor standing by my side. It was all for the sake of baby Jonathan.

Although Alison eventually made her debut at the Idlewild Ball, she was not to the castle born; moreover, when Dr. Grum called Alison his “little princess,” we thought of Elinor Donahue on Father Knows Best, who made us gag. We were not particularly rebellious, but we were savagely curious, and curiosity killed the cat.

The shopping cart museum was interesting, to say the most. In that it wasn’t that interesting. Percival wasn’t sure why he’d ever started it. Just because his dad had specified the money was to be spent on shopping carts, didn’t mean it had to be spent on shopping carts. Percival knew his dad was crazy. Everyone knew Percival’s dad was crazy. But you were supposed to listen to dad, right? Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do? He’d read that somewhere.

Fiasco, Part the First: “It’s them lousy Sasquatches,” Vinnie grumbled as he emptied the trash into the dumpster behind Gatlinburg’s Bigfoot Inn. “They get the breaks. We don’t get nothing. Nothing, I tell you.” He flicked away a banana peel that had stuck to his long, orangish fur. “Just look at that “People Used to Deny Cryptids’ Existence” exhibit at Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum. Bigfoot takes up half, and half the rest goes to them attention-whores Nessie and Jersey Devil. They get everything. Why, this stinking town’s got three stinking shops that don’t sell nothing but knitted Sasquatch hair.”