One warm spring night on a tiny farm in Whistle County, Tennessee, eleven piglets slipped from a sow like marbles from a silk purse, ten boys and one girl. The boys were fine, sturdy specimens, if perhaps a shade dull—more bacon than brains, as the saying goes—but the girl was a wonder, clever and strong and pink as a sunrise.

When Eddie electrocuted himself dead leaving a burnt image of Jesus on his left hand, it was faintly ironic for two reasons: one, he was doing something nice for somebody else at the time, which was out of character to start with; two, nobody had expected him to live long enough to do something nice for somebody else and subsequently electrocute himself.

Dear Applicant,

We have taken your application to register yourself as the sole owner and proprieter of a portion of Hungarian history, specifically 1820-1849, under consideration for inclusion in the Registry of Intangibles.

I’m in the middle of my tuna melt when Wendy tells me she’s got a woman on the line with a clown stuck in her window well. Great.

“Can I call her after my break?” I say with a mouth full of moist tuna.

To which Wendy says, “I’m really sorry but she sounds like hysterics.”

Wendy’s big for her age, her age being about 55—or 20 years my senior—and big being residual body mass from her college rugby days.

I put the rest of my lunch in foil.

Evelyn wasn’t entirely sure what to do, when her husband choked and died at the breakfast table one Saturday morning. Lifting him was out of the question; she was fit for a seventy-two year old, but Ennis was decidedly less so. No, she wouldn’t be able to budge him without straining something. Going into town for help was out, too. She was definitely not ready for any of the folk in town to come sneaking and spying around her house under the guise of caring.