The Best Homework Excuse Ever

November 18, 2010 marks the 25th Anniversary of the comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes." Enjoy.

I was sitting under the tree in our backyard with a notepad and pen, writing my book report which was due in the morning. 

The sky was beginning to darken. 

Suddenly, a very bright light stabbed through the branches overhead, shimmering oddly. 

A spaceship landed in front of me. 

I jumped up, startled. A scream caught in my throat.

Then, the aliens emerged: five little green men. One ran up and snatched the notebook from my hands. Scurrying back to his brethren, he began tearing paper out, handing the torn pages to each of them. 

I guess they were hungry.

The Pendulum Swings On and On

I  stand on gray museum marble, watching the pendulum’s parachronistic swing.

A strange desire fills me. I dismiss it as madness. 

Sensing movement, I turn. A familiar gaze, like looking at an old mirror, cracked and gray, meets mine. "I’ll see you in twenty years," he says. 

He jumps, gracefully arcing, mounting the oscillating arm like a fireman's pole. Our mental connection surprises me, then he winks and I understand. 

My vardoger fades out of existence.

I replay the scene in my mind over and over, so that when the time comes, I’ll be able to execute it perfectly again.

The New Book on the Shelf

The new book was placed on the bookcase between Lady Chatterly’s Lover and The Kama Sutra.

Since one can endure only so much of anything, the stunned little paperback crept sheepishly away from those two naughty tomes and jumped to the shelf below.

There, it nestled comfortably between Louis L’Amour and Zane Grey.

Within minutes, the people on the cover began ducking, shaking their fists as arrows and bullets whizzed past their heads, dangerously close.

The book catapulted to the shelf underneath, sighing with fatigue. It squeezed between Dante’s Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

And then all hell broke loose.