Short Happy Stories

The first volume of Short Happy Stories is now available! The book contains 50 stories. Order here–or ask about it at your local bookstore.

Uncertain Vision

Just before class, when she’s reading the assigned material, there’s no pain at all; but then, when she starts to make her way out of the library, it’s like a nail is being hammered into the middle of her brain. It seems to happen when she focuses on something between, roughly, seven and twenty-five feet away—or something very far away, like an airplane in the sky.

Last night, in a bright box in a dark park, Nicole turned her head as John was swinging his racquet—and he hit the racquetball into her eye.

The pain was astonishing.

When she looked out of the eye again, she saw two of everything. John couldn’t seem to stop apologizing. But she really blamed herself, because she had never worn special glasses to protect her eyes despite the fact that John had advised her, several times since they’d started playing together, to wear the same kind of special glasses he always wore.

Nicole also blamed herself because there was really no good reason for her to turn her head toward John—away from the front wall—when she did. The smart thing would have been to keep her eyes fixed on the front wall while moving closer to the center of the court. Instead, she played the game stupidly and earned double vision.

Her disgust with herself was irrepressible: she destroyed her racquet.

As they were making their way to her apartment they were discussing if they should instead be making their way to the hospital. Inside her apartment a ziplock bag containing some ice was placed on the damaged eye.

By morning the double vision was gone, but she still couldn’t see with her usual clarity; and right now, in the classroom, her professor is about fifteen feet away, and when she focuses on him it’s like a nail is being hammered into the middle of her brain. This feeling may mean, for all she knows, that irreparable damage is happening right now. So, for the rest of class, she focuses almost exclusively on her notebook, in which she writes various disconnected notes, including “It is not always advisable to consider consequences” and “You must go to the doctor right after this class.”

The one-hour class feels like five hours. When it’s finally over she starts to make her way to the university’s health center. To avoid the hammered-nail brain pain, she keeps her eyes fixed just in front of her feet, on whatever surface she happens to be walking on: tile, concrete, grass, concrete, tile. Her fear of more pain is so big that she makes her world as small as possible. Countless interesting details are ignored.

The doctor examines her eye for approximately one minute. Then he goes into the next room and closes the door. Then, after approximately seven minutes, he comes back and examines her eye for approximately one minute. Then he reveals his conclusion: “You need to see a specialist.” He goes back into the next room and closes the door, and soon she hears him talking, presumably into a telephone. Unfortunately everything he says is muffled, indecipherable—with one scary exception: “I really don’t know.”

On the train to the specialist, Nicole ignores the sliding city on the other side of the windows, keeps her eyes fixed on her clasped hands. She’s berating herself for not going to the hospital last night, straight from the bright racquetball court. That was really stupid, she thinks. Then she berates herself, again, for never wearing special glasses to protect her eyes. You are really, really stupid, she tells herself. She feels like her disgust with herself is going to make all of her skin burn off. She wishes she had a racquet to destroy. Destroying the racquet yesterday had made her feel a little better, for a few moments.

In the dark room, as the specialist shines a light into her dilated eye, Nicole feels… happy? She supposes the feeling is relief. Relief that the exact problem and exact solution will soon be known. When the specialist dropped the dilating drops into her eye, he said “The truth won’t be able to hide from me.”

She’s so glad she’s in the wise hands of a seasoned professional. She’s ready for this whole ordeal to be over.

The ceiling lights go back on. This is it, thinks Nicole.

“Here’s the best I can do,” says the specialist, handing her a business card. “This is a specialist who works across the street. I’ll give her a call and see if she can fit you in this afternoon. We’re friends.”

Well I feel sorry for her, thinks Nicole, because you’re an incompetent idiot.

But she just nods and says “OK.”

“I was just about to go out for a Reuben,” says the next specialist as Nicole sits in the examination chair, “but here I am. Andy’s a friend. Do you like Reubens?”

“Not really,” says Nicole. But she’s lying: though she has only eaten three Reubens in her life, she has thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

“If I were forced to choose one type of sandwich to eat for the rest of my life, I would choose the Reuben.”

Though Nicole wants to yell at the specialist and demand that she stop talking about Reubens, she forces herself to just nod and say “OK.”

The specialist spends almost no time examining the eye before turning the ceiling lights back on. Is she rushing through this, thinks Nicole, so she can get to a Reuben?

“I’m going to give you some very special drops,” says the specialist. “They may do the trick.”

“What are the chances that they’ll work?” says Nicole.

“Maybe they’ll work, maybe they won’t. If your eye isn’t better one week from now, call me.”

Nicole begins to use the drops. One day, another day, another day. Though her clarity is improving, the hammered-nail brain pain does not seem to be going away. Could I be stuck with this awful pain, she wonders, for the rest of my life? Because of a stupid game of racquetball?

Before one week is gone the pain is gone and she can see with her usual clarity. Her eye seems to be exactly the same as it was before.

No more hammered-nail brain pain!

Usual clarity!

Actually…

She realizes that she has, in fact, achieved a new clarity. A deeper, greater clarity: gratitude.

Be grateful every single day, she tells herself, for clear and comfortable vision. Never forget how lucky you are. You can look at things in the world! Pleasantly!

She considers never playing racquetball again, but decides it would be stupid—and really kind of pathetic—to stop doing something just because something bad happened one time. So she buys a new racquet and special glasses to protect her eyes.

After the first month or so, she puts on the special glasses and plays racquetball without remembering the eye injury.

As life continues and she moves around, from here to there to somewhere else, clear and comfortable vision seems completely normal—except when she’s in a restaurant and sees the word “Reuben.”

The word “Reuben” always reminds her of that painful scary experience, and makes her feel unbelievably lucky: her eyes are fine, and she’ll soon have a Reuben.

Blind To The Pretty Yellow Leaves

During the fall I found myself in a pleasant park. Having walked aimlessly for quite a while, and not knowing if I should keep going in the same general direction or choose a different direction or decide on a specific interesting destination or just go back home, I sat on a bench. The iron fence that separated the park from the street was mounted on a substantial stone base, and on that substantial stone base, not far away from me at all, sat a very striking man.

The striking man was only wearing tattered pants, and his ribs were sticking out, and his elbows were on his knees, and his withered face was facing the ground between his feet. The sun behind the iron fence was throwing black bars across his back; he seemed, in that pleasant park in that pleasant afternoon, like a prisoner.

I had the strong sense that the striking man’s relationship with the world used to be very different. While his posture on the stone reeked of inescapable despair, weakness, his broad shoulders suggested former power. And his colossal hands expressed, somehow, intelligence. Maybe he was once a sculptor and, with those colossal hands, formed works that awed.

A leaping marble tiger.

A gargantuan lamb, of ambiguous iridescent material.

An intricate forest—entwined granite and stained glass and copper—through which one could wander.

Maybe, to the striking man, nothing had seemed impossible.

But maybe his devotion to his ongoing creations was almost absolute, and he never really thought about himself, and years upon years of intense continuous effort led to extreme exhaustion; and suddenly everything switched from seeming possible to seeming impossible; he failed to even try to control situations that really needed to be controlled; his life gradually dismantled itself.

Or maybe a massive completely unexpected event happened to the striking man, and the impressive structure that was his life simply, in a single moment, collapsed.

Or maybe he gave his mind too much liberty, and eventually lost the ability to control it.

Once again, fear beat want: though I really wanted to find out what had happened to the striking man, I was too scared to go over and talk to him. But I couldn’t seem to stop looking at him, at the way his big slow breaths moved his big distinct ribs. And I thought that he was maybe, in the ways that mattered, living in Hell.

Finally colorful movement inspired me to turn from the striking man—still staring at the ground between his feet—to a little boy who was jumping around and kicking yellow leaves around and smiling brilliantly. Smiling as though there was no difference between his life and the world and pure fun. Smiling as though he was living in Heaven.

The little boy threw two handfuls of yellow leaves into the air, as high as he could, and watched them fall.

When Jungles Filled His Dreams

He decided to be a monkey.

He started to skip soccer practice and go to the big park for monkey practice. The big park had one particular tree area that was perfect for his ambition.

His ambition made him feel special: many people in the world are good soccer players, but not many people in the world are good monkeys.

It wasn’t easy, this business of trying to be a monkey. Before he started—while still on the ground, imagining—the branches seemed pretty simple, pretty easy. But reality proved him wrong. The sturdy branches he relied on were made complicated by irregular littler branches and frustrating twigs: fluidity of movement was difficult to achieve. Adjustments were always necessary—and so often the necessary adjustment was made barely before too late; and too often the necessary adjustment wasn’t made at all, and blood exited his body.

But those cuts and bruises were nothing compared to the feeling that filled his body when he would find himself, due to the choices he’d made, confronted by a great gap between branches. The great gap would challenge him, taunt him. Take a risk and make the leap—or do you think you’ve reached your limit? Is safety more important to you than success?

This before-decision feeling was double fear: the fear of what would happen if he leapt and failed, and the fear of how he would feel about himself if he learned, by turning away, that while he knew exactly what he wanted to become, he was unwilling to do what was necessary.

Did he want to learn that he was, in actual fact, a coward?

Always, eventually, usually in fear but sometimes in anger or excitement, he would make the leap. Many times he fell. Sometimes he fell because he simply didn’t reach the next branch. Sometimes he fell because he reached the next branch, where an unexpected twig would hurt one of his soft hands—and he wouldn’t be able to hold on.

Once, while falling, another branch turned him around so that his head hit the ground at a strange angle. His instant thought: I’ve broken my neck.

But he hadn’t. He seemed to be fine.

While rolling his head around, to confirm that his neck was indeed OK, he wondered how close he’d been to breaking his neck and wondered if he would break his neck if he kept trying to be a monkey and wondered if he should stop trying to be a monkey. Should he abandon his ambition?

He climbed the same tree to try the same leap again. He didn’t want to live in fear. He fell again.

He wanted to be a monkey. Why? Because he wanted to be a monkey.

After monkey practice he would go home and go to his room and eat a banana and hastily do some homework. Then he would eat another banana and watch videos about monkeys. For the first few weeks of his monkey regimen he wrote notes while watching videos about monkeys—but then, one evening, he had an epiphany and exclaimed “No notes!” and threw his designated monkey notebook across the room.

Because a monkey wouldn’t write notes.

After throwing the notebook across the room he ate another banana. He really liked bananas. When he and his parents would sit at the table for dinner, usually around eight, he usually wouldn’t eat very much because of all the bananas he’d already eaten.

When the soccer season ended he pretended to be on the basketball team and kept going to the big park for monkey practice. During the soccer season he’d made tremendous monkey progress: a rather remarkable degree of tree comfort had been achieved. He could climb so fast. He could swing so easily. He could make great leaps without hesitation. He could fall without being too bothered by pain. His limbs had gotten stronger. His hands and feet had gotten rougher (no shoes during practice). His posture had changed. His gait had changed. He felt half monkey. Jungles filled his dreams.

At some point during each monkey practice he would stop climbing and swinging and leaping and falling, and rest on a branch for a while. In these moments he would look at the leaves that were suspended around him. Not long after the beginning of the basketball season, when the sky was getting too dark too soon, he asked himself if he felt satisfied being in a tree, looking at leaves. His answer to himself: “Kind of.”

One morning someone from school stepped onto the city bus. He knew her name but didn’t know if she knew his name—and he was surprised when she sat next to him. “We just moved to this neighborhood,” she said.

The jungle sounds coming through his headphones made it difficult to hear her words. He took off his headphones.

“Headphones can be tricky,” she said. “I like listening to music, obviously, but I don’t use headphones when I’m out and about because they can make you miss a lot. For example, last week on the 43, which I took to school until today, the two people right behind me were planning a murder. They’re going to make it look like an accident, I know all the details, and I think it’ll work, I really do. They sounded smart and I couldn’t see any holes in their plan. They mentioned Wednesday morning a few times, so I’m essentially certain they’re going to do it tomorrow. So tomorrow afternoon I’m going to try to find a report about this quote-unquote ‘accident,’ and if I find proof that it did indeed happen, I’m going to contact one of the plotters—well, by then she’ll be a murderess, I guess—and I’m going to blackmail her for nine thousand dollars. Maybe you’re wondering how I’ll be able to do that. I’ll be able to do that because I know her name. She got a call while they were talking and the voice coming through the phone said a name—a full name, and I barely heard it, but I heard it—and she, the plotter, said ‘This is she,’ and I wrote down the name even though I knew I wouldn’t forget it—and the point is that I probably wouldn’t have heard this murder plan, and certainly wouldn’t have been able to hear the voice coming through the phone, if I’d been using headphones.”

He considered her words. “Why nine thousand?”

“Nine thousand seems like a fair number. I don’t want her to think I’m being unreasonable. It’s important to always be civilized. Can I look at your music thing?”

She took the device out of his hand and saw six songs: “Monkey Man” by The Rolling Stones and “Apeman” by The Kinks and “Monkey Man” by The Specials and “The Magnificent Seven” by The Clash and, uncredited, “Sounds of the jungle in the daytime” and “Sounds of the jungle in the nighttime.”

She was nodding. “This is very interesting.” She looked up from the device. “You know, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but you kind of remind me of a monkey.”

I am a monkey, he thought about saying—but didn’t, because he didn’t want her to think he was crazy.

“Anyway,” she said, “I like the band Radiohead. Do you know the band Radiohead? They’re really moody. They make me laugh.”

“I’ve heard of them, but I don’t know what they sound like,” he said. “Your blackmail plan is really impressive. You’re actually doing something. So many people just don’t do anything interesting. So many people seem fine with, like, doing the same meaningless bullshit that everyone else… And they never… Whatever.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” She handed the music device back to him, then seemed to focus on the advertisement above the window they were facing. “You know, it may not be easy to find a report about the fake accident. And then I’ll have to find that plotter’s phone number. And then I’ll have to call her and tell her what I know and what I’m willing to do. And while I assume she’ll be amenable to my offer, maybe she’ll be… difficult. This project may require some elbow grease. And… If you want, you can help.” She turns her head and looks at him directly. “Do you want to meet right after school tomorrow?”

Unfortunately that’s when he’ll be heading over to the big park… to continue his development… as a monkey. As a monkey?

“Sure,” he says. “I would like to help.”

“That’s really great,” she says. “And if everything works out, you’ll of course get a cut. Maybe… Well, at least five percent.”

He’s laughing.

He’s not a monkey.

He’s in love.

A Dream

A very unusual thing is happening: he is remembering his dream. Some people he’d neither seen nor thought about in years appeared, creating a kind of shock—as though time had collapsed. However, the actual events of the dream were very boring. He has no idea if dreams have meaning, but feels certain that the boringness of this particular dream precludes the possibility of analysis.

Staying in bed, he thinks not about the dream itself, but about the people who appeared in the dream. He thinks about experiences he shared with them in real life—and it’s so strange, how much one experiences and quickly forgets. In so many cases, forever. But, in this moment, some things that were maybe going to be forgotten forever are being remembered.

Some of the memories are good and some of the memories are bad. He has done many things he would never do again, and finds it weird that he actually did some of those things. As he lies in bed, all these years later, some of those things are causing shame—and it’s so strange, how intense that shame is. Maybe the intensity is due to not having spent time with these particular memories. Treasured memories that are frequently revisited contain no surprises, and are consequently diminished; whereas memories that haven’t been seen in years have surprising shapes that make them feel oddly fresh—as though they happened not years but days ago. As though some of the corresponding stuff still matters.

But what’s he thinking? Maybe some of that stuff does still matter…

One person suddenly overshadows all else. If not for some stupid immature behavior, their lives could be totally different. But, of course, he acted the way he acted, and she exited his life and his thoughts. Until now. Now he’s thinking about some of the things that happened; and now he’s thinking he should try to have a conversation with her—maybe today!—and apologize. Or, if an apology seems too overdue, and consequently meaningless, he could just talk with her and find out what her life is like.

But what’s he thinking? Why would she want to talk with him? To think she would be interested in hearing from him, after all this time, is really presumptuous, probably. In all likelihood, maybe, she has thought about him as little as he has thought about her. But now, after all this time, and for no clear purpose, he is thinking about her… And she did some pretty annoying things too! But that one afternoon, when—

Deciding that he has thought about her long enough, he thinks about some of the other people who appeared in his dream—about how they materialized in real life. And he realizes that with those different people he was different people. Well, obviously he wasn’t, but… He has always assumed that he knows what he’s like; but, in actual fact, the decisions and actions that didn’t align with his specific idealized view of himself were unknowingly disregarded, not thought about. Until now. Now he’s remembering a remarkable variety of painful moments; and now he’s remembering a remarkable variety of joyous moments; and now the actions and the joy and the shame and the decisions and the pain and the love all begin to blend together, creating the strange feeling that life is a kind of dream. A dream in which he will always be a stranger.

He gets out of bed and spends the day exactly the way he’d expected to spend the day before getting into bed. The dream and his reaction to the dream are, like so much else, forgotten. When he returns to bed sixteen hours later, tired after a moderately satisfying day, he falls asleep almost immediately—and dreams an adventure worthy of Indiana Jones.

A Strange Strange Way

An orange moon goes up as a blue car drives by; in the house you lift a cup and the baby starts to cry.

Years will pass and you’ll crash and you’ll laugh, but this moment never stops; the future and the past will split you in half until the world pops.

The sky and the sea were meant to be—or maybe they weren’t at all… Still you search for a key, search for an answer, while hoping the moon won’t fall.

The house is now quiet but your mind is a riot because you don’t know the right route; but in a moment you’ll feel saved, in a strange strange way, by an owl’s cool calm hoot.

Feel free to contact me at [email protected].