True Story

"Funky kewl," I said, picking up the ping pong ball and examining it thoroughly.

Who would think? A tie-dye ping pong ball.

Quite vivacious, actually. Just sitting here, all alone, in this wide open parking lot.

I almost wish it had friends, to keep it company. There could be a plaid ping pong ball, a polka dotted ping pong ball, and ping pong ball wearing bellbottoms...

I think I'll make up a word for this ping pong ball. A word describing ping pong balls in bold colours sitting all alone in an empty parking lot near a Crush can.

"I christen thee," said I, holding up the Nikon camera to my eye, "phib!"

I snapped a picture the instant I said the word.

I pulled down the camera and lay on the parking lot next to a sun crisp dead worm, staring at my bare feet behind my flares.


The End.


Wait, that's not all.

After a time, I saw a crow drive by me in a 1956 Camero, red. A really groovy 1956 Camero. But groovy wasn't a word until the sixties, so I'd better think up a fifties word for it.

"Um..." I began brilliantly.

I straightened up and watched it go past, and when it had gone, I stood up and dusted off my bum, glancing around. It was gone, but the responsibility of calling it a word was still left on my shoulders.

Like a tie-dye ping pong ball.

At that instant, the world decided that it was bored of the same old same old, and promptly turned upside down. Firstly, I was afraid of falling into the sky, until I remembered I was wearing groovy suction cup shoes. Which I wasn't wearing before, but that's besides the point.

And I watched the ping pong ball fall up into the sky and get stuck in a cloud, and I remember opening my gob and saying, "I do wish that ping pong ball hadn't gone up, er, down, rather, there." For you see, I had made quite good friends with it, and the dead worm and Crush can, too, that I grew immediately lonely.

What to do, what to do. I could untie the shoes, and fall up with the ball, but then who'd get me out of the cloud?

I ran into a dilemma.

Don't worry, I didn't leave the ping pong ball down there. It's a rather long story, but it came out in the end with a ping pong ball wearing bellbottoms and a rather stubborn three-headed coin.