Diane’s Never Won Anything Before Day!

“Well guess what Diane!” the morning radio DJ says. “May is Money Month here on the Itchy In The Down There show, and you just won $500!”

“Oh my God,” Diane says over the sound effects (farts, Jimmy Walker saying “Dy-No-Mite,” the sound of steel bending in Tower 2). “I’ve never won anything before!”

“How’s it feel?” DJ Itchy asks.

Diane is silent.

“Diane?”

“Never,” she whispers, almost inaudible under the sound bite from a Mel Gibson voicemail to his wife. “Not once.”

“Diane?”

“I’m 52,” she says. “What rewards? What accomplishments? 52 years, and all I can say I’ve achieved in life is a radio DJ once threw me five hundred bucks. And that’s pure random chance. Not the result of anything I’ve done. Just because you happened to dial a bunch of numbers. My God, I’ve let it all slip away.”

“Hey, it’s not random chance. You had to enter your work phone number on our website to win, right?”

“No,” Diane says. “No, I didn’t do that. I’m just temping at this desk.”

“Oh,” DJ Itchy says. “Oh God.”

“Oh God!” Diane sobs. “I didn’t win, did I?”

“Diane!” DJ Itchy says. “Diane don’t hang up!”

Diane disconnects the call midway through a sob.

Unsure what to do, because what can he do, DJ Itchy slowly presses a control board button and plays the sound clip from ‘Terms of Endearment’ where Shirley MacLaine is crying and repeating “I’m so stupid! I’m so stupid!” just after Debra Winger dies.

Happy Diane’s Never Won Anything Before Day!

In The Supermarket Day!

You put your hand on the freezer door to get the fish sticks he used to buy.

You never ate them before he came into your life. You used to assume such foods were gross.

But he kept demanding them, he loved them so. He made you think if he had to choose between you and the fish sticks you would be the one he’d happily let go.

“You’d be the one I’d happily let go,” he’d joke.

Then the two of you would take turns taking bites obliterating the length of a fish stick.

Your hand is on the freezer door to grab those fish sticks, a box of the fish sticks he used to buy.

Just because he’s gone back to his ex-boyfriend doesn’t mean that freezer door is locked to you forever.

He opened it for you.

This is what lovers do.

They open doors.

Even when the only thing on the other side is some frozen fish sticks.

The doors stay open. Everything on the other side is yours to keep.

He gave those fish sticks to you, he brought them into your life. He took away his heart, the fish sticks are yours to keep.

Happy In The Supermarket Day!