Sterling's Weekly

This may carbon date me as some fossilized, one hundred-million-year-old dinosaur, and may likewise doom me to a similar fate, but I gotta get it off my chest: technology is the worst .   Now look, I know that’s not the most original take, and I assure you I’m not some hapless, ancient geezer yelling at the sky.   I drive a car, when mine’s not out of commission; I have a smart phone, though sometimes I wish I had the fortitude to go back to the simple brick; I use multiple streaming services, when I can remember my passwords. So, as you can see, it’s not like I live a completely cloistered life, actively shunning and railing against the obvious perks afforded to us by technology.   I just think it—technology, or artificial intelligence—has gotten a little too big for its britches lately.   But whose fault is that, technology’s, or the humans’ whose mission in life is to continuously advance it, the suckers like me who can’t not use it?   Like, if a mother ...

I figure I may as well stay on theme here.  All this talk of dogs and pets in general, and what with Labor Day just in the rearview, it’s all reminded me of the time I found this stray and collarless pooch on the side of the highway a year ago, last Labor Day weekend.  A beautiful pup, some sort of shepherd mix, but oh was she a pitiful sight, covered in fleas and ticks, all skin and bones, and when she’d moved or shake, voluminous brown clouds of dirt would explode from her fur, as if you were smacking your grandmother’s rug.  Well, I gave her some water and then, a bit impulsively, loaded her into my car and took her home, where I tried my best to nurse her back to at least a semblance of health.  But, it being a holiday weekend, I had to hold onto her for a couple extra days before I could take her into the vet for a legitimate checkup, for something a little more thorough than the oatmeal baths and the once- and twice- and thrice-overs with the flea comb that I...

I never took my phone out, though.   Never called Omar.   In fact, the prospect of collecting the thousand dollars from him and his cousin Meelod quickly became unrealistic and equally as unimportant, irrelevant.   Why?   Because while sitting there on the floor, cat in my lap, watching some coming-of-age TV drama from the 2000s— One Tree Hill Des said when I asked—I realized that Nadia was, to put it plainly, a perfectly nice lady.   And what I mean by that is she seemed completely unlike her brother and cousin.    Where Omar and Meelod were frenetic and harebrained, Nadia was quiet and measured—though I’m not sure what I should’ve expected, considering she’d been forced from birth to experience the world in blackness.   I’d probably keep to myself, too, if that were my lot.   Of course, I’d just met her, so this was all mere speculation, yet, regardless of whether the money was real (it wasn’t), I resolved then and there that I wasn’t goi...

Like I said, I had no intention of looking for the kid, and if that jeopardized, or forfeited, my chances at the thousand bucks, then so be it.   Sure, I highly doubted that I’d ever see either Omar or Meelod again, that we’d even had the slimmest of chances at finding Nadia, or that the batty cousins would’ve paid me the money even if we had.   I did a 360 and took in surroundings, tried to get my bearings, but I realized I had no idea where I was.   I’d say I was in the back of the ice cream truck for only fifteen, twenty minutes, but watching the outside pass by through the rear window, together with the disorientating jingles, had done a number on my sense of direction.   I felt a bit like a hostage who’d been nabbed and held for ransom, but then quickly and unceremoniously dumped on the side of the road once my captors discovered I was worthless and wouldn’t fetch a penny.   I took out my phone and checked my location, how far I was from home.   Th...

I got in.   Now, if you’re wondering why that sounds familiar, it’s because this wasn’t the first time I’d gotten into the large vehicle of a virtual stranger.   Remember Seamus, the psychopath EMT?   Yes, I wish I didn’t either.   The catalyst for that debacle was the implied promise of a ride home, one I desperately needed at the time.   And this time, I don’t think anyone can blame me for hopping in the ice cream truck with Omar and Meelod.   A thousand bucks was a thousand bucks.   But what the kiosk cousins didn’t tell me was that I’d be earning that rack in a way other than simply searching for the missing Nadia—namely, slinging ice cream treats.   I should’ve expected as much.   Omar and Meelod were not the kind of men who’d let a business opportunity like this pass them by, looking for a missing loved one or not.   What I couldn’t have expected, though, was the class of ice cream treats we’d be selling: refrozen .   “I...

The lake really did me in.  I was, as they say, outta commish for a couple of days.  It was probably the fact that, despite my earlier doubts, the four of us had finished the two cases of Rolling Rock—me, Kelley, Suds, and, once she’d calmed down, Ava.  Chet, if you’re wondering, turned out fine, by the way.  Not long after abandoning ship, the idiot was plucked from the water by state wildlife resources agency officers who were out patrolling the channel for holiday ne-er-do-wells.  Said that he posed a danger to passing boaters, that he’d been called in by a couple fishermen and even a barge making its way towards the dam.  You can’t help but laugh at the irony in that.  Dude was probably the only sober cat out on the water, yet he’s the one who got picked up by the cops?  And look, I’m not making light of boating while intoxicated.  No, certainly not.  But like I said before, our little bald jockey had abandoned his aquatic steed, som...

Kelley had tasked me with packing a cooler for the two of us, and I was ready when she arrived at Morning Wood.   Or as ready as I could’ve been.   I wasn’t really sure what to expect.   I didn’t know anything about Kelley’s friends, didn’t know anything about going out on a lake.   Hell, I didn’t even know which lake we were going to, or if our plan was to sit our asses on a beach or in a boat.   As it turned out, it was the latter, which was probably why Kelley let out an Oh wow, okay as I climbed into her passenger seat with two 24-packs of Rolling Rock.   The last time I’d had a Rolling Rock was probably in high school, but something about the big green cases spoke to me, the promise of the emerald 12-ounce cans inside them.   Perfect for the lake, no? But it was only going to be five of us—me, Kelley, and three of her friends—so forty-eight beers was probably overkill, especially considering the others were bringing their own alcohol.   O...