A new blog series, from the Abby Normal mind of Stan Lerner!
CROOKED COPS EPISODE 1
It was a bright, sunny morning in the suburbs of Los Angeles. And from the Skinner home, a single story ranch-style, emanated rays of happiness, perhaps even more illuminating than those from the big happy face in the sky.
Eight-year-old Joshua ran down the hallway of his family’s modest two-bedroom home. “C’mon Dad were going to be late! Hurry up,” he shouted as he rounded the corner to the living room just before his foot landed on the misplaced Tonka toy.
A skid forward into a tacky twenty-dollar Torchiere lamp, Torchiere lamp tipping over into a 1970’s shag carpet cat tree, filled with a variety of cats, cat tree tipping over sending cats flying, cats attached to living room drapes like magnets to a fridge, one cat landing in fish tank.
The cat known as Pester, a feline with above average human intelligence, looked up from his unexpected good fortune to see that the curtain and its cache of cats were falling down upon him.
“Meow!” said Pester, but in human he was really saying, “Oh F**k!”
While this early morning commotion, was well into motion, Joshua’s dad Richard, a clean-cut, Wonder Bread type of man, in his early thirties, was showering in a bathroom that was quite literally a converted closet. Thinking that something may be amiss, he turned his head to the partly opened door and listened to what sounded like loud crashes and cat cries from the living room.
“Josh what’s going on out there?” yelled Richard, in the most loving and fatherly tone.
“Nothing Dad!” rang back Joshua’s voice, the voice of a precocious youth, not so cleverly disguised as an innocent angel.
In the not yet updated kitchen worked Mona, the beautiful, almost Victoria Secret model, wife and mother. Breakfast was always a challenge, so it was not so unusual that fire had erupted from all four slots of the toaster, in fact Mona hadn’t even noticed due to her several unsuccessful attempts to flip the eggs in the black greasy frying pan. Finally, she did get enough height with her egg toss, but was distracted by the toaster flames, which caused her to miss the catch.
“Oh no toaster fire!” uttered the brunette beauty, as she moved swiftly toward the pantry cupboard, desperately emptying all of its contents onto the floor. “Damn, damn, damn.”
Finally, Mona laid grasp to a box of baking soda purchased in the Brady Bunch times four, super family size. With both arms she heaved its contents towards the toaster covering it completely and extinguishing the flames. The resulting baking soda, mushroom cloud plumed to envelope Mona and the rest of the kitchen. Undeterred, Mona strained to see the eggs through the white fog and then having located them she bent over, in a manner that would have warmed even a dead man’s loins, to scrape the eggs from the floor onto the otherwise empty breakfast plates.
Plates in hand, Mona emptied the charred contents of the toaster onto the eggs sprinkling a little baking soda on top of each for good measure. Cheerfully, she brought the plates to the breakfast room table and set them down atop the red and white-checkered tablecloth.
“C’mon Guys breakfast is ready!” she shouted as she walked out of the breakfast room into the living room where Josh was having a ferocious tug of war trying to free his gold fish from the mouth of Pester the cat. Both were putting up a good fight, stretching the fish like a rubber band to at least a foot in length. The other cats all rolled around hopelessly entangled in what used to be the drapes. The sight of all this caused Mona to pause, “Josh stop playing with Pester you’re going to be late,” she said putting her hand on her hip, which she was prone to do whenever she felt the need to communicate she had had enough.
With resolve Mona continued down the hallway to the bedroom where without announcing her presence in any kind of way she forcefully opened the door to the very, very small bathroom. Unfortunately, Richard was in the process of shaving with his new straight edge razor when the door hit him from behind causing the razor to lacerate his cheek from top to bottom. Continue reading CROOKED COPS EPISODES 1–10 →
