Larry Bird

I keep having a dream I’m about to propose to my girlfriend when Larry Bird appears in the bushes, smiling at me in a creepy way. I wake up in terror. I consider telling my girlfriend, but I don’t want to jinx anything. Our relationship is shaky. Besides, my girlfriend hates Larry Bird. He broke her heart when he divorced her in 1993. One night, in the dream, I rise from a knee to approach Larry Bird in the bushes. “How could you do that to Janet?” I say, right up in Larry Bird’s face, although I’m trembling because it’s Larry Bird. “I’m sorry for the pain I must have caused,” Larry Bird says. His smile falters: “I kept having a dream about you proposing to Janet, until I finally understood you two would make the better match.” And Larry Bird fades away until nothing’s left but his mullet.

Science

To save money for our wedding, my girlfriend and I decide to join a controversial televised making out competition. How it works is Janet and I make out on stage while a crowd of people gather around us and cameras roll. If an audience member becomes aroused, they must leave the stage. The last person standing wins a new car. As Janet and I are making out, I whisper to Janet, “It’s weird to do this with everyone watching.” “I know,” Janet says, “but please try to focus.” Suddenly, an anti-make-out protestor runs onto the stage holding a gun. She shouts, “It’s time to bring science into the equation!” I scream, “Guns aren’t science!” and I run off the stage before we are shot. Later, Janet and I sit miserably in the green room, where I continue to argue with the protestor in my head. It is true, in a way, that science led to the creation of guns (the argument I imagine the protestor presenting), but “gun” is not a metonym for “science” (the argument I imagine presenting to the protestor), unless the protestor means to suggest science gone wrong, Oppenheimer style. Shit. Now I am realizing I would have lost the argument. It’s unfortunate for me; for Janet; for our wedding, which will have to wait; and most of all, for science.