You have your cherry coke, I have my cold meds, and this is what happens:

Daddy’s Daily Chores


1. Break a Heart:

First, you lay it on a table, clamped between two corn cob picks, salted and buttered to your own preference. Carefully then take a bite from the meatiest section, being especially careful to puncture through the top layer. Creating a good size opening, the heart will begin to unfold, revealing soft tissue tied together by pink satin ribbons. To keep the heart shape, you have to move fast with the next part: fill the hole with cement. Once it has dried, go to the tallest building you can find (at least 12 stories) and drop the heart off. Aim carefully. Statistics prove you only have the ability to hit one person and cause significant damage.

2. Lose your Marbles:

Start with a collection of marbles. Do not count them. Glue them onto a wide brimmed hat or just let them roll around in the cupped edges. Put a trampoline in the back of a pickup truck and ask a friend to drive the truck (you will need assistance: do not attempt to drive the truck and bounce on the trampoline at the same time, you will lose more than the marbles). Hat securely tied to your head (you do not want to lose it) your friend will gradually pick up speed over a nice, flat, preferably suburban road. Then ask him/ her to gun it. Begin to bounce on the trampoline. You will feel the marbles coming out of your hat. Do not be alarmed.

3. Bring Home the Bacon:

Just bend over backwards and grab a snack on the way out.

4. Get over the Hill:

Lasso forty porcupines together, dog-sled style. Using stomped out trashcan lids and fishing wire, construct a sled and harness for the porcupines. Sit in the sled. The porcupines will know what to do (they are very talented creatures) and they will pull you up to the top of the hill. Porcupines, though, are very similar to cows (meaning, of course, that though both animals are very agile at climbing up things, they do not have the ability to climb down); thankfully porcupines have a nice little built-in system. To complete your mission, all you have to do is poke the porcupines so they curl up into balls and begin, through gravity, to roll down the other side of the hill. The trashcan lids should suffice to protect your skin from puncture wounds, so just ride down the hill on tops of the rolling porcupines.

5. Get Rid of the Weakest Link:

Kill your younger sister.

6. Give Yourself a Few Weeks to Live:

Don’t. Give yourself more. It makes no sense to be greedy internally.

7. Bend over Backwards:

Go to a butcher shop, preferably in working order. Among the racks of lamb and hanging hinds of cows and pigs, find two hooks that are unused, next to one another. If this is not readily available, eat two hanging slabs of meat when the store owner is not looking. Grab onto the hooks and pull yourself upside down, looping your feet into the hooks. When hanging, let all the blood rush to your head. You know you have done this long enough when everything in the room begins to look spotted and red and veiny, just like your neighborly hanging flesh. At this point, begin to bend your back so you form a J shape. The blood will begin to slide towards your stomach. This will aid in digestion. Digestion of meat takes four to six hours, if you have that much stamina, go for it. If not just hang until you feel less like a hanging slab of meat, because really, no slab of meat ever unhooks itself and walks around.
When you leave the shop, don’t forget to leave sufficient money to pay for the meat you ate. That is the kind thing to do.

8. Swim with the Sharks:

Tell your secrets to no one. In fact, tell nothing to nobody. Live lies. Secrets eat out your insides, from the pads of your fingers to the curve of your knee. You will become hollow, no substance, just an outline. Kind of like one of those police sketches for fallen bodies. In order to attract the sharks, you will have to drop in some of those bodies that were sketched—the police have the outline, that’s all they need. You need the rest for this endeavor. Sharks come, you jump in. Empty or not, the sharks will like you. Friendly animals, they are. You will probably be eaten, substance-free or not. Wear gloves.

9. Get the Ball in your Court:

Kill your older sister.

10. Think Outside the Box:

Hand capless tinted bottles to people and ask them what is inside. Take a vow of silence. Eat the peanut butter and jelly on the outside of the sandwich. Start a walk-off against the trees. Run backwards. Memorize the Egyptian alphabet. Collect recordings of rattles: of the snake, leaf, and baby persuasion. Never open an umbrella, but carry it everywhere you can. Seek out genius. Make a telephone out of a coconut, a ship out of tin cans and a woman out of a snail. Believe in fairies and ghosts and spirits and portals to the unknown. Stop using stilts. Never swear, smoke, drink, steal, or succumb. Smuggle a magician’s thumb. Refuse to dance the foxtrot or tango, but never refuse to dance. Fly without a parachute. Spiral sideways. Never throw anything away. Sail in salty waters. Never let your neighbor be stagnant. Don’t cut grass, let it cut you. Throw up at all the appropriate times.

11. Fall off the Edge of the World:

Mooch off your parents for an Ivy League education, then forget your mother’s birthday.

12. Mix Oil and Vinegar:

Put the younger sister and older sister in the backyard, properly contained with a wooden picket fence, but one that is easily scaled in case of an emergency. Observe: they will start by sniffing around each other, stepping softly, aware of the other one but no direct contact (notice as well that they never, ever expose their backs). It will start as a celebration: friendship, youth, and the similar plea for personal space. The change will start simply. The older sister nonchalantly picks up the younger sister’s Barbie. Young Sister looks directly at Old Sister for the first time. Old Sister, having seen this change, throws the Barbie up into the tree, where its hair tangles with the needle roof, and remains airborne. The mixture of two parts loathing, one part misunderstanding and one part action (coming from both sisters) will be exactly opposite and thus, exactly perfect.

13. Make a Close Call:

Three more feet and the car would have been your coffin, but make sure those three feet exist.

14. Make Ends Meet:

Thread spider webs through the freckles on your left arm and pull tightly, bunching up the skin like a piece of elastic. Do not waste any material. Ask the next person down the line to carefully begin threading through your right arm, connecting the freckles—in order to do this at the utmost efficiency and waste the least amount of web, you must put your arms in front of you like a genie. When they have finished, your neighbor will begin the process again on themselves, using the same thread, thus connecting you two together in the same genie stance. This will continue down the line with each person until it creates an even, unbroken line of ridged skin, even shoulders and uneven glares (some can take threading more easily than others). The final person will not be able to complete the process, as he has no neighbor to thread his right arm to his left. He will be lost, and the feelings of an uncompleted task will ripple down the thread and tremble in the tiniest crevices between each neighbor’s shoulders. This situation must be remedied. You know what to do, and begin to turn slowly inward, pulling your neighbor, who thus pulls their neighbor, who thus pulls their neighbor, and so on, to create an arc. The final person does the same, pulling the neighbors, as you two inch farther away from the original line and closer to each other. Once next to each other, you have created a circle, yet still have no way of threading the web through the final person’s arms. The End stands just like everyone else, still trembling and causing the thread to shake. With your right hand you clasp his forearm to ease the shaking, and form a much stronger bond that webs ever could, or can, or will.

15. Even Out the Playing Field:

Mix oil and vinegar, but this time, Young Sister throws the Barbie in the air.

16. Make Love:

Walk along the Charles River with a perfect stranger as the sun begins to rise. The skyline illuminates, the golden curls licking the water between the shadows of the buildings, creating a perfect outline in the water of the reality on the land. It’s quiet, except for the creak of the swings in an imaginary breeze. You don’t know her. She doesn’t know you. But you share the skyline, share the curls, separate the water and share the sunrise. In the clasped hands of you and her, a tiny electricity of song hits you both, three times quick. She’s not such a perfect stranger anymore.

17. State the Obvious:

Your freckles can be connected to map out the route from Alaska to your own front door.

18. See Eye to Eye:

Hand capless tinted bottles to people and ask them what is inside. Take a vow of silence. Eat the peanut butter and jelly on the outside of the sandwich. Start a walk-off against the trees. Run backwards. Memorize the Egyptian alphabet. Collect recordings of rattles: of the snake, leaf, and baby persuasion. Never open an umbrella, but carry it everywhere you can. Seek out genius. Make a telephone out of a coconut, a ship out of tin cans and a woman out of a snail. Believe in fairies and ghosts and spirits and portals to the unknown. Stop using stilts. Never swear, smoke, drink, steal, or succumb. Smuggle a magician’s thumb. Refuse to dance the foxtrot or tango, but never refuse to dance. Fly without a parachute. Spiral sideways. Never throw anything away. Sail in salty waters. Never let your neighbor be stagnant. Don’t cut grass, let it cut you. Throw up at all the appropriate times.

19. Reach Cloud 9:

Find yourself in the middle of the woods. Surrounded by trees, you break free of the needle roof in a small clearing, the green-flushed grass welcoming you. Lie down in the middle. You can feel them (this is familiar). There are people, lying down with you. There are four of you. Creating a pinwheel with your heads at the center, you cannot see each other. From the sky you all make a star. No matter that you cannot see each other. Seeing and feeling and touching and tasting and hearing, what are they but surface-level misconceptions? You are. You be. They are there. You see the half moon and full sky, together. One eye. You feel the tingle of grass on your spines, together. One spine. You touch the uneven soil underneath the grass with the tips of your fingers, together. One finger. You taste the life of trees, together. One breath. You hear the contented whispers of buried souls underneath you, the ones who had lain in the same spot before you and refused to go, and thus been eroded and buried, together. One.