• Eugene Schmid could tell it was going to be another one of those days, you know, when you wake up right on time only to get tangled in your sheets when you try and get up. You remember to actually brush your teeth like the psychotic suicidal dentist recommends, only to discover your toothpaste has been laced with some suspicious looking purple stuff. You would take a shower to wake yourself up but the bathtub is backed up, again, with blood from your neighbor's victims the night before. You know that law? the one that says toast always lands buttered side up? yeah, it doesn't apply on these kind of days; on these kind of days you butter your toast, drop it, the constantly in place "everything to it's place" spell spirits the toast back to the table and you eat it dust, mud, blood and all. Poor Eugene with his pimply back, thick eyebrows, missing kidney, and practically opaque generic loser glasses. Only thirteen years old and already with a bad back, premature Alzheimer’s disease, and a self inferiority complex seven miles long. If Eugene could recall how the last day that started like this had turned out, he would have locked himself in his padded basement cell with some Prozac and twinkies, but sadly he didn't. So he pulled on his baggy black trousers, yes, trousers, not pants, tucked in his crisp puke colored shirt, snapped on his convenient hot pink snap on tie, and spent a full ten minutes trying to remember how to tie his Velcro shoes. Again, poor Eugene's lack of capable short term memory also made it impossible for him to get out of the house before the ever inevitable,
    "EUGENE PEIRCE ANTHONY SCHMID! GET UP HERE THIS INSTANT AND LOTION MY FEET!" Had Eugene remembered to get out of the house early, he could have avoided the disaster of having to lotion Great Grandma Agatha's feet. And if Eugene had the brain power to develop confidence and stand up to Great Grandma Agatha, he would call her Jezebel like everyone else in his apartment complex did. But poor Eugene had neither the guts, spine nor spleen to do either of these things.
    “I’m sorry Great Aunt Agatha, but I cannot lotion your feet today for I shall be late for class.”
    “What did you say Eugene?! What did I tell you about using that kind of language! Now get up here, my bunions aren’t going to lotion themselves you know!”
    “If only they would…” Eugene sighed in resignation, once again attempted logical reasoning lost out to refusal to wear a hearing aid.