Short Story

Nothing in Common

A Simple Story #3 — You’re a Good Man

Today, Calaif helped me with a semi-annual tradition here.

The festive, “Take the Air Conditioners Out of the Windows” holiday.

It’s where we move boxes around to accommodate the AC’s, clean space, clean AC’s, reorganize a bit.

The AC’s have near altar status.

We talk about the event and plan it for weeks.

Towels need to be prepared to accept their bodies.

We need to secure all the proper tools.

Then, the day comes.

There’s an appointment — the person who gets to remove the screws from the windows and do the handling of the units.

This takes careful contemplation — planning placement, making sure the appropriate amount of strength and delicate handling is applied.

One year, we lost one.

It fell backwards out of the window.

The sound of the thud on the ground led to shock and horror.

The people exchanged glances of disbelief.

It was an event that was immortalized in story passages for ever after on the eve of the event of sister holiday, “Put the Air Conditioners IN the Windows”.

It’s a story that will never be forgotten. We killed an air conditioner that day.

Anyway, now that Calaif is here, I know all is in good hands.

I told him while we were preparing, something my grandmother always told me, that has become part of our family lore and tradition.

“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”

Calaif looked at me and said, “My mother used to tell me that too. She used to joke and call me Charlie Brown, because I had two swirls of hair on my head. I even had a Charlie Brown sweater.”

Yep. Calaif is the original Charlie Brown.

This is a series.

© Susan Brearley, 2019 All Rights Reserved

Susan Brearley is a published book author, writer, editor, essayist, occasional comedy writer, and an accidental poet. She is currently working on her second book, a murder mystery about an OCD detective, who’s been called a “young version of Monk”. She’s a retired systems engineer and salesperson from IBM, a serial entrepreneur, and a survivor of a stage 4 inflammatory breast cancer since 1995. She’s also working on her US Coast Guard Captain’s license, has her US Sailing keelboat certification, and is the creator and elder teacher of a new program, “VisionQuest” that mentors and teaches adults of all ages how to create the life they were born to live. She is currently based in the mid-Hudson Valley, New York.