::Long silence in car::
Sara: “Ollie, what are you thinking about?”
Oliver: “Oh, how many barbershops I can name.”
Me: “Ollie, why are you climbing the couch like that?”
Ollie: “I…I got the zoomies.”
Sara: “What are you most looking forward to for school?”
Evelyn: “I’m looking forward to feeling superior to other people.”
Alex: “It’s kind of inefficient to go to bathroom and then get a drink of water.”
Boy at pool, hitting on Sara: “Hey what’s your name?”
Sara: “Sara. What’s your name?”
Boy: “Aiden. How old are you?”
Sara, wondering where this is going: “40.”
Sara: “How old are you?”
Boy: “11.”
Boy: “Do you say bad words and stuff?”
Sara, trying not to laugh: “No, not usually.”
Boy: “Do you smoke?”
Sara: “No. Do you smoke??”
Boy: “No.”
Boy: “So, where are you from?”
Sara: “Illinois.”
Boy: “Are you from Collinsville?” (St. Louis border town, pop. 25k, so the odds here were not great)
Sara: “No.”
Boy: “Where are you from then?”
Sara: “Chicago.”
Boy: “Cool.”
Nathan: “You know Ron from Harry Potter? He bought an ice cream truck and drives around the countryside giving out ice cream.”
Alex: “No spoilers!!”
When you’re raising a D&D kid:
<Alex falling off his bike>
Me: “Oh no are you okay? Did you scrape your knee?”
Alex: “No, it was more like bludgeoning damage.”
Absolutely no one:
Alex: “If someone says, ‘That’s my guessssss!’ they’re probably being controlled by a snake.”
Me: “Will you draw an invisible picture for me?”
Alex: “Here it is!”
Me: “What is it?”
Alex: “It’s as big pile of inappropriate words.”
Alex: “I just got water up my nose. It feels like getting tested for Corona.”
It is both hilarious and deeply sad that this is a sentence that made sense to everybody.
Oliver: “Wait what did Evelyn not want me to do? I want to do it.”
Oliver: “That looks…not very safe. And fun!”
Sara: “What’s your favorite toy in the bath?”
Alex: “I gotta say air. It keeps me alive.”
Watching Star Wars:
Alex: “They’re over there doing all the romance while the fight is going on!”
Evelyn, in regards to Kylo Ren: “That’s why you don’t put an emotional teen in charge of the army!”
This is a reprint, but if you missed it the first time around, Infinite Tiny Lives, Infinitely Small is available in this month’s Flash Fiction Online!
Grandma kept her civilizations on a shelf in the living room. She always let me dust them.
(If you’ve already read that one, or if you read it just now and feel like you need more, you can find an original flash story by me in this month’s Fantasy Magazine!)
Shane Halbach 