PEMDAS #1

To the Waaklesky School District Board:

Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally.

Let me explain.

You see, my family was recently dealt a heavy blow when my father injured himself last saturday afternoon. As we always do, we went to McDonald's for our traditional Saturday brunch. Only this time, we went to the new Mickey D's downtown. Just to check it out. Unfortunately, this one was different since it had this gigantic freaking playground at the front of the store. You could barely even tell there was a restaurant behind such a behemoth of a playground. Instantly, my little brother Shannon went apeshit. Excuse me. Let me rephrase that. Instantly, my little brother Shannon became excited. For someone accustomed to slipshod, low-budget grade school slides and swings, a three story playground was like seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time. Minus the scattered snail corpses and persistent body odor, you know.

So, once we got there, my dad let Shannon play for a little bit before the meal was ready to eat. Once we got our food, though, Shannon was so into this colossal playplace that he didn't want to stop and eat. We set the tray of burgers down on a table near the shoe cubbies and called his name. He was at the very top, refusing to get down. Then my dad gets the bright idea to climb up and get Shannon himself. I was surprised that he even got past all those other little kids all the way up to the top. But, just as he was crossing the last cargo net tunnel, his weight made him fall right through the net and down thirty feet or so down onto some fat guy's table. He scared the shit out of that fat guy. One second this lonely lard ball is staring at the eleven Filet-O-Fish sandwiches he bought and the next second, BLAM! An explosion of radioactive seafood and horseradish. And what looked like a 350 pound man flailing his arms as if he were trying to take flight with a flock of Canadian geese.

We had to pay $450 to pay for the broken cargo net tunnel and another $30 for that fatso to buy some more sandwiches. Worse than that was that my dad hurt his back in the fall. He didn't break anything, though. The doctors said that the sandwiches probably broke his fall. Maybe obesity has its advantages after all! But even though he didn't suffer any major damage, he was still in a lot of pain. So, the doctor gave him some vicodin to stop the pain.

Three days later, my dad's sister came all the way up from Cheyenne to visit us for a few days. This was the first time I've ever seen her in my life. The same for Shannon. I wish we could have kept it that way. All Aunt Sally did was sleep on the sofa, smoke glass pipes, and eat my Snickers Kudos bars that I have with my lunch. Kind of like what our Uncle Saul used to do before he died in the Iraq War.

Then came yesterday, when Aunt Sally came to school to pick me and Shannon up. She was eating my dad's vicodin and saying how she wanted to go spelunking with Mark Ruffalo or something like that. She looked kind of dizzy, but that's how she usually is anyway. But then she grabbed my backpack, found my AXE deodorant, and started spraying it everywhere. Then she tried to light a cigarette and wound up lighting the art class display on fire. Aunt Sally says she's sorry for destroying everyone's project. She needed to take all the vicodin for when she cut her pinky on a dried up orange peel, which is why she got so dizzy. It won't happen again.

Sincerely yours,

Graham Mackenrow
5th Grade