What's So Funny?
Russell Gayer, author speaker
C’mon, Baby, Light My Fire
After months of badgering by my beloved wife, I scheduled a return visit to the heart doctor for a check-up. Those of you who’ve read “The Incident” in The Perils of Heavy Thinking know all about my encounter with HPSS (Home Project Shock Syndrome) five years ago.
Dr. Boris Bogomilov is a rather short fellow who speaks good English, but with a heavy Russian accent. Fortunately, I’ve watch thousands of episodes of Rocky & Bullwinkle and have no problem understanding his lingo. Thus far, I’ve resisted the temptation to ask him to say, “Moose and Squirrel,” or if he could see Sarah Palin’s house from his childhood home in Russia.
If you’re new to Friday Flash Fiction, the Surgeon General who demands we bend over and cough out new stories each week is Dr. Michaela Quinn Wisoff-Fields. If you’d like to participate in this exercise of madness, head over to her blog for step-by-step instructions. To view the FFF Hollywood Squares Authors Block click here.
“Evan and I are having problems.” Michelle pursed her lips and stared out the window. “We never talk. It’s like living alone.”
“What happened?” Becca caught the glisten of tears in Michelle’s eyes.
“It’s that damned Smart phone. If he’s not on Facebook, it’s Twitter, or YouTube, or Amazon. I could be making love to another man right here on the sofa and he’d never even notice.”
“Sounds like a serious addiction. Where is he now?”
“Upstairs. I asked him to draw me a hot bath. Know what he said?”
“What?”
“Sure, sweetheart. I’ve got an App for that.”
61 Comments on “C’mon, Baby, Light My Fire”
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What's So Funny? 
Cute. That are too many people just like him.
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You should see our lunchroom at work during break time. Everyone staring at cell phones. Not a word is being spoken. The room is spooky quiet.
Twenty years ago people would have been playing cards and telling jokes. Social media is no substitute for social skills.
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I know. When it got slow at work sometimes we’d talk, but most times everyone got on their smart phone, except me. I edited a novel, that’s now published. ;0)
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Dear Evan,
I’d like to find that hot bath app. I know how Michelle feels about the smart phone. My husband tells me I’m online all the time but there are times he’s headed for an iPadectomy or a smart phone suppository. I told him he could join FF if he wants to communicate with me. Some folks are incurable.
Shalom,
Dr. Mike
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LOL I agree with Dr. Mike! Where’s that app? Must be Android only.
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Ouch, smart phone suppository sounds painful. I don’t see how that could reduce swelling. 🙂
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It won’t reduce selling but it could bring one of us pleasure. 😉
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Do you make housecalls, Dr. Mike? I know someone who needs their prescription filled. 🙂
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Ha ha! Love it!
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LOL. Fun read.
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Thanks.
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“There’s an app for that” might be the greatest line in advertising for this decade.
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I agree. Wonder what’s next?
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IDK but I hope you or I write it! lol
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Me too, Dawn. 🙂
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It gets very steamy in my bathroom, too. At least Evan had the brain cells to crack the window, or maybe he has an app that opened the roof?
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I have a feeling he’s going to need a virtual wife at some point in the future.
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Behind closed Doors? 😉
Good piece.
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Jim Morrison could never have imagined a world like this.
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If that smoke in the picture is steam from the hot bath, that’s one heck of an App. I hope it doesn’t melt the tub. Michelle needs to join a support group for wives of Social Network addicts. I’m sure there must be one. There seems to be one for everything else. Funny stuff again, Russell. 😀 — Suzanne
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Poor Michelle 😦 At least they don’t seem to have kids – no app for that…yet. I went out to dinner a few weeks ago, and the mom at the table next to us cut up her ten-year-old son’s dinner so he could eat it with his fingers and keep playing games on his i-pad.
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That is sad. She’s enabling his addiction.
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The number of parents who do it is staggering. The trouble is, they’re too afraid to say, “No, you may not have your i-pad at the table.”
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They need a treatment center for addicts too. We have smoke-free restaurants now. Instead of adding Wifi they should make an electronic-free area.
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There’s an app for anything. Well almost… Nice one Russell.
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Can you imagine what would happen if the internet went down for one day? or even one hour? There would probably people committing suicide.
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Poor Michelle. She definitely needs to join WAGOSNA – Wives and Girlfriends of social network addicts.
I loved watching Rocky and Bullwinkle! What memories. Good old Boris and Natasha.
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Yes, Boris and Natasha were fun. I never dreamed their broken English would be helpful to me fifty years later.
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Dear Russell,
The future is going to see even more of the disconnection you so ably describe in your story. We are going to be jacked into the web, mainlining data from antennas and chips grafted right into our temples. We are the dinosaurs and I’m kind of glad of it. Great job this week.
Aloha,
Doug
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I think you’re one of those old sea turtles, Doug. You definitely beat my pants off on humor this week, but I’ll get my fiddle retuned before the next dance.
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Love your take on this prompt, made me smile. 😄 Good job!
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We like smiles. Thanks for stopping by.
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Hehehe. Easy solution: get her a smartphone of her own. Maybe there is a happy marriage app, too. Great fun.
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Yep, they could text each other from across the room.
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I actually think you wrote quite a serious story here – behind all good comedy there’s often a lot of real anger! Great piece!
BUT problem I have with lots of these doom-and-gloom-kids-of-today comments is we’re all on flipping Friday Fiction – we’re not exactly going to do this by pigeon are we!
I do get angry at work when someone sends me an email instead of looking up and talking to me, but I love my smartphone almost as much as my garden – mainly because that’s what it’s for, taking pictures of the garden.
As a kid I always had my head down in a book and fiction was as real as life to me – is that different from having your head stuck in your phone?
Sorry to go off on one – you have set a fuse alight here!!
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I love lengthy comments. My wife is a gardener. She used to really harass me about reading, “Always have your nose stuck in a darned old book.”
We all have our vices. I guess we should be careful about throwing stones.
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Funny but sad at the same time. Only for those of us that are old enough to remember talking to each other. I thought on reading she was about to have a bit of hot sex on the sofa with whom she was talking but instead a nice twist with the app to draw the bath.
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Me too. I thought we were going to witness some Great Balls of Fire. Damn that author. The writer’s guild should revoke his license.
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LOL
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Yeah… what up with that? Why not give poor Michelle some fun, eh?
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Where can I get that App? Truly, this is funny and sad. It’s a sign of times. I’m guilty of it myself. Sometimes I’d like to just chuck my phone. Well done, Russell.
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Well, whatever you do, don’t use it as a suppository (as Dr. Mike suggested). It does not shrink swelling of hemorrhoidal tissues. That app has not yet been created.
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Russell … where do you get that App? Oh, you already gave it to Amy. Darn it !!
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There’s been a lot of demand for that app this week.
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Really funny, but the opening even funnier! Go ahead and repeat after me: “Moose and Squirrel, Moose and Squirrel, Moose and Squirrel!” Okay, now let’s hop in the Way Back Machine, check out Helen of Troy, and be back for lunch.
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You and me in the Way Back Machine, that would be fun, Perry.
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Has he also got an app for making love to his wife before she finds a less technically-savvy lover?
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Sure. Have you seen the movie Barbarella? It works something like that.
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i’ve heard about grass widow and golf widow. i wonder what this phenomenon would be called. oh, why should i even ask? there must be an app for that, too.
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It’s an addiction. She needs to join a support group.
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Funny stuff but I see the very serious side too. Oh what the Hell, I just saw the funny side. Who am I kidding? Loved the comments and your replys. Good for you going to a doc. You know how I feel about doctors. Necessary evil despite our funny accents. Boris and Natasha – make him say it. Ha ha
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I love the accent. Boris has a great sense of humor. He’d probably say it if I just ask him.
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I guess there’s only way to reach people like that.. Tell’em on facebook… 😉
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Good point, Bjorn.
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I predict un’appy days for her unless she sends him a facebook friend request.
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I think she’s to the point where she’s ready to unfriend him on Facebook.
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It’s become polite to check your smart phones together, in restaurants… bugs the sh^# out of me! I think Michelle needs a “kick-his-butt-the-curb” app!
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Have you seen the foreign YouTube video where the husband is insisting his wife goes paperless, then he’s on the pot, out of toilet paper, and she slides an iPad under the door with a picture of toilet paper on it. Fun stuff. 🙂
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I LOVE that commercial; it’s brilliant!
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Made me chuckle – and no I didn’t use any App to induce it 😉
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Smart phones and tablets of all types seem to have forced conversation with people around us almost to a standstill. Inevitable I suppose, but somehow rather sad. My sympathies are with Michelle. The last line is excellent … Great read altogether! 🙂
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