Pair with How Will I Know by Whitney Houston
“Brian Chester Tibbs, do you take Melinda Karen Carrolls to be your wife?” asks the officiator.
“Well, what happened was,” says Brian with an apologetic smile, “I couldn’t get the Honda to start, not the Ford, the Ford always starts, but my mate had it that Tuesday because he was gonna move some furniture out of his Mom’s and the sectional couldn’t fit so I said he could borrow mine, but then he was half-way to Springfield when he got a flat and I’d already used the spare back in September, so now he was up the creek, wasn’t he?”
Pair this one with Eye of the Tiger by Survivor
Camilla, a millennial tiger shark, felt unfairly stigmatized by the negative reputation of her species. She thought that people did not take the time to get to know her because they made all kinds of assumptions about her being a macropredator and a garbage eater. Granted, that was how she was raised, but in college, Camilla had dabbled both in bi-veganism and the occasional romantic submission to a killer whale called Henry from the Zeta-Jones fraternity. She just didn’t like to be pigeon-holed on her genus alone, although pigeons were yummy with a sprig of rosemary and some sea salt.
Pair with Ocean Eyes by Billie Eilish
There once was a teenager that kept rolling its eyes at its parents. It rolled them at how its father dressed. It rolled them at the music its mother listened to. It especially rolled them at dinner choices that were not pasta or fried, invitations to do things that were not streaming video content in its room, and comments about Billie Eilish’s new look. Being inflicted with two Gen-X parents, the teenager had ample opportunity for eyes-rolling. It got so good at it that one day the eyes stuck back there. Really stuck. Forever. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Pair with the song of the same name by The Mamas and The Papas
Tracy, a lemur with a penchant for drama, went into her Monday with existential unease. She could not figure out if her chakras were blocked or it was the medication for a persistent fungus underneath her left toilet claw that threw her off. Whatever the reason, by 11 PM, Tracy was ready to slip back under her weighted blanket. Not only was someone posing as her on TokTik, but her new crystal windchimes seemed to call upon thousands of fire ants to congregate in the underwear she had drying on the French balcony of her third-floor apartment in Old Town.
Pair with Honey by Robyn
“Is that you, honey?” He calls from the kitchen.
She dumps her bag and keys, kicks her pumps off, stumbles to the open kitchen door, and leans on the doorframe.
“Whadaday,” she says. “Think Ima godo bed.”
He turns around from the stove, scrubbing-brush in hand, the baby monitor clipped onto the apron pocket.
“I thought maybe we could have a little time?” He says.
“Nah,” she says. “Me’n’t’girls went to club ‘ve early meeting.”
She wrestles to get her bra unhooked and out one of the shirt sleeves.
“Explains the varsity lockerroom smell,” he sighs.
But she’s already gone.
Regitze Ladekarl
Regitze Ladekarl crafts universal tales from everyday lives with an honest and sharp pen.
