Southern Shorts

Book summary

In "Southern Shorts," Sue Mydliak weaves a series of humorous and heartwarming tales set in the quirky small town of Dry Prong, Louisiana. Follow Charlese and her lively encounters with friends, co-workers, and her eccentric neighbor, Willodean. These stories promise laughter and charm, making for an engaging read.

Excerpt from Southern Shorts

1 BLender Fiasco

“No one, and I mean one, knows how to create madness and mass hysteria better than my neighbor Willodean. In this story, Willodean is fighting for her life over a fruit smoothie. So, sit down, take a load off your feet, and be prepared for a pretty fascinating story!”

I awoke to screams, coming from my neighbor’s house.

Quickly, I grabbed my robe and sprinted outside. By the time I reached my neighbor’s front door, my pink bunny slippers, once perky, looked like drowned rats … dew was their undoing.

The screaming persisted.

“Willodean? You alright?”

No answer. Can she hear me?

Usually, the door is locked, but at this point I didn’t give a rat’s ass and gave the door a wild kick. Down it went and in I went!

There stood Willodean in shock, sporting food from head to toe. From where I stood you could see all the way into the kitchen, bungalows are great that way and that’s where I found her, between the kitchen and the dining room.

“You kicked my door down! What the hell, Charlese?”

She was furious with me … the one who came to her aid. “You were screaming, and you woke me up. That’s how loud you were!”

“But you kicked my damn door down! Why would you do that?”

Granted, I didn’t check to see otherwise, but when your neighbor, your friend, is screaming bloody murder, you don’t do polite things. You go in for the kill.

“You sounded like you were being killed, so I’ve come to save your butt!”

“But you kicked down my door!” Willodean hadn’t moved from her spot upon my arrival, and it was probably due to the fact that she had so much food, juice and whatever else on her that she became glued to the floor.

“Ok, can we just get past that part for now?” I told her. “You ok? You look a mess.” She did too: hair all tousled about as if a hurricane had gone through it and body all covered with food and juice. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was in a food fight.

She waved her hand aimlessly about, with a confused look on her face, as though she didn’t know what had happened. ‘Dazed’ would be the perfect word to describe her.

“I, I …” She motioned toward the blender, “It attacked me.”

Ok. That was … different. I snorted and grabbed my abdomen in a fit of laughter.

“Charlese, it’s not funny, it really did. I had to protect myself!” She was pleading for her life, but it looked more like a drowned kitten meowing to be fluffed up dry.

That made me laugh even harder.

“Oh, Willodean, you can’t be serious! What’d it do? Try to blend you?” My words were barely audible because I was laughing so hard.

“Why, yes, yes it did,” she said proud and indignant.

Grabbing onto the counter for support, I slowly sank to the floor, convulsing with laughter, and clutching my side. My insides hurt so badly that I thought they would explode.

She just stood there, messy and annoyed. After a few minutes had gone by, I had composed myself as best as I could, but it was hard. Just one look at her sorrowful face … I, no I didn’t have the heart. She truly needed some words of comfort, and I was going to do just that.

“Now, hunny, blenders don’t attack people,” I said.

She pointed to the blender again as if to say, yes, they do! But I knew better. I would try to get her to see reason, which, for Willodean, would be no easy task.

“No, no they don’t sweetie,” I said. “You may have gotten a spoon stuck in it, but it did not attack you.”

“Charlese, you’re never to put a spoon in a blender when it’s running. That’s just common sense!”

This is a girl who just claimed a blender had attacked her, and she’s telling me about common sense. Right.

After a calming breath, I said, “Willodean, sit down before you have another episode. You’re a bit confused, not to mention scary at the moment.”

I took a deep breath. “Tell me what is going on; how’d the mean ol’ blender attack you?”

“Stop treating me like an infant, Charlese. I know what I saw. I was making a smoothie for breakfast, you know the one with strawberries and bananas, when it sucked my hand down inside. The thing was ready to chop me up into tiny pieces.” Willodean’s emotions were at an all-time high. When she gets frustrated, fight or flight mode kicks in and it’s usually the flight mode she resembles.

I needed a moment of silence to register what I just heard, but then Willodean emotions fired up again.

“I … I had to defend myself,” Willodean continued, her voice shaky. “It was like the blender had taken hold of my very hand.” She waved her digits in front of my face, her way of being dramatic. “So, I started to punch at it and when that didn’t work, I unplugged it, but it kept on going! It was like something out of the Twilight Zone, Charlese!”

“I see.” I have to admit, I was interested, a little weirded out, but as her friend, I had to go along with her. “So, let me get this straight: all you did was make a smoothie and the blender went all crazy on you?”

“Yup.”

I walked over to the blender that now lay on its side; bits of strawberries and banana, not to mention juice, were all over the counter and floor. I looked at the blender, and thought about it for a moment, a long moment. Willodean now had me spooked about this appliance. I shook my head. I was being stupid. Cautiously I went to upright the blender, and it turned on me.

Willodean let out a loud scream, grabbed me from behind and pulled.

It was too late. The monster had me already. The whirl of the blades sucked my hand closer and closer. My life flashed before my eyes: Chester, Chubby Weiner, and my Gran. This would make an epic movie.

All the while, we struggled against the dang thing, and we might have been defeated if not for Willodean. When she couldn’t pry it off my hand, she ran for the garage and got the blow torch.

“Willodean, my hand is in this thing,” I hollered frantically. “You’re gonna melt it over my hand!” Now, I would’ve trusted anyone else to do this, but not Willodean. Trusting Willodean to do anything that was remotely dangerous was like jumping off a cliff thinking you could fly.

“I know what I’m doing, trust me,” she assured me. When I torch it, you fling it off your hand as hard as you can. You got that?”

I shook my head but said, “Yeah.”

“One, two … three!”

When she torched the blender, I flung the thing as hard as I could, only it connected with Willodean’s head. Down she went for the count and out the window went the smoldering kitchen appliance, truly a sight to behold. Willodean, on the other hand, was a heap of girl: food and a welt as big as a golf ball forming on her forehead. Ouch.

Days have passed since that horrific morning. We don’t talk much about it. In fact, we don’t say a word. Willodean has no use for blenders anymore. Can’t say that I blame her.