All Stories, General Fiction

Nobody Ever Retires, Even After They’re Dead [1] by J Bradley Minnick

Mr. Balding, our 5th grade Social Studies teacher, was so old that the Germans shot the hair from his head on two separate occasions and in two separate wars. Mr. Balding was so old that he hated and despised discussing his age. He was so old that the hairs in his ears had fossilized and had grown longer than the hair on his head. He was so old that his cataracts had cataracts. He was so old that he couldn’t remember being our age. And, yet, in a weak attempt to connect to what he imagined to be our violent sensibilities, once a month, or so, some military and patriotic force compelled him to tell gory and graphic war stories from behind the full view of the obit page of Peoples Gazette—our local and irregularly published bi-weekly.

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