angela townsend / two flash essays

Useful Information

There are some important things you might not know, but then again, you might. Every cat’s middle name is “Rutabaga,” even the fortunate minority whose first name is also “Rutabaga.” One hundred percent of archangels smell like oatmeal cookies. “Cannellini beans” comes from the original Latin for “can of leeny beans.” Most interpersonal conflict can be resolved with spork catapults, tater tots, and small curd cottage cheese. God is infatuated with dandelions. You become younger every time you arrange blueberries in a smiley face on pancakes. There are saints at large in the dollar store. The meanest dude in fourth grade has regrets. God is infatuated with adverbs. There is no law against making dioramas using circus peanuts for people. Your ancestors have nicknames for you and say them out loud when you are afraid. You will never be too old for everything collectively. There was a time before slipper socks and Funfetti, but you did not have to endure that. There is not one living creature who believes in their own splendor, except for walruses and senators. There is not one living creature whose eyes are not beautiful if you look. Certain grandfathers have averted Armageddon through sheer love of baseball. Long-haired hamsters are all employed by the United Nations and mostly Capricorns. God is infatuated with rapscallions. If you ask the grocery store manager for his birthday, he will tell you, and then you can send him cards. The aliens maintain a database of everyone who knows how to fold a fitted sheet. Someone will have to answer for the existence of “chicken fingers” containing neither chicken nor fingers. Spray-cheese was created as an object lesson that we do not control the arc of the universe. There is no law against making potholders. A bodhisattva is a person who refuses to enter paradise until all the imps and scamps can stay for dinner. Every living creature looks good in a pompom hat. God is infatuated. 

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Ricky's Register

Ricky reminds me to check the expiration dates. Someone taught him this, but now it is personally important. 

“They don’t always rotate the stock.” He considers my yogurts, lifting each over his head as an individual. “I don’t want you to get sick.”

Ricky likes yogurt, too, but only the kind with jelly on the bottom. We both think it’s funny that yogurt has “live and active cultures.” Ricky is the only person who knows I used to feel guilty about eating them, until I found out they are still alive inside.

He teases me when I succumb to flavors like Nutella Cupcake and Boston Crème Pie. “You should just get a Boston crème pie!” Ricky is not wrong. I would tell Ricky that I have Type 1 diabetes and a whole hangar of hang-ups about food, but Ricky cries enough as it is.

I never mean to make Ricky cry. One minute we are one-upping each other’s alliterations – champions choose cottage cheese, and pineapple people prevail – and the next, salty tears are blurring his freckles. Ricky doesn’t know how one man can be so wealthy. Ricky is a tycoon. Sometimes he wonders how long this can all last, but God told him “forever,” so he doesn’t worry. He just cries until one of his people distracts him with a pun.

I became one of Ricky’s people the day after my divorce went through. I had always been subterranean at the supermarket, a feral cat slinking the self-checkouts. But the unforgiving robot kept insisting I put my apples in the bagging area, and the loyalty card was under a name I never wanted to read again, so I gave up and went to Ricky’s register. I won’t go back.

Ricky looks like he escaped the local middle school. His freckles are carbonated. A congregation of cowlicks yells “Amens” in all directions. Ricky’s name tag says his name, but it is obscured by all the happy face stickers. Ricky didn’t ask why I needed to correct my last name, but he did say the “new” one was pretty.

If something is pleasant, Ricky is under obligation to praise it. No one taught him this. He told a woman in curlers that more women should wear their hair like that. When she said she was in a rush and knew she looked ridiculous, Ricky said it’s right and rocking to be ridiculous. Ricky feels responsible to inform citizens that they have kind-hearted faces. He has told me this three times. He tells children and parents. When I bought a balloon for my stepfather, Ricky intuited that he has a kind-hearted face. 

Ricky is not allowed to accept gifts. He has turned down sunflowers and a Boston crème cruller. He hesitated over the river rock with googly eyes. He asked if I used a hot glue gun. He asked if I wore gloves. He said I should give it to the next sad person I find. Ricky is a tycoon. He has more than one man can hold in two hands.

It pleased Ricky when the grocery store phased out single-use bags. Ricky likes the cloth ones with pictures of cats in sunglasses or dogs on surfboards. You should never use anything just once and throw it away. If you keep something, you will find out that you love it. Ricky once built a robot out of Cheez-It boxes and won an award. Ricky’s eyes overflow when he thinks about that. 

I made it out faster when I used the self-checkout. Ricky is worth my time. Ricky is my benefactor. He dresses up as candy corn every Halloween. I can never match his alliteration, not when he tells me that I am an elegant, eminent entity or his cherished, childish customer. 

I asked him if he really meant “childish.” His freckles vanished and the saltwater streamed. Did he offend me? Oh, no! No, no. I just wondered what he meant. Ricky meant that I still know how to be happy, and I have a kind-hearted face. Was “childish” the wrong word? I promised him it was right. He taught me something today.

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Angela Townsend is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, thirteen-time Best of the Net nominee, and the 2024 winner of West Trade Review's 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Blackbird, The Iowa Review, JMWW, The Offing, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, trampset, and Witness, among others. She graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and Vassar College and writes for a cat sanctuary.