Annuals of the WaPo

‘Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful’

‘Laylor Torenz’

VA Medical Center:

Ann– We’d like to thank everyone for showing up today,

T,L: HELLO!?

Ann– I’m sorry miss, this meeting is for veterans.

T,L: Yes I know. I’m not a veteran, but I’m, um, ‘Laylor Torenz’. I have SUCH TERRIBLE ptsd and I thought that sharing my story with those with less acute cases might help them recover faster.

Ann– I’m sorry, but this IS for veterans who

T,L: I KNOW. I HEARD YOU. BUT MY PTSD IS SO, SO SO TERRIBLE. How could it NOT help these poor unfortunates.

Could you move that persons, I’m sorry I don’t know what your pronoun is, stretcher out of the way so I can sit.

Can you move the ventilator please, it’s exhaling all over me? (shiver) Thank you.

HI, I’m, um. Laylor Torenz and I have terrible ptsd.

Aren’t they supposed to say ‘HI TAYLOR’ um, ‘hi LAYLOR’ back to me?

Ann– I’m going to have to ask you to leave

T,L: I KNOW, I KNOW. I have to leave ALL MY PRECONCEPTIONS of how terrible my ptsd is and the terrible effects it’s having on my personal life OUTSIDE in the hall when I walk through the door.

(CLACK)

T,L: OHMY! Don’t you know how triggering that is? Please ask that person to hold onto their crutches a LITTLE-MORE-SECURELY?

It’s not like you’re missing BOTH your arms.

Back to MY story.

I MAY BE a world famous, oh, you might call me a ‘personality’.  Yes I, OH MY GOD!

Could you PLEASE ask that person to turn to the right. They don’t have a face and I can’t think when I have to look at them.

Give me a moment.

(turns her chair).

T,L: OH! Yuck!

Why is THAT person turning blue?

What are they trying to say?

MY ptsd is terrible and I CAN STILL TALK.

CAN-I-HELP-YOU?

Joe– you

T,L: YOU…?

Joe– are (weeze)

T,L: YOU ARE…?

Joe– onmy

T,L: YOU ARE OMMY? No I’m not your MOMMY, but what can mommy do for you?

Joe– oxy…

Chuck– Damn IDIOT you’re on his oxygen line!

T,L: WHAT DID YOU SAY.

Chuck– I’m sorry ‘Laylor’, My name is Chuck, I have ptsd. You say ‘HI CHUCK’. I say, I don’t have any LEGS. Else I’d walk over and kick your BUTT off of Joes OXYGEN LINE.

T,L: Well, you’re aggressive. I MOVED. See. ‘JOE’ is not blue anymore. And I WORKED with a man named CHUCK who, I can say it now, there were so many, many, many microaggressions that it literally took weeks of therapy for me to realize how bad they were.

I couldn’t have said that last year.

AM-I-HELPING-ANY-OF-YOU-YET?

‘Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding’.

Oh. I’m sorry. I don’t have any more time. I have a selfie that has to be posted at 12, I’m very secure in my beauty.

NOW.

Before I was so harassed for my looks that I wished for so long that I wasn’t so talented AND beautiful.

I’m better now.

I hope you all learned that just because you AREN’T beautiful and have NO talent you don’t need ptsd because no one will harass you for it.

I have SOME pull in, the media, and I’ll see if we can’t do a special or something like that on people with no chances who are really okay with it?

Thank you.

I’m ‘Laylor Torenz’. Bye.

“SCREECH. SCREECH. SCREECH.”

Oops.

Didn’t I ask someone to move that ventilator? Someone should plug it back in.

‘AT HOME WITH MULLAH ABDUL GHANI BARADAR’, a millard bunson exclusive. part ii

Millard: Belgium waffles, you ALWAYS pick Belgium waffles?

Abdul: Politically I can appreciate the fact that a country that may have driven Julius Caesar to distraction is remembered after millennia for the sweetbread that may or may not have anything to do with its namesake being offered as an incredibly unhealthy breakfast staple principally in a woke capitalist country that would change its name to ‘Cuban’ waffles in a heartbeat. AND, they are BELGIAN waffles, as you already know Millard.

Millard: You have changed. Maybe too much?

Millard: Watching the ‘fall of Kabul’ what do I see? I see young Taliban celebrating by taking ‘selfies’ to post to their own facebook pages. I see half your ‘army’ who when you talk about becoming ‘Martyrs for Allah’ think ‘no way am I going to go without internet for a month. a WEEK maybe’. It has already been written about, you know what I’m talking about: ‘…Religion doesn’t work anymore. First, it will be housewives complaining that their dishwashers aren’t working any more. Then, business complaining that their factories can’t produce as much… the war didn’t end with a huge final battle, it just ended one day. ‘

Abdul: Asimov, the Foundation. I know. How do we deal with changed reality.

Abdul: Earlier we could always rely on the fact that when we put the call out for Martyrs we would have to turn some away because EVERYONE wanted to be proud to die in the Jihad. Now? We get ‘what you mean Willis?’ as a smartass answer from young kids grown up with to much Western influence and technology. They LIKE the idea of a Islamic Caliphate based on Sharia, but when they see a mullah calling out THEIR mother, sister or wife, possibly striking them in the process, the reality is going to cause a big change in THEM real fast.

Abdul: Then, we have what I like to call the ‘2 Headed Beast’. I would call them barbarians but they ARE what I WAS when I was much younger. They both hear an inherent call to violent Jihad, but their only difference is whether the should subjugate and purify OUR country first before they go out and claim the rest of the world for Allah. Who’s children should we kill in Allah’s name first? Our own or the infidels?

‘At home with Mullah Abdul Ghani baradar’, a Millard bunson exclusive.

We enter with the interview in progress…:

Millard: Go ahead, Abdul, do it.

Abdul: Millard, I know what you’re going to do, please don’t my friend.

Millard: Abdul… You know you want tooo. All you have to do is push-that-one-little-button?

Abdul: Allah forgive me. PUSH!

Millard’s phone rings ” HEY MR. TALIBAN TALLY ME BANNANA’S, DAYLIGHT COME AND I WANT TO GO HOME!”

Abdul: HA, DAY-O, DAYYYYYYY-O, DAYLIGHT COME AND IT WANNA GO HOME!!!

Millard: I knew you’d like it.

Abdul: Intoxicating Millard, Intoxicating.

Millard: So. You’re back in country, all you avenues of communication have been taken off line, and here I am? The interview of a lifetime

Abdul: You may live to see another one, take it one question at a time my friend.

Millard: ‘Baradar the Butcher’? That’s what they USED to call you. Recruiting poor illiterates with no chance in life from hovels and dirt poor villages? That’s what you USED to do. Young, Angry and full of Angst? That’s what you USED to be. What do we have now:

-to cut off communications you stopped an internet/facebook/instagram feed.

-your YOUNG recruits, like ALL kids, spend more time texting and on their phones than studying the Quoran.

-YOU have grown, and know that climate change, a developing economy NOT based on illegal drugs, and pernicious pandemic viruses are more of a challenge that will NOT be touched or solved by making your country full of illiterate barbarians again.

-and having neighbors like China and Russia, who have learned the lesson of others and history will NOT try to invade, but they can and will make sure that any number of accidents keep you firmly entrenched in the Middle Ages.

Abdul: How you have lived this long can only be a sign of Allah’s beneficence my friend. Of course, we may still end the day with a thrilling game of ‘Bunson Buzkashi’?

Millard: The point being Abdul, that if it was a video game most of the kids in your Taliban would know how to play, but the old ways are slipping through your fingers. They know more of Marvel and DC heroes than they do of their own culture. In all honesty, if the West wanted to destroy your country all they would have to do is deliver free internet and porn on demand. One generation, that’s all it would take. I think you know that too. To the question Abdul.

‘What are you going to do’

Abdul: look, breakfast is here.

to be continued.