Birds and Girls

Earl is some guy from who cares where. Less than twenty people know his last name and he will say that doesn’t bother him, but it does. He had a 40th birthday party recently. There was four people in attendance: his mom and dad (whom he lives with), an aunt, and his cousin, whom he hasn’t had any contact with in over five years. His parents, in their humble abode, hosted the small gathering. His mom made lasagna, his favourite.

Earl is a warehouse worker for a big chain department store. He unloads one truck in the morning and loads up another truck after unloading the morning truck, repeating the process for ten hours a day, five days a week, Monday to Friday. Earl is efficient, dependable, and forgettable.

Earl is an aspiring comic. He isn’t funny, but he seems to think he is. What that is based on no one really knows, but he once made his mother squirt milk out of her nose from laughing so hard. He slipped on some ice onto his backside while helping carry in the groceries and ended up with tomato sauce all over himself. It was, admittedly, a funny scene.

Every Thursday night Earl heads to the local comedy club called the Howling Hyena for open mic night and every Thursday he bombs. It’s not so bad that he’s booed off stage, but aside from the odd cough, there isn’t much of a reaction, which is arguably worse.

Earl also has a fascination with European starlings, an invasive bird species whose populations have flourished in his area. Every morning before work he spends fifteen minutes feeding and watching them from his back porch. He has names for the ones that frequent his house or have defining features. Names like Patchy, Squabble, and Nelly.

Earl’s parents love him very much. They have raised him under their roof for the past forty years. With no end in sight, they yearn for the chance to move south to meet with their friends whom have also moved south and have long since enjoyed the pleasures of retirement. One of those pleasures being free of looking after their adult children. Earl’s father isn’t shy about his feelings about the situation, but Earl’s mother is a little more hesitant to kick him out.

One morning, after watching Earl watch and feed the birds for more than fifteen minutes, Earl’s father had had enough. When Earl got home later that evening, they would all sit down at the kitchen table and have a discussion that, in his opinion, a long time coming. Earl’s mother began to protest, but her resolve and patience has slowly eroded with time, and soon she was in agreeance with Earl’s father.

One of Earl’s only friends, a reserved and enigmatic trucker, was smoking a cigarette while Earl was loading his truck. His name is Paul and he was leaning against the driver’s side door, slowly and methodically pulling drags from his homemade cigarette. Earl admired Paul, but often felt nervous speaking to him. Paul was always kind to Earl, but never spoke about himself. The only thing Earl knew, or at least what he thought he knew, was that, aside from the accent, Paul was from Manchester, England and a big fan of their soccer, er football team rather, Manchester United. He presumed this by noticing the large amount of football memorabilia jammed in the cabin of Paul’s truck.

Earl took a break from loading the truck and stepped outside to join Paul. He began to tell Paul about his latest night at the Howling Hyena and the lack of reaction from the crowd. Paul pitied Earl, as he knew he still lived with his parents and wasn’t at all funny.

“I have something for you, Earl.”

Paul went to the cabin of his truck and dug through the pile of stuff in the back; hats, cards and jerseys falling out behind him. Finally, he found what he was looking for and held it up to Earl. It was a black notebook, worn and smelling of cigarettes.

“This is my special notebook,” Paul began to tell Earl. “I’ll let you borrow it for the week. Write your jokes in here. I have a feeling your stand-up will go down a storm and the birds will go mad for you.”

Earl eagerly grabbed the notebook, flicked through the empty pages a bit, and thanked Paul for the gracious gift.

“There is a comedy competition coming up this Thursday,” Paul said excitedly. “The grand prize is twenty thousand dollars! If I win, I’ll split the money with you since you were so kind as to lend me your special notebook.”

Paul smiled, but a sudden grave look came over his face. “I should warn you… please only write jokes in this notebook. A sudden shift in the tone of what’s written will have dire consequences, mate.”

Earl nodded. “Of course, of course. Only jokes. Got it.” He then spent the rest of his break writing jokes down in the notebook, surprising himself with how easy it was to think of them.

Later that evening, when Earl got home, his parents were sitting at the dinner table waiting for him. His mother had a worried look on her face, his father a stern one. Earl wasn’t the brightest bulb in the room, but he could hazard a guess as to what was about to happen. And he would’ve been right. His father told him that they could no longer support him under their roof and that he would need to move out and find his own place. Earl began to object, telling them about the competition and the grand prize, and how he received this mysterious notebook that would make him funny and that the girls would go crazy for him. His father wasn’t having any of it.

“Your dependency on us has gone on long enough and your mother and I want to move south to be with our friends. We love you very much, but think this is for the best.”

Earl looked to his mother for help, but her eyes were cast down at the table and she didn’t say a word. Earl got up from the table in a huff and stormed up to his room, much like an angsty teenager would. Earl was so heated that he grabbed the notebook and angrily jotted down what he planned to do with the money if he’d won. Different trips and a down payment on a house, forgetting completely that he was meant to split the money with Paul.

The following evening was the competition. Earl had gotten there early and was pacing outside the back, psyching himself up for the night ahead. His train of thought was interrupted momentarily when he heard quiet chirping from above. Earl noticed that a few of the starlings, the ones he had names for like Patchy and Squabble, were perched on a power line looking down at him. My only fans, he sadly thought to himself.

He headed inside and went to the greenroom with the other comics waiting for people to take their seats and the show to start. The first comedian to go up was funny, Earl could hear the laughter from the greenroom. The second comedian was funnier still. When he heard the MC call his name he walked out on stage and noticed that it was a full house. Yet Earl’s confidence was not shaken. In fact, he was more confident now than he had ever been in his entire life. And with good reason.

He killed that night. Drinks were being knocked over from people slamming their fists on the tables, howling hysterically. Several people got up to leave, but only because they had peed themselves with laughter. Even the staff at the Howling Hyena were in stitches, forgetting to serve the patrons, though it didn’t matter at that point. Earl received a standing ovation, and won the competition.

On his way back to the greenroom, he was surrounded by women practically throwing themselves at him. Earl struggled to write down the different numbers in the notebook, but he was grinning from ear to ear. This would be the best moment of his entire life.

Earl finally was able to break free and return to the greenroom. The other comedians were all smiles, slapping him on the back and congratulating him. One of them recommend he head out the back exit as the audience had turned more into a mob, most still reeling from laughter. Earl grabbed his notebook and headed outside.

The night was cool and Earl was experiencing ecstasy. He was so out of his mind that he didn’t notice the thousands of starlings perched on the power lines looking down at him. Twenty thousand starlings to be exact. Squabble, Patchy, even Nelly was there to witness Earl having his moment.

Squabble flew down and landed on Earl’s shoulder, something that Squabble had never done before.

“Oh hello, Squabble,” Earl said with a smile.

Then Nelly came and landed on the other shoulder and gave him a sharp peck on the cheek, drawing blood.

“Nelly, oh my.”

Earl laughed nervously. He glanced up towards where the birds were balanced along the power lines. There was a sudden wooosh, like the sound of giant waves crashing in a storm, but was actually the sound of twenty thousand starlings descending on their prey.

I guess he meant REAL birds, Earl thought one last time.