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• A Good Morning (1)

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• A Bad Morning (0)

I have been an avid gamer ever since my youth, this is a passion I built my early years of life around. One that became so strong that I passed it down to my children, buying games and playing them together was one of the best things to do as a family.

So we were all thrilled with the current generation of consoles, I got all of them for the house over a couple of years as well as an HD TV to play them on. My younger kids loved the Wii and we got our fair bit of enjoyment from the Xbox until it broke down, but our greatest mileage came from our PS3. Sure, there weren’t many great games on it at first, but it gave us an early start on the Blu-ray craze, we thought of it as a Blu-ray player on which we could games once we found the right ones.

Our daily routines were simple enough and we even kept tabs on how long our kids could play any given system. The whole family was proud of our little media center, that is until the day we came home after being away visiting my wife’s folks for the holidays.

The living room door had been forced and the drawers had been taken apart, but that wasn’t our biggest worry. We ran into the living room to check our treasured media center, every last bit of it was now gone. The kids were devastated, but at least their room hadn’t been messed up since the damage focused on the living room area.

It was the holidays and we got burglarized, so far so good. My wife and I didn’t want to leave the kids without something to play on, so we went to a local videogame retailer and forked over the dough to get a Wii since they left behind most of the games. We also had to get a tv, and this time we upgraded to a flat-screen, if only so we could bolt it to the wall.

We had a couple friends over to help us install the new locks. I mentioned how we missed the PS3, since we had a bunch of movies left we couldn’t watch one of our friends suggested we go to a pawnshop and see if we can one. It sounded like a sensible choice if we could get over buying a crack head’s PS3.

I went with him to a pawnshop downtown later that night, lo and behold our fucking family’s PS3 was there! I recognized it from the decals my kids had put on it, I told the guy that I would call the cops on him since I had kept the box, receipt and the thing was even on a family photo with the kids. Calling a cop on a pawn shop may not be the brightest idea ever but the guy had a “No stolen items” policy. We checked on the rest of his merchandise but the other things weren’t there.

I took the PS3 back home and told the kids how my friend and I had fought over it, the older ones wouldn’t buy it into the story. All it mattered was that we managed to find a bit of our stolen properties, all in one night’s work as a dad. Besides, my little kids looked up to me like I was the goddamned Batman.

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• A Good Morning (1)

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• A Bad Morning (0)

I had been dating this guy for quite a while now and everything was going well, at least as far as the early stages of a relationship go. He always treated me to a nice dinner when he had a chance, often taking me to a club or to catch a movie right after we were done. It all seemed great, but it was just a little bit weird that all our dinners ended with him telling me to meet him by the car while he sorted the bill.

Part of me figured it was just his way to be a gentleman, or that maybe he didn’t like his dates to see how high the bill could get. This went on for five dates, all of them in different restaurants and different nights over the course of our two month relationship. We would mostly go out to the movies, clubbing or just stay together in his apartment having fun, the big dress up dates only came up occasionally.

Such a date is the reason behind this story, it was our sixth date and he made plans for us to go to the fanciest restaurant he could find. He reasoned his habit of switching restaurants by saying, “I never eat at the same place twice in order to to experience new flavors, not to mention that each restaurant had its own mood to it!” He also insisted on the fact that “Each experience will be unique in its own way, think of it as romantic tour of fine dining!” He put on his suit and I tagged along in my cocktail dress, ready for a wonderful dinner.

We had lobster, champagne and a few side dishes to celebrate our third month together. I was simply heels over toes by how much dedication he put into taking me out like this, we both had simple jobs so money had to be a bit short to afford this place. Maybe that’s why we went out like this once every couple of weeks, I guess he had to save for the occasion.

He went a bit over board, though, he ordered deserts and fine wine once we were done with the champagne. Anyone who saw us would dare say that we were a couple of new rich kids, just living it up on a new-found fortune. “The good things in life only come so often, and I’m sorry to tell you that I won’t be able to take you out like this for a bit”, he said over the last bits of our desert. It was okay, I never had been spoiled by a boyfriend like this in all of my life so it’s not like I was expecting more.

A couple of glasses of wine later and we were ready to go to my place and celebrate properly, but I had to go to the bathroom first. He insisted that I simply headed to the car while he paid, I agreed but only because it gave me a chance to go to the bathroom without resorting to the un-lady like “I’m going to burst!” line. I came out to an empty table, so I went straight to the exit to meet him in the parking lot.

One of the waiters stopped me while a manager approached me, they both looked and sounded furious. I turns out that my charming man had been planning a “dine and dash” move that ended up with him leaving without me. I was forced to write them a hefty check hoping that I could at least get half the money back from my boyfriend. He thought differently and broke up with me the next morning for “ruining his winning streak”. The bill was way more than my budget for the next month, so now I’m broke and single.