My Cardboard Balcony

by Belinda Roddie "A one legged Jedi walks into a bar..." "Oh, no." "He comes up to the bar and he asks the barkeep for a hot chocolate..." "No, stop. Drake, shut him up before it's too late." "Why, is it that serious?" asks Drake, his smile glowing silver behind his glass of amber. I can't help chuckling at my friends' typical antics. Peter has been trying to tell a "timeless" joke of his to the gang while the tired-eyed bartender passes me another pint of Smithwick's. The froth is still sparkling on my lips as I cast my vision on the gorgeous Áine, who's feigning utmost panic while clutching her Heineken bottle to her chest. "I'm telling you, it's a disaster. This pub will crumble from the sheer dreadfulness of his joke. Thousands will cower amid the rubble! The punchline uses bone humor, for God's sake! Bone humor!" "Hey, I didn't make it up," Peter mu...

How many were dead? I didn't know. They all seemed to become one mass on the television screen. The way the camera hovered over them was like the cameraman was expecting someone to jump up and go, "KIDDING!" But no one did. It wasn't a game show. It wasn't a reality show. This was real. And we were watching it like a poor kid's entertainment while the gunman laughed his ass off.