Saturday's Storyteller: "I would sit up late and watch videos of whales giving birth."

by Belinda Roddie

I would sit up late and watch videos of whales giving birth. Marco liked to find all of the glitches in video games. Shannon had a penchant for building action figures out of spoons and sticky hands and naming all of them Joseph.

We all had our bizarre hobbies at the Slop House - which is what we called our townhouse just on the corner of downtown and the Tenderloin. When Oscar arrived as the fourth roommate, however, he said something that was very confusing.

"I like running on a treadmill once in a while," he told me and my roommates over glasses of very watered down absinthe. "Can I have a treadmill in the living room?"

We weren't sure what to think of it. The living room was Marco's space for all of his N64 and Playstation needs. Not to mention that the music Oscar liked to listen to was predominantly smooth jazz piano - which sounded way too melodic over the harsh shrieks of a bugging out Koopa on the NES. If he was going to have a treadmill, then I was going to have to turn up the didgeridoo music.

"How did you find an entire album of didgeridoo music, anyway?" asked Shannon, as she created a wig for her latest silverware superhero out of the cut off hair of an old barbie doll.

I smiled. "Have you ever gotten anything off of eBay?"

This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.