This is a sampling of some of my recent favorites. Each piece is between 700-750 words. If you are a publisher or an editor and would like to include Hey, Guess What? in your publication - or you're just a regular guy who likes what he sees, drop me a line and let's talk.

Enjoy!

THE ATARI GENERATION TAKES OVER:
I can't help but laugh whenever I see a teenager wearing an Atari T-shirt. Do they even know what Atari was? I've heard at least one person born after 1984 say, "Atari games were so much better than the games they put out today." I don't know if they're just trying to be retro-chic or what, but take it from me Scooter, Atari sucked.

HOT LUNCH UPRISING:
The cooks in our elementary school didn’t take well to criticism. They yelled and made us spend recess inside with our heads down whenever we complained about the burnt pizza, hairs in our yogurt or rubbery meat in our spaghetti sauce.

TOILET HUMOR:
I grew up in a house where the only doors with locks were the main entrances. The bedrooms didn't lock. Neither did the bathroom. In fact, the bathroom door didn't even shut tight. All it took was a cat's paw to push the thing open. But in spite of these perils weighing in against me, not one person in over twenty-two years of potty training has caught me making pee pees or poo poos.

THE MAC DADDY - TOO COOL TO CARE:
I know I'm going to be a great dad. I'm no child psychologist or family wellness professional, but I have discovered the key to being a good parent. It's quite simple actually. All you have to do is realize that, like it or not, you are not cool. And don't try playing the whole, "I used to be cool," thing. As soon as you become a parent, you just have to accept the fact that you are not now, nor have you ever been, cool.

ONE TRIMESTER AT A TIME:
People keep asking me how it feels to know I'm going to be a dad. To tell you the truth, it's just hitting me, four months after my first anniversary, that I'm married. So you're going to have to give me some time on the baby thing. Maybe after my kid breaks his first window and I give him his first good beating, I'll be ready to comment. Just kidding. I'll be beating my kid way before he's old enough to break windows.

SURVIVING REALITY:
American Idol was always on right before 24 on Tuesdays, and I'd be subjected to the final two minutes after switching over from Buffy. Every week I'd have to stomach one-hundred and twenty seconds of Adobe and Pastrami singing their asses off, trying to sound like Luther Vandross - even if they were singing an AC/DC song.

BEE PREPARED:
You know that scene at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones realizes he has spiders all over his back, so he calmly brushes them off with his whip? Yeah, I don't do that. The nanosecond the nerves in my back register anything smaller than a chair, my whole body contorts into a corkscrew, my hands raining down blows like napalm on the compromised area.

NINE LIVES TOO MANY:
These cats are Lauren's babies. She cuddles them. She kisses them. She sings pop songs to them, changing the lyrics to be about them. "He was a Kitty Boi. He said 'Mew-y mew-y Boi.' He wasn't good enough for Meow."

READING GROUPS: DEFINING THE MASSES:
Do they still assign reading groups in school? Personally, I think they were an invaluable part of the learning process. It allowed us to quickly and easily identify all of the "slow people" so that we wouldn't cheat off them during geography tests.

THE MASKS I'VE WORN:
If only those fascist daycare people could have just minded their own business. But no. They just had to point out that, "Dracula does not say, 'Roar!'" "Well, what does he say?" I asked. The best they could come up with was, "I vant to suck your bloooood." I tried it out, but compared to "Roar!" it was just plain sad.

SNOW DAYS ARE HERE:
Excuse me, but where are all these people's shovels from last year? Did every single shovel collectively break in half on March twenty-first? Are people scared that their trendy friends will catch them with last year's model shovel? And while we're at it, just what kind of word is "shovel" anyway? Shovel. SHUH-vul. Shovel?

DECKING THE HALLS - ONE DISCORD AT A TIME:
I have never actually decked any of my halls with bows of holly. Though, one year I did Fun-Tak® the closet door with a poster of Cindy Crawford in a Santa hat. Fa la la la la, la la la la.