YET ANOTHER AWARD PROGRAM

Manny held the record for tolerating the most annoying people in an eight hour work shift—eighty-seven; obliterating the old record by nineteen. Two days later, while walking from Grand Central Station up Fifth Ave to Central Park he logged forty-four “getting bumped intos” without an apology, just edging his old record by two.
 He was already way ahead, he was sure, in channel surfing, pigs in a blanket eating at weddings and time spent keeping a telemarketer in conversation before hanging up. That was a golden one hour and six minutes.
All Manny needed was one more record to break the Creative World Record Almanac of Records but he wanted more because he knew that Herby and Ike were not letting any grass grow under their feet and the final record and reckoning and award dinner at Denny’s was only a week away. He wasn’t worried about the others—their visions were limited to being followers of previous year’s records and not innovative leaders such as himself in this creative intellectual’s version of Fantasy Football.
Manny walked away from the Award Dinner with a Denny trophy for coming in second—now five years in a row and beating his personal best of four from the previous year.
He walked the two miles home swearing under his breath the entire way and thus begun his first record of the new year—distance walking while swearing under one’s breath and he had a strong feeling that this upcoming year was going to be his in a cakewalk.