I admit it was my house but the ladder, the tar, and the idiot were no kin to me. I wasn’t even there! I was at the grocery store.

By the time I got home and found him, it was too late. He was already gone.

And another thing.

That is not even a real paper, for crying out loud!

It’s a free, throw away coupon advertiser that Stanley’s mom pays to have printed so he can call himself an editor. Even old Harold wouldn’t deliver the thing, it came in the mail.

Stan Chan took a ribbing all through school and not all of it about his name. Some of it he set out to earn. He changed the spelling of his name to Stanleigh, thinking it made him sound British, flunked gym four years in a row, and managed to graduate on minimalist grades of D in homemaking and basic art.

He only wrote the front page, with it’s scandalous, inaccurate headlines, braced up with facts he received from Mars with an aluminum foil hat he made himself. I made that part up but it’s probably close to accurate.

There were, sadly, others in our small community who believed anything in the paper, even one as lowly as his, and took it upon themselves to visit the home of the ‘multiple murderer’.

They strolled past or into my front yard, armed with cameras, at all times of the day and night. I couldn’t water the front lawn without being asked for my autograph. Calls to the police only elicited advice, such as put up a fence or get a dog.

I had a dog.