I am a speck of dust. I don't have the necessary components to be a living thing. I rise and dip according to the room's air currents and have not been at rest for many days. I am inanimate and, in truth, intangible to anything and everything that does not notice me. Tonight, ignored by the entire world, I dance on air in celebration rather than duty. I swoop and sway and swish without help from drafty windows or woodstove heat. I am a happy speck of dust. The Red Sox won eight straight post-season games and are World Series Champs again after an eighty-six-year drought. Even specks of dust in St. Louis and New York are secretly happy specks of dust.

I am an Emporer Scorpion. A man bought me from a pet store today, from an employee who had nice breasts and smooth words. This man had no possible comprehension of what I am or what I do. He thought it would be neat to put a fogging machine in my aquarium habitat, submerged in three inches of water in a plastic container dug into the wet mud that was my floor. I am a tropical scorpion, not a desert one, and did enjoy the humid atmosphere. The plastic "pond", however, was my hidden arch-nemesis...my silent stalker. I had just begun to explore this new world, and upon breaching the pond flat against it's glass border, I toppled upside-down into the misty water. The container was exactly my length in diameter, and though I struggled, it was impossible to right myself. I am a relatively simple creature, with few nerve endings and little emotion, but I was scared. I thrashed and squirmed as far as my five-inch carapace allowed, but was ultimately doomed. Then I saw a Bic pen descend upon my watery grave, lifting me from from the pond's bottom. I clutched the bank and pulled myself out. The Red Sox had won the World Series two minutes before I fell in, and the man had got off the couch to see what I was doing. He rescued me. The Red Sox saved my life.

I am the base of a lamp. I have a small plastic bag stapled to the top of me that holds the screw-in component needed to attach a shade. I had sat on a crowded (but lonely) Walmart shelf for months before someone suddenly snatched me up and roughly dropped me in their shopping cart next to a meaty looking organ and a few houseplants. I passed over some sort of scanning machine and was again carelessly chucked in the cart, finally tossed into the trunk of a car beside a case of Carona. When I was united with a beige shade with leaf patterns and propped up on a Tiki desk, I settled in for a long stint of switching on and off. Who could have predicted my first night in a cozy home would see history being made? When the Boston Red Sox won the fourth and deciding game against the St. Louis Cardinals, I pushed a 60 Watt bulb to its breaking point; if us lamps had awards, I would have recived the Hank Aaron trophy for Greatest Achievement in Pride. With no prospect of an NHL season, this was my chance to light up this room of mine and be proud of those that earned it. Kurt, Pedro, Manny, Johnny, Jason, Keith, and even Mark...I shine for you.

I am a Fizzle. I was cut from a slaughtered bull's corpse, dried and cured, then sold at the same time an Emporer Scorpion was on the cashier's counter. I was at one time the penis of a great mammal, but now await a final chew from someone's canine friend. This dog will strip my many layers for hours until nothing is left but my inner, sinuous core...white and dejected and pleading for extermination. And sure enough I am spotted, and carried to a convenient place to be devoured. It is in front of a television, and it's the ninth inning. The shephard gnaws and pulls, but I exist long enough to see the ground-out to Foulke, who tosses it to Kevin Millar for the final out of Game 4. There's some comfort in a death like that.

I am an Aloe plant. The last thing I remember is coughing from the fumes in the Walmart parking lot; then everything went dark. Suddenly, the light was there again, and I was carried through October air before being positioned on a sheltered end-table. In this new pot of mine, my fingers explored the new earth surrounding their tips, and I felt at ease. The air was rich in carbon dioxide and there seemed to be adequate light sources. This was my destiny...to occupy this space and offer all I had. My blood would heal sunburns and the oxygen I exhaled would be rich and pure. But I had not sat there ten minutes before an impurity showed up: a speck of dust, no bigger than a molecule of potassium, slowly swooped and landed squarely on my arm. I was just about to speak when it sprung to its feet and faced me. "The Red Sox have won at last," it said. And I smiled. So did the Scorpion, the Lamp and the Fizzle.

A lot can happen on any given day...that is, except the Boston Red Sox winning the World Series. What next? "Go Cubs!"