After the past several weeks of feverish work and stress-filled wrangling to get Book 13 safely into the retailers’ systems, my brain is completely empty. Usually there are a few screwball thoughts floating around in there, but this week? Nada. Not even the sound of crickets.
(Although the sound of crickets would be worrisome, considering that I recently read a news article about a woman who had a cockroach take up residence inside her ear, BLEAH!)
Anyway, I had nothing but the whistle of wind between my ears, so I consulted a site that offered random writing prompts. And I got this: Write a post about anything you’d like, but be sure to include this sentence somewhere in the final paragraph: “He tried to hit me with a forklift!”
Something about that prompt burrowed into my brain like a… ech, never mind.
I know randomness was the whole point of the exercise, but nevertheless my mind rebelled. Why hit someone with a forklift when there are so many more entertaining weapons? A dead fish, for example. A cauliflower. A rainbow-coloured My Little Pony riding crop with marabou feathers on its… oh, wait. Is that a little too creepily specific?
*ahem*
Moving right along…
How could I write a post about “anything I like” and somehow include a forklift? I like music and ice cream and rare steaks and art and cold beer and gardens and a host of other things. Excavators are fun. Ditto highway tractors. But forklifts? Meh.
I considered spinning some flash-fiction: Who was this guy and why would he try to hit me with a forklift? Was he a wack-job smushing innocent people for fun? Or had I done something to deserve smushing? And why was I hanging around a forklift anyway?
Unfortunately, creating flash fiction requires brainpower; and I was fresh out of that. (Not to mention, you already know the punchline.)
When I searched for “funny forklift” on the internet I found a disturbing number of forklift fails, but they were more cringe-worthy than amusing.
I tried to come up with some bad puns: A fork lift; as in an elevator for forks? A fork-lift, as in lifting a fork? I even tried and failed to figure out some kind of filthy double entendre about getting forked. It’s a sad day when I can’t even come up with a dirty joke.
So… I didn’t get hit by a forklift this week (which is good); nor did I get hit with inspiration (not so good). I hope I’ll be able haul my brain out of its swamp of exhaustion soon.
But I think I’m gonna need a forklift…
Help me out here: Anybody know a good forklift joke?
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P.S. Book 13 is available for pre-order at all retailers AT LAST, woohoo! Click here for purchasing links
Author Diane Henders 
I’m thinking a Country and Western song:
“Your love hit me like a forklift”
“Forklift to Heaven”
“You forklifted me out of your life”
“Nuthin’ like a forklift and you”
“You scratched my heart with a forklift”
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Perfect! I can imagine someone of your talent writing the lyrics for any of these. (Hint, hint.) 😉
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Well, okay. Summers off might be a good news/bad news sort of thing. It was 110 degF here today. AND IT’S STILL MAY, FER CRYIN’ OUT LOUD!!! I don’t wanna even think about August.
Then again, a cold front is due to blow in tonight. Only 106 tomorrow, and it’ll taper all the way down to a frigid 96 by Sunday. Just sayin’…
Needless to say, I’ll be inside. Editing, editing, editing, and, er, editing.
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110F?!? Yikes! Have I mentioned lately how much I love it here? We’re having beautiful weather in the low 20s (mid-70s). Calm, sunny, and perfect for working in the garden.
Keep on editing, and be sure to keep that brain of yours adequately cooled! (I prefer liquid coolant myself. I’m sure some of it must circulate from my mouth to my brain… eventually… 😉
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A forklift drives into a bar . . . no.
A forklift, a minister and a rabbi . . . no.
How do you know an elephant has been driving your forklift? . . . no.
I give up!
But I’m darn impressed with your post about/not about forklifts. In fact, I’m wondering if you can also spin straw into gold!
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Well, yeah, but you’ll need a forklift… 🙂
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Thanks, jenny_o! Spinning straw into gold would be a great trick, right up there with teleportation. If I can get those two skills nailed down, I’ll be set for life! Must… practice… harder… 😉
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Once upon a time, in the company I work for, associates would shrink-wrap a coworker to a chair and then wrap the chair to a pallet and put them in the overhead racking. Usually this was done to a “friend” on his or her last day of work, especially if that “friend” had been promoted. Not dangerous at all, nope. For the record, I’m very glad this is no longer a thing. 😳
And the only forklift joke I know was already shared 😊. You’d think there’s be more… oh well, happy resting !!
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Thanks, Michelle! I was amazed to discover that tomorrow (for one day only) I have NO deadlines or commitments. I think that’s the first time in two years. 😉
And yikes, I’m glad I didn’t work for your company. I’m pretty sure I’d be freaking out by the time they got me shrinkwrapped; never mind hoisted overhead. It just wouldn’t end well for anybody.
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I sometimes feel like I need a forklift to get me up after a big meal. Or out of bed from a deep sleep.
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Yep, I know the feeling; although if I’m sleeping that deeply I’m usually pretty glad there are no forklifts around. 😉
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I’m impressed you managed to write anything at all! I would have just called it a day and watched TV. Maybe a show about forklifts. 😄
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That would have been the smart thing to do! 🙂
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Why don’t forklift drivers like puns?
They find them unpalletable.
Once I worked in a factory where we used forklifts to move pallets of products and supplies around. One day a forklift driver wasn’t paying attention to where he was driving and drove the forks right through a wall. Several people in the shipping and receiving department were arrested shortly afterwards on various drug charges – including the driver.
There’s a whole novel right there – the drug gang using an unsuspecting factory. And the guy on the other side of the wall were the forks appeared has an interesting story to tell.
and a little pony ridding crop might lend itself to a very different genre of fiction. Are there little pony handcuffs or riding boots?
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AGH!!! That pun is brilliant! I’m still laughing!
Drugs might explain a lot of the forklift fails I found on the internet. It’s truly amazing how many stupid tricks people have attempted (and failed) with forklifts. All in all, though, I’d rather not be the guy on the other side of the wall.
And that My Little Pony stuff was pure (or impure…?) fiction on my part… at least as far as I know. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it… 😉
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Forklift…forklift… Hm. Lemme see…
Nope, I got nothing. No forklift jokes at all. And I’d know them all if there actually were any, I’d think. I used to design and build forklifts, after all. Granted, a lot of funny stuff happened while I had that gig, but the forklifts themselves weren’t all that funny.
Well, there were the times that we’d pop a hydraulic hose out in the mud bog, of course. The guys with the other product lines would laugh at us when we trooped back to ‘civilization’ to get the recovery vehicle to rescue our cute little critter before it was swallowed completely. They would laugh hysterically and point at us with mud up to our knees when we’d drive by in our MONSTER rough terrain lift with our cute little toy dangling from the boom by a chain and swinging back and forth. Then we’d laugh at them while they cleaned up the thousand pounds of mud we left for them at their wash bay. Yep, that was hilarious, but it wasn’t an actual joke-with-a-punchline sort of thing.
Forklift jokes…? Nope, I got nothing. 🙂
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LOL! A thousand pounds of mud is only funny if it happens to somebody else. And what; you’re telling me that nobody ever tried to hit anybody with your cute little forklift? So much for that storyline… 😉
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Tried to hit anybody with it? AnyBODY? Well, not exactly. Out on the test track, we ran over EVERYTHING with it. But not people…as far as anybody else knows.
The ‘test track’ was a space about two full city blocks in size. That piece of ground was said to be completely homogeneous down to a depth of probably fifteen feet. All the new scraper designs along with all the modification we tried on each model were tested on that plot of ground, so it was constantly being dug up, spread out, and filled in. Stirred, but not shaken, as it were.
It would have been a great place to hide any number of bodies…except they would have been dug up again no later than Tuesday of next week.
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Hm, perhaps not ideal, then. But you’ve had the COOLEST jobs! 🙂
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Yep, couldn’t agree more. And saved the best for last. This whole professor gig is an incredible blast! Have I mentioned I get summers off? 🤪
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I think you might have mentioned that… a time or three… 😉
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