The longest distance I ever traveled alone at the age of five was twenty-one feet. I'm fairly certain of this because each step I took was about a foot wide and I counted all my steps from park bench (where I sat with your mom) and the water fountain (which on certain afternoons felt as if it were overseas.)
How funny my mother must have found me to be, so scared to travel 7 yards to the water fountain. How disappointed my father must have found himself at raising little more than is own little Pinocchio; a marionette with strings attached to both himself and his wife.
That was pretty much the type of child I was. I'd want to be let go, put down, unembraced, left alone and whenever it was that my parents would eventually relent and let me roar off into the sunset, I would get about five feet away and turn back like a dog encaged by an electric fence.
I can't recall exactly what my mentaility was in all this. I'd help my mom do the weekly grocery shopping* and when I couldn't immediately find her in the frozen foods or produce section, I'd tailspin into a panic. I'd look around at all the strangers and imagine what kind of foster parents they'd be. I'd use my really bewildered looks for the kind-hearted looking strangers, the loving ones, the ones with a lot of Cookie Crisp in their shopping carts, because I assumed that my mother had enough of me and decided to whittle the family down a bit. Furthermore, whomever I chose to tell my tales of woe to would have to serve as my new foster parent.
Yep. I was a spaz.
Speaking in the past tense is mostly wishful thinking. I suppose I still am a spaz. But I am a bit more adult now; I no longer care if my foster parents have Cookie Crisp in their shopping cart.
Then there were airports.
I want to clarify that I have never been afraid to fly. Not that I can remember. From take-off to touch-down I'm as calm as a hollow reed in an Iowa breeze.
But those damn airports, man. To an eight-year-old me, airports were like hanging out in Pleasure Island with Lampwick and the rest of the bad children awaiting their mutation into donkies.
It was like Hell.
Once a year, we'd fly to Nevada to visit my grandma, and the only thing that ever got me through that nonsense was a mother who would never hear the end of it from my grandma if I was left somewhere between the Honey Dew kiosk and the duty-free shop.
I distinctly recall telling my best friend in fourth grade that 1988 had been a bad year for me and mom. I don't recall any of the events that lead up to any of this, but it's quite reasonable to believe that I was officially moving into my pre-teen phase of thinking that I was basically an adult while still eating vanilla Dunkaroos and Lunchables.
I have no doubt that the bulk of what was seperating mom and me, causing us to bicker all the time, had more to do with my own stupidity and less to do with my belief that she kept trying to release me to foster parents.
And see, even that... I say I was seperating from my mom at that point, but she and I (and soon after, my sister) would fly to visit my grandmother almost every year until I was in college and not until I moved to Baltimore in the autumn of 2003, had I ever been on an airplane alone.
Clearly if anyone was seperating, I was not one of the involved participants. I was always too scared to seperate... from anything.
I don't do well with change. I am currently wearing a t-shirt that can be seen in pictures of me from 1997.
Moving is pretty bad too. When our family left Chicago city-proper for the Chicago suburbs, I was crushed. I was eleven and I was crushed.
I wasn't entirely selfish... I was mostly selfish certainly, but not entirely selfish. I worried about other people being left behind too. Heck, I worried about other things being left behind. I'd rather carry the weight of the world on my back than say goodbye to any of it. We moved and during the final five minutes in our (now empty) Chicago apartment, my dad asked that I take a look around one last time to insure we not forget anything.
It took me twenty minutes of apologizing to inanimate rooms and saying goodbye to favorite floorboards and wall outlets, stuff like that, before my dad decided to force me out...
...for good.
I still remember the rooms I didn't visit one last time. I remember wondering if there was anything left in those rooms.
I can't imagine anything worse than being left behind, all alone.
I've got 23 more days to say goodbye to every room I've ever been in here in Massachusetts and I don't know how I'm gonna do it.
===================================
* By help, I mean that I ditched her and went to look at magazines and toys until I was pretty sure she was almost done. A bad day at the grocery store, for me back in those days, usually meant two things 1) they had stocked no new toys and very few magazines since the previous week and 2) I rejoined my mom in the freezer section. The freezer section meant she was running slow. It also meant that she hadn't even started her produce shopping yet and that was the most boring of all grocery shopping.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Mechanical Errors
Okay, here's the thing: I don't like buying gas.
The paying for gas is kind of a bummer, but I'm speaking about actually going to the station and filling my tank. Honestly, who has the time? My sneakers always soak in the green and purple gassy mixture most filling stations are plagued with and I'm always nervous for the following hour or so that my sneakers will spontaneously catch fire and burn me from the ankle up.
Anyway, gas stations blow.
It is because of this general disregard for filling stations that I always run my gas needle deep into "empty".
So okay, so remember that my gas tank is extremely empty.
Also, was anyone else aware that parking your car on an uphill slope is bad? I never knew this. But apparently the gasoline is sloshing around in the tank. And like getting down to the end of a Slurpee that the spoon-straw just won't suck up, my car couldn't inject what little fuel was left in my tank because the hill sloshed the gas to the opposite side as the little gasoline straw.*
I was stuck. My car wouldn't start. It was night. I was scared.
I'm not a particularly bright human being. When the television flickers, I punch the side of it as hard as I can and assume that'll do the trick. Most of the time it doesn not do the trick and I end up driving to Wal-Mart a half-hour later to buy a new television. But the scant number of times it does work, well, then my friends, on those occasions you can find me beating my chest and refering to myself as Captain Awesome for the rest of the afternoon.
And like my brutal handywork I perform on past television sets, I set forth with the same methodology with my atrophied automobile. I just turned the ignition switch over and over and over.
And when that didn't work, I turned the ignition switch over and over a few more times, just in case I had gotten stronger in the past minute or so and brute strength was all the engine needed.
Nothing doing.
It seemed like all my car might need was a little gas, I quickly waltzed over to a gas station just steps away from my apartment in hopes of finding a gallon gas can. I couldn't find one and the cashier behind the counter had apparently never heard of such a thing. I was going to have to call a mechanic, which was going to cost me money so I used the ATM in the convenient mart.
Taking out $40, the machine spit out one twenty dollar bill... and that was it.
I went back to the cashier who looked absolutely shocked that I was still in his establishment. Apparently, people asking for gas cans are schitzophrenic and schitzophrenics must not hang around convenient marts for more than one go-'round with the cashier.
I'm no one's normal schitzo though.
I complained about the ATM ripping me off. He said he couldn't do anything about it. He shrugged and I stood there for a moment wondering when Ashton Kutcher was going to come out and admit that he was Punking me. Drunkened with frustration I started to leave the convenient mart, but turned back to the cashier and asked once again, "you haven't gotten in any gas can shipments in the last three minutes have you?"
Unblinkingly and sincerely, he replied, "No."
I looked for a phone number on the ATM machine that I could call for assistance. It was in looking for this number that I found my second twenty dollar bill stuck near the back of the ATM like a pack of Doritoes stuck in the spokes of a vending machine. I grabbed it and held it above my head like I had just won a stuffed toy at the carnival.
I left the gas station, headed back to my broken car and I called a mechanic.
And then the fun began.
In waiting for the mechanic I decided first to try my car seven or eight more times. I dunno why I did this exactly, probably because I wasn't creative enough to think of any better solution. When the car remained dead, I sat on the stoop of my apartment... waiting.
Alongside me on the stoop were several empty water cooler jugs. The thought crossed my mind to steal one, fill it with gasoline and put it in my car. But anyone who knows me, knows that this surely would have caused my sneakers to catch on fire and somehow, it would have landed me in jail.
As fate would have it, I gave up jailtime for Ramadan this year and really wanted to try to stick with that.**
So there I sat on the stoop until the tow truck showed up. I pointed him to my car and started it so that he could hear what the problem was. He told me that my battery was dying. I told him that it was fine earlier and that I thought I just needed to put gasoline in it. He wrinkled his nose.
"Well, I'm out here it's gonna cost you 45 bucks no matter what, I might as well recharge your battery. But you're parked on a hill and it ain't gonna start without puttin' gas in it."
It was important that I remained cordial with this guy because he was my only hope. So I remained calm. "Yeah I know. I really just need a gas can. Do you have a gas can in your truck?"
Without moving his feet, the mechanic turned his waist and glanced ten feet behind him into the bed of his tow truck. From where I was standing I could see wrenches, an industrial car lever, two spare tires, various engine oils, a Pac-Man arcade game, Dorothy's ruby slippers, several bowling balls and a ferret.
"Naw man, I ain't got a gas can."
"Well I'll tell you what...", that's how I started my haggling approach. I don't really know how to haggle, but I really liked Ocean's Eleven and figured I could fake it. "Instead of you towing me, can't you just take me somewhere they sell gas cans?"
"You want me to just drive around from gas station to gas station?" he asked a fair question. So I gave him whatever answer I could think of:
"Oh, I thought you might know a nearby gas station that sold gas cans."
"Naw man, I don't know where they sell gas cans."
At this point I began wondering if I had imagined the existence of gas cans. I thought I had seen one before, but maybe not. No one in Massachusetts seemed to have any clue what a gas can is, maybe I just created it in my mind like Jimmy Stewart and that 10-foot rabbit.
Meanwhile, while I was doing an awesome job at haggling, a row of cars were impatiently waiting behind the roadblock that had become my car and the tow truck. No one was audibally upset until a damn firetruck pulled down the road and honked several loud, emergency honks. I was going to type that I had never seen a firetruck drive down my little residental road in almost two years of living here, but as I began writing this paragraph, wouldn't you know that another damn firetruck roared down the road?
Go figure.
Eventually my car became hooked on the truck and he pulled me the 200 yards from my parking spot to the gas station I was at thirty minutes earlier. The mechanic set the car down near the gas tank. As he was rooting around his truck looking for jumper cables, he told me that he'll wait for me to fill up my tank before he jumped my car.
Great.
Except that he dropped my car directly in the middle of two gas tanks. So there I was like Buster Keaton yanking one gas pump as far as it would reach only to come up short, moving to the second gas pump and falling equally short.
Six minutes later after I told the mechanic what was wrong, and after he reloaded my car onto his tow, moved me three feet forward, and set me back down, I filled the tank.
The car started once the tank was full; the straw once again reaching the gas.
He jumped my car and the battery was back to full life. The night was finally looking up (kinda, although I still hadn't eaten dinner and I tend to be cranky when I go too long without dinner).
$45 to fill my gas tank.
$45 for a tow truck to visit my car.
an extra $20 if the truck tows me (even if it's 200 yards away from it's point of origin).
Total cost = $110
But it was the next $6.48 that really stung.
The mechanic is winding his jumper cables around his forearm and I hand him the four twenty dollar bills I got from my pocket (and from the ATM). He looked at the money in my hand and gave me a "you're not gonna believe this"-style smile.
"You don't have change do you?" I asked.
"Naw man. I ain't got change."
I took a step back, beause if Ashton Kutcher came running out from behind the convenient mart with his camera crew, I wanted to make sure I had enough room to jump-kick him in his teeth.
The mechanic took a half-step toward me and said, "I'll tell you what, man. Instead of paying for the tow. How 'bout you give me the $45 for coming out and the extra $35 you got in your hand and I can hook you up with a real nice watch."
I hate Ashton Kutcher.
Words were unable to escape my mouth. Thoughts aimlessly stood around in my head without much direction.
"It's a real nice watch, man. It's worth $150, $175 - something."
The only thought that made any sense at the time to say was, "I'm single, man. I got no one to give a watch to."
He tells me, "It's a man's watch."
I could only raise my watch-wrapped wrist and say, "I'd rather just pay for the tow, man. Thanks."
What the hell did I just thank him for?
It seemed smarter to break my twenty by buying something in the minimart. I head back into the gas station and grab a Gatorade, the whole time keeping an eye on my car and half-assuming that the mechanic was gonna take off with it. Standing in line wondering what the reaction of the attendent would be this third time around, I had a sudden hankering for a SlimJim.
I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I do love my SlimJims.
The Gatorade and SlimJims came out to $6.48 and if you're doing the math in your head you'd realize that, after handing him, $20 that my change was now $13.52.
I didn't get a five dollar bill back, which was all that I needed.
Sonuvabitch.
I grab a Snickers and re-enter the mini-mart line.
Upon reaching the head of the line and the convenient store cashier for the fourth time that night, I was convinced that he thought I was there to murder him. I smiled at him and it seemingly offered no comfort.
With five dollar bill in hand, I returned to the mechanic who was nearing the end of his cigarette. He seemed perfectly pleasant, perhaps waiting for a tip.
I gave him no tip.
Almost an hour and fifteen minutes after going to my car in the first place and never having gone more than 200 yards away from my home during that time, I headed back down my street.
And wouldn't you know it, my parking space was gone.
On a completely unrelated note, I am now training to become a ninja. I plan to begin my kill-crazy rampage sometime shortly after Labor Day.
Have a lovely afternoon.
========================
* I don't know if gasoline tanks have "gasoline straws". Point-of-fact, I know very little about cars in general, one of the reasons I found myself in the predicament I was in.
** Alright, I'll come clean, I don't know when Ramadan is, nor am I aware whether or not Ramadan's constituents are expected to give anything up in honor of it.
The paying for gas is kind of a bummer, but I'm speaking about actually going to the station and filling my tank. Honestly, who has the time? My sneakers always soak in the green and purple gassy mixture most filling stations are plagued with and I'm always nervous for the following hour or so that my sneakers will spontaneously catch fire and burn me from the ankle up.
Anyway, gas stations blow.
It is because of this general disregard for filling stations that I always run my gas needle deep into "empty".
So okay, so remember that my gas tank is extremely empty.
Also, was anyone else aware that parking your car on an uphill slope is bad? I never knew this. But apparently the gasoline is sloshing around in the tank. And like getting down to the end of a Slurpee that the spoon-straw just won't suck up, my car couldn't inject what little fuel was left in my tank because the hill sloshed the gas to the opposite side as the little gasoline straw.*
I was stuck. My car wouldn't start. It was night. I was scared.
I'm not a particularly bright human being. When the television flickers, I punch the side of it as hard as I can and assume that'll do the trick. Most of the time it doesn not do the trick and I end up driving to Wal-Mart a half-hour later to buy a new television. But the scant number of times it does work, well, then my friends, on those occasions you can find me beating my chest and refering to myself as Captain Awesome for the rest of the afternoon.
And like my brutal handywork I perform on past television sets, I set forth with the same methodology with my atrophied automobile. I just turned the ignition switch over and over and over.
And when that didn't work, I turned the ignition switch over and over a few more times, just in case I had gotten stronger in the past minute or so and brute strength was all the engine needed.
Nothing doing.
It seemed like all my car might need was a little gas, I quickly waltzed over to a gas station just steps away from my apartment in hopes of finding a gallon gas can. I couldn't find one and the cashier behind the counter had apparently never heard of such a thing. I was going to have to call a mechanic, which was going to cost me money so I used the ATM in the convenient mart.
Taking out $40, the machine spit out one twenty dollar bill... and that was it.
I went back to the cashier who looked absolutely shocked that I was still in his establishment. Apparently, people asking for gas cans are schitzophrenic and schitzophrenics must not hang around convenient marts for more than one go-'round with the cashier.
I'm no one's normal schitzo though.
I complained about the ATM ripping me off. He said he couldn't do anything about it. He shrugged and I stood there for a moment wondering when Ashton Kutcher was going to come out and admit that he was Punking me. Drunkened with frustration I started to leave the convenient mart, but turned back to the cashier and asked once again, "you haven't gotten in any gas can shipments in the last three minutes have you?"
Unblinkingly and sincerely, he replied, "No."
I looked for a phone number on the ATM machine that I could call for assistance. It was in looking for this number that I found my second twenty dollar bill stuck near the back of the ATM like a pack of Doritoes stuck in the spokes of a vending machine. I grabbed it and held it above my head like I had just won a stuffed toy at the carnival.
I left the gas station, headed back to my broken car and I called a mechanic.
And then the fun began.
In waiting for the mechanic I decided first to try my car seven or eight more times. I dunno why I did this exactly, probably because I wasn't creative enough to think of any better solution. When the car remained dead, I sat on the stoop of my apartment... waiting.
Alongside me on the stoop were several empty water cooler jugs. The thought crossed my mind to steal one, fill it with gasoline and put it in my car. But anyone who knows me, knows that this surely would have caused my sneakers to catch on fire and somehow, it would have landed me in jail.
As fate would have it, I gave up jailtime for Ramadan this year and really wanted to try to stick with that.**
So there I sat on the stoop until the tow truck showed up. I pointed him to my car and started it so that he could hear what the problem was. He told me that my battery was dying. I told him that it was fine earlier and that I thought I just needed to put gasoline in it. He wrinkled his nose.
"Well, I'm out here it's gonna cost you 45 bucks no matter what, I might as well recharge your battery. But you're parked on a hill and it ain't gonna start without puttin' gas in it."
It was important that I remained cordial with this guy because he was my only hope. So I remained calm. "Yeah I know. I really just need a gas can. Do you have a gas can in your truck?"
Without moving his feet, the mechanic turned his waist and glanced ten feet behind him into the bed of his tow truck. From where I was standing I could see wrenches, an industrial car lever, two spare tires, various engine oils, a Pac-Man arcade game, Dorothy's ruby slippers, several bowling balls and a ferret.
"Naw man, I ain't got a gas can."
"Well I'll tell you what...", that's how I started my haggling approach. I don't really know how to haggle, but I really liked Ocean's Eleven and figured I could fake it. "Instead of you towing me, can't you just take me somewhere they sell gas cans?"
"You want me to just drive around from gas station to gas station?" he asked a fair question. So I gave him whatever answer I could think of:
"Oh, I thought you might know a nearby gas station that sold gas cans."
"Naw man, I don't know where they sell gas cans."
At this point I began wondering if I had imagined the existence of gas cans. I thought I had seen one before, but maybe not. No one in Massachusetts seemed to have any clue what a gas can is, maybe I just created it in my mind like Jimmy Stewart and that 10-foot rabbit.
Meanwhile, while I was doing an awesome job at haggling, a row of cars were impatiently waiting behind the roadblock that had become my car and the tow truck. No one was audibally upset until a damn firetruck pulled down the road and honked several loud, emergency honks. I was going to type that I had never seen a firetruck drive down my little residental road in almost two years of living here, but as I began writing this paragraph, wouldn't you know that another damn firetruck roared down the road?
Go figure.
Eventually my car became hooked on the truck and he pulled me the 200 yards from my parking spot to the gas station I was at thirty minutes earlier. The mechanic set the car down near the gas tank. As he was rooting around his truck looking for jumper cables, he told me that he'll wait for me to fill up my tank before he jumped my car.
Great.
Except that he dropped my car directly in the middle of two gas tanks. So there I was like Buster Keaton yanking one gas pump as far as it would reach only to come up short, moving to the second gas pump and falling equally short.
Six minutes later after I told the mechanic what was wrong, and after he reloaded my car onto his tow, moved me three feet forward, and set me back down, I filled the tank.
The car started once the tank was full; the straw once again reaching the gas.
He jumped my car and the battery was back to full life. The night was finally looking up (kinda, although I still hadn't eaten dinner and I tend to be cranky when I go too long without dinner).
$45 to fill my gas tank.
$45 for a tow truck to visit my car.
an extra $20 if the truck tows me (even if it's 200 yards away from it's point of origin).
Total cost = $110
But it was the next $6.48 that really stung.
The mechanic is winding his jumper cables around his forearm and I hand him the four twenty dollar bills I got from my pocket (and from the ATM). He looked at the money in my hand and gave me a "you're not gonna believe this"-style smile.
"You don't have change do you?" I asked.
"Naw man. I ain't got change."
I took a step back, beause if Ashton Kutcher came running out from behind the convenient mart with his camera crew, I wanted to make sure I had enough room to jump-kick him in his teeth.
The mechanic took a half-step toward me and said, "I'll tell you what, man. Instead of paying for the tow. How 'bout you give me the $45 for coming out and the extra $35 you got in your hand and I can hook you up with a real nice watch."
I hate Ashton Kutcher.
Words were unable to escape my mouth. Thoughts aimlessly stood around in my head without much direction.
"It's a real nice watch, man. It's worth $150, $175 - something."
The only thought that made any sense at the time to say was, "I'm single, man. I got no one to give a watch to."
He tells me, "It's a man's watch."
I could only raise my watch-wrapped wrist and say, "I'd rather just pay for the tow, man. Thanks."
What the hell did I just thank him for?
It seemed smarter to break my twenty by buying something in the minimart. I head back into the gas station and grab a Gatorade, the whole time keeping an eye on my car and half-assuming that the mechanic was gonna take off with it. Standing in line wondering what the reaction of the attendent would be this third time around, I had a sudden hankering for a SlimJim.
I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I do love my SlimJims.
The Gatorade and SlimJims came out to $6.48 and if you're doing the math in your head you'd realize that, after handing him, $20 that my change was now $13.52.
I didn't get a five dollar bill back, which was all that I needed.
Sonuvabitch.
I grab a Snickers and re-enter the mini-mart line.
Upon reaching the head of the line and the convenient store cashier for the fourth time that night, I was convinced that he thought I was there to murder him. I smiled at him and it seemingly offered no comfort.
With five dollar bill in hand, I returned to the mechanic who was nearing the end of his cigarette. He seemed perfectly pleasant, perhaps waiting for a tip.
I gave him no tip.
Almost an hour and fifteen minutes after going to my car in the first place and never having gone more than 200 yards away from my home during that time, I headed back down my street.
And wouldn't you know it, my parking space was gone.
On a completely unrelated note, I am now training to become a ninja. I plan to begin my kill-crazy rampage sometime shortly after Labor Day.
Have a lovely afternoon.
========================
* I don't know if gasoline tanks have "gasoline straws". Point-of-fact, I know very little about cars in general, one of the reasons I found myself in the predicament I was in.
** Alright, I'll come clean, I don't know when Ramadan is, nor am I aware whether or not Ramadan's constituents are expected to give anything up in honor of it.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Farm Days
There comes a time in every young man's life when the realization hits him that he wants to outdo his father.
What each young man desires to surpass his father in, varies. I haven't yet conquered a steady theory behind this phenomenon, but I assure you, I've been thinking really, really hard about it all while sitting here, listening to mellow alternate rock music and eating microwaveable tequitos.
Still ... nothing.
When I was fourteen-years-old, I asserted that my life accomplishment would be to beat my giant-sized father in a game of basketball. I was tired of hearing about how successful a high school player the old boss had been, I felt it was time to introduce him to the new boss. By the time I was fifteen, dad's knees weren't what they once were and beating him in a pick-up game consisted of no more than insisting on driving to the hoop everytime I had the ball.
So good. Dad and I got through our little war without too much love lost. He was still heroic and yet I was allowed to feel worthy of assuming his crown.
But then, several years later, dad got a kick out of telling and retelling the story of the time he saw Tina Turner open for The Rolling Stones for a scant $2.00 entry fee. To see either of those acts these days (much less both) would cost no less than several of my limbs and the limbs of three of my closest friends*. I didn't realize it at the time, but his fortune (and price inflation in the music industry) really irked me.
I wanted to beat Dad.
Basketball was no longer my Holy Grail, no longer the benchmark in the subtley silent war between father and son. I wanted to see something big for almost nothing. The funny thing was, I hadn't articulated this desire until I found myself standing a mere forty yards away from my own idol, Bruce Springsteen in a Louisville arena back in 2000. The details of how this all came to be are better suited for another blog. But there I was with Bruce, for free.
And although the concert experience was sweet and something I will remember for a very long time, it turns out that the most beneficial garnish of that night was my ability to follow up my dad's story about his damn rock concert bargain.
The Rolling Stones and Tina Turner $2.00 = pretty darn good
Springsteen 0 dollars = brilliant magnificence.
I love my father. He is a hero to me in ways that should both humble and flatter him. And in a way, I guess my feelings for my dad in regard to this occasional and manic competetion that he isn't even aware of, leave me a little cold. Live and let live. This is how I hoped to view things once I left that Louisville arena half-a-decade ago.
And for the last five years, this is how things have remained.
But no longer.
The itch has arrived on it's pale white horse once again. But this is it, the final showdown.
* * *
For the past year, I have been employed at an organic farm in the backends of a Boston suburb. When I utilize the term farm, I am not expressing my environs with any hyperbole. The farm has hay and crops and hogs and wheel barrows and fertilizer and mangy dogs and chicken coops. This place even has a dinner bell, but my shift ends at 2 o'clock every afetrnoon so I never get to hear it.
Anyway, my job is technically to shaperone two autistic teenagers enrolled at the school that I work for. The Natick Farm is their employer, not mine, but because the farm relies on everyone's help to keep production successful year-round, they see no reason why I should only be there to supervise. They, in fact, see me as someone who should be picking up the slack for both my students, Danny and Big Moosey. Big Moosey is a giant teenager who could snap me in half if that was something he wanted to do. Imagine Of Mice and Men's Lenny only instead of overalls, he is clad in Red Sox paraphenilia and I don't usually get bothered with the mess of dead rabbits. Danny, on the other hand, has messily thick red hair and the uncanny ability to quote late-night infomercials in perfect pitch. He is disasterously unaware of most everything else including the ironic t-shirts his parents dress him in that say witty things like "Blame my parents" or "I'm not autistic, I'm just ignoring you".
These are my boys. This is my life. And this is the setting for what I hope is the final showdown with my father.
Since before I can remember ever wanting to outdue my own father in various meaningless life experiences, I've been regaled in stories of his childhood growing up on the animal farm. He grew up with dogs and horses and sheep. Pigs that passed away and became the following morning's breakfast, cows with no long term memory for cruelty.
Growing up in Chicago or parts close to, far away from country livin', I was always admiring of Pop's experiences; his ability to have acclimated so seamlessly from country to city mouse. I guess I always wanted that too.
Or at least that chance.
That chance slammed into my knees last July at about 15 miles per hour, was named Orville, and came in the form of a muddy bovine with a spirit harkening back to Steve McQueen in "The Great Escape".
"Hey Mr. S! You better grab dat pig, man!" shouts Moose successfully ignoring the fact that I'm on my knees in the mud like a hockey goalie preparing to, as Moose suggested, grab dat pig.
"Thanks Jay. I'll do my best. You wanna come gimme a hand?"
"Aw, naw man. You... You got it, man. Just grab 'im."
Right.
Just grab a slippery sow with the obvious intention to remain free. I went to a private art school, I take the train everywhere, I bleed easily. What previous life experiences have prepared me for pig wrastlin'?
Moose and Danny have spent a year on the farm before me, but you'd never know it to watch the melee that is unfolding on my first day on the farm. I scoot left, I scoot right, Orville just oinks in piggish glee realizing that the new lanky farm-hand is just as useless as his two autistic counterparts. And before you suggest that I'm being insensitive to both my students, and before you remind me that these kids are unlike you and me and before you poo-poo my reliance on them to carry out the job they have been sent there to do, keep in mind that I was smiling, okay? Not yelling, not screaming.
Also, the pig beds are nothing more than mud and lettuce.
And I was already tired from laying down new beds for the turkeys out of a soil that is mostly eight-month old leaves, lettuce and old spelt (fermented grains and vegetables), so I was already a mess and stinking of a hefty evening of boozing the night before.
So please, step out of your glass house and allow me a little saracasm.
"Just grab 'im Mr. S! You gotta grab 'im!"
"Moose, you come over here and grab him! He's fast, you know!?" Orville was in my grip for just a second, but the short, bristly hairs along his legs surprised me and I let go. Danny thought this was funny. At least I thought he did, because he decided to shout, "BOOM! Tough actin' Tenactin! BOOM! Tough actin' Tenactin!" And usually if he has sudden commercial outbursts, he is either annoyed or amused and seeing as how he was leaning against the cyclone fence doing little else but watching, I couldn't see Danny being all that annoyed.
"Aw, naw man. You can catch 'im, can't you, Mr. S? Huh? You... You can catch 'im, Mr. S."
For some reason, Moose insists on addressing me each time he talks to me. Every sentence aimed at me either starts or ends with "Mr. S.".
My patience was becoming scarce, as was the amount of unmuddied skin left on my body. This was my first day on the farm, and my boss (whose name was Skeet, if you can believe that) sent us into the pen without much warning that the pigs were feeling squirrelly this afetrnoon. I thought we were just putting some turkey beds down, man. Gimme some warning. I'm no pushover, but had I known I was gonna dirt dive this pig into the ground, I woulda worn my painter's pants.
So much of my job is defined by the results you get out of the students you are supervising. Even though they've been working for Skeet for more than twelve months previous to my arrival, Skeet seems like a likeable, but unforgiving country sort. The "what've you done for me lately" -type who might see my multiple missed tackle opportunites on this pink-menace to be a bad omen for Moose and Danny's socialization into the working world.
"Moose get over here! I need your help." With Big Moosey, the difference between a question and a statement has nothing to do with tone of voice or punctuation, and everything to do with the "thank you" that you have to put at the end of the sentence when you want to ensure that there is no confusion.
"Moose! Chase Orville close to me, so I can grab him. Thank you."
"Aw. Okay, Mr. S. You want me to chase the pig? Huh? Is that what you want me to do? I'm gonna get dirt all over me, Mr. S. I'll get all muddy."
That's Moosey in a nutshell, I'm covered in slop and old lettuce and blood and I'm on my knees and mumbling swears to myself but he doesn't wanna soil his Red Sox t-shirt.
I could kill him.
Moose starts shooing Orville closer to the side of the pigpen that I'm on. I decided moments ago that the second Moose got close enough to me, that I would toss a chunk of slop on him. That's what teachers are for; to educate and to experience lessons of life from... well, today's lesson was gonna be never to watch your teacher get put through the grinder while you sit on the sidelines trying not get dirty.
Remember, the far was their job, not mine.
I finally wrangle Orville, a feat I'm still unclear if I did correctly. I tried to grab the pig around the belly, but realized he was about three seconds away from another escape, so I bailed out and grabbed his two hind legs.
On a completely unrelated note, it is my opinion that a pig's squeal is the most horrific noise registered by human ears.
We get the pig back inside the enclosed portion of the main pigpen (where the pigs sleep and discuss pig stuff amongst one another) and I stand there looking at Moosey, then at Danny. Danny hasn't moved from the fence.
"How you feelin' Danny?"
He replies quickly and with a slight lisp, "I feel happy."
"Good, Danny", I say. "Good."
"You got mud on you, Mr. S."
"I know, Moose. I was laying in a pig pen for the past five minutes, remember?"
"Oh. Yeah, Mr. S. You were. You were workin' hard, huh? Huh, Mr. S.? You were workin' hard, huh?"
And there it was. "You were workin' hard, huh?"
Clarity.
And then it was as if the mud washed away from my body. It was as if Moose had spoken the secret to eternal life. It was suddenly as if I hadn't spent the last few days on the farm chopping and stacking wood, or piling boozed-up leaves on the floor of a 90 degree chicken coop or purifying mulch, or rebuilding portions of the tool barn or wrangling hefers while my students stood stone like and watched me. I was working hard. Harder than I've worked in a long, long time (physically speaking anyway), maybe ever.
There were only two people in my life I could count on knowing the fatigue and frustration farmwork had left me with. My roomate Armin (real name), who had this particular job with Moose and Danny last year, and my father.
My father, whom could no longer guilt me into taking out the trash by telling me of all the early mornings he spent milking his cow. I no longer have to sit idly by and let my Dad tell his bumpkin tales of childhood farmhanding, and if he does go into them, I can interrupt him with some of my own. We can connect. Not that we couldn't before, but as I mentioned previously, these father/son competitions are one-sided and arbitrary and now I've got experience instead of longing.
Orville was worth a winning game of hoops and free Springsteen tickets any day of the week. My greatest fear now is my Dad telling me that when he was twenty, he was always able to get autistic kids to listen and obey him.
===================================
* I don't wholly believe my father. I believe that he saw The Rolling Stones and Tina Turner, but I doubt it was for only $2.00. I imagine, in reality, he saw them for $25.00 and Tina got frustrated with Ike halfway through the set and forced Mick and Keith to do the extra long version of 'Midnight Rambler'. Over the years, Dad has either forgotten the truth or chosen to ignore it. To my kids, grandpa will probably tell them he saw The Stones, The Doors and Jimi Hendrix play at a backyard pool party where the cover was only a dime. It is my job as a parent not to raise such gullible children that they believe all the lies my father will try to get over on them.
What each young man desires to surpass his father in, varies. I haven't yet conquered a steady theory behind this phenomenon, but I assure you, I've been thinking really, really hard about it all while sitting here, listening to mellow alternate rock music and eating microwaveable tequitos.
Still ... nothing.
When I was fourteen-years-old, I asserted that my life accomplishment would be to beat my giant-sized father in a game of basketball. I was tired of hearing about how successful a high school player the old boss had been, I felt it was time to introduce him to the new boss. By the time I was fifteen, dad's knees weren't what they once were and beating him in a pick-up game consisted of no more than insisting on driving to the hoop everytime I had the ball.
So good. Dad and I got through our little war without too much love lost. He was still heroic and yet I was allowed to feel worthy of assuming his crown.
But then, several years later, dad got a kick out of telling and retelling the story of the time he saw Tina Turner open for The Rolling Stones for a scant $2.00 entry fee. To see either of those acts these days (much less both) would cost no less than several of my limbs and the limbs of three of my closest friends*. I didn't realize it at the time, but his fortune (and price inflation in the music industry) really irked me.
I wanted to beat Dad.
Basketball was no longer my Holy Grail, no longer the benchmark in the subtley silent war between father and son. I wanted to see something big for almost nothing. The funny thing was, I hadn't articulated this desire until I found myself standing a mere forty yards away from my own idol, Bruce Springsteen in a Louisville arena back in 2000. The details of how this all came to be are better suited for another blog. But there I was with Bruce, for free.
And although the concert experience was sweet and something I will remember for a very long time, it turns out that the most beneficial garnish of that night was my ability to follow up my dad's story about his damn rock concert bargain.
The Rolling Stones and Tina Turner $2.00 = pretty darn good
Springsteen 0 dollars = brilliant magnificence.
I love my father. He is a hero to me in ways that should both humble and flatter him. And in a way, I guess my feelings for my dad in regard to this occasional and manic competetion that he isn't even aware of, leave me a little cold. Live and let live. This is how I hoped to view things once I left that Louisville arena half-a-decade ago.
And for the last five years, this is how things have remained.
But no longer.
The itch has arrived on it's pale white horse once again. But this is it, the final showdown.
* * *
For the past year, I have been employed at an organic farm in the backends of a Boston suburb. When I utilize the term farm, I am not expressing my environs with any hyperbole. The farm has hay and crops and hogs and wheel barrows and fertilizer and mangy dogs and chicken coops. This place even has a dinner bell, but my shift ends at 2 o'clock every afetrnoon so I never get to hear it.
Anyway, my job is technically to shaperone two autistic teenagers enrolled at the school that I work for. The Natick Farm is their employer, not mine, but because the farm relies on everyone's help to keep production successful year-round, they see no reason why I should only be there to supervise. They, in fact, see me as someone who should be picking up the slack for both my students, Danny and Big Moosey. Big Moosey is a giant teenager who could snap me in half if that was something he wanted to do. Imagine Of Mice and Men's Lenny only instead of overalls, he is clad in Red Sox paraphenilia and I don't usually get bothered with the mess of dead rabbits. Danny, on the other hand, has messily thick red hair and the uncanny ability to quote late-night infomercials in perfect pitch. He is disasterously unaware of most everything else including the ironic t-shirts his parents dress him in that say witty things like "Blame my parents" or "I'm not autistic, I'm just ignoring you".
These are my boys. This is my life. And this is the setting for what I hope is the final showdown with my father.
Since before I can remember ever wanting to outdue my own father in various meaningless life experiences, I've been regaled in stories of his childhood growing up on the animal farm. He grew up with dogs and horses and sheep. Pigs that passed away and became the following morning's breakfast, cows with no long term memory for cruelty.
Growing up in Chicago or parts close to, far away from country livin', I was always admiring of Pop's experiences; his ability to have acclimated so seamlessly from country to city mouse. I guess I always wanted that too.
Or at least that chance.
That chance slammed into my knees last July at about 15 miles per hour, was named Orville, and came in the form of a muddy bovine with a spirit harkening back to Steve McQueen in "The Great Escape".
"Hey Mr. S! You better grab dat pig, man!" shouts Moose successfully ignoring the fact that I'm on my knees in the mud like a hockey goalie preparing to, as Moose suggested, grab dat pig.
"Thanks Jay. I'll do my best. You wanna come gimme a hand?"
"Aw, naw man. You... You got it, man. Just grab 'im."
Right.
Just grab a slippery sow with the obvious intention to remain free. I went to a private art school, I take the train everywhere, I bleed easily. What previous life experiences have prepared me for pig wrastlin'?
Moose and Danny have spent a year on the farm before me, but you'd never know it to watch the melee that is unfolding on my first day on the farm. I scoot left, I scoot right, Orville just oinks in piggish glee realizing that the new lanky farm-hand is just as useless as his two autistic counterparts. And before you suggest that I'm being insensitive to both my students, and before you remind me that these kids are unlike you and me and before you poo-poo my reliance on them to carry out the job they have been sent there to do, keep in mind that I was smiling, okay? Not yelling, not screaming.
Also, the pig beds are nothing more than mud and lettuce.
And I was already tired from laying down new beds for the turkeys out of a soil that is mostly eight-month old leaves, lettuce and old spelt (fermented grains and vegetables), so I was already a mess and stinking of a hefty evening of boozing the night before.
So please, step out of your glass house and allow me a little saracasm.
"Just grab 'im Mr. S! You gotta grab 'im!"
"Moose, you come over here and grab him! He's fast, you know!?" Orville was in my grip for just a second, but the short, bristly hairs along his legs surprised me and I let go. Danny thought this was funny. At least I thought he did, because he decided to shout, "BOOM! Tough actin' Tenactin! BOOM! Tough actin' Tenactin!" And usually if he has sudden commercial outbursts, he is either annoyed or amused and seeing as how he was leaning against the cyclone fence doing little else but watching, I couldn't see Danny being all that annoyed.
"Aw, naw man. You can catch 'im, can't you, Mr. S? Huh? You... You can catch 'im, Mr. S."
For some reason, Moose insists on addressing me each time he talks to me. Every sentence aimed at me either starts or ends with "Mr. S.".
My patience was becoming scarce, as was the amount of unmuddied skin left on my body. This was my first day on the farm, and my boss (whose name was Skeet, if you can believe that) sent us into the pen without much warning that the pigs were feeling squirrelly this afetrnoon. I thought we were just putting some turkey beds down, man. Gimme some warning. I'm no pushover, but had I known I was gonna dirt dive this pig into the ground, I woulda worn my painter's pants.
So much of my job is defined by the results you get out of the students you are supervising. Even though they've been working for Skeet for more than twelve months previous to my arrival, Skeet seems like a likeable, but unforgiving country sort. The "what've you done for me lately" -type who might see my multiple missed tackle opportunites on this pink-menace to be a bad omen for Moose and Danny's socialization into the working world.
"Moose get over here! I need your help." With Big Moosey, the difference between a question and a statement has nothing to do with tone of voice or punctuation, and everything to do with the "thank you" that you have to put at the end of the sentence when you want to ensure that there is no confusion.
"Moose! Chase Orville close to me, so I can grab him. Thank you."
"Aw. Okay, Mr. S. You want me to chase the pig? Huh? Is that what you want me to do? I'm gonna get dirt all over me, Mr. S. I'll get all muddy."
That's Moosey in a nutshell, I'm covered in slop and old lettuce and blood and I'm on my knees and mumbling swears to myself but he doesn't wanna soil his Red Sox t-shirt.
I could kill him.
Moose starts shooing Orville closer to the side of the pigpen that I'm on. I decided moments ago that the second Moose got close enough to me, that I would toss a chunk of slop on him. That's what teachers are for; to educate and to experience lessons of life from... well, today's lesson was gonna be never to watch your teacher get put through the grinder while you sit on the sidelines trying not get dirty.
Remember, the far was their job, not mine.
I finally wrangle Orville, a feat I'm still unclear if I did correctly. I tried to grab the pig around the belly, but realized he was about three seconds away from another escape, so I bailed out and grabbed his two hind legs.
On a completely unrelated note, it is my opinion that a pig's squeal is the most horrific noise registered by human ears.
We get the pig back inside the enclosed portion of the main pigpen (where the pigs sleep and discuss pig stuff amongst one another) and I stand there looking at Moosey, then at Danny. Danny hasn't moved from the fence.
"How you feelin' Danny?"
He replies quickly and with a slight lisp, "I feel happy."
"Good, Danny", I say. "Good."
"You got mud on you, Mr. S."
"I know, Moose. I was laying in a pig pen for the past five minutes, remember?"
"Oh. Yeah, Mr. S. You were. You were workin' hard, huh? Huh, Mr. S.? You were workin' hard, huh?"
And there it was. "You were workin' hard, huh?"
Clarity.
And then it was as if the mud washed away from my body. It was as if Moose had spoken the secret to eternal life. It was suddenly as if I hadn't spent the last few days on the farm chopping and stacking wood, or piling boozed-up leaves on the floor of a 90 degree chicken coop or purifying mulch, or rebuilding portions of the tool barn or wrangling hefers while my students stood stone like and watched me. I was working hard. Harder than I've worked in a long, long time (physically speaking anyway), maybe ever.
There were only two people in my life I could count on knowing the fatigue and frustration farmwork had left me with. My roomate Armin (real name), who had this particular job with Moose and Danny last year, and my father.
My father, whom could no longer guilt me into taking out the trash by telling me of all the early mornings he spent milking his cow. I no longer have to sit idly by and let my Dad tell his bumpkin tales of childhood farmhanding, and if he does go into them, I can interrupt him with some of my own. We can connect. Not that we couldn't before, but as I mentioned previously, these father/son competitions are one-sided and arbitrary and now I've got experience instead of longing.
Orville was worth a winning game of hoops and free Springsteen tickets any day of the week. My greatest fear now is my Dad telling me that when he was twenty, he was always able to get autistic kids to listen and obey him.
===================================
* I don't wholly believe my father. I believe that he saw The Rolling Stones and Tina Turner, but I doubt it was for only $2.00. I imagine, in reality, he saw them for $25.00 and Tina got frustrated with Ike halfway through the set and forced Mick and Keith to do the extra long version of 'Midnight Rambler'. Over the years, Dad has either forgotten the truth or chosen to ignore it. To my kids, grandpa will probably tell them he saw The Stones, The Doors and Jimi Hendrix play at a backyard pool party where the cover was only a dime. It is my job as a parent not to raise such gullible children that they believe all the lies my father will try to get over on them.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Potbellied Jogging
You'd think I'd understand a bit more about them than I do, but I don't. Half of my friends are racing/ jogging/ runner-health machines that crack walnuts with thighs (probably their own) and can wind-sprint past cheetahs (a handy skill here in the states).
They know what a trans fat is.
They know how many calories they should be ingesting each day... and ingest accordingly! This blows my mind, as it should be noted I am typing this blog with Cheeto fingers.
To each their own I guess, but it effects my life. And when you mess with the Big Bull's life, you're catching the horns (I, for the purposes of that last sentence, will be "The Big Bull". No one has ever referred to me as a The Big Bull, nor do I resemble anything that might garner such a nickname, but it sounded cool and since no one will call me "Duke", I'll try Big Bull for a while).
I got off the topic. What was I saying?
I got off the topic. What was I saying?
Do trans fats hinder one's shirt-term memory?
Ah wait, I remember now... my healthy friends.
And we're back.
Running itself confuses me. It's so simple.
Running itself confuses me. It's so simple.
It's too simple.
It's suspiciously simple.
I'm wary. Wary mostly of the runners themselves. The runners that I am aquainted with are not, by and large, simple people. They are complicated highly intellectual beings of muscle, blood and tissue. Nothing else that they do is simple, except for running. It's like everytime they decide to run, something snaps in them and they turn primalistic. One minute they are developing new theories on binary logarithms and the next they drop everything to go run in a circle for twenty minutes.
It doesn't add up.
Runners always say that running helps them think. How powerful must those thoughts be to get physically propelled onward by them? I consider myself a fairly introspective cat, but usually smoking a pipe and watching rain droplets slide down the pane of a big bay window is all I need to explore my inner self. Is no one else worried about the thoughts swirling in a person's head whose best response is to exhaustingly speed away?
Why is no one looking into this?
The head-clearing joggers are the ones that scare me; the healthnik joggers are the ones that I can deal with. But even with the healthniks, I still sense a large disconnect.
I guess the largest disconnect between myself and runners is my metabolism. Up until now (and I suspect for another seven years or so) I have been blessed with a metabolism that allows me to eat fried chicken and orange sodapop for three weeks straight and at the conclusion of that time, be six to seven pounds lighter than when I started.
The head-clearing joggers are the ones that scare me; the healthnik joggers are the ones that I can deal with. But even with the healthniks, I still sense a large disconnect.
I guess the largest disconnect between myself and runners is my metabolism. Up until now (and I suspect for another seven years or so) I have been blessed with a metabolism that allows me to eat fried chicken and orange sodapop for three weeks straight and at the conclusion of that time, be six to seven pounds lighter than when I started.
When you are young and don't gain weight, running doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Not that I'm necessarily bragging about my metabolism. I'm in big trouble when my metabolism finally gets winded. I'll have the eating habits of the entire Florida State football team and have no way to combat it.
And that's another problem that I not only have with runners and healthniks, but that they have with me as well. I try to treat all people with respect and dignity, I try to make everyone laugh, I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
I listen.
I care (or at least try to care) about people's problems and yet, by the end of the year, my hyperspeed metabolism is going to make all the healthniks in my aquaintence angered. If you are not a healthy eater, you are probably a disgusting eater. Healthy people eating healthy things and living healthy lives look up from their roasted chicken salad, fresh granny apple and ripoff bottled spring water with the same disgusted look Lemmon gave Mathau in 'The Odd Couple' at the sight of me squirting Cheez-Whizz onto a hunk of beef jerky wearing nothing but boxer shorts and a Calvin & Hobbes tee-shirt.
And I can't say I blame them. Come to think of it, I really should be dead by now.
And I can't say I blame them. Come to think of it, I really should be dead by now.
Runners and various other healthy types seem really bothered by people like me that still enjoy a good Big Mac. The McDonalds coorporation has really taken a beating in the last decade or so for being so horrifically unhealthy. But I'd like to defend a multi-billion dollar coorporation.
Why I am doing that, I have no idea.
McDonalds was founded in 1948, but didn't become the fast food gotham that it is today until 1956. Back then, citizens smoked and wrestled alligators and huffed glue and no one realized that any of that was bad for us. Maurice and Richard McDonald (along with the help of mogul Ray Kroc) just wanted some cheap eats that arrived quickly. You runners should understand wanting to arrive places quicker - it's why you run. It takes a certain amount of chemicals to allows each menu ingredient to taste okay and remain on the ready for any passerby with a hankering for french fries, okay? So sue them if they tried to make our lives more convenient.
Skip ahead forty years. Our society decides it's too fat and plays the blame game with food and all food preparers. Whether it's the gym rats filling their heads with such things as lean-fat-to-muscle ratio or carbs-per-meal; nature geeks who enjoy a good swamp swim, braiding their hair so's not having to wash it and would rather forage for roots from the hiking path; or runners who jog for miles and miles on end with their iPod's strapped onto their bicycle shorts, jugs of water clipped to their biceps and guilt strapped to their brain because they added peanut butter to their celery stalks; they all came to the decision that McDonalds needs to get healthy or get gone.
Skip ahead forty years. Our society decides it's too fat and plays the blame game with food and all food preparers. Whether it's the gym rats filling their heads with such things as lean-fat-to-muscle ratio or carbs-per-meal; nature geeks who enjoy a good swamp swim, braiding their hair so's not having to wash it and would rather forage for roots from the hiking path; or runners who jog for miles and miles on end with their iPod's strapped onto their bicycle shorts, jugs of water clipped to their biceps and guilt strapped to their brain because they added peanut butter to their celery stalks; they all came to the decision that McDonalds needs to get healthy or get gone.
But McDonalds didn't start out evil. It only appeared evil as we all started appearing fatter. Asking McDonalds to get healthy or get gone just because we evolved into healthniks is like asking baseball to incorporate tackles just because we now embrace football as our national pasttime.
Baseball is not about tackles and McDonalds shouldn't be villified for doing what they do.
What they've always done.
What they've always done.
I apologize. McDonalds is very near and dear to my heart. We've gone through a lot of tough times (and McNuggets*) together and it pains me so, to see McDonalds lavished in such acidity.
So what is to be done? What is the understanding that I can come to? One day I will either a) be a fatty or b) be healthy: neither option of which I am looking forward to. But in the end, I am fairly physically active enough that it will just come down to paying attention to what I eat. And that will only happen under one condition...
I'm going to have to marry a woman who will cook healthy meals.
Now don't get up in arms. I'm not hunting for a wife to cook and clean and remain barefoot and pregnant. I've said many times before, I will do everything else. I will wash the dishes and shop for groceries and take out the trash and raise the children while my wife gets pedicures and shelter her from both her mother and my own - whatever she wants, so long as she cooks nice meals for me. That's it.
So what is to be done? What is the understanding that I can come to? One day I will either a) be a fatty or b) be healthy: neither option of which I am looking forward to. But in the end, I am fairly physically active enough that it will just come down to paying attention to what I eat. And that will only happen under one condition...
I'm going to have to marry a woman who will cook healthy meals.
Now don't get up in arms. I'm not hunting for a wife to cook and clean and remain barefoot and pregnant. I've said many times before, I will do everything else. I will wash the dishes and shop for groceries and take out the trash and raise the children while my wife gets pedicures and shelter her from both her mother and my own - whatever she wants, so long as she cooks nice meals for me. That's it.
Well, okay that's not quite it. It's also important that she have a cool rock'n'roll name. I've always imagined being married to a woman named Bernadette and whenever we found ourselves in a big argument, I'd just break into The Four Tops' song:
Bernadette!
In your arms I find the kind of peace of mind the world is searching for.
But you, you give me the joy this heart of mine has always been longing for.
In you I have what other men long for.
All men need someone to worship and adore.
That's why I treasure you and place you high above.
For the only joy in life is to be loved.
So whatever you do, [Bernadette]
Keep on loving me, [Bernadette]
Keep on needing me, [Bernadette]
Bernadette!
And of course, I'd scream my wife's name each time the lyric warranted it (just like The Four Tops did) and my wife would remember why she fell so madly in love with me in the first place. I guess it doesn't have to be Bernadette necessarily. Layla or PeggySue or Freebird** will all suffice.
Bernadette!
In your arms I find the kind of peace of mind the world is searching for.
But you, you give me the joy this heart of mine has always been longing for.
In you I have what other men long for.
All men need someone to worship and adore.
That's why I treasure you and place you high above.
For the only joy in life is to be loved.
So whatever you do, [Bernadette]
Keep on loving me, [Bernadette]
Keep on needing me, [Bernadette]
Bernadette!
And of course, I'd scream my wife's name each time the lyric warranted it (just like The Four Tops did) and my wife would remember why she fell so madly in love with me in the first place. I guess it doesn't have to be Bernadette necessarily. Layla or PeggySue or Freebird** will all suffice.
But if I am willing to ask so little from my own wife, is it wrong to ask that runners find a larger purpose for their activity than to carry hectic thoughts? Is that so awful of me?
Instead of running around and around without accomplishing much (besides exhaustion), why not play a sport instead? *** Or if competition doesn't put wind in your sails, why not try stealing something before you go running? Steal something of incredible value, something that will sure to get you noticed. Not only would this get you running, but the adrenaline alone would carry you for at least 50 miles before becoming winded. And not only that, but you'd have huge calves and sudden wealth.
Or you'd go to jail.
Either way, running would be much more worthwhile, n'est-ce pas?
======================================
* While on the subject of McNuggets, I'm tired of all the naysayers out there claiming that a McNugget isn't real chicken. You know what? You don't know that. How dare you judge something solely on how it appears. True, a McNugget doesn't appear to be any real part of a chicken, but you've never talked to a McNugget. You've never asked a McNugget what it's life is like, or what it's feeling. You're just prejudiced. You people don't know what makes a McNugget a McNugget and so you automatically hate it? For shame. Most of you people could not build a television from scratch, you wouldn't know what parts are used in creating a television, but does that stop you from enjoying the programming a television has to offer?
Either way, running would be much more worthwhile, n'est-ce pas?
======================================
* While on the subject of McNuggets, I'm tired of all the naysayers out there claiming that a McNugget isn't real chicken. You know what? You don't know that. How dare you judge something solely on how it appears. True, a McNugget doesn't appear to be any real part of a chicken, but you've never talked to a McNugget. You've never asked a McNugget what it's life is like, or what it's feeling. You're just prejudiced. You people don't know what makes a McNugget a McNugget and so you automatically hate it? For shame. Most of you people could not build a television from scratch, you wouldn't know what parts are used in creating a television, but does that stop you from enjoying the programming a television has to offer?
No.
I hope you've all learned something here today.
** I am not opposed to marrying Native Americans.
*** Pick a sport other than soccer though. Soccer is just another example of running around and around without accomplishing much (besides exhaustion). So if you pick soccer, you might as well just stick with running.
** I am not opposed to marrying Native Americans.
*** Pick a sport other than soccer though. Soccer is just another example of running around and around without accomplishing much (besides exhaustion). So if you pick soccer, you might as well just stick with running.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Embarrassing Abnormalities
[ This story is dedicated to my Sister. Good luck being a senior. ]
FRED'S BARBER SHOP
You are a senior in high school and have, over the course of time, developed an abnormal sense of inadequacy amongst other boys. It feels abnormal anyway.
MAGGIE
Your parents love your friend Maggie and your mother always wants to know why you aren't dating her. This irks you because frankly, you would like to know the same thing.
Part of it is that she enjoys playing the field. Not in a slutty way, but in a "no-one-is-good-enough-for-all-of-my-time-but-plenty-of-people-are-good-enough-for-some-of-my-time" sort of way. The other (bigger) part of it is that you are a prude.
FRED'S BARBER SHOP
You are a senior in high school and have, over the course of time, developed an abnormal sense of inadequacy amongst other boys. It feels abnormal anyway.
Everything at seventeen feels abnormal.
You've never before realized how harshly a social atmosphere changes people. Three weeks ago, you had a hairdo that looked like a small ferret was napping atop your head. No one else in school had as lame a haircut as you - not even the kid who always wore a fedora.
You've never before realized how harshly a social atmosphere changes people. Three weeks ago, you had a hairdo that looked like a small ferret was napping atop your head. No one else in school had as lame a haircut as you - not even the kid who always wore a fedora.
Action had to be taken.
Now, it is Monday afternoon and you are walking desperately into Fred's Barber Shoppe (a place so quant Fred still spells "shop" in an old-fashioned manner). And you walk into Fred's with a magazine cut-out of one of the characters from the 'Friends' television program. The intention of the magazine picture is to have Fred recreate the look with your own hair. Fred has been cutting your hair since you were ten-years-old and there is a part of you that knows this might change the relationship between the two of you forever.
It probably cost $1,000 to get the 'Friends' castmember's hair to sit all spikey and gelled and you're hoping to get the same treatment for ten bucks. What makes you think ol' Fred can do this is beyond you, but you're not thinking specifics. All you know is attractive people are on 'Friends' and you want to be attractive too.
But that's the tricky thing about high school; you don't even know who you are trying to look attractive for, or more specifically, what makes someone attractive in the first place. Further proof of this cluelessness is in the fact that you are asking a sixty-five-year-old man to miraculously make you hot.
This isn't who you are. Combs are not your friend.
You enjoy a good peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
You prefer sweatpants to Ambercrombies.
You prefer showers taken alone.
Irregardless, you walk out of Fred's barber feeling pretty damn sexy, although sexy at seventeen translates into nothing more than being fairly certain there isn't any spinach stuck in front of your teeth. And for the rest of afternoon, you think life will suddenly turn around for you.
All the "Katie's"* in your school are going to start casually hanging on your arm in the hallways.
All the "Pat's" are going to start cluing you in on their secret Irish Catholic cool-dude handshakes... or if secret handshakes aren't cool, they'll clue you in on that.
By the next morning, you come to understand that you contain, within yourself, an uncanny knack for completely missing whatever it is about style and social composure that ever made boththose things cool in the first place. The minute you walk through the hulking double-door entrance of the school, people begin making fun of your overly coiffed man-hunk hairdo.
The Katies laugh and the Pats point.
Hairdos never look as good the second day as they do exiting the barber.
For the first time since your high school career began, you find yourself looking forward to swim class like a terrier looks forward to a walk.
And despite having a general rule mandating a 10-foot minimum between your own nude nether regions and the nether regions of other nude boys today is different.
Today anything goes if it results in becoming lost in the crowd once again instead of suddenly being the butt of the crowd's jokes.
Anything to get that gunk out of your hair.
You played a game of chicken with the rest of your school and swerved first. You've switched your sweat pants and frilled up your hair so much that the gunk lingers through swim class and dries hard and crispy and ridiculous.
You hate yourself and your awful hair.
You slink as low to the ground as possible all day, you cannot recall anything that happened in any of your classes except for the deafening snickers of classmates.
You are so inwardly turned all day that you almost forget about your study date with Maggie after school. You've been walking home instead of to her house, and now you are six blocks out of your way.
Great. Anything to keep you outside in the public eye even longer.
As you walk over to Maggie's house with shamelessly toussled hair, all you feel like doing is apologizing to Fred the barber for being such a fancy priss.
MAGGIE
Your parents love your friend Maggie and your mother always wants to know why you aren't dating her. This irks you because frankly, you would like to know the same thing.
Part of it is that she enjoys playing the field. Not in a slutty way, but in a "no-one-is-good-enough-for-all-of-my-time-but-plenty-of-people-are-good-enough-for-some-of-my-time" sort of way. The other (bigger) part of it is that you are a prude.
A nervous, silly prude.
You finally arrive at Maggie's house. She sits on the steps of her oversized ranchhouse, waiting. You feel bad for making her wait, but love the fact that she's there and love the fact that she smiles when she sees you.
She is the sweetest person you know.
This is the only reason you would ever maintain a study date despite your hair looking like a tropical storm ripped through it.
Maggie put her long black hair in a ponytail since you last saw her earlier at school. You wish you could eradicate a bad hair day with a ponytail.
You wish you could eradicate the whole day.
Presently, Maggie remains quiet about your hair. She never said anything about it all day. This causes you to realize you are in love. Because by her not mentioning something as obviously atrocious as your rebuffed assimilation, she signifies one of two things: 1) she doesn't want to needle you about something you already know is a mistake or 2) the condor's nest you've created on top of your scalp is something Maggie might not see as wierd coming from you. And if she accepts your hair in it's current state, she'll accept anything else you are capable of throwing at her.
You love her acceptance.
You will never ask her out on a date.
The two of you set up camp in her den. Studying Shakespeare's Henry V in school, it seems a good idea to see a Hollywood adaptation of it. You and Maggie sit in her house watching Kenneth Branaugh emote, her parents out for the night. You seem to grasp the language far more than she does, which confuses you because she is much smarter than you are.
The two of you set up camp in her den. Studying Shakespeare's Henry V in school, it seems a good idea to see a Hollywood adaptation of it. You and Maggie sit in her house watching Kenneth Branaugh emote, her parents out for the night. You seem to grasp the language far more than she does, which confuses you because she is much smarter than you are.
"I'm cold," says Maggie's tiny voice in front of you.
"You want my sweater?" you ask.
"Nah," she says and completely crushes your spirit, "I'll tell you what, hold me for a sec. I'll warm up soon enough."
You've dreamt of this moment like a pauper dreams of the lottery.
It was just the right amount of dull straightforwardness that you require in order to recognize the interaction as flirting.
Unless it was not flirting, which is quite possible. Maggie could stand naked in front of you and you would question the motivation behind it.
Several years later, the doctors will inform you that you are mildly retarded.
For now however, you throw your arms around her way too fast and tip your hand. You are not a very cool guy and further proof lies in the look Maggie gives you as the two of you snuggle on the couch watching Pistol and Bardolph patter at one another.
She adjusts your grip on her, and your head is above hers. Before you can control yourself, your eyes glance down the front of her shirt. Your eyes don't usually do that, but there they went.
Glancing.
glance /glans/ v.intr. 1. cast a momentary look 2. pass quickly over a subject(s)
Yeah. What you were doing was not glancing. You were staring. Gawking.
glance /glans/ v.intr. 1. cast a momentary look 2. pass quickly over a subject(s)
Yeah. What you were doing was not glancing. You were staring. Gawking.
Many seconds passed. Eleven. Twelve.
You tell yourself to stop staring.
You're embarrassing yourself. This is a violation.
You're near the scene of the Battle of Agincourt. Pay attention to the band of brothers, you pervert, not the band of boobies.
Nothing doing. You're seventeen. Not even a free Slurpee is better than this.
You wonder what could possibly break your concentration from the sight of the cleavage disappearing into the top of her "Illinois: The 'S' Is Silent, Stupid" t-shirt.
You love her ratty t-shirts and her ponytails and her kindness. You are wrapped in so much happiness that none of it registers. It's there, but it is not making it's mark in your brain.
It's consuming. It's globular. It's shapless.
You wonder what could possibly break your concentration from the sight of the cleavage disappearing into the top of her "Illinois: The 'S' Is Silent, Stupid" t-shirt.
You love her ratty t-shirts and her ponytails and her kindness. You are wrapped in so much happiness that none of it registers. It's there, but it is not making it's mark in your brain.
It's consuming. It's globular. It's shapless.
You're overloading. Look at the television! Look at it!
Your attention is finally broken. But things are not more comfortable, they are, in fact, less comfortable..
Much less.
Maggie shifted. She slid down on the couch. But your hands didn't move. They were wrapped around her stomach and now...
Wait. Wait.
You can't be sure, but Maggie's shift may very well have supplanted your hands on her breasts.
You prude! You don't know if you're holding onto a breast or not?!
You prude! You don't know if you're holding onto a breast or not?!
'Henry V' has taken a backseat. You don't hear it. You're not even aware that there is anything in this room except for your eyes, your hands and Maggie's breasts. That's it.
There must be 120 square feet of den-space around you, but it might as well be only two hands two breasts and two eyes.
You crane your neck without moving any other part of your body, you have to see for yourself.
No way! You are totally feeling Maggie up!
No way! You are totally feeling Maggie up!
Did she shift on purpose? She hasn't said anything.
She apparently loves Kenneth Branaugh. You are confused. You're in a position in which you shouldn't be confused, but you are because you are an idiot.
Shouldn't there be more talking. A little discussion of the exchange that is taking place?
Is she no longer cold? You bet she isn't. You hope she isn't.
Your mind spins because she hasn't reacted at all yet. This was designed. But what if it wasn't? What if she shifted and this all happened on accident? No one will ever believe your story. She will tell her lawyers that you molested her right before King Harry went once more unto the breech. And your only excuse will be that you were too busy trying to see down her shirt to realize she shifted her boobs underneath your hands.
You're going to jail. And you will probably fail your Shakespeare test.
You've been called a prude before, even been called prude in front of Maggie. Is she taking pitty on you and your haircut? Maybe this is a misunderstanding? Can resting your hands on breasts ever be a misunderstanding? They're just resting there, they're parked.
You've been called a prude before, even been called prude in front of Maggie. Is she taking pitty on you and your haircut? Maybe this is a misunderstanding? Can resting your hands on breasts ever be a misunderstanding? They're just resting there, they're parked.
If your hands were a car in an airport loading zone, you'd be getting towed away by now.
You're holding her in this position for a long time, saying nothing. Things have gone from educational to risque to kinda painfully awkward.
You're holding her in this position for a long time, saying nothing. Things have gone from educational to risque to kinda painfully awkward.
Wait. Wait, you're freaking out now. You're in the batter's box, you laid down a perfect bunt and you've stupidly started heading toward third base. Turn around, dummy. Make this right.
Make this right.
Ugh. You're not going to make this right, are you?
Sweeping your legs out from under both of you, you cough up the following excuse:
"Man, I tell you, there's someting about good Shakespeare that makes me really have to pee."
You say this as a joke, but you didn't smile or laugh after you said it, and you're sure she believes that Henry V actually pulses your bladder.
"Man, I tell you, there's someting about good Shakespeare that makes me really have to pee."
You say this as a joke, but you didn't smile or laugh after you said it, and you're sure she believes that Henry V actually pulses your bladder.
You could have said, "excuse me" and have been done with it. Hell, even "pardon me, I'm gonna flee to the bathroom and figure out why my hands were hammocked around the very breasts I've imagined hammocking for several months now. When I come back, hopefully my head will be clear, we can pause the movie and continue on the path of righteousness that I just interruped."
Yup. Even that, would have been better than the pee line.
As you stare at yourself in the mirror, you think back to a time not-so-long ago when Slurpees and Spiderman were among the most important things in your life. Now Spiderman has been replaced by the delightful creature reclining on the couch two rooms away and you've opted to stand here for the evening.
You think to yourself, "My God, when will being in my own skin get easier?"
Your mind wanders back to the present and you hurry out of the bathroom. You've been in there for over five minutes and it's possible Maggie is going to assume you are masturbating in there. Awful.
You are halfway between the bathroom and the den - alone in the kitchen - when you become saddened by the truth that - cruel or not - anyone who ever called you a prude were completely correct.
Three Options at 7-11
It's almost 10 o'clock. You stayed at Maggie's several hours.
Three Options at 7-11
It's almost 10 o'clock. You stayed at Maggie's several hours.
Nothing happened. 'Henry V' was a well crafted film.
You saunter into the 7-11 near your house, you just can't go home yet. Going home is the official end of your night. The end to a night where the girl of your dreams may or may not have thrown herself at you and you freaked out.
You are not Fonzie.
You are not James Dean.
You are a spaz. A spaz hoping that a Slurpee and jerky will make you feel better.
You pay for your food and find yourself unable to look the cashier in the eye for fear of him judging your eating habits and haircut.
Your total is $3.97 and you hand him four singles.
Your first option is to walk out of the store immediately without the three pennies worth of change. But if you do that, the cashier might think you to be an idiot who forgot that he had change coming to him.
Your second option is to say something along the lines of, "keep the change" as you walk out of the store, but then the cashier might think you to be an arrogant prick kid who thinks he's a big shot for bequeathing three cents on the 7-11 guy. And because you don't want to offend him, you end up waiting there with your hand held out.
But even this third option leaves a sour taste in your mouth because now, in your mind, you are sticking around and waiting... in essence demanding your measly three cents in change. Maybe the cashier enjoys putting spare change in the "leave-a-penny-take-a-penny" jar, or maybe he doesn't like counting change, you don't know. You don't know how cashiering at a conveneient store works.
You being you, you stand there assuming he believes you to be a complete freak to stand there waiting desperately for three pennies. He has also, by now, figured out that you blew it with your lady friend earlier in the night.
You don't know that he knows, but you assume he does. You make your way out of the convenient store realizing that you weren't gonna escape that transaction without being an idiot, a pompous ass, or a cheap bastard.
The store door clanks open, but before you can fully exit, the cashier calls after you, "Hey friend," he says, "you look like that guy from t.v. You look like the man in 'Friends'"
Your mouth drops so wide open that hornets fly into and build a nest.
Your mouth drops so wide open that hornets fly into and build a nest.
You crinkle your nose a bit and reply, "Shakespeare makes me pee."
You walk out and it's a month before you return for jerky and Slurpees.
========================================
* For further explanation, see previous blog "Sweatpants & The Irish Catholics"
You walk out and it's a month before you return for jerky and Slurpees.
========================================
* For further explanation, see previous blog "Sweatpants & The Irish Catholics"
Friday, July 14, 2006
Pete, Henry and Me
I cannot be stopped and if you attempt it, I will eat your entire head.
This is what I thought to myself on Friday night sitting amongst strangers in a booth located in what had to have been the darkest pub in the state of Massachusetts. Three sheets to the wind, the only thought I could muster - aside from the logistics of eating an entire head - was that I would give my entire kingdom for a flashlight. And I wasn't hoping for a flashlight in some twirly-glo-stick-rave kind of way... I just couldn't see.
I was blind.
I heard voices and all the bodies in the joint created enough heat for me to sense they were there, but I saw no faces.
Everyone was a reaper of death.
Alright, not everyone was a reaper of death. I bet not even half of them were reapers of death.
The point is, for three hours I was given all the beer I could drink for $10. I don't even like beer, but you offer endless amounts of anything to me at a discount price, you'd better believe I'll eat it up like waffles.* Whatever the discount, I'll adopt it.
Love it.
Raise it from a pup.
Treat it like it sprung from my loins and never tell it who it's natural father is.
So there's all this free beer needing a good home, scared in the darkness that is this bombshelter of a tavern and so pardon me if I felt compelled to take action.
But all joking aside, that action got me blotto; got everyone blotto. I assume it did, I can't say for sure because, as mentioned before, it was dark and I was unable to see anything. A lot gets muddled when you subtract the ability to see faces. I began searching for a well-lit place somewhere inside the bar.
Odd thoughts began swirling.
Drunk thoughts.
I don't share any specific expertise on flowers or even particularly like them, but at that moment, searching through the barroom abyss for a patch if brightness, it occurred to me that delivering flowers might be a better way to meet girls than both grocery stores and coffee houses combined. In general, most guys - nay most people - just need some sort of introductory statement; a reason to approach their object-of-fancy. Delivering flowers not only gives the deliverer an appropriate reason to approach this person, but it sends the deliverer directly to their home with flowers already in hand. If the situation is suitable, the action of delivering the flowers can transform into a makeshift first date. Flower deliveries only happen during business hours, so there is no pressure to have dinner. Everything is lunch or coffee.
Easy. **
And don't forget, often times flowers are sent in either apology or condolence and if the card attached to most bouquees indicates either of these, you've already got an opening conversation and a springboard toward a romantic future.
I came up with this while drunk. Surprised?
When I get like I got on Friday, my brain seperates into three distinct personalities, all of whom become extremely chatty.
It always starts with Pete.
Pete is the rowdiest of my inner voices. He's always convincing me to continue taking whatever actions got me to a state in which I find myself carrying on a three-way conversation with myself. Pete is also almost always the voice apologizing for throwing up everywhere.***
Then there's Henry. Henry is the victim. Henry never wants to get drunk, rarely even wants to drink. But there he is, arm-in-arm with Pete singing Irish shanties from the sea. Henry is always trying to appear sober despite having Yuengling spilled down his shirt front.
Then there's me. And on Friday night, all I really wanted was for Pete to stop talking so I could better concentrate on the sports scores flashing on the television (mostly because it was the only beacon of light in the entire joint).
Like moths to a flame, the three of us wafted through the dark throngs of sweaty bodies and dashed to the bar.
I say "dashed", but I bet it was more of a "saunter".
It worked out nicely because now Pete was near the beer and Henry could see better. This allowed him to "study body language". This is what happens when I drink too much; I drink and Henry picks an activity to perfect in his drunken state. Friday, Henry was going to learn all there was to know about reading body language, an art far more romantically effective than delivering flowers.
Little known fact: body language is impossible to read drunk and ensconced in darkness. Looking around, the follwing thoughts struck me:
1. If I occupy the same general area as a girl and at no point in the span of, let's say an hour, does that girl even glance momentarily in my direction (despite looking everywhere else), she's doing that on purpose, right? And if she is doing that on purpose, is it because she's got the hots for me or because she fears vomiting in her own mouth upon gazing at me for too long?
2. If a girl touches you gently, or crosses her legs and leans toward you, that's good. But what if a guy does those things to you? (That's Pete's question, as both those things happened to him Friday).
3. If a girl notices me noticing her and then proceeds to fiddle with her hair slightly, is that a knee-jerk reaction born from becoming conscious to the fact that I've noticed her and her hope that I find her appealing
- or -
Is she shifting her hair in front of her face so as to insure that my eyes never again pierce the atmospheric layer hanging just beyond her lashes?
4. Where exactly is the line between extroverted and overbearing?
This last question is particularly puzzling when you consider the things I saw once I was amidst the neon glow of the bar. A movie came out last year called 'Derailed', and in this film there is a pickup line used by the leading man after sidling up to a bar next to the leading lady. He wagers her $20 that he can kiss her without ever touching her mouth.
In real life, I've got to assume that the woman would be creeped out by this proposal, mumble something along the lines of, "I'm sure you can", and scamper away from the bar incredulously describing this short interaction to her friends later. But this isn't real life, this is a movie... well, technically this is my blog, but my blog is discussing a movie and the female lead in this movie accepts his offer. The male character leans in close, directly in front of her face. Pauses. The audience wonders how he will pull this off.
Turns out he doesn't. He leans in the rest of the way and kisses her full on the mouth. The woman pulls away pleased but confused. The man smiles confidently, paws at his glass and says, "best twenty dollars I ever spent."
Now first of all, does that count as prostitution? And could this possibly work for anyone who doesn't happen to be Orlando Bloom or Clive Owen? Again, where is the line between confidence and cockiness? I ask because a lot of people probably saw that film and many of them were probably just as impressed with this scene as I was and have since tried variations of it in poorly lit cavebars across the U.S. themselves.
So there I was with Pete and Hank (that's what Pete calls Henry when Pete gets really wasted) when I notice an attractive Asian gal standing nearby. And just as the girl notices me and fiddles with her hair, some gearhead slides next to her and offers to buy her a beer.
Okay... A) beers are free tonight, idiot and B) if the guy had taken a second to look down he would have noticed her 3/4-filled beer already sitting there. The girl sternly- but-politely lifts her cup to illustrate the reason she doesn't want what he's offering. But like something out of the afore mentioned movie, the gearhead grabs her drink, gulps it down quick as a blink and offers again to get her another beer...
Whoa, that's bold.
And I imagine if George Clooney or Jake Gylenhaal pulled that crap with Jennifer Aniston or Scarlett Johansson or whoever, it would have been a great scene.**** But the gearhead was a far cry from Clooney and the Asian girl wasn't having it. She didn't even bother putting her hair in front of her atmospheric eyelash layer, she just smiled tightly and said, "That's nice. That's real nice." She walked away and the gearhead showed no visible signs of remorse.
What the hell kind of way to act is that?
But the madness didnd't stop there.
A pretty brunette was dancing in a triangle with her two less attractive friends. Like a puma poncing from the darkness, some chucklehead grabs the brunette and begins what I suppose can be interpreted as dancing (although I would label it "aggrivated assault").
This is not unusual. What is unusual is that before the girl can turn around and get a proper look at her assailant, this chucklehead divebombs both his hands into the girl's brown mane of hair and begins mussing and toussling it like he was shaking a snowglobe.
Like a big brother noogying his younger brother.
Locks of hair are flying every which way; crazy-style. I had never seen anything like this in a public place. Why would someone go gonzo upon a girl's hair like that? He wasn't hurting her, but he was severely messing up this girl's 'do.
The brunette finally turns fully around to face this wierdo and says that not only doesn't she like having her hair played with ("played with" being an epic understatement) but she also cited her two unattractive friends being left alone as the final reason for cutting the dance short, which is funny only because stranger-to -stranger noogying seemed like a good enough reason to cut the dance short.
Don't get me wrong, I love messing up people's hair. I think it's a dynamite way to spend an afternoon. Matter fact... hold on.
. . .
There.
I just got up, and noogyed my roomate. She laughed. Then I laughed. We clinked our wine glasses and shared one last giggle over the entire ordeal.
Noogies are fine if you are comfortable with the person, but it just seems retarded to try it out on someone's who's name you haven't yet learned.
Look, I called myself a "boozing, dancing, juggernaught of raw awesomeness" earlier and I meant it. I'm not one to make excuses, but even juggernaughts have needs and I want to air them out.
Top 4 Juggernaught Needs (in no particular order)
1. If you like me, look at me and stop playing with your hair. If you don't like me, keep doing exactly what you've been doing 'cause it totally works.
2. Never trust your flower delivery person. Their hearts are filled with shenanigans.
3. Dear Hollywood,
Stop allowing your attractive actors to do such smooth things to your attractive actresses in your movies... it's confusing the gearheads.
4. If you own a bar and there aren't any lights to turn off come closing time - it's too dark in your bar and it's causing people with several personalities intermingling amongst one another the inability to find their friends.
Your dark shadow hole is causing people to stumble home alone...
and helpless...
and unstoppable.
=============================
* God forbid it should be waffles being discounted.
** Although I suppose you'd have to work for a fairly understanding boss who wouldn't mind you taking an hour or two each shift to date flower recipients.
*** It should also be noted that the whole flower delivery ploy was Pete's concoction.
**** Or if not a great scene, at least a well-lit scene.
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