Hopscotch

On my walk home from work three days ago I noticed a pink and blue chalk etching of a hopscotch line.*

*I don't know that I've ever before played hopscotch and if I have, I'm certain I didn't play it correctly. I'm not even really sure what the thing kids jump on is called. I mean, I know that they're literally jumping on the sidewalk, but doesn't the sidewalk turn into something when you draw numbered hopscotch boxes on it? I was always under the impression that hopscotch was what you did, not what you did it on. Are you hopscotching or are you jumping on the hopscotch?

I thought nothing of it three days ago. It was poorly created, the chalked lines were uneven, shaky and faint and the numbers inside each box were barely legible. I'm not sure I would've recognized them as numbers had I not already known that numerals were supposed to go inside the boxes.

Three days ago, it was fairly easy for me to glance at the 50 hopscotch boxes and forget I ever saw them. Some kids had a nice weekend. It's better than playing videogames, Twittering about how atrocious the new Facebook layout is or putting the finishing touches on the new meth lab. Good for the kids. One point for the antiquated ideal of youth.

Two days ago I noticed the hopscotch boxes had extended to the end of the block. There were 650 boxes now. I imagined the calf muscles these tiny children were going to have by the end of this hopscotch game.* I was happy the children were setting lofty goals for themselves and playing outside in order to attain those goals.

*Again, forgive my hopscotch naivete, but I'm not sure how one wins the game. For the sake of this blog, I'll assume one wins only after their opponent trips while hopping and crumbles to the ground. Kinda like Russian drinking games, but instead of trading shots of vodka, it's hopscotch and instead of barfing, it's falling.

Yesterday, I came upon the hopscotch again and found two kids, a boy and a girl, both about 11-years-old, at the end of the massive row of hopscotch boxes. I've made it quite clear at this point that I'm ignorant to all things hopscotch,* so perhaps I've got it all wrong, but they seemed a little old for hopscotch. These two kids really looked 11 and by the time I was 11, I was playing baseball. I don't want to come off as any sort of elitist, but a baseball field's chalk lines indicating fair and foul are about the only things that a sport like baseball and a children's game like hopscotch have in common. I was a little disheartened that these kids looked 11 and not six.

*I'm close to being ignorant about all things scotch. I'm clueless on hopscotch, I know nothing about the whiskey, except that it makes me want to die just sniffing it. I run shallow on my Scottish history other than that I really dig the Fratellis. My only saving grace is that I know shit loads of stuff about Scotch tape. For instance, did you know that "cellophane tape" originated with two sticky sides instead of one (what we now call double-sided tape), but to cut costs, 3M produced the tape with only one sticky side? A Minnesota automobile trader said that the Scotch bosses at 3M were stingy and the name stuck (no pun intended).

Anyway, they had traversed the street and had continued on the adjacent sidewalk starting at 651. I wondered what they would do about the 20 feet in between hopscotch box 650 on one side of the street and hopscotch box 651 on the other. Was the street a free zone? Are you allowed to have a free zone in hopscotch?

Is it halftime?

It didn't really matter. The street, the ever-growing numbers, the ages of the kids, the rules of the game. None of it mattered. Kids will be kids. They were setting goals. Fun goals. Innocent goals.

As I walked closer to the children etching an even greater number of chalk boxes, I noticed that one kid wasn't helping the other. The boy was, in fact, slapping the nearby concrete with a fallen tree branch. The girl was etching each box with what can only be called careless consumption. There was no effort put into each box (which was why a box created by an 11-year-old looked to have been created by a six-year-old). She wasn't making a hopscotch table, she was absently drawing boxes and numbering them, like she had nothing better to do.

There were no rocks, no hopping, no competition. Nothing. Just two stupid kids spending the time not taken up by drooling to stand around doodling on the ground with blue and pink chalk.

What a betrayal! This was not a quaint hearkening back to Opie Taylor or Wally and the Beav'. This was two uncreative, bored-ass idiots drawing boxes on the ground and swinging sticks around like a bunch of Appalachian mounties. Video games would have been better. The meth labs, the Facebook... all better than this idle nothingness.

Ever see a toddler with pudding smeared all over his or her face? Sure, part of you is sad that the child has gross poop-like desert gelatin surrounding its mouth, but most of you is annoyed that that child hasn't got the sense to wipe off the mess or not allow the mess to happen in the first place.

In that analogy hopscotch is the pudding.

Here I thought these kids were the last vestige of old fashioned outdoor play. Overachieving competitors in a simple elementary game. Turns out they're just "Deliverance" with a pail-full of chalk nubs in place of banjos.

Oh the humanity.

Tortoistory

Most mornings are the same: I wake up (sorta), fall asleep in the shower until the water goes from warm to cold, dress in the dark praying that my socks end up matching and go to the celarium of my apartment where my tortoise Tillie sleeps.

I assume she sleeps there, everytime I stand at her tank to check on her, her eyes are open.

She's alert and skeptical.

She hears my footsteps and imagines that it's bath time, her least favorite time of each month. Imagine your haircut and dentist appointment rolled into one terrifying trip.

That's bath time for Tillie.

So when I say that she sleeps in her tank, I'm just assuming. I really don't know.

What I do know is that after I've changed my socks around three times so that they match, visit Tillie, feed her and change her water, she's already up. Always. No matter what time I get up in the morning, she's standing in her food dish waiting for me.

When I wake up at six, it's easy to assume she's only been standing there a few minutes or so. When I get up at nine and recall the times I've been up at six, I imagine my bratty little tortoise standing on the equivalent of her breakfast plate for damn near three hours. Can you imagine if your children pulled that shit?

It's possible that she hears me get up in the morning and falls into first position, but my room is far away from her tank, so I doubt it.

Editor's note: I just Wikipedied "tortoise" and found nothing about them having sensitive hearing. I'll continue assuming there is nothing noteworthy about tortoise's hearing, especially after I double-checked my work by entering "human" and also saw no notations on us having special hearing.

Because humans have no special hearing, I can only deduce that neither do tortoises.

It's bad enough that she is standing on top of her food dish like some radical hippie protester, but because tortoises don't make noise or show any emotion whatsoever, my American sensitivity processes this as hostility. My understanding of pets (and our love affair with having them) comes from an exchange of shelter and food for undying affection. But that's not the vibe I get from Tillie. Now firmly entrenched in reptilian adolescents, Tillie can only be seen as an uppity spoiled teen. Nothing I do is right, she never wants to hang out and walk on the floor near me anymore. She sleeps all day and (apparently) is up all night waiting to be fed.

Where did I go wrong with her?

Umbrellas

Here's an experiment to try the next time you see me...

I get mad at insignificant things yet will let life-altering tragedy roll off my back like downhill marbles. I'm not sure why this is, only that it is.

The first part of the experiment is to punch me in the stomach. Seriously. A solid sock to the wheelhouse.

This will make me mad.

But right after you jam me in the belly, hand me an umbrella and have me walk a block in the rain.

I guarantee I'll be twice as mad after I circle the block.

Why? Because umbrellas don't work.

They should work. Umbrellas have inhabited this earth long enough to develop the reputation of serving a purpose, but there have been numerous walks to and from the train in which I open the umbrella, stand under it and move around. But when I'm all done, everything downward from my hips is as soaked as if I had spent that time jumping in puddles.

If Shakira taught us anything, it's that hips don't lie. If mine are soaked after holding an umbrella over them, that's pretty damning evidence that umbrellas are worthless.

Perhaps I'm using my umbrella incorrectly. Is that possible? I'm somewhat intelligent and umbrellas are somewhat simple gadgets, so I wouldn't assume operator error is probable.

The idea behind the umbrella, in case you're unfamiliar, is to stand underneath a nylon shield so that while your geographic surroundings are being soaked by Mother Nature, you won't be. The umbrella forms a fortress around you, but does not encroach upon your personal space.

In reality, the rain hits the umbrella, slides downward and falls (diagonally) onto my clothes and pissing me off in the process. I mean, Jesus, I might as well hold a tennis racket above my head when it storms. I'd be equally dry at the conclusion of my journey, and with a racket, I'd have a better weapon with which to beat the inventor of the umbrella should I ever run into him.

My mom suggests I get an oversized golf umbrella, the kind that expands out enough to fit three or four people underneath.

First of all, why do golfers need umbrellas? If the weather is inclimate enough to pull out an industrial sized umbrella, shouldn't all golf activities cease anyway? Get indoors, dummy. Additionally, I already have enough to deal with trying to find creative ways to lie to bums about how I haven't got any change or why I can't give it to them. I don't want to add umbrella real estate to the ever-growing list of things I need to deny poor people.

The only median action to be taken in that instance would be to surround myself with bums and let them soak up the runoff from my umbrella. That's not at all humanitarian though. Poor people already have so little to trust in and rely upon, do I really need to be the one to expose the bullshit effectiveness of umbrellas?

Talk about raining on someone's parade.

When in doubt, punch 'em out

I saw a band Wednesday night called Reggie and the Full Effect. I was only vaguely aware of this band before seeing them, but my girlfriend wanted to go, which pretty much meant that I wanted to go. So we went.

Reggie and the Full Effect isn't a lead singer and some additional musicians as the band name suggests, but a joke or gimmick over which Midwestern kids exchange knowing winks. It's like Ziggy Stardust with less dedication to the illusion. Imagine "This Is Spinal Tap" without going balls-out parody. The balls-out aspects of Bowie or the Tenacious D duo is what make their gigs work. With Reggie, who performed at the surprisingly quaint House of Blues venue, I was mostly unaware something was supposed to be funny or ironic.

Darius Rucker was not technically Hootie. Eric Clapton was not technically Derek and Joseph was never in a band called The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

And apparently, James Dewees is not technically Reggie.

Besides all the identity confusion, the show wasn't bad. It was loud. Generally speaking, loud equals good, or at least not bad. And because the show was neither despicable nor remarkable, it should come as no surprise that my intention isn't actually to discuss the show.

I'd much prefer to address the show's bouncer standing directly in front of the stage.

What is it about certain shows of certain bands that attract certain kids who act like dipsticks in order to replace the entertainment the band fell short of providing?

For the final third of Reggie's performance, punkie teens with skinny jeans and overly decorated hoodies found it entertaining to crowd surf their way toward the 12-foot-tall bouncer. It didn't take long for these goobers to figure out that the House of Blues wasn't going to eject crowd surfers from the concert. Instead, it instructed its security force to lift the sugar-high 90-pound skater kids off their hand-mattress and place them gently back on the ground from whence they came. That's it. No warning, no three-strikes-you're-out, not punch in the eye sockets. Nothing.

The main house bouncer manning the area directly in front of Reggie's caterwauling was bigger than Olympus. Unfortunately for him and anyone hungry to see some blood, the bouncers are forced to set each of the crowd surfers back onto the floor with the same ease you and I would set down a bag of recycling.

How agitating must that be?

GETTIN' THE FULL EFFECT: Although this is Reggie, this was not the Reggie
show I was at. I included this photo from a House of Blues in Myrtle Beach,
SC to approximate what those little punky bastards must have seen moments
before making the bouncer's night a little bit more awful.

With each new (and sometimes repeat) surfer, I watched assuming this would be the punkass to tip the bouncer's scale. I watched each incident hopeful that now would be when one of the little jerks would have the Twinkie-goo slapped out of him. I'm not sure what's more amazing, that the bouncer never snapped or that the teens kept trying their luck.

The kids became so enthralled with the spectacle of the lift 'n' set that they threw up devil-horns to their friends as soon as the bouncer's massive forearms closed in around them. I swear I saw one of them texting while they were being set back on the ground.

OMG!!!!
bowncers got me
C-ya ROTFL!
peece ;b

I imagine there's not an abundance of employment positions available for 850 pound dudes and therefore the house bouncer didn't want to lose his job. This is the only reasonable explanation as to why he didn't punch holes in the brains of half of these kids. It seems however, like the bouncer could have creatively dissuaded the continuing behavior. I mean, perhaps wearing a t-shirt warning that "Bitches get stitches" would have dissuaded a few. Or even better, what if the bouncer just wore a bikini brief and a tanktop? It was hot in the House of Blues and the big fella was sweaty. Who's gonna want to get a bear hug from that? What if the bouncer greased his torso with Crisco, Vaseline, or chicken fat? It wouldn't do a whole lot for total prevention, but you certainly wouldn't have repeat offenders or previous surfers recommending their actions to friends.

Get creative.

Or get permission from management to start beating some rock 'n' roll manners into the next crowd-surfing wave of text-happy grope-jockies.

Chipotlooting

Tip it in the bud: If you accidentally drop something in a tip jar, let it go,
'cause man, it's gone.

I recently found myself in Chipotle, which is about as newsworthy as an alert that I am sitting on the toilet (an alert often preceding a trip to Chipotle).

Chipotle addresses head-on what Taco Bell does not: it's all the same ingredients gussied up and rearranged as if it were something wholly new. For Taco Bell it's a point of embarrassment, for Chipotle, it's a business model.

I like the guys behind the counter, more specifically, the visible food preparers mixing up my chorizo and barbicoa. I've never been to a Chipotle that did not have employees of Latin decent preparing my food. This is important to me. I still say the worst Chinese food I've ever had was prepared by what looked like a gaggle of Irish women in Gloucester, Mass. This shouldn't have surprised me, the Irish suffered a famine because they only liked potatoes, why would they know how I prefer my shrimp fried rice? So when I see genuine latinos and latinas, it reminds me just how smart McDonald's Corp is.

Ask yourself: would you rather eat a burrito that I prepared for you, or someone native to the burrito culture?

Is it okay to say burrito culture?

Hopefully I've established that I'm more appreciative of Chipotle and all it's employees than I probably should be for a high-end fast food joint. My appreciation was turned in on itself and used as an ironic dagger to my soul.

I ordered a quadruple shot of corn tacos (expertly prepared by my seemingly authentic food staff), scooted down the high school lunch line, squared up in front of the cashier and crescendoed by paying for my meal with a $10 bill. The cashier handed back a single, a few coins and my receipt all in one fistful. This transaction was like a precarious drawbridge swinging over the tip jar moat. I'm in the habit of dropping whatever change I'm given into tip jars, just as much for my own convenience as it is alms to the restaurant staff. Like usual, I dropped the coins into the tip jar, but I also accidentally dropped the receipt. I reached in the tip jar to pull it out. The tip jar is not a trash can and because I fully intended to throw my receipt in the trash, it didn't seem right for me to leave my soon-to-be trash in their tip jar.

I looked up at the cashier as I was fishing for my receipt and something struck me as funny. The look on her face seemed confused and perhaps angry. I did what most people confused about a situation would do to coax out more information, I smiled. Nervously.

"Uh-uh. What are you doing?" the cashier asked.

Still confused. Still gripping the single in my fist. Still fishing for the receipt, I finally got it and showed it to the cashier.

"I dropped this," I said.

"That's for tips," she said. "Put that back."

Ohhh. Okay. I understood.

This was not the first time I've had change trouble in a food establishment and I didn't want to create another scene.

The cashier saw the single in my hand, probably paid as little attention to me as I did to her, not realizing she had just handed me the single and saw what she thought was me taking money out of the tip jar.

"You just gave me this dollar," I said. "I dropped my receipt and I was just fishing it out."

A problem flashed across my brain. I was admitting that I was not stealing a dollar from the tip jar, but I was also admitting that I hadn't put a dollar in the tip jar. I wasn't sure the total of the coins I tossed in there and feared it was three cents or something. I glanced at the receipt. It was 18 cents. My defense was crumbling.

Eighteen cents is not a good tip.

In my mind, I was agitated because I felt guilty. But for what? I hadn't stolen anything. I didn't even believe the Chipotle staff deserved tips, if I may be so honest. They get paid a higher hourly wage than waiters, they get paid a wage comparable to Burger King and Arby's and those employees didn't garner tips. It feels like I'm tipping whoever had the idea to put out a tip jar. Existence does not equal justification. Now I felt vilified and I didn't deserve it.

The only way I was going to get out of this pickle was if I specifically explained that I got $1.18 back in change, dropped the coins and kept the dollar because I hate pennies and like bills.

I also couldn't just drop the dollar in the tip jar because that's an admittance that I was, in fact, wrong. The cashier would be more angry if I put the dollar back. It's bad to be robbed, but worse to catch the thief. There was no sense spending a dollar I didn't think Chipotle deserved in the first place, just so the cashier could hate me more.

People were staring now, more at the cashier than me, but also me. I was blushing. I wondered if blushing equated to guilt. The guy who mixed the chorizo with the rice had come over, not to mediate, but to gawk.

I made the decision that I would not drop my single into the tip jar. Never say no if in a hostage negotiation and never apologize to a significant other if it's insincere. In volatile situations, it's best to stay neutral.

"I don't know what to tell you. I took nothing out of the jar except the receipt I dropped," I said.

The cashier smacked her lips and dramatically turned her attention to the customer after me. She was physically gesticulating that she was done with me. If this were 1993, she would have demanded that I "talk to the hand." If this were my sister, she would have rolled her eyes and said "whatever."

But the cashier did neither. Her manner of revenge was to ignore me, to leave me alone to the enjoyment of my tacos.

The tacos were good, but the taste in my mouth was bad and I haven't been back to Chipotle since...


...Saturday.

And then again on Sunday.