My friend Daniel put up a story on Facebook the other day about how he almost drove his car into a cow. I left a comment saying that I actually did hit a cow once, to which Daniel responded asking for me to clarify just what I meant by that statement. I responded with the whole story, exactly how it went down, and afterwards realized that it was actually a pretty good little tale that I thought would be worth sharing. So here it is:
It was night time and I was driving down the long narrow two-lane road that leads into the neighborhood where I grew up on the outskirts of Houston. It's a semi-rural semi-urban area with a bit of industrial thrown in for good measure. You can find livestock, heavy-machinery manufacturing, a trailer park, and houses all within a few square miles. There are no street lights on this stretch of road, so it's just you and your headlights and whatever assistance the night sky might have to offer. Way up ahead of me, I saw the tail lights of another vehicle swerve, brake, but then continue. It made me think I should give my brakes a tap. I'm glad I did because a second later, a cow stepped right up out of the ditch on the side of the road and walked right out in front of me. I slammed on my brakes. I would have swerved, but the ditches on either side of this road are quite deep, the kind you don't get out of without a tow truck. My tires were still screeching when I broadsided the beef, though I dont' think I was going too fast at that point. It was enough to knock the cow over, but it got right back up again and continued on across the road without so much as a moo. My truck's hood had a nice dent in it. So if anyone ever asks you, "Why did the cow cross the road?" you can look them in the eye and say, "To fuck with a man's truck."
Showing posts with label stories of our lives. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stories of our lives. Show all posts
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Monday, May 09, 2011
Youston
Memory’s tricky, you know? Even with only thirty-five years behind me, there are things in there that are plenty hazy. Half-remembered. Uncertain of their position in The Timeline, which often seems like a garden hose that’s been drug all over the yard until it’s not at all straight or linear, but instead full of loops and kinks and aw shit it’s caught on something. Sometimes I even think tiny shards of fiction have gotten themselves worked in there, like Memory and Imagination have been leaving stuff at each other’s houses. There’s the Truth of the Matter, the What Happened, and then there’s the Memory of the thing. I guess that’s why we point cameras at stuff. Why we write things down.
I don’t trust you, Memory. But like anybody else, I cling to you.
We were coming back from a place we’d been for a few days, a place that is not our home, a place with an ocean, or if you want to get all technical about it, a great big-ole Gulf. It belongs to Mexico, but they let us use it. It was Mother’s Day when we were coming back from this place, and the path from it to our home goes right through the place where my mother lives. So we made a plan for a little visit on the way back.
“Can you look at googlemaps and figure out how to get there from 45?” my wife asked.
“I can get us there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Uh, yeah.”
So Memory’s not all bad. Driving directions. Not so awful at those. Not yet anyway.
On the way in, we pass through the city’s core, a mass of serious towers wrapped up in ribbons of highway that bring people in from all corners to put in their hours and take home their cut. I point it out to the boys, and in their impressed silence, I can hear the gears turning, the comparisons being made to the downtown of our home city, the only other one they’ve ever seen which, by comparison, is quite meager. In this moment, I suspect, it’s occurring to them just how big things can be.
I spot the building where my mom worked for so many years. At least I think that’s it, the mid-sized white one with the insets of windows creating a stair-step effect up the side. Some architect’s contribution. When my mom worked on weekends, she would take me along with her, me with my bag of toys and, later, homework, her with her bags of...stuff. Thirty-plus floors up, there was a great view, machines that would give me all the soda I could drink, and plenty of desks to sit behind.
There’s something tugging at me as we pass through the core, then beyond it through the tangle of intersecting highways and on into the the northern half of the city. I can’t put a finger or any other body parts on it. The car’s speakers are churning out songs by a band that sounds, to my ears, like they have something to say about what it is to be a person from a place. Some of the band’s members are from this city - one of its many suburbs anyway. I know this, but I can’t help but feel that even if I didn’t, their notes and words would still be perfect accompaniment to this inexplicable churn I feel going on inside. There is no particular memory I can bring to the fore, no specific image, no other bit of sensory remembrance I can grab a hold of, but for a few seconds, I feel like I’m going to burst into tears, an urge I push back because I have zero explanation for it, and bursting into tears isn’t like sneezing or cracking your knuckles where you can just do it and then not explain.
“It’s like everything’s been relabelled,” I say at some point. I’m not sure I’m explaining it right, but my wife gets it anyway. She usually does.
The place where my mom lives is the place where I grew up. The same house in the same neighborhood - a word that some shorten to its last syllable when applying it to this area - on the city’s edge, but outside of it in name only, the kind of edge that seems to extend forever. Saturn’s fattest ring, visible from thousands of miles up.
“That’s the street where Bryan and Wade lived. Wade played guitar, too. We hung out. That’s Robert’s street. He was into Morrissey, did the whole Mexican pompadour thing.”
The main through street is a narrow two lanes lined by ditches so deep they seem to have their own gravitational pull. I saw plenty of vehicles go grill-first into those ditches over the years, plenty of tow-trucks called out to give them a lift. I once ran my truck into a cow to avoid running it into one of those ditches. The cow was fine.
“That’s the trailer park where my friend Craig lived.”
This small patch of land is an odd conglomeration of urban, rural, residential, and industrial whose oddness didn’t occur to me until I was outside of it. But that’s the way, isn’t it? You live in your box and the box is The Way Things Are until one day you poke your head outside of your box and realize that not all boxes are like your box. Some of them aren’t boxes at all.
We arrive at the place that used to be My House, but is now My Mom’s House. I don’t remember exactly when this transition took place, but I suspect it was gradual. We’ve spent the last two days going between a beach and a tent, so my wife and I want to shower, but the boys want to see these old Star Wars toys of mine that they’ve heard so much about. My Mom locates the box among her storage, catching a wasp sting for her troubles. We open the box and show the boys a few pieces of their old man’s past. Various action figures. A snow speeder. A T.I.E. fighter. A blaster, which is always good to have at your side. And the crown jewel, the Millennium Falcon, which is faster than she looks. This will all be theirs one day soon, but not today.
“I thought you had a lightsaber, Daddy.”
“I did, but it got pretty beat up in all those lightsaber battles.” It’s the truth. It’s something I remember.
The visit and lunch and everything are wonderful. I usually send flowers or something, so us being here, children in tow, is an extra treat.
The route out of town carries us through more of the sprawl. Memory flares up here and there, at this corner or that, but offers nothing really solid. It’s all just vague familiarity. Maybe something happened over there one time. Maybe we went there back when it used to be. Is that the street where...? Or maybe not. It’s all different, it’s all the same. It looks like everywhere else. My wife uses a term she read in article somewhere, “secondhand suburbs.” It’s perfect.
The tears have gone back down into their ducts to wait until they are needed again. But I still wonder what it was that called them up in this instance. There’s nothing at all remarkable about these stretches of city, but they were pieces of my everyday back in a life that seems forever ago, though really it’s been less than two decades. The blink of an eye. Not even that much. The start of the eyelid’s downward sweep, the lashes still pointed upwards, not having received word yet that a blink is in progress. Maybe my Memory is mourning the stuff I’ve already forgotten.
After we get home and the car is unloaded, I upload the pictures on my camera from the trip we’ve just finished. Most of them are of my boys on the beach, headed into or out of the water lapping up on the sand. Their joy is clear and unbridled. I stood in the water with them, the camera around my neck, and captured a few moments of it. Years from now, I’ll look at these pictures and smile as tears fall down my face, and I suspect that the question of why won’t even occur to me.
I don’t trust you, Memory. But like anybody else, I cling to you.
We were coming back from a place we’d been for a few days, a place that is not our home, a place with an ocean, or if you want to get all technical about it, a great big-ole Gulf. It belongs to Mexico, but they let us use it. It was Mother’s Day when we were coming back from this place, and the path from it to our home goes right through the place where my mother lives. So we made a plan for a little visit on the way back.
“Can you look at googlemaps and figure out how to get there from 45?” my wife asked.
“I can get us there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Uh, yeah.”
So Memory’s not all bad. Driving directions. Not so awful at those. Not yet anyway.
On the way in, we pass through the city’s core, a mass of serious towers wrapped up in ribbons of highway that bring people in from all corners to put in their hours and take home their cut. I point it out to the boys, and in their impressed silence, I can hear the gears turning, the comparisons being made to the downtown of our home city, the only other one they’ve ever seen which, by comparison, is quite meager. In this moment, I suspect, it’s occurring to them just how big things can be.
I spot the building where my mom worked for so many years. At least I think that’s it, the mid-sized white one with the insets of windows creating a stair-step effect up the side. Some architect’s contribution. When my mom worked on weekends, she would take me along with her, me with my bag of toys and, later, homework, her with her bags of...stuff. Thirty-plus floors up, there was a great view, machines that would give me all the soda I could drink, and plenty of desks to sit behind.
There’s something tugging at me as we pass through the core, then beyond it through the tangle of intersecting highways and on into the the northern half of the city. I can’t put a finger or any other body parts on it. The car’s speakers are churning out songs by a band that sounds, to my ears, like they have something to say about what it is to be a person from a place. Some of the band’s members are from this city - one of its many suburbs anyway. I know this, but I can’t help but feel that even if I didn’t, their notes and words would still be perfect accompaniment to this inexplicable churn I feel going on inside. There is no particular memory I can bring to the fore, no specific image, no other bit of sensory remembrance I can grab a hold of, but for a few seconds, I feel like I’m going to burst into tears, an urge I push back because I have zero explanation for it, and bursting into tears isn’t like sneezing or cracking your knuckles where you can just do it and then not explain.
“It’s like everything’s been relabelled,” I say at some point. I’m not sure I’m explaining it right, but my wife gets it anyway. She usually does.
The place where my mom lives is the place where I grew up. The same house in the same neighborhood - a word that some shorten to its last syllable when applying it to this area - on the city’s edge, but outside of it in name only, the kind of edge that seems to extend forever. Saturn’s fattest ring, visible from thousands of miles up.
“That’s the street where Bryan and Wade lived. Wade played guitar, too. We hung out. That’s Robert’s street. He was into Morrissey, did the whole Mexican pompadour thing.”
The main through street is a narrow two lanes lined by ditches so deep they seem to have their own gravitational pull. I saw plenty of vehicles go grill-first into those ditches over the years, plenty of tow-trucks called out to give them a lift. I once ran my truck into a cow to avoid running it into one of those ditches. The cow was fine.
“That’s the trailer park where my friend Craig lived.”
This small patch of land is an odd conglomeration of urban, rural, residential, and industrial whose oddness didn’t occur to me until I was outside of it. But that’s the way, isn’t it? You live in your box and the box is The Way Things Are until one day you poke your head outside of your box and realize that not all boxes are like your box. Some of them aren’t boxes at all.
We arrive at the place that used to be My House, but is now My Mom’s House. I don’t remember exactly when this transition took place, but I suspect it was gradual. We’ve spent the last two days going between a beach and a tent, so my wife and I want to shower, but the boys want to see these old Star Wars toys of mine that they’ve heard so much about. My Mom locates the box among her storage, catching a wasp sting for her troubles. We open the box and show the boys a few pieces of their old man’s past. Various action figures. A snow speeder. A T.I.E. fighter. A blaster, which is always good to have at your side. And the crown jewel, the Millennium Falcon, which is faster than she looks. This will all be theirs one day soon, but not today.
“I thought you had a lightsaber, Daddy.”
“I did, but it got pretty beat up in all those lightsaber battles.” It’s the truth. It’s something I remember.
The visit and lunch and everything are wonderful. I usually send flowers or something, so us being here, children in tow, is an extra treat.
The route out of town carries us through more of the sprawl. Memory flares up here and there, at this corner or that, but offers nothing really solid. It’s all just vague familiarity. Maybe something happened over there one time. Maybe we went there back when it used to be. Is that the street where...? Or maybe not. It’s all different, it’s all the same. It looks like everywhere else. My wife uses a term she read in article somewhere, “secondhand suburbs.” It’s perfect.
The tears have gone back down into their ducts to wait until they are needed again. But I still wonder what it was that called them up in this instance. There’s nothing at all remarkable about these stretches of city, but they were pieces of my everyday back in a life that seems forever ago, though really it’s been less than two decades. The blink of an eye. Not even that much. The start of the eyelid’s downward sweep, the lashes still pointed upwards, not having received word yet that a blink is in progress. Maybe my Memory is mourning the stuff I’ve already forgotten.
After we get home and the car is unloaded, I upload the pictures on my camera from the trip we’ve just finished. Most of them are of my boys on the beach, headed into or out of the water lapping up on the sand. Their joy is clear and unbridled. I stood in the water with them, the camera around my neck, and captured a few moments of it. Years from now, I’ll look at these pictures and smile as tears fall down my face, and I suspect that the question of why won’t even occur to me.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Me At Indie Ink
My wife had surgery on her poor shoulder back in the first week of January. And since she was somewhat down for the count in the weeks to follow, and since we provide shelter and care-taking for the two hellions that we conspired to bring into this world, I spent a couple of weeks or so working from home. The thing is, I ran into a few technical difficulties, and I was unable to get either my MacBook or my Windows laptop to connect to my work machine. To do that, I had to bring the old dinosaur desktop out of retirement. Though it be slow and clunky and in great need of updates, it still manages to handle the job of connecting to my office's network and allowing me to remote desktop in relatively well.
If any of you IT folks care to give me an assist so that I don't have to do that again, that'd be awesome.
Anyway, while I was puttering around on the old beast, I ran across some of my old files, particularly, some old pieces of writing that I had forgotten about. Most were scripts, some of which dated back as far as 1999. But aside from pieces meant for the stage, there were also a few short stories, one of which I had completely forgotten about. If I remember right, it came about because of a writing prompt that asked you to start a story with "Where Were You Last Night?" Or something like that. I fixed a couple of typos and was about to pop it up here when I remembered something about the Indie Ink folks looking for submissions. I sent it their way and they were kind enough to put it up. So pop on over, if you would, and give it a read. Hope you enjoy it.
If any of you IT folks care to give me an assist so that I don't have to do that again, that'd be awesome.
Anyway, while I was puttering around on the old beast, I ran across some of my old files, particularly, some old pieces of writing that I had forgotten about. Most were scripts, some of which dated back as far as 1999. But aside from pieces meant for the stage, there were also a few short stories, one of which I had completely forgotten about. If I remember right, it came about because of a writing prompt that asked you to start a story with "Where Were You Last Night?" Or something like that. I fixed a couple of typos and was about to pop it up here when I remembered something about the Indie Ink folks looking for submissions. I sent it their way and they were kind enough to put it up. So pop on over, if you would, and give it a read. Hope you enjoy it.
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Preventative Measures
The best part of having a little brother is that he’s slower than me because I’m faster than him because I’m bigger because I’m five and he’s only three. I was born before he was. He came out of my mommy’s tummy after I did, when I was three, and then I turned four, but now I’m five. Simie is three.
I can run faster than him because I’m bigger and I have superfast shoes. Simie has Spider Man on his shoes, but mine are still faster. They’re superfast.
When Daddy chases us, he can catch Simie easier than he can catch me because Simie is slower than me, so Daddy can catch him first. Sometimes Daddy does The Monster and he chases us. When I’m big, I’m going to be faster than Daddy and he won’t be able to pick me up anymore and I’ll be able to pick him up because I’ll be bigger than him. I’ll be able to pick up Simie too.
Ack-shoo-uh-lee, I can already pick up Simie. The other day I picked him up and put him on the potty so he could go poop but then Daddy had to come wipe him because I can’t do that yet.
Sometimes people that are not as old as you can be bigger than you and that’s okay. Like my friend Bella. She was born after I was, so she’s not as many as me yet. She was born in April. She’s four. But she’s a little bit bigger than me, but I’m faster because I’m superfast.
I used to be four, but now I’m five.
I’m really good at Legos. For Christmas, Santa Claus brought me a whole bunch of Legos that were still in their boxes and they came with restructions. I got a castle and a spaceship from Star Wars. It’s Luke’s spaceship with R2-D2. He says bee-boop bop-boo-beep flurp!
Luke Skywalker has a lightsaber. It goes ggzzzzhhhh.
When I was little I used to drink milk out of bottles like a baby but now I drink milk out of a mug because I’m a big boy. Mommy and Daddy use mugs to drink coffee but I drink milk.
Luke is a Jedi. Obi-wan Kenobi is his daddy.
Sometimes I help Mommy in the garden. I like to do that. We grew tomatoes and broccoli. And kale. And we grew a watermelon in the summer but the chickens ate the other watermelon and we ate, uh, we ate the big watermelon. It was like the ones you buy in the store except we grew it in our yard.
The other day when we were working in the garden, um, Simie hit me in the head with a shovel and it made me drop my shovel and I was crying. I thew a rake at him but it missed so I threw a rock and it hit him in the face and he started crying and then we were both crying so Mommy took us inside and gave us a snack and we watched a Spongebob.
We had to put a fence around the garden so the chickens wouldn’t eat it all. Some of the chickens lay blue eggs but they taste the same.
I made the Luke Skywalker spaceship all by myself with my Daddy’s help. He helps me find the pieces and I put them together like it says in the restructions. We made the wings and then put them all together so they looked like a X. That’s why it’s called a X-wing.
The wings shoot lasers at the bad guys. The Death Star shoots big lasers.
We didn’t have a garden at our old house. Simie was born when we were living in our new house so he came from that garden and then he was in Mommy’s belly and then he came out, but I must have been in another garden, and then I was in Mommy’s belly because I was teeny-tiny. But now I’m big.
The castle is big too! My Mommy helped me make it. And Daddy, but first it was Mommy, but then Mommy had to go run some errands so it was me and Daddy and Simie. Simie was playing with his trains in his room while me and Daddy made the castle. He was in his underwear because he took his pants off. Simie sometimes pees his pants and runs around with his pee-pee out. And his butt! Hahahahahahahahahahaha!
Simie broke the train track that we made in our room. Me and Daddy made it together and Simie helped but then while we were making the castle, Simie broke the train tracks and we could hear him throwing the pieces in the box and if he breaks them there won’t be anymore and we won’t have them to play with because they cost a lot of pennies.
I think there were some babies in the garden by where the watermelon used to be. Mommy said that babies come from gardens like the garden we have, so first they’re in the garden and then they’re in their Mommy’s tummies. So I had to get rid of them.
Simie came downstairs and he picked up my Luke Skywalker spaceship and he went zhhooom zhhoom! And then he threw it and it hit the floor and broke into a hundred million pieces. They went everywhere. Daddy yelled and Simie ran back upstairs. Daddy said Simie probably thought the spaceship could really fly.
If I had a spaceship, I would shoot lasers at the bad guys. They’d go pee-ew pee-ew pee-ew! Darth Vader is a bad guy. He lives at the Death Star. He says hhhhoooohhh hhhhaaaaahhh. The Death Star is his house.
Daddy mostly fixed the spaceship, but there was a piece we couldn’t find, but it’ll probably turn up because it has to be around here somewhere. It didn’t just walk off by itself.
Then Simie came downstairs and he took a piece off of my castle and I told him to stop but he wouldn’t stop because he wasn’t listening.
Aren’t you listening, Simie? How is that helping? Do you hear me?
Spongebob has a snail named Gary. He says meow because he thinks he’s a cat.
Sometimes the chickens get in the garden and Mommy and Daddy have to get them out before they eat all of our food. They’ll eat all of it because they like everything. I like broccoli. It’s good for you. It gives you muscles and makes you superfast. Like me.
I always eat all my dinner. You have to eat a good dinner or you’ll shrink and turn back into a baby. Sometimes Simie doesn’t eat a good dinner and Mommy and Daddy tell him that he needs to eat his dinner or he’ll turn back into a baby and have to go back into Mommy’s tummy. Or maybe he’ll have to go back to the garden.
Simie likes to pick up the chickens and Mommy always yells at him because she says he’s going to break their little chicken necks and then they won’t be able to lay eggs for us anymore because they’ll be dead.
Put the chicken down, Simie. Put it down. Aren’t you listening?
I don’t know if any of the chickens ate any of the babies in the garden. If a chicken ate a baby, then it would have the baby in its tummy. And then it would have a baby in an egg.
Simie broke my favorite mug. It had a picture of an owl on it and I used it to drink my milk out of before bed. He threw it from the top of the stairs and it hit the ground and broke into a million pieces and Mommy said we couldn’t fix it because it was broken into too many pieces. Simie said he was sorry but I’m not sorry. Mommy said they would get me another one but that one was my favorite so I’m not sorry.
Mommy and Daddy were still asleep this morning when I came downstairs and Simie was at the Lego table and he had broken my castle because he breaks everything. Mommy and Daddy told him not to mess with the castle but he did anyway so I went outside to the garden and pulled up all the plants so there wouldn’t be anymore babies because babies break everything.
There were keys in the door so I just turned it like Mommy and Daddy do and it unlocked the door so I could go outside. The gate to the garden was already open but I know how to open it. I’m not sure which plants were the babies so I just pulled them all up and threw them on the ground for the chickens. Mommy said the ones by the fence were tomatoes, but tomatoes are red and these had green balls on them, so I pulled them up out of the ground because they might be babies.
I pulled up the ones that Mommy said were broccoli because I didn’t see any broccoli on them because we have broccoli in the freezer so I know what it looks like.
I let the chickens out of their coop so they could come into the garden and eat it up. They came in and started eating it aaaall up.
Then Mommy came outside and she saw me and she yelled at me to stop, but there was another plant that I needed to pull up so I pulled it up and threw it to the chickens and she yelled at me to stop again and then she ran after me and I ran out the gate. The other gate that goes to the front yard. I’m big enough to open it now. She yelled at me to stop, but I kept running because I’m fast.
I’m superfast.
I can run faster than him because I’m bigger and I have superfast shoes. Simie has Spider Man on his shoes, but mine are still faster. They’re superfast.
When Daddy chases us, he can catch Simie easier than he can catch me because Simie is slower than me, so Daddy can catch him first. Sometimes Daddy does The Monster and he chases us. When I’m big, I’m going to be faster than Daddy and he won’t be able to pick me up anymore and I’ll be able to pick him up because I’ll be bigger than him. I’ll be able to pick up Simie too.
Ack-shoo-uh-lee, I can already pick up Simie. The other day I picked him up and put him on the potty so he could go poop but then Daddy had to come wipe him because I can’t do that yet.
Sometimes people that are not as old as you can be bigger than you and that’s okay. Like my friend Bella. She was born after I was, so she’s not as many as me yet. She was born in April. She’s four. But she’s a little bit bigger than me, but I’m faster because I’m superfast.
I used to be four, but now I’m five.
I’m really good at Legos. For Christmas, Santa Claus brought me a whole bunch of Legos that were still in their boxes and they came with restructions. I got a castle and a spaceship from Star Wars. It’s Luke’s spaceship with R2-D2. He says bee-boop bop-boo-beep flurp!
Luke Skywalker has a lightsaber. It goes ggzzzzhhhh.
When I was little I used to drink milk out of bottles like a baby but now I drink milk out of a mug because I’m a big boy. Mommy and Daddy use mugs to drink coffee but I drink milk.
Luke is a Jedi. Obi-wan Kenobi is his daddy.
Sometimes I help Mommy in the garden. I like to do that. We grew tomatoes and broccoli. And kale. And we grew a watermelon in the summer but the chickens ate the other watermelon and we ate, uh, we ate the big watermelon. It was like the ones you buy in the store except we grew it in our yard.
The other day when we were working in the garden, um, Simie hit me in the head with a shovel and it made me drop my shovel and I was crying. I thew a rake at him but it missed so I threw a rock and it hit him in the face and he started crying and then we were both crying so Mommy took us inside and gave us a snack and we watched a Spongebob.
We had to put a fence around the garden so the chickens wouldn’t eat it all. Some of the chickens lay blue eggs but they taste the same.
I made the Luke Skywalker spaceship all by myself with my Daddy’s help. He helps me find the pieces and I put them together like it says in the restructions. We made the wings and then put them all together so they looked like a X. That’s why it’s called a X-wing.
The wings shoot lasers at the bad guys. The Death Star shoots big lasers.
We didn’t have a garden at our old house. Simie was born when we were living in our new house so he came from that garden and then he was in Mommy’s belly and then he came out, but I must have been in another garden, and then I was in Mommy’s belly because I was teeny-tiny. But now I’m big.
The castle is big too! My Mommy helped me make it. And Daddy, but first it was Mommy, but then Mommy had to go run some errands so it was me and Daddy and Simie. Simie was playing with his trains in his room while me and Daddy made the castle. He was in his underwear because he took his pants off. Simie sometimes pees his pants and runs around with his pee-pee out. And his butt! Hahahahahahahahahahaha!
Simie broke the train track that we made in our room. Me and Daddy made it together and Simie helped but then while we were making the castle, Simie broke the train tracks and we could hear him throwing the pieces in the box and if he breaks them there won’t be anymore and we won’t have them to play with because they cost a lot of pennies.
I think there were some babies in the garden by where the watermelon used to be. Mommy said that babies come from gardens like the garden we have, so first they’re in the garden and then they’re in their Mommy’s tummies. So I had to get rid of them.
Simie came downstairs and he picked up my Luke Skywalker spaceship and he went zhhooom zhhoom! And then he threw it and it hit the floor and broke into a hundred million pieces. They went everywhere. Daddy yelled and Simie ran back upstairs. Daddy said Simie probably thought the spaceship could really fly.
If I had a spaceship, I would shoot lasers at the bad guys. They’d go pee-ew pee-ew pee-ew! Darth Vader is a bad guy. He lives at the Death Star. He says hhhhoooohhh hhhhaaaaahhh. The Death Star is his house.
Daddy mostly fixed the spaceship, but there was a piece we couldn’t find, but it’ll probably turn up because it has to be around here somewhere. It didn’t just walk off by itself.
Then Simie came downstairs and he took a piece off of my castle and I told him to stop but he wouldn’t stop because he wasn’t listening.
Aren’t you listening, Simie? How is that helping? Do you hear me?
Spongebob has a snail named Gary. He says meow because he thinks he’s a cat.
Sometimes the chickens get in the garden and Mommy and Daddy have to get them out before they eat all of our food. They’ll eat all of it because they like everything. I like broccoli. It’s good for you. It gives you muscles and makes you superfast. Like me.
I always eat all my dinner. You have to eat a good dinner or you’ll shrink and turn back into a baby. Sometimes Simie doesn’t eat a good dinner and Mommy and Daddy tell him that he needs to eat his dinner or he’ll turn back into a baby and have to go back into Mommy’s tummy. Or maybe he’ll have to go back to the garden.
Simie likes to pick up the chickens and Mommy always yells at him because she says he’s going to break their little chicken necks and then they won’t be able to lay eggs for us anymore because they’ll be dead.
Put the chicken down, Simie. Put it down. Aren’t you listening?
I don’t know if any of the chickens ate any of the babies in the garden. If a chicken ate a baby, then it would have the baby in its tummy. And then it would have a baby in an egg.
Simie broke my favorite mug. It had a picture of an owl on it and I used it to drink my milk out of before bed. He threw it from the top of the stairs and it hit the ground and broke into a million pieces and Mommy said we couldn’t fix it because it was broken into too many pieces. Simie said he was sorry but I’m not sorry. Mommy said they would get me another one but that one was my favorite so I’m not sorry.
Mommy and Daddy were still asleep this morning when I came downstairs and Simie was at the Lego table and he had broken my castle because he breaks everything. Mommy and Daddy told him not to mess with the castle but he did anyway so I went outside to the garden and pulled up all the plants so there wouldn’t be anymore babies because babies break everything.
There were keys in the door so I just turned it like Mommy and Daddy do and it unlocked the door so I could go outside. The gate to the garden was already open but I know how to open it. I’m not sure which plants were the babies so I just pulled them all up and threw them on the ground for the chickens. Mommy said the ones by the fence were tomatoes, but tomatoes are red and these had green balls on them, so I pulled them up out of the ground because they might be babies.
I pulled up the ones that Mommy said were broccoli because I didn’t see any broccoli on them because we have broccoli in the freezer so I know what it looks like.
I let the chickens out of their coop so they could come into the garden and eat it up. They came in and started eating it aaaall up.
Then Mommy came outside and she saw me and she yelled at me to stop, but there was another plant that I needed to pull up so I pulled it up and threw it to the chickens and she yelled at me to stop again and then she ran after me and I ran out the gate. The other gate that goes to the front yard. I’m big enough to open it now. She yelled at me to stop, but I kept running because I’m fast.
I’m superfast.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Badass Ice Chest of Badassery
Normally when I think about a badass ice chest, I think of the one that my friends Bill and Aaron bring with them to parties. These guys are serious beer drinkers. They don't like to worry about the selection and quantity of beer that will be at the party or whether there will be enough room in the fridge to store their stash, so they just take care of both problems themselves. Whenever these guys come rolling in, you can be sure that one of them will be pulling their badass ice chest along behind them (it's got wheels, yo) and that it will be packed with an ice cold assortment. Theirs is a badass ice chest indeed.
But that's not the badass ice chest I'm talking about here.
My wife started out the new year by letting some doctor cut open her shoulder and saw on her bones. Her shoulder had been hurting her for well over a year or something, and it's still hurting her now, except now it's hurting because it's recovering from surgery and not because her shit's all fucked up. At least that's the hope. That's what we're paying you for, Dr. Shoulder Scraper.
To help manage the pain of her recovery, our insurance was kind enough to pay for this neat little ice chest contraption that, while not wheeled or filled with beer or even very large, is pretty badass in its own way. Its sole purpose is to pump ice cold water into a pad that can be placed atop an injured area of a person's body. Check it out in action:
"The fuck are you doing?" was the question I had to answer of my wife right before I took this picture. "Don't worry, I won't include your head," I assured her. It's not that my wife is not beautiful because she is, but a period of surgery recovery is not a person's most attractive time. You're all tired and drugged and worn-out and slow-moving. An attitude of "fuck it" pervades all but the most essential hygiene-oriented tasks. You're doing good to get a shower. Flannel becomes like, the most wonderful fabric ever.
As you can see, this ice chest would not hold a lot of beer, but it does hold significant powers of pain relief. For the first few days after surgery, I was filling it and refilling it with a fresh load of ice and water several times a day, along with fetching pills, keeping everybody fed, reasonably clean, clothed, entertained. Oh, and trying to get some work-work done. Yay for working from home. Lucky for us, we've gotten a lot of help from family. Somewhere in there I turned 35. I had a brief episode of depression inspired by feeling like I haven't accomplished enough with my life, got mostly over it, then went and made dinner.
Here's hoping this is the most pain we suffer all year.
But that's not the badass ice chest I'm talking about here.
My wife started out the new year by letting some doctor cut open her shoulder and saw on her bones. Her shoulder had been hurting her for well over a year or something, and it's still hurting her now, except now it's hurting because it's recovering from surgery and not because her shit's all fucked up. At least that's the hope. That's what we're paying you for, Dr. Shoulder Scraper.
To help manage the pain of her recovery, our insurance was kind enough to pay for this neat little ice chest contraption that, while not wheeled or filled with beer or even very large, is pretty badass in its own way. Its sole purpose is to pump ice cold water into a pad that can be placed atop an injured area of a person's body. Check it out in action:
As you can see, this ice chest would not hold a lot of beer, but it does hold significant powers of pain relief. For the first few days after surgery, I was filling it and refilling it with a fresh load of ice and water several times a day, along with fetching pills, keeping everybody fed, reasonably clean, clothed, entertained. Oh, and trying to get some work-work done. Yay for working from home. Lucky for us, we've gotten a lot of help from family. Somewhere in there I turned 35. I had a brief episode of depression inspired by feeling like I haven't accomplished enough with my life, got mostly over it, then went and made dinner.
Here's hoping this is the most pain we suffer all year.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
John Williams Ruins Everything
I remember one such occasion in my own life when I was hanging out with my friends Lucas and Tim. Somebody, I don’t remember who, started singing the theme to “Sanford and Son.” Now that I think about it, I think it was me. I like singing the theme to “Sanford and Son.” There’s a relaxing quality to it. My friends, Lucas and Tim, told me that John Williams had written the theme to “Sanford and Son.” This is the John Williams who wrote the theme to “Star Wars.” Oh wait, you know what? We might have been singing the theme to “Star Wars” when this happened. Whatever theme it was, Lucas and Tim told me that John Williams of “Star Wars” theme fame had also written the theme to “Sanford and Son” and because I am sometimes gullible, I believed them. “Really? Really?” I asked. And not in a skeptical tone, but a really excited one. I was so happy to hear that John Williams, the guy who had written duuuuun DUUUUUN dun dun dun DUUUUUUUUN dun, dun dun dun DUUUUUUUUN dun DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUUN had also written bowm bowm bownowm. bowm bowm bownowm bowmown bowm.
So you can imagine how upset I was when I saw the smiles on Lucas and Tim’s faces that told me that they were just pulling my stupid leg. I wasn’t upset that I had been tricked. I was upset that this vision they had set before me was not reality. I really wanted John Williams to have written the theme song to “Sanford and Son.” Wouldn't that be a wonderful world to live in?
Goddammit, John Williams. You ruin everything.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
What's Wrong With Your Mind?
I realized a while back that the music loaded on my iPhonamapod was lacking something: good ugly brutal drill-seargent-mean workout music. Sure, I had plenty of uptempo jams in there, some of them plenty aggressive, even. But I had no individual albums loaded up that could drive me all the way through from warm-up to that final agonizing “DON’T YOU FUCKING GIVE UP YOU FUCKING PUSSY!” set and on into the cool-down. So this past weekend while I was making some adjustments to my carrying-around music, I remedied this situation by uploading one of the most perfect workout albums ever recorded, Pantera’s 1992 Texas metal masterpiece, Vulgar Display of Power.
Except for the last song because it’s a piece of shit.
Understand, I was sixteen years old when this album came out, so I was at a point in my life when I was all about the blind screaming rage. As far as I was concerned, this album was the pinnacle of humanity’s creative endeavors. I don’t recall exactly what I was so very pissed off about all the time. The usual package of teenage boy woes with a crate of fat kid afflictions piled on top of it. But really and truly, the specific focus of one’s anger is of secondary importance when you’ve got power cords, double-kick drums, and demonic vocals providing the sonic backdrop for your angst. I had that shit on constant rotation.
So the other day I went to the gym, ready to give it a try. The gym I go to is in the bottom floor of the building next door to where I work. I go there because it’s free and because there’s hardly anyone there. I’ve often got the whole place to myself. As I walked over, I detected -- what is--? Is that apprehension? Nervousness? See, I had not actually listened to this collection of songs in ages. What would my beloved Vulgar Display sound like to me lo these many years later? Would the production sound shitty compared to the quality of recorded music now? Would it seem so silly as to be painful? Or, horror of horrors, would the music of my youth be too aggressive for these aged sound receptacles of mine?
But as soon as “Mouth For War” came thundering in, all these worries went and fucked off somewhere. It was exactly what I had been looking for. I’m not going to go into the details of my exercise routine because then I’d have to punch myself in the face for being one of those people, but suffice it to say that by the time “Fucking Hostile!” rolled around, I was feeling, well, not exactly fucking hostile, but at least reasonably hostile. There was definitely some hostility emanating from my person, but in a positive sense. The blood was pumping, the music was aggro -- I was in a good place.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the door open and a person enter. I turned to see who it was and damn near dropped a weight on my foot. It took a long moment to register what I was seeing, but when the synapses finally got to firing, I realized that, yes, standing in front of me was none other than my old friend Jennifer. What was she doing in town? At my gym no less? What the hell was she smiling at? I pulled the buds out of my ears and stood there breathing heavy for a moment, trying to regain the ability to speak. Between gasps, I forced out the question.
“Jen?”
Something about her looked strange, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. She laughed and shook her head.
“I can’t believe you’re still listening to that shit.”
While it may not have been the absolute last thing I would’ve expected her to say, it wouldn’t have been among my top hundred guesses. I’d barely started to babble out a response -- “Whahuhwhowhat’reyouhuh?” -- when the door opened yet again and in walked another old friend, my oldest friend actually. I’ve known Chad damn near my entire life, since we were just little kids having sword fights with curtain rods and watching the skies over our suburban Houston homes for UFOs. He walked in and stood next to Jennifer. They didn’t look at each other, only at me, like they’d planned this little meeting. And just as I’d noted with Jen, he looked strange somehow. He laughed too.
“I can’t believe you, man.” he said.
“What?” There was clearly a joke here that I was on the outside of. “You can’t believe -- Pete?"
And then who else should walk in but none other than my freshman year crackhead roommate, Pete. And when I say crackhead, I don’t mean he busted his skull open while diving into the wrong end of the pool; I mean that he started off our freshman year at the University of Texas as a harmless pothead and was inhaling rock through a glass tube by the next summer. Until this very moment, that was the last I had seen or heard of him.
“Hey T-man, what’s happening?” He smiled and lit a cigarette. He always was the kind to ignore No Smoking signs, then act surprised when someone in authority pointed them out to him. Oh gosh, I’m so sorry!
And there they stood in a line, all facing me, watching me pant and sweat. An odd reunion in which I seemed to be the only person surprised at its happening. These three and I, the four of us, had never been all friends together. The three of them had maybe met each other at some point or another, but my relationships with each of them had been separate. So the way they’d all gathered here, completely unsurprised to see me or each other, it was highly suspicious. I had the strange feeling I was being intervened with.
And then it dawned on me, Pete’s scraggly hair, his acne-scarred cheeks, the inch and a half long cylinder of ash at the tip of his cigarette that would crumble under its own weight at any second and fall down on his hand -- he was exactly as he was the last time I saw him over fifteen years ago. And Chad with his wide eyes, long hair, and rail-thin body, Jennifer with her jet black hair pulled back with little butterfly clips and that scent of vanilla that followed her like so many admirers -- these weren’t the people they are now; these were the people they were then, back in the day, so to speak, back when the album I currently had blaring in my headphones was one of my mainstays. Pete’s cigarette ash looked close to teetering, but if he was worried about it, it didn’t show. “Seriously man, you still listening to this metal shit?”
“What?” I was totally thrown off. Were these really my friends from over a decade and a half ago standing before me in this gym? What were they doing here? Why these three? Were there more coming? Was one of my exes about to walk through that door?
“You’re what, 30-something now dude?” asked 17, 18, maybe 19 year old Chad. “You haven’t mellowed out yet?”
“What? No! I mean, yes, I have. I haven’t listened to this in years. I--what’s your problem? You come from the past to hassle me about my music?”
“Who is this again?” asked Jennifer.
“Fucking Pantera,” drawled Pete. “Y’all, I remember this fool used to play this shit all the time. And sometimes he’d strap on that guitar of his and fucking play along with it. He’d be all--” and then he proceeded to demonstrate for Chad and Jen what I looked like when I did my dorm room rock god routine. I don’t recall being quite so spastic, but I didn’t argue. I was faintly aware of a guitar solo emanating from my dislodged ear buds. I left it alone, leaving Dimebag Darrell, R.I.P., to do as he pleased.
“Okay Pete, first of all, fuck you dude. I couldn’t listen to classic rock for an entire year after living with you. A year! You made me not want to listen to Zeppelin! And The Doors still irritate me.”
“And you’re still wearing that?” asked Chad, pointing at the ratty old Tool tee-shirt I was sporting.
“Oh my god! You had that in college!” said Jennifer.
“He had it in high school!” said Chad. “We both got that exact same shirt when we saw ‘em in concert senior year.”
“Trav, come on.” said Jen. “I had slightly higher hopes for you than this. Buy some clothes, would you?”
“I’m just wearing it to exercise!” I protested.
“It’s like you haven’t grown up at all.” she continued.
“Yes I have! Seriously, look at this thing. It’s covered in holes. I only wear it to work out or to mow the lawn or -- oh! I have a lawn! I have gardens! I have kids! A wife! Chickens! See? Grown-up stuff.”
“So are you still listening to Tool?” asked Chad.
“On occasion, yeah, and so are you, I might add. Current you, I mean. In fact, you just saw them in concert not long ago.”
“Really? They’re still around?”
“Yep. You went and put the pictures up on your Facebook.”
“What’s a face book?” he asked.
“A book with faces in it?” said Jennifer.
“Why would I put pictures of a concert in a face book?”
“Maybe they were pictures of faces?”
“That sounds stupid.”
“It is stupid.” I said.
“So hey man,” said Pete, “it looks like you ain’t done a whole lot with yourself since college, huh?”
“What?!” I laughed because this had all become so ludicrous. A crackhead was standing here telling me that I hadn’t done much with my life. Three inches of ash hung precariously off the end of his cigarette. “Dude, I’ve done plenty. Probably more than you have, wherever the fuck you are. For all I know you’re fucking dead.”
“Oh now that’s just mean.” said Jennifer.
“Naw, he may well be right.” said Pete. “I ain’t exactly been walking a righteous path.”
“Still, it’s not a nice thing to say.” she said, looking at me. “Be nice.”
“Yeah,” said Chad. “It’s not our fault you’re all old and still pissed off, listening to this shit.”
“I’m not old.” I said.
“They playing Metallica on classic rock radio yet?” he asked
“He was always so angry.” said Jen. “What were so angry about anyway?”
“I wasn’t--! Look, is there something you need from me? Something you need to tell me? Or did you just travel into the future to give me shit?”
“You’re being awfully defensive.” said Jennifer.
“No I’m not!”
My hostility, it was increasing.
“You fuckers are standing here giving me shit about my life just because you happened to catch me listening to Pantera for the first time in literally years when in fact I’ve...” and I started babbling, stammering, spilling out an incoherent bullet list of my life in no particular order, things I’d done, things that had happened to me, accomplishments, failures, the most random of memories, any and every thing I could think of to prove that my life hadn’t gone on pause all this time, that I’d been living, doing. And it wasn’t until I heard myself actually say, “I’m a different person now!” It was only then, as I stood there with cool air-conditioned sweat dripping down my face, that I looked at the three of them and realized the obvious.
These stupid kids don’t know a damn thing.
Well, they know how to travel through time
I suppose there’s that.
I laughed. “You fucking kids...you don’t know shit, you know that?” And then they laughed, seemingly with me rather than at me for the first time during this exchange. The ash of Pete’s cigarette fell to the floor whole and silently exploded into dust on the industrial carpet. He didn’t seem to notice. We just stood there laughing like idiots. A gym employee passed through, but barely gave us a glance.
With the tables flipped over in my favor, I thought I’d have some fun and drop a few hints about what the future had in store for them.
“So Chad...” I started, ever thought about joining the Army? But before I put voice to the question, he disappeared. Pop. The air rushed to fill the space that had become unoccupied so quickly. Jen and Pete looked at each other, at me, then they disappeared too. Pop. Pop.
Well, I thought, that was....
By this time I was all cooled off and didn’t much feel like hopping back into the routine. I shouldered my backpack and headed out the door, slipping the buds back into my ears. It was right in the middle of a song.
Except for the last song because it’s a piece of shit.
 |
| Dude got punched |
So the other day I went to the gym, ready to give it a try. The gym I go to is in the bottom floor of the building next door to where I work. I go there because it’s free and because there’s hardly anyone there. I’ve often got the whole place to myself. As I walked over, I detected -- what is--? Is that apprehension? Nervousness? See, I had not actually listened to this collection of songs in ages. What would my beloved Vulgar Display sound like to me lo these many years later? Would the production sound shitty compared to the quality of recorded music now? Would it seem so silly as to be painful? Or, horror of horrors, would the music of my youth be too aggressive for these aged sound receptacles of mine?
But as soon as “Mouth For War” came thundering in, all these worries went and fucked off somewhere. It was exactly what I had been looking for. I’m not going to go into the details of my exercise routine because then I’d have to punch myself in the face for being one of those people, but suffice it to say that by the time “Fucking Hostile!” rolled around, I was feeling, well, not exactly fucking hostile, but at least reasonably hostile. There was definitely some hostility emanating from my person, but in a positive sense. The blood was pumping, the music was aggro -- I was in a good place.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the door open and a person enter. I turned to see who it was and damn near dropped a weight on my foot. It took a long moment to register what I was seeing, but when the synapses finally got to firing, I realized that, yes, standing in front of me was none other than my old friend Jennifer. What was she doing in town? At my gym no less? What the hell was she smiling at? I pulled the buds out of my ears and stood there breathing heavy for a moment, trying to regain the ability to speak. Between gasps, I forced out the question.
“Jen?”
Something about her looked strange, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. She laughed and shook her head.
“I can’t believe you’re still listening to that shit.”
While it may not have been the absolute last thing I would’ve expected her to say, it wouldn’t have been among my top hundred guesses. I’d barely started to babble out a response -- “Whahuhwhowhat’reyouhuh?” -- when the door opened yet again and in walked another old friend, my oldest friend actually. I’ve known Chad damn near my entire life, since we were just little kids having sword fights with curtain rods and watching the skies over our suburban Houston homes for UFOs. He walked in and stood next to Jennifer. They didn’t look at each other, only at me, like they’d planned this little meeting. And just as I’d noted with Jen, he looked strange somehow. He laughed too.
“I can’t believe you, man.” he said.
“What?” There was clearly a joke here that I was on the outside of. “You can’t believe -- Pete?"
And then who else should walk in but none other than my freshman year crackhead roommate, Pete. And when I say crackhead, I don’t mean he busted his skull open while diving into the wrong end of the pool; I mean that he started off our freshman year at the University of Texas as a harmless pothead and was inhaling rock through a glass tube by the next summer. Until this very moment, that was the last I had seen or heard of him.
“Hey T-man, what’s happening?” He smiled and lit a cigarette. He always was the kind to ignore No Smoking signs, then act surprised when someone in authority pointed them out to him. Oh gosh, I’m so sorry!
And there they stood in a line, all facing me, watching me pant and sweat. An odd reunion in which I seemed to be the only person surprised at its happening. These three and I, the four of us, had never been all friends together. The three of them had maybe met each other at some point or another, but my relationships with each of them had been separate. So the way they’d all gathered here, completely unsurprised to see me or each other, it was highly suspicious. I had the strange feeling I was being intervened with.
And then it dawned on me, Pete’s scraggly hair, his acne-scarred cheeks, the inch and a half long cylinder of ash at the tip of his cigarette that would crumble under its own weight at any second and fall down on his hand -- he was exactly as he was the last time I saw him over fifteen years ago. And Chad with his wide eyes, long hair, and rail-thin body, Jennifer with her jet black hair pulled back with little butterfly clips and that scent of vanilla that followed her like so many admirers -- these weren’t the people they are now; these were the people they were then, back in the day, so to speak, back when the album I currently had blaring in my headphones was one of my mainstays. Pete’s cigarette ash looked close to teetering, but if he was worried about it, it didn’t show. “Seriously man, you still listening to this metal shit?”
“What?” I was totally thrown off. Were these really my friends from over a decade and a half ago standing before me in this gym? What were they doing here? Why these three? Were there more coming? Was one of my exes about to walk through that door?
“You’re what, 30-something now dude?” asked 17, 18, maybe 19 year old Chad. “You haven’t mellowed out yet?”
“What? No! I mean, yes, I have. I haven’t listened to this in years. I--what’s your problem? You come from the past to hassle me about my music?”
“Who is this again?” asked Jennifer.
“Fucking Pantera,” drawled Pete. “Y’all, I remember this fool used to play this shit all the time. And sometimes he’d strap on that guitar of his and fucking play along with it. He’d be all--” and then he proceeded to demonstrate for Chad and Jen what I looked like when I did my dorm room rock god routine. I don’t recall being quite so spastic, but I didn’t argue. I was faintly aware of a guitar solo emanating from my dislodged ear buds. I left it alone, leaving Dimebag Darrell, R.I.P., to do as he pleased.
“Okay Pete, first of all, fuck you dude. I couldn’t listen to classic rock for an entire year after living with you. A year! You made me not want to listen to Zeppelin! And The Doors still irritate me.”
“And you’re still wearing that?” asked Chad, pointing at the ratty old Tool tee-shirt I was sporting.
“Oh my god! You had that in college!” said Jennifer.
 |
| Holeyer than thou |
“Trav, come on.” said Jen. “I had slightly higher hopes for you than this. Buy some clothes, would you?”
“I’m just wearing it to exercise!” I protested.
“It’s like you haven’t grown up at all.” she continued.
“Yes I have! Seriously, look at this thing. It’s covered in holes. I only wear it to work out or to mow the lawn or -- oh! I have a lawn! I have gardens! I have kids! A wife! Chickens! See? Grown-up stuff.”
“So are you still listening to Tool?” asked Chad.
“On occasion, yeah, and so are you, I might add. Current you, I mean. In fact, you just saw them in concert not long ago.”
“Really? They’re still around?”
“Yep. You went and put the pictures up on your Facebook.”
“What’s a face book?” he asked.
“A book with faces in it?” said Jennifer.
“Why would I put pictures of a concert in a face book?”
“Maybe they were pictures of faces?”
“That sounds stupid.”
“It is stupid.” I said.
“So hey man,” said Pete, “it looks like you ain’t done a whole lot with yourself since college, huh?”
“What?!” I laughed because this had all become so ludicrous. A crackhead was standing here telling me that I hadn’t done much with my life. Three inches of ash hung precariously off the end of his cigarette. “Dude, I’ve done plenty. Probably more than you have, wherever the fuck you are. For all I know you’re fucking dead.”
“Oh now that’s just mean.” said Jennifer.
“Naw, he may well be right.” said Pete. “I ain’t exactly been walking a righteous path.”
“Still, it’s not a nice thing to say.” she said, looking at me. “Be nice.”
“Yeah,” said Chad. “It’s not our fault you’re all old and still pissed off, listening to this shit.”
“I’m not old.” I said.
“They playing Metallica on classic rock radio yet?” he asked
“He was always so angry.” said Jen. “What were so angry about anyway?”
“I wasn’t--! Look, is there something you need from me? Something you need to tell me? Or did you just travel into the future to give me shit?”
“You’re being awfully defensive.” said Jennifer.
“No I’m not!”
My hostility, it was increasing.
“You fuckers are standing here giving me shit about my life just because you happened to catch me listening to Pantera for the first time in literally years when in fact I’ve...” and I started babbling, stammering, spilling out an incoherent bullet list of my life in no particular order, things I’d done, things that had happened to me, accomplishments, failures, the most random of memories, any and every thing I could think of to prove that my life hadn’t gone on pause all this time, that I’d been living, doing. And it wasn’t until I heard myself actually say, “I’m a different person now!” It was only then, as I stood there with cool air-conditioned sweat dripping down my face, that I looked at the three of them and realized the obvious.
These stupid kids don’t know a damn thing.
Well, they know how to travel through time
I suppose there’s that.
I laughed. “You fucking kids...you don’t know shit, you know that?” And then they laughed, seemingly with me rather than at me for the first time during this exchange. The ash of Pete’s cigarette fell to the floor whole and silently exploded into dust on the industrial carpet. He didn’t seem to notice. We just stood there laughing like idiots. A gym employee passed through, but barely gave us a glance.
With the tables flipped over in my favor, I thought I’d have some fun and drop a few hints about what the future had in store for them.
“So Chad...” I started, ever thought about joining the Army? But before I put voice to the question, he disappeared. Pop. The air rushed to fill the space that had become unoccupied so quickly. Jen and Pete looked at each other, at me, then they disappeared too. Pop. Pop.
Well, I thought, that was....
By this time I was all cooled off and didn’t much feel like hopping back into the routine. I shouldered my backpack and headed out the door, slipping the buds back into my ears. It was right in the middle of a song.
....then when confronted we ask them the questionHell if I know, Phil. Hell if I know.
What's wrong with their mind?!?!
What's wrong with your mind?!?!
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Auto Bio
And on top of all that, now I'm writing THIS post! Holy shit!
For both of these sites, I was asked to write a bio, a little something something about mahself for those readers who just got-ta got-ta know more about the man behind all this brilliance. Truth be told, I hate writing these things. I've had to write them for damn near every play I've ever been involved in and I never know what the hell to say. My friend Brandon, on the other hand, can write a bio like nobody's business, even if he hardly knows anything about the person he's biographizing. I've seen many a cast and crew member outsource their bio-writing duties to this clever fellow.
When it came time to hand in something for my DadCentric bio, I decided to see what Brandon would come up with. He did not disappoint:
You see? Fact and fiction, artfully blended.
Travis "The" Holmes is the father of two hilarious young boys. The oldest, Henry, has mastered a dead perfect Redd Foxx impression while the youngest, Simon, can play "House of the Rising Sun" on his father's banjo despite the fact that he is barely a year old. Travis is married to Governor Rick Perry's personal assistant, a lovely young woman known in some circles as Ashley and in others as Agent 434. Travis himself is an enigma. Some records indicate he was raised by inmates in a Texas state prison, hidden from the guards for eighteen years and groomed to lead the prisoners to freedom in a bloody December revolt known as Snow Day (The Kind Of Snow That Is Bloody). Other records claim he is actually the world-famous Peruvian stand-up comedian Perla Santiago. They claim she obtained gender reassignment surgery in Monaco twelve years ago in order to escape political persecution in her home country after making one too many ill-timed Sesame Street jokes. His past may be shrouded in mystery, but his present is undisputed - loving husband, devoted father, and champion chinchilla trainer, Travis Holmes is the guy your wife wishes she had married instead of you.
When it came time to come up with something bio-ey for MamaPop, I considered crawling back to Brandon once again, but I decided that as much as I love his work, I really should suck it up and give this a shot myself. Here's what I managed:
The Holmes is a remarkably handsome fellow living in Austin, Texas. This “pop culture” thing that you people are always going on about is something of a mystery to him; all he knows is that he likes his music loud and he likes it nonstop. He disagrees most violently with the assertion that a big-legged woman ain’t got no soul, for he has seen her soul and it is most glorious...or perhaps there’s been a misunderstanding caused by the use of double-negatives. It wouldn’t be the first time. He’s been known to rap about killing people, but only in the comfort of his station wagon after the kids are dropped safely at daycare. He firmly believes werewolves to be the most superior of the undead creatures and will gladly debate anyone who disagrees because this stuff is important. Due to a complete inability to feel guilt, he has no guilty pleasures -- only pleasures. He once wrote a play inspired by his love for Liz Phair, but she wouldn’t agree to be in it and then things between them got complicated. He writes about being a dad and various dad-related minutia over at DadCentric. He’s got himself a wife, two little boys, the best dog in the world, a coop full of chickens, and a tank full of fish.Mostly fact, tiny hints of fiction, all of it true.
Friday, June 04, 2010
The Innocent Kind
Let me tell you a story about this thing that happened this one time. One time only did this thing happen, which is good because otherwise I might be dead, struck down in my youth by a physiological reaction to artery-freezing fear, and then I wouldn’t be here to tell you about this thing that happened, and that would be sad.
First, a note to those of you who know me in real life, i.e. we’ve inhabited the same physical space and spoken face to face and been to the same parties and gone to movies together and helped each other move and all that in real life stuff. Many of you folks have probably heard this story before. Maybe more than once, even. I was disqualified in the first round of Most Interesting Man In The World auditions, what can I say? I only have so many stories worth telling that are both true and that actually happened. I tell it again here because the movie/book that is the subject of this particular story came up on the Twitterator the other day and it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to make a little internet data out of it. And so....
Ninth grade was my first year of book-learnin’ that occurred outside of a religious educational facility. I attended kindergarten through sixth grade in one Baptist school, then seventh and eight grade in another Baptist school. But once junior high was over and it was time for capital-H High School, my mom decided that I had gotten just about all the benefit I was going to get out of those kinds of places. Thank any god in the book in the book who had a hand in that decision.
So there I was, a freshman in a brand new school where I knew one, count it, ONE single solitary person with whom I had ZERO classes. Because I hadn’t gone to the public elementary and junior high schools, I didn’t even know the other kids from my neighborhood all that well. And not only was it a new school, it was a whole new environment. The building was, in my eyes, gigantic. The student body was no less than ten times what I was used to, and it felt like they all disapproved of my existence. Also, I was now being taught about this thing called evolution. Up to that point, the only thing I had been taught about evolution was that it was an idea borne out of the fires of hell, conjured up by Satan’s demon imp Charles Darwin to confuse and confound the children of God and lead them astray. Evolution, heavy metal, witchcraft, Darwin, Metallica, Catholics, they all fell into the same hell-bound bucket as far as my Baptist educators were concerned.
As you can imagine, I spent a fair amount of my school hours alone that year. I wasn’t busy socializing or vandalizing school property or having underage sex or anything, so I had plenty of time to do things like peruse the school’s enormous library. And there was this author I had heard about, one whose works were said to inspire terror and trembling, a writer who could play ever so skillfully with that feeling you get when you awaken in a dark room with the sense that your’e not exactly alone. He was, in my mind, dangerous. My interest: it was piqued. I took a look through the library’s catalog one day, and sure enough, there he was:
I remember staring at that shelf lined with his work. They’re right here in front of me. I can take any of these books I like and walk out of here and nobody will stop me. They’ll encourage me, even. I don’t know if I realized it then, but something was about to change.
Of course, the man’s name was all that I knew at the time so I had no idea which of his books I should start with. They all sounded fantastic. Then I spotted a familiar title. Hey, wasn’t this one...? Yeah, this one was a movie. So of course it had to be good, right? I pulled it off the shelf, took it to the front desk, checked it out, and that very night, I began reading The Shining.
I spent every free waking moment I had with my nose buried in those pages. I snuck in chapters by the beam of a flashlight late at night when I was supposed to be asleep. This book didn’t care about my bedtime. No, it had much more important things to show me. Just one more chapter, little boy, just one more chapter.
It was during one such late night flashlight-lit reading session that The Freshman Year Heart Stopper aka My Shining Moment took place. If you’ve read The Shining or/and seen the movie (which really, if you haven’t experienced at least one of the two? You need to get on that), you’ll recall that the old chef warns the boy, Danny, not to enter one particular room in the hotel, (217 in the book, 237 in the movie, nerds). The old man doesn’t tell him why exactly, he just insists that Danny absolutely not set foot into that accursed room under any circumstances. But his warning only confirms what Danny already suspected, that there is something strange about that room. From that moment on, we know his curiosity will eventually win out. He’s going to open that door. He’s going to find out what’s in there, and so are we.
It was the middle of the night. The house was dark and quiet. My mom was asleep down the hall from my room. I was sitting in my bed, flashlight beam trained downwards on the chapter where Danny finally gets up the nerve to go against the old man’s advice. It’s been a few years, but as I recall, it goes something like this:
Danny stands at the door of the forbidden room.
Danny opens the door...or is it mysteriously open for him?
Danny enters, his curiosity momentarily trumping his fear.
Danny looks around the room.
Danny sees nothing out of the ordinary.
Danny walks into the bathroom.
Danny finds the bathtub filled with water.
Danny finds the bathtub filled with water and, oh look, it’s the bloated corpse of a drowned woman.
Danny recoils in horror.
The corpse pulls herself up out of the water into a standing position.
The corpse stands in the tub, water dripping from her grotesque form.
The corpse steps out of the bathtub and moves towards Danny.
I’m relaying this as simply a sequence of events, but King’s telling is...well, let’s just say there’s a reason the man’s name sells millions of copies. As far as my ninth grade self was concerned, the rest of the world had faded to nothing. There was only this boy in this hotel room with this drowned woman shuffling toward him. Which I guess is why I completely leaped out my skin when, at that very moment, my bedroom door suddenly slammed shut.
Had I had even one of my wits about me, I would have shone the flashlight on the door. I would have seen that there was nothing there, no corpses, no axe-wielding maniacs, no creepy little kids beckoning me to come play with them forever and ever. But the sound of that door slamming shut and trapping me in my room at the precise moment that this dead woman’s bloated veiny form stepped out of her drowning pool and made a move for the book’s horrified little protagonist effectively drove all of my wits towards the nearest exit. The flashlight, the book, they both went flying and I screamed, which of course woke up my mother. She ran down the hall to my room, turned on the light, and demanded to know just what the hell was going on, a demand that I couldn’t answer exactly. Between the scare I’d just had and the fact that part of my mind was still back in the Overlook Hotel, I don’t think I was able to stammer out anything coherent before my mom realized that there wasn’t a thing wrong with me and that I had just woken her up for nothing. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that all lights were to be extinguished and I was to get my ass to sleep.
I don’t remember if it was while my mom was yelling at me or if it was a few minutes later while I was laying there in the dark trying to calm myself that I realized it -- the air conditioner. The stupid air conditioner had come on, sending air through the vent above my door and pushing it closed. It had done it before, even, just never while I was reading Stephen King.
I said it at the start, I’ve told this story before. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years too, which seems weird considering what a small simple event it was. A lot like Danny, I was striking out into unknown territory and I ended up getting one hell of a scare out of it. I’ve wondered sometimes if this moment of raw fear followed by the realization that it’s okay, everything’s okay, just breathe, nothing to be afraid of, if it did a little something to the wiring in my brain, causing me to seek out these kinds of scares, the innocent kind where there’s nothing there that can actually do any harm because it’s all on a screen or a page. As opposed, of course, to the real scary scares, the kinds that don’t necessarily startle you all of a sudden, but instead drag on and on, the kind that involve things like waiting on test results or consulting specialists or wondering what the Gulf Coast is going to look like when your kids are old enough to take their families to see it.
So there you have it. That’s the thing that happened this one time.
First, a note to those of you who know me in real life, i.e. we’ve inhabited the same physical space and spoken face to face and been to the same parties and gone to movies together and helped each other move and all that in real life stuff. Many of you folks have probably heard this story before. Maybe more than once, even. I was disqualified in the first round of Most Interesting Man In The World auditions, what can I say? I only have so many stories worth telling that are both true and that actually happened. I tell it again here because the movie/book that is the subject of this particular story came up on the Twitterator the other day and it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to make a little internet data out of it. And so....
Ninth grade was my first year of book-learnin’ that occurred outside of a religious educational facility. I attended kindergarten through sixth grade in one Baptist school, then seventh and eight grade in another Baptist school. But once junior high was over and it was time for capital-H High School, my mom decided that I had gotten just about all the benefit I was going to get out of those kinds of places. Thank any god in the book in the book who had a hand in that decision.
So there I was, a freshman in a brand new school where I knew one, count it, ONE single solitary person with whom I had ZERO classes. Because I hadn’t gone to the public elementary and junior high schools, I didn’t even know the other kids from my neighborhood all that well. And not only was it a new school, it was a whole new environment. The building was, in my eyes, gigantic. The student body was no less than ten times what I was used to, and it felt like they all disapproved of my existence. Also, I was now being taught about this thing called evolution. Up to that point, the only thing I had been taught about evolution was that it was an idea borne out of the fires of hell, conjured up by Satan’s demon imp Charles Darwin to confuse and confound the children of God and lead them astray. Evolution, heavy metal, witchcraft, Darwin, Metallica, Catholics, they all fell into the same hell-bound bucket as far as my Baptist educators were concerned.
As you can imagine, I spent a fair amount of my school hours alone that year. I wasn’t busy socializing or vandalizing school property or having underage sex or anything, so I had plenty of time to do things like peruse the school’s enormous library. And there was this author I had heard about, one whose works were said to inspire terror and trembling, a writer who could play ever so skillfully with that feeling you get when you awaken in a dark room with the sense that your’e not exactly alone. He was, in my mind, dangerous. My interest: it was piqued. I took a look through the library’s catalog one day, and sure enough, there he was:
King, Stephen
I remember staring at that shelf lined with his work. They’re right here in front of me. I can take any of these books I like and walk out of here and nobody will stop me. They’ll encourage me, even. I don’t know if I realized it then, but something was about to change.
Of course, the man’s name was all that I knew at the time so I had no idea which of his books I should start with. They all sounded fantastic. Then I spotted a familiar title. Hey, wasn’t this one...? Yeah, this one was a movie. So of course it had to be good, right? I pulled it off the shelf, took it to the front desk, checked it out, and that very night, I began reading The Shining.
I spent every free waking moment I had with my nose buried in those pages. I snuck in chapters by the beam of a flashlight late at night when I was supposed to be asleep. This book didn’t care about my bedtime. No, it had much more important things to show me. Just one more chapter, little boy, just one more chapter.
It was during one such late night flashlight-lit reading session that The Freshman Year Heart Stopper aka My Shining Moment took place. If you’ve read The Shining or/and seen the movie (which really, if you haven’t experienced at least one of the two? You need to get on that), you’ll recall that the old chef warns the boy, Danny, not to enter one particular room in the hotel, (217 in the book, 237 in the movie, nerds). The old man doesn’t tell him why exactly, he just insists that Danny absolutely not set foot into that accursed room under any circumstances. But his warning only confirms what Danny already suspected, that there is something strange about that room. From that moment on, we know his curiosity will eventually win out. He’s going to open that door. He’s going to find out what’s in there, and so are we.
It was the middle of the night. The house was dark and quiet. My mom was asleep down the hall from my room. I was sitting in my bed, flashlight beam trained downwards on the chapter where Danny finally gets up the nerve to go against the old man’s advice. It’s been a few years, but as I recall, it goes something like this:
Danny stands at the door of the forbidden room.
Danny opens the door...or is it mysteriously open for him?
Danny enters, his curiosity momentarily trumping his fear.
Danny looks around the room.
Danny sees nothing out of the ordinary.
Danny walks into the bathroom.
Danny finds the bathtub filled with water.
Danny finds the bathtub filled with water and, oh look, it’s the bloated corpse of a drowned woman.
Danny recoils in horror.
The corpse pulls herself up out of the water into a standing position.
The corpse stands in the tub, water dripping from her grotesque form.
The corpse steps out of the bathtub and moves towards Danny.
I’m relaying this as simply a sequence of events, but King’s telling is...well, let’s just say there’s a reason the man’s name sells millions of copies. As far as my ninth grade self was concerned, the rest of the world had faded to nothing. There was only this boy in this hotel room with this drowned woman shuffling toward him. Which I guess is why I completely leaped out my skin when, at that very moment, my bedroom door suddenly slammed shut.
Had I had even one of my wits about me, I would have shone the flashlight on the door. I would have seen that there was nothing there, no corpses, no axe-wielding maniacs, no creepy little kids beckoning me to come play with them forever and ever. But the sound of that door slamming shut and trapping me in my room at the precise moment that this dead woman’s bloated veiny form stepped out of her drowning pool and made a move for the book’s horrified little protagonist effectively drove all of my wits towards the nearest exit. The flashlight, the book, they both went flying and I screamed, which of course woke up my mother. She ran down the hall to my room, turned on the light, and demanded to know just what the hell was going on, a demand that I couldn’t answer exactly. Between the scare I’d just had and the fact that part of my mind was still back in the Overlook Hotel, I don’t think I was able to stammer out anything coherent before my mom realized that there wasn’t a thing wrong with me and that I had just woken her up for nothing. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that all lights were to be extinguished and I was to get my ass to sleep.
I don’t remember if it was while my mom was yelling at me or if it was a few minutes later while I was laying there in the dark trying to calm myself that I realized it -- the air conditioner. The stupid air conditioner had come on, sending air through the vent above my door and pushing it closed. It had done it before, even, just never while I was reading Stephen King.
I said it at the start, I’ve told this story before. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years too, which seems weird considering what a small simple event it was. A lot like Danny, I was striking out into unknown territory and I ended up getting one hell of a scare out of it. I’ve wondered sometimes if this moment of raw fear followed by the realization that it’s okay, everything’s okay, just breathe, nothing to be afraid of, if it did a little something to the wiring in my brain, causing me to seek out these kinds of scares, the innocent kind where there’s nothing there that can actually do any harm because it’s all on a screen or a page. As opposed, of course, to the real scary scares, the kinds that don’t necessarily startle you all of a sudden, but instead drag on and on, the kind that involve things like waiting on test results or consulting specialists or wondering what the Gulf Coast is going to look like when your kids are old enough to take their families to see it.
So there you have it. That’s the thing that happened this one time.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Asleep in the back
I was sitting in a parking lot today with my two year old asleep in the back seat, thinking about the events of the morning that had just passed by, this morning that was done and over with and would never ever happen again, except I wasn’t just thinking about the stuff that had happened so much as I was recounting the whole thing in the voice of my father, words that he fictionally spoke to me years and years ago describing this particular morning that, in my imagination, he knew would come and that he wanted me to be prepared for.
Son, one day you'll find yourself sitting in your car in a parking lot somewhere, motor running, music playing real low, baby asleep in the back, writing a blogpost on your phone about the events of that very morning while waiting for a call from your wife (on that very phone, mind you!) telling you to come and pick her and your eldest child up from the birthday party they’ve been attending, the same party that you and the little boy currently asleep in your back seat would be at if the poor little fellow hadn’t yakked on your shoulder as soon as you got him out of the car at the park where the party was being held. You’ll have been driving around for a while, having intended to go home and wait for the call there, except the little guy will have faded off to sleep as soon as you got him back in the car, and you probably won’t feel like risking a carseat to bed transfer. Those are always iffy, believe you me.
See? Utterly ridiculous, not to mention all over the place tense-wise. I don’t think my father stuck around quite long enough to know nearly this much about parenting, and I doubt he ever knew what a blog was, much less that you could write on one from a phone. In spite of all that, he rambles on:
And you’ll be sitting there in that parking lot, writing your post on your phone, intending it to just be a quick one, when suddenly you’ll detect a bit of motion to your rear. You’ll turn around in your seat and there will be your little boy, eyes open, looking around trying to figure out where the hell he is. It’s a weird feeling, you see, falling asleep in one place and waking up in another. Disconcerting. But he won’t be entirely awake, no sir. He’ll still have that sleepy aura about him, enough so that you’ll get to thinking “Maybe I can get the little bastard back to sleep.”
Little bastard? Real nice, dad.
So you’ll fire up your engine and throw her in gear, and off you’ll go, driving towards nowhere in particular, just trying to keep it moving so as to maybe lull the boy back to sleep. You’ll check your rearview every thirty seconds or so. You might get a yawn or two out of him. His eyes will fade a bit, but they won’t quite close. And after a while, you’ll have to accept that it ain’t happening. But hey, when that day comes, at least be glad he got a nap in, short though it may be. From there, you might as well head to Hooter’s.
Ah, so now we’re getting into the advice portion.
Yep, you’ll have been driving around for a bit and you’ll be wondering just what the hell you should do at this point. Your wife should be calling any time now, so no point in going home. My advice to you would be to just pull into a parking lot, any parking lot will do, how about this Hooter’s parking lot? You’ll maybe want to give your wife a call and say, hey, howsabout’s we come pick y’all up now?
And that’s what I did. We stopped by the party for a bit, long enough for me to down a couple of hot dogs and some cake, then we piled in the car and headed home. I don’t know if it was the sugar or the sun or what, but eldest had more energy than any carseat can be expected to fully contain. His mouth was spewing a constant stream of high volume noise that sounded something like aaaaaJIOPUIKJKKKK{{{{{(*(*IMBIG!(*@(*!!!!!!+++==++=+++++___-___-_-_---000))09089087876981732u`oiu[oik’l;.ra,.,d/SldjPSfjKLDJIRAAAAHHSPIDERMANCAKE!!!HH!!!!UUJIU908u897498uqjoiejakj89087*&^&**%$KICKYOU@!@#$%^&*()(UhjnIJ*&^TYGHJ*&(&)%%%%%+amp;^RFVY%$#EDFJKLP:
What you’ll want to do when that happens, son--
I got it dad! Shut up! I turned in my seat and shouted “HEY HENRY GUESS WHAT?!?!”
“What?”
And then there was only the silence of a question waiting for its answer. Because I know the most famous answer to “guess what?” but I just wasn’t sure that I really wanted to, you know, introduce this into our lives. I put the question to my wife. "Should I?"
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“HEY HENRY, GUESS WHAT?!?!!”
“WHAT?!??!”
“CHICKEN BUTT!”
And oh how the car did howl with laughter. We proceeded from there with the obvious line of followup questions, guess why, guess where, guess who, guess how, all of which met with appropriate answers and the screams of children who have just heard the funniest shit ever. Those boys definitely learned something today.
On this last matter, my father was silent.
Son, one day you'll find yourself sitting in your car in a parking lot somewhere, motor running, music playing real low, baby asleep in the back, writing a blogpost on your phone about the events of that very morning while waiting for a call from your wife (on that very phone, mind you!) telling you to come and pick her and your eldest child up from the birthday party they’ve been attending, the same party that you and the little boy currently asleep in your back seat would be at if the poor little fellow hadn’t yakked on your shoulder as soon as you got him out of the car at the park where the party was being held. You’ll have been driving around for a while, having intended to go home and wait for the call there, except the little guy will have faded off to sleep as soon as you got him back in the car, and you probably won’t feel like risking a carseat to bed transfer. Those are always iffy, believe you me.
See? Utterly ridiculous, not to mention all over the place tense-wise. I don’t think my father stuck around quite long enough to know nearly this much about parenting, and I doubt he ever knew what a blog was, much less that you could write on one from a phone. In spite of all that, he rambles on:
And you’ll be sitting there in that parking lot, writing your post on your phone, intending it to just be a quick one, when suddenly you’ll detect a bit of motion to your rear. You’ll turn around in your seat and there will be your little boy, eyes open, looking around trying to figure out where the hell he is. It’s a weird feeling, you see, falling asleep in one place and waking up in another. Disconcerting. But he won’t be entirely awake, no sir. He’ll still have that sleepy aura about him, enough so that you’ll get to thinking “Maybe I can get the little bastard back to sleep.”
Little bastard? Real nice, dad.
So you’ll fire up your engine and throw her in gear, and off you’ll go, driving towards nowhere in particular, just trying to keep it moving so as to maybe lull the boy back to sleep. You’ll check your rearview every thirty seconds or so. You might get a yawn or two out of him. His eyes will fade a bit, but they won’t quite close. And after a while, you’ll have to accept that it ain’t happening. But hey, when that day comes, at least be glad he got a nap in, short though it may be. From there, you might as well head to Hooter’s.
Ah, so now we’re getting into the advice portion.
Yep, you’ll have been driving around for a bit and you’ll be wondering just what the hell you should do at this point. Your wife should be calling any time now, so no point in going home. My advice to you would be to just pull into a parking lot, any parking lot will do, how about this Hooter’s parking lot? You’ll maybe want to give your wife a call and say, hey, howsabout’s we come pick y’all up now?
And that’s what I did. We stopped by the party for a bit, long enough for me to down a couple of hot dogs and some cake, then we piled in the car and headed home. I don’t know if it was the sugar or the sun or what, but eldest had more energy than any carseat can be expected to fully contain. His mouth was spewing a constant stream of high volume noise that sounded something like aaaaaJIOPUIKJKKKK{{{{{(*(*IMBIG!(*@(*!!!!!!+++==++=+++++___-___-_-_---000))09089087876981732u`oiu[oik’l;.ra,.,d/SldjPSfjKLDJIRAAAAHHSPIDERMANCAKE!!!HH!!!!UUJIU908u897498uqjoiejakj89087*&^&**%$KICKYOU@!@#$%^&*()(UhjnIJ*&^TYGHJ*&(&)%%%%%+amp;^RFVY%$#EDFJKLP:
Sunday, May 16, 2010
The Adventures of Cadaver Arm
“Oh, it’s Cadaver Arm!”
It’s my wife talking. We’re laying in bed, our bedside lamps still on. The arm she’s referring to is my left one, which she nicknamed Cadaver Arm because of my habit of draping it over her like it’s a hunk of dead weight that happens to be hinged to my shoulder. It’s my own personal take on cuddling. Lazy, passive, a pain in the ass and loving all at the same time. It's the kind of pet name I can support. Kind of weird, not particularly cute. Even a bit morbid.
My two year old’s crying woke me up one night, as happens from time to time. I got out of bed, turned down the baby monitor so my wife could sleep, and made my way toward his room. I was shuffling through the living room when I kicked something and nearly tripped over. I’m usually really good about clearing the path before I go to bed because I know there’s a decent chance I’ll be walking it in the dark in a half-asleep state in just a few hours. It’s a habit I developed after stepping on way too many toy trains and stubbing my toe on the goddamn ottoman more times than can possibly be good for one’s sanity. I slid my foot around the floor trying to locate the offending obstacle and kick it out of the way. But before I could find it, I noticed something: my arm was missing.
That was the first time Cadaver Arm set out on his own.
I thought at first that maybe I was dreaming. After all, I had made myself a bit of a nuisance to the Dream Boss a while back. Maybe he was having some fun with me. Plus, the fact that I have his sister tattooed to that shoulder struck me as being a bit more than coincidence.
But it turned out to not be a dream. Or if it is, I’m still dreaming it, and me sitting here writing is all part of it, and any moment now I’ll wake up in a puddle of my own drool and all this imagery will spill out of my memory, leaving me with nothing more than a few vague notions about this dream that I think I might have had, maybe.
Standing there in the dark living room, I bent down and picked Cadaver Arm up with my right. I was surprised -- oddly pleased, actually -- how heavy he was. I was holding him at the shoulder end, so I expected the forearm to hang limp at the elbow, but it didn’t. He held himself upright, as if there were eyes in his hand that he was using to look at me. I had no idea what to do with him, but lucky for me, he took the initiative and jumped into his proper place on the left side of my trunk. I could feel everything reattaching, the bones, sinews, blood vessels, nerve endings, skin, all the way up to my head and all the way down to my toes. It took maybe all of three seconds. Dude, shudder.
His name is obviously a misnomer, seeing as how Cadaver Arm is very much alive. He’s attached to me. He, er, it is mine. Actually, I’m not sure how to address Cadaver Arm pronoun-wise. “It” throws a kind of Addams Family vibe upon its/his being, but I’m not sure if gender applies to body parts when they’re running around all disembodied like.
The next time it happened, I woke up laying on my left side. I could tell right away that Cadaver Arm was missing because my head was sunk deeper into the pillow than usual. I was so tired, I thought about just going back to sleep and not worrying about it until morning. But not knowing the whereabouts of one's arm makes sleep a bit hard to accomplish. I climbed out of bed and grabbed my phone to use as a flashlight. It took me all of two seconds to locate him. He was curled up with our dog, Elliott. Elli had one paw draped over Cadaver Arm, who in turn had his hand over Elli’s other paw. They were both sound asleep. It was such a cute picture, I left them there and went back to bed, where I laid down on my right side and fell back to sleep. BIG MISTAKE. When I woke up the next morning, Cadaver Arm was laying next to me in the bed, waiting for me to roll off of my left side so he could reattach. He reeked of dog. But even worse, as soon as he rejoined my body, I felt an instant sensation of gross. Cadaver Arm was covered in dog slobber! He’d even gotten it all over the sheets. I was pissed at him and the dog all morning, and believe me when I tell you, it’s an odd feeling being pissed off at a part of your body as if it’s a separate entity.
After this started happening, I got worried that Cadaver Arm might try functioning independently while he was attached to me. It’s bad enough that he takes off on his own while I’m asleep. It would be quite another issue to have him, I don’t know, reach up and punch somebody without my directive. Or grope somebody. Oh dear god. So far, that hasn’t happened. Apologies in advance if you get punched or groped. If it was my left, it was Cadaver Arm. After all, I am not left handed.
There have been a few more episodes since then. On separate occasions, I’ve found Cadaver Arm cuddled up in bed with my kids, a sight which is both creepy and sweet, but ultimately hard to argue with since he seems to be able to help them stay asleep. I guess he’s good with the wee folk. Several times, I've found him doing pull-ups on the shower curtain rod. I once found him building a train track on the train table in my four-year old’s room. His progress was a bit slow since he only has one hand, but he seemed to manage. It got to where I didn’t even worry about it anymore. Sometimes I would wake up and he’d be attached, other times he wasn’t and I would just slip right back to sleep.
One night, I was awakened by a series of three sharp piercing beeps. I thought it was a smoke alarm at first. Cadaver Arm was missing. I walked out of our bedroom and heard the three beeps again. I realized what it was and headed towards the kitchen. See, we have one of those fancy refrigerators that beeps at you if you leave the door open for too long. Sometimes it’s helpful, but most of the time it’s an annoyance. “Okay! Okay! Give me a minute!” I find myself shrieking at the fridge damn near every time I have to put away groceries.
I walked into the kitchen to find the refrigerator doors wide open and most of its contents spread out on the counter. Well not all of its contents, exactly. Just certain things. Jars. Cans. Tupperware. Twist-tops. Flip-tops. Bottles. Containers. And nearly all of them were open. When I had gone to bed, I had left three perfectly good, perfectly unopened bottles of Sierra Nevada Torpedo sitting serenely in the fridge. But here they were on the counter, two of them with their tops pried off, and Cadaver Arm working on the third. I grabbed the bottle opener out of his, er, my hand.
“What the hell are you doing?” I shout-whispered. He felt around for the bottle opener for a moment, as if he had dropped it. Then he turned his hand toward me. He seemed to consider for a moment, then laid down on the counter. I swear he sighed. He looked as sheepish as a disembodied appendage possibly can.
“Dude, seriously, what the fuck?” I wonder how many times that phrase has been uttered, how many questions it has been used to ask.
Cadaver Arm picked up the top to a jar of jelly and screwed it back on. Then the same for the mayonnaise, then the salsa. He flipped closed the lid on the syrup, twisted the mustard shut, snapped the lids back onto several pieces of tupperware.
“Dude, were you....” It seemed a ridiculous thing to ask, but it was the only thing that made sense. “...bored?” He tensed a bit, the tension of one who's been found out and is embarrassed about it. I sensed that even if he could talk, he probably wouldn’t. He just wanted to clean up the mess he had made and be done with it. I started putting the closed containers back in the fridge to help him out. Pretty soon, everything was back in its right place except for the open beers. Well shit, I thought. Now I have to stay up and drink these.
I put the two open bottles into the six-pack carton. They were still cold and would stay that way long enough for me to down them. Cadaver Arm and I made our way through the dark house to the front room, which serves as a combination library and playroom. I took a seat in the easy chair while Cadaver Arm went about stacking up the brightly colored toy bricks that spend most of their time scattered across the floor. I didn’t bother turning on the lamp.
“Now you have to be quiet” I told him. “And as soon as I finish these, we’re going back to bed. Both of us.”
The next day was a Saturday. I awoke to the sounds of wide-awake children barely able to contain their excitement at the prospect of a whole new day of life. I draped my arm over her. “Oh good morning Cadaver Arm” she mumbled.
“Yeah,” I said through a mouthful of morning breath. “About that name...”
It’s my wife talking. We’re laying in bed, our bedside lamps still on. The arm she’s referring to is my left one, which she nicknamed Cadaver Arm because of my habit of draping it over her like it’s a hunk of dead weight that happens to be hinged to my shoulder. It’s my own personal take on cuddling. Lazy, passive, a pain in the ass and loving all at the same time. It's the kind of pet name I can support. Kind of weird, not particularly cute. Even a bit morbid.
My two year old’s crying woke me up one night, as happens from time to time. I got out of bed, turned down the baby monitor so my wife could sleep, and made my way toward his room. I was shuffling through the living room when I kicked something and nearly tripped over. I’m usually really good about clearing the path before I go to bed because I know there’s a decent chance I’ll be walking it in the dark in a half-asleep state in just a few hours. It’s a habit I developed after stepping on way too many toy trains and stubbing my toe on the goddamn ottoman more times than can possibly be good for one’s sanity. I slid my foot around the floor trying to locate the offending obstacle and kick it out of the way. But before I could find it, I noticed something: my arm was missing.
That was the first time Cadaver Arm set out on his own.
But it turned out to not be a dream. Or if it is, I’m still dreaming it, and me sitting here writing is all part of it, and any moment now I’ll wake up in a puddle of my own drool and all this imagery will spill out of my memory, leaving me with nothing more than a few vague notions about this dream that I think I might have had, maybe.
Standing there in the dark living room, I bent down and picked Cadaver Arm up with my right. I was surprised -- oddly pleased, actually -- how heavy he was. I was holding him at the shoulder end, so I expected the forearm to hang limp at the elbow, but it didn’t. He held himself upright, as if there were eyes in his hand that he was using to look at me. I had no idea what to do with him, but lucky for me, he took the initiative and jumped into his proper place on the left side of my trunk. I could feel everything reattaching, the bones, sinews, blood vessels, nerve endings, skin, all the way up to my head and all the way down to my toes. It took maybe all of three seconds. Dude, shudder.
His name is obviously a misnomer, seeing as how Cadaver Arm is very much alive. He’s attached to me. He, er, it is mine. Actually, I’m not sure how to address Cadaver Arm pronoun-wise. “It” throws a kind of Addams Family vibe upon its/his being, but I’m not sure if gender applies to body parts when they’re running around all disembodied like.
The next time it happened, I woke up laying on my left side. I could tell right away that Cadaver Arm was missing because my head was sunk deeper into the pillow than usual. I was so tired, I thought about just going back to sleep and not worrying about it until morning. But not knowing the whereabouts of one's arm makes sleep a bit hard to accomplish. I climbed out of bed and grabbed my phone to use as a flashlight. It took me all of two seconds to locate him. He was curled up with our dog, Elliott. Elli had one paw draped over Cadaver Arm, who in turn had his hand over Elli’s other paw. They were both sound asleep. It was such a cute picture, I left them there and went back to bed, where I laid down on my right side and fell back to sleep. BIG MISTAKE. When I woke up the next morning, Cadaver Arm was laying next to me in the bed, waiting for me to roll off of my left side so he could reattach. He reeked of dog. But even worse, as soon as he rejoined my body, I felt an instant sensation of gross. Cadaver Arm was covered in dog slobber! He’d even gotten it all over the sheets. I was pissed at him and the dog all morning, and believe me when I tell you, it’s an odd feeling being pissed off at a part of your body as if it’s a separate entity.
After this started happening, I got worried that Cadaver Arm might try functioning independently while he was attached to me. It’s bad enough that he takes off on his own while I’m asleep. It would be quite another issue to have him, I don’t know, reach up and punch somebody without my directive. Or grope somebody. Oh dear god. So far, that hasn’t happened. Apologies in advance if you get punched or groped. If it was my left, it was Cadaver Arm. After all, I am not left handed.
There have been a few more episodes since then. On separate occasions, I’ve found Cadaver Arm cuddled up in bed with my kids, a sight which is both creepy and sweet, but ultimately hard to argue with since he seems to be able to help them stay asleep. I guess he’s good with the wee folk. Several times, I've found him doing pull-ups on the shower curtain rod. I once found him building a train track on the train table in my four-year old’s room. His progress was a bit slow since he only has one hand, but he seemed to manage. It got to where I didn’t even worry about it anymore. Sometimes I would wake up and he’d be attached, other times he wasn’t and I would just slip right back to sleep.
One night, I was awakened by a series of three sharp piercing beeps. I thought it was a smoke alarm at first. Cadaver Arm was missing. I walked out of our bedroom and heard the three beeps again. I realized what it was and headed towards the kitchen. See, we have one of those fancy refrigerators that beeps at you if you leave the door open for too long. Sometimes it’s helpful, but most of the time it’s an annoyance. “Okay! Okay! Give me a minute!” I find myself shrieking at the fridge damn near every time I have to put away groceries.
I walked into the kitchen to find the refrigerator doors wide open and most of its contents spread out on the counter. Well not all of its contents, exactly. Just certain things. Jars. Cans. Tupperware. Twist-tops. Flip-tops. Bottles. Containers. And nearly all of them were open. When I had gone to bed, I had left three perfectly good, perfectly unopened bottles of Sierra Nevada Torpedo sitting serenely in the fridge. But here they were on the counter, two of them with their tops pried off, and Cadaver Arm working on the third. I grabbed the bottle opener out of his, er, my hand.
“What the hell are you doing?” I shout-whispered. He felt around for the bottle opener for a moment, as if he had dropped it. Then he turned his hand toward me. He seemed to consider for a moment, then laid down on the counter. I swear he sighed. He looked as sheepish as a disembodied appendage possibly can.
“Dude, seriously, what the fuck?” I wonder how many times that phrase has been uttered, how many questions it has been used to ask.
Cadaver Arm picked up the top to a jar of jelly and screwed it back on. Then the same for the mayonnaise, then the salsa. He flipped closed the lid on the syrup, twisted the mustard shut, snapped the lids back onto several pieces of tupperware.
“Dude, were you....” It seemed a ridiculous thing to ask, but it was the only thing that made sense. “...bored?” He tensed a bit, the tension of one who's been found out and is embarrassed about it. I sensed that even if he could talk, he probably wouldn’t. He just wanted to clean up the mess he had made and be done with it. I started putting the closed containers back in the fridge to help him out. Pretty soon, everything was back in its right place except for the open beers. Well shit, I thought. Now I have to stay up and drink these.
I put the two open bottles into the six-pack carton. They were still cold and would stay that way long enough for me to down them. Cadaver Arm and I made our way through the dark house to the front room, which serves as a combination library and playroom. I took a seat in the easy chair while Cadaver Arm went about stacking up the brightly colored toy bricks that spend most of their time scattered across the floor. I didn’t bother turning on the lamp.
“Now you have to be quiet” I told him. “And as soon as I finish these, we’re going back to bed. Both of us.”
The next day was a Saturday. I awoke to the sounds of wide-awake children barely able to contain their excitement at the prospect of a whole new day of life. I draped my arm over her. “Oh good morning Cadaver Arm” she mumbled.
“Yeah,” I said through a mouthful of morning breath. “About that name...”
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Have I No Shame?
Back in the day, I used to be a regular attendee at a monthly event called No Shame Theater. No Shame participants get five minutes on stage to do whatever the hell they want, shame-free. And they do. And I did. As you can imagine, you end up sitting through some total crap and some mediocre garbage, but in return you get to see some most likely never to be repeated bits of true badassery. I like to think I produced some of all three at various points.
Lately, my homie Brandon's been sending out Facebook invites to come check out the No Shame madness once again. So this last time around, I thought I'd drop in, check it out, see what the current crop of no shame-having motherfuckers have to offer. I had nothing prepared, so I would just be there as an audience member. It was a good plan on my part, if I do say so myself.
Then I went and got my post-vasectomy sperm count done, and the whole experience was just too weird not to share with a room full of mostly strangers. Honestly, the bits I find the funniest are the spontaneous and unexpected bursts of applause. Enjoy.
No Shame 0310 - Travis Holmes from Naughty Troll on Vimeo.
Lately, my homie Brandon's been sending out Facebook invites to come check out the No Shame madness once again. So this last time around, I thought I'd drop in, check it out, see what the current crop of no shame-having motherfuckers have to offer. I had nothing prepared, so I would just be there as an audience member. It was a good plan on my part, if I do say so myself.
Then I went and got my post-vasectomy sperm count done, and the whole experience was just too weird not to share with a room full of mostly strangers. Honestly, the bits I find the funniest are the spontaneous and unexpected bursts of applause. Enjoy.
No Shame 0310 - Travis Holmes from Naughty Troll on Vimeo.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Unaware Audience
A couple of weeks ago, I contributed a guest-post to a series about doing crazy shit hosted by Brian over at The Cheek of God. The story I told there reminded me of yet another time where I pretended to be something that I was not for no real reason other than to do it. I almost hesitated to post it for fear nobody will ever trust me again, but, you know, screw it. So without further ado...
It was Friday night. I had made it this far, five and a half days since the previous Sunday afternoon when I’d first started the challenge. The idea had been conceived the week before and quickly codified into a wager. It had been Champ’s idea, most likely borne out of his annoyance with me.
“I bet you can’t talk with that stupid accent for a whole week.” he’d said.
“Aw yeh?” I said. Or maybe I said “Oh rayally?” Or worse, “Betcha ah can, mate.” I don’t remember my exact words, only that I made it clear that this kid was game.
The accent in question was a rather poor Australian that myself and a few of the other kids on the camp staff had taken to using for no apparent reason. No wait, there was a reason: we figured out that it annoyed Champ.
Champ. That was his name. From his short stature to his dark hair to his jacked-up pickup to his resentment of having his authority disrespected or disparaged in any way whatsoever, he was every bit the Napoleonic figure. Still, I didn’t totally hate him. And looking back, I confess I feel just a twinge of sympathy that he had to be in charge of a bunch of asshole teenagers.
But hey, nobody was forcing him.
Somehow, I ended up as one of the main figures in this game of accent annoyance, so it was to me that Champ delivered his wager. “I bet you can’t.” he’d said. Bitch, you just lost a bet.
It ended up being me and one other kid in on the bet, another guy my age whose real name totally escapes me now, but who we all called Fievel because he wore a hat just like the movie mouse of the same name. They had the same hat and everything. The point of the bet was for the two of us to speak in those ridiculous Australian accents, 24 hours a day, for an entire week. Since there was a new batch of kids in camp every week, the bet started when the first group rolled in, and ended when the last troop rolled out. For the kids in attendance that week, their entire experience of Fievel and I would be as guys speaking with funny accents. So we decided that rather than just speaking like Australians, we would just go on and be Australians. I mean really, Australia vs. Texas - how different are they? We looked at a map and figured out what town we were from, dreamed up a bit of backstory as to why we were in the States. Conveniently enough, Fievel even had an Australian scout uniform. Our story was air-tight. We were good to go.
Did I mention this was a boy scout camp? Yeah. A scout is trustworthy.
We made it through the entire week with nary a slipup. Looking back, I can’t say for certain that we had all of the adults fooled, but most of the boys seemed to buy it. If any didn’t, they kept their mouths shut. The rest of the staff seemed to have our back when it came to verifying out story. Fievel and I briefed each other throughout the week re-garding any pieces of our fictional past that we had told anyone, just so that our lies would all add up into one great glorious mound of truth.
FIEVEL: So ah tauld thees keeds thees morning that our mum had a pet koala beh when we lived in Australia.
HOLMES: Oh yeh?
FIEVEL: Yeh. Sed we hed to laeve it at the koala beh pound when we moved to Texees.
HOLMES: Ah'll mike a note of eet. Oh, before ah forget, ah told some keeds that you lost a surfing competition to an Aboriginine keed named Terrence.
FIEVEL: Crikey! Whoy'd ah heff to lose?
HOLMES: Because you're a terrible surfer, stewpeed.
At one point, I got chewed out by one of my supervisors for something that wasn’t my fault, and had to chew back with the accent in place. I can now say from experience that expressing your righteous indignation in a voice that is not quite your own has a way of pulling you out of yourself. I’m not sure that Travis from Houston would have responded to a misplaced ass-chewing with quite so much volume, but Travis from Perth, Australia had no problem yelling back at his superiors, and didn’t really care if he was making a scene. Because the whole week was already a series of scenes, why not have one where the Australian guy gets pissed off? I hear those people have anger issues. They're descended from criminals, you know.
Friday night of every week was the closing campfire, our little way of saying thanks and so long to the people that had spent the week with us. The Sunday night opening campfires had a way of being subdued, what with all these boys being away from the comforts of home, some of them for the first time. But after a week in the woods, closing campfires could be counted on to be rowdy affairs. But that particular week, I felt a bit of melancholy. I had essentially spent the week lying to these kids and their adult leaders for no real reason. Yes, this story wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t have that word in it: lying. It had been fun, but now that I was about to send these kids back into civilization with false information in their heads, my conscience was making a pest of itself.
But then the campfire ended and whatever guilt I felt subsided along with its flames. The troops rolled out the next morning. Fievel and I won our bet, so Champ held up his end of the bargain by taking us out for pizza. We ordered two larges topped with pepperoni and extra Champ-is-a-loser sauce.
I went back to work at camp again the next summer. One week, some kid whose face I didn’t recognize walked up to me and asked, “What happened to your accent?” It was a shitty feeling. I made up something about how it had faded over time, been in Texas for so long, blah blah blah. I responded to a question about one lie with another lie. One fiction propping up another.
So with that, my career as Andy Kaufman came to an end.
It was Friday night. I had made it this far, five and a half days since the previous Sunday afternoon when I’d first started the challenge. The idea had been conceived the week before and quickly codified into a wager. It had been Champ’s idea, most likely borne out of his annoyance with me.
“I bet you can’t talk with that stupid accent for a whole week.” he’d said.
“Aw yeh?” I said. Or maybe I said “Oh rayally?” Or worse, “Betcha ah can, mate.” I don’t remember my exact words, only that I made it clear that this kid was game.
The accent in question was a rather poor Australian that myself and a few of the other kids on the camp staff had taken to using for no apparent reason. No wait, there was a reason: we figured out that it annoyed Champ.
Champ. That was his name. From his short stature to his dark hair to his jacked-up pickup to his resentment of having his authority disrespected or disparaged in any way whatsoever, he was every bit the Napoleonic figure. Still, I didn’t totally hate him. And looking back, I confess I feel just a twinge of sympathy that he had to be in charge of a bunch of asshole teenagers.
But hey, nobody was forcing him.
Somehow, I ended up as one of the main figures in this game of accent annoyance, so it was to me that Champ delivered his wager. “I bet you can’t.” he’d said. Bitch, you just lost a bet.
It ended up being me and one other kid in on the bet, another guy my age whose real name totally escapes me now, but who we all called Fievel because he wore a hat just like the movie mouse of the same name. They had the same hat and everything. The point of the bet was for the two of us to speak in those ridiculous Australian accents, 24 hours a day, for an entire week. Since there was a new batch of kids in camp every week, the bet started when the first group rolled in, and ended when the last troop rolled out. For the kids in attendance that week, their entire experience of Fievel and I would be as guys speaking with funny accents. So we decided that rather than just speaking like Australians, we would just go on and be Australians. I mean really, Australia vs. Texas - how different are they? We looked at a map and figured out what town we were from, dreamed up a bit of backstory as to why we were in the States. Conveniently enough, Fievel even had an Australian scout uniform. Our story was air-tight. We were good to go.
Did I mention this was a boy scout camp? Yeah. A scout is trustworthy.
We made it through the entire week with nary a slipup. Looking back, I can’t say for certain that we had all of the adults fooled, but most of the boys seemed to buy it. If any didn’t, they kept their mouths shut. The rest of the staff seemed to have our back when it came to verifying out story. Fievel and I briefed each other throughout the week re-garding any pieces of our fictional past that we had told anyone, just so that our lies would all add up into one great glorious mound of truth.
FIEVEL: So ah tauld thees keeds thees morning that our mum had a pet koala beh when we lived in Australia.
HOLMES: Oh yeh?
FIEVEL: Yeh. Sed we hed to laeve it at the koala beh pound when we moved to Texees.
HOLMES: Ah'll mike a note of eet. Oh, before ah forget, ah told some keeds that you lost a surfing competition to an Aboriginine keed named Terrence.
FIEVEL: Crikey! Whoy'd ah heff to lose?
HOLMES: Because you're a terrible surfer, stewpeed.
At one point, I got chewed out by one of my supervisors for something that wasn’t my fault, and had to chew back with the accent in place. I can now say from experience that expressing your righteous indignation in a voice that is not quite your own has a way of pulling you out of yourself. I’m not sure that Travis from Houston would have responded to a misplaced ass-chewing with quite so much volume, but Travis from Perth, Australia had no problem yelling back at his superiors, and didn’t really care if he was making a scene. Because the whole week was already a series of scenes, why not have one where the Australian guy gets pissed off? I hear those people have anger issues. They're descended from criminals, you know.
Friday night of every week was the closing campfire, our little way of saying thanks and so long to the people that had spent the week with us. The Sunday night opening campfires had a way of being subdued, what with all these boys being away from the comforts of home, some of them for the first time. But after a week in the woods, closing campfires could be counted on to be rowdy affairs. But that particular week, I felt a bit of melancholy. I had essentially spent the week lying to these kids and their adult leaders for no real reason. Yes, this story wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t have that word in it: lying. It had been fun, but now that I was about to send these kids back into civilization with false information in their heads, my conscience was making a pest of itself.
But then the campfire ended and whatever guilt I felt subsided along with its flames. The troops rolled out the next morning. Fievel and I won our bet, so Champ held up his end of the bargain by taking us out for pizza. We ordered two larges topped with pepperoni and extra Champ-is-a-loser sauce.
I went back to work at camp again the next summer. One week, some kid whose face I didn’t recognize walked up to me and asked, “What happened to your accent?” It was a shitty feeling. I made up something about how it had faded over time, been in Texas for so long, blah blah blah. I responded to a question about one lie with another lie. One fiction propping up another.
So with that, my career as Andy Kaufman came to an end.
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