I went to sleep with a glass of water on my night stand, and now there’s water on the floor. And when I got out of bed this morning I tripped over the laundry basket and by mistake I cut the under part of my nose while shaving. And I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day because when I got to Starbucks I asked for a chocolate doughnut, and I was told that they didn’t have those anymore, and that a plain one would have to do. And then they gave me a latte instead of a mocha, and when I sipped it I burned my tongue. And while I was arguing with the barista about my mocha, someone gave me a new door ding in the parking lot and then drove off. I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, that’s what it was because after leaving Starbucks I had to sit in traffic for an hour and a half. Who gets out of bed at 6am to sit on the freeway for an hour and a half? ‘I hope you all own shares of BP!’ I shouted. ‘I hope that a dog totals your Prius!’ I shouted, shaking my steering wheel. All the shaking made my doughnut fall on the floor of the truck. I think I’ll move to Australia.
When I got to work, Mark had a Jelly roll with his Mocha. Brett had some lemon cookies and a cup of tea. Guess who still had a lonely, tepid latte? At meeting time the boss said that my numbers didn’t look right, and at the other meeting time I got action items. Who needs action items? ‘Make those numbers right by next week’ he said. ‘Next week’, I said, ‘I’m moving to Australia’.
I am having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I told everyone. No one even answered.
At lunch time I spilled soup on my shirt, I got pee on my pants, and I bit my tongue. The boss wants to go to the conference with Mark, not with me. And Brett took back the stapler he said I could keep, and the soda machine was out of diet coke, and I broke my pen.
When I went home I had to make mac and cheese for the kids, and I hate mac and cheese. And the baby needed changing, and I hate changing. And "Cupcake Wars' was on TV, and I hate 'Cupcake Wars'. And the school left a message that said that one of our kids was ‘a really neat kid’ but that they needed to talk with us about him. And Sally wants to sleep on her side of the bed, and not with me.
It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
...I guess some days are like that. Even in Australia.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
The Crash
After the dust had settled, Don opened his eyes and spied a tiny caterpillar just a few inches from his right cheek, almost hanging in mid-air as it was busily gnawing on a thin blade of grass that was bending slightly under the weight of the beast. You could almost hear it chewing in the silence that had fallen since the crash. Don sat and stared at it for a few seconds, and then made a face as if to mimic the caterpillar’s chewing - partly, I figure, to check to see that he was still alive, and partly to enjoy the simple things in life that people briefly re-discover after a near-death experience.
Most people would have assumed, and rightly so, that we had been out drinking again and in a fit of poor judgment decided to get in a vehicle and make it go – but this was not the case. What had been the case was that we were kinda checking out some ass on the way to a team building experience that our boss, in his infinite wisdom, forced us to go to. We really had no business going to this event in the first place, as everyone who sat within ear-shot of Don and myself had already made up their mind about whether they could stand working with us or not. Ordinarily, we might have downed a pint of liquor in the parking lot before-hand, and then followed some other poor bastard out to their car so that they could drive us to the event, all the while making obnoxious jokes and sounds, and seeing who could sound the most like Sam Kinnison. Don’s natural drunk voice was a cross between Jeff Foxworthy and Sam Kinnison, so he had an advantage in this area, but I could usually mimic him well enough to get him in trouble on conference calls and such, from time to time. But this is all beside the point, because as I said before, we were not drinking at all that day – we were checking out ass.
Ass comes in many shapes and sizes, and while the debate rages on over what the perfect ass looks like you can pretty much count on most guys to have the exact same reaction when confronted with a given ass. On the affirmative, the guy will either make a shortened ‘m’ sound, or potentially even go as far as to say ‘damn’, but this is rare and is also a call for any other guys in the area to stop what they are doing and have a gander as well, because it’s just that good. It’s a bonding thing. Conversely, on the negative a typical guy will usually stifle a kind of gagging sound, which is difficult to describe but often heard, while averting their eyes – sometimes going as far as to actually shield their eyes with one hand, just in case. Occasionally, there will be a negative of epic proportions at which point the guy will temporarily lose control of his diaphragm and utter a rather louder sound that is either similar to a retching noise, or, if he is more experienced, ‘Oh Gawd’. This is also, contrary to what you might think, a call for other guys in the vicinity to drop what they are doing to experience this with you. Again, it’s a bonding thing. Don’t ask. There are no asses in the middle. It’s a simple yes or no question.
Don was an ‘Oh Gawd’-er because he was more experienced at this than I was. He was also thrilled by the recent development of women taking to putting their names across their backs or butts on sweats because it made identifying and pointing out the ass in question much easier than in a normal girl-group situation. Plus, if you ever felt the urge to compliment someone on their derrier, it made that easier too. ‘Hey Williams!!!’ (pause) ‘Nice ass!!!’
Just kidding, he never did that - at least not with the windows rolled down anyway. Don probably thought it unusual that so many of the girls were named either ‘Juicy’ or ‘Pink’ though – speaking of which, why would you want the word ‘Juicy’ across your ass anyway? That’s just. So. Wrong.
So anyhow, where were we… O right, we were on our way to said team building event, listening to Jimmie Rodgers on the stereo (because we’re freaks) and checking out ass:
Me: ‘Abercrombie.’
Don: ‘m.’ *pause*
Stereo: ‘Um gonna buuuuy me a shotgun,’
Don: ‘Blondie there.’
Me: ‘Damn.’
Stereo: ‘Just as looooooong as I’m tall…’
Don: ‘What?’
Me: ‘Forrester, in the red there.’
Don: ‘Damn.’
Stereo: ‘Gonna buy me a shotgun,’
And this went on pretty much the whole trip, as we toodled down the road, until we came upon something that we did not entirely expect to be possible.
Me: ‘Juicy.’
Don: ‘m’.
Don (shielding his eyes): ‘O Gawd!’
Me (looking over): ‘What, I, *retch*, ack!’
Me (thinking quickly): ‘With her, or that big green one we saw a minute ago?’
Don (grimacing at the thought, but you have to answer –it’s the rule): ‘Green-ey’.
Me (laughing): ugh.
Don: ‘In grey, up ahead’.
Me: ‘I don’t see – ‘
Don: ‘Well, we’ll have to get closer to be sure.’
Me: ‘Oh there…’
Me: *pause*
Don: *pause*
And we paused there, at length, as if we were two yokels trying to make out the meaning of a Picasso painting, and we got closer and closer to the ass in question, but neither one of us said anything or took our eyes off it. It wasn’t a good ass, but it wasn’t a bad ass either. It was set dead-square in the middle, not bony or fat, not shapely but with shape, not huge and not small, and in fact there was absolutely nothing remarkable about it at all, except to say that it did indeed exist somewhere under those grey sweatpants, and upon discovering what can only be assumed to be the one ‘middle-of-the-road’ ass in the entire world, our brains simply stopped functioning as they went into an endless loop of analysis paralysis and
Don: ‘STAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWPPPP!!!!!’
Cue slow motion. I have had numerous near-death experiences before (almost drowning, nearly being hit by a train, motorcycle vs. Mack truck, etc.) and the one constant between them all is that the world seems to slow down for the duration of the experience. The world has now slowed down, which means that I am about to die unless I do something, so here goes…
I hear Don shout, and tear my face away from the ass dilemma to assess the situation. We are traveling about 50 MPH, and there is a line of stopped cars in front of us at what appears to be approximately 10 feet away (though I am sure it was really farther). I have a suspicion that it would be futile to hit the brakes at this point, and I doubt I could even touch the brake pedal before impact. I have to swerve, either into oncoming traffic or the shoulder. I’ll pick the shoulder. It might not be wide enough for the car, and I am not sure what lies beyond it because my eyes can’t see that far that fast, but all in all it sounds like a better plan than the oncoming traffic. And time begins to speed up. . .
WA-ZIZZZZZ!!! We managed to swerve fast enough to avoid hitting the car in front of us, and we were even in the shoulder, briefly, but apparently there was a lot of loose gravel or something in said shoulder which caused a total failure of traction because as I straightened out from the swerve our vehicle continued drifting slowly sideways, and we left the shoulder at the speed of still 50 mph, were momentarily airborne, and then began to descend and bottom out in a near perfect fashion in a canal which was beyond the shoulder of the road by a few feet, running parallel to it.
The car crunched perfectly into the rather narrow canal – like a slot car running on a track really, and we zoomed along the canal floor rather grandly as I stood on the brakes, and Jimmie was howling the whole way too:
Don: ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!’
Stereo: ‘Gunna buy me a pistol…’
Don: ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!’
Stereo: ‘With a big long shiny barrel…’
Don: ‘AAAAHHH!!!!’
We ultimately stopped a few feet short of a metal underpass pipe, and I reached over and turned off the stereo; the caterpillar chewed, and then Don made his chewing face, and then we assessed the situation. The canal was luckily empty, as the sides rose slightly above the roof of the car and had it been full we would have been unable to open the doors (because they butted up against the sides of the canal within a few inches either way), and the water surely would have shorted out the electrical system causing the sun roof to be inaccessible. Picture two guys slowly drowning as they frantically tried to position themselves in such a way as to kick through a windshield or sunroof from the inside of a car. Haha.. Fortunately, this did not happen, though we did have to climb out the sun roof to escape our current situation – which as it turns out had not gone entirely unnoticed by the rest of the motoring community, leaving us to sit on the roof of the car smiling and waving at everyone who had stopped to gawk and ask stupid questions while leaning out their windows like ‘Hao’d yoo doo thay-at?!?’
You would think that this embarrassment would be enough for one day, but alas, remember the ass-in-question that caused this whole mess? Well, it decided to walk over to see how we were doing:
Ass-in-question: ‘Hao’d yoo doo thay-at?!?’
Don (recovered now, and in his best Sam Kinnison voice): ‘Well, you SEE, ‘
Me (cutting Don off, so we don’t end up in jail): ‘We were just looking for, uh, free parking.’
Don (nodding): ‘Free parking.’
Ass-in-question (slowly): ‘Are you guys, uh, feeling ok?’
Me (looking at Don): ‘Oh sure, it’s all good. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Are you fine?’
Don: ‘Yup! Just fine!’
And the ass-in-question waves and walks away.
Me: ‘I think that one’s a ‘no’ for me.’
Don: ‘Yeah, it’s a no. The lighting must have been bad before.’
Me: ‘It’s not that bad, but I mean, no where near as good as Juicy was.’
Don: ‘Kind of saggy, really. I mean –‘
Cop: ‘Sir, step off the car please.’
Let me take a little break here to give you some background on my experiences to-date with the po po. Actually, they can be summed up quite simply: I never get away with anything. Nothing, nada, zip. I have tried various answers to the ‘do you know why I pulled you over, son?’ question, and none of them have ever caused an incident to end in a favorable manner. Allow me to recap a medley of events for you, briefly:
Cop: ‘Did you see that sign back there?’
Possible Answer: A) ‘Yes’
Response: ‘So you willfully disregarded the sign then. You know, all I ever see around here are accidents and blah blah blah.’
End Result: Ticket
Possible Answer: B) ‘No’
Response: ‘So, you’re a lousy driver and you aren’t paying attention to the road either, huh? I should cite you for blah blah blah blah.’
End Result: Ticket
Possible Answer: C) ‘Yes, but I guess that I made a judgement call, because everyone else wa-’
Response: ‘A what?!?? If everyone jumped off of a bridge would you? If everyone blah blah blah blah, would you!?’
End Result: Ticket
I fleetingly and fancifully thought about getting cheeky with the officer, since I knew I was going to get a ticket anyway, but resisted the temptation to answer in the affirmative. After all, if everyone is jumping off the bridge then there’s probably going to be a good reason (train coming, bridge on fire, etc), but I let that one slide because, well, I didn’t really need any new jewelry that day. Anyway, back to the present:
Cop: ‘Did you see that sign back there?’
Don: ‘Ack!’
Me (stepping off the car): ‘Hi Offi-‘
Cop: ‘Son, have you been drinking?’
Me: (I know the answer to this one, because I get asked all the time for some reason): ‘No sir!’
Cop: ‘License and registration.’
Me (after having retrieved it by shimmying through the sunroof, to the delight of onlookers): ‘Here it is.’
Cop: ‘What happened?’
Sam Kinnison: ‘Well, you SEE,’
Me (cutting Don off, so we don’t end up in bracelets): ‘I, uh, just got distracted, and umm, I guess we ended up here.’
Cop (writing things down and frowning at me): ‘I should cite you for reckless driving, but it looks like you have enough to worry about for right now.’
Me (in disbelief, as I have never gotten out of a ticket before in my life): ‘Uh… thanks.’
Cop: ‘You got a tow truck on the way, right?’
Me (I sure will in a minute here): ‘Yup!’
The cop then cheerfully proceeded to light about 15 road flares and sprinkle them all about the shoulder of the road, as if there was going to be some sort of party in our honor, and then gets in his car and leaves. This is truly excellent, because now anyone who might have missed a bright red Acura sitting at the bottom of a canal with two nimrods sitting on top of it is not going to make the same mistake when it’s surrounded by flares – oh no.
So I sit back down on top of the car to call a tow truck amid what has become every one else on the road’s personal reality TV show, and I think to myself: Do we have AAA? So I call my wife to ask, and if so what our account number is. The conversation went something like this:
* ring ring *
Her: ‘Hello.’
Me: ‘Hi, do we have AAA?’
Her: ‘No.’
Me: ‘Damn.’
Her: ‘Wait, what do you need AAA for?’
Me (cornered): ‘Errr.. Nothing!’
Her: ‘What did you do?’
Me: ‘Uhh… Well, we sort of like, drove into a ditch by accident.’
Her (pausing): ‘And how on earth did you do that?’
Don (who had been listening in - shouting): ‘We was checkin’ out ASS!!!’
Me: (covering the phone): ‘I don’t remember. I have to call a tow truck now though.’
Her: ‘There’s a sticker on your window, remember?’
* click *
Ahhh, that’s right. The auto manufacturer offered free roadside assistance for the first 48k miles. I had forgotten that! So I call them up and a guy with a two truck arrives in short order, winches the car out of the canal and what was a rakish 45 degree angle or more, and we are back on the road in no time. No visible damage to the car at all, save a couple paint scrapes that were caused by a patch of blackberries growing on the side of the canal. Amazing really. So we get back in the car and continue, though somewhat more cautiously and shakily, on to the team building event - which is half over by this point, but whatever.
Don: ‘Don’t fucking kill us this time.’
Me: ‘Okay.’
Don: ‘Pink.’
Me: ‘m’
We pulled in at the address a few minutes later. Turns out that the teambuilding event was, for real, a racing event hosted here: http://www.traxxracing.com/groups.asp .
We opted out.
Most people would have assumed, and rightly so, that we had been out drinking again and in a fit of poor judgment decided to get in a vehicle and make it go – but this was not the case. What had been the case was that we were kinda checking out some ass on the way to a team building experience that our boss, in his infinite wisdom, forced us to go to. We really had no business going to this event in the first place, as everyone who sat within ear-shot of Don and myself had already made up their mind about whether they could stand working with us or not. Ordinarily, we might have downed a pint of liquor in the parking lot before-hand, and then followed some other poor bastard out to their car so that they could drive us to the event, all the while making obnoxious jokes and sounds, and seeing who could sound the most like Sam Kinnison. Don’s natural drunk voice was a cross between Jeff Foxworthy and Sam Kinnison, so he had an advantage in this area, but I could usually mimic him well enough to get him in trouble on conference calls and such, from time to time. But this is all beside the point, because as I said before, we were not drinking at all that day – we were checking out ass.
Ass comes in many shapes and sizes, and while the debate rages on over what the perfect ass looks like you can pretty much count on most guys to have the exact same reaction when confronted with a given ass. On the affirmative, the guy will either make a shortened ‘m’ sound, or potentially even go as far as to say ‘damn’, but this is rare and is also a call for any other guys in the area to stop what they are doing and have a gander as well, because it’s just that good. It’s a bonding thing. Conversely, on the negative a typical guy will usually stifle a kind of gagging sound, which is difficult to describe but often heard, while averting their eyes – sometimes going as far as to actually shield their eyes with one hand, just in case. Occasionally, there will be a negative of epic proportions at which point the guy will temporarily lose control of his diaphragm and utter a rather louder sound that is either similar to a retching noise, or, if he is more experienced, ‘Oh Gawd’. This is also, contrary to what you might think, a call for other guys in the vicinity to drop what they are doing to experience this with you. Again, it’s a bonding thing. Don’t ask. There are no asses in the middle. It’s a simple yes or no question.
Don was an ‘Oh Gawd’-er because he was more experienced at this than I was. He was also thrilled by the recent development of women taking to putting their names across their backs or butts on sweats because it made identifying and pointing out the ass in question much easier than in a normal girl-group situation. Plus, if you ever felt the urge to compliment someone on their derrier, it made that easier too. ‘Hey Williams!!!’ (pause) ‘Nice ass!!!’
Just kidding, he never did that - at least not with the windows rolled down anyway. Don probably thought it unusual that so many of the girls were named either ‘Juicy’ or ‘Pink’ though – speaking of which, why would you want the word ‘Juicy’ across your ass anyway? That’s just. So. Wrong.
So anyhow, where were we… O right, we were on our way to said team building event, listening to Jimmie Rodgers on the stereo (because we’re freaks) and checking out ass:
Me: ‘Abercrombie.’
Don: ‘m.’ *pause*
Stereo: ‘Um gonna buuuuy me a shotgun,’
Don: ‘Blondie there.’
Me: ‘Damn.’
Stereo: ‘Just as looooooong as I’m tall…’
Don: ‘What?’
Me: ‘Forrester, in the red there.’
Don: ‘Damn.’
Stereo: ‘Gonna buy me a shotgun,’
And this went on pretty much the whole trip, as we toodled down the road, until we came upon something that we did not entirely expect to be possible.
Me: ‘Juicy.’
Don: ‘m’.
Don (shielding his eyes): ‘O Gawd!’
Me (looking over): ‘What, I, *retch*, ack!’
Me (thinking quickly): ‘With her, or that big green one we saw a minute ago?’
Don (grimacing at the thought, but you have to answer –it’s the rule): ‘Green-ey’.
Me (laughing): ugh.
Don: ‘In grey, up ahead’.
Me: ‘I don’t see – ‘
Don: ‘Well, we’ll have to get closer to be sure.’
Me: ‘Oh there…’
Me: *pause*
Don: *pause*
And we paused there, at length, as if we were two yokels trying to make out the meaning of a Picasso painting, and we got closer and closer to the ass in question, but neither one of us said anything or took our eyes off it. It wasn’t a good ass, but it wasn’t a bad ass either. It was set dead-square in the middle, not bony or fat, not shapely but with shape, not huge and not small, and in fact there was absolutely nothing remarkable about it at all, except to say that it did indeed exist somewhere under those grey sweatpants, and upon discovering what can only be assumed to be the one ‘middle-of-the-road’ ass in the entire world, our brains simply stopped functioning as they went into an endless loop of analysis paralysis and
Don: ‘STAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWPPPP!!!!!’
Cue slow motion. I have had numerous near-death experiences before (almost drowning, nearly being hit by a train, motorcycle vs. Mack truck, etc.) and the one constant between them all is that the world seems to slow down for the duration of the experience. The world has now slowed down, which means that I am about to die unless I do something, so here goes…
I hear Don shout, and tear my face away from the ass dilemma to assess the situation. We are traveling about 50 MPH, and there is a line of stopped cars in front of us at what appears to be approximately 10 feet away (though I am sure it was really farther). I have a suspicion that it would be futile to hit the brakes at this point, and I doubt I could even touch the brake pedal before impact. I have to swerve, either into oncoming traffic or the shoulder. I’ll pick the shoulder. It might not be wide enough for the car, and I am not sure what lies beyond it because my eyes can’t see that far that fast, but all in all it sounds like a better plan than the oncoming traffic. And time begins to speed up. . .
WA-ZIZZZZZ!!! We managed to swerve fast enough to avoid hitting the car in front of us, and we were even in the shoulder, briefly, but apparently there was a lot of loose gravel or something in said shoulder which caused a total failure of traction because as I straightened out from the swerve our vehicle continued drifting slowly sideways, and we left the shoulder at the speed of still 50 mph, were momentarily airborne, and then began to descend and bottom out in a near perfect fashion in a canal which was beyond the shoulder of the road by a few feet, running parallel to it.
The car crunched perfectly into the rather narrow canal – like a slot car running on a track really, and we zoomed along the canal floor rather grandly as I stood on the brakes, and Jimmie was howling the whole way too:
Don: ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!’
Stereo: ‘Gunna buy me a pistol…’
Don: ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!’
Stereo: ‘With a big long shiny barrel…’
Don: ‘AAAAHHH!!!!’
We ultimately stopped a few feet short of a metal underpass pipe, and I reached over and turned off the stereo; the caterpillar chewed, and then Don made his chewing face, and then we assessed the situation. The canal was luckily empty, as the sides rose slightly above the roof of the car and had it been full we would have been unable to open the doors (because they butted up against the sides of the canal within a few inches either way), and the water surely would have shorted out the electrical system causing the sun roof to be inaccessible. Picture two guys slowly drowning as they frantically tried to position themselves in such a way as to kick through a windshield or sunroof from the inside of a car. Haha.. Fortunately, this did not happen, though we did have to climb out the sun roof to escape our current situation – which as it turns out had not gone entirely unnoticed by the rest of the motoring community, leaving us to sit on the roof of the car smiling and waving at everyone who had stopped to gawk and ask stupid questions while leaning out their windows like ‘Hao’d yoo doo thay-at?!?’
You would think that this embarrassment would be enough for one day, but alas, remember the ass-in-question that caused this whole mess? Well, it decided to walk over to see how we were doing:
Ass-in-question: ‘Hao’d yoo doo thay-at?!?’
Don (recovered now, and in his best Sam Kinnison voice): ‘Well, you SEE, ‘
Me (cutting Don off, so we don’t end up in jail): ‘We were just looking for, uh, free parking.’
Don (nodding): ‘Free parking.’
Ass-in-question (slowly): ‘Are you guys, uh, feeling ok?’
Me (looking at Don): ‘Oh sure, it’s all good. We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Are you fine?’
Don: ‘Yup! Just fine!’
And the ass-in-question waves and walks away.
Me: ‘I think that one’s a ‘no’ for me.’
Don: ‘Yeah, it’s a no. The lighting must have been bad before.’
Me: ‘It’s not that bad, but I mean, no where near as good as Juicy was.’
Don: ‘Kind of saggy, really. I mean –‘
Cop: ‘Sir, step off the car please.’
Let me take a little break here to give you some background on my experiences to-date with the po po. Actually, they can be summed up quite simply: I never get away with anything. Nothing, nada, zip. I have tried various answers to the ‘do you know why I pulled you over, son?’ question, and none of them have ever caused an incident to end in a favorable manner. Allow me to recap a medley of events for you, briefly:
Cop: ‘Did you see that sign back there?’
Possible Answer: A) ‘Yes’
Response: ‘So you willfully disregarded the sign then. You know, all I ever see around here are accidents and blah blah blah.’
End Result: Ticket
Possible Answer: B) ‘No’
Response: ‘So, you’re a lousy driver and you aren’t paying attention to the road either, huh? I should cite you for blah blah blah blah.’
End Result: Ticket
Possible Answer: C) ‘Yes, but I guess that I made a judgement call, because everyone else wa-’
Response: ‘A what?!?? If everyone jumped off of a bridge would you? If everyone blah blah blah blah, would you!?’
End Result: Ticket
I fleetingly and fancifully thought about getting cheeky with the officer, since I knew I was going to get a ticket anyway, but resisted the temptation to answer in the affirmative. After all, if everyone is jumping off the bridge then there’s probably going to be a good reason (train coming, bridge on fire, etc), but I let that one slide because, well, I didn’t really need any new jewelry that day. Anyway, back to the present:
Cop: ‘Did you see that sign back there?’
Don: ‘Ack!’
Me (stepping off the car): ‘Hi Offi-‘
Cop: ‘Son, have you been drinking?’
Me: (I know the answer to this one, because I get asked all the time for some reason): ‘No sir!’
Cop: ‘License and registration.’
Me (after having retrieved it by shimmying through the sunroof, to the delight of onlookers): ‘Here it is.’
Cop: ‘What happened?’
Sam Kinnison: ‘Well, you SEE,’
Me (cutting Don off, so we don’t end up in bracelets): ‘I, uh, just got distracted, and umm, I guess we ended up here.’
Cop (writing things down and frowning at me): ‘I should cite you for reckless driving, but it looks like you have enough to worry about for right now.’
Me (in disbelief, as I have never gotten out of a ticket before in my life): ‘Uh… thanks.’
Cop: ‘You got a tow truck on the way, right?’
Me (I sure will in a minute here): ‘Yup!’
The cop then cheerfully proceeded to light about 15 road flares and sprinkle them all about the shoulder of the road, as if there was going to be some sort of party in our honor, and then gets in his car and leaves. This is truly excellent, because now anyone who might have missed a bright red Acura sitting at the bottom of a canal with two nimrods sitting on top of it is not going to make the same mistake when it’s surrounded by flares – oh no.
So I sit back down on top of the car to call a tow truck amid what has become every one else on the road’s personal reality TV show, and I think to myself: Do we have AAA? So I call my wife to ask, and if so what our account number is. The conversation went something like this:
* ring ring *
Her: ‘Hello.’
Me: ‘Hi, do we have AAA?’
Her: ‘No.’
Me: ‘Damn.’
Her: ‘Wait, what do you need AAA for?’
Me (cornered): ‘Errr.. Nothing!’
Her: ‘What did you do?’
Me: ‘Uhh… Well, we sort of like, drove into a ditch by accident.’
Her (pausing): ‘And how on earth did you do that?’
Don (who had been listening in - shouting): ‘We was checkin’ out ASS!!!’
Me: (covering the phone): ‘I don’t remember. I have to call a tow truck now though.’
Her: ‘There’s a sticker on your window, remember?’
* click *
Ahhh, that’s right. The auto manufacturer offered free roadside assistance for the first 48k miles. I had forgotten that! So I call them up and a guy with a two truck arrives in short order, winches the car out of the canal and what was a rakish 45 degree angle or more, and we are back on the road in no time. No visible damage to the car at all, save a couple paint scrapes that were caused by a patch of blackberries growing on the side of the canal. Amazing really. So we get back in the car and continue, though somewhat more cautiously and shakily, on to the team building event - which is half over by this point, but whatever.
Don: ‘Don’t fucking kill us this time.’
Me: ‘Okay.’
Don: ‘Pink.’
Me: ‘m’
We pulled in at the address a few minutes later. Turns out that the teambuilding event was, for real, a racing event hosted here: http://www.traxxracing.com/groups.asp .
We opted out.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Back in My Day. . .
I'm not quite old enough to bellow 'back in myyyy day' and proceed to tell a long and excruiatingly painful story about making soap by hand behind the barn with my brothers and sisters, concluding with a moral or values or something else long forgotten. Not quite yet anyway. I hope. Though I was in Target (I have my standards) the other day and over-heard a boy about 8 whine incessantly about not getting a new Wii game and ultimately fold his arms declaring that he was bored and that there was nothing to do. The parent subsequently caved. Now, aside from being privately flabbergasted and fondly reminiscing about the one time I tried throwing a tantrum in the store (which I am told (and only kinda remember) ended with my bare backside exposed to everyone in aisle 4, followed by a good long uncomfortable sit in a summertime Plymouth with blue vinyl seats), I thought back to what I did do when I was bored as a child. A small treasure trove of childhood memories burst forth, so I thought I would share :). Keep in mind we were a little bit poor, relatively speaking, but that we were far from a bunch of inbred hoochers living on the bayou - despite what you are about to read. So here goes, top 10 childhood memories about what we did when we were bored:
10) Rock fight. Pro: Easy to organize; rocks are cheap and abundant. Con: This always ends rather quickly with someone running home crying, and their mother subsequently shouting obscenities at others from the doorway.
9) Playing with fire. This actually has its own post, so for details on something that does not warrant repeating and probably should never have been posted in the first place, go here.
8) Making home-made radios. No wait! Allow me to explain! If you dig through the garbage (or your neighbor's garbage) you will eventually find an old can or a jar. If it's a jar with a lid, then you are indeed in luck that day - otherwise you'll have to make do with a can and something to cover the open end (tin foil, envelope, block of wood, etc). Mostly we found cans, and although cans had better acoustics than jars, they were also more dangerous. So get your can and follow me, and lets try to capture an unsuspecting flying insect and then we'll compare the sound of an angry yellow jacket vs. an angry hornet buzzing against the inside of your can. If it's a super-lucky day, then you might find a wasp instead - This is a real treat, because wasps have a sound all their own when irritated. How do you irritate them? Easy! Cover up your can and shake it up real hard. Put the metal side up to your ear. Hear all that buzzing? Now it's like you have a real walkman! No, of course no one ever got stung, repeatedly. . . :)
7) Digging. On a more industrious day, it would then turn into mixing the dirt in a pail with water to make mud. If you wanted to be more scientific about it, then you added a bit of sand, wood shavings, or whatever else you could find. Then we poured it back into the hole we dug it out of and smoothed it out like cement. This took hours.
6) Box car derby. This is probably not what you are thinking. Picture a little kid standing at the top of the stairs, a pampers box sitting at his feet. The pampers box is perched precariously at the edge of the first step, and is mostly empty except for a few diapers selectively arranged as a seat, and also inside, sitting upgright, his 9 month old sister. I am happy to report that there were no fatalities.
5) Roller derby. This is also probably not what you are thinking. Picture a slightly larger kid standing at the top of a long sloped driveway, with a cardboard packing barrel turned on its side, and held in place by a block of wood - and inside the barrel, lying on her stomach, his 4 year old sister. Once again, I am happy to report that there were no fatalities.
4) Mii Fit. Take one small water pail, such as only your grandmother would have, and one nasty old yellow tennis ball (also such as only your grandmother would have) and head out into the front yard. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to toss that nasty old tennis ball up on the roof to where it rolls high up, but does not go over to the other side. Now you track its trajectory as it heads back down the roof, anticipate the little bump and rise it gets from the gutter, and catch the ball in the pail. I am sorry to report that I chased that sad yellow ball around for hours at a time.
3) Doorjam magic. Find yourself a doorjam. Stand in it. No wait, there's more! Stand with your arms at your sides, then push up on the door jam with the backs of your hands as hrdasyoupsblycan andthencnt tosxty slwly. When you get to sixty, release, and walk out of the doorjam. Your arms will rise magically into the air for the next few seconds. It's magic! :)
2) What lives under this? If you have played this game, then you already know the appeal. If you haven't, then you probably won't get it anyway. It usually ended with a stomp fest, followed by carefully replacing the object of interest. My friend Rowdy (his real name), however, liked to poke worms and squeeze their brains right out of their little heads - then watch them wiggle uselessly on the ground. I didn't participate.
1) Build a fort. Boys love forts. Forts are everywhere. A fort could be as simple as a blanket draped over a piece of furniture in the house or as complicated as a wooden structure created from spare siding, a few nails, and some tall grass. One time we made a fort by cutting and stacking blocks of (essentially) ice with a snow shovel, after a massive snow-storm was followed by freezing rain in Idaho. A fort is your home away from home. A castle. A sanctuary, where you are free to sit and contemplate your existential state of being. Or perhaps sit clutching your knees, rocking back and forth chewing on your own hair, plotting the demise of all who have ever wronged you - real or imagined.
I was never really one for contemplation. ;)
Happy New Year!!
10) Rock fight. Pro: Easy to organize; rocks are cheap and abundant. Con: This always ends rather quickly with someone running home crying, and their mother subsequently shouting obscenities at others from the doorway.
9) Playing with fire. This actually has its own post, so for details on something that does not warrant repeating and probably should never have been posted in the first place, go here.
8) Making home-made radios. No wait! Allow me to explain! If you dig through the garbage (or your neighbor's garbage) you will eventually find an old can or a jar. If it's a jar with a lid, then you are indeed in luck that day - otherwise you'll have to make do with a can and something to cover the open end (tin foil, envelope, block of wood, etc). Mostly we found cans, and although cans had better acoustics than jars, they were also more dangerous. So get your can and follow me, and lets try to capture an unsuspecting flying insect and then we'll compare the sound of an angry yellow jacket vs. an angry hornet buzzing against the inside of your can. If it's a super-lucky day, then you might find a wasp instead - This is a real treat, because wasps have a sound all their own when irritated. How do you irritate them? Easy! Cover up your can and shake it up real hard. Put the metal side up to your ear. Hear all that buzzing? Now it's like you have a real walkman! No, of course no one ever got stung, repeatedly. . . :)
7) Digging. On a more industrious day, it would then turn into mixing the dirt in a pail with water to make mud. If you wanted to be more scientific about it, then you added a bit of sand, wood shavings, or whatever else you could find. Then we poured it back into the hole we dug it out of and smoothed it out like cement. This took hours.
6) Box car derby. This is probably not what you are thinking. Picture a little kid standing at the top of the stairs, a pampers box sitting at his feet. The pampers box is perched precariously at the edge of the first step, and is mostly empty except for a few diapers selectively arranged as a seat, and also inside, sitting upgright, his 9 month old sister. I am happy to report that there were no fatalities.
5) Roller derby. This is also probably not what you are thinking. Picture a slightly larger kid standing at the top of a long sloped driveway, with a cardboard packing barrel turned on its side, and held in place by a block of wood - and inside the barrel, lying on her stomach, his 4 year old sister. Once again, I am happy to report that there were no fatalities.
4) Mii Fit. Take one small water pail, such as only your grandmother would have, and one nasty old yellow tennis ball (also such as only your grandmother would have) and head out into the front yard. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to toss that nasty old tennis ball up on the roof to where it rolls high up, but does not go over to the other side. Now you track its trajectory as it heads back down the roof, anticipate the little bump and rise it gets from the gutter, and catch the ball in the pail. I am sorry to report that I chased that sad yellow ball around for hours at a time.
3) Doorjam magic. Find yourself a doorjam. Stand in it. No wait, there's more! Stand with your arms at your sides, then push up on the door jam with the backs of your hands as hrdasyoupsblycan andthencnt tosxty slwly. When you get to sixty, release, and walk out of the doorjam. Your arms will rise magically into the air for the next few seconds. It's magic! :)
2) What lives under this? If you have played this game, then you already know the appeal. If you haven't, then you probably won't get it anyway. It usually ended with a stomp fest, followed by carefully replacing the object of interest. My friend Rowdy (his real name), however, liked to poke worms and squeeze their brains right out of their little heads - then watch them wiggle uselessly on the ground. I didn't participate.
1) Build a fort. Boys love forts. Forts are everywhere. A fort could be as simple as a blanket draped over a piece of furniture in the house or as complicated as a wooden structure created from spare siding, a few nails, and some tall grass. One time we made a fort by cutting and stacking blocks of (essentially) ice with a snow shovel, after a massive snow-storm was followed by freezing rain in Idaho. A fort is your home away from home. A castle. A sanctuary, where you are free to sit and contemplate your existential state of being. Or perhaps sit clutching your knees, rocking back and forth chewing on your own hair, plotting the demise of all who have ever wronged you - real or imagined.
I was never really one for contemplation. ;)
Happy New Year!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
