My 17-year-old son David innocently asked me if I wanted to go to the basketball court with him Sunday. Since he’s at that cute age where he rarely speaks a sentence to me that doesn’t begin with the words, “Can I have..”, I said sure.
I warned him, though, that I was not going to play him in an actual game. I’m too out of shape for that foolishness. I might hurt myself or, in a much worse outcome, I might actually lose.
He’s been trying to bait me into a basketball game for some time. The other day he was trash-talking and I said, “Have you forgotten who won the last time we played? That’s right, it was me.”
He responded by reminding me that it was three years ago when that happened, when he was still in the eighth grade. Oh, big deal. Like there’s much difference between an eighth-grader and an 11th-grader. I mean, I haven’ t changed that much in three years, so what makes him think he has?
Anyway, we got to the court, and we started shooting, and I realized the little booger knew what he was doing. He knew there was no way I was going to let him stand unchallenged on the court. Finally I said, “Ok, I’ll run you a quick one. Let’s play to seven.”
No, he said, we always play to 12. Fine, I said, knowing I couldn’t back down. If you show weakness to these urchins, they’ll kill you in your sleep and steal your debit card. So I agreed to play to 12, which in retrospect, was a poor decision.
The game started out calmly enough. I drained a couple of jumpers, he made a layup here and there. By the time the score was 3-1, there had already been three timeouts for injury. It may surprise you to know that two of those times, he was the one who got hurt. He kept foolishly running into my elbow.
The other time, I jammed my fingers quite badly when I reached for the ball and accidentally hit his hard head. As evidence, my middle finger on my right hand is swollen to the size of a bratwurst and is turning black. Having a middle finger out of commission severely hampered my morning commute. But I stayed tough, and took a 7-4 lead, and would have at that point been the winner had I stuck to my original plan.
Then, he began to catch up, and I began to move a little more slowly. I was going to my left with all the quickness of a sea turtle on Quaaludes. After he tied the game at 7-7, I looked up and saw my wife drive up in her car. She had come to watch the fun. Trust me, I had no illusions about who she was pulling for.
It’s a good thing she showed up when she did, because it gave us an excuse to stop the game for a few minutes, and I was about 5 seconds away from a cardiac event.
“How are you doing?” she said, and I told her that I was doing just fine, but it might not be a bad idea to dial 9-1-1 on her phone and have her finger hover above the “send” button, just in case. She smiled, told me that she had faith in me, and asked me where the life insurance policies were.
The game resumed and, as you can surmise, what with my concentration thrown off and my finger hurting and the fact that the baskets were 3 inches higher than regulation, not to mention it was really a bad biorhythm day for me and my astrological signs were lined up poorly – well, I lost.
Don’t worry, though, I handled it maturely. I congratulated him, and secretly vowed to work over the next few weeks to get ready for a rematch. I’ve hired Larry Bird as my shooting coach, I’m doing conditioning work with Lance Armstrong, and I’ve begun taking steroids. If all that fails, I’ll remind him of all the times I let him win when he was younger. I’m not above accepting charity.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
I watched the Super Bowl Sunday, because I am a red-blooded American man and it is required behavior, like spitting in the sink or drinking straight from the orange juice carton.
I watched it at home, with my son and my dog. None of us cared that much about the game, since we’d hoped the Falcons would make it, but I guess I pulled for the Packers, and my son was for the Steelers. The dog didn’t state a preference.
My daughter was in Athens, studying, I’m sure, because that’s what college students do all weekend. And my wife was upstairs doing something else because, let’s face it, I was watching football, and that’s no place for a woman.
Don’t get me wrong. I like watching football, and I like women. I just don’t like watching football with women.
I don’t much go got football-watching parties, because these usually involve women who are allegedly watching the game, but are really there just to talk. I know, I know, there are some exceptions out there, women who actually are interested in the game and know what’s going on. But I think that’s probably a pretty low percentage, and why take the chance?
My wife will occasionally come into the room with me as I’m watching football, which is fine, except she tries to talk to me, because women think that you are supposed to communicate with your spouse, which is of course crazy talk.
She’ll try one of two tactics in her attempts to talk to me during football. First, she’ll talk about things having nothing to do with the game, like what needs fixing around the house, or how much money the kids need for something, or a story about somebody she knows who caught her husband with a dental hygienist and wants to leave him except they just spent $10,000 on in-vitro fertilization and she hopes she’s pregnant.
She soon learns that this is getting nowhere, as my only response is a grunt before I scream “Screen pass? Who is going to be fooled by a screen pass on third-and-20????”
Her second method is to try to make comments on the actual, game and this is disastrous, because the comments are not appropriate. It’s usually stuff like, “Why are they wearing that color jersey with those pants?” or “Look how long his hair is!” or “Why is he grabbing himself there?”
“Listen,” I told her the last time she tried this, “I appreciate the effort. But all I really want to hear you say when I’m watching football is, “Do you need another beer, honey?’ “ That led to a rough afternoon. Who knew divorce attorneys worked on Sundays?
My daughter is actually a pretty good football watcher, but that’s because I trained her from birth. But her mother just wasn’t trained right, and it’s too late now. It’s why we’ve had two TVs since the day we were married.
I’ve changed my football-watching behavior during the years as I’ve aged and mellowed and my home insurance premiums have gone up. I closely follow two teams – the Falcons and the Georgia Bulldogs –and I used to get quite animated during games, and perhaps would toss a few things around harmlessly. OK, I’ll be honest – I’ve thrown some fits while watching games that would cause Charlie Sheen to tell me, “Whoa, dude. Calm down.”
Now, when things are going poorly for the Bulldogs – which occurred in several games this year immediately after the coin toss – I just get quiet and watch stone-faced, and remind myself that there are people suffering in the world and war and famine and I shouldn’t get upset just because somebody FUMBLED ON THE 1-YARD LINE! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????
OK, maybe I still need some work, and maybe I’m a little bit sexist (I can hear my wife saying, “a little bit????”), but I’m a work in progress. Football is over for a few months, and now I have a lot of time to hear about what needs fixing and who’s pregnant, and I promise I’ll at least pretend to be listening.
I watched it at home, with my son and my dog. None of us cared that much about the game, since we’d hoped the Falcons would make it, but I guess I pulled for the Packers, and my son was for the Steelers. The dog didn’t state a preference.
My daughter was in Athens, studying, I’m sure, because that’s what college students do all weekend. And my wife was upstairs doing something else because, let’s face it, I was watching football, and that’s no place for a woman.
Don’t get me wrong. I like watching football, and I like women. I just don’t like watching football with women.
I don’t much go got football-watching parties, because these usually involve women who are allegedly watching the game, but are really there just to talk. I know, I know, there are some exceptions out there, women who actually are interested in the game and know what’s going on. But I think that’s probably a pretty low percentage, and why take the chance?
My wife will occasionally come into the room with me as I’m watching football, which is fine, except she tries to talk to me, because women think that you are supposed to communicate with your spouse, which is of course crazy talk.
She’ll try one of two tactics in her attempts to talk to me during football. First, she’ll talk about things having nothing to do with the game, like what needs fixing around the house, or how much money the kids need for something, or a story about somebody she knows who caught her husband with a dental hygienist and wants to leave him except they just spent $10,000 on in-vitro fertilization and she hopes she’s pregnant.
She soon learns that this is getting nowhere, as my only response is a grunt before I scream “Screen pass? Who is going to be fooled by a screen pass on third-and-20????”
Her second method is to try to make comments on the actual, game and this is disastrous, because the comments are not appropriate. It’s usually stuff like, “Why are they wearing that color jersey with those pants?” or “Look how long his hair is!” or “Why is he grabbing himself there?”
“Listen,” I told her the last time she tried this, “I appreciate the effort. But all I really want to hear you say when I’m watching football is, “Do you need another beer, honey?’ “ That led to a rough afternoon. Who knew divorce attorneys worked on Sundays?
My daughter is actually a pretty good football watcher, but that’s because I trained her from birth. But her mother just wasn’t trained right, and it’s too late now. It’s why we’ve had two TVs since the day we were married.
I’ve changed my football-watching behavior during the years as I’ve aged and mellowed and my home insurance premiums have gone up. I closely follow two teams – the Falcons and the Georgia Bulldogs –and I used to get quite animated during games, and perhaps would toss a few things around harmlessly. OK, I’ll be honest – I’ve thrown some fits while watching games that would cause Charlie Sheen to tell me, “Whoa, dude. Calm down.”
Now, when things are going poorly for the Bulldogs – which occurred in several games this year immediately after the coin toss – I just get quiet and watch stone-faced, and remind myself that there are people suffering in the world and war and famine and I shouldn’t get upset just because somebody FUMBLED ON THE 1-YARD LINE! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?????
OK, maybe I still need some work, and maybe I’m a little bit sexist (I can hear my wife saying, “a little bit????”), but I’m a work in progress. Football is over for a few months, and now I have a lot of time to hear about what needs fixing and who’s pregnant, and I promise I’ll at least pretend to be listening.
Friday, January 7, 2011
What's on TV?
I have satellite TV, and we’ve ordered the “Deluxe Jumbo 5,000 Channels of Crap” package, so I have an endless possibility of things to watch, all the while saying “I can’t believe I’m watching this.”
My wife and I often watch separate TVs, since she likes shows like “I had a 200-pound Tumor”, or reality shows about people who have 30 kids in their house, or shows where some Yuppie couple in San Jose spends three weeks deciding how to redo their kitchen floor. Meanwhile, I’m downstairs watching sports, or cool shows on Spike, like “1,000 Ways to Die.”
Have you seen that show? It depicts all sorts of crazy ways that people have died over the years – exploding toilets, a turtle dropped on a guy’s head by an eagle, a skateboarder passing out facedown in wet cement – with graphic re-creations. I can’t understand for the life of me why women don’t enjoy this show.
The truth is, I have the TV on a lot, but I don’t really watch it that much. I am thrilled that IFC is now showing “The Larry Sanders Show,” which is the best show in the history of television. But other than that, pickings are slim.
The other night I was sitting on the couch, flipping through one of the many HBO channels that I overpay for, and I saw that the movie “Up” was coming on. Well, I’d never seen it, and I thought, I’ll give it a try. I’d read good reviews, and it looked like a delightful animated adventure. My daughter said she’d watch part of it with me.
Have you seen this movie? For the first 20 minutes, I had to pretend that my cold was acting up so my daughter wouldn’t ask me why I was getting teary-eyed and sniffling from watching a cartoon. I haven’t been that emotional watching a movie since (Spoiler Alert!) Old Yeller got a bullet in his brain.
At least it was a pretty good movie. One good thing about my children growing up is I don’t have to sit through awful kids’ movies and TV shows any more. There was a point in my life when just seeing something purple could turn me homicidal, all thanks to Barney the Dinosaur. I used to daydream about driving to California and strangling that little guy on “Blue’s Clues” with my bare hands.
Now, my children watch wonderful shows like “Jersey Shore.” I wouldn’t watch that show unless I was wearing a haz-mat suit. You could probably get an STD if you watched that show on one of those new 3-D TVs. If aliens land on Earth and see that show, they’ll immediately incinerate us all, because they’ll think there’s no hope for humanity. A purple Barney was pretty bad, but an orange “Snooki” is too much to bear.
I suppose I could do something productive instead of just sitting on the couch in front of the TV set. I could, but I’m not. It’s cold outside, it gets dark at 5:30, and by the time I get home from work, my brain needs rest, not stimulation. Hopefully there’s a good bowl game on tonight.
My wife and I often watch separate TVs, since she likes shows like “I had a 200-pound Tumor”, or reality shows about people who have 30 kids in their house, or shows where some Yuppie couple in San Jose spends three weeks deciding how to redo their kitchen floor. Meanwhile, I’m downstairs watching sports, or cool shows on Spike, like “1,000 Ways to Die.”
Have you seen that show? It depicts all sorts of crazy ways that people have died over the years – exploding toilets, a turtle dropped on a guy’s head by an eagle, a skateboarder passing out facedown in wet cement – with graphic re-creations. I can’t understand for the life of me why women don’t enjoy this show.
The truth is, I have the TV on a lot, but I don’t really watch it that much. I am thrilled that IFC is now showing “The Larry Sanders Show,” which is the best show in the history of television. But other than that, pickings are slim.
The other night I was sitting on the couch, flipping through one of the many HBO channels that I overpay for, and I saw that the movie “Up” was coming on. Well, I’d never seen it, and I thought, I’ll give it a try. I’d read good reviews, and it looked like a delightful animated adventure. My daughter said she’d watch part of it with me.
Have you seen this movie? For the first 20 minutes, I had to pretend that my cold was acting up so my daughter wouldn’t ask me why I was getting teary-eyed and sniffling from watching a cartoon. I haven’t been that emotional watching a movie since (Spoiler Alert!) Old Yeller got a bullet in his brain.
At least it was a pretty good movie. One good thing about my children growing up is I don’t have to sit through awful kids’ movies and TV shows any more. There was a point in my life when just seeing something purple could turn me homicidal, all thanks to Barney the Dinosaur. I used to daydream about driving to California and strangling that little guy on “Blue’s Clues” with my bare hands.
Now, my children watch wonderful shows like “Jersey Shore.” I wouldn’t watch that show unless I was wearing a haz-mat suit. You could probably get an STD if you watched that show on one of those new 3-D TVs. If aliens land on Earth and see that show, they’ll immediately incinerate us all, because they’ll think there’s no hope for humanity. A purple Barney was pretty bad, but an orange “Snooki” is too much to bear.
I suppose I could do something productive instead of just sitting on the couch in front of the TV set. I could, but I’m not. It’s cold outside, it gets dark at 5:30, and by the time I get home from work, my brain needs rest, not stimulation. Hopefully there’s a good bowl game on tonight.
Monday, November 22, 2010
Shopping in a warehouse
The other day my wife and I found ourselves in the parking lot at the enormous warehouse store, Sam’s Club. We got out of the car and I looked at her and asked why we were there, and she said, “I don’t know.”
This was surely a sign that we should have gotten in the car and gone back home, but no, we forged ahead, with a pledge to each other not to spend too much money. An hour later we were $200 poorer and headed home with a carful of stuff, and I have no idea why we bought any of it.
When we first walked in, I was greeted by dozens of flat-screen TVs. It was Sunday, so there were football games on. I stood there, mesmerized, like a 15-year-old boy in a strip club, with my mouth watering almost as much.
Never mind that just last month I was contemplating putting my baseball card collection on EBay just so I could pay the cell phone bill. I was stricken with flat-screen TV fever, and found myself thinking things like, “You know, $2,500 is not really a bad deal for a TV like that. I mean, think how much use I’ll get out of it!” We’re probably the only people on our block who still have a round-screened TV, or whatever you call those old things.
Those warehouse stores are the devil’s workshop, I can tell you that. There are three people living in my house right now, so why would I need a package of 60 rolls of toilet paper? Yet we bought one. You go in those places thinking you’re just going to buy paper towels, and you walk out with a new living room set, a pressure washer and 27 pounds of frozen shrimp.
The most crowded part of the warehouse store is the food section, because of all the free samples. There were people lined up, 8 or 9 deep, at some of the sampling stations. I swear, some people come there for their Sunday dinner, which is fine, if you want to eat your entire Sunday dinner off of toothpicks.
I bought some interesting things on my most recent trip there. I got a new white dress shirt. Some men buy their clothes at Brooks Brothers, I get mine at Sam’s Club. It might explain why I’m not exactly shooting up the old corporate ladder.
I also bought an enormous collection of hot chocolate. There are, like, 8 different kinds of hot chocolate in there, which seems great, until you get home and realize that your favorite flavor of hot chocolate is, you know, chocolate. That, and I drink about 5 cups of it a year. So I’m covered when it comes to hot chocolate until 2021.
We grabbed a few other things we desperately needed while there – a box of pomegranates; 50 chicken wings; a pack of reading glasses; and enough laundry detergent to wash 212 loads. We chose this one over the laundry detergent that could only promise 210 loads. Since our daughter came home from college this weekend and brought her laundry, we’re already down to about 110 loads left.
I think I need to stay away from Sam’s for a while. I’ll go back when I run out of toilet paper, which should coincide with the next visit from Halley’s Comet, unless I actually need something from there in the meantime. You know, I could really use that pressure washer…..
This was surely a sign that we should have gotten in the car and gone back home, but no, we forged ahead, with a pledge to each other not to spend too much money. An hour later we were $200 poorer and headed home with a carful of stuff, and I have no idea why we bought any of it.
When we first walked in, I was greeted by dozens of flat-screen TVs. It was Sunday, so there were football games on. I stood there, mesmerized, like a 15-year-old boy in a strip club, with my mouth watering almost as much.
Never mind that just last month I was contemplating putting my baseball card collection on EBay just so I could pay the cell phone bill. I was stricken with flat-screen TV fever, and found myself thinking things like, “You know, $2,500 is not really a bad deal for a TV like that. I mean, think how much use I’ll get out of it!” We’re probably the only people on our block who still have a round-screened TV, or whatever you call those old things.
Those warehouse stores are the devil’s workshop, I can tell you that. There are three people living in my house right now, so why would I need a package of 60 rolls of toilet paper? Yet we bought one. You go in those places thinking you’re just going to buy paper towels, and you walk out with a new living room set, a pressure washer and 27 pounds of frozen shrimp.
The most crowded part of the warehouse store is the food section, because of all the free samples. There were people lined up, 8 or 9 deep, at some of the sampling stations. I swear, some people come there for their Sunday dinner, which is fine, if you want to eat your entire Sunday dinner off of toothpicks.
I bought some interesting things on my most recent trip there. I got a new white dress shirt. Some men buy their clothes at Brooks Brothers, I get mine at Sam’s Club. It might explain why I’m not exactly shooting up the old corporate ladder.
I also bought an enormous collection of hot chocolate. There are, like, 8 different kinds of hot chocolate in there, which seems great, until you get home and realize that your favorite flavor of hot chocolate is, you know, chocolate. That, and I drink about 5 cups of it a year. So I’m covered when it comes to hot chocolate until 2021.
We grabbed a few other things we desperately needed while there – a box of pomegranates; 50 chicken wings; a pack of reading glasses; and enough laundry detergent to wash 212 loads. We chose this one over the laundry detergent that could only promise 210 loads. Since our daughter came home from college this weekend and brought her laundry, we’re already down to about 110 loads left.
I think I need to stay away from Sam’s for a while. I’ll go back when I run out of toilet paper, which should coincide with the next visit from Halley’s Comet, unless I actually need something from there in the meantime. You know, I could really use that pressure washer…..
Friday, November 19, 2010
Home remedies
I try not to do the “you kids don’t know how easy you have it” speech with my children very often, because I realize that each generation has its own set of problems and issues to deal with. For example, it is very hard for my son do his homework while playing a video game online with his friends and texting his girlfriend. I didn’t have these pressures. I just, you know, did my homework.
But I must say that there have been some improvements in medicine that have definitely worked to their advantage. For example, they have never had their skin burned by the compound of red death otherwise known as “merthiolate”, or “mercurochrome.”
My mother loved me, I am sure, but she did not miss an opportunity to put this stuff on me. It supposedly was some sort of antiseptic, and every time I had the smallest of scratches, she would drag me into the bathroom and get out the little dropper and put some merthiolate on me.
Words can’t describe how this stuff burned. She may as well have dipped a fireplace poker in the fire and branded me with it. And not only did it burn, it turned your skin bright red. How did anybody think this was a healing agent?
It got to where I would hide my injuries. I could have walked into a running chain saw, and I wouldn’t have told my mother, because I knew exactly what she would do. This got to be difficult, because I was a little boy and naturally got scratched and scraped up daily. But I would just put on long sleeves and long pants and a stocking cap until everything healed up.
I did some research on this and I’ve discovered that they don’t use merthiolate or mercurochrome much anymore because, for one, it doesn’t work, and for two, it’s TOXIC! Well, heck, I could have told you that when it was burning a hole in my skin.
Another favorite cure of hers was hydrogen peroxide. This wasn’t as bad; it didn’t burn, it just bubbled on your wound. Again, I’m not sure that something that causes a chemical reaction on your skin is doing you much good, but it’s good for a few minutes of fun if you’re sitting around the house bored. Wait, am I the only one who does that?
When I would get ulcers in my mouth, my mom had another homemade remedy – Goody powders. Ulcers are very painful, so I was willing to try anything to make it feel better when I had one. It was simple, you just poured a Goody powder directly onto the ulcer. For about five minutes after doing this, the pain was unbearable. I would literally drop to my knees, tears running down my face, as the throbbing pain coursed through my mouth. I remember looking at my mom the first time she had me do this and wanting to say, “Why do you hate me?”, but of course I didn’t say anything, because my mouth felt like I had swallowed burning charcoal.
But, before long, that pain went away and the ulcer didn’t hurt at all. I could eat and drink all I wanted without pain, until the Goody’s powder wore off in a couple of hours. I have since learned from a dentist that putting a headache powder on an ulcer like actually burns the skin and prolongs healing, and is a bad idea. I have to tell you, though, it brought me a lot of relief back then. I will neither recommend nor discourage this home remedy.
If I got a fever blister, which I often did, my mom had a special remedy that she got from a local pharmacist. This stuff wasn’t over-the-counter, it was under-the-counter, because it was a homemade concoction that the guy had come up with. It contained ether and was, apparently, illegal. But I have to tell you, it worked. That pharmacist either retired or got arrested, I’m not sure, but I know you can’t get his ether cure anymore.
Some of this sounds pretty bad in retrospect, but I survived it. My mother meant only the best for me, and even if her home remedies could have killed me, it would have all been out of love.
But I must say that there have been some improvements in medicine that have definitely worked to their advantage. For example, they have never had their skin burned by the compound of red death otherwise known as “merthiolate”, or “mercurochrome.”
My mother loved me, I am sure, but she did not miss an opportunity to put this stuff on me. It supposedly was some sort of antiseptic, and every time I had the smallest of scratches, she would drag me into the bathroom and get out the little dropper and put some merthiolate on me.
Words can’t describe how this stuff burned. She may as well have dipped a fireplace poker in the fire and branded me with it. And not only did it burn, it turned your skin bright red. How did anybody think this was a healing agent?
It got to where I would hide my injuries. I could have walked into a running chain saw, and I wouldn’t have told my mother, because I knew exactly what she would do. This got to be difficult, because I was a little boy and naturally got scratched and scraped up daily. But I would just put on long sleeves and long pants and a stocking cap until everything healed up.
I did some research on this and I’ve discovered that they don’t use merthiolate or mercurochrome much anymore because, for one, it doesn’t work, and for two, it’s TOXIC! Well, heck, I could have told you that when it was burning a hole in my skin.
Another favorite cure of hers was hydrogen peroxide. This wasn’t as bad; it didn’t burn, it just bubbled on your wound. Again, I’m not sure that something that causes a chemical reaction on your skin is doing you much good, but it’s good for a few minutes of fun if you’re sitting around the house bored. Wait, am I the only one who does that?
When I would get ulcers in my mouth, my mom had another homemade remedy – Goody powders. Ulcers are very painful, so I was willing to try anything to make it feel better when I had one. It was simple, you just poured a Goody powder directly onto the ulcer. For about five minutes after doing this, the pain was unbearable. I would literally drop to my knees, tears running down my face, as the throbbing pain coursed through my mouth. I remember looking at my mom the first time she had me do this and wanting to say, “Why do you hate me?”, but of course I didn’t say anything, because my mouth felt like I had swallowed burning charcoal.
But, before long, that pain went away and the ulcer didn’t hurt at all. I could eat and drink all I wanted without pain, until the Goody’s powder wore off in a couple of hours. I have since learned from a dentist that putting a headache powder on an ulcer like actually burns the skin and prolongs healing, and is a bad idea. I have to tell you, though, it brought me a lot of relief back then. I will neither recommend nor discourage this home remedy.
If I got a fever blister, which I often did, my mom had a special remedy that she got from a local pharmacist. This stuff wasn’t over-the-counter, it was under-the-counter, because it was a homemade concoction that the guy had come up with. It contained ether and was, apparently, illegal. But I have to tell you, it worked. That pharmacist either retired or got arrested, I’m not sure, but I know you can’t get his ether cure anymore.
Some of this sounds pretty bad in retrospect, but I survived it. My mother meant only the best for me, and even if her home remedies could have killed me, it would have all been out of love.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
All's fair at the fair
The fall of the year, as my mother used to call it, is upon us, and that brings back memories of the old Griffin-Spalding County Fair. I remember being excited when the multi-colored billboards would start to appear around the county, promising the coming of the fair with its rides and games and incredibly unhealthy but delicious food.
I always loved going to the fair. I loved riding (some of) the rides. I loved eating corn dogs and cotton candy. I even loved going to see the livestock exhibit, which smelled to high heaven, but where else was I going to see goats and pigs and enormous piles of cow droppings?
As I look back on it now, though, the fair could be a pretty dangerous place. My parents, once I got old enough, used to drop me off, then come back and pick me up. We don’t do this anymore with our children, since we’re all over-protective, and we’ve seen episodes of Dateline on NBC.
The most dangerous aspect of the fair was, of course, the people who traveled with the carnival. Do you remember when, just before the invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein opened the doors to all of the prisons and insane asylums in Baghdad and let the inhabitants roam the streets? Well, that pretty much describes your average collection of carnival workers.
These dregs of society manned the rides and the carnival games. Here’s a fun guessing game – which does the guy running the game have more of, fingers, teeth or times arrested? Ok, it’s not really a fair game. “Times arrested” always wins.
Then there were the rides, which were rusty and creaky and probably hadn’t been inspected since FDR was president. I can remember excitedly climbing on those rides, paying no heed to the fact that they were being held together by Scotch tape and chewing gum.
There was one particularly insidious ride called the “Skydiver.” On this contraption, you were strapped into a metal cage which was attached to a big wheel, similar to a Ferris wheel. And as you went around in circles, the cage would roll over. You could control how much it rolled, if it all, with a steering wheel inside the cage of death. Why this appealed to anyone, I never knew.
I would never ride it as a kid, always making the excuse “that looks lame” or “it doesn’t go fast enough.” The truth was, the mere sight of it scared me to death. Who were these crazy people climbing on that thing and letting the winner of a Charles Manson look-alike contest pull a lever that controlled their fate?
So one year, when I was a little older and had a fancy job at the Food Giant grocery store and a 1968 Mustang with a white vinyl top and a little spending money in my pockets, I took a young lady to the fair. That’s a romantic scenario you see in a lot of movies, right? Young lovers, strolling down the midway hand in hand, the girl eating some cotton candy while clutching a stuffed unicorn the boy won for her at a carnival game; the boy, strutting on the sawdust, pulling his girl close and hoping to steal a kiss on the merry-go-round.
Well, I take this crazy chick to the fair, and the first thing she does is point to the Skydiver and say, “I want to ride that!” I pretended to not hear her, and instead steered her to the carnival games. “Let me win you a stuffed animal,” I said. She said OK, but I saw her cast one more glance filled with desire at the freaking Skydiver, and I knew I was in trouble.
The first game we went to required me to knock over some bottles with a softball. This, I thought, would be easy. I was a pretty fair country ball player and had a good arm. What I didn’t know was that the parolee running the game had filled the bottles with something like iron or kryptonite, and it would have taken a hydrogen bomb to knock one down.
Then we went to basketball shooting game. I was a good shot back in those days, but all three of my attempts clanked off the rim which, I’m guessing, was actually smaller in circumference than the basketball. I was running out of money and pride, and not impressing my date.
Finally, I found a game where you tossed softballs into a basket. This seemed pretty easy, so I stepped up and did it on the first try, and beamed at my date, and the chain gang escapee handed me, I’m not kidding, a small piece of shag carpet. Wait a minute, I said, pointing to colorful stuff elephants and giraffes, what about those? Oh, to win that you have to throw it in one of those, he said, pointing to a basket about as big around as a doughnut. I knew I had been defeated.
“Come on,” I said to my date, once I found her again, “let me buy you a corn dog or some cotton candy.”
“That stuff is gross,” she said. “Let’s go ride something.”
“OK,” I sighed, and before I could point her toward the Tilt-o-Whirl, she grabbed my hand and began sprinting toward the Skydiver. My fate was sealed. The only possible chance I had at even getting a peck on the cheek was to climb aboard that death machine and test my fate.
We got on the thing, and I tried to lean in close to her, but this maniac was already turning the steering wheel, trying to get us upside down before the ride even started. I took my arm from around and began to fight for control. I saw that I was losing this battle, and I decided right then and there that no kiss was worth this, and I tried to open the door and get out, but Cool Hand Luke hit the start button, and away we went.
Around and around we went, with Sybil beside me trying to make the cage spin, and me holding on for dear life. I may as well have not even been on the ride – she was in love with the thrill, and not me. After about 10 times around, we get to the top of the ride – and it stops. Dead. Apparently, there was a mechanical issue with the ride.
I look down, and the guy’s walking around with a screwdriver, trying to figure out how to get the ride going again. I was thinking of jumping out, but my date keep spinning the cage, and finally I told her, “If you do that one more time, I’m going to throw up on you.” I guess the greenish tint to my face convinced her that I was serious, so she stopped her foolishness, and sulked as I held the steering wheel steady, keeping us upright until the ride got going.
Finally, it started up again, and when I reached solid ground I bolted out of the door and began wobbling back up the midway, ready to go home. My date was walking behind me when she saw a group of her friends, and she said, “If you’re not feeling well, I’ll just hang out with my friends and have one of them take me home and you can leave.”
I nodded my head, mumbled something and left her in the sawdust. I glanced over my shoulder and all I saw was her blonde hair bouncing as she ran back toward the Skydiver, and we didn’t go on any more dates.
Oh, and I kept the piece of shag carpet.
Friday, September 10, 2010
It's in the bag
The other night I heard a cell phone ringing somewhere in the kitchen. I knew it wasn’t mine, because my ringtone is the opening riff from “Whole Lotta Love,” cause I’m just cool like that.
I figured it must be my wife’s, and I could hear that she was upstairs in the shower, so I decided to go get it and, depending on whose number showed up on caller ID, answer it and let whoever it was know that she wasn’t available, or just pretend I didn’t hear it ringing.
I finally traced the signal to somewhere on the kitchen table, then realized it was coming from the bowels of her purse. So I opened the purse, looked in and realized I would not be able to find an atomic device in that mess, let alone a small cell phone.
What is it with women and their purses? I actually dug in there a little bit to try and find the phone, and came up with all sort of stuff – receipts from the 1990s, emery boards, mysterious clumps of keys, makeup, tissue, and about $17 worth of pennies and nickels. It looked like a miniature recycling center in there.
A woman’s purse is a mysterious hinterland best left alone by men. My mother used to call hers a pocketbook, but I don’t hear that term much anymore. I can remember when I was a kid, she could reach in there and produce anything she needed. For example, she always seems to have a wet rag in a plastic bag, which she would use to wipe my face before we went into a store or somebody’s house. And if I needed a Band-aid or an aspirin or a cough drop, she’d reach in there like a magician and, voila, pull it out.
I have seen women around my office carrying purses that are as big as they are. And most of the women I see at work are not just carrying a purse, but also a couple of other bags draped around their body. I feel a little guilty sometimes when I get on the elevator in the morning, not carrying a thing, everything I need stuffed into my pants pockets, when some poor 100-pound woman gets on looking like a roadie for The Who, carrying twice her body weight in assorted purses, bags and satchels.
What is in all of these bags? Are these women carrying out secret company documents? Are they smuggling drugs? I just don’t see the purpose.
They like to change their purses a lot, too. I’ll carry a wallet around until it’s held together by duct tape, but they change purses like they change their underwear. My wife will say, “I need a new purse,” and I’ll say, “But you just got one,” and she just says “It’s a woman thing. You don’t understand” And since I’ve admitted that I don’t understand women, I’ve painted myself into a corner and I don’t have a defense.
I could deal with it until one day, she took me into a Coach purse store. Apparently, Coach is a brand of purse that’s not available at, say, Walgreens. I mean, I should have known what I was in for when a brand of purses has its own store.
Anyway, I got bored, as a straight man is bound to do in a store pull of women’s purses, and I decided to just look at a couple of the price tags, to see what this was going to set me back. Holy Moly! “Are we buying a purse or a Toyota?” I asked my wife. I mean, when you have to finance something that you just use to carry stuff around, you’re paying too much for it.
Maybe I exaggerate, but I don’t think anyone will think any less of my wife, or any women, if they carry the same purse around for more than two weeks at a time. Just get a shovel and clean it out once in a while, and it will last you a good long time.
I figured it must be my wife’s, and I could hear that she was upstairs in the shower, so I decided to go get it and, depending on whose number showed up on caller ID, answer it and let whoever it was know that she wasn’t available, or just pretend I didn’t hear it ringing.
I finally traced the signal to somewhere on the kitchen table, then realized it was coming from the bowels of her purse. So I opened the purse, looked in and realized I would not be able to find an atomic device in that mess, let alone a small cell phone.
What is it with women and their purses? I actually dug in there a little bit to try and find the phone, and came up with all sort of stuff – receipts from the 1990s, emery boards, mysterious clumps of keys, makeup, tissue, and about $17 worth of pennies and nickels. It looked like a miniature recycling center in there.
A woman’s purse is a mysterious hinterland best left alone by men. My mother used to call hers a pocketbook, but I don’t hear that term much anymore. I can remember when I was a kid, she could reach in there and produce anything she needed. For example, she always seems to have a wet rag in a plastic bag, which she would use to wipe my face before we went into a store or somebody’s house. And if I needed a Band-aid or an aspirin or a cough drop, she’d reach in there like a magician and, voila, pull it out.
I have seen women around my office carrying purses that are as big as they are. And most of the women I see at work are not just carrying a purse, but also a couple of other bags draped around their body. I feel a little guilty sometimes when I get on the elevator in the morning, not carrying a thing, everything I need stuffed into my pants pockets, when some poor 100-pound woman gets on looking like a roadie for The Who, carrying twice her body weight in assorted purses, bags and satchels.
What is in all of these bags? Are these women carrying out secret company documents? Are they smuggling drugs? I just don’t see the purpose.
They like to change their purses a lot, too. I’ll carry a wallet around until it’s held together by duct tape, but they change purses like they change their underwear. My wife will say, “I need a new purse,” and I’ll say, “But you just got one,” and she just says “It’s a woman thing. You don’t understand” And since I’ve admitted that I don’t understand women, I’ve painted myself into a corner and I don’t have a defense.
I could deal with it until one day, she took me into a Coach purse store. Apparently, Coach is a brand of purse that’s not available at, say, Walgreens. I mean, I should have known what I was in for when a brand of purses has its own store.
Anyway, I got bored, as a straight man is bound to do in a store pull of women’s purses, and I decided to just look at a couple of the price tags, to see what this was going to set me back. Holy Moly! “Are we buying a purse or a Toyota?” I asked my wife. I mean, when you have to finance something that you just use to carry stuff around, you’re paying too much for it.
Maybe I exaggerate, but I don’t think anyone will think any less of my wife, or any women, if they carry the same purse around for more than two weeks at a time. Just get a shovel and clean it out once in a while, and it will last you a good long time.
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