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Month: May 2023

Hello, 911? It’s Urgent! An Unauthorized Intruder Is Terrorizing Mother!

6 Min Read

When an unknown pervert starts lurking about, you know it’s time to whip it out.

Uh, whip out your cell phone, just to be clear…


“Someone is here,” is all her ominous text message read.

My mother had only the day before moved out to our country plot o’ land, and was celebrating by having a picnic with our 5-year-old daughter, The Younger. I had honestly expected to see some cute picture of The Younger frolicking in the meadow or the pasture when my phone buzzed in the middle of the workday.

But instead of being overwhelmed with cuteness when I looked at my phone, I was slightly awash with dread instead. I had just spend my entire day the day before lauding the praises of secluded country living, including confidently reassuring mother dearest that it would be plain crazy for anyone to go through the effort of creeping around out there.

“Hold on for just one moment,” I turned to my co-worker who had been expecting me to help her run scientific experiments on live mice all day. “I have situation I need to attend to.”

“What do you mean ‘someone is here’?” I said the instant Mom picked up her phone–cause this was not time for fiddle-farting with texting. “Is it a delivery truck? Though I’m not expecting on more delivery trucks any time soon…”

“Well, the two of us were just sitting on the porch and enjoying lunch, when a car came down our driveway, and then disappeared down the road beside the garage,” Mother informed me.

“Wait, what?!?”

It’s hard to explain it without a picture or a diagram, but that was totally unexpected. It would be like seeing somebody walk past you in the hall and then go through a door that wasn’t there. To the untrained eye, our driveway ends after you pass the main house and then dead-ends into our detached garage. But if you look closely, there’s almost a secret path that you can veer off onto, and it’ll take you to down by The Holler.

“What’s down in The Holler?” you, Dear Reader, might be asking.

Well, I’ll tell you what’s down in The Holler: Nothing. Well, except maybe some Possum Juice–the jug of used cooking oil the former owner of this place used to leave out as food for the local possums. There also used to be a water-logged sailboat parked down there, but that’s neither here nor there, but less so ‘here’ because I gave it to our electrician the instant he offered to haul it off.

So a rando car just rolling onto our private property and on down there was quite bizarre–an incident we had a hard time coming up with a plausible explanation for. In fact, my first thought was, “Oh, yeah, that was definitely a ghost stuck in a timeloop.”

“So…it was a ghost car?” I asked Mom. “Just great. The place haunted.”

“No, it was real. At first I thought it had just been my imagination…except your daughter saw it, too. And I now I can see it parked back in the trees, camouflaged amongst the foliage.”

“What can you tell me about the car or the person?”

“Well, it was a green car, kinda like a Jeep. And when they got out of the vehicle, it was a white guy with brown hair, kinda pudgy, and wearing a blue shirt with orange sleeves.”

“Orange sleeves?!? The heck? So was it like a uniform?”

“No, not a uniform, short sleeves.”

“Well, that is weird.”

The picture she had just painted in my mind involved a Zach Galafankis-looking guy wearing a head band and a tube top for some reason. I definitely had to get to the bottom of why some weirdo perv was creeping all up ons my mom and baby girl.

Of course this all had to happen the one day I went into work, which put me a good 45 minutes away from the action, otherwise I would swoop in to the resolve the situation like any good lord of the manor would.

“I would just have you go find the guy and aski him what the hell he’s doing on our property, but you got the kiddo with you, and we can’t afford anything happening to you and leaving her to fend for herself.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening…”

“You’re right, it’s not. I think we have no choice but call the police. You wanna do it, or you do want me to?”

“I’m going to get your daughter in the car, and go stake out down the road. Meanwhile, you call the Sheriff and have them send someone out…”


“Nine-one-one, what’s the address of your emergency?” the dispatcher dutifully asked me.

“Uh, it’s [redacted for our privacy–jeez, we don’t want every Tom, Dick, & Harry on the internet knocking on our the door of our secluded Oasis of Peace (TM)]. It’s where my mother is, all alone with her elderly self; I’m at work.”

“Sir, that address is in [redacted]. We don’t have the number for that county.”

“Uh, so what are you saying?” I couldn’t believe that we were wasting precious seconds with this nonsense.

“You’ll have to dial 411 and they can transfer you over, good bye.”

And just like that 911 hung up on me.

I begrudgingly dialed 411, but not without cussing and mumbling under my breath about how they were dang lucky this wasn’t a super-emergency, one where 20 seconds could easily be the difference between life or death.

And good thing, too–apparently, just yelling ‘EMERGENCY’ at the automated operator doesn’t do much good, and it ended up taking me a couple tries to figure out that I needed to specifically ask for my county’s Sheriff’s department to get where I wanted to go.

*Approximately 3 minutes later…*

“[redacted] County Sheriff’s Department, what’s your emergency?”

“Help! My mom is alone out on secluded farm with our daughter, and there is an intruder on our property!”

“Okay, sir, just calm down. We can send someone out to check things out. I’ll need to call your mom and talk to her. What’s her number?”

“Oh good, she can give you a detailed description of the creep. Her number is [redacted].”

I hung up and anxiously awaited to receive any updates. It was a good 5 minutes before I checked back in, only to find out that Mom had been off the phone with the Po-po for a couple of minutes (which felt like eternity, given the situation).

“Yeah, they’re sending someone out straightaway. Meanwhile, I’m sitting here in my hiding spot, where I’ll be able to see the guy whenever he leaves–he has no other way out!”

“Good thinking, Ma! What a heckuva first day of living in your new place, eh?”

“Oh wait! I see him! But he’s turning the other way. He’s headed up to the neighbors’ place up on the hill. I have his license plate now, though!”

“What in the world is that turkey up to? Anyways, we better call the police back, since we have his license now.”

At that point, I 3-way called into cops, as I wasn’t about to get off the phone with my beloved maternal figure. As we were relaying the license plate number, the dispatcher assured us that a deputy was in the area and would be there soon.

“Jeez, ‘in the area’?!? We could have a potential rapist and molester on our hands, and you’re sending someone over only because it’s convenient. Maybe you are the real monsters here…” I of course said this only in my head.

“Oh wait!” Mom all of a sudden interjected. “He’s coming out–I repeat, he’s coming out now.”

“Follow that car!” I barked through the phone.

“Sir, I don’t think that’s a good–” the dispatcher didn’t get to finish her admonishly sentence before Mom piped up again.

“And I see the deputy coming from the other way. Oh, thank heavens, not a moment too soon!”

Even on the other end of the phone, we could hear a vehicle passing, followed by unexpected silence from Mom.

“Mom, you still there?”

“Yeah, it’s just…it’s just that I would make a terrible witness in a court of law.”

“Whatchyou talking about, Willis?” I asked.

“Well, the car was tan, not green, for one…”

“Okay, no big deal.”

“And you were right he was wearing a uniform: blue sleeves and an orange vest…”

“Okay, that’s encouraging. Unless that is a prison uniform.”

“And it’s a Black guy. Totally could have sworn he was white…”


“Yes, that’s right ma’am. He was a surveyor, not ‘Sir Voyeur’. He was legit, had a name tag and equipment in the back and everything.”

I could hear the deputy fill Mom in on the details of his conversation with the potential perp before he let him drive off into the day.

“Did you catch all that?” she asked me after she had wrapped up the conversation.

“I did indeed. Well, that’s a relief. I bet that was related to our [neighbor’s name redacted]’s efforts to make all these wooded acres out here part of a nature conservancy. I’ll let her know that if they’re going to poke around on private property, that they better notify the owner first. In these parts, that’s a good way to find oneself staring down a shotgun barrel!”

A day or so later, this particular neighbor informed me that they guy was probably not a land surveyor, and that there was a good chance he was surveying the land for any potential endangered wildlife living in the area.

…and it was in that moment I knew it was official.

I mean, think about it, dude:

I had called 911…

…on a Black guy…

…who was just bird-watching.

Don’t you get it? It’s me–little ol’ woke me–I’m the neighborhood Karen.

*Facepalm*.

But wait! Let the record show that I had thought I was calling 911 on a white guy.

Heck, I didn’t even technically call 911 on him–remember, I had to dial 411 just to get to the right person in order to tattle on his wandering ‘white’ ass.

Unlike my poor startled mother, you had better get these details right if the Woke Police come around asking about me…


Content created on: 28 May 2023 (Sunday)

Wanted: One Sweet Surfboard. Will Pay Top Dollar (Or Less).

8 Min Read

Trying to unload that unused surfboard? Why not try out Craigslist?

You’re sure to get an offer that’ll make you mutter ‘Good Lord’…


“Moving halfway across the Pacific Ocean is pretty expensive–especially when neither of us have jobs waiting for us…”

True, My Beautiful Bride’s logic was airtight–nevertheless I resisted.1#ElizabethWarrenHumor

“Yeah…but, I have so many memories with that board,” I said with the tiniest tear forming in my eye.

Sure, I was sad that we had to leave Hawai’i after living there for a way-too-short two years, but why was I inexplicably waxing sentimental about a surfboard?!? Especially this surfboard?

“Seriously? Did you even catch a single wave on that board?” was her cold response.

“No, I suppose not. But the one time I did take it was when I paddled up the shore so far I ended up in the private surf spot of the short dude from Hawaii 5-0. Um…you know, real big celebrity…what’s his name again? Oh! Scott Caan, son of legendary actor, James Caan. Yeah, it was just me and him and our trusty boards…”

“Didn’t you say that you were pretty sure you were giving him stalker vibes?”

“That’s true. Okay, so maybe it was just a memory with the ol’ NSP, and perhaps not the greatest one,” I conceded.

“And wasn’t the only other experience you had with that board was when you bought it off Craigslist, and you totally got duped into thinking it was much longer?”

“Oh, right. That. Well, at least I learned the very valuable lesson that I probably shouldn’t be blindly trusted with scientific endeavors…or anything else that requires accurate measurements.”

“Sooooo…”

After a brief awkward pause between me and my wife, I had to confess my confusion.

“So, what?”

“So basically this 7’10” board is emotional dead-weight, then?”

Oh, I wasn’t about to give up and let go of such a hard-earned possession just yet.

“No, no, no. I didn’t say that. You don’t understand: this board is so much more than just a useless piece of recreational equipment; nay, this board is an allegory. It’s a physical manifestation of my eternal optimism. I may be a big fella today, but one day…”

My words trailed off as I dramatically gazed off into the distance, lost in the view of the Pacific Ocean from our window.

*Ahem*–one day I will be light and lithe enough to not need my 11-foot board to catch waves and I’ll be hanging ten on that little guy instead,” I finished my thought, as I continued to gaze out over the endless blue expanse…

“Hey…Hey. Hey! Snap out of it! We could use the extra cash to help cover our move back to the Mainland. Now I need you to put the ----- thing on Craigslist and try to get back as much of the $350 your dumbass spent on it in the first place.”

*Sigh*. “Okay, but first: just one last ride…”

“Dear, we don’t have the luxury of waiting around for you to figure out how to catch a wave on that thing.”

“Well, dangit, I’ve had this for almost 2 years, and I’m not letting it go to complete waste. One of us is going to ride this before it’s going on Craigslist!”

At that point, the conversation seemed to kind of fizzle out, so I headed out the door for work, not giving it much more thought for the rest of the day.

However, when I got home that evening, what’s the first thing I see when I logged on to FaceBook?

I see My Beautiful Bride’s post of the only one of us that is actually the right size for that board:

Well, that’s what I get for not being more specific. Welp, Craigslist, here I come…


“For Sale: One NSP surfboard. Size: definitely not 10 and half foot. Asking price: $450.”

I turned to My Beautiful Bride who had been listening to me compose the Craigslist ad aloud. “Sound good to you?”

“You’re seriously going to ask $450 for it?”

“Hey, baby proverbially needs new shoes, right? You gotta start high cuz you know the Peoples of Craigslist alway, always be low-ballin’ and trying to talk you way down. It’s just the way of this world.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Dang skippy ‘whatever I say.’ Now, let’s see what type of sweet deal I can rustle up…”

It didn’t take long for the texts to come in:

(A brief interrupting note from the Author: Before I continue, I just want to point out a couple of things. First, I’ve been holding onto this text thread for almost 10 years now, and is in fact the second oldest text thread surviving in my iMessages. There’s just something about it that keeps me from, deleting it like I should. Second, I’ve kept them for historically accuracy, but I just noticed that iMessages screwed me over by displaying the time/date for my current time zone, EDT. This particular message chain started at 5:24 pm, Hawaiian Standard Time. In case you were wondering…)

Okay, just a normal Craigslist interaction so far. Gotta let the prospective buyer see the goods–and what better place than a poorly lit parking lot near a gas station after dark? The conversation continued:

Just some basic exchanging of identifying info, in order to avoid either of us having to awkwardly ask everybody minding their own business, filling up their vehicles, “You the dude from Craigslist? With the surfboard?”

Well, I roll up in my Pathfinder at the prescribed time to find a truly local dude awaiting me. At first I thought he was cool, but then dude started negging my board. If you don’t know what ‘negging’ is, it’s a tactic sleazy, skeezy, below-average looking guys use to try to pick up chicas way out of their league, and involves making side-handed and back-handed ‘compliments’ that are actually insults and are meant to lower the woman’s self-esteem enough to want to sleep with a choad 5 rings below her on the social ladder.

And homeboy here, was trying that on my surfboard. Of course he was trying to make me think that my board wasn’t worth anything so he could buy it for practically nothing–but I was having none of his nonsense.

“Haha, you’re so funny, Tyler! Only offering $175 for my $450 board, now that’s a real joke. Nah, man, look: I got made a fool when I bought this thing, but I sure the heck ain’t gonna be made a fool selling it. So take you’re little piece of poo Mazda truck and go back from whence you came.”

Disappointed he wasn’t able to take the board off my hands for next to nada, my dude got back in his tiny pickup and whizzed off into the night, never to been seen or heard from again…


“Tyler??? Why the heck is that rando from Craigslist texting me? Unless, perhaps, he has come to his senses and will offer $350 for my board? Yes. Sure that must be it…”

*Checks text*2Again, the time stamp is incorrect. The text was actually sent at 8:19 pm local time…meaning he must have sent it within 5-10 minutes after he left me, lol.

Welp. That definitely was not an offer for $350. But…was it perhaps even more valuable? Not that I’m the type of guy that: A) Goes clubbing; nor B) Has friends that go clubbing; nor C) Has friend; nor D) Had 3 different nights free to go clubbing, what with a new baby and preparing to move 5000 miles in 3 weeks, but…

“Intriguing offer, My Dude…but I’ll have to check out this ‘Club 939’ you speak of tomorrow at work…”

*The next day at work:*

“Hey Boss-man Andy, you ever heard of Club 939? I’m trying to sell the ‘board that enters the wave at 10-1/2 feet’, and some dude is trying to ply me with a VIP booth at this place.” My boss was born and raised in Honolulu, so surely he would know all the hottest spots in town, right?

“Nah, I don’t think I’ve heard of that bar. Let’s scope it out online…maybe we could get together there with the fellas in the lab on one of your last nights here in Hawaii. Gotta give you a proper send-off, after all.”

“Good thinking. Now let me just Google it…”

*Moments later, on my computer screen. At work. With my boss eagerly looking over my shoulder. This:*

“Ohhhhhhh, riiiiiiight. That kind of club,” I realized aloud.

“Dude, you definitely got to take him up on that offer!”

“Andy, I know you’re a cool boss, and all–I mean, I must be the only guy in the world to get in trouble for going into work too early when the surf was up–but I think I’m going to hold off and sell it for $300 to a middle-aged father looking for the perfect-sized board to teach his 9 and 12 year old daughters to surf on.”

“Well, you’re no fun…and that’s a very specific demographic you’re expecting to respond to your Craigslist ad…”3That’s called using retrospective foreshadowing to sneak in a boring story resolution without needlessly boring, you, Dear Reader.


The point of the story is there are no real gentlemen at a Gentlemen’s Club. I mean–true story– I was a squeaky-clean family man long before I had a wife and kid, and even more so once they came along. And a true gentlemen like myself ain’t gonna pull no Perverted Jack and the Beanstalk move at a time when they need me most.

You know: just like Jack’s mom trusted him to sell their last cow so they could eat and that bunghole came back with a handful of beans, I ain’t gonna be that guy whose wife trusted him to go out and sell his surfboard so he could feed my family, but instead finally comes back at 2 am saying, “Hear me out…I didn’t get much cash. I got something WAAAAY better…”

Anyways…I suppose I’ll leave you with one of the many tid-bits I uncovered while researching this story (tid-bits that include, but are not limited to: reading Google reviews for a strip club for the first time in my life; noting that the most recent calendar they offer for sale in their online store is from 2013–though they are clearly still in business; and discovering what, exactly, is on the application form for employment at such an establishment–one of the few places where ‘Ass Manager’ isn’t just an unfortunate abbreviation):

Ladies and [true] gentlemen, may I present to you what I like to call, ‘Jacklynn’s Beanstalk’:

It’s…uh…it’s “the tallest pole in all of Hawaii”. In case you were wondering…


Content created on: 18/20/21 May 2023 (Thurs/Sat/Sun)

Footnotes & References:[+]

That’s A Massive Surfboard You Got There, Big Boy

5 Min Read

Don’t be fooled–no matter what she says, size does matter.

*Ahem* Get your mind outta the gutter, Brah–I’m talking about surfboards…


“A long board for only $350?!? Hawaii Craigslist is so rad, man!”

It was mid-October of the year we moved to Honolulu, and even though we had been living there for barely 2 months, I was way overdue for buying a proper surfboard of my own, Brah. Like, it was totes embarrassing having to always be asking to borrow your boss’s or colleague’s board every time you wanted to hit the waves. Or–even worse–have to rent one of those cheap boards that all the tourists get stuck with.

Now, this would have been a task easier on the wallet if I were but a fellow of a slimmer, more agile build. You know, like Scott Caan1I name drop him because I actually went surfing with him once on accident. It was just him and I at that surf spot. I wasn’t catching a ----- thing. It was awkward….true story. from CBS’s hit crime drama, Hawai 5-0, one of those skinny athletic dudes who could catch a wave just by wearing oversized slippahs (or what you Haoles call ‘flip-flops’). Okay, well maybe not with slippahs–pardon the hyperbole–but they do be catch waves on surfboards in the 5 to 8 foot range with the greatest of ease.

Not me and my chunky uncoordinated ass, though, nosiree Bob! I needed something that I could balance on, and that could hold my hefty weight of…

*checks notes, and by ‘notes’ I mean my WeightWatchers history*

…oh, jeez, I was at least 235 then, well on my way to 250 lbs by Christmas. Yeah, so the point being is that I needed me a nice long, hefty board. And guess what? Long, hefty boards don’t come cheap, even on Craigslist.

So after seeing ads for long board after long board with asking prices in the range of $750-$1k, you bet your sweet taro pie that I was thrilled to find one for only $350. And while Ol’Tubby here was hoping to score and 11 or 12 foot board, this one coming at a solid 10-1/2 feet would surely get the job done, right?

Right…


“Howzit! Is this Jeanine with the ten and a half foot NSP board?” I couldn’t resist showing off the local slang for “How is it going?” that I recently incorporated into my dialect–even when I was shouting into the buzzer box of a downtown Waikiki apartment building, about to meet some rando from Craigslist.

“Howzit!” crackled back the buzzer box. “You the Haole from Craigslist? Come on up!”

After Jeanine buzzed me in, I scurried up 3 flights of stairs in eager anticipation of meeting The Board I would indubitably learn to surf on and who/which would go on to be so endeared to my heart as much as any inanimate object could be.

“Ah, come on in, the board’s back here. You got the cash on you, ya?” Jeanine grunted as she let me into an apartment that was clearly in the middle of a move-out.

“Oh, you better believe I got the cashola on me!”

Of course one brings cash to a Craigslist transaction, but on that particular day being adequately prepared to purchase large surfing equipment had been a whole ordeal, so I wasn’t ashamed to brag that I had the cash.

Did I have the cash? Pffft! Am I going to take the day off from work, rent a mini-van, almost get towed double-parking in front of the ATM, and then triple-park the rented mini-van in the way-to-narrow street in front of your apartment, and not ‘bring the cash’? Wahine, please! You lolo from eating too much loco moco.

I proceeded to try not to pretend to be over-eager, and asked dumb questions like: “So…why you selling the board?”

“Moving.”

“Huh. No sh*t, eh.”

I continued inspecting the goods, standing the board up next to me and verifying that it was indeed taller than me.

“Yup, looks good to me. How much were you asking again? $350?” Frankly, I wasn’t in the mood to haggle. I had come too far to get here, I just wanted to get my long board and leave.

“Ya, $350…”

She counted it out the stack of $50s I had handed her.

“1…2…3…4…5…6…7–looks like we’re all pau here. I hope you enjoy the board.”

I grabbed the board–lighter than I expected–and headed back down the stairs to where the temporarily-mine mini-van awaited, throwing her the shaka like the true kama’aina that I had already become.

“I’ll tell you what, though, Brah,” I muttered to myself as I fired up my sweet family chariot, “she sure wasn’t one to talk story…”


“Hey Babe, do you know where we packed our tools?” I shouted through the jalousies into our house as inspected my new purchase on our lanai. “Ummm…asking for a friend.”

“I don’t know–you were the one who packed all that. What are you needing anyways?” My Beautiful Bride shouted right back through the jalousies.

“Er…I just need a tape measure to double-check my math here on this ten and a half foot board.”

Moments later she joined me on the lanai, tape measure in hand–though she didn’t seem to need it.

“You mean that 8 foot board you got there?” she said immediately when she spotted my new prized possession. “Cuz that board is definitely not ‘ten and half feet’, my dear.”

“Just help me measure it, okay?”

She held one end and I pulled out the tape, and soon enough my worst fears were confirmed: I had just bought a 7 foot, 10 inch surfboard.

“Told ya!” MBB unhelpfully commented.

“Dangit! I knew I felt suspiciously tall when I stood next to it…”


From the University of Hawaii email archives, dated 8:17 pm, 13 October 2011, sent to my boss Andy, an experienced surfer:

“Hey Andy,
Quick question: on the way back from dropping my car off at the shop, I picked up a board I had found on craigslist.  The posting said that it was an NSP, 10 1/2 foot.

I thought it looked shorter than I expected, but I thought 10 1/2 foot meant that it was 10 1/2 foot, right?  So I when I got home to drop it off before coming in to work, I measured it and it’s only 8 foot long.

I texted the girl I bought it from about this, and she said “Its called a 10 foot cause its a beginners board that’s where it catches the waves.”  So I’m confused…am I going to be able to surf on this thing (or will the wife be able to, for that matter)?  Is she full of sh*t?  Help this grom out!”


From the University of Hawaii email archives, dated 8:28 pm, 13 October 2011, from my boss Andy, an experienced surfer:

“No it’s not 10 1/2 feet it’s 7′ 10″. She’s full of it. You will never get up on that.”


From the University of Hawaii email archives, dated 8:29 pm, 13 October 2011, sent to my boss Andy, an experienced physicist:

“Thanks.  That’s what I thought.  She better give me money back.  Next time, I’m taking a tape measure with me.”


From the University of Hawaii email archives, dated 8:28 pm, 13 October 2011, from my boss Andy, an experienced physicist:

“Good luck with that…”


To this very day, I am still waiting to hear back from her (and never caught a single wave on that thing, either). Stupid Craigslist return policy really screwed me over on this one.

*sigh*

The point of the story is never trust a scientist who can’t tell the difference between 94 inches and 126 inches.

Like, for realz?!? Taking accurate measurements is what you do for a living, Brah, and you’re over here clueless when you’re off by 25%? My Dude, maybe you should consider a career change before you embarrass yourself any more.

Howzthat? You say you’ve taken up a side hustle of home renovations? Oh, that’s definitely going to end well.

But hey, things could be worse. At least you’re not designing stage props for a satirical 80’s glam rock band…


Content created on: 12/13 May 2023 (Fri/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Who Wants To Be As Reliable As Old Faithful Anyways?

4 Min Read

When traveling, being right on schedule is supposed to be a good thing.

Bodily functions, however, are a strong exception to that rule…


“Um…could you pass me my barf bag. I hate to you leave you alone with the baby, but I better try to see if my body wants to do anything before our next flight.”

Last I left you, I had somehow miraculously survived the first leg of my airline adventure from hell, making it from Wichita to Atlanta on my way back to North Carolina. And if you recall from before that, my body was on a pretty regular schedule expelling disgusting fluids from alternating ends of my body.

Now despite being surprised by which end of my digestive system was busy during the most recent mid-air incident–spoiler alert: I pooed when I should have spewed–I still had every reason to believe that something was going to happen after another 2-hour interval. But this time, I was determined to be proactive.

So, as a result, I found myself sitting in the men’s bathroom of the Atlanta airport, trying for at least a solid 25 minutes to make myself yak into my barf bag.

And wouldn’t you know it, despite feeling like I should be yakking, I simply could not make it happen! The worst part was that I knew that something would happen eventually, but for the time being, I had a flight to catch.

“One last time,” I begrudgingly told myself, as a part of me hoped that I was finally done with all this bullcrap. “Let’s see how far down my throat I can get this finger…”

“BWAAAAAAH! SPEEEEEEEW! SPLATTTTTTT!”

“Oh sweet success!” I thought to myself as I began to fill up the bag with nothing more than Sprite and stomach acid–at this point, that’s all I had ‘left in the tank.’

“SPLASH! SPLASH! SPLAAAASH!” the sound transitioned from liquid hitting waxed paper to liquid hitting liquid. Ohhh, the bag was filling up too fast!

“I’ve always fancied myself to be something of a Boy Scout,” I quipped to myself as I deftly opened my backup barf bag with my spare hand and swapped them out during one of the 4-second rest intervals between heaves.

So. Much. Liquid. Like, how had I not vomited earlier, especially with all my intentional efforts to do so???

Honestly, though I didn’t care. I was just thrilled to be yakkity-yakking there in the bathroom instead of out in the terminal or on the plane.

I wrapped up my business and skedaddled back to where I had left my bride and my baby. Later, MBB told me that she had never seen me so white and colorless than when I came back from that bathroom. The funny part about that is that Baby was oblivious to my situation, and just absolutely lit up in delight when she saw me. Touching, I know.

Whew, now only one more flight to survive…


“Ladies and Gentlemen, uh, welcome to Raleigh-Durham. The local time is 12:45 pm, and its wonderful 79 degrees out,” the pilot might as well have been whispering sweet nothings in my ear.

I had survived the flight to RDU–barely. Boy, what miserable mental fortitude I had to conjure up to endure that. Ugh. It wasn’t fun trying to do nothing more than exist for an hour and a half, but I had made it.

“Maaaake way, for Prince Ali!” I maintained a sense of humor as we sped past the security exit to the general area where Popo–my father-in-law–was eagerly awaiting us, totally oblivious to the hell I had just gone through to get there…a hell that I might not necessarily be quite all the way through just yet, in fact.

“You’ll have to excuse him–he hasn’t had the smoothest of flights,” My Beautiful Bride explained to her father as I (seemingly) rudely hobbled past him and into the nearest restroom.

Surprisingly, this trip to the bathroom was notably less dramatic than the last 5 visits, though I wasn’t feeling completely peachy afterwards.

“Just don’t talk to me until we get home,” I meekly requested to my car mates as we loaded up in Popo’s CRV. It looked like I would have another 45 minutes or so of just trying to hang on to existence ahead of me, and I was pretty sure trying to engage in any type of conversation or social interaction would not end well.

So, I just sat there and stared, the only thought I allowed myself to think was “We’re almost home. This is all almost over. We’re almost home…”

When we finally rolled up in to the driveway, I couldn’t get myself into the house soon enough.

Literally.

I took three steps out of the car before unloading what looked like neon-green anti-freeze all over Popo’s newly-planted azalea bush right next to the side-door into the garage. Ah, you gotta love that stomach acid.

Oh. So close. So very close to making it home–two feet, to be exact. A mere twenty-four more inches and I would have been in the garage, and roughly twenty paces and I would have made it to a proper bathroom. Oh, the irony.

Good news is that that turned out to be my, umm, ‘last hurrah’, with no more incidents after that. I just took a shower, drank a Sprite, and then passed out in bed for the next 18 hours.

Dear Lord, I pray that I–or any other member of the human race–ever have to endure anything like that again…


The point of the story is just become a ----- vegan already. Sure, it took me another 5+ years to get the message, but seriously, do you know how many times I’ve had food-related illness since turning the Big V 3-1/2 years ago? Zero. Nada. Nil.

Now, just go ask my Dear Mother or My Beautiful Bride about the consequences of eating suspect meat or dairy. Uh-huh. That’s right. Go ahead. Be prepared to hear about camping out on bathroom and/or ER floors, or perhaps you’ll be regaled with a tale about the worst way to end a Costa Rican vacation–or how about hearing the story of the $13k Emergency Room bills? Oh, you’re gonna get regaled, all right.

So put down that custom Chipotle burrito and set aside your chorizo and eggs, my friend, and come join me on the Green Side.

*ahem* You know, ‘Green’ as in green plants/plant-based diet, etc. etc. It’s funny. Or at least it’s a humorous statement.

I promise you, we vegans are still funny as meat-eaters, though we might be less ironic.

You know…because it’s harder to get the iron your body needs as a vegan…

*sigh*

It’s a humorous statement…


Content created on: 28/29 April & 4 May 2023 (Fri/Sat/Thurs)

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