The Point of the Story

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Month: February 2024

The Confidential Tale Of The Know It All Going To Hell

25 February 2024 / / 0 Comments
6 Min Read

Just cuz somebody is a real smarty-pants doesn’t mean they don’t make dumb decisions on occasion.

And, no, I’m not returning my medal, man…

“And in fourth place…”

I held my breath. There were only five spots on the All-League team, and three out of my four teammates already had had their names called. I was but a lowly freshman, and I could merely hope to land a spot behind Ryan, the junior on our team, who was still aspiring to make the cut himself.

“…well, it looks like we have a three-way tie! All earning the honors as co-fourth-seats on the team are Ryan H. and BJ A. from Rolla High School (no surprise there), and Hanston High School’s very own, Local Kid! Come on up and get your medals–you earned them!”

I was slightly in shock. As a freshman, not only had I pulled it off, but I tied with the big-headed junior on our team!

The three of us walked to the front of the lunch room where the awards ceremony was being held. It didn’t take much more than that short walk for us whiz kids to quickly realize that the math didn’t add up here.

“Uh…I’m sorry, Local Kid, but we’ll have to send you your fourth place medal later in the mail,” the Hanston principal, who was emceeing the show, looked as compassionately at his student as he could, hoping not to kill the buzz of the dude’s modest victory…

Back in the day when I was attending Rolla High School, I had the great pleasure of partaking in the one activity in which our humble little school from Kansas was consistently a powerhouse: Scholars’ Bowl (aka Quiz Bowl, aka Jeopardy Light, etc). ‘Twas my freshman year, and at the time I was the runt of the proverbial litter, usually just relegated to watching the four upperclassfolk on my team kick intellectual ass. If I was lucky, I would get to sub in a late round once the tournament was already well in hand and I couldn’t possibly screw us over.

But at long last, here at the Santa Fe Trail League tournament–hosted by perennial football rival and now-defunct Hanston High School–I finally had the chance to prove myself and give the world a glimpse of the 100% Grade-A Quiz Bowl stud that would soon rise to state-wide domination over the next 3 years. Making the All-League Quiz Bowl team was an honor that any scholar could attain strictly on their own merits, even if they had 4 other mental dead-weights dragging them down.

Conversely, even if your other 4 teammates were frickin’ brainiacs–as was my case–you had to punch your own dang ticket onto the team.

And unlike most other Scholar Bowl activities which were oral-based and relied on one having speedy reaction times, admission into the exclusive All-League team featured a written test as it’s bouncer. Halfway through the tournament, the academic administrators running the show would herd all 35 or so of us youths into the Hanston lunch room and let us sit wherever we wanted. It should go without saying that they would precede to hand out pencils and sheets with roughly 20-30 questions,1The typical quiz bowl round consisted of 16 questions, so maybe that’s how many questions were on the test…but it seems like they should have given us more in that situation. Hell, I don’t remember. It’s been almost 30 years! set a timer for 15 minutes or so, and let us go to town.

Apparently, it was just the right conditions for my species to thrive…

“Ah, crap, a trigonometry question!” I muttered under my breath. “I won’t take trig until next year…I have no chance of getting this one right.”

Up until that point on the written test, I had been doing fairly well, but for some reason, not being able to throw out a wild guess and thus having a non-zero chance of getting this one right seemed to stick in my craw. It was only one of many questions, so I should have just counted my losses and moved on, right?

Wrong.

I simply could not bear the horror of that lone blank spot on my paper staring back at me.

I looked up from my test and locked eyes with David, the sophomore on our team and young man of noble character, who was sitting two feet away from me on the adjacent side of the lunch table. Yes, you heard me right–the dumbasses running the show haphazardly let us all sit together as a team. With my eyes, I drew his attention to the sad little empty spot on my sheet.

“I got you covered, my man,” he replied only with his eyes, as he slightly angled his answers just enough so I could see his chicken scratch scrawled at the bottom of the page.

“Tangent!” I proclaimed in my head as if I had just had an epiphany. “Hah! I knew it was something I would have never guessed on account of my complete lack of acquaintance with the topic of trigonometry. But now I will always and forever know that the tangent is ‘the ratio of the vertical leg of a right triangle to its horizontal counterpart.’ Done and done!”

I gave David a nod of appreciation and proceeded to jot it down, finally feeling at peace about turning in my test–all of which I had otherwise answered all on my own with my little freshman mind…

“Sorry, Local Kid, but we’ll have to send you your fourth place medal later…”

Those words hit a little differently now, don’t they? Now that you, Dear Reader, know that it should have been a two-way tie for fourth place and, ergo, enough medals to go around. Poor Local Kid.

“Sh*t. Had I known that one question would end up being so significant, I wouldn’t have even cheated on that singular occasion,” I thought to myself, acknowledging that I hadn’t really thought about how my error in judgement might possibly play out–it was only one question for crying out loud! I hadn’t done it to win, I had done it to avoid the wounded pride and shame that comes along with leaving one question blank. But whether premeditated or not, I was in this predicament either way.

“Welp, looks like I’m in too deep now,” I thought as I accepted my medal, still stunned not only by making the team as a freshman, but under the circumspect circumstances which it had happened.

“Guess I’m taking this one to the grave with me…”

“Why come clean now?” you may be indubitably asking.

Well, Dear Reader, that is a fantastic question. After all, I’m not dead…yet.2I do have some unresolved health issues indubitably related to officially becoming middle-aged over the last year, so my longevity actually can’t be taken for granted. Well, if nothing else I’m honest, and honestly it was never that big of a secret. I’m sure I’ve told some people over the years, including past girlfriends and current wives.

Heck, I figured I would just toss it out there for sh*ts ‘n giggles…and, in the spirit of Primary Season during an election year, I thought that just in case I ever want to run for President, I might as well get out in front of this scandal. Control the narrative and what-not. And I do want to point out that at least on the bright side, I hadn’t robbed anyone of a rightful spot on the All-League Team–had I let the tangent question go, Ryan and Local Kid would have filled the last two spots on the team, and I would have been left with the bragging rights of “making All-League 3 out of my 4 years of high school…”

So basically the point of the story is that if you’re going to cheat, you better be prepared to win–and all the emotional baggage that comes with carrying that unwelcome weight around until the statutes of limitations expires or you die, whichever comes first.

Anyways…I almost forgot the coda to the story: the following year when it came time to head to the host lunch room and take the All-League written test?
“This year we’re making a slight change,” they announced. “We’re randomly assigning you to a table, children, as no two of you from the same team are allowed to sit together…”

Okay, now I can’t confirm that the little stunt that David and I pulled was the cause for this much-needed ----- common-sense rule to be put in place–as far as I know that secret stayed between the two of us well into our college years–but a part of me can’t help be just a wee bit proud for perhaps making the world a tiny bit better place.

Of course, leaving an ass-backwards legacy was already kinda my thing by then.

What’s that? You don’t what I’m talking about?

Oh, my friend, just listen: the answer is Blowin’ In The Wind…

Content created on: 23/24 February 2024 (Fri/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

I’m Not Lost, Man! I’m Just, Uh, Pioneering

18 February 2024 / / 0 Comments
6 Min Read

Not all those who wander are lost and then there are those who, deep down, wonder why we wander aimlessly.

Me? I blame the deep blue sea…

“Good lord, it’s…it’s…it’s THE END OF THE WORLD!” I was totally freaking out, man.

“The hell you talking about, dude?” my junior high buddy, Nick, asked, obviously much less concerned.

“The sun…the sun–don’t you see it–it’s setting in the north!” I gestured emphatically in the general direction of our nearest global pole.

We had just come out of the bowling alley on the Navy base we both lived on, and I kept rubbing my eyes in disbelief as they adjusted to the surprisingly bright dusk, and my mind tried to handle the overwhelming amount of cognitive dissonance.

“Uh…that’s west, dumbass, where it usually sets,” Nick calmly stated.

“Dude, no it’s not. Here let me draw a map for you.”

I grabbed a stick and etched out an approximation of this map:

“We’re on the West Coast, see?” I explained. “The water is that way–west. You turn 90 degrees to your right, and you’re facing north–and staring at a setting sun. And you don’t see anything wrong with this picture?!?”

“Oh, you silly Kansas kids. It’s cute that you think ‘water equals west’ here in California,” Nick condescended to me. “Here, let me fix that map of yours…”

He then preceded to sketch out approximately the following in the dirt:

“You got your map turned 90 degrees, jackass,” he pointed out. “As you can see, in these parts of the West Coast, about half the time the ocean is to the south. Such is the case for our current locale, Point Mugu.”

I stared hard at his hand-carved map.

“You sure about this? This doesn’t seem right. I’m pretty sure the West Coast runs straight north and south,” I double-downed on my dumbassery.

Nick just rolled his eyes hard.

“I’ll show you an actual map made by real cartographers and printed on real paper when we get back to my place. Will you believe me then?”

“I don’t know…maybe. Are these the same cartographers trying to trick us all into thinking the world is round and not flat?”

“Wait, what?”

“Just kidding, Nicholas, jeez. Yes, if you present me with solid evidence, then yes, I would be able to override my opinions and gut feelings.”

*moments later, at Nick’s place*

“Well, I’ll be jiggly-darned,” I said as I let out a low whistle. “The water isn’t always to the west.”

“Thank you,” said Nick, still in disbelief that it had taken this much to convince me.

“Dude, I’ve lived here for almost 7 months now,” I said, turning to face Nick. “And now you tell me? What kind of friend lets his best buddy run around for that long with his mental map rotated a full 90 degrees like a complete jerk?”

“Me??? This is somehow my fault?” Nick was incredulous.

“No…I suppose not,” I conceded. “But, dang…this is just plain embarrassing.”

I paused for a moment to digest this earth-shattering revelation.

“Well, at least that would explain why I’ve felt this inexplicable feeling of ick every time I’ve stepped foot outside since I’ve been here…”

“Oh, sh*t. Not again,” I muttered to myself.

Nearly 20 years later I had landed a dream job in a land that was all coast–Hawai’i. And as I expectantly awaited My Beautiful Bride to pick me up on a side street near the hospital where I worked, I just couldn’t figure out why the sun was setting in the south.

I gotta briefly point out, though, while it is somewhat discomforting to see the sun on the southern horizon, it’s somehow not as unsettling as it was before when it appeared to be in the north.

Nevertheless, I had somehow incorrectly set me internal compass.

“Let’s see…I’ve already accounted for the water being pretty much straight south here in Honolulu. And the H11One of the main ‘interstates’ on Oahu. runs pretty much east-west, and that’s to my right hand side–making that north…and to my left the sun is setting. Dammit.”

I was baffled.

“What’s even worse is that I’m facing the same direction as my work desk…which I could swear faces south. Yet, based on past experience, when I see the sun setting, I should know better to believe it when it’s telling me I’m looking west…and since I have to look to my left, that would mean that…I’m facing north. WTF, mate???”

At this point I was full-on having a conversation with myself out loud.

“Alright, I’m just going to look this up on Google Maps when I get home.”

Wisdom of the ages had taught me not to fight this insanity without facts.

*moments later, in front of my home computer*

“Ah, Google Maps, you have explained so much to me,” I said as I looked at this properly oriented map:

I even annotated it for you, with the big arrow in the middle representing the direction I’d be facing when I exited the building where I worked at Queen’s Medical Center. As you can see, my main orientation point was the H1 running parallel to what would be my right. And of course, this point would have to be the exception to the general east-west directionality of the H1, and that a-hole would have to be running north-south right when I was counting on it to be consistent.

“Well, at least the world isn’t ending,” I said, relieved. “But that doesn’t answer why my desk feels like it’s facing south…”

The only upside to this secondary mystery was that it only to plague me locally. Nonetheless, for the next two years I had to sit there in my windowless workspace, nearly in tears knowing that everything I knew about which way I was facing was dead wrong…

“I’m not going to miss sitting in this disorienting af room, I’ll tell you that much!” I quipped to Eric, the guy who had sat next to me my entire time there.

It my last day of work, and while I really did not want to leave Hawai’i, I was ready to bid good riddance to my chronic compass-related discombobulation.

“Ah, so you feel it too then?” Eric asked somewhat cryptically.

“Uh..feel what?”

“That that way feels like north,” he said pointing directly behind us, though we both knew dang well by this point that it was south.

“YES. So I’m not the only one?” I was relieved to know that I wasn’t suffering alone at least. (After all, why should I be the only one in complete misery?)

“Oh, yeah, pretty much any male that works in this space has thought that was north,” Eric informed me.

“What? That is weird!”

“Not really,” Eric said. “We’re pretty sure it’s the 3-Tesla magnetic field of the MRI machine.”

“Aaaaahhh…” I said as I gazed fondly at the MRI room that had been there this whole time, a mere 25 feet behind me. “Well, sh*t, that explains that.”

But this new insight brought up new questions.

“Dude, I’ve worked here for almost 24 months now,” I said, turning to face Eric. “And now you tell me? What kind of co-worker lets his trusty colleage run around for that long with his mental map rotated a full 180 degrees like a complete jerk?”

“Me??? This is somehow my fault?” Eric was incredulous.

“No…I suppose not,” I conceded. “But, dang…this is just plain embarrassing.”

I paused for a moment to digest this earth-spinning revelation.

“Huhn. We really do have reliable compasses in our noses after all. Neat…”

“Honolulu…Long Beach…Málaga…New Orleans. Honolulu…Long Beach…Málaga…New Orleans. Honolulu…Long Beach…Málaga…New Orleans.”

No matter how much I told myself that my temporary home for the next 5 weeks was just like all the other places where I had successfully tuned my intuition to tell me that the water was to the south, I could already sense that I was screwed. As you may recall from a few years ago, the family and I had to take refuge at the beach while our house was being repaired and remodeled. And that particular fun house was located on Oak Island, NC.

I’m sure you, Dear Reader, are aware that North Carolina is on the East Coast…yeah, you can already see where this is going.

Anyways, yada, yada, ya and next thing I know I’m watching a beautiful sun rising in the north.

Okay, okay, I admit that I knew going into it that the entire beach on Oak Island ran almost perfectly east-west, thus putting the Atlantic Ocean due south. But alas, the point of the story is that you can lead a Kansas boy to water, but you can’t teach that old dog that that water he’s looking at isn’t necessarily due east just because it’s the Atlantic Ocean.

…

…

Hmm…I think I mixed one too many metaphors there. What I’m really trying to say is that for some of us out there, directional discombobulation can be a very real, very debilitating affliction. If there is someone in your life like this that finds them in improperly-oriented situation, show them some mercy.

But whatever you do, keep them far, far away from misaligned coastal maps and strong medical-grade magnets…

Content created on: 16/17 February 2024 (Fri/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Wedding? Gift? Baby? Wait–There’s Another Kind Of Special Registry?

11 February 2024 / / 0 Comments
6 Min Read

There’s this special type of list that our great state makes–but it’s on you to check it twice.

Not knowing anyone naughty? That’d be nice…

“Did you see on NextDoor that there have been a pair of registered sex offenders lurking around downtown?”

In typical Mom Fashion, my dearest mother just had to ruin my peaceful lunch by bringing up yet another “likely benign” thing for me to worry about in this world.

I gently rolled my eyes, and then turned to acknowledge her apparent concern.

“No, Mother, you know that I stay far away from that website. NextDoor is essentially tantamount to a Karen Convention.”

“Well, you should be on there so you aware of what’s going on in your neighborhood. Especially things like this where there’s a pair of perverts on the prowl in these parts,” Mom replied.

“Cool, cool. I really would like to enjoy the rest of my meal with a bit of Zen, so, ya know…” I attempted to subtly change the topic.

“You know you do have two young girls you should be worried about,” she said, obviously not getting the hint.

I realized that she wasn’t going to drop the matter, so I figured the only way to get her to let it go for now was to acquiesce.

“Well, I’m not on NextDoor, so I guess you’ll have to fill in me in on the details as best as you can.”

“I thought you’d never ask!” she said a bit too excitedly as she whipped out her iPad.

“So, let’s see here…” she skimmed over the NextDoor post. “Ah, yes, so there’s a taller skinny guy. Looks like he was following a couple of 12-year-old girls all over downtown PBO, and they had to seek refuge in the ice cream shop.”

“Oh, good, so it had a happy ending at least?” I couldn’t wait for this story to be over, obviously.

“Nope, he followed them in there, and the owner had to call the cops.”

“Great, so the authorities handled the situation, and at least got his shady ass off the streets for a few days?”

“Not exactly. Cops came but said that he wasn’t technically doing anything wrong, so they didn’t do anything about it. I guess they just contacted the girls’ parents to come pick them up.”

“But surely the police officers at least shared a Type-2-Diabetes-Special Banana Split with the girls, since they were all there anyways, right? You know something like this would at least help take a slight edge off of the traumatic experience.”

I reminded Mom of what I was talking about by pulling up this classic pic on my phone:

She really does take after her old man. Got his eyes and lips, at least…

“What? No! Please take this seriously. I need you to do what you can to protect my grand-babies!”

“Fine, fine. So I won’t be taking them to the ice cream shop any time in the near future. Apparently it is too ‘child-predator-friendly’. I get the message.”

“Thank you,” Mom said.

After a brief awkward pause where I was waiting for her to fill me in more, I decided what the hell and prompted her for the rest of the story that she had started.

“Okay, so that was Pedo #1. Didn’t you say there was a second guy?”

“Oh yeah, but the post didn’t say much about him…they just shared his entry from NC Sex Offender Registry.”

“Super. Just text that to me so I can be on the lookout for the guy…”

“Wow, check out the jawline on this guy!”

Later that afternoon I had finally gotten around to looking at the official NCSOR page for the second guy. Take a peep at this dude and you’ll see exactly what I mean:

Amiright? Or amiright?

“Hah, hah!” I thought to myself out loud. “That dude almost looks like a bulldog.”

I continued chuckling softly to myself, while in the meantime some gears started spinning in the back of my head.

“Why is the word ‘bulldog’ jarring something in my memory?” I wondered.

I continued working on my project, trying to put it out of my mind, but a piece of me seemed fixated on the idea.

“Have I met this guy before? Nah, it couldn’t be the dude who hit me up for sliced-meat money at the gas station downtown…”

My inner dialogue unfolded slowly over the next ten minutes or so.

“His name was what? Terrance? I bet I can prove that it wasn’t the same dude. Let’s see…this guy’s name is…”

*zooms in*

“Ah hah! See there? Couldn’t be him–this guy’s name is Anthony,” I told myself, content that I had shut the book on the matter.

*moments later*

“Wait, that wasn’t his name, though that’s what My Beautiful Bride would call him. I think he went by his initials…what were they again?”

I flipped to an older post of mine to confirm the facts of that particular encounter.

“A.P.! He said people would him see him on the streets of PBO and call out, ‘What’s up, A.P.!’ Yeah, lemme prove that this isn’t him…let’s see what his initials are…”

*scrolls down*

“See, I told you so! His initials are ‘A.M.’ I don’t know this ‘A.M.’ character.”

I could feel that I was on the verge of resolution, when it occurred to me that there was more than one way to skin the proverbial bulldog, and likewise there was more than one way to construct an initial-based nickname (think M.J.–aka Michael Jackson/Jordan).

*zooms back out and scrolls back up*

“Oh…well I guess if uses his last name, this guy–in theory–could technically go by ‘A.P.’ But still, it is highly unlikely this is my du–“

*eye gets caught by something embarrassingly obvious*

“Oh, right…A.P. also said people would see him on the streets of PBO and say, ‘What’s happening, Bulldog?’ Oh, jeez.”

Yes. Yes, I do know this guy. I tried to prove the anti-null hypothesis,1This is the opposite of the regular null hypothesis, in which the assumption is that two things being compared are the same until proven otherwise. and put the full burden of proof that they were one and the same on my shoulders.

Despite all my skepticism, I am forced to admit that I have, in the past, financially supported this guy.

I think at this point, you probably should hop in my time machine to an event that happened right about this time last year, and either refresh your faithful memory, or get up to speed, you lackadaisical infidel.

Just click this link to read about how The Bulldog Wanted Baloney. You’ll Never Guess What Happened Next. Don’t worry–I’ll be waiting right here when you get back.

…

…

…

Oh, hello! There you are! Welcome back to the present day.2Technically this occurred back in October 2023, roughly 4 months ago.

While you were gone, something else caught my eye about our old friend, Bulldog.

*scrolls to the bottom of the screenshot*

What was his first (and, seriously speaking, only one that might be humorous) offense? Oh, just a little Felonious Indecent Exposure.

Let’s just say that I had no idea how lucky I was last year. Thank the good lord I never caught a glimpse of the Bulldog’s…uh…um…er…”baloney”…

Content created on: 10/11 February 2024 (Sat/Sun)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Candy-Man’s Secrets Of The Summer That Got Out Of Hand

4 February 2024 / / 0 Comments
5 Min Read

Who can make a boy’s wildest dream come true? The Candy Man can!

And who can trash that dream? The Anti-Candy Ma’am can! Or so she thinks…

“My wife says I’m getting too fat…”

As a youngster, this was probably the first time I heard this phrase come out of the mouth of a grown-ass man. Of course, it wouldn’t be long before I wizened to the ways of the world, and realized that, actually, this was sort of a theme in many marriages.

The grown-ass man that first uttered those words to me was Matt, a military co-worker of my brother-in-law, Joe. The previous year we had lived with Joe and my sister on the local Navy base–right around the corner from Matt–and while I had moved back to Kansas to live with my old man for the school year, Mom had got her own apartment in the nearby town. Though I had come back for the summer, Mom had her day job, so most days I would try to convince somebody to sneak me onto base. Otherwise, I would have been stuck by myself in Mom’s apartment with nothing to do but play videogames, watch reruns of Mr. Belvedere and Dinosaurs, and eat the stupid health food with which Mom stocked her pantry.

Anyways, so there we were, the three of us dudes, plus my slightly older brother 1SkinnyJ, chillin’ in Matt’s garage (for a youngster like me, it was a real treat to get to hang out with ‘the big boys’).

“…so, lads, today’s your lucky day,” Matt continued. “Gentlemen and, well, uh, boys, behold: my candy stash!”

I looked at 1SkinnyJ, mouth agape, to see him giving me that same look. We could not believe our eyes. We had never seen so much candy in our lives outside of Mr. Bulky’s infamous sweets shop.

“Sadly for me–but great for you–the wife is making me get rid of every last bit of this sweet, sweet junk food,” Matt lamented. “Please. Take it all out of my sight before I change my mind.

“You’re just messing with us, right?” 1SJ asked Matt. “There’s no way any man with half a sweet tooth would let this go freely.”

While 1SJ probed the veracity of our apparent windfall, I eyeballed the stash up and down. Kit-Kat. Snickers. Pay Day. Twix–both caramel and the highly sought-after peanut butter version. And that was just a mere sampling of the American varieties. I mean, this dude had it all. Even several boxes of exotic Asian candies. I’m guessing they were mostly of Japanese origin, though I had yet to learn Kanji, so I couldn’t be 100% sure what the strange writing on the packaging said. However, I suspect they were from Japan mainly based on the fact that they were weird af, which just screamed ‘I’m Japanese!.’

“Nope, I sh*t thee not,” Matt confirmed the good news. “But I told the wife I was throwing it away, so you best skedaddle out of here with it all before she finds out what we’re up to. She’ll lose her mind if she finds out I’m contributing to the cavities of minors.”

“I have no place to keep this on base,” 1SJ turned to me with a solemn look on his face. “We’ll have to smuggle it into my room in Mom’s apartment. I’m entrusting you to protect it when I’m not around. Can I count on you, bro?”

“You got it, dude!” I said, despite not actually being a bona fide fan of the 80s sitcom, Full House.

I turned to Matt, placing my hand of my heart, “You can rest at ease: I promise you that we’ll provide a safe and loving home for your candy. Don’t you worry, it’ll be thoroughly enjoyed.”

“In your chubby little hands, I have no doubt it will be,” he replied. “Just don’t let your mom find it, or else…well, ya know…”

“Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity-dog!” I sang to myself as I woke up mid-morning the next day.

Mom had already long headed off to work and I finally had the apartment to myself. What kid wouldn’t be incredibly enthusiastic to greet the day, knowing what sugary delights that lied in wait for him? Especially an adipose-advantaged adolescent1I.e., “fat kid”. like me?

Knowing I would need my energy if I intended to spend my day indulging in all sorts of confectionery delights, I amazingly had the patience and discipline to start off with something that actually had some nutritional value: a big ol’ bowl of soggy Grape Nuts. I dutifully chowed down, one mushy mouthful at a time, all whilst fantasizing about which treats I wanted to eat first (there is something to be said for letting some anticipation build up, know what I mean?).

At long last, it was time to engage in some pure, unadulterated hedonism. I couldn’t help myself from skipping across the apartment and back to 1SJ‘s bedroom, where I carefully peeled back the layers of bean bags that I had employed to abscond our precious cache to reveal…absolutely nothing.

How could this possibly be??? I shook my fists to the heavens, fell on my knees, and rent in half the Nirvana smiley-face t-shirt I had been wearing.

My heart caught in my throat, while simultaneously the pit in my stomach dropped like a brick, as the realization overwhelmed me: Mom had found us out.

And not only had she found us out, but she had completely wiped us out. Not a wrapper, nor a crumb, nor any trace of the glorious treasure that had sat hidden in our room only mere hours earlier.

“How could I have been so sloppy, so stupid?” I chided myself. “I knew I should have hidden it so much better! Dammmmmmit.”

And just like that, all my hopes and dreams for what should have been the most glorious summer ever, down the drain…

“Down the drain…down the drain…down the drain…” I kept muttering to myself.

I pounded the video game controller in frustration as I processed the cold hard fact that I had blown the opportunity of a lifetime. Needless to say, I wasn’t getting over the heartbreak quickly.

“Down the drain…down the drain…down the–wait just a tic!” I was starting to realize something.

“W.W.M.D.–What Would Mom Do?” I pondered.

“If it had been 1SJ’s weed stash she had found, sure, I could see her flushing it down the toilet. But…but…but, there’s no way in hell that’s what she did with all that candy. What did she do with it?”

I mean, something like that doesn’t just vanish into thin air, right?

“Hmmm…I wonder…no, surely she would have been more careful–surely!”

I about completely put the thought out of my mind. Almost.

“Oh, what the heck do I have to lose at this point?” I continued my monologue with myself. “Buckle up, Buttercup, it looks we’re going dumpster diving…”

Not that I thought that anything would really come of it–as evidenced by my lack of footwear–I nonetheless wandered casually out to the nearest dumpster, which happened to be right next to where Mom tended to park her Pickle Wagon.

Needless to say, I was completely unprepared to find sitting completely unblemished and easily within arms reach, there on top of the rest of the rubbish, basking in an angelic beam of light shining on it from upon high…every last piece of candy that had been prematurely ripped from their loving candy-daddy’s arms.

I sh*t thee not, I swear I heard this playing in that moment:

As much as I had been in shock when I discovered my goodies had gone missing, I was twice as much so when the Good Lord smiled upon me and gave me a totally undeserved second chance at achieving diabetic Nirvana. There really is no greater feeling in the world than that of a dead dream being brought back to life with a vengeance like ol’ Lazarus…aaaaahhhhhh!

Eventually, though, I gathered my wits and collected the goods before Mom could come home for her lunch break and spoil the party permanently. You better believe I hid My Precious much better this time–so good in fact, that I can’t find the slightest of slivers in my memory where I had squirreled it all away for the rest of the summer.

The interesting part is that Mom never said a word to me about what she had discovered amongst those bean bags, presuming that such a gut-wrenching loss would be punishment enough.

Oh, ho ho ho! Little did she know that Child Protective Services would have come and taken me away had they known all the abuse my teeth suffered that one glorious, glorious summer…

Content created on: 31 January/2/3 February 2024 (Weds/Fri/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

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