Author: BJ (Page 5 of 34)

Ten…nine…eight…seven…

You got about six more seconds before you’re gonna see ol’ Hamhocks go up into porcine heaven…

“Noooooooo!” I screamed in my head as I watched gravity have its way with the can of soup that I was planning on having for lunch. “Seriously, can’t this wait until tomorrow?!?”

Unfortunately, the laws of physics ignored my request to reschedule my hot date with gravity to a later date. Instead, I got a front row seat at the ‘Watch-A-Canned-Good-Fall-In-Slow-Mo-Towards-Yo-Toes’ Theatre.

And of course it had to be a beautiful day in May that inspires one to wear flip-flops. My toes didn’t stand a chance without the protection of nary even a sock. This wasn’t going to end pretty…

The worst part about this was that I kept my trusty stash of Progresso canned soups¹To be honest, it wasn’t Progresso, but that’s the only brand name of soup I can think of in the moment. above our sink, so once I accidentally knocked it off, I had a surprisingly long time to think about my life choices.

“Why, my Good Lord, did you choose today of all days to send such trials and tribulations my way? If you’re really there, then I just want to say you have a really sick sense of humor.”

It was moments like this that the most faithful and devout believer have a wee bit too much empathy for the pagans and atheists.

“I’m going to lose a toe, ain’t I?” I was resigning myself to fate, even before the can had a chance to do its damage. “And, can I just say, ‘f**k my life’? Dear All-Powerful Being In The Sky, if you’re going to be so unkind as to take a toe, the least you could do is wait until I have proper health insurance.”

As I waited for the can to cover the last few inches of its downwards trajectory, I put my hands on my hips and looked impertinently towards the heavens, which in that moment happened to resemble the kitchen ceiling of our bachelor pad on College View Drive.

“Not even one day. You couldn’t just hold off on mangling my limbs one day–nay, 12 hours–could you?!?” I shook my fists to the sky.

*Smack-runch!*

The can made contact. But not with my whole foot, or even with all of my toes. No, it had to channel all of its affection to my left pinky toe. ‘One little toe to take the full blow,’ one might say if this were some sort of twisted nursery rhyme.²Wait, isn’t that redundant? Aren’t almost all nursery rhymes twisted by definition? I mean, London Bridge and Ring Around The Rosy were both about the ----- Plague, for crying out loud.

I felt the shock of adrenaline hit my system as it reacted to the injury of indeterminate magnitude. Against my better judgment, I looked down.

“Oh, sh*t! That’s a lot of blood.” I quickly averted my gaze, regretting that I looked down, as the sight of oxygenated heme sent another, much larger surge of adrenaline through my system.

I was in a full-on cold sweat at this point, barely able to breath.

“It’ll be okay, it’ll be okay…I can turn on the stove an cauterize the wound, and go to the hospital tomorrow,” I assured myself. “Besides, plenty of people lead very successful and happy lives missing whole limbs. I should be able to get by short that little piggy who get beheaded like a French aristocrat in a guillotine,³Holy sh*t, I spelled this word right on my first try, without any help from autocorrect! right? Nine toes are more than enough to get by in life.”

Was it really the trauma of possible losing a piece of my flesh and bone to a can of soup–of all things–that was causing me so much distress? Actually, I didn’t mind that as much as the fact that I was right at 60 days into my first job out of college working for Western Wireless, ⁴Now a part of Verizon via a couple of mergers. and for the first time in my life, had proper health insurance…starting tomorrow. When I say ‘f my life’, this is what I’m talking about–seriously?!? I lose a toe in a freak canned-soup accident a matter of mere hours before I am financially able to have it reattached, if necessary? This is a sick joke right?

“Time to pay the piper, I suppose,” I said, indubitably using the wrong turn of phrase for the occasion.

I moved the can off of my foot, and through the barely modest amount of blood–adrenaline can turn you into a real drama queen–and I was delighted to see a roughly 1 cm gash on top of my miraculously-still-attached pinky toe. Good news, everybody! This wasn’t anything a little super glue and a BandAid (TM) couldn’t handle!

I was so relieved and excited that I even did a little jig and clicked my heels in celebration like I was a flip-flop-wearing Leprechaun or something, lightly misting the adjacent cabinetry and fridge with a bit of blood spatter.

“Oh, right! I probably should glue that up first…”

Can you, Dear Reader, guess what the point of the story is? I truly doubt you’re reading this in a vacuum, and have no context for what I’ve been diatribing about recently. Surely, you’re aware of the 21-Trap-Flap and the Youthfront Lake Monster, because you read the last two posts.

Right? Right.

That’s right, I think it’s utter nonsense that a matter of a few ticks on the clock would determine whether or not one has to suffer through life with only 19 digits instead of 20 like a normal person. Just like it’s complete and utter tomfoolery that a matter of mere miles can determine whether or not one has to go through life looking like Harry Potty instead of having a smooth and hale forehead like a normal person. Just like how it’s a massive load of bullshit that the fact that your dad is a hard-working but tragically self-employed farmer determines whether you have to go through life with your right elbow looking like Harry Potter instead of having a uniformly dry and flaky elbow like a normal person.

Oh, PS, tragically late spoiler alert: I might have just ruined the plot of my last two posts, but go ahead and go back and read them if you haven’t.

The point is that the U.S. health insurance system⁵This, ironically, could be a case of ‘biting the hand that feeds’, seeing as how the bread winner in our household is a…health insurance executive. LOL? is complete cow-crap and should be burned to the ground.

Single-payer, universal health care for all. How ----- hard is it? Is it that outrageous that a government should be interested in investing in the well-being of it’s citizens (most of whom are taxpayers, but honestly, that’s irrelevant)?

Oh, and if you think I’m done regaling y’all with tales that are tangentially related to insurance and health care, just you wait. Just you wait until next time, that is…

Content created on: 3/4 November 2023 (Fri/Sat)

Sure, what lurks beneath the surface might seem terrifying.

I’d recommend you hope and pray to the Jesus you never actually run into it…

“…and then, kids, a blood-drenched beast arose from Youthfront Lake and let out a mournful roar…”

Jimmy paused in his story and looked at me for approval.

“Um, yeah, ----- you, Jimmy.”

Needless to say, he did not get my approval.

“Yo, Circle C is a Christian camp,” Jimmy tut-tutted me. “I know it’s been a long day, but you’ll need to stop dropping the F-bombs by time the kids show up tomorrow.”

Jimmy was a buddy from Kansas State, and had kindly took me up on my offer for a week of co-cabin counseling with me. Wrangling 10-12 pre-teen and/or teenage boys for 5 straight days could get exhausting, so it was also nice to have a familiar face to help me out (normally, it would be just some rando who Brian, the boss of all of us cabin leaders, recruited off the streets of Kansas City).

He had shown up Sunday evening to prepare before the campers showed up the next morning, and fortunately, we got the work out of the way to quickly and found ourselves with time on our hands. Unfortunately, that was when things literally went sideways.

And for some reason, Jimmy thought it would be fun to regale our campers with the tale of our little misadventure. I disagreed.

“Dude, too soon, ya think?” I glared at him and rubbed my forehead, which was still throbbing.

“Ok,” Jimmy conceded, “but I still think telling it from my point of view is more riveting…”

“Let’s see who can swim underwater the furthest,” Jimmy challenged me as he gestured towards the oversized pond the camp had so generously named ‘Youthfront Lake.’

“Sure, why not?” I said, accepting his challenge. “We’re young with some free time to do stupid stuff like this on our hands. What do we have to lose?”

Earlier that evening, the two of us and a third unnamed co-conspirator had donned swim trunks and had been bouncing each other off The Blob. If you don’t know what a Blob is, it’s basically a ~40’x8′ inflatable water pillow that sits in the lake and–you know what, let’s not waste more time on this tangentially relevant detail, and you can just check it out here yourself if you’re curious.

Next to The Blob, about 20 feet down the ‘coastline’, was a dock that wrapped around a swimming pool-like area. This 20 feet in between the two would be our swimming lane, the idea being that we would dive in and not come up until well out into the open water of the lake.

Since the gauntlet had been thrown down to me, I nobly went first.

I dove in and took a couple of initial powerful strokes to get my momentum going. But on the third stroke, my left hand caught one of the underwater ropes that held The Blob down.

“Oh, snap, I’m swimming right into The Blob…better course-correct slightly to the right,” I thought to myself, because, you know, I didn’t want to waste my lung capacity on saying it out loud underwater.

A gentle swerve back in that direction and I was on my way to making Jimmy rue the day he decided to challenge my aquatic skills. In my mind I was keeping track of my location.

“Three…two…one…and I should be hitting open wat–“

My train of thought was interrupted by…sonar?

Yup…that’s the only way to describe it.

“So this is what it feels like to be a bat,” I thought, as I immediately became aware–via a complete 3-dimensional rendering in the darkness of my mind–of a vertical rectangular object that must have been made out of…steel?

“Yes, that’s definitely steel,” I mumbled incoherently to myself as my skull wrapped around the object that had positioned itself squarely between my eyes.

A good full beat passed as I floated there, completely stunned and completely submersed, my noggin ringing like a mother ----- bell.

Eventually I came to my senses and, upon groping about, I was delighted to realize that what I had collided with was a ladder. You know, like one of those ladders that you can climb to get out of the swimming pool. Or a lake. Or Youthfront Lake, even.

Half conscious, I pulled myself up the ladder and out of the lake.

“Did I win?” I sputtered through a stream of blood gushing out of the gaping split in my forehead…

“So…you probably need get that stitched up,” mused the camp nurse’s adult son–also a nurse–as he attempted to stem the Crimson Tide that flowed down my once-handsome visage. “You want me to take you to the ER in KC?”

First, I was lucky that any medical professional had been at camp, since it was the weekend and the place was usually a ghost town. Second, I was lucky to have health insurance.

Maybe.

“Uhh…I would go to the ER, but…well, I think I have insurance, but I’m not quite sure,” I replied.

“What do you mean? How do you not know whether you have insurance?” he asked.

“Well, I signed up for the temporary insurance that was offered at cabin leader orientation, but I never received any type of card or anything like that. So…”

“…so you don’t want to risk showing up at the ER and getting stuck with a $2,000 bill? I gotchya, bro. Lemme just slap a daub of super glue and a butterfly BandAid (TM) on there, and let go and let the Jesus take care of the rest…”

“Dear Sir, unfortunately we are unable to offer you health insurance coverage, as you reside outside or area of coverage…” read the letter I found in my P.O. Box upon returning to Manhattan (KS) at the end of the summer.

“Well, if that’s not ironic,” I muttered as I tore up the letter, threw it in the trash can, lit it on fire, and burned down the entire post office.

Just kidding. I only burned down 60% of the post office.

Well, at least the mystery of whether I had insurance during The Sonar Incident was solved: I did not.

And why didn’t I? Because I had used the only address I actually had when I signed up for the insurance: the one in the college town where I lived the other 9-10 months out of the year when I wasn’t off gallivanting at summer camp.

And why didn’t I find this out until it was way too late? Because I had used my stupid ----- permanent address.

I feel like the system is broken somewhere in this asinine loop of circular logic…

The point of the story is that it can be pretty ----- scary not knowing whether or not you have health insurance when you’re bleeding out like Carrie. Well, I guess it’s not as scary knowing you don’t have any insurance at all.

You know, on second thought, the system isn’t broken on account of which address you use to sign up for health insurance; it’s broken on account of your address–that part that ends in “U.S.A.”

You want a horror story? Behold the U.S. healthcare system. Don’t let uber-rich assholes convince you otherwise: healthcare is a human right, and the Land of the Free is atrocious when it comes to actually taking care of its citizens in this respect (amongst others).

Land of the Free? More like Land of the Free to Bleed Out in the Street…

*sigh*

Happy Halloween, everybody. ScarFace, out…

Content created on: 28/29 October 2023 (Sat/Sun)

Guys, you wanna know how to win over that beautiful young lass (and perhaps even take them as your wife for life)?

Funny you should ask…

“Who does this dude think he is? Jesus?” snickered Mark, my future roommate and hopeful college graduate.

“Who, Bob? The new guy always wearing sunglasses in church?” I asked.

“His name is actually Bill, but yeah, that guy,” Mark replied as we both looked across the gymnasium where our local church held court every Sunday, chuckling to ourselves at the sight of Billy-Boy.

“I’m pretty sure Jesus even had those exact same Ray-Bans. At least that’s what he was wearing when he posed for the Shroud of Turin…” I noted.

“What? Ray-Bans? No, man, I’m not talking about homeboy’s sunglasses–wait? ‘Shroud of Turin’ What are you talking about?” Mark said side-tracked-ly.¹Yes, I just made up the word–but we both know that’s the exact right word for this situation.

“Let me see your awesome iPhone 1,” I gestured to Mark to fork over his new toy that he had brought with him into church.

In no time I had pulled up the Shroud of Turin page on Wikipedia and was showing him that, indeed, our dude Jesús looked like he had been rocking some shades from 2,000 years in the future when they attempted to mummify him. Seriously. Check out the link above (or just look it up on Wikipedia yourself), and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Mark was stunned.

“No sh*t. They do have the same sunglasses,” he side, clearly impressed by the uncanny resemblance. “But, no man, I’m talking about the wood.“

“Bill was also crucified on a cross? That is pretty Christ-like…” I mused.

“You dipsh*t, not that.” Mark realized that he had gotten himself into a battle of wits and puns with me, and was starting to get worried I might be putting up more points on the Humorous Statement Scoreboard (TM) than he was. “Bill? He’s is an actual carpenter–just like Rayban Jesus was.”

“Who the hell is a carpenter in this day and age, anyways?” I observed semi-incredulously.

“I guess Bill is,” Mark stated matter-of-factly, before pulling out the ol’ PSA trope. “You see kids? This is what happens when you don’t go to college–“

“–while tragically deciding to go to church in a college town,” I interrupted, trying to beat Mark to yet another punchline.

“Yeah, you gonna get mocked relentlessly behind your back by us intellectuals. Figures that he’s a carpenter–cuz he’s a real tool!”

We both tried to stifle our laughter at yet another great pun. Our pastor was in the middle of his sermon and we didn’t want to risk getting kicked out…again.

“We’ll continue this after church when we go out to lunch,” I reassured Mark, understanding that he was worried that we might be leaving some Bill-related jokes still on table…

“And have you noticed that Bill suffers from what some in the medical establishment like to call ‘Resting About-To-Cry-Like-A-Little-B**h Face?’ Like, seriously, half the time Bill is wearing an inexplicable frown that makes it look like he’s about to bust out crying at any moment.”

Mark and I had arrived at the Mexican restaurant ahead of the rest of the College/Young Professionals gang from church, and if one of us wasn’t dragging Bill’s ass then the other one definitely was. In fact, we were enjoying our new pastime even more than the complimentary chips and salsa we were scarfing down.

“And what’s with him being old?” At this point, I was edging us closer to a full-on Roast of Bill.

“I know right?!?” Mark concurred. “The guy’s what? Thirty-five, at least.”

“I swear the dude be using skin cream to keep his wrinkles from getting too out of hand,” I half-whispered, though no one was there yet to overhear me confiding in Mark.

“You know who he reminds me of?” Mark got a pensive, far-away look in his eyes. “Your friend from Kansas, Doug-E.–the guy who, despite being 27 and not being in college, would hang out with you and all your undergraduate friends, oblivious to how incredibly awk–“

Mark looked up and locked eyes with mine.

“I think we have found our new nickname for Bill,” he said with understated confidence.

“We have indeed…”

“You know…like AquaMan…right? AquaMan, the underwater superhero…you know who I’m talking about, right?”

Most of the gang–including Bill–had left the restaurant by this point, and I found myself in a lazy, meandering conversation with 2 or 3 of the available young lasses in our congregation. And I gotta be honest, nothing gets a good Christian boy higher than making a girl (or two) laugh. So I couldn’t help flex a bit and show off some of the comedic chops Mark and I had spent the better part of that Sunday honing.

“But instead of ‘Aqua’, we’re saying ‘Awkward’…because Bill is, ya know, super awkward…”

Nothing but crickets and blank stares from my audience. Nevertheless, I persisted. I cleared my throat and put on my best Movie Trailer Voice.

” ‘Ruining conversations with his mere presence, it’s…Awkward Man!’ “

Still, nothing. Time to lay out the facts and steamroll them with logic until they couldn’t deny how funny it I was.

“C’mon, y’all can clearly see it’s a pun. And it’s a hilarious one at that…”

I was slowly realizing that maybe–just maybe–these ladies didn’t have the same sense of humor that Mark and I shared.

It was time to go nuclear and resort to anachronistically pulling a Jeb…

The point of the story is you better figure out whether or not you’re capable of marrying someone without a sense of humor–

Hold up–wait a sec…

*checks notes*

Oh, my bad, that was this point of this story.

The real point here is that maybe it wasn’t my female audience’ ‘s lack of humor that was the problem. Perhaps…maybe…could it be…despite my killer stand-up routine, is there any chance I wasn’t exactly the ‘husband material’ they were looking for?

I distinctly remember thinking, “Oh, sh*t, these are kind-hearted church-going women of G0d! And I’m here, basically bragging about how Mark and I are like really good at making fun of this nice guy just because he doesn’t fit in perfectly to our little church clique…hmmm…maybe we’re the assholes. Oh, Jesus, we’re both gonna die virgins, aren’t we?”

The point being that there’s more to it than just making a girl laugh. And Jesus help you if being funny becomes so important to you that it turns you into a complete phallic-face²D*ckhead. I’m trying to hint at the term ‘d*ckhead’ here. ass-hat, well…let’s just say that between Mark and I, one of us learned our lesson and the other one is still single 16 years later…

Content created on: 28/30 September & 1 October 2023 (Thurs/Sat/Sun)

They say all good (and easy) things must come to an end.

How exactly that goes down, though, isn’t always plane to see, my friend…

“Sir, if you would, could you please follow me to the Back Office?”

Something wasn’t quite right about the smile the nurse assistant had plastered across her face as she made her overly polite request. I had already been traumatized here at the Manhattan Plasma Center, and now I was getting that foreboding tingly feeling all over my body again. I could just smell it in the air–there was definitely something off about what I had expected to be just another one of my semi-weekly¹This means twice a week–not to be confused with every other week, like many paychecks. trips to Oversided-NeedleVille.

But before all that dread took over me, there were a good several very long seconds where, at first, I kinda felt special to be ‘called back’. Like, maybe they wanted to talk to me for totally awesome and rad reasons. Perhaps I would be getting an award for ‘Easiest To Find Veins’?

Or was I about to be recognized as the ‘2001 MPC Most Faithful Client’? Surely, not that. *blushes* I mean, gee guys, I’ve only started showing up to have my Money Hole regularly tapped since last July. Certainly there are plenty of other poor chumps in this college town that have been selling their souls to y’all one to two times a week for $20 to $45 all year long, right?

Oh, oh! I know! I had reached a milestone worthy of a celebration. Would today’s donation contribution put me over The Threshold and vault me into the exclusive Fifty-Liter Club? It would normally take the average guy my size 8 months to have 50L of plasma safely extracted from his body.²This is based on the upper limit of “625 to 800ml per donation”, as found here. But then again, was I your average Joe? I mean, have you seen my beautiful, veiny, rower’s forearms? Especially my right one? The one known around MPC as “Phlebotomist’s Phantasy”? Yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that I was a plasma-producing prodigy without having even realized it…

“Sooo….just taking a look over your medical screening. Is there any contextual information you would like to share with us in regards to your blood test?” the resident medical professional looked over her glasses at me slightly suspiciously.

The gradual sinking feeling that I had started to feel as I had made the pilgrimage to the Back Office was now a full-on brick in the stomach (a similar, but entirely different experience than the one I had recently told you, Dear Reader, all about). My dream of walking out of there $25 richer was quickly dissipating. I mean, what was I even thinking? It’s never good to called to the Back Office–a lesson I had learned just barely 2 weeks earlier at my other college side-hustle.

And now they’re bringing up my blood results?!? Not to brag or anything, but not only was I good little Christian boy throughout my college career, but I was also a proud virgin, and for me to have any funny business with my blood would have taken some sort of funked-up bizarro Immaculate Conception scenario where, instead of the Virgin Mary getting pregnant with the Son of God, the Virgin BJ gets a Sexually Transmitted Disease.

Hey, I was pretty religious, but I wasn’t exactly a believer in modern-day anti-miracles.

“Uh, yeah, so…my blood is clean as a whistle, as clean as a preacher’s sheets, as clean as a baby’s–“³https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–I0gkn5Gzw

“Let me just stop you right there,” she interrupted me. “You’ve definitely been up to something. You see this graph charting your historical test results for the protein Amyphagdelydia-3?⁴I just made this name up because I don’t have the energy to figure out the proper name of the protein that did me in was. And see this dashed horizontal line? That’s the threshold line. Well, two days ago you spiked at seven times over the acceptable amount in your blood.”

“Oh, yeah, that is weird. But it’s not going to be problem, right?”

“We understand that spikes like this can be inaccurate representations for various reasons, so we only take action if it is still above this level two tests in a row,” she explained.

“Well, surely whatever it was is out of my syst–“

I stopped short as she just tapped matter-of-factly on the last data point in the graph–today’s test result.

“You’re still three times over the limit, sir.”

“Oh. I see. Well, what could have even caused this?” I asked, still blissfully unaware of my lot in life at this point.

“You’re kidney over-produces this protein in several situations. For example, from exercising too strenuously after a long period of inactivity,” she explained.

“Aha! That must be it! You see, my friend Chong convinced me to start the Spring semester off right by hitting the gym with him–and we did hit it a little too hard, I suppose. Yup, that explains it all. I should be fully recovered in just a few more days and be ready to get back in the plasma-selling game.”

I gotta say, things were starting to look up again…

“Yeah, sure it could be from working out…or it could be from shooting up black tar heroine–you do have the veins perfect for such deviant activities, after all. Anyways, we have no real way of telling the difference between the two,” she said flatly.

I chuckled nervously.

“But in my case, it’s obviously from working out and not hardcore drug use…right?”

“No, unfortunately it is not obvious. We have no choice but to follow protocol, and put you on The National Donor Deferral Registry. I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to give plasma anymore.”

“Okay, well that sucks. So this lasts…how long? Six months?”

“No, that’s forever–you’ll never again be able to donate anywhere in the U.S. as long as you live, you druggie, you.”

“Are you kidding me?!? You’re blacklisting me? You’re putting me on, dare I say, a no-supply list?”

She seemed shocked by my choice of words.

“Too soon?” I asked.

“Too soon…”

The point of the story here should be ‘no good deed goes unpunished’–I mean, I was trying to improve my health and they go and blackball a dude just for working out too hard? C’mon, Karma, you had one job…

But that’s not the point here–and neither is “if you ever find yourself failing an employer-mandated drug test, just vehemently insist that it was on account of your new gym membership.” Yes, that too is a very valid, very solid, so-called ‘point of the story.’

Alas, what I really want you, Dear Reader, to reflect upon is where were you when you first saw the footage of a plane crashing into the side of the Twin Towers? You know, the foremost collectively traumatic event of our lifetimes (save for my more mature readers who lived through the assassination of JFK).

I sure as hell know where I was that Tuesday morning in 2001. I’ll give you a hint: it involved ~800ml of bodily fluid and a $20 bill…

…

…

Did you guess “a very regrettable mid-morning trip to the local strip club”? Because if you did, you would be oh, so very wrong, you pervert. I mean, how does ones even go about losing that much bodily fluid through any method other than via venipuncture? Riddle me that!

No, I was at the Manhattan Plasma Center when I got to watch history being made for all the wrong reasons…

Speaking of “history being made for all the wrong reasons,” I’ll leave you to ponder this tweet:

Oh c’mon, you know it’s funny.

And don’t you dare tell me it’s “too soon”…

Content created on 8/9 September 2023 (Fri/Sat)

Sure, you’ll sacrifice your body in hopes of getting a slice of the American Dream.

Too bad your family isn’t quite on the same team….

“I’ve got big dreams, Dad! And you can either help me pursue those dreams wholeheartedly, or you can step aside and I’ll go down this path alone and without your support.”

My dad let out a sigh in that way only an overly-pragmatic farmer could.

“Listen, Son, you’re not in high school any more–you’re a man now. And you’ve got to start taking the whole ‘being an adult’ thing more seriously.”

“Dad, what makes you think I’m not taking things seriously?” I protested.

“Well, for starters, have you looked in the mirror lately? That ridiculous two-tone hair of yours would be the first clue that maybe–just maybe–you have dubious executive function.”¹J.K. Kidding–Dad would never use the term ‘dubious’.

It was now my turn to sigh in that way only a precocious 18-year-old punk could.

“Still sore that I went and dyed my hair while you were off gambling in Topeka, eh? Well, I’ll just ignore that comment of yours, like the mature grown-ass man that I am,” I said, scrambling for the moral high ground.

Dad rolled his eyes at this.

“Nevertheless, you have to understand that from here on out, you can’t just make such decisions so flippantly.²Okay, so this is how you know that I’m having to take historical artistic liberties with the dialog–Dad would have never used a word like that. Especially ones like this, where you really need to be sure that you’re ready for the time commitment–not to mention the emotional energy required and the physical suffering you’re bound to endure along the way.”

“Dad,” I said, gently putting my hand on his shoulder. “I know what I’m getting myself into. I know it can be a little scary for you, since you never went down this path when you were my age. But trust me, I’m gonna be okay.”

I could tell that Dad had to think about it for a moment or two before speaking.

“Well, you know that I will always support you, Son, no matter how noble or ignoble your cause may be.”

“So you’re in? Awesome! I knew I could count on you!” I was reveling in our rare father-son Hallmark Moment.

But that didn’t last long, as Dad, being the pragmatic farmer that he was, quickly switched the focus back to the practicality of the logistics ahead of us.

“Let me make sure I got this straight: you’ll need us to pick up 7 of ’em when we go to store, right?” Dad said, double-checking my request.

For some reason, all of a sudden, that number was seeming a little low.

“Hmmm…on second thought, you’re always saying ‘half-assing things will never get you anywhere in life’. You know what, Dad, we better make that 14 watermelons instead…”

“Wait. What?!?” I spit out several watermelon seeds, trying to wrap my head around what Dad was saying.

“I said that I’m treating the family to a mini-vacation in Cripple Creek right before you head off to college. You’re welcome!”

“Yeah, well, I thought just you and I were going to go camping, so I guess that’s not happening. But besides that, I need you to go back to the part about when we were going to Cripple Creek.”

“Oh, right–August 13th through the 15th. I know it’s only 2 nights, but hey–we’re farmers. It’s a miracle that we’re even taking a vacation, amiright?” Dad said with that sh*t-eating grin of his.

“No, no, no, no, no! This can’t be happening!” I said under my breath as I frantically flipped through the little daily planner I had been using to keep track of The Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99.

“Something wrong?” Dad inquired.

When I finally got to mid-August, I slammed my forefinger down on the square that had ‘5-State Free Fair Watermelon-Eating Contest’ in all-caps and circled thrice.

“This. This is the problem!” I exclaimed pointing at the big ‘1-4’ in the corner of that square. “I’m supposed to be in Liberal on the 14th, you big oaf! I’ve got a hot date with destiny, dammit!”

“Aw, shucks, that’s a shame. Too bad, though, cause those dates are the only ones I can get away from the farm.” Dad didn’t really seem too by bothered by the fate that was befalling me.

That moment when I realized my dreams were being shattered? It felt like a punch straight to the gut–which, incidentally, is also what it felt like to eat half of an oversized watermelon in 90 seconds after dinner. Every day. For 2 weeks straight.

I put down the chunk of watermelon I had been holding.

“I can’t bear the sight of this foul weed no more!” I proclaimed melodramatically as I put a sticky hand to my forehead in true ‘woe-is-me’ fashion.

I slightly-sweet tear³Sweet from all the ----- watermelon juice in my system! trickled down my cheek as I grieved the technique I had perfected, but would never get to use.

But, in the off chance that you, Dear Reader, find yourself training for a watermelon eating contest, I’ll tell you what my method was, and perhaps it won’t all be completely in vain: you see, what I liked to do was crush the watermelon as I chomped off the flesh from each watermelon wedge, usually within 2-3 bites per wedge. Watermelon is actually highly compressible, so if you use your tongue and palate as a garbage compacter, you’ll end up with a surprisingly small amount of mass that needs to be swallowed–in fact, chewing is optional if you do it just right. Of course there’s a lot of watermelon juice expelled into your mouth in the process, but it’s easy enough to drink that as you go. And ta-dah! That’s it! You can tear your way through all the melon your stomach (and/or bladder can handle)!

What else can I say but…

The point of the story is that sometimes one’s potential for greatness is thwarted by the dumbest things. In this case, that ‘dumbest thing’ was my parents’ need to vacation in a town that is 95% casinos, and therefore utterly boring for anyone under 21. If I could go back in time, I would have an intervention with them, because methinks they had a bit of a gambling problem (one that did pay off handsomely in due time, though).

Speaking of going back in time…I’ll let Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite summarize how I feel about being robbed of my greatness:

So, anyways…as we head back-to-school and off-to-college this fall, let’s pause and somberly consider that, statistically speaking, we’re on the cusp of seeing a whole lot of youthful potential go to waste.

Young over-achievers-soon-to-be-under-achievers, we drink this watermelon juice in remembrance of you…

Content created on: 25/26 August 2023 (Fri/Sat)