Category: General Cerebral Leakage (Page 14 of 26)

You love sugar. I love sugar.

It never hurts to have more sugar…

“Boys, who wants a banana split?!? See how fast you can clean your rooms while I get them ready, okay?”

Man, oh man, who doesn’t love a good ol’ banana split? Indeed, Mom had found the secret to getting me and my bro, 1SkinnyJ, motivated enough to get off our elementary-school-aged duffs and actually help get our house tidied up for once.

With each Lincoln Log (TM) I gathered, in my mind I could already start feeling the juxtaposition of the textures of ice creaminess against the soft-yet-firmness of the banana as I bit into it.

I threw yet another Hot Wheels (TM) car into the toy box, and my thoughts lingered on the sensual saltiness of the chopped peanuts perfectly complementing the chocolate and strawberry sweetness of the Blue Bell (TM) frozen confections, as they exploded into fireworks of flavor as they first hit my lips and then my tongue.

And as I was finishing up picking up the last few of my oversized off-brand Lego (TM) building blocks, my imagination savored the thought of polishing off the remaining bits of whipped cream mixed with that inevitably awesome sweet syrupy muck–the by-product of any banana split done right.

Of course, there was the proverbial–and literal–“cherry on top,” which, being the best part of the whole experience, I saved for last–even in my childhood sugar-lust fantasies.

My mental pre-vouring¹That, my friend, is a portmanteau of ‘pre’ and ‘devouring’. You’re welcome. of my future tasty treat perfectly ended in sync with the household task I had been charged with.

“Alright, Mom, I’m done! Now, where’s my sweet, sweet banan–“

…

“What in sweet Baby Jesus’ name is this abomination?!? Where’s my banana split?”

She just stared at me somewhat blankly, apparently unsurprised by my unpleasant surprise.

“This is your banana split. Surely you weren’t expecting something different, were you?”

In that moment, I was too embarrassed to have not known better. I had been duped and was too proud to admit it.

The fact that Mom–no-sugar-added, making-birthday-cakes-with-honey, health conscience Mom–would be offering me a concoction that involved not only Blue Bell (TM) ice cream and Maraschino (uh…TM?) cherries, but Reddi-whip (TM) whipped cream and Hershey’s (TM) chocolate syrup? That should have been a giant red flag waving in the Kansas wind.

How was I not suspicious of such an impossible offer? I knew that, apart from the bananas, we never had the raw the materials for a proper banana split on hand in our sad sucrose-less sanctuary.

At least not the kind of banana split I had oh so naively thought I was getting–you know, the real good ones that Grandma Smalls²This is hilariously not her last name. I don’t even know why I would bother to change her name… would buy for us at the Dairy Kreme (a violation of TM?) whenever we would go run errands with her in Elkhart. (Ah, Grandma Smalls: a fan of sweets, no doubt–and from whom I indubitably inherited my sweet tooth.)

No, what lay before me was…well, sure, the requisite banana was there…

…but piled high with cottage cheese, canned pineapple chunks, and generic unsalted peanuts.

And for that “cherry on top”? Oh, you better believe that did she not disappoint in her impeccable ability to disappoint…

Kretschmer (TM) wheat germ. Yes, you read that right: gosh darn, melon-farming, sock-clucking wheat germ. Who does that to their kid?!?

This trauma? This trauma was real. It scarred me for life.

So much so that now to this very day, “Banana Split” means one thing and one thing only amongst my family:

“Oh, I knew your offer sounded too good to be true. Pftt! It’s the Banana Split Incident all over again. I guess I’ll just sit here and be…”

You know who loves that crystalline crack, that sweeter-than-smack, the one, the only, the granulated sugars?

Grandma Smalls, that’s who.

And, by some stroke of luck, the house that she shared with my soft-spoken Pap-pap³Again, a ridiculous and unnecessary pseudonym… was conveniently separated from our house in Richfield by a mere cow pasture.

So whenever 1SJ and I could no longer handle our involuntarily-induced processed foods withdrawal that came along with living with Mom, we would literally just traipse across the field to Grandma’s and raid her kitchen–whether or not anybody was home.

During one of these adventures, I made a culinary discovery for the ages: you know what was better than Jif (TM) chunky peanut butter in your Roman Meal (TM) bread and Welch’s (TM) concord grape jelly PB&J sandwich?

Jif (TM) chunky peanut butter, lightly laced with a dusting of sugar, that’s what!

At first, it was just localized to the PB that I was putting on my own sandwich, but it only took a couple more Munchies-motivated food runs before the situation spiraled completely out of control. To help illustrate what went down, I’d like to enlist the help of one of my all-time favorite comic strips, the February 18th, 1981 Garfield, who will be playing the role of me:

I was a genius: by directly incorporating a few cups of sugar into the canister of Jif (TM), I was cutting out the tedious process of having to sugar-ify my PB each time. And I’m sure ol’ Sweet Tooth Grandma Smalls would thank me later for saving her the trouble as well…

“What in heaven’s name are you doing, boy?!?”

I was shocked. This was the first time in my 6 or 7 years of existence that I had ever seen Pap-pap upset in even the slightest of manners.

And now he was yelling at me, which I thought was a bit of an over-reaction.

Sure, he had just caught me red-handed lacing the new canister of Jif (TM) with the appropriate amount of sugar needed to give it that grainy crunch that I had come to crave. But was it worth the anger and wrath from an otherwise impeccably unflappable man? Naw, something wasn’t adding up.

Even though I was shocked, I still managed to fumble for a response.

“Uh…well…I know how much Grandma loves sugar, so I thought I would do her a favor and–“

“You know your grandmother is DIABETIC! Are you trying to kill her?!?”

“Oh. Sh*t. My bad, my bad…”

…

So, that’s what having diabetes was really all about, eh. Well, damn, no one bothered to pass the memo onto me.

And to think, this whole time I had thought the saying “Sugar Is The Silent Killer” was just some hyperbole that Mom would trot out to justify those sock-clucking banana splits…

*shrugs shoulders*

Welp, I guess you can consider this your weekly PSA…

Content created on: 5 November 2021 (Friday)

This Halloween, why not visit one of the spookiest places on Earth:

The Emergency Department…mwah hah ha…

The Emergency Room. Remember that ol’ thang? Gone are the days of the Emergency Room, replaced by what I suppose is the politically correct term “Emergency Department,” and functionally supplemented by Urgent Care centers.

While the ER is in theory supposed to treat people who have suffered physical trauma, surviving a visit to one can be a traumatic experience itself. Just this past week, I had to accompany a family member to one of these God-forsaken places, and had the joy of staying there for almost 24 hours. Let me tell you, I had truly forgotten how ----- -up these places can be.

Some say that humor is one way of dealing with trauma, and so to help fend off some ED PTSD, I figured I would recount all the ways I have found myself in the ER.

All the stupid, stupid ways…

If playing on a swingset hasn’t sent you to the hospital at least once in your life, I dare argue you may have had a deprived childhood. By that metric, it took me until the summer before 6th grade before I truly experienced childhood.

Raise your hand if it was the “Watch me flip backwards out of this swing but not stick the landing” that did you in.

*raises hand*

Yup, good ol’ adolescent hubris did yours truly in–I landed squarely on my little ass instead of my feet after one such back flip. SMACK! Right on the ol’ tailbone. Man, I could barely walk back into the house to let my mom know I had messed something up down below.

Of course she kindly hauled me to the ER, where I promptly¹Just kidding. It was the ER–it took 2-3 hours to be attended to. had my developing gonads bombarded by X-rays, only to learn that I only thing I had really bruised was my ego.

Okay, so that was admittedly a milquetoast ER story. What say we turn the stupidity up a notch…

The weekend before finals week of my spring semester of college, me and my frenemy, “Spanky” Spankewich, decided to proactively blow off some steam with a round of mountain biking on some nearby trails.

It had been raining recently, and when I tried going down a 2-3 foot incline, my back tire decided it would slide sideways down the hill instead of following its brother in the front in an orderly manner. But instead of crashing and burning, I suavely laid my bike down sideways, and landed on my feet at the bottom of the hill.

“Hooray! Did you see that Spanky? I totally should have wrecked but didn’t!” I exclaimed, pumping my fist in the air victoriously.

“Uh…dude, why is your arm all red?”

“Wha!? Oh, crap, that’s blood.“

Turns out, there had been some random-ass broken beer bottle hanging out on the side of that hill, and I just happened to slide my right wrist perfectly over it as I was laying down my bike. And now I was spurtin’ my life force all over the place.

Yada yada ya, and I found myself getting sewn back together by some ER doc.

At first I was bummed by the incident, but then I found a silver lining: I was taking an Engineering Drafting course that semester, and part of our final consisted of manually drafting orthogonal views of some complicated geometric objects. This may not sound like much, but I despised such things, and was not looking forward to the final exam at all.

Needless to say, I was disappointed when I learned that having a sliced wrist on your dominant hand wasn’t a good enough excuse to get out of the exam.

Yeah, I may or may not have “accidentally” bled just a wee bit on my final drafts before turning them in…

When we lived in Springfield, Missouri, there was this big hill next to our school that led down to the soccer field, probably a good 8-10 feet high. One January when I was in 4th grade, Springfield got hit with a big freeze–cold enough to call off school, even if there was no snow.

Since we lived only a few blocks from the school, my bro, 1SkinnyJ, and I wandered over to try to go sledding on the frozen grass of that sweet, sweet high hill. Only problem was that we were a bit, uh, ‘cash-strapped’ and didn’t actually have sleds. So we improvised–there just happened to be a stack of old boards laying against the school, and we learned that they worked quite nicely.

Around my 6th or so trip down that hill, I took it a bit too steep, causing my board-sled to come to an abrupt stop at the bottom. My bottom, however, did not get the message and justg kept on going.

Now, this wouldn’t have been a problem, save for one l’il rusty nail that I had failed to notice hanging out in the board. As my body stayed in motion, sliding across the now-motionless board, that nail pierced my winterized jams and caught hold of some of my wobbly bits as they whizzed past.

You can imagine how the rest of this ER story goes: naturally ending in a tetanus shot–and the punchline you all just knew was coming:

“Doc, I think I just ripped myself a new butthole…”

As a kid, I was huge nerd. So huge, in fact, that one time in 4th grade I got so fed up with my classmates not shutting the ----- up while I was trying to work that I put in some ear plugs.

Fast-forward a few days later, and Mom was starting to get concerned about a notable dip in my awareness of my surroundings.

“Um, Honey, are you okay? Every time I ask you something when I’m standing to your right, you never respond.”

“Nope, I’m fine as far I know, Mom.”

“Maybe I should just take a peek in your right ear…”

*Peeps in my ear with flashlight*

“Holy sm*kes, son! Have you put anything in your ears lately?!?”

“Oh, yeah…the kids at school would not shut up while I was working, so I may have possibly chewed up some wads of paper and used them as ear plugs. Why do you ask?”

*digs in futility in my ear for good 15 minutes*

“Well, you’ve done it this time, Boy Genius. It looks like we’re headed to the ER…”

In my defense, the idea of paper-wad earplugs was a pretty logically sound²Unintentional pun! one at the time, but after having to actually say it out loud a second time–this time explaining the origins of this fiasco to the ER doc holding the incredibly long tweezers usually reserved for removing cockroaches from ears–I began to appreciate the alternate perspective that maybe–just maybe–I was a bigger dipwad than I fancied myself to be…

It’s almost every kid’s dream to be a pirate. But it takes someone truly special to make that dream come true. I, being someone truly special, was on the verge of making that dream a reality. I just didn’t see it coming…

‘Twas the morning my dad was supposed to come and pick me up and take me back to Kansas. Fifth grade was behind me, and nothing but a summer of fun stood between me and sixth grade. Like any other day, I started out with a nice little shower, followed by brushing of the teeth and hair.

Except…except when I went to brush my hair, I somehow managed to brush my right mother ----- eyeball instead. Like I said, it takes someone truly special, and hey, what can I say, I delivered on that one.

The downside was that even after the ER fixed me up, my eye was sore as…hey, what’s that one word that roughly rhymes with “up” and flows well after “as”? I can’t think of that word right now, but you get the idea.

On the brightside, hell yeah, I had that eye patch I had fantasized about having since I was five (I’m not lying–I have plenty of drawings I had made from that era as proof of what my “ideal self” looked like).

Later that afternoon, when my dad rolled up and took one look at me, he exclaimed, in his best anachronistic Hank Hill³From King of the Hill. impression:

“Wha–Bobby Junior, what in the hell did you do to yourself this time, boy?”

Missing him completely as I went in to greet him with a hug,⁴Because of my lack of depth perception, dummy. I reassured him:

“Livin’ the dream, Dad. I’m just livin’ the dream…”

(But hey, at least I’m not this guy…yet.)

Content created on: 23/24 October 2021 (Sat/Sun)

Words your friend should never hear come from your lips:

“Man, I really nailed your mom…”

“Let’s kick his ass, Seabass! C’mon, after him!”

‘Twas a cold winter evening during my sophomore year in high school, and me and my bestie Phillip K. Ballz (aka PKB) had been chillin’ at the Corner Stop¹As a reminder, it was/is the only convenience store in Rolla. minding our own ----- business. In the evenings Dad would sometimes let me borrow the farm pickup so I could go into town and have a bit of a social life, and since beggars can’t be choosers, there we found ourselves, sitting in the sweetest red Ford F350 flatbed diesel Rolla had ever seen.

I can only surmise we were just waiting for all the beautiful young ladies to come flocking to us because, c’mon, you know…the sweet kitty-magnet that I was driving and all.

Well, little did I know that such an ill-conceived plan was about to blow up spectactularly in my face…and it all started when that turd The Bard and one of his buddies streaked by on their bikes, talking some trash on us as they passed.

“But wait!” you say, “I thought you and The Bard were buds from Kindergarten, through grade school, and even after graduating high school! So what gives here?”‘

Ah, yes, a very keen eye you have, Dear Reader! Well, you see, at that time The Bard happened to be going through an awkward phase of being a little punk-ass b*tch, and PKB–also going through a similar phase of his own–had managed to get into some stupid schoolyard petty beef with The Bard over lord-knows-what.

Thusly on account of this pubescent feud, it was ol’ PKB who was that proverbial “scrub” that TLC so desperately tried to warn mid-90s teens about, hanging out of the passenger side of his best-friend’s ride, trying to holler at me.

Except instead of “me” being a beautiful young girl who don’t want no scrub, it was me, the driver of, um, how did I put it? Oh yeah: “the sweetest red Ford F350 flatbed diesel Rolla had ever seen.”

So what did I do at the mere suggestion of chasing down our arch-nemeses in a fit of bloodlust? I threw Big Red–I guess the pickup has a name now–in reverse, slammed my foot on the gas, and hauled [Phillip K.] Ballz out of that Corner Stop parking lot…

“THUNK…Crrrrrunch…Scraaaaape!”

We hadn’t got Big Red more than 4 feet out of his parking spot before our fever dreams of beating the sh*t out of our classmates came to a very sudden, very violent halt.

“What the ----- was that?!?” I asked PKB, as it was quickly becoming obvious that we (well, I) had backed right into an immovable object.

PKB glanced back–a basic precaution that I had foregone in my haste to get to our street fight–and then looked back at me with pure panic in his eyes.

“Oh sh*t. That was MY MOM.”

When I finally got around to using my rear-view mirror, I was met with the image of the sharp corner of Big Red’s flatbed firmly embedded in the front driver’s side panel of PKB‘s mom’s green Ford Explorer, with her arm hanging out the driver’s window, mere inches from utter mutilation.²For the curious cats out there, she had wanted to talk to PKB and had pulled directly into our path. You can’t blame her too much for assuming that I would see her parked behind me, and would stop so the two could converse before we scurried off to our future aggravated assault charges.

“Oh thank God, it was your mom’s Explorer, not your mom! You bout gave me a heart attack there, you ----- drama queen…”

“I DIDN’T SAY YOU COULD STOP CUTTING STRAWBERRIES.”

*sigh* “I think I would rather have had to deal with vehicular manslaughter rather than this,” I mumbled under my breath.

“What’s that?” PKB‘s mom apparently wasn’t too pleased that I was taking time out from my strawberry-cutting duties to make smart ass comments under my breath.

“Uh, nothing, Ma’am. Just saying sorry for making a crater in your fender, that’s all.”

“Harumph! That’s what I thought. NOW BACK TO CUTTING.”

“Hah-hah! Oooh boy, Mom sure owns your ass now!”

I’m not quite sure why PKB just had to go and rub my newfound “Indentured Servant” status right into my face at this point. I mean, it was his stupid need to get into a donny-brook with The Bard–a need that I had been trying to graciously help him satiate–that started this stupid, stupid series of unfortunate events, after all.

Alas, I couldn’t argue with him though: in exchange for not getting the cops involved–and thereby avoiding the prospect of being unnecessarily handcuffed–it seemed I had tacitly agreed to humbly be doing his mom’s bidding for the next few weeks or so.

And those ----- strawberries were only the beginning…³I really really wanted to end this story here, with the line “What a twist. It looked like I was about to go through a little-bitch phase of my own…”

Fun fact: usually, if the cops don’t get involved, neither will the insurance company. This had the unintended-yet-hilarious consequence of it being months on end before the Explorer got repaired.

And of course PKB‘s mom didn’t stop driving it in the meantime, so everywhere she went, the citizens of Rolla and the Greater Morton County Area would behold this enduring testament to the utter dipshittery of which their Golden Boy was capable.

No telling how many of them swore under their breaths at the sight of that cratered fender: “And this is the guy we’re pinning all our hopes on to put Rolla on the map?? Well, I guess we better get used to being known as the Tool Capitol of North America…”

*sigh*

Folks, the point of the story here really shouldn’t have to be stated: if you have to scurry off in your pickup to chase down somebody on a bike, with the hopes of at least threatening physical harm, please please please at least use your dang mirrors before you back that azz up.⁴Bonus punchline #2: “If you don’t, instead of cutting a b*tch, you just might end up a b*tch cutting strawberries.”

Or maybe–just maybe–avoid hanging out with violent psychopaths who have delicate little snowflake egos. That’s always an option too.

…

…

Nah, I’m just kidding–I’m only busting Phillip K.’s Ballz because it only seems fitting as a rite of passage for a wrinkly ol’ sac like him as he goes Over the Hill.

Happy 40th birthday, PKB!⁵Bonus #3: I almost titled this post “That One Time I Really Nailed Your Mom”. Or I could have also done, “Banging Your Mom Was Not Nearly As Fun As I Expected”. Bwahhhahahaha! I crack myself up! You will be my favorite dipshit, always and forever…

Content created on: 6/7 October 2021 (Weds/Thurs)

As the saying goes “With friends like these, who needs enemas?”

Your friends. Your friends need enemas. Because they’re ass-hats…

“You really worry too much about what people think.”

Well, this had just gotten real uncomfortable. I was a guest counselor at a summer camp for a week, and was hanging out with the full-time counselors when one of them, out of nowhere, decided to start going around the room and laying out uncomfortable truths about each person.

“You have some real daddy issues.”

Awkward.

“You need to break off your engagement. You know it deep down in your heart that you do.”

Shit, she wasn’t sparing anyone’s feelings.

“I bet you don’t even really believe there is a god.”

Damn, the hits just kept coming.

But was I worried? No! Why? Because I only had been there a few days, and this ----- girl barely knew me. What dirt could she possibly have on me?

Though I got to admit that I admired her bravery for telling her friends the hard-to-swallow things that they needed to hear.

“You–you talk about yourself waaaaay too much.”

I started to chuckle before she whipped around and pointed a finger directly at me, “And you too, Buddy.“

Dang, girl, that was stone-cold.

Now, extensive self-centered oration isn’t really that embarrassing…it’s just that she figured out that that was my cardinal sin after only a handful interactions…

More recently, I found myself hanging out with a group of friends. A TV was playing in the background, and it must have been on the Food Network or something because there was a gratuitous amount of meat being shown. Real mouth-watering stuff, I tell ya.

I leaned over to one of my friends, whispering, “Don’t tell anyone, that I, as a vegan, am watching–and secretly enjoying–this show!”

She leaned over and whispered back, “Again, that information has no value to me or anyone else. Can you see how it’s you just talking about yourself even more?”

Damn, girl…

So at this point, you maybe thinking that the point of the story is something like “Blessed be the true friend who is willing to give it to you straight” right? While, sure, yeah, that’s true, there’s one tiny detail that I’ve intentionally omitted thus far: these tales never really happened. Sorta.

The truth is that these were both actually my own ----- dreams.

In other words: it was ME all along!

I mean, how bad is it that, technically speaking, I’m calling myself out for characteristically blabbing about myself at great lengths, and at times, for no real reason?

But I think the real point of the story is: beware, beware, oh beware your dream-self. They might keep running their mouth off, and, like me, you might find yourself thinking “Ugghhh. This ----- guy.¹I’ve been watching What We Do In The Shadows on Hulu recently, if you were wondering whether this was a pop-culture reference or something. I wish this asshole would just shut the hell up about myself already…”

[Bonus material, since we’re vaguely referencing The Big Lebowski:]

Content created on: 17 June 2021 (Thursday)

“Tell me what I want, what I really, really want…”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, if you really, really want to know…”

“Cat toys? My bus to work? Another stolen glimpse of the comely young lass waiting at the bus stop? Shit, I have no idea what I’m doing here!”

And thus went the internal monologue in my head.

It was mid-morning, and I was rushing around in a frenzy, but I just couldn’t seem to remember why. Taking stock of my surroundings–my usual bus stop, a nearby Petco, the bougie food shop that popped up where our beloved TCBY used to be–I was doing my darnedest to formulate a theory as to what I was supposed to be up to.

What I was doing just made no sense. Now I was at Trader Joe’s? The heck? I needed to figure this out ASAP. Especially if I was supposed be catching that bus.

I paused a moment to continue my internal dialogue. I guess I decided to cut to the chase–no pun intended–as I wondered aloud: “What is it you’re really chasing after, man?”

Holy shit, was I surprised when, loud as day I heard another voice that sounded exactly like my own reply without skipping a beat: “Self-respect.”

I stopped dead in my tracks, stunned. I about screamed: “YOU WEREN’T SUPPOSED TO ANSWER THAT! IT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION!!!”

By this time, I had realized nothing seemed to make sense because–wait for it–I was dreaming.

Just one tiny problem though: the answer that my dream-self gave me? It made waaaaaay too much sense.

The funny thing is, fully-conscious me would have never in a million years come up with anything close to that answer. I was literally blind-sided by my overly-honest sub-conscious. I had just revealed a deep secret to myself. Or maybe it was the Universe speaking to me, through me, in my dreams?

Either way, “self-respect” was, as I like to say, one ----- interesting theorem, explaining way too well so much about so many of my deepest desires and motivations throughout my life, even at a young age. That’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax, though, and maybe I’ll unpack it all sometime down the road.

Moments later, I woke up in a real foul mood. Later that day I had processed this newfound information enough to figure out why this whole ordeal made me so upset and, for lack of a better descriptor, icky.

The answer to that question, if answered at all–was supposed to be more like “financial security” or “the respect of my peers and/or wife.” You know, things that are somewhat beyond my control.

But self-respect? That means all the unhappiness and dissatisfaction brewing underneath the surface? That was my own ----- fault if I didn’t show myself some respect. Even worse was the thought that it was on me if I hadn’t earned on my own respect.

Uggh. No wonder I was angry. I was angry because it was true.

Anyways, I guess the point of the story is you really shouldn’t go around asking profound, meaning-of-life questions in your dreams. You may think that you’re Tom Cruise in the classic hit movie A Few Good Men, but deep down a part of you–the Jack Nicholson part of you–knows better:¹Source: https://gifimage.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/you-cant-handle-the-truth-gif-14.gif

Dammit, it was the Napoleon Dynamite Incident all over again…

Content created on: 10 June 2021 (Thursday)