When all other categories fail (or absentmindedly forget to be assigned), General Cerebral Leakage, fresh off his third tour of duty in the war against wise insurance providers, steps in to save the day!
I just discovered a new safe word for you to use when stuck in a conversation:
“When I was five, I found out my grandpa had a twin…”
“When I was five, I found out my grandpa had a twin, when I saw him after my grandpa’s funeral. A ----- heads up would have been nice.”
Of all the stories I’ve ever told in these parts, that is probably one of the best ones ever. It has it all: brevity, wit, a plot twist, an “OMFG” moment, and, best of all, a well-justified and appropriately-used f-bomb.
But wait just a minute, Buster: if you’ve been paying attention at all, you will know that at least one of those story-time traits is not characteristic of a Point Of The Story story. At all.
Yes, the whole “brevity” part is definitely a snitch that deserves a stitch: this is not my story at all, but instead a fantastic tweet by @oksheesh that I happened to stumble across:
Ja, I admit that the reason I share it is part out of admiration, part out of envy. Man, I wish could tell my tales like this! I just know that had this happened to me, I sure as heck would have written up a small novel about, including every last bit of context such as where Real Grandpa’s coffin was situated, whether it was open-casket, and what Doppel-Grandpa was wearing.
And no doubt I would have thrown in some completely unnecessary trivia, like how I was eating corn at the after-party1Wait, that can’t be the right term for that… when I quipped to my mom something to the effect of “You know what I love about funerals? The food!” Because that part did really happen, so why wouldn’t I include that?
Anyways, during a recent road trip to our beach house,2If you haven’t read my post about the Fun House at the beach, then that just means I haven’t written it yet, and you should read that when I do write it up! I was sharing this fantastically tidy tale with my mom–from whom I most definitely inherited my extraneous verbosity–as I was gushing about what a perfect tweet/story it was and how I wanted to be just like @oksheesh when I grew up as a writer.
We both laughed heartily at that fanciful thought, as we knew that my genetic disposition to the contrary was so strong that it was highly doubtful that I would ever master the art of being succinct…
Later, as I was listening to my mom give a detailed account of where everybody was sitting at a particular meal that was the setting for the non-story she was sharing, I briefly experienced what it must be like to be you, my Dear Reader.
“Okay, so she’s telling me all these intricate details, but I have no idea how they relate to the story…well I better pay attention to all the noise just in case there’s a critical detail somewhere in there that makes all this make sense, or at the very least, mildly humorous…”
And just like that, my entire bandwidth was wasted on context, context, context, and I found myself too exhausted to give enough of a flying ----- to find out why we were having this asinine conversation in the first place.
Encouraging her to get to the point, I deftly referenced our conversation from less than an hour earlier:
“When I was five, I found out my grandpa had a twin…”
And it worked! She immediately got the hint and wrapped up her story lickety-split!
And, no, the irony of me using that phrase on someone else is not lost on me at all.
In fact, my trademark style of uber-self-awareness/wry self-deprecation is what compelled me to share all this in the first place–using waaaaay too many words in the process, of course.
If you ever need me to dispense with all the eye-witness-to-a-felony-criminal-act level of details that I’m sharing with you, all you need to do is leave in the comments section: “When I was five, I found out my grandpa had a twin…”
You’re welcome!
(And so sorry for using up all your mental capacity in the process…)
If you haven’t read my post about the Fun House at the beach, then that just means I haven’t written it yet, and you should read that when I do write it up!
“I can’t believe you’re asking me to be your Best Man!
I promise you wont’ regret it…”
“Now, if somebody could kindly lend me a Bible…”
*Crickets.* Nothing but ----- crickets from my captive audience.
I found myself staring out into the vast sea of Christian faces that had gathered for the wedding reception of my good friend and faithful TPOTS fan, Roger-Dodger,1Not his real name. If you are Roger-Dodger and would like to know where the heck that name came from, let me just put it this way: roger-DoDGer. There, make sense now? and, I, as his best man, was dying up on stage as I tried to give him and his beautiful bride the toast of a lifetime. And none of these Jesus-heads had not a single Bible amongst the lot of them.
I was starting to feel like a regular citizen of the fine city of Sodom, if you know what I mean.2If you don’t know what I mean, I meant that I was feeling “sodomized” by the situation.
To make things worse, the wedding reception was being held at the headquarters of one the larger Christian youth ministries in the Kansas City area where the bride worked. So forgive me for thinking that when I needed to quote the Good Word at a Christian wedding in the offices of a Christian organization, that there would be a plethora of copies of the Holy Scriptures at hand.
But nooooooo. Jesus was nowhere to be seen to save me from my own over-thought and somehow strangely sexually-charged speech.
Wait.
Let me back up to the beginning, though…
It’s not like I just showed up and started orating extemporaneously out of my anus, you see. I had found out at Thanksgiving that I would have the honor of being R-D’s best man. And, yes, I had been ruminating over the toast I would have to inevitably give during every waking moment since that point in time.
Like, literally. Or almost literally–every single time I went for a run in those 5 intervening months, The Speech is all I would think about. I wasn’t going to let my homeboy down, oh no I wasn’t!
And I had it figured out, too! You see, R-D and I happened to inadvertently, umm, “pursue” many of the same fine young Christian women during our college days at Kansas State.3Largely unsuccessfully. And for the record, not sexually, you ----- pervert. So, in my infinite King Solomon-like wisdom, I thought that our failed romantic conquests would be the perfect topic around which to craft a wedding speech.
Now in my defense, my angle was “see, you and I have great taste when it comes to the ladies: the one thing that they all have in common is that they all had excellent Christian character–just like your current bride!”
But in retrospect, it is much more obvious that the crowd wouldn’t follow my train of logic, and instead–as one friend in the audience later shared with me–what they heard was, “Damn, man, do remember back in the day when we were a bunch of stud-muffin horn-dogs?!? And alllllll those fine honeys we used to chase? Aww, yeah, buddy!”
As you can imagine, this gathering of devout Christian folk was not bemused. And given that it was a dry wedding, I found myself denied even the most basic of Best Hu/Man Rights: being able to turn to an alcoholic beverage for a bit of extra liquid courage.
Luckily, before all hope was lost and the entire wedding ruined, I managed to pivot to talking about the many wonderful qualities of the bride herself (instead of all these “other women”), and despite going completely off script, this strategy proved to be much more popular with both her and the crowd than–and I repeat–talking about all the other women your future husband lusted after.
And now, all I had to do was bring it home with a quick wife-themed quote from Proverbs:
“A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies…Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”
Proverbs 31:10,30
Pretty solid, right? Yeah, believe it or not, I do have some good judgement in me.
But why would I actually need a physical Bible when–full disclosure–I could have easily recited this by heart?
Because, my thirsty friend, there is nothing like a bit of prop comedy to really get the marital celebrations flowing.
After a rather awkward 3-minute delay, one of our friends tracked down seemingly the only Bible in the entire place. Using this to my advantage, I pretended to be super-nervous, thus causing me to “accidentally” start my Biblical quotation maybe just a verse or two too early:
“Let beer be for those who are perishing, wine for those who are in anguish! Let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more!”
Proverbs 31:6-7
*rimshot*
Unlike my attempt at lightly riffing on ambiguously implied fornication, I absolutely killed it with the crowd with this one:
“Ha ha! It’s funny because it’s true! Many marriages, long term, will drive one to drinking.”
“Tee-hee! Oh, the misery, anguish, and perishing that awaits the married man! That’s hilarious!”
“But seriously though, we could use some beer up in here, having to listen to this guy…”
The point of the story is, if you’re gonna give a wedding toast, the best advice I can give you–and, more importantly, my younger self–is to make it all about the bride. And, even though my where-is-the-much-needed-alcohol-up-in-here humor landed with the audience, I fervently repeat Toast Tip #1: keep it all about the bride–you gotta treat a wedding reception with a little more sanctity than an open mic night a bar, amiright?
Anyways, despite the several glaring errors in judgement that I made when trying to fulfill my duties as Best Man, I couldn’t be prouder to report that 15 years later, and the only thing R-D and his wife are drunk on are each other’s love!
Happy Anniversary, you Fatties!4This makes much more since if you 1) know their last name, & 2) speak a particular foreign language.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find a fermented drink5Kombucha. I’ll be drinking kombucha because my vegan ass can’t handle real alcohol any more. to imbibe in your honor…
Not his real name. If you are Roger-Dodger and would like to know where the heck that name came from, let me just put it this way: roger-DoDGer. There, make sense now?
You know what they say: “The early bird gets the worm!”
What they don’t tell you is: “The early tax-filer might just get screwed out of all the easy monies…”
Okay, so today isn’t exactly “Tax Day.” Usually it is though, so I thought I would spit a quick tax-related tip at you, because, hey is there ever a more fun and exciting topic?
So I like to be a good citizen when it comes to filing my taxes, and in fact, I usually have them in to the IRS within the first week that they can be submitted in early February. Sure, we usually get a tidy little refund, so that makes it much easier to get sh*t done in a timely manner.
This year I was a little behind on my game and didn’t get them in until early March. No biggie, though–well within the time frame that still would allow me to go publicly bragging about such an asinine thing.
It just so happened though, that the third economic stimulus package was announced a week or two after getting our ‘fund. This time around, though, those checks came with strings attached: namely, if you and/or your hard-working wife make too much money, then you might end up getting exactly jack-squat.
This information would have been extremely handy to have had before I filed my taxes so ----- early like the exceptionally good member of society that I aspire to be. Turns out, had I been a dead-beat family accountant–or a notorious procrastinator, which I seem to be in just about every other area of my life–then the IRS would have been forced to determine our eligibility based on our 2019 taxes.
*Sigh*
If only.
I can neither confirm or deny our current gross household income, but let’s just say that DAMMMMMMIT! I JUST SCREWED US OUT OF A FAT FIVE-K STIMMY FROM UNCLE SAMMY!
You get the point, right? The year 2020 was a shit-show in general, but financially we did just well enough to miss out on all the free-money fun.
And all because I had to–just had to–go showing off to the IRS how much dough we be rolling in the first chance I got.
Wait–I mean, “I was an exemplary citizen, and thoughtfully filed my taxes early enough to help relieve some of the burden on the poor, poor IRS workers.”
What does my goodwill and excellent altruistic behavior get me? Jack. Squat.
The point of the story is, try to not fall into the sinkhole of cynicism if you can, but dang it, it’s true what they say: “No good deed goes unpunished.”
Call me a bad boy, call me Mr. Dangerous. Call me what you will but I say “screw this!” I’m filing my taxes on the last day possible next year!
Katie Crouch had a doppelganger. She even was the same age, had gone to the same college, was also an aspiring author, and no matter where she moved, this Katie Crouch clone seemed to move there as well.
The best part? Her name was Katie Crouch too.
I came across this Tale of Two Katie Crouches while listening to one of my favorite story-telling podcasts, Snap Judgement. If you want to hear the full story, you can listen to it here, but for today’s purposes, let me skip ahead a bit.
Katie #1 thought it was the coolest thing that not only did Katie #2 exist, but they were so alike in so many ways. However, Katie #2 could have cared less though, and just went on living her life as if she was literally the only Katie Crouch in town.
Now, where things take a bit of a turn was when Katie #2 wrote a book that kinda took off. It even made the New York Times’ Bestseller list. The problem, of course, was that since Katie #1 was also trying to make it as an author, everyone she knew just assumed that she was the one who had just made it big.
Congratulations poured in. Friends took selfies with “her” book in bookstores. Everyone was overjoyed and elated for her. Even the media came knocking on the wrong Katie’s door.
Yeah, it was super-awkward.
And she found she couldn’t escape it no matter how hard she tried. She was constantly reminded that Katie #2 had beat her to making their shared name famous, even further reminding her of how from her dreams of being a big name in the book world she was.
Verily, verily, it was damn-near a nightmare…
Somewhere in between overwhelming success and abject failure, toils most aspiring creators of content–and yours truly is no exception. Is this blog the widely-read, much-talked-about source of wit, mirth, and life philosophy I envisioned it to be? Um, let’s just say it’s a “work in progress.”
At the same time, I have the consolation that I’m not just screaming into the void, and the hope remains that if I keep putting in the time and effort that eventually it will pay off in the form a decent-sized readership. (Dare I even dream of making a profit?!?)
Over the past month or so, thanks to some involuntary home renovations, the previously consistent creative output found in these parts has fallen off a bit. And without new content, one can naturally expect to see their traffic dwindle to a trickle.
Therefore, it was a very much a pleasant surprise to see a sharp uptick in visitors to this humble blog:
Could it be? Was I actually on the verge of success, fame, and fortune as humorist/writer/memoirist?!?
Of course, this couldn’t just be a random event, so I felt compelled to investigate the source of all these new readers. So I scrolled down a bit further:
Oh no…
*groans loudly*
Not The Conspiracy Theory Of Everything! I finally get some exposure, and this is the article that these new readers are using to form their impression of the larger body of work to be found here?!?
While not the worst writing that I’ve had the poor judgement to publish, it’s pretty close. In my head, the thoughts were rather coherent, and so when I needed to spit something out in short order so I could enjoy a beach vacation with my family, I thought it would be the perfect article to write.
Well, it turned out that my thoughts weren’t so coherent when I tried to put pen to paper, and eventually I gave up on making a cogent argument, basically just saying “F*ck this sh*t, I’m going on vacation! Peace!”
And now, this is what the world thinks The Point of the Story has to offer.
Well, this is embarrassing.
Even worse, I eventually started wondering “Why this post? And why now?”
It wasn’t long before I regretted trying to answer that question. It turns out a 4-hour YouTube “documentary” came out recently:
(At one point in time, my article was the #2 result!)
Oh, that’s super-fucking-awesome. It is pretty much the anti-thesis to my anti-conspiracy thesis. So pretty much all these new people accidentally discovering my site? People actively looking for conspiracy theories.
Son of a biscuit.
The only word that I can think of to describe this? “Katie Crouch #1, I feel your pain.”
If you want to funk with someone’s mind, you gotta play the long game…
I like to think of myself as a prankster at heart–even from a young age and few solid hits, such as wrapping a rubber band around the sink faucet sprayer and ass-blasting my maternal grandma with an ass-ton of water when she turned it on. She was not bemused.
Or the time, when 7-year-old me was forced to hang out in my dad’s semi truck for a boringly long time while he was plowing or harvesting or doing some other farmy-type activity. That was when I took a tarp strap and hooked up the driver’s door to the truck’s horn, so my dad got ass-blasted with an ass-ton of decibels upside his head when he tried to get in the truck a few hours later. Unlike my grandma, he was bemused. Apparently, I get my jokester genes from his side of the family.
I’ve had some other good ones here and there, but if I’m being honest with you–and you know I am–I have actually lead a seriously deprived prank life. Growing up, it seemed that my best ideas would require at least one accomplice, but unfortunately, my ideas were too outside-the-box, genius, and/or dangerous for the comfort of my much more closed-minded acquaintances.
Alternatively, my college friends only seemed to be in a pranking mood when I wasn’t around, so I ended feeling left out and sorry for myself when, time after time, I found myself excluded from all the fun and cheeky shenanigans.
However, as an adult, there was one incident that I was particularly proud of…
During the summer after I graduated from college, one of my roommates at the time, the Beautiful Love Muscle–yes, that BLM–was preparing to get married and move to Colorado Springs at the end of July. Consequently, he would one or two weeks at a time scouting out this new and strange land, occasionally returning to grace us with his presence.
It was while he was gone one of these times that my concurrent co-conspirators, Andrew and Crash–a nickname earned by going over to friends houses only to involuntarily nap on their couches–had the bright idea to toy with BLM’s sanity a bit. And all we needed was a screwdriver…
In our kitchen, the fridge was in the middle of one of the walls, and its door–unlike in most kitchen layouts–did not necessarily need to open to the left or right. It literally swung both ways. In theory at least.
So just for ----- and giggles we decided to swap which side the hinges were on (an obvious consequence of which would be the handle would be on the opposite side). BLM came back and we could barely contain ourselves as we waited to see what type of confusion and delay our handiwork might cause him.
…but it never came. He seemed to be oblivious to our minor rearrangement, like the big doof he could sometimes be. I was rather disappointed that our collective stroke of genius had seemingly gone to waste.
Come end of the summer, when it was time for him to move out and move on with his life, I just had to know if he ever even noticed the difference, so I subtly asked him just that.
“Oh my god! THAT’s what’s been eating at me! Halfway through the summer, I could sense something wasn’t quite right, but I could never quite put my finger on it. I was going ----- insane!”
Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised and infinitely pleased to see that it had worked out even better than I could have imagined…I just had to play the long game.
Anyways, there’s not real point to this story, other than to give you the idea to go switch the fridge door on your mates and then…wait. It will be well worth it. If you’re getting antsy, then maybe you could up your game and switch the door back and forth every week or so. Either way, slowly driving insane the lovable assholes you find yourself cohabiting with will be well worth it.
Disclaimer: no gold was harmed in the making of this film.
But, fellas, you’re probably not going to like it when you hear what was harmed…
“Keep It Simple, Stupid”–aka the KISS Principle. Many scholars maintain, present company excluded, that the less complicated a plan is, the less likely it is to go off the rails, and therefore the better it is. And personally, I think it’s simply ----- stupid. But that’s just me, over-complicater extraordinaire.
However, every now and then an idea floats past me in the aether that is just the right amount of simple that I can’t deny its beauty and its genius.
And before I float this beautiful, genius, simple idea, I’m just gonna throw in the disclaimer that, on account of its simplicity, that there’s no way in hell that it can be an original idea of mine; I’m sure this has been posited by someone else long before I showed up.
Also, you may utterly hate this idea, so I may or may not actually want to take credit for it, even if it were actually original. Anyways, I digress…enough intellectual foreplay–let’s get to the real action…
“It’s a story that’s tragically familiar, and all too easily avoidable: another man with a gun, another tragedy…” At some point in the last week I scrolled past an article that started this way, in reference to recent mass shootings in Georgia and Colorado. And yes, the article was making a case for common sense gun control.
Now I’m well aware that gun control is a rather controversial topic, but just humor me for the next 2 and 1/2 minutes, will ya?
That line from that particular article got me to thinking, “What singular characteristic best predicts who may be responsible for future mass shootings?”
Of course, the answer one gets when they ask that depends pretty heavily on who you’re asking. Some might say that if you look at the cold, hard data, it’s actually white men you need to be constantly giving the side-eye. But focusing on this demographic would have let the shooter in Denver–who is most definitely not your average white guy–slip past unnoticed until it was too late. Others might point out that it is precisely these guys with “hard to pronounce names” are exactly who you should be afraid of, and warrant an extra level of surveillance and/or restrictions of personal liberties.
In short, it’s a politically loaded question, and we all know that if it’s that subjective, then we’ll never agree enough on how to combat the problem effectively.
But hold up–has the obvious blown right on past us?
Really, though? What’s the single most accurate predictor of the perpetrators of senseless gun violence?
This particular scholar maintains that the undeniable answer is: a penis.
Indeed, the one thing nearly every last one of these assholes have in common is a dick.
So I’m just going to throw this ri-dick-ulous idea out there, and let you do with what you will. What if…what if we simply banned men from owning or handling guns?
Yeah, that may be a bit of blunt tool for a nuanced issue, but let’s just stop ----- around already and solve this problem. Us men have repeatedly proven to society that we simply cannot be trusted with firearms. In-laws, outlaws, crooks, & straights–if Brooks & Dunn can sing about them, then they are statistically way too likely to shoot someone or something that they shouldn’t.
Only female cops get guns? You know what, that sounds pretty ----- good to me.
Only female soldiers get to handle loaded weapons? That one probably doesn’t matter because it won’t be too long before the military has outsourced all their violence to drones and robots. In the meantime, though, sure, I think we would do just fine with that policy.
Oh, and would this solve all the domestic violence problems in the country? No…but, yeah, maybe. I say it’s well worth the risk, the Patriarchy be damned!
Girls, go get your guns! If you can’t be trusted with them…well, it’s going to take a lot to prove to us that you can’t be trusted with guns, given the infinite amount of heart-breaking and senseless shit that we’ve tolerated thus far from your brethren…
Like any idealistic and naive proposition like this one, there are bound to be unintended consequences that the creators never could have foreseen. And no doubt that would be the case here. But after all the dust settles, I would wager that our society would be a much better place for the vast, vast majority of us.
There is, however, one unintended consequence that I can foresee, and it makes me chuckle a wee bit: I can only imagine that the support for transgender rights would suddenly find proponents from previously untapped and unexpected sources (this is not to denigrate the very real struggle of fellow citizens who are very worthy of basic respect, but rather a critique of those who for some ----- reason think they have an opinion in the personal matters of other people).
Is it morally wrong of me to take some sort of secret delight in envisioning gun-loving gentlemen across this great nation of ours agonizing over that age old question? You know the one: “Which do you love more: your dick…or your gun?”
But seriously, somebody should have hid the fire water from these two drinking bunnies…
“Hide my presents and then I can search for them like a pirate searches for treasure!”
The Elder, our older daughter, was celebrating her 8th birthday at the beach and was understandably overly-excited and full of um…”interesting” ideas for the present-opening portion of the festivities. Now, in fairness, hiding her gifts and then sending her on a scavenger hunt wasn’t that bad of an idea…had 1) we been in a familiar location, & 2) us adults had some time to prepare ahead of time. Without those two pre-conditions, though, the whole scheme could quickly become much more of a dubious endeavor.
But fortunately, I have enough life experience under my belt to foresee how this seemingly fun and cheeky idea could turn out to be a darker shade of shenanigan. So I waved The Elder over and said, “Come young lass, I have a very important story to share with you…”
Back in my early grad school years when I was a single young buck, I would spend my holidays with either my brother (One Skinny Jay) or sister, who lived near each other in Virginia. One particular Easter we were at my sister’s place out in the country, and 1SJ had brought the wife and kids over that morning to celebrate.
And celebrate we did–it seems that us bros had the idea that there was no better way to commemorate the rising of the Lord Jesus Christ than raising a few bottles of booze “in remembrance of Him.” Further, just like Jesus’ female fans found His grave empty early that Sunday morning, we made sure that we likewise found our previously-full bottles empty this fine Sunday morning.
Oh, what’s that? Oh. You wanted to know how the kids celebrated, not the adults? Gotchya.
Well, seeing as how there were 5 of my nieces and nephews running around by that point, it was only logical that us adults hosted an Easter Egg hunt, a classic neo-Pagan American vernal pastime, indeed.
Our sister, seemingly the only responsible adult present that day, had filled up a bunch of brightly colored plastic eggs the night before with candies, quarters, and one-dollar bills, so us boyz only had to hide them in her front yard. It should come as no surprise (or maybe it does) that we knocked out our part of the bargain lickety-split without any trouble.
In less than 5 minutes we had hid all 25 eggs in and under the porch, in the thick half-dead grass, and in/under/around the small lone tree that stood in her yard. Given how starkly featureless the space we had to work with was, we were actually a bit proud of ourselves for finding hiding spots for all of them. Patting ourselves on the backs, we called the butt-munchkins1This is a bespoke portmanteau, created by yours truly for his siblings children, an amalgamation of the words “butt-munch” and “munchkins”. out into the yard and let them go buck-wild with their Easter baskets.
After all was said and done, we sat around the dining room table, eating ham sandwiches and deviled eggs, helping the kiddos sort through all their loot. Eventually, when we compared notes, we discovered that only 21 eggs had been successfully recovered. Not wanting to leave any valuable booty left undiscovered in the yard, me and 1SJ headed back out to there, bottles o’ rum in hand.
We quickly found one of the stray eggs, but the other 3…well, even after another 20 minutes of combing through the yard, we simply could not figure out where the hell they could have disappeared to. I mean, c’mon, there was 1 porch, 1 tree, and…grass. They couldn’t have gone too far, right? Apparently that logic wasn’t as air-tight as one might guess.
We finally had to call off the search for the sake of our sanity, and all agreed that we would just chalk this loss up to the alcohol. Still to this day, though, we still wonder if there is unclaimed silver doubloons languishing in oblivion at the bottom of her yard…
The point of the story is you probably should avoid the responsibility of hiding the kids’ Easter Eggs if you’ve been day-drinking (again). But, if you do, drink & hide responsibly–make a map of your treasures as you go, you big enebriated pirate, you!
“Oh sh*t…” you say, as you do your best Fred-Savage-from-the-Princess-Bride impression. “Is this a pooping story?”
“This is a pooping story, isn’t it…”
If you’re lucky, you probably have little to no memory of your early childhood years. If you’re unlucky, you might be cursed with remembering every ----- detail since birth. And if you’re real unlucky, you could be stuck with all-too-vivid recollections of those wonderful Golden Years1You bet your un-wiped ass that was urine pun! of potty training.
Guess which shat-agory I fall into? Yup, you can bet your darned left butt-cheek that I remember way too much from that particular era in my life. But the good news is…wait for it…yup, you guessed correctly again! There is a gem of life advice buried somewhere in all that brown gooey muck, and I’m about to dump–er, I mean, “share” it with you right now!
Our 3-year-old daughter, The Younger, is pretty well potty-trained at this point, but she hasn’t quite mastered the art of wiping herself up yet. And since she is like her old man, she typically is left on the potty to do her business for extended of periods of time while her caretaker takes care of other business elsewhere in the house.
But instead of patiently waiting for someone to come clean her up when she’s done, she’s gotten into the habit of just wandering around the house casually with her pants around her legs, butt-cheeks red from sitting to long hanging out and all, loudly proclaiming, “CAN YOU WIPE ME UP PLEASE?!?”
I got to thinking about this the other day, and realized that I am extremely grateful that her little habit is so low-key. Well, relatively speaking, that is.
You see, she could have turned out just like me…
By the age of 3, I, too, had mastered the art of defecating in receptacles previously designated for just that. But unlike The Younger, I had actually become well-versed in the whole wiping thing by then. The only problem, though, was that I just didn’t know when to quit.
Like, literally–I had no clue when it was okay for me to be done wiping. So what did I do? I got a second opinion from someone with better judgement than me, of course!
My standard post-poo protocol was to wipe 2-3 times, then traipse down the hall shirt-on-but-buck-naked-below-deck to the living room where Mom was, do a 180, bend over with my cheeks spread in her general direction, and loudly inquire “AM I CLEAN YET?!?” Then repeat as necessary, until she gave me a clean butt of health.
This probably went on for a good few months without anyone batting an eyelash until one day my much older sister pulled me aside and shared her most precious life-tip with me:
“If you look at the toilet paper after you wipe, you can tell roughly just how clean dat ass be. And you just simply have to keep wiping until it comes back clean–no need to involve our poor mother in this!”
The Ancient wisdom of an older sibling
Now I have had a few experiences in my life that just shook my worldview to the core. This was indubitably the first one of these.
My mind was simply blown away by the genius of it all. And best of all, I wouldn’t have to choose between living with my mother for the rest of my life or smelling like crap all the time.
I recall excitedly sharing this amazing revelation with my slightly older brother One Skinny Jay, and he was like “Pfffft! Everyone knows that! How did you not know that?!?”
Well, excuuuuuuuse me, mister. Apparently, no one in my life could have bothered enough to share that ----- memo with me!
So, from that very moment in time, I knew that I never wanted any child in my purview to ever suffer the indignation that I did of having to regularly perform the uncouth ritual of what I now refer to as “Behold The Gobbler.” Always and forever, I told myself, I would solemnly vow to pass on to my nieces & nephews–and eventually my own children–Life Lesson #1: How To Wipe Your Ass Clean When You’re All Alone.
Speaking of which, I think it’s about time I sat down and had a little chat with The Younger…
Do you like Oreos? I bet you do. Especially if you’re [Whole-Food] Plant-Based like me. They’re a classic treat that simply can’t be beat!
For my part, I distinctly remember falling in love with Oreos at a young age…unfortunately it was during, um, “a particular era in my life.”
Shortly after discovering The Joy of the Big O’ around the age of 3, I had a rather indulgent session with them that involved probably a third of a package and the milk to match the task. Hey, it seemed like a ----- fantastic idea at the time, so sue me.
Well, shortly after “at the time” I experienced one of my earlier life lessons in “consequences of my actions” (surprise, surprise). Not to be too gratuitous, but…yeah, it wasn’t quite diarrhea, nor was it quite solid, rather, my poo was a 4th state of matter more akin in nature to flubber.
Actually, after all these years, I just realized the perfect description for it: “super slow-motion semi-solid diarrhea.” Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
Anyways, after all the damage was done, I was going through the usual steps of running out to Mom with my short shorts around my cowboy boots for inspection. But unbeknownst to me, there was a hanging chad hiding in one of my crevices, and I only discovered Chad when he became dislodged and landed squarely on my calf before preceding to sloooooooowly creep down to my ankle.
Now, I don’t remember much that happened after that, but I do recall gagging like I had never gagged in my life before or since, and I think I…I think I touched it. It was traumatizing. I couldn’t eat Oreos again for another 4 year or so.
…aaaaand that’s it. That’s the story.
Sorry, I meant The Story, as in “That’s The Story that I actually told–out loud–to everyone sitting with me in Kramer Dining Hall back during my freshman year of college, thinking it to be a relevant tale after making myself the ingenius dessert of crushed Oreos in a glass of milk. You know…the kind of story that begins, ‘This chocolatey mush reminds me…’ “
And guess what? Now you, just like all 15 of my [former] friends and acquantainces present on that fateful day, have officially been cured of your Oreo addiction.
Finding that perfect baby name is every expecting couple’s dream.
But the process can be a real nightmare…
Naming a child is no easy task. While it’s a great honor indeed, it is also a great responsibility that one must not enter into lightly. I mean, the poor kid is going to have that name yoked around their neck for the rest of their life, so you gotta choose wisely!
Now, I’m not one to over-think things…wait, that doesn’t sound right. I am one to over-think things, and believe you me, naming our first daughter something less generic than The Elder was the grand-daddy of all the many over-thought thoughts I’ve had in my long and storied career as a professional over-thinker (with the lone exception being what I should get for a tattoo).
And it doesn’t help that the Boss Lady and I are a notoriously bad combination when it comes to making mutually agreeable decisions in an efficient manner.
I mean, we actually ended up watching the 1994 Tim Robbins/Meg Ryan/Walter Matthau not-so-much-of-a-hit-movie, I.Q., on Netflix once, for fuck’s sake. The only good decision we made that evening was to call it quits on I.Q. 20 minutes into the bore-fest, and just re-watch the 1997 Bruce Willis/Milla Jovovich/Gary Oldman/Luke Perry/Chris Tucker actually-entertaining-movie, The Fifth Element instead.
And that example is, incidentally, how we coined the term “Netflix Name.”
Giving our child a Netflix Name was our worst nightmare: the fear was that we would do such a crap-ass job at compromising that we would end up giving her a name that no one was happy with. Just like is bound to happen when any couple–you know who you are (everybody)–tries to jointly decide what movie to watch on that ubiquitous content-streaming service.
Anyways, after collaboratively slaving away at the task for a good 7 months, the prospect of coming up with a name that was desirable to one of us and at least satisfactory to the other was looking pretty bleak.
It even haunted me in my sleep.
One night, with less than a month to go before The Elder was due, I had a dream that I was a miner of precious ore and gemstones, and that I had fallen victim to every miner’s worst nightmare: trapped in a cave-in.
In dreamland, I was trapped underground for over two weeks before being rescued, and when I came to the surface, I received the fantastic news that the Boss Lady had had our child in my abence.
Now usually one would be irreparably upset at missing out on the once-in-a-lifetime of an event like the birth of their first child. But strangely, I wasn’t.
In fact, I was ecstatic–it meant that she had figured out what to name her! After being tormented for so long, I would finally have the resolution of knowing The Name To End All Names. Oh, sweet revelation!
I got on the phone with the Boss Lady, and with tears of joy trickling down my face as I wept, I told her how much I loved her and the new life we had brought into the world together…and then I immediately pivoted to “So what did you name her?!?”
…and then I woke up.
The point of the story is, the Universe can be so ----- cruel sometimes. May you never forget that.
Oh, and Happy Birthday to The Elder! Here’s to 8 years of knowing the true Name To End All Names…
When she said “Farmboy, fetch me the finest seats in the house,” you know what he said?
“As you wish…”
“Hana hou!” In Hawaiian, that means “one more time!” or “encore!”1https://www.hawaiianairlines.com/our-services/in-flight-services/hana-hou And for the Boss Lady and myself, it meant getting a second chance at a missed opportunity from our childhoods: seeing Rob Reiner’s 1987 block-buster movie, The Princess Bride.
“What?!?” you say? “How can this be true? Inconceivable!“
Yea, verily I say unto you, ’tis but true! You see, back in 2012 when we were living in Honolulu, one of the local theaters decided to start up their Hana Hou movie series, in which, on one special Wednesday each month, they would play a classic movie from Hollywood’s movie vault. I believe this is actually common now, but back then it wasn’t really a thing yet, so it was super exciting.
When we first saw the poster for The Princess Bride we ’bout crapped our britches in shear excitement! But although it was being shown on the largest screen in all of Hawai’i,2https://www.consolidatedtheatres.com/ward/cinema-info we were lucky to reserve ourselves 2 of the 225 seats available for this twice-in-a-lifetime event. In fact, I think we scored the last two tickets next to each other, so it was nearly an opportunity missed.
Well, it indeed lived up to the hype, and was perhaps one of the most incredible movie-going experiences of my life. It’s a pretty incredible energy when you get 224 hardcore fans of such a classic movie in an enclosed space–the place was literally buzzing with excitement!
Now, you may have noticed that I said “224 fans,” when there were 225 seats. Let me explain…
The Princess Bride is perhaps one of the most quotable movies ever. From “As you wish.” to “Inconceivable!” to “Stop rhyming, and I mean it!” *pause* “Anybody want a peanut?”, there are a plethora of opportunities to jump in and say your favorite line along with the character on screen. And believe you me, there was a lot of that going on that night, with at least a handful of audience members reciting dialogue during any given scene.
However, there was one quote, occurring several times throughout the movie, that seemed to unite the entire audience in what I can only describe as a religious experience: Iñigo Montoya’s “Hello. My name is Iñigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
The only way I know how to explain the phenomenon we experienced that night is this: if you’ve ever gone to just about any church in America, there is a good chance that you’ve been in the congregation when they’ve recited the Lord’s Prayer. Well, it was exactly like that: everybody knew every word, but nobody ever figured out how to say it in unison, so you endup with this eerie asynchronous chorus of whispers, which would be freaky as ----- if you didn’t know what was going on. It literally gave me the chills. Or was it the creeps…?
Anyways, I was at first astounded that everybody in that packed-out movie house was still obsessed with this film 25 years later…but then I realized that there was one auspicious exception: the guy sitting on the other side of me was strangely silent the whole time.
It seemed that it was this virgin’s maiden voyage into our collective world of fantasy, and this grown-ass man was just now seeing The Princess Bride the first time in his whole life. How was that even possible?
I mean, are you kidding me??? The lone heretic in that entire place just happened to be sitting next to me? Super. When the gods of Hollywood would inevitably smite this infidel with a bolt of lightening, I just knew that my ass was going to get zapped too…
Shortly thereafter, and based on our experience the previous month with The Princess Bride, we made sure to be ahead of the game and bought our tickets early to Quentin Tarentino’s 1994 cult-classic Pulp Fiction–a movie that I, as a grown-ass man, actually had never seen.
Now, I was particularly proud of my purchase this time, as I had scored seats right in the middle, 3 rows up from the open aisle that divided the front seats from the back. I’m talking primo, grade-A location, man. This experience was going to be even better than The Princess Bride, I just knew it.
It turned out, though, that around that same time, the Boss Lady was kicking around the idea of getting a Master’s degree from the University of Hawai’i, and her on-campus interview inadvertently got scheduled for the same night as the showing of Pulp Fiction. It ended up causing us to rush across town to the theater, only to show up about 5 minutes late.
I really had to use the restroom, so I told the Boss Lady which seats were ours, and told her to go on in before someone tried laying claim to them. When I came out of the john, I knew that our seats–25 & 26, to be precise–was slightly closer to the right side, so I took the hallway that went to the right going into the auditorium.
To my surprise, the place wasn’t nearly as packed as it had been for The Princess Bride, but the first 5 or 6 rows where our seats were were plum full. Assuming my life partner was already in her seat, I “excuse me, pardon me’d” my way past 20+ fellow patrons trying to enjoy the movie…only to find that the Boss Lady was not in her seat, and further, somebody else’s fat ass had set up camp in one of ours.
So what did I do? Well, I worked hard to reserve those highly-sought after seats for my Buttercup, and this Farmboy wanted what was rightfully his. So I went down the row, trying to figure out who didn’t legally belong, and who had just scooched over one seat out of courtesy to the mother- ----- squatter. It wasn’t until about Seat 7 or 6 that I found the culprit and kicked him out of our row. And then, after that, I had to “excuse me, pardon me” back over approximately 20 people who I had just forced to move one seat over…
Meanwhile…in the back row of the front section–on the far left side–the Boss Lady had set up camp in the handicap seats and was vigilantly watching for me to come in, so she could tell me that it wasn’t worth trying to get to our single seat and that it would be much simpler to find some open seats closer to the front.
Patiently watching for me in the dark, she heard a commotion behind her. Turning around the other way to see what the hub-bub was about, she quickly had her worst fears confirmed: there I was, “excuse me, pardon me, you need to move over to the seat that’s on your ticket”ing to the whole ----- row, single-handedly disrupting everyone’s movie-going experience.
Wondering where the hell she was, I started scanning the place as I viciously guarded my hard-fought prize–that primo, grade-A empty seat with my wife’s name on it–before I eventually locked eyes with her…sitting on the left side, of all places!
We had a bit of a stand-off, impertinently waving at the other to get their ass over to our respective locations: “Come over here!” “No, you come over here!” and what-not, until finally she very reluctantly caved. Of course, getting to her seat at this point was no easy task in the least, and she ended up having to climb over the bars in front the first row, “excuse me, pardon me” a couple seats over in Row 2 so she could climb over the lone empty seat there, and then “excuse me, pardon me” over a few more very perturbed patrons to finally get to me.
Needless to say, that was perhaps the least romantic date we’ve ever been on. Now in all fairness, from my perspective, I was fighting for the honor and comfort of my fair maiden. But in reality…
Well, if chivalry wasn’t dead already at that point in time, I had just murdered it in cold blood and then skull- ----- its rotting corpse, in front of roughly 125 onlookers…
The point of the story is: don’t be like me–be adaptable! In the end we decided the best way to deal with that utter fustercluck was to laugh at our incredibly embarrassing shenanigans–so embarassing that I had totally forgot that there had been a power surge that night and the theater had totally blacked out about 10 minutes from the end of the movie.3I found this out when searching old emails for the exact seats we had that night. Apparently, due to the black out, the theater was offering us free tickets to the next month’s showing of SpaceBalls. But you wouldn’t believe how many times I have had that used as Exhibit A against me since then, as irrefutable evidence of my inflexibility, single-mindedness, and inability to compromise.
These days, the Boss Lady only has to utter a mere 2 words to win any argument of that nature: “Pulp Fiction.“
To which, my only real reply is a solemn, demoralized whisper, also 2 words in length: “#NeverForget.”
…
Oh! And speaking of “adaptable,” the whole reason why I brought any of this up was so I could have an excuse to share with you the “Home Movie” version of The Princess Bride that I recently came across. If you ever wondered how your favorite celebrity spent their time during the Great Quarantine of 2020, may I present to you: Exhibit A.
I found this out when searching old emails for the exact seats we had that night. Apparently, due to the black out, the theater was offering us free tickets to the next month’s showing of SpaceBalls.
The latest word on the street