Category: My Own Damn Freud (Page 1 of 6)

Who needs to pay a psycho therapist when you can do it yourself! Paying for a shrink? To quote Gellieman: Pfffffft!

Watch How Colorful Plumage Attracts The Female Of The Species…

5 February 2023 / BJ / 3 Comments

7 Min Read

Yeah, sure, David Attenborough nature documentaries can be fascinating and informative.

But as a source of relationship advice? Not so much…

“Oh, you got a full-ride scholarship? Wow, you’re not only handsome and funny, but smart too–that’s a lady-killer combination you got going on there. Tee-hee!”

As my new-found hair stylist busied herself dying my hair half electric-blue and half neon-pink, we had started chatting to pass the time as one does. And it wasn’t long before she landed such a devastating blow to my ego, catching me completely off guard.

Wait, let me clarify: I don’t mean ‘blow’ as in the ‘it hurt so bad and now I have zero self-esteem and want to shuffle off this mortal coil’ type of blow. No, I mean ‘blow’ as in the ‘one hit of that white powdery goodness and now I’m high as a kite’ kind.

Cocaine. Blow is slang for cocaine, if I have to spell it out for you. It’s a frickin’ controlled substance joke.

Anyways…What I mean to say is, even though she was a much older woman at 31 years of age–it’s hilarious what a college freshman considers ‘old’, lol–as I sat there basking in the afterglow of such an ego-stroking comment, I couldn’t help to wonder if I had accidentally engaged in some type of secret college town mating ritual. Was it possible that she, upon seeing my beautiful plumage, couldn’t help but to call out with a series of irresistible vocal chirps and squeaks in an attempt to lure such a lucrative life-mate into her little love nest?

The thought bemused me, particularly because not only was I a poor college student, but a cheap one at that–and the whole reason I was sitting in her chair was because her hair-transmogrifying prices were the cheapest in all of Manhattan.¹Manhattan, Kansas–home of Kansas State University So if she was looking for a bread-winner to provide financial security for our future children together, then the joke was on her.

When our time together finally came to a close, and I had to pay my bill, she had me feeling so good about life that I did something very much out of character: I left an embarrassingly large tip–somewhere around 50%! Yup, that’s right: thanks to her little compliment, I ended up blowing all the money I was supposedly saving on her tip.

And it wasn’t until days or weeks later that it occurred to me that was the whole point: she didn’t see me as a potential suitor and/or genetic donor–no! She saw me as a paying customer who–on account of his requested hair colorings–apparently was crying out for validation and/or attention, and he might just pay a little extra were she to lavish either or both of those upon him.

Alas, she was right. But again, if there’s a life lesson that I wish I would have learned long before then, it’s that a little flattery never hurts no one. Heck, if you’re good enough at making people feel good about themselves, they might even pay you handsomely.

Hmm…

The more I describe the situation…well, the more it starts to sound more akin to a trip to the local brothel. You know…a whorehouse, or whatever y’all Boomers used to call it back in your day. Hooker hotel, maybe? Does that ring a bell? Or is that too Cival War Era-y for you? Not that old, eh…

Ah! I got it! ‘Prostitute’–there’s a term I think that everyone will understand. In retrospect, it was kinda like going to a Prostitute Place–dangit! That doesn’t sound right either, does it?–anyways, you get the analogy here, ya? You go somewhere and you pay some rando to make you feel real good. Like, what am I actually paying for here, anyways?

On the other hand…wouldn’t that line of thinking call into question the moral fidelity of any one who frequents a masseuse?

Wait…NO. I’m not taking all y’all’s suffering souls down this philosophical rabbit hole. I came here to talk about how I had really cool hair when I was in college, and somehow here we are talking about crack cocaine and escort services. Needless to say, “I digress…”

So…um, yeah. Fun fact: a mildly interesting side effect of my choice of hair colors was that they looked suspiciously close to the colors of our sworn enemy and intrastate rivals, Kansas University (blue and red), rather than that of the hometown team, Kansas State (my favorite color, purple). Ultimately, I tried to navigate that situation with some snappy-yet-incredibly-stupid comeback like “red and blue make purple, you ass–I’m surprised a cross-eyed inbred idiot like yourself didn’t see that already!”

Yes. Witty. I know.

I really had to bust this out when KU rolled into town to play us in football. It got pretty old pretty quick, being mistaken by my own comrades in the student section for a heinous traitor. Can you believe it? They thought that I identified with the goofiest-ass of all the birds in the imaginary animal kingdom: the JayHawk. Oh, the indignity…

“Man, I appreciate where your heart is, taking a seasonal approach to your choice of hair color, but…”

A few months later, it was time to move on with my life and say goodbye to my now-fading red and blue ‘do. And one of the first people to see my new look was my good friend, Gfeller, who, like any true friend should do, was excellent at shooting straight with me. So…kinda the complete opposite of ol’ Compliments-For-Cash Candi, or whatever my hairstylist’s name was. Yup, he was definitely never one to feed my ego.

And as his voice trailed off, I knew exactly where he was going with his silence: I had made a gross error in judgment.

“…but maybe celebrating Thanksgiving by going half-brown, half-orange wasn’t the best idea?” I finished his sentence.

“Yeah, let’s just say you’re not going to be picking up any chicks anytime before Christmas.”

“Is it really that bad?”

Gfeller paused a moment before speaking some hard truth into my life.

“Dude, you look like a ----- turkey…”

“Welp, at least it’s better than last year’s orange-and-brown fiasco…”

Gfeller. Again. This time around he was seeing me for the first time since the beginning of our sophomore year. After a relatively vanilla (i.e. naturally blonde) spring and summer, my first order of business upon returning to campus was to revert to my old ways and chemically assaulting my follicles.

“Yeah, I’ve never really tried going with complimentary colors before, so…y’know…ta-da?” It seemed like any time I was in Gfeller’s presence, I would eventually end up questioning my life choices.

“Mmm-hmmm. I see. You know, if you really wanted to go that route, you probably would have been better off waiting until Christmas.”

“Pfft! Red and green is too bougie for me! Why would I want to be just another lemming running off a cliff with the rest of the crowd?”

Gfeller lost himself for a moment amidst yet another bout of wise and sage-like reflection.

“Nonetheless, orange and blue is a pretty, erm, ‘bold’ move, even for a bold guy like you. I can’t help wonder if there’s more to your color selection…”

“What exactly are you getting at, my dude?” I felt slightly attacked.

“This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with a certain female in our friend-group that you’ve been writing letters to all summer, would it?”

“Hey man, the fact that orange and blue happen to be her alma mater’s school colors is a complete and utter coincidence! Not that I would know what the colors of the Olathe East–I mean, ‘whatever high school she happened to attend’–would be. C’mon, what kind of guy do you think I am?”

“If you say so…” G-man clearly wasn’t convinced by my protestations.

It wasn’t but a day or two later when Gfeller and I ran into this particular female–whom shall remain un-nicknamed–and I swear the first words out of her mouth were: “Hey, orange and blue! Just like my high school! Go Ha–“

“Go Hawks!” I replied just a few microseconds before I should have.

Gfeller gave me a long sideways glance laced with a smirk.

“My, aren’t you rather knowledgeable when it comes Kansas high school mascots?” he said in a not very brothers-before-those-who-might-become-mothers²In college I ran with the Christian crowd. This was our adaptation of the incredibly misogynistic phrase “bros-before-hoes”. In retrospect, we weren’t doing any better of a job on the not-being-a-sexist-shitheads front than the heathens. tone.

“Or…um…whatever random animal your mascot might be…’Hawks’ you say? I guess I’m just good at guessing…so yeah, ‘Go Hawks!’…or whatever…does it feel hot in here to you two? He he….um…so, yeah…”

“Uh…you sure you want an Ichthus on your head? Umm, whatever you want, dude. It’s your hair, your dye…your funeral…”

It wasn’t but a month or so before it became clear that orange/blue wasn’t moving me any closer to marriage with…um…nobody in particular–I was just getting bored with that ugly color combination, okay? So, just like in the world of tattoos, the best way to fix a semi-permanant mistake is to cover it up with an even bigger, more permanent, mistake.

And for this task, I had eschewed the insincere services of ‘Candi’ and instead enlisted my #1 frenemy, ol’ Spanky Spankowich–who, curiously enough, was later revealed to have been interested in the same nobody-in-particular at the same time as me. I didn’t know about his pursuits, but he sure knew about mine because we took a road trip to KC at one point, and guess what happens if you get stuck alone with me for more than 3 hours? I don’t stop talking until you know every last detail about what is currently consuming my thoughts at that particular point in time.

Now that I think about…perhaps the fact that we were unspoken romantic rivals explains why he was more than happy to let me self-sabotage myself into oblivion…

Oh, Spank, you rascal! I entrusted you with my hair, and you return the favor by obliging my request for a green Jesus-fish running from front-to-back of my scalp…

…filled in with purple in the middle…

…with red on the outside on the left…

…and with blue on the outside on the right…

…and so thoughtful!–You even remembered the eyebrows…

…blue on the left, red on the right!

Jesus-fishin’ cries for help,³If you didn’t follow that stretch of humor logic, it was an attempt to be a play on “Jesus effin’ Christ”, with a dash of attention-whore self-judgment thrown in for a nice little circular reference. dude, true friends don’t let friends self-destruct like that! What were you thinking, letting me lean into my own poor af fashion judgment like that? Spank, you dirty bastard, you!

Yeesh.

One look at me, and you would have to ask yourself: “Is this guy trying to attract college girls or pea hens, amiright? You know…cuz he looks like a mother- ----- peacock…”

The point of the story is that if you want to randomly #HumbleBrag to whoever will listen about all the edgy sh*t you did with your hair when you were but a youth, may I suggest weaving them together with a common theme like, say, ‘birds’? Never mind the emergent theme of how your hairstyle choices played pretty directly into your repeated failed mating rituals. Don’t pay that no mind at all, My Little Pretty…

Oh! But speaking of ‘weaves’–we haven’t even got to the dreadlocks yet. That’s a whole ‘nother tale or two of poor-yet-humorous life decisions that’ll have to wait until next time…

Content created on: 3 February 2023 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	Manhattan, Kansas–home of Kansas State University
↵2	In college I ran with the Christian crowd. This was our adaptation of the incredibly misogynistic phrase “bros-before-hoes”. In retrospect, we weren’t doing any better of a job on the not-being-a-sexist-shitheads front than the heathens.
↵3	If you didn’t follow that stretch of humor logic, it was an attempt to be a play on “Jesus effin’ Christ”, with a dash of attention-whore self-judgment thrown in for a nice little circular reference.

Boy, Would I Kill For A Little Extra Social Skill…

28 August 2022 / BJ / 0 Comments

6 Min Read

We all have regrets, both large and small.

But the real trick is figuring out how to get away from them all…

“Hello Ashonta,¹Not my wife/the Boss Lady’s real name….merely an anagram.

I was overjoyed to see Myra’s²Not my younger daughter/The Younger’s real name…but it will soon become apparent that is the point of the story. application come on for Folk school. How is her big sister doing? It’s seems like such a long time ago now that she was here…”

The Boss Lady intently watched me as I read over the email she had received from Ms. Heidi, the middle-aged hippie lady that ran the Fairy Farm where our now 9-year-old daughter, The Elder, had attended kindergarten.

“Um…maybe it was just a typo? I bet she was so excited that we might be sending our youngest child to preschool there–“

“JUST KEEP READING,” the Boss Lady firmly commanded me.

At this point, it was mid-June, and one could reasonably make the argument that we had dropped the ball in applying to potential preschools for the upcoming year. For the sake of convenience, our first choice had been the school The Elder was attending, but our lazy asses had been rightfully immediately been put on a waiting list there.

So, our backup plan, of course, was to send The Younger to join Ms. Heidi on the Fairy Farm, a delightful childhood experience in its own right.

But as I continued scanning Ms. Heidi’s reply to our application, I noticed things were amiss–such as the fact that we were applying to the preschool, not the Folk School, which was altogether a different part of the Farm.

Oh, and there was the issue of our child’s name. It was one of those “close, but no banana” type situations.

“Sh*t, she misspelled it with an ‘M’ three times in her short email. Is ‘Myra’ even a real name?!? “

“I know, right?”

“Ja…well, this is awkward. So…you’re going to correct her, right? She sent the email to you, not me.”

The Boss Lady and I sat there in awkward silence for a minute or two before I piped up:

“Welp, I guess we have no choice but to legally change her name to ‘Myra’, right?”

The Boss Lady concurred.

“The poor kid is going to be so confused come this fall…”

“Hello, this is Jake calling on behalf of the N.C. Troopers Association. Could I speak to Robert?”

Sh*t. The State Troopers calling me, again? I was just a newly-married graduate student at the time, and so somehow had even less money when I was a single graduate student–back when I had made the initial regrettable mistake of feeding The Beast–er, I mean, “donating to their non-profit association.”

The NCTA was, like most charitable organizations, pretty much a homeless person when it came to soliciting donations: no matter how many fat twenty dollar bills you threw at them, they would always come back asking for even more. (Not to mention that they blab to all their homeless associates about how loose you are with your purse strings!)

Sure, donating money to help the families of Troopers fallen in the line of duty is a worthy cause, but was it the worthiest? By that point, there were legion other causes–like credit card and student loan debt–that were easily worthier. Plus, I had gotten fed up with them incessantly calling me.

“This ends NOW.” I thought to myself.

“Hi Jake, I’m sorry Robert won’t be able to come to the phone. You see–*sniff!*–he tragically passed away a few months ago.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry to hear tha–“

Thinking on my feet, I realized that I would have to take swift action before Jake could force me into creating an alter-ego–and then subsequently guilting him into making endless donations.

“OK, see you!“

*Click*….

“Are you effing kidding me?!? You want to move to Finland, but Canada is ‘too cold’?!? You’re out of your gosh dang mind, woman!”

About halfway through this summer, The Boss Lady and I were revisiting an idea we lightly toss around every so often: expatriating to another country and actually getting our daughters a decent education–and hence why cold-ass Finland somehow weasled its way to the top of our hypothetical list.

Attempting to get my life partner to consider a more feasible option, I decided to play the Anne-With-An-E card:

“What about Prince Edward Island? Remember how you forced me to watch the entire 6-hour Anne of Green Gables miniseries before you would agree to marry me? And you’re always talking about taking a vacation to see Anne’s stomping grounds.”

“Ooh, I could do Prince Edward Island…”

“Good, then…”

A few days later, I found myself checking my Zillow app for the 4th time that day–which had become an ingrained ritual for me this summer, as we’d been in the hunt for some acreage in the nearby countryside.

But instead of staying focused on Central North Carolina as per usual, I decided to zoom my search map out, and see what was happening in the real estate world in, say, Northeastern Canada.

I quickly decided that Prince Edward Island wasn’t quite what I wanted, being in the middle of an inland sound and all, so scooted down to check out some of the bright red dots on the southern coast of Nova Scotia.

I only needed to look at two listings before stumbling upon this little coincidence:

“1588 Myra Rd.?!? I gotta share this listing with the Boss Lady!”

You know what the funny thing is about sharing a real estate listing through Zillow? They automatically think you’re super-interested in actually buying that property. You know, never considering the possibility that you might have just found the street address mirthful in a very, very narrow context that only your wife could appreciate.

Wouldn’t you know it though, about a week later this shows up in my email inbox:

“Welp, Honey, it looks like we better book our plane tickets to go see this place…”

“Ooh, you look just like Elsa from Frozen! Is that what you’re wearing to go Trick-or-Treating tonight, Little Girl?”

Last Halloween, I had taken the Younger with me to our usual grocery store to grab some last-minute candy supplies, and she had insisted on wearing her costume, an Elsa princess dress. As we were ringing up our goods in the self-checkout, a guy who was clearly the manager started chatting up my wee one.

The Younger, being 3-1/2 and still a bit shy, just nodded enthusiastically without saying a word.

“Let me guess…is it…wait, one second, I’ll be right back!”

A moment later he returned holding a Barbie-like Elsa doll still in its package.

“Is this who you’re going to be?”

More enthusiastic nodding.

“Awesome! Do you have a doll like this?”

At this question, The Younger seemed more uncertain. And me, being a complete social idiot, almost grasped what was happening in this situation, but panicked nonetheless, deferring to my daughter to handle it.

“Do you have that doll? I think you might, but I’m not sure.”

With a thick layer of uncertainty, she whispered to me, “yes.”

“Thanks, but she says she already has that doll,” I told the manager.

“Uh. Okay. You sure, though?”

Looking again to the Younger, I threw the grenade of social responsibility back in her lap: “Wait, do you have it? Maybe you don’t have it…you have it, right?”

A very tenuous nod was all we got from her.

“Yeah, she has it already. Thanks, though.”

He seemed disappointed as he wished her good luck with her candy-schlepping and walked away.

As I continued to check out, I overhead an older lady, who had been nearby and watched things unfold, quietly ask the manager, “You were going to give that doll to her, weren’t you?”

“Yup…” he said as he shrugged his shoulders in resignation to the fact that his attempt to delight a child had been rebuffed.

From the moment we left the store, I instantly became obsessed with the mistakes that were made…ones that were clearly my mistakes. I had the chance to make my little girl and a middle-aged man both very happy by accepting his very generous gift of a $20 doll, yet I blew it. Ugh, I wasn’t looking forward to the next time I might bump into that guy.

Two weeks of mulling it over later, I had to go on our bi-weekly grocery run. My daughters, along for the ride seemed confused when we passed our turn to the store.

“Uh, Daddy, where are we going?”

“Sorry, girls, but we can never show our faces in that store again…”

“Congratulations! We would like to offer Lyra³Not our daughter’s real name, but this time ’tis I misspelling it for the sake of her privacy. a spot in our half day program at our Children’s House!”

I tell you what, the email from the admissions office at the Elder’s school was like music to our eyes! Sure, it would cost us $100 a month more than sending Lyra/Myra to the Fairy Farm, but it would totally be worth it just to get us out of the pickle with Ms. Heidi.

“So, you finally replied to Ms. Heidi that we wouldn’t be sending our baby to her school, ja?” I had to confirm the obvious with the Boss Lady.

“Ja.”

“And did you address the fact that her name isn’t actually ‘Myra’, ja?”

“Ja…kinda…”

More awkward silence.

“You told her ‘Myra’ died, didn’t you…”⁴A few days after I cracked this joke, I finally realized why it seems a bit familiar. There was an episode of Seinfeld that culminated in Elaine actually holding a funeral for ‘Suzie’, her alter ego that was accidentally created when a new co-worker called her by the wrong name, and she never had the courage to just correct her.

Content created on: 26 August 2022 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	Not my wife/the Boss Lady’s real name….merely an anagram.
↵2	Not my younger daughter/The Younger’s real name…but it will soon become apparent that is the point of the story.
↵3	Not our daughter’s real name, but this time ’tis I misspelling it for the sake of her privacy.
↵4	A few days after I cracked this joke, I finally realized why it seems a bit familiar. There was an episode of Seinfeld that culminated in Elaine actually holding a funeral for ‘Suzie’, her alter ego that was accidentally created when a new co-worker called her by the wrong name, and she never had the courage to just correct her.

Whoever Said Nicknames Were Supposed To Make You Feel Special?

21 August 2022 / BJ / 0 Comments

4 Min Read

What?!? A special name just for me???

Oh, wait…that kind of ‘special’…

“BEE-YAY! TELEFONO!”

In the beginning, those words were music to my ears. You see, in high school I lived on a farm a few miles outside of our local raging metropolis, Rolla–no, not the one in Missouri, but rather it’s lesser-known red-headed stepbrother in Kansas. And for quite some time I didn’t have my own transportation, so just walking or driving to a friend’s house wasn’t an option at my disposal.

So you could imagine that nothing could break my serial sense of boredom quite like those blessed words, “Bee-Yhey! Telefono!” That, my friend, was the sound of my bestie, Phillip K. Ballz (aka PKB) blowing up our home phone,¹This was circa 1996 after all, before I could ever dream of having my very own cellphone. perhaps offering to come pick me up in his mom’s forest-green Ford Explorer so we could go back and kick it at his place in town.

“But, why the, uh, ‘unique phrasing’?” you are indubitably asking the screen of your mobile device.

Well, I’m glad you asked! My dearest stepmother, “Daisy”, was Mexican, and despite living in the U.S. for at least 10 years and having mastered the English language, she never really got around to figuring out how to master the pronunciation of my commonly accepted moniker, “B.J.” As they say here in the South, “bless her soul.”

Anyways, every time ol’ PKB or anyone else called for me and she answered, the silence of our double-wide trailer would soon be broken by broken-sounding English reverberating off every wood-paneled wall in the place:

“BEE-YAY! TELEFONO!”

Somebody calling just for little ol’ me?!? I feel so special…

“BEE-HEY, TELEFONO!”

Well, as it turns out, that phrase, when heard muffled on the other end of the phone line, can be music to other people’s ears as well.

It didn’t take long before I found out that my dearest dipshit, PKB, found this to be comedic gold and soon was using it publicly in our high school, whether referencing me directly or indirectly. And high schoolers being the immature bunch of dumb-asses that high schoolers tend to be, it wasn’t long for this very much unwanted moniker spread like wildfire through the hallowed halls of Rolla High School.

Sometimes, I got the short version lobbed in my direction–“Bee-Yay!”, “Bee-Hay!”, “Bee-Yhey!”–no matter what ‘flavor’ of my newfound nick-nickname my fellow students preferred, they were always sure to include the very important “!” Well, technically, if this were a comic book, their speech bubbles would need to include the bonus upside Spanish exclamation mark–aka el signo de apertura de exclamación:²https://www.spanishdict.com/guide/what-is-the-upside-down-exclamation-point *ahem* “¡Bee-Yhey!“

Other times, when my cohort of jackasses were feeling particularly ornery, I might be lucky enough for them to include my nick-last name: “¡Bee-Yhey! ¡Telefono!“

Usually, referring to someone and including their last name would be a sign of respect. This was not one of those times.

In fact, The Legend of ¡Bee-Hey! got so out of hand that in our Sophomore English class, when tasked write and illustrate a children’s book, the Real ¡Bee-Hey! chose to write about a substance-abusing (but very sanguine ³I’m using definition #3 here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sanguine.) extraterrestrial. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the classroom, my brother-from-another–my classmate with whom I not only shared a first name, but also a birthday–ol’ Roberto chose to immortalize ¡Bee-Hey! for generations to come.

Did he write of tales of a dashing and debonair young man, the kind that men want to be and women want to be with? Were we regaled with all the adventures and conquests of a man in a foreign land who, like Cher or Beyonce, had a last name but never needed it? Are millennials worldwide indoctrinated from childhood with strange-yet-true stories that someone only as special as my alter ego could generate?

Nope, not so much. But at least Roberto managed to nail that “special” part on the head. A little too hard actually: this version of ¡Bee-Hey! appeared to suffer from a brain injury or some other developmental issue. I.e. he was “special” in all the ways one wouldn’t want to be.

Por ejemplo, did this ¡Bee-Hey! have a modestly successfully career as a published physicist/neuroscientist? No, but his employment was almost as illustrious, with him tackling the challenging task no one else at the local restaurant would even dare think of attempting: sorting out the clean forks and knives after they were ran through the industrial dishwasher.

But fortunately, ¡Bee-Hey! was blissfully obliviously to his station in life, and never once did that smiling idiot caricature of me ever cynically wonder” ¿Cómo se dice en English ‘chinga mi vida’?”⁴Mother, if you’re reading this, please don’t bother running that through Google translate. This, in stark, stark contrast to the real-life ¡Bee-Hey!…

The irony of all this is that occasionally I find myself envious of ¡Bee-Hey!’s unburdened and uncomplicated life. It’s taken awhile, but I have slowly come to embrace my inner idiot–er, I mean ‘simpleton’–and I guess you could say the point of the story is: take ownership of whatever it is that makes you “special.”–even if some of things aren’t exactly the most flattering.

Oh, and there’s definitely an upside to this naive optimism: I get to enjoy a little chuckle to myself in those very special moments when I have the pleasure of making a new acquaintance with a native Spanish speaker.

You know…that moment when I get to explain to them that “my name is Robert, but I go by ‘B.J.’,” and without fail, they repeat back to me “¿Bee-Yhey?”

*snort*

And always, also without fail, I can’t help but mentally respond with “That would be Dr. ¡Bee-Hey! ¡Telefono!, PhD to you, buen señor or señorita…”

Content created on: 19 August 2022 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	This was circa 1996 after all, before I could ever dream of having my very own cellphone.
↵2	https://www.spanishdict.com/guide/what-is-the-upside-down-exclamation-point
↵3	I’m using definition #3 here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/sanguine.
↵4	Mother, if you’re reading this, please don’t bother running that through Google translate.

How To Make This The Last First Date Of Your Lifetime

14 August 2022 / BJ / 1 Comment

7 Min Read

You know what I really, REALLY hate?

The inevitable no-good, horrible experience of The First Date…

“So it was you all along!”

When I last left y’all, I had fell ass-backwards into what was maybe a date with my cute’n’kind af ,neighbor/church friend, “The Dimpler”. Pretty sweet, right? Well, as they say, “the night is young”, and when they say it they usual mean “don’t worry, you still have plenty of time to screw this up.” Let’s just see how this all pans out. But first…

Now, one who is already up to speed–aka, have already this post and this post–might point out that writing drug-themed-yet-romantic poetry and sending it your crush via FaceBook messages, attributing it to a mystery author that you “personally know”, subsequently spamming her with a random trivia questions (also via a FaceBook message), then “awarding” her a dinner with this made-up mystery author when she gets the question right–you might point out that this may more fall under the purview of “deception and deceit.”

You know what though? I didn’t really care, because practically speaking I was going to get an evening with her all to myself, and I wasn’t about to ask too many questions such as “who tricked who?” or “am I straight up lying to this chica?” or “wait, what if she is expecting some illicit drug use as part of this dinner date?” to kill my vibe. And also, isn’t there is a universal rule, “if the Universe drops a beautiful potential life partner in your lap, just shut up and roll with it” or something like that?

Anyways, after work on that fateful Tuesday evening in August 2007–the one in whence I accidentally discovered Nerd Plutonium–I donned my finest blue jeans and t-shirt and hopped in my sweet ’95 Camry…and drove just around the corner to The Dimpler’s apartment. I then subsequently strolled up to her door and with a surprising sense of calm, knocked on her door…

Speaking of “surprising,” I was somewhat surprised that she was somewhat surprised that I was indeed the Mystery Author. But then again, just the day before I had cleverly added to her uncertainty and confusion by stealthily delivering to her apartment a real book about poetry and physics.

Oh, right, I had totally forgotten about that. You see, I had gone over to her apartment at I time when I was pretty sure her and her roommate weren’t home, and so thought it best to just slip the book into the mail slot in their door.

When the book got slightly jammed in the slot, I knelt down to get it unjammed and to then make sure it made it safely inside. Well, wouldn’t you know it, once the book suddenly popped past whatever it was catching on, I was slightly shocked to see two pairs of very wide eyes staring back at me from across the room.

THEY WERE BOTH HOME AFTER ALL!

Sh*t. And now I’m a certified Peeping Tom. Well, this has backfired spectacularly.

“Just give us a minute!” I could hear one of them shout through the now-shut mail slot flap.

Moments later the door opened and they both greeted me with smirks on their faces.

“What’s up–“

“I DIDN’T SEE ANYTHING I SWEAR!”

“Protest too much, my lady?” quipped her roomie, henceforth to be known as A Hot Piece of Ash (or using her more convenient anagram-acronym hybrid, “the Hapa”).

“I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE HOME!”

The Hapa turned to The Dimpler, “Oh, yeah, he’s definitely protesting too much. What do you think? Should we report this perv to the church elders?”

“Oh, definitely. I’m pretty sure he caught a glimpse of my **censored** without my consent.”

My jaw about dropped to hear those words coming out of her mouth.¹Okay, time for a disclaimer. Those words didn’t actually come out of her mouth. She said something more PG like “You might have seen Muffin naked.” Note that she did not use the word “my”.

“You mean our **censored**?” The Hapa corrected her.

At this point I was scrambling to extricate my jaw, which was now buried in 3 feet of their concrete porch.

“Yes, our Muffin likes to lounge about in nothing but fur…”

Now I was just confused.

“Ok, now you’re just messing with my head. Who–or what–is ‘your Muffin’? Like, we know each other from church…right? Or have I slipped into some perverse parallel universe? (Not that I’m complaining, *ahem*)”

“Muffin’s our cat, you big doof. And next time, just knock first. At least give Muffin a chance to put a bra on…”

“Ok, confession time: up until I saw you show up at my door step alone, I was about 50% sure that the Mystery Author was real and wasn’t just your alter-ego.”

We were about halfway through our dinner, and by some miracle things were going pretty smoothly. Funny story: it turned out that the Peeping Tom incident only endeared me to her. Oh, and also it probably helped that I considered the whole evening with her a freebie–the proverbial icing on the cake–a date that I had never expected to even happen. The end result being I was able to continue my “George-Costanza-philosophy-of-doing-the-opposite-of-my-instinct” and, instead of nervously and anxiously saying stupid sh*t trying to impress her, just relax and enjoy the ride.

Even though she was confiding to me that she had been confused by my “gonna-trick-you-into-a-date” strategy, I wisely decided that it was too early in the game to confess to her that I had genuinely thought she was insulting me when she told me High-ku was “good”. Too soon to release the inner cynic into the wild, know what I mean?

Anyways, yada-yada-yada, and, after a failed attempt to hang out with an Indian guy from my lab and a bunch of his friends that we randomly met on the street after dinner, and another failed attempt at finding dessert, we decided to just wind down our surprisingly pleasant-in-spite-of-me-wearing-jeans-in-August evening by wandering around our shared neighborhood and chatting.

“Welp, seeing as how it’s almost 2 in the morning, why don’t I escort you to your door and call it a night?” I suggested like a true, confident, gentleman would.

…

What I had thought was a natural pause in the conversation (finally!), I soon realized that she had something on her mind, but was having trouble finding the right words for.

“Oh…ok. So I see you have something to say?”

If she was about to give me the axe, her intentions were sure hid pretty well behind that huge genuine, single-dimpled smile on her face.

“Yeah…um…well, first I want to say that I have really, really enjoyed this evening. Thanks so much for dinner and great conversation.”

“Sure–it was my pleasure indeed! But clearly you weren’t trying to figure out how to that. Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Okay…so, as you know, I just recently broke up with a long-time boyfriend, and well, I just thought I would need to take a break from dating for awhile.”

“Cool…cool…”

“Also, I feel that the Universe²At the time, the exact term she used was “the Jesus”. is steering me towards being a missionary overseas, and well…you’re a physicist.”

“Oh. Okay, well th–“

“…but…this night went differently than I had expected, and now I’m not sure of anything.”

Well, that was a plot twist.

At this point I noted to myself that, historically speaking, now would be the time I would normally argue with her and perhaps convince her that those were hair-brained notions and she should most definitely become my girlfriend (or at least go on a second date with me).

Or, as Seinfeld would say to his arch-nemesis, “Hello, Instinct”:

Obviously, my a-hole Instinct hadn’t exactly served me well in the past–time for a new tack.

“Well, sorry I won’t be able to help you out with that. I mean, c’mon, I’m not exactly unbiased here, and I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t trust any ‘advice’ I could offer you.”

“Huh?!?” Clearly this was not the response she expected.

“Yeah, the best I can suggest is you find some older, wiser woman from church that you trust, and see what advice they might have for rebound-dating a domestic heathen scientist like myself. Oh, and take all the time you need…”

“Oh. Okie-dokie. That sounds like a pretty solid plan…thanks?”

“Sure thing, Kiddo. Now how about I walk you home? It’s not safe for a sweet young thang like yourself to be walking around by yourself at 4 in the morning.”

As we got to her door (where I could have sworn I saw The Hapa peeping out through their mail slot), she paused and subtly leaned in towards me–a move that was promptly met with a side hug from me.

“Yeah…so, I would love to give you a kiss goodnight, but I feel the Universe³Again, a more philosophically flexible euphemism for “the Jesus”. wants me to wait until my wedding day for that very special ‘first kiss’…”

“Well?!? How did those unorthodox methods work out for you!?! First, you welcome her back to town in your way-too-flattering bike tights, then you lean quite hard into illegal substances when looking for inspiration for poems you send her but won’t even claim as your own, after which you completely fabricate another persona to whom you give writing credits, followed up by a trivia contest that she didn’t even consent to participate in, meanwhile you decided engaging in a bit of light voyeurism would be a sure way to seduce her, and of course you had to follow up your “contest”⁴No, this is not a reference to “The Contest” episode of Seinfeld. by awarding her a trick prize that entrapped her with you for an evening. If that wasn’t bad enough, you go tell her ‘don’t even think about dating me unless you get a clear non-me sign from the Universe’, and–the icing on the cake–refuse to kiss her until she likes it enough she puts a ring on it.”

Let me just respond with: and yadda-yadda-yadda…now every Sunday morning I get to enjoy The Dimpler’s freshly-baked muffins, if you know what I mean…

…

…and by that I mean that The Dimpler is now the be-ringed Boss Lady with whom I have a standing weekend, um, “arrangement.”

…

…and in this “arrangement,” I get up with the kids on Saturday mornings and make breakfast so The Dimpler/Boss Lady gets to relax for a few sacred hours, and then she returns the favor Sunday mornings. Though, instead of muffins, I typically make pancakes or waffles.

It’s pretty much the sweetest arrangement known to mankind⁵Wait…what did you think I meant? You ----- pervert.…

The point of the story, Young Nerdlings, is that if you follow the exact opposite of your instincts, along with listening to the Universe for the occasional bit of divine inspiration, one day you, too, could find yourself in a mutually beneficial baked-breakfast-goods-on-the-weekend relationship with a fine lad or lass waaaaaaay out of your league.

Or who knows? Maybe it’s just my instinct that is faulty and you should go with what your gut tells you instead. What do I care? It’s your funeral…that this person will be planning if all goes well and you die before them at a ripe and mature old age.

P.S. The Dimpler, if you’re reading this (LOL): Happy 15th First Date-versary!

P.S.S. Kinda Fun Fact: I found out later that from the outset of our ‘date’ her one and only goal was to preemptively give me the axe. Had I known that I had one shot at changing her mind, I would have most definitely utterly and completely bungled everything. Sometimes that well-known PSA from the childhood of every 80s baby should instead say: “The Less You Know…”

Content created on 14 August 2022 (Sunday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	Okay, time for a disclaimer. Those words didn’t actually come out of her mouth. She said something more PG like “You might have seen Muffin naked.” Note that she did not use the word “my”.
↵2	At the time, the exact term she used was “the Jesus”.
↵3	Again, a more philosophically flexible euphemism for “the Jesus”.
↵4	No, this is not a reference to “The Contest” episode of Seinfeld.
↵5	Wait…what did you think I meant? You ----- pervert.

How To Land The Most Exotic Hottie In The Hood

7 August 2022 / BJ / 0 Comments

6 Min Read

The Good Lord hath blessed you with a real angel next door.

But alas, barring some miracle, she shall never be yours…

“James Earl Ray.

Adobe.

The Man of La Mancha.

Al Green.

Red Skeleton.

James Earl Ray. Adobe. The Man of La Mancha.

Al Green. Red Skeleton.

James Earl Ray. Adobe. The Man of La Mancha. Al Green. Red Skeleton…”

What do you do when you hear the begrizzled man loitering at the bus stop muttering these words under his breathe like some bizarre version of the Lord’s Prayer? You should pay no him mind, but…

But then again, once you hear those words, the mystery of it all is bound to haunt the darkest recesses of your mind until the day you die.

Well, as that begrizzled man, I’m here to say: you wouldn’t be alone in your insanity.

You see, I myself am doomed to be frequented by this very same specter for all eternity; this random list of trivia(l) facts fluttering through my mind at unexpected moments, causing an inexorable shudder, an indubitable pang of regret.

But what are These?

These? They are The Ones That Got Away…

Believe it or not, I wasn’t a jock in high school, but *ahem* that doesn’t mean I wasn’t a stud in my own right. Back in those glory days, I was a member of a juggernaut Quiz Bowl¹AKA Scholar’s Bowl, Knowledge Bowl, Trivia Bowl–basically competitive Jeopardy at the high school level. team, the one that the mere mention of struck fear in the hearts of opposing team of schools all across Kansas, both large schools and tiny schools alike: Rolla High School.

Look at this picture. Just look at this picture:

Figure 1: The 1996 Kansas State Quiz Bowl Champs. Am I the blonde on the left or on the right? You’ll never know…

I mean, wouldn’t you poo your pants if you walked into an academic showdown and you saw these intellectual beasts at the opposing table?!?

I would like to try to #HumbleBrag here, but I can’t: the fact is, we were good. Real good. And me? I wasn’t just some B-Team backup, clinging onto the coattails of more successful and competent members of my team. Even from my Freshman year, I was carrying my share of the load, and from my Sophomore year on, my name was a name to be reckoned with for those who dared face…Rolla High School *dun-dun-duhhhhhhn!*

Out of my four years of high school, we were State Champions three of those, I made the Santa Fe Trail All-League Team all four years, and my Junior year we pulled off a feat that no RHS Quiz Bowl team has been able to pull off before or since: we went 10-0 in all our tournaments. We were the 1972 Miami Dolphins.

But for all that personal and collective success, there were still failures. In fact, when you’re that good, those rare incorrect (or inexplicably forgotten) responses that end up costing you have a way of really sticking in your craw.

It’s like regret on steroids. I mean, James Earl Ray? C’mon, how do you ever forget the name of an asshole like that?

Yes. It’s true. Even studs can have their down days…

“Surely you didn’t write that beautiful and strangely romantic haiku about drugs yourself…did you? I mean, it’s just…really good.”

Oh, right. I forget that I previously left everyone on a cliffhanger last time, wondering if my newfound George-From-Seinfeld-Do-The-Opposite-Of-What-My-Instinct-Tells-Me strategy was actually going to profoundly impact my life in any way, if it was going to finally get me somewhere with the ladies, if you will.

In case you need a refresher, you can pop on over here for a sec to get caught up. And as always, I’ll wait…

…

Yeah, so to catch you up, I had started FaceBook flirting (kinda) with The Dimpler, the hottest and most exotic young lady at my church–and my new neighbor.

She had accidentally thrown down the gauntlet and challenged my poetry and prose skills unknowingly, and got surprised when a professional-grade haiku ended up in her inbox. So good, that she didn’t believe I had written it.

And when she shared how good she thought it was, I couldn’t believe that she was being sincere, and got pissed that this pretty girl was turning out to be just another mean girl. Like, geez, did she have to mock my attempt at the written verse.

Last I left you, though, I had remembered that my natural instinct hadn’t exactly served me well in the past, so instead of firing back and telling her to f**k off, I just ghosted her for a few days. You know, let us both digest the situation.

Well…around that same time, one of my roommates–also neighbors/church friends with The Dimpler–came back from a visit to her place with a sh*t-eating grin on his face.

Turns out, he had inadvertently learned that this seemingly off-limits beauty had recently broken up with her long-time boyfriend (side note: do you know how flipping hard it is to flirt/”not flirt” with your hot af neighbor when you have to assume they have a boyfriend? Didn’t think so). One might even say she “\finally “kicked his ass to the curb.”

An interesting development indeed…

Flying monkeys. Would I ever be able to redeem those ----- stupid flying monkeys? That was yet another question that perpetually haunted me.

The year was 1998, and it was my Senior year of high school. Recall that the previous year our Quiz Bowl team had went undefeated in all 10 of our tournaments. And now it was supposed to be my turn–Quiz Bowl Stud Extraordinaire–to lead our fabled team to another undefeated year.

But it was not exactly going well. It was early in the season and we had suffered two Second Places in a row–no one wants second place–and in the current tournament we had made it to the championship match and were looking to break that streak of bad beats.

Late in the tight match, all tied up even with our challengers, the moderator began their question: “In the book, The Wizard of Oz…”

*BUZZZZZ*

I realized that I had instinctively reacted to the trigger phrase “Wizard of Oz” and ol’ Quick Draw McGraw here had buzzed in prematurely.

Normally, I would know the answer and leave the audience in awe at my ability to conjure the correct response with such little information and with such great confidence.

But…fuuuuuugggg. It was the Don Quixote/Man of La Mancha fiasco all over again (for the record, that was another premature answer on my part that effectively cost RHS the chance to achieve another unthinkable: winning the State Championship 4 years in a row).

The best, exasperated, I-am-fully-aware-of-how-ridiculous-this-situation-is, “educated” guess I could proffer with a chuckle was…flying monkeys.

I mean, it had as good as a chance of being the right answer as any other character/item/scenario from that beloved American book/movie.

But of course it wasn’t. And instead of being awarded 10 points and securing the win going into the final question of the match, we were dinged 5 points because I buzzed in early and got it wrong.

We went on to lose that championship match moments later. By 5 points…

“In the book, The Wizard of Oz, what color were Dorothy’s slippers?”

Not knowing what else to do with The Dimpler, I broke the 3 days of FaceBook radio silence with–you guessed it–the full version of the question that screwed me over roughly 10 years earlier.

Honestly, I didn’t have a plan of any sort. I just wanted to get back to chatting with her online, because when she wasn’t ambiguously insulting/complimenting me, it felt good. Real good. It was a bit of a high, and I feared I might be getting willingly addicted.

A day later, her response came back:

“Silver.”

I later found out that she Googled it, but obviously I didn’t give a rat’s ass whether she cheated to win or not. And yes, in the movie, they’re ruby-red, but in the book they are indeed silver. And the only reason I know this…well I just regaled you with all that.

Was I surprised that she got it right? No.

Did I have a well-calculated move waiting in the wings when she did? Also no.

And then…and then the Universe shined kindly on my dumb face with another inspired moment.

It felt as if I was watching somebody else control my hands as they typed out my response: “That is correct! And for your correct answer, you have won an evening with…the Mystery Author of the High-ku!”

…

“Awesome. When?”

…

“Does tonight work? He happens to be in town from Virginia.”

I had been playing along with her doubt about my authorship, going so far as to claim not only was the High-ku from an anthology of poetry written by current and former drug addicts, but to actually write another addiction-themed piece of work called The Light. Yeah, I was having a bit too much fun with the power that came with keeping things a mystery.

…

“Sure. I’ll be available around 6.”

…

“Sounds great. I’ll bring him by around then…”

The point of the story is that what you ultimately do with some of your deepest regrets is up to you. You can sit around and forever kick yourself for your Flying Monkeys Moments and all the stupid silver medals they won you.

Or you can turn around and find the Silver-Slippered lining in your hilarious, face-palming mistake and use it to trick and/or fall ass-backwards into a date with the hottest girl in the ‘hood.

In the end it’s up to you…

“But wait! Does the whole trickery about the Mystery Author blow up miserably in your face? How long can you last before your luck runs out and/or you return to your natural instincts and blow it all? Can you stick the landing, or will you add The Dimpler to your long list of The Ones That Got Away???”

…you are indubitably asking.

Well, stick around a bit longer and you just might funk around and find out…

(*Ahem* That’s how I say “To be continued…“)

Content created on: 5 August 2022 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	AKA Scholar’s Bowl, Knowledge Bowl, Trivia Bowl–basically competitive Jeopardy at the high school level.

Look Here, You Stupid Students, I Was A Great Teacher!

24 July 2022 / BJ / 0 Comments

6 Min Read

If you’re aspiring to be an educator, why not take it for a spin first?

You never know what you just might learn…

“Yeesh! These physics students can be a real tough crowd…they seem to really enjoy busting the chops of us teaching assistants!”

Back in the day, before Yelp! and Google Ratings were a thing, reviews were handled the old-fashioned way: all accolades and raking-over-the-coals alike were in writing, on good ol’ paper.

In my case, it was August 2002, and as an aspiring high school physics teacher, my college side-gig was teaching labs in the physics department at Kansas State. I had taught the previous semester, and to kick off the TA¹Short for Teaching Assistant. training session for the new semester, our lab directory was handing out our performance reviews–the ones our former students had written.

And boy, was I excited for the feedback! A little constructive criticism and a few compliments would surely only help my future career in education.

Welp, a mere two reviews in, and things are already getting…um, “interesting”.²I am sad to report that while I kept the best-of-the-best comments as mementos, I couldn’t locate them when I went to look for them. I really wanted y’all to see with your own eyes that I was not exaggerating.

He never seemed prepared to teach lab, and quite honestly, appeared to have no idea what he was talking about.
Anonymous Student #1

Ok, that’s not what I want to hear, but they do make a fair point: I would rarely review the material before class, pretty much just improvising as I went. It may be criticism, but hey, at least it’s constructive, right? Let’s see what else we got in here:

Worst TA I have ever had. What else do you want me to say?
Anonymous student #2

Ouch. I mean, c’mon…the worst? Like, how could you possibly know that? Ok, I’ll just file that one away as “Not a fan of my teaching style. And probably a poor student at that.” Next!

He was super-helpful, and happily provided his undivided attention any time our table had any questions.
Your favorite student *wink wink*

Ok, FINALLY, someone who speaks the truth. I was helpful. I was an attentive teacher. Those other haters are just jealous. I’m sure the rest of these are just like—

The absolute worst TA I have ever had…
Anonymous Student #3

BORING! I’ve already heard this one, buddy. Maybe try out some original material next time?

Wait, what’s that? There’s more?

…this guy was a total clown. I sincerely pity any future student of this bumbling buffoon. I somehow actually know less about physics after being his student.
Anonymous A-Hole #3

Ok, I gotta give this clearly disgruntled, low-achieving student points for creativity. They may not have science down, but at least the got a grasp on the English language. But I’m not going to let a few squeaky wheels get me down…

He sucked pretty hard at his job. The end.
Anonymous Butt-plug #4

Hmmm…am I crazy, or I’m starting to see a trend here? Let me flip through the rest of these…I’m confident that whoever went through these must have stuck all the glowing reviews singing my praises in the back…

He seems like a great guy…
A truth-seeing student

Yes…do go on…

…but sorry, he’s not a very good teacher at all.
I take that back, you, you sitter-on-a-throne-of-lies!

Okay, let’s just skip to the back, where the really good ones are surely awaiting me…

Unbelievable. He couldn’t be bothered to help us out at all. He would literally trip over himself like a damned fool to help the more attractive students, completely ignoring us regular folk.
Sounds like somebody has some self-esteem issues

Now, see, I gotta take issue with a comment like this. I enjoyed helping everybody. You know how some people claim “they don’t see race”? Well, as a teacher at least, I don’t see beauty or lack thereof, I merely see hungry minds, yearning to learn..

He only talks to pretty girls.
Someone who clearly doesn’t identify as a pretty girl

Ok, that’s it! Who wrote this? WHO WROTE THIS?!? This is nothing but a lie! I’ll admit that some groups of students connected with me better than other anti-social ones. And yes, therefore I spent more time engaging with those who bothered to engage back. And no, there was ZERO correlation between the perceived beauty or attractiveness of these students–heck, there were plenty of dudes amongst them–and how much time I spent with them. Sure, there might be some relationship between a student’s pleasing appearance and their social confidence–and thus more likely to respond to my attempts to connect with my students on a human level. But were there…um, “teacher’s pets” that one might argue were objectively less-than-attractive? Yes! Plenty of them! Don’t I get credit for talking to the not-pretty girls? Doesn’t it count for anything that I spent plenty of time talking to dude-students?

Oh geez. Doth I protest too much?

Do I really come off as a guy who “only talks to pretty girls?”

This is so embarrassing…

“Whew! These students are just really dragging our asses, aren’t they? How bad were your reviews?”

I knew I wasn’t a bad teacher. I didn’t have a bias towards students who were more physically blessed than the other students. Heck–I better not!

So to prove that, while I may be a mediocre educator, I’m overall an alright guy and these students are just sadists, I turned to my fellow TA, the K-Man,³I think his name was Kevin, but I can’t remember for sure. who surely got roasted by his students as viciously as I had.

“Huh? Well, actually, no…all my students loved me.”

“You’re kidding me! Why don’t you read some of yours out loud?”

“My pleasure…”

Absolutely loved being his student! Best TA ever!
YOu’re not helping my cause, other TA’s Student

“Oh. I bet it feels good to hear that. But surely they’re not all like this?”

“Let’s see…”

The K-Man knows physics, and knows how to teach it to us students. Wish every teacher was awesome as him. I love you, K-Man!
A little too glowing of a review is you ask me

“Okay, I believe you. You can stop now…”

“Ah! Here’s another gem:”

K-Man is the best. Women want him and men want to be with him…
A Student in the arts of hyperbole

“I SAID THAT’S ENOUGH, DUDE.”

“Just one more…”⁴I shit you not, this was really written in this guy’s TA review.

If there was one thing that the K-Man taught me in his class, it would be that I want to bear his children…
Definitely not my student

“Oh, you and your students can go ----- yo’ selves, K-Man!”

The beginning of the end. That’s what I like to call that particular moment.

It was indeed the beginning of the end of my budding career as a teacher. It made me really step back and wonder to myself, “Is it possible…could it be…maybe–just maybe–I’m not cut out to be a teacher?”

Incredibly, it would take another whole year before I fully accepted this cold hard truth and changed my major from “physics teacher” to just “physics”–but that’s a story for another time.

Eventually, though, the trauma induced by my mean, mean college-level physics students caught up with me. A couple of years later, when I was trying to decide if I should pursue my PhD in physics, I was thiiiiis close to walking away and saying “nope, not today mother fuckers!” And all because I knew that for the first year of my studies, the way I was going to put food on my table was being personally indentured to the UNC Department of Physics and Astronomy…teaching physics labs.

But, Young Grasshoppers, I am here today to tell you that shouldn’t let being a sh*tty teacher deter you from pursuing your dreams. And–fun fact–you can actually get better if you put some serious elbow grease into it.

Not only did I face down my fear of snarky students by diving headlong into the entire grad-school experience, but I actually did a pretty decent job teaching my labs. And you know why? Because, I took those less-than-fun feedback forms from years earlier to heart…

…and stopped talking to the pretty girls.

…

J.K. Kidding. It turns out that 30 minutes of prep work before class goes a long ways. That’s the real trick to not sucking butt as a teacher.

Oh, and if you need proof of what a slightly-above-average job I did my second time around as physics lab TA, you’re in luck; I brought receipts.

Not to brag…but…

Since you probably didn’t read every single one, I’ll paraphrase them for you: the students enjoyed my enthusiasm for physics, but felt that maybe the lab was not the proper venue for me to workshop my stand-up routine.

So that’s the good news. The bad news? None of my students wanted to bear my children. ----- you, K-Man, for setting the bar so high…

The point of the story is if you’re the type of guy (or gal) who only talks to pretty girls, you probably should give some thought to your choice of career.

Perhaps, for example, you might want to reconsider the notion of being a high school teacher–a scientifically proven formula for horrible, horrible, you-just-might-end-up-on-a-national-registry disaster…

Content created on: 22/23 July 2022 (Fri/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	Short for Teaching Assistant.
↵2	I am sad to report that while I kept the best-of-the-best comments as mementos, I couldn’t locate them when I went to look for them. I really wanted y’all to see with your own eyes that I was not exaggerating.
↵3	I think his name was Kevin, but I can’t remember for sure.
↵4	I shit you not, this was really written in this guy’s TA review.

The Unexpected Value Of Rump-Shaking With An Average-Ass White Girl

17 July 2022 / BJ / 1 Comment

6 Min Read

You asked the Universe for a modest amount of booty.

Butt you got a whole lot more than you bargained for…

“Oh, man, I couldn’t believe my good luck! Ladies fighting…over me?!? And not only that, the hot af, out-of-my-league one was winning??? Was this really happening, or was I just really, really drunk?”

Yes, this is exactly where I left you last time, with yet another cliff-hanger mystery…

…and this is the point in the story where I tell you to go back and do last week’s homework (aka take 3 minutes to read 3:45–The Perfect Time To Full On Panic At The Disco) if you haven’t already.

As usual, I’ll wait…

…

As it turned out, the correct answer was “both”.

At the end of the night, as I perambulated with the rest of the gang I had originally came with¹If you were wondering how I ended up in a strange city dancing with strangers, the backstory is that I had joined my roommate, her boyfriend, my roomie’s female friend and her boyfriend, and my roomie’s female friend’s roomie for a Saturday night on the town in Greensboro, where one of them had recently moved. Since there were already two natural couples in the party, me and my roomie’s friend’s roomie was left to keep each other company for the night. Even though it shouldn’t have mattered, it seems that the fact that she was a lesbian contributed to her being as cold as ice towards me, despite my low expectations of having some platonic companionship for the night. Thus, I essentially found myself alone in the club. back to my roommate’s friend’s nearby apartment, I couldn’t help but feel like I was walking on clouds the whole way.

That really had happened! Both incidences had indeed actually had come to pass.

But, alas, when one is so drunk on wine and high on newly-found female affirmation, they are presented with a dilemma: do I drive the hour home under such influences? Or do I pass out in my clothes in my acquaintance’s abode, get 3 hours and 45 minutes²That’s a 3:45 Ass reference, folks. of sleep, and then drive directly to church at 7 am so I can fulfill my duties of setting up chairs for the worship services slightly hungover?

Pro-tip here, my friends: driving drunk is never the answer, and I had enough God-given sense to come to that conclusion as well.

As I drove to church the next morning, the hour ride gave me time to contemplate and ruminate over the previous evening’s events.

Was I filled with regret and remorse? Ah, hell no! Why would I want to take back such a euphoric life-changing experience? Nope, no regrets here, folks!

However, one thing gnawed at the back of my mind that I couldn’t ignore: why was I dancing with the average girl in the first place? Clearly there was a prime specimen next to her, shaking her tush in my general direction.

Yet…yet I distinctly remember thinking, “my best bet is to go for the average girl, a wager optimally balanced between having a modestly high chance of her accepting my advances, while the reward of being able to enjoy her modest level of beauty makes it worth the risk.”

In other words, going for the “personality friend” may have been close to a sure thing, but it wasn’t exactly a desirable outcome. On the other hand, the highest reward could be achieved by pursuing the attention of the “hot girl”, but my chances of success seemed too low to be worth the risk.

If you’re wondering why I would frame the problem in such terms, especially for someone who had had a few drinks, it should be noted that I had just finished a pair of PhD-level courses in quantum mechanics and thermodynamics about a month earlier, and so I couldn’t help but think of such choices in terms of “expectation values”.

Now, I won’t bore you with the granular details–you can read up on them here–but I will tell you the results of my off-the-cuff-and-inebriated dance floor calculations from that night. Using a superficial 1-to-10 attractiveness scale, I wanted to know where upon the scale I could expect to find the booty that would be grinding all up ons me, based on which of the three lasses I “chose” to pay attention to.

This value was found by multiplying the candidate’s perceived attractiveness by the estimated fractional chance³Note that this does not need to be normalized, i.e. the probabilities do not need to add up to 100% (or 1, actually), as my success with each of them was independent of the other, and there was no guarantee I would be successful with any of them. of success with that particular one. Ergo:

Hot girl (20% chance of success): 10 x 0.2 -> expected outcome: 2.

Friend with personality (90% chance of success): 3 x 0.9 -> expected outcome: 2.7.

Average girl (70% chance of success): 7 x 0.7 -> expected outcome: 4.9.

No choice (i.e. just wonder about the potential of the situation, but don’t take a ‘measurement’): (2 + 2.7 + 4.9)/3 -> expectation value: 3.2.

As you can see, making a move on the average girl was a well-calculated risk and a sound decision. But surprisingly, despite aiming not too high nor too low, I ended up with an outcome of 17!

Okay, so I shouldn’t have just added 7 + 10. Instead, it’s more appropriate to calculate the time-spent-with-each-girl-grinding-all-up-ons-me-weighted average, which, assuming 15 seconds and 135 seconds of booty-against-my-boys, respectively, comes out (7*15 + 10*135)/(15+135) = 1455/150 -> observed value: 9.7!

As you can tell, 9.7 is clearly much higher than 2, 2.7, 3.2 or even 4.9…so how were my calculations so far off???

It didn’t take long for me to realize where my error was hidden: in my estimated odds of success with each.

Not only did I not account for two very important factors–beer goggles and the lack of male competition–but I notably underestimated my chances of success with the hot girl.

Come to think of it, why did I assume that I didn’t have much of a chance with her? First off, I may be no Adonis, but I was the hottest guy in [that corner of] the room. In retrospect, it makes complete sense that she thought, as the hottest girl in [that corner of] the room, she would be entitled to the hottest guy, and hence the Hussy hostilities towards her average friend that I mentioned last time.

Secondly…well, there is no secondly. My physical appearance was pretty much all that she had to go on to make a judgment ass to whether or not I was bump-and-grind-worthy. So…if she clearly thought that I was so bump-and-grind-worthy that she would physically assault her supposed friend to get to me, that must mean…

Ok, so this definitively confirmed something I had suspected for quite some time. Do I have an inferiority complex? No, as I would have gone after the friend-with-personality. Do I have a superiority complex? That can’t be the case, otherwise I would have had made a bee-line towards the hot girl.

I went straight for the average one. Sh*t…I have a mediocrity complex (TM).

…

You have no idea how long I’ve waited to use that punchline, LOL. But I digress…

No, that’s not the worst of it, though. I could feel an even worse realization looming just over the horizon. True, it was a lack of sobriety that had led me to this eye-opening experience, but now, staring at the rising sun on my way to church and in the thrall of sobriety, a new level of enlightenment–some form of twisted nirvana, if you will–was coming over me.

What was really gnawing at me was: Why did I have such incredible unexpected luck last night? In theory, she should have taken one look at me and scoffed haughtily and ran off in indignation. I’ve felt that, much like the friend-with-presumed-personality, I’ve had to ride my own personality pretty much my whole life, attributing my lack of luck with the ladies to my average, non-Adonis physical appearance. And, alas, that is something that I can’t change too much.

But…wait just a tick. If my looks weren’t ruining romance for me–a new-found fact which was just unequivocally confirmed by my little dance-a-thon the night before–what else could possibly be sabotaging my love life (apart from dirty old bastards)…?

Oh. Oh, no.

No…no…no.

A twist in the plot unfolded just then as if my life had been written by M. Night Shyamalan himself: it wasn’t my physique that was the culprit here. It was something even more me: my big fat mouth and my “personality” had been screwing me over all along!

That was such a complete and utter shock to my sense of self that I almost drove off the road. It was pretty horrifying, actually. Here, what I thought were my best assets (no pun intended, seeing as how “ass” has been the theme lately), have turned out to be my own worst enemy all along–and I’m only finding out about this now at age 26!

On the flip side of this uncomfortable and worldview-shattering revelation though, was an incredibly shiny silver lining. It is true that one can only do so much with the looks ----- gave them–and so the good news is that this is not my problem!

Social skills, speech filters, being an intentional listen, working to be a kinder and more thoughtful soul…these things I could do something about. I had the power to actually change my love life luck, instead of just being a whiny shmoe who only pouts about what I crappy hand life has dealt him.

Indeed, what had been a night of mild hedonism for an innocent li’l church boy had somehow turned out to be perhaps the most life-changing moment of my life (yet whether or not that is the case, is a tale yet to be told here).

Or, in terms of my original title for this post (read like a newspaper headline):

Local Man’s Drunken Ass Gyrations Lead To Unexpected Self-Realizations
The headline from that night, if my life were captured in an Onion article

Content created on: 8/15 July 2022 (Fri/Fri)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	If you were wondering how I ended up in a strange city dancing with strangers, the backstory is that I had joined my roommate, her boyfriend, my roomie’s female friend and her boyfriend, and my roomie’s female friend’s roomie for a Saturday night on the town in Greensboro, where one of them had recently moved. Since there were already two natural couples in the party, me and my roomie’s friend’s roomie was left to keep each other company for the night. Even though it shouldn’t have mattered, it seems that the fact that she was a lesbian contributed to her being as cold as ice towards me, despite my low expectations of having some platonic companionship for the night. Thus, I essentially found myself alone in the club.
↵2	That’s a 3:45 Ass reference, folks.
↵3	Note that this does not need to be normalized, i.e. the probabilities do not need to add up to 100% (or 1, actually), as my success with each of them was independent of the other, and there was no guarantee I would be successful with any of them.

Don’t Worry, I’m A Professional! What’s Bugging You, My Man?

1 May 2022 / BJ / 0 Comments

5 Min Read

Sometimes simply being a listening ear can mean the world to someone.

Mainly because then you’re not a running mouth…

“Just hanging in there the best I can…”

I gave a slight smirk upon hearing the exterminator’s response to my question, “How ya doing today?”–my attempt at basic pleasantries one might be expected to proffer when interacting with a stranger.

He had come by for his bi-monthly visit to spray for bugs around our house, and, as usual, he was at our front door letting us know he was there and what he planned to do that day–you know, to preempt us from calling the cops upon seeing a random dude wandering around outside our house.

Now, I’m not really big on the whole “basic pleasantries” thing, on account of the overly-honest gene in my DNA that gives me a near-unhealthy penchant for authenticity in all of my inter-personal interactions. So it’s always a treacherous gamble to engage in such activities with me, as you might just get more than the usual lie of “I’m doing just fine” that typically serves as the lubricant that keeps society running smoothly.

Anyways, the bug guy had caught me in a particularly hectic moment, so let’s just say that he had no idea what he was in for…

“That was about to be my exact response!”

I didn’t want to leave the guy wondering why I had a half-grin on my face, so I was letting him know that I could relate to how he was feeling. But before I burdened him with my current woes, I decided to let him share first what was weighing him down.

“Yeah, I hear ya…what’s ailing you these days?” I continued.

Who says that two complete strangers can’t share a sincere human connection, amiright?

“Well…” he said before pausing for a brief moment.

“Don’t worry, Buddy, you got a listening ear in me.” I gently encouraged him.

“So, I just recovered from COVID after being knocked on my ass for couple of weeks…”

“Oof. That’s rough.”

“…but what was really tough was losing 3 family members to COVID in just the last 2 months…”

“Oh man, I am so sorry to hear that.” I asked for ‘realness’, and whether I liked it or not, he was sure delivering.

“And then…”

“Wait! There’s more?” I thought to myself. Hadn’t he suffered enough already?

“…I get off work two nights ago, and come home to find all my possessions on the front porch.”

Sh*t. That could mean only one thing.

“Turns out, out of nowhere, my wife leaves me for another guy. I had no clue; I was completely blindsided.”

“Oh, man, that is so terrible–on top of everything else, too…”

Honestly, this was new territory. The closest I had previously come to having to figure out how to respond to a random person sharing some incredibly personal trauma with me was that one time I tried to give $20 to a guy loitering outside the local Korean fried chicken joint, and, well, I don’t have to tell you how that went.

“She said she’s taking the house. So I’ve been sleeping in my work truck the last few nights since I have nowhere to go…”

“Dang…” I was pretty much speechless by this point. I just couldn’t believe The Universe would kick a guy so squarely in the cajones when he was already down.

“…and I’ve got exactly negative $124 in my bank account, so yeah…I’m just hanging in there best I can.”

I was officially speechless at this point, doing all I could not to cry in front of another grown-ass man who just poured his heart out to me.

“Welp, today I’ll be spraying around the perimeter of your home as usual–gotta keep the creepy-crawlies from getting in the first place. Oh, and have you noticed any issues with bugs inside the house lately?”

“Here you go, I want you to have this. It’s not much, but hopefully it’ll help take the sting off a little.”

I had been an unexpected emotional wreck for the past 20 minutes while he had sprayed around the house–and I was just as worried that he would leave without checking back in with me. After rummaging through a couple dressers, I found what I had hoped to pass on to him: a Ziploc baggy with a modest amount of cash in it–serendipitously within a couple of dollars of his negative bank account balance.¹Not to #HumbleBrag, but I had discovered that they were $20 bills when I thought they were $50s or $100s, so it wasn’t as much as I had hoped to pass on to my hurting amigo. So I was rather relieved (and nervous!) when I heard the doorbell ring again.

He graciously accepted the gift, and just stood there for a moment.

“I’m doing all I can not to cry–this means so much to me.”

I, too, was doing all I could not to cry.

“I know hugs aren’t a good idea right now, but how about a fist-bump?” he offered.

I took him up on that, and in that moment, the much-maligned fist-bump became the vessel for one of the deepest connection I have experienced with another human being…

“You ever pondered over that part of the Bible where Jesus talks about ‘what you’ve done unto the least of these, you’ve done unto me'²https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-25-40 and what-not?”

“Yeah, I suppose I’ve given it some thought…”

Over a month later, and the Boss Lady and I were road-tripping to the beach for her birthday get-a-way, and I had just opened up to her for the first time about my encounter with the bug guy–it had been so emotionally heavy that I hadn’t been able to share it with another soul for weeks on end.

And she was indubitably wondering where I was going with it by bringing in theology.

“Well, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve just punched my ticket to Black Heaven³It wasn’t explicitly stated, but the bug guy is Black. So on top of everything else he has to deal with a baseline of systemic racism and racial inequity.…”

After a pause, my mouth rambled on to finish that train of thought.

“…and of course, by blasting my good deeds to the whole world, I’m no doubt voiding that ticket and going straight back to Caucasian hell…”

Empathy, generosity, and now humor?

Though I hadn’t meant to, my little tale had assaulted my dear wife with the Trifecta of Character Every Woman Wants Her Man, and thereby winning her heart back over after a little run-of-the-mill, very incredibly stupid 24-hour marital spat.

Again, yes I know that telling the whole world about my kind heart and valiant deeds kinda nullifies everything, but there really is a point in sharing all this.

I mean, it was her fault for trying to be infectiously gracious in the first place after I had mumbled a few choice expletives at an inept teen driver with whom we were stuck in traffic.

“Dear, don’t be so harsh–you never know what kind of day she’s been having…”

“Sigh. That’s true. Speaking of which, boy, do I have a story for you…”

“I’m crying! I’m crying!”

Fortunately, the Boss Lady was crying tears of laughter at this point, despite the gravity of The Bug Guy Story I had just intimated to her.

“Whew! Oh boy, I can’t get over the thought of you sharing your woes first instead of him–what was it you were about to say again?”

“Well, first, in my defense, things had been pretty stressful for me then. At least relatively speaking.”

“Just tell me the exact phrase you were about to tell him, explaining why you had the need to ‘hang in there’ the best you could.”

“Fine. I was about to say, and I quote:

‘Yeah man, life’s been rough on me lately. I’ve been trying to upgrade our front and back porches with this really expensive composite decking, and it’s just been taking forever. And on top of that, me and the family are leaving for a 6-day Disney World vacation tomorrow, and I feel completely unprepared. I’m totally stressing out here, man!’

There. Are you happy with how incredible close to being utterly embarrassed while simultaneously making him feel even more horrible?”

*gasp! gasp*

“One moment while I catch my breath…”

I couldn’t help but roll me eyes.

“Are you finished with your schadenfreude yet?”

“Oh, Dear…again, it all comes back to you, Disney, and your First-World Problems…”

Content created on: 29 April 2022 (Friday)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	Not to #HumbleBrag, but I had discovered that they were $20 bills when I thought they were $50s or $100s, so it wasn’t as much as I had hoped to pass on to my hurting amigo.
↵2	https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Matthew-25-40
↵3	It wasn’t explicitly stated, but the bug guy is Black. So on top of everything else he has to deal with a baseline of systemic racism and racial inequity.

Gotta Hand It To You, Girl, You Sure Were Special…

24 April 2022 / BJ / 0 Comments

7 Min Read

Always celebrate those things that make your child unique.

And the more embarrassing, the better…

“Lay off of her! Our child is completely normal!”

Okay, so maybe my response to the innocent-enough questions, “Have you noticed that The Younger likes to religiously wipe everything with the back of her fingernails? Do you think there’s something wrong with her?” was a bit too impassioned.

Sure, one could argue our 4-year-old daughter’s habit was borderline O.C.D., but what good would it do it slap such a negatively-connotated label on the kid? When I asked why she would run the back of her fingertips over everything–couches, iPads, the perimeter of the kitchen countertops, various body parts of her family members, and even the occasional toilet seat–every chance she got, she simply replied, “Because it feels good on my fingers.” So why give her guff for her doing what just felt right to her, when it really wasn’t hurting anybody else? In fact, I was the opinion of that it gave her “character.”

“I can relate, kid, I can relate…”–that was my special Daddy way of helping her affirm her identity when other family members were less-supportive of her life choices.

And I could indeed relate, because–as it would seem–her unusual Savior Complex was not the only outlying behavior she inherited from her paternal genetic lineage. I tried to tell the other adults around her that, I too, took particular pleasure in running my fingernails along things when I was young.

So, yeah, I was actually a bit proud that she was taking after her Papa. Though, unlike her, I usually limited to my activity to my own pant legs…

“Stop. Making. Fun of me!”

So what? I was involved in one case of mistaken identity when I was about 4. Big deal. I was just a child for Heaven’s sake!

Yet, there I was, 6 years old, and Mom and 1SkinnyJ–my slightly older brother–would just not let me forget one teeny-tiny social faux pas I made well over 2 years earlier. It was almost a ritual for them, every month or so, drudging it back up and getting a good laugh out of my misfortune.

“Whoo-wee! You should have seen the look on your face! You were red as a beet, you were so embarrassed!”

“Shut up!”

I mean, really, who makes fun of kid for something that, frankly, scarred them for life? What kind of sick, twisted people am I stuck with calling “my family”?

Do you even know how emotionally impossible it is for a toddler to process such a psychologically damaging life event? Not to mention having to be repeatedly reminded of it by so-called “loved ones”?

What are these horrors that I wouldn’t even wish upon on the child of my sworn enemy, you ask?

Look, if you really want to know what happened, then fine, I’ll tell you. But you’ll be just as guilty as them for perpetuating childhood trauma.

It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal anyways. Where at a graduation at our local high school back in the mid-80s, and I recall standing in line with Mom to congratulate the new graduates…

“Hey there, kiddo, it’s good to see you!”

From across the way, I heard one of my aunts¹If you really care about historical accuracy, I must state for the record that I don’t know if it was an aunt for sure. But it was either a family member or a friend of the family. holler my name. And in spite of being an incredibly shy child who was permanently attached to his Mommy’s hand, I bravely ventured out and scurried over to say “hi” to the trusted, friendly face of said family member.

A good 90 seconds was about all I could bear out in the dangerous world, so after offering Auntie my greetings and salutations, I made a bee-line straight back to the safety and security of Mom’s hand.

“Oh…well hello there, little fella.”

Wait, what was wrong with Mom’s voice?!?

In a panic, my eyes followed the path from the hand that I was gripping ever-so-tightly, up the arm, and lastly to…

“Aww, sh*t…YOU’RE NOT MY REAL MOM!!!”

That face.

That face was not my mother’s! Hell, I didn’t know who’s it was. Like a complete ass, I hadn’t bothered looking up and confirming that it was Mom I was sidling up to before making physical contact!

I was so stunned, I couldn’t do anything but just stand there petrified, forgetting that I was still latched onto the hand of a complete ----- stranger.

From a few feet up ahead in the line, I saw my real mom turn and around, and, a little beet red herself, scurry back to detach me from the mystery woman’s appendage.

“So sorry about that…he’s, uh…a little special…”

“Another Easter egg hunt? Yayyyyy!!!”

The Elder’s Taekwondo dojo²Is it racist that I knowingly use this incorrect term? was hosting yet another Easter egg hunt this past holiday weekend, and I was just too busy with around-the-house projects to go. So I convinced the Boss Lady³As a friendly reminder, The Boss Lady is my wife. to take our two girls by herself.

I would later deeply regret this decision, as it turned out that by not going, I missed out on perhaps one of the most formative childhood events in the life of The Younger.

When the Boss Lady came back, she had this weird grin on her face.

“So, I gotta tell you what happened at the Easter egg hunt, but you gotta be standing up for this story.”

“Uh, okay…” I humored her by standing up, though I couldn’t see what in the world that had to do with the proverbial price of rice in China.

“After the hunt they handed out prizes–The Younger won the award for least number of eggs found, LOL–and so most of the kids were standing by the prizes as the parents watched.

As they wrapped it up and everyone started to leave, I headed over to claim our two children. But instead of running to me, The Younger started walking behind this Hispanic woman in dark pants.⁴Although The Boss Lady is half-Asian, half-Caucasian, and 0% Hispanic, she can easily be mistaken for a Herspanic, especially from behind. I was about halfway over to get her when she did this:”

The Boss Lady proceeded to demonstrate The Younger’s aforementioned tic by firmly swiping the fingernails across my hind-quarters.

“She just straight-up ran her fingers across that woman’s butt!”

After a fit of tearful chuckling, I managed to quip, “Man…she really is my daughter isn’t she?”

“Indeed, she is your child. Of course, the woman was startled by the fact that someone in the crowd had just grabbed her ass. And I could only watch and try not to laugh as she turned around, and upon seeing who her assailant was, respond like any other woman would respond in that situation…”

After I caught my breathe from guffawing so hard, I eked out the natural follow-up question:

“What…whew…what did…wait, I need another second…so what did the lady say?”

“What do you think she said? ‘Oh…why, thank you.'”

I wiped the remaining tears from eyes.

“Well, it just wouldn’t be the holidays without a little bit of generational trauma…”

The Boss Lady gave me a slightly quizzical look.

“You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means…”⁵https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTRKCXC0JFg

The point of the story is, no matter how humorous it may seem to you, when your child’s personality traits–ones that they inherited from you, no less–collide and form one magical and hilariously embarrassing moment, show pity on the child, and never ever remind them or tease them about the event. It only becomes generational trauma if you choose to reinforce it…

…

Aww, f*ck it–this is waaaaay too funny to ever let go of. So you can be danged sure that if and when the day comes that The Younger gets married, her slightly inebriated father will be up there slurring out an unforgettable toast to the bride: “Hey, hey, remember that one time you wiped a strange woman’s ass at an Easter egg hunt…?”

Bonus material: Title notes

I would hope that you, my Dear Reader, would pick up on the many puns and other nuances that I try to pack into the titles of my posts. Of course, this is not always easy because sometimes I make either obscure references and/or significant stretches of logic in the process. Or sometimes I’m lazy and settle for a less-than-optimal title in exchange for pleasing the search engine gods at Google.

But with this title, I can’t stand the thought of some the puns embedded in the title to go completely unnoticed, so I thought I would share some inside notes with you about it.

The seedling that I built the title around was “I gotta hand it to you, kid…” Of course, you can see that the final version is slightly modified from this, but nevertheless, much of the punnery remained intact.

The two main jokes here are, first: “I gotta hand it to you”, as in, “I’m genetically passing on to you, my child, some of the same tics and traumas that I experienced myself.”

Secondly, I just had to have “hand” in the title, because both the tic and the embarrassing incident(s) were very much hand-related. Yeah? See what I did there?

“I gotta hand it to you, kid…” Yes, prime dad-jokery abounding here.

Further, I wanted to actually entitle it “I gotta hand it to you, kid–generational trauma, that is!” But I didn’t want to ruin the sub-punchline of “generational trauma.”

On a side note–do you realize how ----- hard it is to find literary-friendly synonyms for “trauma”?!? But I digress…

Ultimately, the title ended up referencing the punchline–always a dangerous strategy in my book–i.e. toasting/roasting your daughter at her wedding.

Another variant riffing on that idea was: “I gotta hand it to you, you were one ----- weird kid…” Well, maybe not with the expletive, but really railing on the idea of lovingly making fun of your kid for all of their idiosyncrasies and particularly embarrassing moments.

It’s like, “Hey, I got made fun of these exact same things and was scarred for life in the process. So of course I gotta continue the cycle…”

LOL…right?

Lastly, one of the final touches was including the term “special”, in part a reference to the end of the second section of the story where I claim that my mom apologized for me being special. Honestly, I can’t remember if she used those exact words, but nonetheless is a humorous tip-o-the-hat to my self-depracating habit of pointing out that much of my life I walked a fine line between “genius” and “complete ----- moron with no common sense.”

Ultimately, though, I’m as much a narcissist as the next guy, and take special loving delight when my daughters take after me in ways that are outside the norm, and, in my humble opinion, what really gives a person character.

Hey, after all, perfection is waaaaay over-rated. I mean, who wants to be that boring? But again, I digress…

The point of the story is I waste an incredibly disproportionate amount of my post-creating time on just coming up with a satisfactory title. (Note that it really helps when the title easily lends itself to my featured cut-and-paste picture creating process, which further complicates things.)

Content created on: 20/21/23 April 2022 (Wed/Thurs/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

Footnotes & References:
↵1	If you really care about historical accuracy, I must state for the record that I don’t know if it was an aunt for sure. But it was either a family member or a friend of the family.
↵2	Is it racist that I knowingly use this incorrect term?
↵3	As a friendly reminder, The Boss Lady is my wife.
↵4	Although The Boss Lady is half-Asian, half-Caucasian, and 0% Hispanic, she can easily be mistaken for a Herspanic, especially from behind.
↵5	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTRKCXC0JFg

When Secrets Of The Night Come Out Into The Light

3 April 2022 / BJ / 0 Comments

3 Min Read

Secrets lurk in the dark, waiting to ambush you.

And they’re coming for your precious little family, too…

“WHAT THE–?!? Hey, let go of me!”

‘Lyle'¹Yes, that’s his real middle name., one of my older brothers, startled awake in the dark²For the historical record, it was actually the middle of the day. to find a mysterious arm clutching him tightly.

“ZZZZZZ…zzzz…” The only response that broke the silence was some serious snoring.

“Ugghn!” Lyle let out a deep grunt as he pried himself free from the arm.

“That was weird…” he muttered to himself before rolling over and falling back asleep…

“ZZZZ…I gotchya! Zzzz….”

The stillness of the night was shattered by some light snoring with a few cryptic words mumbled in between, followed by a loud “THWAP!” as a disembodied arm smacked 1SkinnyJ–yet another of my many brothers–in the abdomen.

“Get. Off. Me!”

A bleary-eyed 1SJ was a confused by the arm as he was annoyed. After all, none of us had been getting much sleep that week, as we had been spending almost every moment–waking or otherwise–beside our dad as he lay on his deathbed.

After 4 days of virtually no sleep, the three of us finally had the chance to get a few hours of hardcore napping at a family friend’s³Okay, so it was actually Lyle’s uncle–is it really worth wasting the words to explain that? house. But keeping watch as you wait for a loved one to pass can take a deep toll on a person.

Apparently, it causes you to hallucinate that mystery appendages are giving you really intense hugs as you sleep…

“Dude, I had the weirdest dream…”

Refreshed and back at the hospital, Lyle and 1SJ were just shooting the breeze to pass the time.

“…that an arm came out of nowhere and saved you from falling off the bed, amiright? I’m right, aren’t I?”

1SJ‘s jaw dropped open, wondering how the heck Lyle knew exactly what had gone down in his dream.

“Wha–how did you know?”

“Yeah, it happened to me too. Though…”

“Though what?”

They both turned and looked at me, who had been aloof to their entire conversation up until that point.

“That was no dream–it was you!”

I found myself staring down Lyle’s accusatory finger.

“What did I do? I’m innocent I swear!”

“You were sleeping in between us, so it must have been your arm that kept grabbing us in our sleep!”

“You’re full of sh*t, man. I was sound asleep the whole time.”

“No, it’s true,” 1SJ chimed in, “you were definitely trying to keep us from falling off the bed. Though, come to think of it, we were never ever even close to the edge…”

“Really?!? I swear that’s never happened before, my bros…”

“AAAAHHHH! What the hell, Hubby? You scared the crap out of me!”

“These dogs…these dogs keep mooching off my back…mumble mumble mumble…”

“Oh…you jackass. You’re doing weird sh*t in your sleep again…”

Less than 4 months after Dad passed, I found myself newly wed to the Boss Lady, and it didn’t take too long for her to learn that, indeed, I do do weird sh*t in my sleep. Stuff that I had no clue I was ever capable of.

Performing dream-soliloquys complaining about dogs trying to hitch a ride on my back as I swam across a river? Check.

Making her wake up to an earthquake rocking our bed, only for her to discover it’s just me, rocking out and playing the air drums while still fast asleep? Been there, done that.

And of course: saving her from falling off the bed? You can bet her sweet ass that she’s the safest snoozing spouse you’ve ever met. Just ask her: there’s nothing like unwittingly being wrapped up securely in a strong, sexy arm….Night, after night, after night…

These are just a few of the many tales she would regale me when I woke up. Stories so fantastic and/or ridiculous that I would have never believed her, were it not for the independent accounts of my nocturnal heroics from my beloved brothers.

The point of the story is: you never know who you truly are until you start sleeping with other people…

“Don’t worry, Daddy! I’ll keep you safe from falling!”

“THWAP!”

A tiny little 4-year-old arm grabbed a hold of me tightly, just right when I was starting to settle into my nap with The Younger.⁴As in, “the Younger of my two daughters.”

“Yawn…hmm, that’s nice…”

…

“Wait, what?!?” I startled awake as I recognized what she what was really doing–and that there was no way she could have learned that behavior from me.

“Dang it,” I muttered to myself. “It looks like it’s genetic…I guess I’m passing my ~~White~~ While-You-Were-Sleeping Savior Complex onto my daughters…”

Content created on: 1/2 April 2022 (Fri/Sat)

Footnotes & References:[+]

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↵1	Yes, that’s his real middle name.
↵2	For the historical record, it was actually the middle of the day.
↵3	Okay, so it was actually Lyle’s uncle–is it really worth wasting the words to explain that?
↵4	As in, “the Younger of my two daughters.”

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Previously, on “The Point of the Story”…

The latest word on the street

Dig into the vault for lost treasure

Enjoy this blog? Please spread the word :)