Time for a heaping serving of our creme de la creme…
Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! Welcome to the end of another year that, for many of us, we summed up by saying “Welp, I guess we should be grateful we survived the last 12 months…”
I don’t know about you, but I really really hope that 2022 is not another one of those years. But what can you do? Hope for the best my friends, just hope for the best…
Speaking of “Best,” I thought I would help you celebrate ringing in 2022 by looking back at the Best posts the Point of the Story had to offer in 2021. Okay, so it’s hard to objectively say these were “the best,” but they were some of my favorites from the past year. It was hard to decide which stories to put in slots 7 through 3, as they were many other worthy candidates, and they probably could have ranked in any arbitrary order.
But #2 and #1? Yeah, those are undoubtedly the Top 2 Posts of 2021.
So, whether you missed them the first time around, or just back for a second helping, here are the Editor’s Top Seven Pointless Posts of 2021.
Enjoy! (And Happy New Year!)
Slide
#7
Stop Sabotaging My Love Life, You Dirty Bastard!
Stop Sabotaging My Love Life, You Dirty Bastard!
4Min Read
Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and it’s time to get your funk on, baby! But first, you’re gonna have to get that funk the funk off you…
The Year: 1999, Summer Time. Location: Our Family Farm.
Excitement Level? “Never A Dull Moment”…
The summer in between high school and college, I had the pleasure of working on ye olde farm with me olde man–and, fortunately, a more competent friend & classmate, “The Bard”.
Now, while I could wax long and poetic about those glory days back in SW Kansas, I think I’ll do you a solid and wane short and prosaic1For the record, I had to Google “antonym poetic” to come up with that one. instead. Let me just put it this way: Me. On a farm. Of course, I’m gonna have a story or two to tell…
Unborn On The 4th Of July
Unborn On The 4th Of July
5Min Read
What could possibly be more interesting than life on the farm?
Death on the farm. Definitely “death on the farm”…
The Year 2021: The Year of the Endless Home Renovation.
Pfft! More like “The Year We Almost Ended Up Homeless”…
Indeed, the Year 2021 turned out to be the Year of the Endless Home Renovation. What started as simple puddle of water under our kitchen sink ended up making our 2021 almost as bad as 2020. Yeah. That bad.
While remodeling in and of itself was no walk in the park, it was taking refuge from all the remodeling that ended being the more “interesting” part of the whole ----- fiasco. Five weeks at the beach in the spring? Sounds pretty sweet, right? Well, in theory, yes. In practice…well it wasn’t Heaven and it wasn’t quite Hell.
Read on, and discover why I can only describe the those fateful 5 weeks in Eden Cove 9 as “Purgatory”…
PS: If you feel like you need to know more about the events leading up to and surrounding the following tales, you can find even more reading here and here.
Better Beach Rentals: Blurring The Line Between Luxury And Purgatory
Better Beach Rentals: Blurring The Line Between Luxury And Purgatory
4Min Read
To say that it was “A Vacation From Hell” might be a bit of an exaggeration.
It all started just like any other regrettable college moment.
“Chug! Chug! Chug…”
I shouldn’t have panicked.
But I did. And ultimately, that is what did me in.
I had to figure out how many ounces I could drink without ruining my stomach, and honestly, I had never really tested the limits of how big of a bottle I could handle.
On the paper before me, I had one shot to impress the judges, and I didn’t want to blow it by claiming I could only drink 16 ounces. I mean, for all I knew, the next college-aged blockhead could come along and say they could drink 24 ounces of that Nectar of the Gods, and then where would I be? Out in the cold, that’s where–just a mere spectator in the crowd and not a competitor.
“No, I better go big or go home,” I mused to myself. “Surely no one else would be daring enough to put down 36 ounces…”
Mere milliseconds from dropping my scrap of folded-up paper into the submission box, and a wave of regret started to wash over me. In my gut I just knew that 36 wouldn’t be enough. Luckily I was quick enough, and was able to jerk my hand back just in the nick of time.
Hastily, I added 36 to the list of scratched-out numbers–along with 8, 16, & 24–and penciled in my final answer, the one that would indubitably get me a spot in the finals.
“Forty-four, baby. Forty-four ounces to freedom…”
“Ladies and gentlemen of Haymaker Hall, I present to you our 4 contestants, one–and only one–of whom will leave tonight with a $100 gift certificate, good at any business in downtown Manhattan (brought to you by the Little Apple Chamber of Commerce).”
“Wait just a minute. A gift certificate?!?” I screamed in my head.
I had been under the impression that the winner of the “What’s The Dumbest Dare You Would Do For $100” contest would be awarded…ya know…$100. As advertised.
Dammit, they had suckered me in with the lure of cash, and now here I was with a cold over-sized bottle, about to sacrifice my stomach, and for what? A lousy hundred dollars to spend at the lamest stores in this whole college town? Well, if this wasn’t the Banana Split Incident all over again, then I didn’t know what was.
“Welp, too late to back out now. I better go big or go home, amiright?” I told myself as I awaited to hear what type of stiff competition I would be up against.
“First, we have Dominick, who has dared himself to…shave his legs!”
What was this amateur hour? It sounded like to me that this dude was more just looking for an excuse to shave his legs. He definitely wasn’t going to beat me.
And I was right. The crowd of about 50 students gathered in the basement of Haymaker Hall barely even murmured when Dominick followed through on his threat to shave his gams.
…
“Second, we have The Gator, who has dared himself to…eat 3 worms!”
Okay, so despite The Gator being a good friend of mine, and despite the fact that eating worms was pretty nasty given our Western culture, I had no doubt that his paltry 3 worms wouldn’t threaten my shot at that certificate.
Or so I thought. Seeing that third worm get stuck in his Adam’s apple before coming back up and then going back down again? That was actually pretty disgusting. But still not enough to worry me.
…
“Third, we have Goofus the Doofus, who has dared himself to…bite the head off of a goldfish!”
“Hmmm, interesting…playing to the crowd I see. But still, no one gonna beat nasty l’il me…” In my head, I just knew that darn-near-worthless gift certificate would be going home with me that night.
However, a little bit of doubt started to creep into my head when I saw that he, too, had decided to “go big or go home,” on account of the 5-inch goldfish that the bastard had busted out to sacrifice to the gods of collegiate stupidity.
And for a split-second–the one where we all heard that decapitating “CRUNCH”–I was worried. But then what did that lightweight do? He spit it out! The fish wasn’t even in his mouth more than half a second. Hmmph! Even The Gator and his worms should have him beat.
…
“And last but not least, we have Floyd,1That’s a self-reference: Floyd is my alter ego. who had dared himself to…drink 44 ounces…”
I was pleased that our Emcee spotted me a dramatic pause, just long enough to lull the audience into a false sense of complacency.
“…OF [CENSORED]!”
You could actually hear a few audible gasps from the crowd, though those were pretty much drowned out by the much more numerous “WTF?!?”s…
“I think I’m going to be sick…” one girl bemoaned, as she watched me guzzle those 44 ounces down with the utmost of determination.
I, too, was starting to feel the same way. I knew that I liked to drink the stuff, but damn, Homie, after the first 10 ounces, this schitt wasn’t fun any more.
Nevertheless, I persisted. In hindsight, I probably could have quit after downing half the bottle; the crowd by then had more than enough appreciation for the evil genius behind my choice of, uh, “beverage.” I just didn’t know when to quit.
In fact, after I had nominally finished the bottle, I wanted to make dang sure nobody accused me of not finishing what I started: I found the nearest water fountain and diluted the disgusting dregs that remained in the bottle. And, in what turned out to be waaaay nastier than I had anticipated, I sucked that bottle dry.
I had come to shock the sh*t of the crowd, and guess what? Mission accomplished.
Sorta.
After all of that, the crowd decided (by the cruelly not-so-objective Applause-O-Meter), that 500 milliseconds of shock factor was more worthy of a $100 gift certificate than 3-5 minutes of watching a grown man slurp down [CENSORED]. Of course, they ended up awarding it to Doofus-Goofus No-Neck McJock Face–though I knew that they knew in their heart of hearts that I should have been its rightful owner…
“Always have an exit plan”…was the too-late advice that came to my mind mere moments after my shocking defeat. I hadn’t really thought about what would come after I had achieved this forgettable milestone in my young life.
Having all that in my system couldn’t have good been for business. It couldn’t have been good for anyone.
Now, the version that my Public Speaking 101 classmates got the following year would have you believe that this all had an edgy (i.e. “interesting”) ending, with me getting my stomach pumped in the Emergency Department. You know, as one tends to do when they desperately try to self-induce vomiting by micro-dosing rat poison.
But I’m not going to blow smoke up your butt: I’ve already been more than forthcoming about all my stupid trips to the ED. And this one wasn’t one of them.
No, instead, I did boring dumb things. Like non-stop sprinting for 90 minutes playing Ultimate Frisbee (no luck). Or sticking my entire fist down my throat (don’t believe everything you see on TV, kids). Or even having my racistly nick-named Vietnamese pal, Chong, punch me in the stomach a few times (no dice).
In the end, all that did was make really thirsty for some reason.
Ultimately, the “exit plan” for all that junk that went in one end of me was remarkably predictable, in that it just came out the other. Let’s just say that for the next day or so, that was some of the weirdest sh*t I had ever seen…
The point of the story is, just because you have the unique skill of being able to drink [CENSORED] and enjoy it, doesn’t mean you should attempt to drink copious amounts of it as part of some dorm Double Dare knock-off contest. And if you’re going to poison your body like that, you might as well do it with something fun and cheeky. Like gravy. Or cold hard liquor.
Wait, you thought I was talking about booze this whole time?2Of course you weren’t. That would have been too obvious. Nah man, it takes someone truly special to put away one whole big-ass bottle of Heinz Ketchup.
Surely not be giving out rides when it’s not his car…
“Aww! Poor dude really could use a ride…and so what would Jesus do? Jesus would most indubitably tell him, ‘Hop in, Broseph!’, amiright?”
It was Memorial Day weekend back in 2005, and I was kicking it with my best college buddy Andrew at his parents’ home in good ol’ Kismet, Kansas. He had introduced me to the hobby of “High Pointing” where you try to visit the highest point in as many states as possible, and thusly we had decided to take a day trip in Andrew’s mom’s car to go hike Oklahoma’s High Point.
Of course, that meant a ~3 hour little jaunt to Kenton, Oklahoma, home of one of the few topographically interesting features in the state, Black Mesa (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: In case you ever need to get from Kismet, KS to Oklahoma’s Black Mesa…now ya know!
“Wait!” you say, “That looks like you’re headed to New Mexico!”
And you would be right–as Andrew would say, “The highest point in Oklahoma is New Mexico!” He’s not exactly wrong, either: the highest elevation in the OK state is a hilarious 1000 ft from being in the wrong state altogether (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Oklahoma’s High Point is comically close to just being Slightly Below Average1https://www.google.com/search?q=average+elevation+of+new+mexico Point, New Mexico.
Flatlander jokes aside, it’s actually a really lovely hike, and I recommend you plan an entire vacation around it the soonest chance you get. You won’t regret it!
Okay, maybe there’s a slight chance you might regret blowing all your PTO and savings just to get a scenic view of New Mexico rather than going to, say, Paris. But I digress…
I bet you’re still wondering what happened to ‘Broseph’, the dude in need of a ride. Ok, sure, I’ll humor you.
After spending a very Bro-mantic half-day hiking around Black Mesa, Andrew and I were all tuckered out and finally ready to head back to Kismet.2Fun fact: Kismet was one of the names I floated when were trying to name The Younger aka our second daughter. We had stopped in at the first gas station along our route–the trusty Toot N’ Totum in Boise City–to get some snacks and fill up on gas.
That’s when we met Casper, the aforementioned “Broseph.” And while he technically wasn’t a friendly ghost, he was short, scruffy and as white as one–as a ghost, that is.
He had approached us as we were rambling into the convenience store, and had asked us for a ride. In response, Andrew mumbled something along the lines of “we’ll think about it,” but we were mainly just trying to avoid the awkward interaction–because let’s face it, they’re always awkward af–and get back home and get some rest.
However, I made the classic mistake of giving a rat’s ass about what our Caucasian Savior might have hypothetically done, were he in our hiking boots. You can call it having a crisis of conscience, if it makes you feel less sacrilegious; either way my compassionate side had got the better of me, and that’s when I started cajoling Andrew into letting Casper hitch a ride with us.
To my charitable delight, Andrew, with a Slim Jim and Diet Coke in hand, finally gave in: “Fine, whatever. But you’re cleaning my mom’s car out if he leaves a funk and/or stank.”
“You got it, dude!”
I was so excited about actually making it out of my comfort zone and making the world a better place, that the risk of a phantom funk was well worth it in my book.
Outside, I shared the great news with Casper–though even in fulfilling his request, it was still much more awkward than I had anticipated.
“Hey man, which way you headed? You’re welcome to hitch a ride with us if you like!”
“Um, yeah…I’m trying to get to Oklahoma City…”
“Oh. Okay.”
Aww fudge-nuts. Had I just got us in over our heads?
“Oh. Well, that would add…*checks notes*…7 hours to our 3 hour trip, so…”
*awkward silence*
“I guess since we’re headed east and you’re headed east, how about we take you as far as Liberal?3Liberal, a city of modest size in SW Kansas, situated on the border with Oklahoma. It’s no Oklahoma City, but hey, it’s much closer than you are now.”
“Um, I guess that would work.”
“Sweet, well then, hop on in the back and let’s roll out!”
“So Casper, tell us about your life journey…”
While Andrew focused on driving, I took it upon myself to make Casper feel welcome in Andrew’s mom’s car.
Casper went on to regale us with how he had recently spent a year or two down in Florida…as part of the entourage of rapper Ja Rule (see Figure 3)–“just kicking it with Ja” as Casper put it.
Figure 3: Ladies & gentlemen: Grammy-nominated musical artist, Ja Rule.
Wow, I had never really met anyone who had spent so much time with a celebrity. Fascinating, simply fascinating!
Of course, that also left me with more questions that I probably shouldn’t (and didn’t) ask. Like, “So how does a super-white guy like you get into a guy like Ja Rule’s inner circle?”
Or: “Was this before or after you started living on the streets?”
Or, now that I’ve looked up Ja Rule’s Wikipedia page, “Wait, isn’t Ja Rule based out of New York, not Florida?”
I honestly didn’t think much of these potential discrepancies in the moment, and we carried on conversing about this that and the other.
Twenty or so minutes later of me taking my turn to regale him with some much less interesting stories of my own, Casper got real solemn all of a sudden.
“I haven’t really told anyone this, but…”
“Oh, go ahead. You can tell us…”
“But…I used to be a Spook for the CIA. Of course, I can’t really talk about all the crazy sh*t I did for them…”
“Oh, okay. Cool…”
*moment of silence*
“What’s a Spook again?”
“A spy. I was a spy for the CIA.”
“Oh, okay…”
Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.
This dude must have been a prodigy or something. I mean, he couldn’t have been more than 24 years old, and already he had spent a few years living in Ja Rule’s Florida mansion and had spent multiple years as a veritable Man in Black?!?
I couldn’t believe that I was actually in the presence of a living, walking, hitchhiking legend!
What great fortune I decided to give this dude a chance by offering him a ride…in Andrew’s mom’s car.
It was like…well, it was like kismet…
“Are you out of your ----- mind?!?”
Andrew hadn’t been as gracious to our guest as I would have liked, and had somewhat rudely and abruptly dropped Casper off at the first truck stop we came to as we rolled into Liberal. And as soon as he was out of the car, Andrew had turned his attention to me.
“What are you talking about, man? We just got to share a vehicle with the Most Interesting Man In The World!”
This was the first time that I had noticed Andrew didn’t look like his usual unflappable self.
“He. Was. Crazy. How did you not pick up on that?!? He was making all that sh*t up, and I’ll bet you anything he was schizophrenic.”
“Now that you mention it…yeah, that makes waaaay more sense.”
“I started getting nervous once he started nonchalantly bragging about being so close to Ja Rule.”
“Oh. Yeah…”
“So, what were you thinking, having him sit in the back?!? You should have sat in the back and kept an eye on him. That way, if he decided to murder one of us, you might actually have had a chance to do something about it!”
“Oh. Sorry…”
“Thanks to you, I spent the last hour of that drive just waiting to be stabbed in the back any moment. Pfft! ‘Ja Rule’, my ass!”
We sat in silence during the last little leg of our trip back to Kismet, most assuredly pondering our good fortune to not have been slain by that hitch-hiking little ghost of a man. On the bright side, at least we had a better idea of what Jesus would have done: Jesus would have made his ass sit in the front.
At long last, we pulled into Andrew’s parents’ garage, and as we got out of the car Andrew breathed what I mistook for a deep, deep sigh of relief.
“First thing in the morning, I’m going to need you to help me clean the funk out of this car. Otherwise, one whiff, and my mom will know that we’ve been picking up sassy vagrants4https://youtu.be/Sv_hGITmNuo?t=42…”
…and that’s my story of how we survived an evening with Casper the Fu*king5The ‘*’ is standing in for the letter ‘N’ today, who is out sick with a cold. Crazy Spook.
Happy Halloween, everybody!
P.S. Please enjoy these other Halloween posts from the Point of the Story:
You best believe that some horse sh*t is about to go down…
“Aw, crap! Now I’ll never get to be president with this on my record…”
In one fell swoop, I had just ruined my very nascent-yet-very-promising political career. And it was all because of that stupid ----- tree house.
Ok, I admit I’m being a little over dramatic here–calling it a “tree house” is stretching the truth a bit, seeing as how in SW Kansas trees aren’t exactly in ample supply.
It was more of a stilt-house, if you will. You see, someone had put 4 very tall poles in their backyard and built a sweet little clubhouse about 15 feet off the ground on top of them. And then, as luck would have it, whoever this mysterious someone was had decided to abandon their house (and our sleepy little hamlet of Rolla altogether), leaving it all vacant.
And that’s where a bunch of rowdy young vagrants came into the picture…
‘Twas the summer between 3rd & 4th grade, back in the day when my bro, 1 Skinny Jay (aka 1SJ), and I were living in Missouri with our mom during the school year. Which meant that we got to spend our summers back in our hometown of Rolla, KS with our dad.
We had come to an agreement with Dad that every other day we would go out to the fields and farm with him. And in then during the alternating days in between, we would get to live the city-slicker life and spend the day in town at our grandma’s and do fun kid stuff like going to the pool, hanging out at the Corner Stop,1The one and only convenience store in town. and engaging in general youthful chicanery.
Now, we were more than capable than entertaining ourselves on our own, but sometimes we liked to roll more than 2-deep, and on occasion we would form our own little posse to help keep us preoccupied.
During that fateful period back in the Summer of ’90,2Not to be confused with the Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99. we were trolling the mean streets of Rolla with an old classmate of mine–who we’ll just call Etu Brute for now–and a snaggle-toothed kid a year younger than me who had just moved to town–we’ll call him NKOTB (and yes, that is an unabashed reference to those early 90’s pop-culture icons).
Now, I don’t properly recall who discovered the empty “tree house,” but whoever it was was celebrated as a ----- genius amongst us. I mean, it was pretty dang sweet having a hangout spot that not only had a view, but where also we wouldn’t live in fear of being harassed for “trespassing” or whatever the term Old Man Degarmo used when he found out that we had been using the loft of his barn to stash our cache of trashy mags (but that’s a whole ‘nother story).
Yes, technically we were squatting, but we weren’t hurting anybody, and no one seemed to really care. So for a few blessed weeks, we were drinking up the high life, which was flowing like an avalanche coming down the mountain.
Yes, it was none other than our slightly older cousin, a teenager with such impeccable judgment that he somehow had ended up with the moniker Pony Boy–but for all the wrong reasons, though. Rumor had it that it had something to do with a very stupid dare made in the barns of the Stevens County Fair…and I’ll just leave it at that.
Anyways, thanks to his notorious judgment (or lack thereof, *ahem*), there was never a dull moment when Pony Boy was around, so we didn’t mind when he started hanging out with us.
In retrospect, that was probably our first mistake.
Our second mistake was when we listened to him when he got bored just kicking it in the treehouse and suggested we up the ante and explore the main house on the property.
And by “explore” he meant…how did he put it? Oh yeah, and I quote: “Yeah, let’s break in and see if there’s any stuff like stereos and other sh*t that we can steal!”
Yes, yes, a man above all reproach, indeed.
And since at that point he was the de facto leader of our gang, we were all like “Sure. It sounds like fun…I guess.”
Well, all of us except for that party-pooper Etu Brute, who was like, “You guys are pretty stupid, and I ain’t havin’ no part of your dumbassery–I’m out!”
That left the 4 of us to figure out how we were going to go about breaking and entering at 3…p.m. Yup, we were going to do this in broad daylight. The incredibly brilliant ideas were just flowing like wine that day, no?
Pony Boy, our resident criminal mastermind, eventually decided that NKOTB, being the new kid, should climb up the T.V. antenna and onto the roof of the back porch. From there, he was to shimmy through one of the upstairs bedroom windows, then come downstairs and let the rest of us in through the back door.
A solid, solid plan. What could possibly go wrong?
So up and off he went, surprisingly making it into the house with no issue. Once we saw him disappear through the window, we started eagerly waiting for him to swing the back door wide open for our greedy little asses.
But after 5 minutes or so…still no NKOTB. What the heck was going on? Did he trip over a can of paint in there and break his neck?
Well, sh*t. That would be no good, now wouldn’t it? For serious, here–isn’t it that if somebody dies during the commission of a crime, then all of the accomplices are guilty of murder in the eyes of the law?
Oh, Pony Boy, what have you gotten us into this time?
“Wait!” you say!
“So what happened to NKOTB?!?”
“Will the Hardly-Any-Common-Sense Boys be sent to federal ‘#-me-in-the-a$$’ prison for the rest of their lives???”
“Will we ever uncover the true origin story behind the name ‘Pony Boy’? Like, surely a real pony wasn’t involved…right???”
“And most importantly, does NKOTB–poor guy, Rest in Power–die and have to persist for eternity in heaven as an awkward snaggle-toothed 8-year-old??”
“INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW!!!”
Ok, I get it. You’ve still got questions.
Well, in that case, you’ll just have to tune in next week for the stunning[ly stupid] conclusion…
Content created on: 25/26 September 2021 (Sat/Sun)
Are you sick and tired of prom themes that over-promise and under-deliver?
Well, have I got just the theme for you…
“C’mon! Y’all know my prom theme is da bomb! ‘Ten Steps’ is way more cool than just ‘A Step’. Why do y’all insist on being so boring!?!”
I was attempting to fulfill my duties as a member of the Rolla High School Junior Class Prom Committee, and give the Seniors–aka the Class of ’98–a prom they would actually remember. But no one was daring enough to actually do something cool for once.
Despite the tacit acknowledgment that my idea was indeed pretty ----- awesome, my fellow RHSJCP Committee members wouldn’t take the plunge and commit to my suggestion of having a classic Old West theme entitled, “Ten Steps Back In Time.”
I mean, who wouldn’t want to hearken back to the simpler time when cowboys would regularly resolve their differences in a civilized and gentlemanly gun duel that may or may not have ended in the death and/or maiming of one and/or both of them? There’s nothing quite as romantic as some unnecessary violence, amiright?
Nope, instead we were stuck with “A Step Back In Time”–still Old West themed, but with all the lameness that seems to be obligatory for high school prom themes.
Realizing that I was completely outgunned on this one, I eventually gave up. I had to simply resign myself to the very unoriginal gift that we would be giving to our upper-classmen and -classwomen.
The only solace I had was knowing that “a genius is rarely recognized in their time.”
Wait a sec…I think that is supposed to be ‘prophet’ instead of ‘genius’…
Putting me in charge of putting up the giant letters that would spell out our prom theme? That was their first mistake.
A month or so later, and apparently they had already forgotten that they had picked a super-vanilla theme over my Vanilla-Ice cool theme back during the planning stages of this whole she-bang.
But now it was go-time, and we had to get the lunch room decorated for the party that was about to go down later that evening. For some reason I was deeply unmotivated to do anything, and I found myself just sitting there, blankly staring at the letters in front of me:
Figure 1: The RHS 1998 Prom Theme, simulated here with Scrabble(TM) tiles.
As I kept staring, the letters started to swirl in my mind. I could see a message hidden in there, but I couldn’t quite make it out. Thank goodness I had been playing Scrabble since the age of 6, and in that moment I just knew that destiny had been preparing me for this all along. So I went to work…
Interestingly, this is the point where Present Me had to take “A Step Back In Time” himself, and do a bit of time-travel investigating.
You see, I clearly remember that a very important Message had been transmitted through Teenage Me–a mere humble conduit–but I couldn’t quite remember exactly what it was, only that the Greater Being(s) of the Universe had oddly chosen to include a slight typo in their Message.
Wanting to present an accurate account of what transpired that fateful day, I had to bust out ye ol’ Scrabble game and do a little historical reenactment. And I’m not going to lie: I’m not as spry in the mind as I used to be, and my Third Eye is going a bit blind. It took me awhile, but it was indeed quite the revelation when I finally figured out what very important Message could be constructed using ALL the letters from that lame-ass prome theme “A S T E P B A C K I N T I M E”. The very same Message that was revealed to us rural teenagers, all those years ago…
…
Are you ready?
…
Are you sure you’re ready?
…
I mean, once you have heard such a world-view shattering Message delivered from upon high, you realize your life will never be the same, right?
…
Okay, well, you’ve been duly warned. I wash my hands of anything that happens after this point.
…
Take a deep breath, and prepare to receive the Message:
…
Ok, J.K. Kidding! Call me a tease, but I feel the urge to keep you in suspense a little longer…
It occurred to me that high school proms are like modern-day versions of Araby–you know, the 19th-Century short story by Irish author James Joyce. Just like Joyce’s protagonist, you’re young, full of hormones, and ready to, um, “come-of-age”–and Prom is your very own Arabian market where you just know all of your youthful lusts will be fulfilled.
But does it ever work out that way? No! Or to be fair: Rarely!
It’s supposed to be this super-romantic night, yet for all-too-many youths, it doesn’t exactly go the way they really hoped it would go.
Tragically too often, the evening instead ends with disappointment and frustration…
And this singular thought, pithily summarized by the 1998 Rolla High School prom theme that almost made it past the teachers, passing through their mind:
(Read with the most depressing Redneck accent you can muster in your head:)
Figure 2: Spoken like a true prophet: “I Keep Mastubatin…” (sic).
“I can’t believe you’re asking me to be your Best Man!
I promise you wont’ regret it…”
“Now, if somebody could kindly lend me a Bible…”
*Crickets.* Nothing but ----- crickets from my captive audience.
I found myself staring out into the vast sea of Christian faces that had gathered for the wedding reception of my good friend and faithful TPOTS fan, Roger-Dodger,1Not his real name. If you are Roger-Dodger and would like to know where the heck that name came from, let me just put it this way: roger-DoDGer. There, make sense now? and, I, as his best man, was dying up on stage as I tried to give him and his beautiful bride the toast of a lifetime. And none of these Jesus-heads had not a single Bible amongst the lot of them.
I was starting to feel like a regular citizen of the fine city of Sodom, if you know what I mean.2If you don’t know what I mean, I meant that I was feeling “sodomized” by the situation.
To make things worse, the wedding reception was being held at the headquarters of one the larger Christian youth ministries in the Kansas City area where the bride worked. So forgive me for thinking that when I needed to quote the Good Word at a Christian wedding in the offices of a Christian organization, that there would be a plethora of copies of the Holy Scriptures at hand.
But nooooooo. Jesus was nowhere to be seen to save me from my own over-thought and somehow strangely sexually-charged speech.
Wait.
Let me back up to the beginning, though…
It’s not like I just showed up and started orating extemporaneously out of my anus, you see. I had found out at Thanksgiving that I would have the honor of being R-D’s best man. And, yes, I had been ruminating over the toast I would have to inevitably give during every waking moment since that point in time.
Like, literally. Or almost literally–every single time I went for a run in those 5 intervening months, The Speech is all I would think about. I wasn’t going to let my homeboy down, oh no I wasn’t!
And I had it figured out, too! You see, R-D and I happened to inadvertently, umm, “pursue” many of the same fine young Christian women during our college days at Kansas State.3Largely unsuccessfully. And for the record, not sexually, you ----- pervert. So, in my infinite King Solomon-like wisdom, I thought that our failed romantic conquests would be the perfect topic around which to craft a wedding speech.
Now in my defense, my angle was “see, you and I have great taste when it comes to the ladies: the one thing that they all have in common is that they all had excellent Christian character–just like your current bride!”
But in retrospect, it is much more obvious that the crowd wouldn’t follow my train of logic, and instead–as one friend in the audience later shared with me–what they heard was, “Damn, man, do remember back in the day when we were a bunch of stud-muffin horn-dogs?!? And alllllll those fine honeys we used to chase? Aww, yeah, buddy!”
As you can imagine, this gathering of devout Christian folk was not bemused. And given that it was a dry wedding, I found myself denied even the most basic of Best Hu/Man Rights: being able to turn to an alcoholic beverage for a bit of extra liquid courage.
Luckily, before all hope was lost and the entire wedding ruined, I managed to pivot to talking about the many wonderful qualities of the bride herself (instead of all these “other women”), and despite going completely off script, this strategy proved to be much more popular with both her and the crowd than–and I repeat–talking about all the other women your future husband lusted after.
And now, all I had to do was bring it home with a quick wife-themed quote from Proverbs:
“A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies…Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”
Proverbs 31:10,30
Pretty solid, right? Yeah, believe it or not, I do have some good judgement in me.
But why would I actually need a physical Bible when–full disclosure–I could have easily recited this by heart?
Because, my thirsty friend, there is nothing like a bit of prop comedy to really get the marital celebrations flowing.
After a rather awkward 3-minute delay, one of our friends tracked down seemingly the only Bible in the entire place. Using this to my advantage, I pretended to be super-nervous, thus causing me to “accidentally” start my Biblical quotation maybe just a verse or two too early:
“Let beer be for those who are perishing, wine for those who are in anguish! Let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more!”
Proverbs 31:6-7
*rimshot*
Unlike my attempt at lightly riffing on ambiguously implied fornication, I absolutely killed it with the crowd with this one:
“Ha ha! It’s funny because it’s true! Many marriages, long term, will drive one to drinking.”
“Tee-hee! Oh, the misery, anguish, and perishing that awaits the married man! That’s hilarious!”
“But seriously though, we could use some beer up in here, having to listen to this guy…”
The point of the story is, if you’re gonna give a wedding toast, the best advice I can give you–and, more importantly, my younger self–is to make it all about the bride. And, even though my where-is-the-much-needed-alcohol-up-in-here humor landed with the audience, I fervently repeat Toast Tip #1: keep it all about the bride–you gotta treat a wedding reception with a little more sanctity than an open mic night a bar, amiright?
Anyways, despite the several glaring errors in judgement that I made when trying to fulfill my duties as Best Man, I couldn’t be prouder to report that 15 years later, and the only thing R-D and his wife are drunk on are each other’s love!
Happy Anniversary, you Fatties!4This makes much more since if you 1) know their last name, & 2) speak a particular foreign language.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to find a fermented drink5Kombucha. I’ll be drinking kombucha because my vegan ass can’t handle real alcohol any more. to imbibe in your honor…
Not his real name. If you are Roger-Dodger and would like to know where the heck that name came from, let me just put it this way: roger-DoDGer. There, make sense now?
“Oh sh*t…” you say, as you do your best Fred-Savage-from-the-Princess-Bride impression. “Is this a pooping story?”
“This is a pooping story, isn’t it…”
If you’re lucky, you probably have little to no memory of your early childhood years. If you’re unlucky, you might be cursed with remembering every ----- detail since birth. And if you’re real unlucky, you could be stuck with all-too-vivid recollections of those wonderful Golden Years1You bet your un-wiped ass that was urine pun! of potty training.
Guess which shat-agory I fall into? Yup, you can bet your darned left butt-cheek that I remember way too much from that particular era in my life. But the good news is…wait for it…yup, you guessed correctly again! There is a gem of life advice buried somewhere in all that brown gooey muck, and I’m about to dump–er, I mean, “share” it with you right now!
Our 3-year-old daughter, The Younger, is pretty well potty-trained at this point, but she hasn’t quite mastered the art of wiping herself up yet. And since she is like her old man, she typically is left on the potty to do her business for extended of periods of time while her caretaker takes care of other business elsewhere in the house.
But instead of patiently waiting for someone to come clean her up when she’s done, she’s gotten into the habit of just wandering around the house casually with her pants around her legs, butt-cheeks red from sitting to long hanging out and all, loudly proclaiming, “CAN YOU WIPE ME UP PLEASE?!?”
I got to thinking about this the other day, and realized that I am extremely grateful that her little habit is so low-key. Well, relatively speaking, that is.
You see, she could have turned out just like me…
By the age of 3, I, too, had mastered the art of defecating in receptacles previously designated for just that. But unlike The Younger, I had actually become well-versed in the whole wiping thing by then. The only problem, though, was that I just didn’t know when to quit.
Like, literally–I had no clue when it was okay for me to be done wiping. So what did I do? I got a second opinion from someone with better judgement than me, of course!
My standard post-poo protocol was to wipe 2-3 times, then traipse down the hall shirt-on-but-buck-naked-below-deck to the living room where Mom was, do a 180, bend over with my cheeks spread in her general direction, and loudly inquire “AM I CLEAN YET?!?” Then repeat as necessary, until she gave me a clean butt of health.
This probably went on for a good few months without anyone batting an eyelash until one day my much older sister pulled me aside and shared her most precious life-tip with me:
“If you look at the toilet paper after you wipe, you can tell roughly just how clean dat ass be. And you just simply have to keep wiping until it comes back clean–no need to involve our poor mother in this!”
The Ancient wisdom of an older sibling
Now I have had a few experiences in my life that just shook my worldview to the core. This was indubitably the first one of these.
My mind was simply blown away by the genius of it all. And best of all, I wouldn’t have to choose between living with my mother for the rest of my life or smelling like crap all the time.
I recall excitedly sharing this amazing revelation with my slightly older brother One Skinny Jay, and he was like “Pfffft! Everyone knows that! How did you not know that?!?”
Well, excuuuuuuuse me, mister. Apparently, no one in my life could have bothered enough to share that ----- memo with me!
So, from that very moment in time, I knew that I never wanted any child in my purview to ever suffer the indignation that I did of having to regularly perform the uncouth ritual of what I now refer to as “Behold The Gobbler.” Always and forever, I told myself, I would solemnly vow to pass on to my nieces & nephews–and eventually my own children–Life Lesson #1: How To Wipe Your Ass Clean When You’re All Alone.
Speaking of which, I think it’s about time I sat down and had a little chat with The Younger…
Do you like Oreos? I bet you do. Especially if you’re [Whole-Food] Plant-Based like me. They’re a classic treat that simply can’t be beat!
For my part, I distinctly remember falling in love with Oreos at a young age…unfortunately it was during, um, “a particular era in my life.”
Shortly after discovering The Joy of the Big O’ around the age of 3, I had a rather indulgent session with them that involved probably a third of a package and the milk to match the task. Hey, it seemed like a ----- fantastic idea at the time, so sue me.
Well, shortly after “at the time” I experienced one of my earlier life lessons in “consequences of my actions” (surprise, surprise). Not to be too gratuitous, but…yeah, it wasn’t quite diarrhea, nor was it quite solid, rather, my poo was a 4th state of matter more akin in nature to flubber.
Actually, after all these years, I just realized the perfect description for it: “super slow-motion semi-solid diarrhea.” Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
Anyways, after all the damage was done, I was going through the usual steps of running out to Mom with my short shorts around my cowboy boots for inspection. But unbeknownst to me, there was a hanging chad hiding in one of my crevices, and I only discovered Chad when he became dislodged and landed squarely on my calf before preceding to sloooooooowly creep down to my ankle.
Now, I don’t remember much that happened after that, but I do recall gagging like I had never gagged in my life before or since, and I think I…I think I touched it. It was traumatizing. I couldn’t eat Oreos again for another 4 year or so.
…aaaaand that’s it. That’s the story.
Sorry, I meant The Story, as in “That’s The Story that I actually told–out loud–to everyone sitting with me in Kramer Dining Hall back during my freshman year of college, thinking it to be a relevant tale after making myself the ingenius dessert of crushed Oreos in a glass of milk. You know…the kind of story that begins, ‘This chocolatey mush reminds me…’ “
And guess what? Now you, just like all 15 of my [former] friends and acquantainces present on that fateful day, have officially been cured of your Oreo addiction.
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