When I got COVID, it took me about 5 days to get over it.
Getting over what happened during those 5 days? Oh, about 6 months and counting…
‘Twas the summer of ’22 when I came down with the 21st-Century Flu. What do I do, oh what do I do? Well, for starters, I had pretty high expectations, as anachronistically inspired by this spot-on SNL sketch:
Let’s just say I want a ----- refund…
I run away from problems, that’s what I do (on the advice of my medical professional wife)! It seems that instead of running away from problems, I instead ran into an entire ----- Soap Opera with at least 4 major conflicts to be resolved, a couple of plot twists, and–best of all, and just in time for Spooky Season–3 completely different usages of the term ‘ghost’!
So, yeah, I’m gonna have a story or two to tell. Ladies and gentlemen, get your shot glasses and finest liquors out and get ready to drink every time you hear the G-word, as I present to you: The Long Tale Of COVID…
Just Another Boring COVID Story? Now That’s The Spirit!
Just Another Boring COVID Story? Now That’s The Spirit!
4Min Read
No one wants to have an exciting story about getting COVID.
But if you can live to tell about it, it’s TOTALLY worth it…
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 sanguine3I’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…”
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…
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.
Ask your doctor (or lawyer) to see if The Bus is right for you…
Ahhh…public transportation. Even if I’ve become a man of somewhat modest means, that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a free ride on a regular basis. But the benefits of burning less fossils fuels, wasting less of my hard-earned blogging dollars on gas, and helping reduce traffic congestion are just the beginning of the myriad benefits of pub-trans.
However, I would argue that not everything in this world has to be so utilitarian. Sometimes, riding the bus can be an art form–or more accurately, a form of entertainment–in its own right. So please, I invite you to sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride as a regale you with a threesome of pointless Tales From The Bus…
“Why didn’t you catch the bus in front of me, you big jerk?!?”
I was shocked. Simply shocked. I was just trying to catch a ride to yet another one of my PhD-level classes (#HumbleBrag), and the last thing I expected was to have to defend my choice of bus in a court of law. I’m no law student, buddy–I’m just tryin’ get my physics doctorate on here, mmmkay?
I mean, whew! This bus driver was a real prick and a half. Like, Dude, your job is to stop the bus and let passengers on and off. And that’s pretty much it.
But, nooooo, not this asshat. He took it upon himself to demand a full and thorough explanation as to why, in the rare instance of two buses running the same route hitting a bus stop 90 seconds apart, that I chose the second bus instead of the first one?
Goodness gracious, heavens forbid I inconvenience Princess Bus Driver!
Ok, first off, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have to justify jack sh*t to the cracker-jack behind the wheel of the bus. My tax dollars pays for his salary. Homeboy works for me.
But in case you’re wondering, I had a ----- good reason for catching the second bus. And because I like you, Dear Reader, I will share that reason with you.
You see, in order to get to the bus stop in question, I had to cross a busy intersection first, and then walk/run about 100 feet. If I was real desperate to get to class, and the first bus was my only option, then maybe it would have been worth the risk playing Frogger with the heavy traffic that morning–i.e. jaywalking and putting my life, health, and well-being in harm’s way.
But, guess what? Lo and behold, as I watched my bus roll up to the stop, leaving me to impatiently wait for the crosswalk light to turn in my favor, I spotted a second bus barrelling towards the yellow light at the intersection. ‘Twas but a miracle! Two buses back-to-back? I couldn’t believe that the gods of public transportation were shining down their favor on me…again!
So, given the choice, no duh, I was not going to risk my life to catch that first bus, when I could calmly cross the street and casually stroll up and catch the second one.
Even saying all this out loud feels pretty stupid. I mean, it makes complete sense and was totally the wise and right decision, but…it’s just so…asinine.
Now imagine your butt-face bus driver surprise attacks you with his overly aggressive line of questioning: “Why did you make me stop?!? Why!?! WHY?!? ANSWER ME, YOU WORTHLESS, INCONSIDERATE, SELF-ABSORBED LITTLE TURD!!!”
Ah, I guess the point of the story is that they really shouldn’t let their bus drivers smoke meth before their shift. Or maybe it was steroids? Homeboy had some serious ‘roid road rage going on…
“Oh, you got assigned the Inetianbor v. Western Sky Financialcase study, too!?! Man, I’ve heard we’re in for quite the treat–it’s a real classic!”
I may not have been a law student, but given that my university could brag that its law school was tied for #23 best-in-the-nation,1This statement was supposed to carry much more heft, as I was confusing the law school for the business school, which is ranked much higher. But, alas, that’s what happens when you fact-check yourself before you fact-wreck yourself. it should be no surprise that at least one of these budding douche-bags would take the same bus home at the end of the day as me.
The real problem, though, is when you get more than one of these guys in the same place at the same time.
And in this case study, the particular place was the door to the bus, as they decided to pause embarking the vehicle to have a full ----- conversation about their common class work. Yup, we’re all waiting for these oblivious jack-holes to finish debating the merits of mandatory arbitration in the context of financial law so the bus driver could close the door and we could all get home to dinner.
While the vast majority of us riders were collectively rolling our eyes at these guys, our heroic bus driver jumped into action.
In the most incredible gravelly “old female smoker” voice you’ve ever heard, she simply yet forcefully stated: “GET ON THE BUS.”
This may only sound mildly interesting to a third party hearing this story, yet to witness this glorious moment when The Smoking Bus Driver put the two idiot law school students in their place had quite the emotional impact.
In fact, in our household, it’s become a bit of a shorthand meme for any time we need to communicate “get on with it already!”–and it’s actually surprisingly versatile:
Is your spouse telling yet another long-winded pointless story around the dinner table instead of saying grace?
“GET ON THE BUS.”
Is your child stalling instead of going to bed on time yet again?
“GET ON THE BUS.”
Is your significant other bogarting the only comfortable toilet seat in the house for the third time today?
“GET ON THE BUS.”
Have the, er, “warm up” activities in the bedroom gone on just a bit too long?
“GET ON THE BUS.”
Indeed, from supper-time prayers to foreplay, the possibilities are endless…
“That’s a lot of rakes!”
In full disclosure, it wasn’t me thinking to myself that the amount of rakes this homeless (looking) guy was struggling to get on the bus was impractically large. No, unfortunately, this story I could only experience second-hand from another grad student in my department, Adam.
Adam had once lived near where I did, and after discovering this commonality over a couple of beers, we found ourselves bonding over experiences we had on the G bus.
Of important note, the main nodes for the G bus were our campus and the local, modestly-sized mall. It was there at University Mall that we would both often catch the bus.
One of these times, when Adam was chilling on the bus waiting for it to depart, this random guy comes aboard carrying between 15-20 rakes. Now this was only half-surprising since at that time there was a Rose’s, a medium scale lawn, garden, and home improvement store, at the mall.
But, naturally, so many questions abounded. Like, was this guy starting a lawn-care business or what? And why was he in such hurry? As we all know from our first story, he could always just catch the next bus.
Adam put it out of his mind as the bus pulled out and was on its way. “Might as well try to take a quick nap…” he thought to himself.
However, two blocks later, he was jolted awake by flashing lights and sirens. Or as Kermit T. Frog would put it:
“Please pull the bus over, sir” he heard coming from a megaphone outside the bus.
As soon as the bus pulled over, three cops boarded and swarmed Our Dude, promptly and swiftly hauling his rake-hauling ass down to the station.
Yes, you read that situation exactly right. Not only did this dude think “hey, I’ll just walk out of Rose’s with a cumbersome amount of rakes without paying for them,” but also “you know what would make a great getaway vehicle? A bus!”
I repeat: first, this guy decided that the most lucrative items he could steal were RAKES. Second, he literally chose to take off with more than he could carry.
And last but not least: he used a ----- bus as his getaway vehicle.
You know what I think? I think those law students are wasting their time on Inetianbor v. Western Sky Financial. No, their time would be much better spend studying the psyches of criminal masterminds like this guy…
Oh, what’s that? You’re absolutely insisting that there be a moral to this story?
Well, I suppose if there were a point to this story it would be that maybe–just maybe–if you’re going to steal rakes, at least be reasonable about it. Stick to five or six at a time–max. That way you can make a run for it when the po-po inevitably pull your getaway bus over.
Trying to full-on sprint with 15 rakes in your arms, though? Come on, good sir, don’t be ridiculous…
This statement was supposed to carry much more heft, as I was confusing the law school for the business school, which is ranked much higher. But, alas, that’s what happens when you fact-check yourself before you fact-wreck yourself.
What do you do when someone wants to pay you to eat poo?
Oh, what to do, what to do, what to doo-doo…
“Ring! Ring!“
Great. Just great. The one night in my entire college career that I decide to go to bed before 10, and some jack-hole has to go and be blowing up the phone in my dorm room.
“Uh, hello?”
“Dude, dude, ’tis I, the Beautiful Love Muscle!1No, his initials aren’t actually BLM. Howdy!”
“Howdy yourself, BLM. Why the hell you calling me when I’m trying to get a healthy night’s worth of rest?”
“Yeah, uh, so there’s a bunch of guys here hanging out at my apartment, and…”
“…and what, you huge oaf?”
I didn’t give a crap if my impatience came through loud and clear over my landline or not.
“Well, we have a dare that we all thought for which you would be the perfect candidate.”
“Um, okay. What is it?”
I gotta admit that my ego was slightly flattered that little ol’ me was who they thought could handle this mystery challenge like no one else.
“We’ll tell you when you get here.”
“Nah, ----- that, amigo. I’m hanging up now…”
“No, wait! There’s could be a sizable amount of cash in it for you.”
The man sure did know the way to this poor college student’s heart.
“You don’t say? How much? I ain’t getting out of bed for any less than fif–“
“Two hundred fifty in cold hard cash. So are you in?”
Silence…
“Dude are you still there?”
*Ding-dong!*
BLM opens door…
“Nah man, I’m here…”
“So, it’s pretty simple: you eat some poo, and we pay you $250. Any questions?”
I couldn’t believe that BLM actually was able to keep a straight face while he suggested that I eat a steaming pile of crap, all for the mere purpose of the juvenile amusement of the gaggle of dumbasses–many of which I called ‘friends’–that had congregated at his place.
“The ----- is wrong with you man? And me??? When someone suggested, ‘Hey, let’s see if we can dare somebody to consume human fecal matter!’ All y’all biscuits unanimously came up with my name? Noooo, that’s no disturbing at all…”
“Aw, c’mon man! We’re offering you a quarter of a cool grand. And don’t be too offended we thought of you–after all you yourself brag about how you’re a ‘human garbage disposal’, amiright?”
“Yeah, ‘human garbage disposal’–not ‘walking septic tank’. There’s a bit of a difference there, Broseph.”
Amidst all this banter, a plot to part these fools of their money started to incubate and then hatch in mind. At that point, I thought that I had bought myself enough time. I just need to build a little more suspense…
A “Please, oh please!” spontaneously came forth from some nugget-head in the crowd.
“Yeah, you already got out of bed and traipsed over here–you might as well make it worth your trip.”
“Do it! Do it! Do it!”
All of sudden there was a chorus of jackasses all chanting their encouragement.
“Okay, okay! I’ll think about it–and on one condition: only if it’s the dung of my beloved roomie, B-Nye, Not The Science Guy–wait. What are you doing here? You’re in on this scheme, too???”
B-Nye just gave me his trademark sheepish chipmunk grin.
“Ok, whatever. Let’s just go somewhere private and discuss it. If all y’all need us we’ll be at Jen & Em’s2Female friends of ours who just happened to live in the apartment across the hall from BLM. place across the breezeway. See you suckers in a few minutes…”
“Brownies! Brownies! You ladies got any brownies?!?”
I didn’t have time to mince any words on useless pleasantries.
“Oh, hey, it’s you two. What’s up?” Despite my brusqueness, Jen was as pleasant as ever.
“No time to talk. I need whatever brownies you might have in this apartment, stat! And whole corn–you got any whole corn?”
I could see out of the corner of my eye that B-Nye was starting to put the pieces together.
“Ahhh, I see now…so you weren’t really planning on eating one of my fresh turds? Well, that’s a relief–pun intended!–cuz I don’t think I quite have a proverbial ‘bullet in the chamber’, so to speak.”
Jen, on the other hand, had no ----- clue what we were going on about.
“Ummm…are you guys talking about eating poop? ‘Cuz one time I heard about some frat guy that ate poop, and then after that all the sororities put him on a do-not-date list. They even had Wanted-style posters printed with his picture on it stating ‘Do Not Kiss This Man!’ It was cray-cray, I say…”
“So…he got brown-listed, eh?”
“Yeah, I suppose you could say that.”
“Well, fear not, my dear Jen, I don’t plan eating poop for realz.“
“Then why are you here?”
“Those fools across the hall have pooled their money together and will pay me $250 to eat crap. Fifty of that is yours if you can help me make a fake turd out of brownies and corn, and fifty of that will be B-Nye’s to pretend it was a fresh loaf he just pinched off. What say you?”
“Shouldn’t we split it evenly 3 ways?” B-Nye piped up.
“Oh ----- off. I’m the one risking my reputation here for a measly $150. No need to get greedy.”
“Okay, well you’re welcome to any brownies you can find, but I’m pretty sure we don’t have any.”
After a solid 10 minutes of turning their apartment upside down to no avail–and twice rebuffing BLM and the dumbass mob’s knocking on the door with ‘Go away, or you’re going to scare off B-Nye’s shy chocolate prairie dog!’–we sadly came up completely empty-handed.
In the end I totes be like:
“Noooooo!”
“Sorry to disappoint fellas, but I’m out. B-Nye couldn’t produce the goods.”
I wasn’t ready to reveal to this crew that my plan to take their money and run had only been foiled by Jen & Em’s tragic lack of baked goods in their household.
“But, you thought about it. Oh, man, I can’t wait to tell every girl we know that you seriously considered eating crap!” Cody, one of the many jackasses present, was all too quick to point this unflattering technicality.
Okay. So, I guess I was ready to reveal my plan to fleece them after all.
“You big dummy, I didn’t consider eating poo for a single second! I was going to eat a fake one made out of brownies and make off with your money. I was going to literally walk away with a pocket full of cash and a shit-eating grin.”
“But you still thought about it!”
“No, you see it was actually quite a diabolical genius plan–“
“Hey guys! He almost ate sh*t! He almost ate sh*t! Tell everyone you know!”
“No–wait–oh, fudge,3While that could be considered a pun, what I’m really trying to say is ‘FUCK’. nevermind. You’re all a bunch of ----- idiots…”
The point of the story is that the world is full of turds who don’t give a crap about nuance. Appearances matter. Simple interpretations and salacious stories–those are what are usually remembered.
If something you’re thinking about doing–like, say, pretending to eat sh*t to make a few bucks–that, on the surface, may reflect poorly on your judgment and/or character, well, you better think twice before you even think once about doing it.
Later on you can lay out in great detail all you want about how brilliant you really were, but take it from me: no one will still be listening by then. No one cares about the asterisk. No one gives two toots about parenthetical statements. No one has time for your lengthy over-explanations.
It will already be too late, your good name will be forever smeared4Fecal-based pun intended…
We all hope to be remembered fondly for our charitable deeds.
But which one actually gets memorialized? Well, that depends…
“Hey Babe, I have to show you something you’re not going to believe!”
The Boss Lady and I were out for a stroll in a local park one fine evening in the summer of 2027, and she had apparently stumbled upon something that she thought would blow my mind.
“Okay, I’m going to cover your eyes and lead you to the surprise…no peeking, okay?”
I literally had no ----- clue what she was about to show me. Even when we finally stopped near the park bathrooms and she uncovered my eyes, I was no less confused.
“What the–?!? What am I looking at here?”
“Well, maybe you should read the inscription…”
I leaned over to examine the back of a beautiful park bench, and what appeared to be a limerick engraved on a immaculately-polished plaque.
My eyes skimmed over it several times, but each time only deepened my confusion. Was this some type of riddle?
“Yeah, I still have no idea what’s going on here. ‘R. Hendersen’?1I slightly modified my name to protect my privacy. Is that supposed to be me? If so, how did the heck did they get my name? And ‘depends’? Depends on what?”
“Well, first off, it’s clearly a park bench dedicated in your honor, silly!
She spoke as if it were patently obvious. It wasn’t.
“But…why?!?”
“Well, I was puzzled at first too, but I think I finally figured it out…”
“Please, enlighten me then.”
“So, do you remember back in 2020 when we were in the middle of the pandemic, and we started ordering all of our groceries online?”
“Uh-huh.” I still didn’t see what this had to do with the price of rice in China.
“And do you recall that after a few months we had upwards of 100 paper grocery bags cluttering our garage?”
“Yeah, that did get out of hand, didn’t it?”
“And since you ordered online, every single one of them had a sticker with ‘R. Hendersen’ on them so they would know it was yours when you picked them up.”
“Of course. Yet…”
“Patience, it will all make sense soon, Young Grasshopper. Anyways, between the paper bags and the pandemic, you got so overwhelmed with it all that you asked me to take care of the bags.”
“Ja, those bags took a surprising toll on my sanity…”
“Well, did you ever wonder what I did with them?”
“Uh, I always just assumed you threw them in the recycling…”
“Err, not exactly. I never told you this, but around that time, I happened to be dooms-scrolling on that site we used to call Facebook, and I randomly came across a post by a local charity requesting paper bag donations.”
“Okay…”
“Well, when I showed up with a trunk full of bags, I was surprised to learn that they needed them for delivering adult undergarments to senior citizens in our area. I was even more taken aback by how profusely the guy thanked me.”
” No sh*t? That’s crazy.”
“Yeah, apparently they were super-desperate for bags, and to him, I might as well have been an angel sent directly from heaven. I could swear he almost cried.”
“But…the park bench?”
“Oh yeah, thath. Our donation must have meant quite a bit to the local loose-sphinctered elderly folk, I guess. So much so that they must have showed their appreciation by erecting this bench in honor of their generous-yet-mysterious benefactor…”
“…’Mr. R. Hendersen’!”
“Exactly: ‘Mr. R. Hendersen’.”
“Well, apart from the fact that it should be ‘Dr. R. Hendersen’, I gotta say I’m quite flattered. Now that I know the backstory, let me re-read that plaque…”
With toilets afar from whence we sit, Shall we worry when our bowels move a bit? Nay, a million thanks to one Mr. R. Hendersen And his ample supply of much-needed Depends, Allowing us now in our pants to peacefully sh*t!
Forever Grateful, ChathaM County Council On Aging
“Hey, wait a minute! Does that mean what I think it means? And after all I did for them?!?”
The Boss Lady couldn’t help snickering a bit, taking a wee bit too much delight in confirming my fears:
“Yup. It sure sounds like to me that those old farts are literally taking a huge dump all over your good name…”
If you love her, you’ll give her whatever she needs.
Even if that “whatever” involves 8 gallons of the slippery stuff…
“Thar She blows!”
I quickly ran to the window of our humble trailer home and looked out towards the dusty-ass dirt road that connected our farm to Kansas Highway 51. Soon enough, I saw what the heck my bro, 1SkinnyJ, was going on about.
However, the image of a white whale of a car–an early-80s1I’m embarrassed to say that I don’t remember the exact year, and may have been as old as a 1978 model. Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, to be exact–barrelling down our driveway amidst a whirlwind of dirt and sand just didn’t quite compute in my head.
“What in the heck? We don’t know anybody who drives that kind of car…right?”
I turned to 1SJ, hoping he knew who might be paying us a visit on such a fine spring evening, but he appeared to be lost in thought.
“Let’s see, it’s 1998–that car must be pushing 20 years–yet from what I can make out, it’s in mint condition…”
We both stood there, frozen in suspense, as moments later it pulled up to our driveway, and out popped…
“DAD?!?” we exclaimed in unison, still not understanding what was unfolding before our eyes.
” ‘Tis I, your Noble and Beloved Father, and I come bearing gifts!”
I had never seen a bigger sh*t-eating grin on my old man’s face before in my life.
He continued: “Well, not ‘gifts’ per se, just one gift…”
His two dumbfounded sons just continued to stare blankly back at him.
“Do I really have to go all Oprah on y’all? Okay, here goes…*ahem*:”
Technically, this is an anachronistic cultural reference…
“Well…to be clear, you two get a car to share…”
Seeing as how, at the ages of 17 and 19, respectively, we were basically grown-ass men who hadn’t had their own vehicle up until that point, you can only imagine that we were pretty ----- pleased as a pair of pickles with this turn of events.
I feel I need to pause here for a sec and provide some context regarding our transportation situation at the time. You see, during the entire 1997-98 school year, we would roll up to RHS for class in Kountry Kommodities, a sweet, sweet–but somewhat awkward–ride…that looked much like this:
An artist’s rendition of what Kountry Kommodities might look like today…
“Holy shizzle, it’s even got that velvet-like interior!” 1SJ exclaimed as he peered inside our new ride.
“This day just keeps getting better and better!”
I could not contain my joy, as this was indeed one of the best unexpected and very pleasant surprises of my entire life.
Dad went on to regale us with the tale of how he was at an auction a few towns over, and saw this car, which had been owned solely by an older couple for its entire existence, and since they had mostly kept in their garage, had only 30k miles on it(!!!). He proudly recounted how he decided ‘what the heck!’ and put in a few strategic bids on, driving away with it for only $1200.
Dang straight, he should have been proud of himself–you score for your sons classic wheels like that that’s in mint condition, and for only $1200? That’s Dad of the Year level sh*t right there.
Unlike us, though, “Daisy”, our stepmom was none too pleased that he had gone out and dropped that chunk of money on a lark, but for once he put her in her place, and let her know that dammit if he wanted to do something nice for his boys, he wasn’t going to hear any crap from anyone who might think otherwise.
That there? Now that was a Dad of the Decade performance…
“Oh, one last thing, boys…”
The two of us turned our gaze away from our newfound love, and back towards the Amazing Father of ours.
“…you can do whatever you like with your car, but I will need you to drive it to work.”
Not that the “other shoe dropping” could put that much of a damper on our day, but nonetheless, the realization that our beloved Moby D*ck2If you’re curious, my censorship software can’t tell when I use words such as D-I-C-K in a non-profane manner, and will indiscriminately censor it unless I trick it by spelling it “d*ck”. would have to double as a farm truck wasn’t a pleasant one. So much for keeping it in mint condition…
…anyways, that’s how the Summer of ’98–not to be confused with the Crazy-Ass Summer of ’99–got off to a hot start.
We drove the hell out of that thing–well, 1SJ, in true big brother form, did most of the driving, and if I got lucky, I got to ride in the front seat on the rare occasion that one of his pothead friends didn’t join us for one of our many, many late-night joyrides around the desolate 5-state area.
Of course, during the day, ol’ MD served us faithfully as our farm vehicle, and surprisingly didn’t get too trashed or greasy as one might have expected under such conditions.
At least that was the case when I left my love behind in late June, as I headed off to Southern California to spend the remainder of my summer with my mom. But 1SJ was a pretty responsible guy, and I knew he loved Moby as much I did, so I was confident that our beloved white whale would be in good hands…
“So…she developed a bit of a drinking problem while you were away…”
It was early August, and my first full day back from SoCal, so 1SJ was catching me up on all that I had missed while I was gone.
“If you’re going to be driving ye ol’ D*ck to sunrise football practices, it’s important that you understand the oil situation. She’s been burning through motor oil like crazy, and you’ll need to fill her up with 2-3 gallons3Or was it 2-3 quarts? Maybe my inability to tell the difference was what led to the following events… every morning.”
“Dang, she burns more oil than gas…that’s crazy!”
“Yeah, I know, but we don’t have to really worry about it since we’re on the farm, and have plenty of 55-gallon drums of oil just laying around…”
“That makes sense…”
“…so just make sure you always have at least one 5-gallon jug in the trunk, and be sure to top ‘er off every morning before you take her out, okay?”
“You got it, dude!”
Never in my life had I encountered instructions so simple and so clear…
“That’s odd…the oil line hasn’t changed, and I’ve already put a whole gallon in…”
I stared at Moby Dick’s dipstick, slightly confused. Normally, you could pretty easily tell where the oil level was as you topped her off, but not this day.
Dad and Daisy were headed away for the weekend4The historical veracity of this needs to be double-checked, as another shit-hits-the-fan-when-the-parents-are-away story also happened under similar circumstances. and 1SJ had already took off for the day. Although I had taken a different vehicle to football practice that morning, somebody had picked it up and so our grand plan involved my grandma bringing me back out to the farm to pick up MD, and then I would ultimately meet 1SJ at the field he was plowing that day.
Okay, look, I know it sounds convoluted, but it made sense to Dad at the time, and the upshot is that I was the first one to drive her that day, so the responsibility of oiling her up fell squarely on my shoulders–and thus denying me the luxury of a second opinion in my moment of discombobulation.
I poured another gallon in, yet it still appeared that I wasn’t making any difference. I was starting to get nervous–last thing I wanted was to burn up the only reliable vehicle we had for the next few days, simply because I didn’t put enough oil in it. It would be another classic Farm F*ck-Up on my part, and I desperately wanted to avoid that if I could.
“Well…” I mused to myself, “…it’s much better to have too much than too little I suppose. Guess, I’ll just dump this whole 5-gallon container in here, and hope that the leak is slow enough that it’ll at least get us through the day…”
“SCHLUB SCHLUB SCHLUUUUUUUB…”
“Well, shoot, so much for ‘getting us through the day’!” I muttered as I rolled to a dead stop.
Not even 4 miles down the road, and I was discovering firsthand what a dying (land) whale sounded like. But given that I had no clue if I had really put enough oil in MD, I wasn’t exactly surprised when I found myself stranded on the side of KS-51–aka, ‘The Road Less Traveled.’
“Dang it, cellphones aren’t going to be commonplace for folk like us for another 2-3 years, so…I guess I better start walkin’ then, hadn’t I?”
In reality, it took me much longer than that to assess the situation in which I found myself, and only after being pointlessly pissed off at the situation for a good 15 minutes, did I realize that my ass was walking those 4 miles back to the farm, where I could call Grandma for a ride and get on with my day.
Eventually, once Dad got back into town we towed Moby back to the farm, where he could try to bring her back to life. He was only on the ground underneath her for 2 or 3 minutes before he solved that mystery.
“Let me just inspect the oil pan here…wait! What the he–?!? *glug, glug, sputter, sputter.”
Dad rolled out from underneath the car, looking like he had just made the poor life choice of going to a Halloween party in black-face.
“Who the ----- put 8 gallons of oil in this thing?!?”
“Don’t look at me!” 1SJ was way too quick to rush to his own defense. “I only put 2 gallons in her before I left for the field that morning.”
“Well sh*t, now you tell me!” That information would have been good to have had.
“Dammit, son, so you’re telling that you put another 5 gallons in it after it was already full? Sheesh, sometimes, I swear, kid…”
“Hey, at least it didn’t burn up, right? Now that it’s drained (all over you, mfffph!) to a normal level, it should be good to go, right?” I was optimistic yet that Moby D*ck had many voyages left in her.
“I dunno, maybe. 1SJ, you want to test drive her over to Hugoton5A nearby town about 15 minutes away. and see what your pothead friends are up to?”
“Sure thang, Dad!”
Sadly, that was to be her final voyage, ultimately finding herself forever beached in the church parking lot across the street from Druggie Drew’s house, never to see the black waters of the highway-ocean again…
The point of the story is, believe it or not, there is actually such a thing as too much of a good thing–and specifically in this case, that good thing was “too much lube.”
Remember this, kids, when one day you might find yourself falling head-over-heels in love with a sweet Supreme Ass–er, I mean “a sweet Cutlass Supreme”–of your very own. If you treat her to just the right amount of lube, you might get to sail the seven seas in her for years to come…
And no, if you’re wondering, this is not some kind of sexual metaphor. Just a whale of a tragic tale of a boy and his first car…
If you’re curious, my censorship software can’t tell when I use words such as D-I-C-K in a non-profane manner, and will indiscriminately censor it unless I trick it by spelling it “d*ck”.
The historical veracity of this needs to be double-checked, as another shit-hits-the-fan-when-the-parents-are-away story also happened under similar circumstances.
Yeah, except, instead of “cars” everyone in Rolla High School’s Sophomore1…or was it my Freshman year? Computer/Typing class was getting letters from their very own pen pal. But not from any old boring place like Kansas, though—we got hooked up with a sister class from Apopka High School–that’s in Apopka, Florida, my friends!
And, instead of “Oprah Winfrey”, it was good ol’ Mrs. Hansen handing them out. You remember Mrs. Hansen right? The teacher who once accused me of “murdering a baked potato“? Yeah. Her.
And, instead of “everybody” it was “everybody…except you.” As you might have guessed, that “you” here was spoken directly at me. Yeah. Me.
“Oh, boy!” I thought, “Maybe I’m so special that I get to have two pen pals!”
“So…I’m not getting a letter because I’m getting a couple of letters, right, Mrs. H.?” That was simply the only logical explanation.
“Uh…no. Well, I actually have a letter for you…”
I could tell she was searching for the right way to let me down gently.
“…I just can’t…um…give you the letter.”
I took a moment to try to figure out what in the tarnation2That’s Kansas for “the f*ck”. she was going on about.
Taking my blank stare and trembling lower lip as her cue, Mrs. H pressed forward.
“Your pen pal? Well, she wrote some inappropriate stuff…”
Hmmph. That was odd. What could this person that I didn’t even know have to say that was too much for a 15-year-old to handle?
“Surely you could give me a censored version, right? No need to leave me out in the cold here.”
“No…It was bad. Like, real bad.”
“Seriously, I don’t mind a redacted version. I’ve been so looking forward to having a pen pal–it’s been a childhood dream of mine.”
In the Five Stages of Grief, I was squarely in the Bargaining Stage. I couldn’t let this dream die so easily.
“That’s physically impossible…there would be nothing left after censorship…”
“Just a tiny hint? Please oh–“
“I SAID I CAN’T.”
Whoa. Mrs. H. wasn’t messing around.
“Please oh please?” I whispered meekly with a tear forming in my eye.
“Look, I hate to use foul language in the classroom, but I can’t seem to get my point across to you: she straight-up wrote some nasty sh*t.3Okay, I don’t think she actually said ‘sh*t’ in the classroom. But I very distinctly remember her using the term ‘nasty’. There. I said it. Now end of discussion…”
“The Great Nasty Sh*t Mystery of 1996.” To this very day it haunts me, taunting me even unto my deathbed, forever depriving me of true closure in this lifetime.
WHAT DID SHE WRITE?!? Mrs. H. was so steadfast in “protecting” me–or whatever favor she thought she was doing me–that I was I never able to get even the slightest of clues out of her.
But instead of protecting me, she only left me with an unsolvable puzzle that would go on to slowly eat away at my sanity well into adulthood and beyond. And this is all on top of adding to my long history of childhood trauma in which I was left out yet again (that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms entirely, and beyond the scope of this text, though).
Why would she do that to me? Now I’m left to forever wonder: “I may never know the exact details of that Nasty Sh*t, nay and alas, I’ll never even know the broad nature of those loathsome and despicable words sent slowly in my general direction through the old-fashioned snail mail.”
So my first assumption was that my pen pal was just foul-mouthed–you know, kinda like me, sprinkling an NC-17 word in here or there to liven things up a little and more fully express one’s self. Nothing like an occasional f-bomb to drive your point home, amiright?
I wouldn’t even minded it if she had called me a “melon-farmer“, as we all know that can also be used as a term of endearment.
But the main problem with this theory is it seems like there would have been at least some redeemable text that could have survived the censors and been passed on to me…pitiful ol’ little me…
Then there’s the idea that she was just being hateful and rude. You know, insulting my mom’s weight, farting in my general direction, calling me a cousin-loving hillbilly, telling me to kill myself. Stuff like that. Uncalled for, yes, but unimaginable? No, that is very well within the capabilities of a 15 or 16 year old girl (one with a whole litany issues, admittedly).
At the time, I had one other idea of what she might have written, and I’ll get to that in a second. First, though, I confess that only within the last year or two another possibility crossed my mind: absolute and unabashed racism.
I was (am) just a honky from Kansas after all. She? She was from the cosmopolitan metropolis of the Greater Central Florida area. If she was perhaps, say, a young woman of color, it is very possible that she had experienced enough racial trauma in her young life that she could have seen me as an anonymous outlet for her righteous anger at a very broken system that favors “people like me” at the expense of people like her.
“You cracker-ass mother ----- , putting ghosts to shame with your whiteness! Where’s my reparations, you patriarchal boot-licking he- ----- ?!?”
Ya know, your standard Caucasian-based racial slurs, combined with historic-grievance-based justified rage. Run-of-the-mill stuff, actaully.
The other hypothesis that I came up with back then was that, given that my pen pal was a she/her, perhaps…perhaps it was nasty in a, uh…”sensual context”. I mean, she was from Florida, the birthplace and world capital of erotic 1-900 phone numbers in the 90’s…it’s not that outlandish of an idea.
This is both one of my favorite and most feared scenarios I was able to fathom at the time. On one hand, can you imagine being the one to discover it?
Editor’s note: Mom, you might want to skip this next paragraph.
I chuckled very heartily at the thought of Mrs. H. getting blindsided when reading such classic lines as: “Then I’ll slide off my panties…the panties my mother laid out for me,“4 “Boy, Ima suck your ----- so ----- hard your brains gonna come out my nostrils,” and “Oooh, baby, just your fist? Honey, no. You ain’t stopping until you’re elbows-deep…”
You know, standard naughty-talk.
On the other hand…you can imagine how tortuous it would have been for a 15-year-old hormone-driven youth such as myself to know–or at least suspect–that such a letter existed, literally with my name on it, and to know that I would never be able to see it.
There’s only way to express my hypothetical suffering and woe:
Indeed, folks, the true tragedy here is not an exploding hydrogen-filled floating sea mammal, but that I–no, we–we will never know what was in that letter. We’ll never know what warranted a public school teacher to say, aloud, in class, to a student, “…that was some nasty-ass sh*t…”
“Oh, can you just imagine the look on our girls’ faces when we tell them ‘We’re going to Disney World!’???”
“Pffttt! No way, Jose! Disney is for suckers who like to be parted with their monies. The only reason we even went to Disney Land last time was because, on account of my cleverness and shear will to not accept the status quo, we were able to do it for 10% the price of what it would cost your everyday chump.”
“…plus, I hear the Disney World–you know, the one in Florida–is way better than California’s Disney Land…”
Something the Boss Lady just said snapped me back to full attention:
“Wait…Florida you say?”
*checks map*
*Double-checks map*
Sweet, sweet resolution might be only 27 minutes away…
“Wait, what are you doing in the middle of our conv–“
“LAY OFF ME, I’M BOOKING OUR PLANE TICKETS!”
The point of the story is, before you go and drop a sizable sum of money on a Disney World vacation because you’re using it as an excuse to hunt down4Auntie Amelia, this is how this post relates to the Spanish laptop post, otherwise you’ll be wondering where part 2 was until the day you die. a retired teacher of your long-lost foul-mouthed pen pal, you might want to step back and think this one through.
Young Grasshopper, the Knowledge You Seek isn’t to be found in some far-off exotic swampland called “Florida”. Nay the Knowledge may actually lie closer to home…
*Ahem*
Mrs. Hanson, if you’re reading this, I’m begging you PLEASE OH PLEASE OH PLEASE–tell me what my penpal wrote to me. I’m a grown-ass adult now. I swear I can handle the truth. No matter how nasty it may be…
Wait one sec, let me double-check my family tree…”
“I’ve never seen Titanic, and I promised myself that I never will…”
“I never drank alcohol until my 21st birthday…”
“Oh, and as a rule of thumb, I don’t date cheerleaders.”
Yes, these pompous phrases are ones that I have actually uttered…on multiple occasions each. Ugh. I can’t say I’m exactly proud that I was actually proud of these achievements.
Except that last one–yeah, yeah, the one about the cheerleaders–that wasn’t me being a pompous ass so much as, well, let me just regale you all about it and it’ll all make more sense…
In high school, I actually did have a literal rule of thumb about not dating cheerleaders. And before you go judging me, thinking I was some stuck-up academic ace who looked down up the perceived diminished intellect of your stereotypical cheerleader, to you I just say, “Slow your roll!” You have to understand that I wasn’t exactly dealing with your stereotypical cheerleaders.
I do have to wonder though, if my situation perhaps had stereotypical small town Kansas written all over it…
You see, it wasn’t so much that I was worried about eventually having average-IQ children if I were to date–and heavens forbid–marry a cheerleader. I was more concerned about having kids with the right number of fingers and toes, if you will.
As it were, during my time roaming the hallowed halls of Rolla High School, an ungodly percentage of the cheerleaders were…uh, how do I put this? Um…they were my cousins.
So, statistically speaking, if I were to blindly go out with a member of the RHS Spirit Squad,1Or whatever the hell we called it back then. I would have been running the very real risk of stumbling into some good old-fashioned inbreeding. Yee-Haw, Milo-Farmers, Yee-Haw!
Not to brag or anything, I would say that I may have been in the running for “Most Kansas High School Experience” award. Like they say, “If you ain’t kissing yer kousin, then you ain’t Kansasing right…”
“Wait, she wasn’t technically off-limits!”
There, I went ahead and pre-emptively expressed mild outrage for you. I wouldn’t say that I was fibbin’ or anything, but…but, well, that whole “cousin” thing comes with a few asterisks. And I hope you’re not mad at me for being rather liberal with how I define my family tree.
Now without further ado, allow me to give you the run-down of ~55% of the RHS Cheerleaders between 1995 and 1999, and then you can cast judgement upon my soul (for the sake of privacy, we’ll only be using first names here):
Mendee: First cousin. Since we shared the same last name, yeah, it would have been pretty obvious that we were Kissin’ Kousins.
Marcee: Younger sister of Mendee; first cousin. Again, the whole problem of having the same last name.
Whitney: Second cousin. I think that’s the right term…our dads were first cousins. Our grandmas were sisters. We have the same great-grandparents–whatever that term is, we have enough common DNA that sophisticated city folk would have indubitably looked down their noses at such a cozy familial relationship.
Erica: First cousin…of Whitney; second cousin. *checks notes* Er, that should actually be Step-First Cousin/First Step-Cousin of Whitney. Her mom married my dad’s cousin. So…common DNA? Not that we knew of! Nonetheless, we might have been “cousin enough” in the eyes of the law, so it was better not to risk it.
Patti: First cousin…to my step-siblings. So we’re back to the whole “Are we “Step-First Cousins or “First Step-Cousins?” debate. In this case though, my dad married into their family instead of the other way around (i.e. I’m the proverbial red-headed stepchild in this scenario). Though I suspect that detail doesn’t really change the state of affairs much…
Lisa P.: First cousin…to Patti. My cousin’s cousin is still my cousin, right? What about my step-cousin’s cousin? Okay, at this point maybe I’m stretching the definition of ‘cousin’ pretty thin. I feel like if only she was my step-cousin’s step-cousin, then I would have been in the clear.
Though, now thinking back, there was actually a brief period my Sophomore year I thought about asking her out. So either I’m completely inconsistent when it comes to identifying who my actual cousins are, or I’m the type of guy who wouldn’t let a little 23andMe get in the way of a good time. Though I don’t know which interpretation would be less offensive…
Kate: Not a cousin. I didn’t date her, but at least I got one good kiss in! Though, the legitimacy of even that is questionable. But again, hey, at least our family trees weren’t intertwined, something that, as you can see, shouldn’t be taken for granted in this here part of the country.
“Ashont’a”:2Not her real name, dummy. Not a cousin; never went to RHS. I did date her, though, and yeah, you could say that I got a couple real good kisses in.3So good, in fact, that they both got her pregnant.
So, about “Ashont’a”…yeah, I guess I kinda forgot that my lovely wife4AKA “The Boss Lady”was a cheerleader when she was in Junior High,5…in a state far away from Kansas a fact that I can indubitably attribute my amnesia to how embarrassed she is by this secret from her past. Welp, either way, I guess this revelation blows a huge hole in my whole “I don’t date cheerleaders” excuse for a total lack of love live in high school.
Oh, and if it wasn’t clear from context, let me be absolutely clear here: I didn’t date her while she was a cheerleader. Good heavens, I don’t want Chris Hansen mysteriously showing up on a barstool in my kitchen with a camera crew or anything…
The point of the story is, Young Grasshopper, if you wait long enough, a smart, funny, beautiful—and kind!— cheerleader might just come your way one day. And if you’re real lucky, she won’t even be your second step-cousin’s step-first cousin…
I guess what I’m trying to say is…Happy Valentine’s Day to my very own and very wonderful former-cheerleader-not-my-cousin-wife. To you a say:
“Give me an ‘I’! Give me an ‘L’! Give me an ‘O’! Give me a ‘V’! Give me an ‘E’! Give me a ‘U’! What does that spell? ‘Rah! Rah! Rah! I LOVE U!'”
Oh, and also Happy V-Day to all you non-cousin-lovers and cousin-lovers6Who am I to judge your love? alike. After all, “Love is love is love,” amiright?7As an unrelated bonus trivia fact, I was really planning on getting in a zinger about “as a rule of let’s-try-not-to-have-kids-with-fused-thumbs”, because, ya know…incest-induced-birth-defects-based humor and all that.
UPDATE/CORRECTION: My sources confirm that there is at least one more name to add to the list…
Lisa O.: No relation to Lisa P; first cousin (to me). Seriously, even dating a cheerleader in another town wasn’t a safe strategy–while I was a Freshman, she was busy being a Junior High cheerleader in the neighboring metropolis of Hugoton. I just couldn’t catch a break.
Our mothers are sisters, so the “Same Last Name” issue never came into play, but obviously the whole “we share roughly the same amount of DNA as half-siblings” thingy is quite the deal-breaker…
Content created on: 11/12/13 February 2022 (Fri/Sat/Sun)
As an unrelated bonus trivia fact, I was really planning on getting in a zinger about “as a rule of let’s-try-not-to-have-kids-with-fused-thumbs”, because, ya know…incest-induced-birth-defects-based humor and all that.
Hey all you bureaucratic fat-cats down at the DMV!
Yeah, that’s right, I got a bone to pick with you…
It had fiasco written all over it from the start. Then again, it wouldn’t be a trip to the DMV if there isn’t at least some level of extraneous drama, now would it?
You see, normally for a Kansas teenager, the mere act of turning 16 would be enough to earn one’s driver’s license. Heck, we had all been unofficially driving for 5+ years at that point–or at least those of us had the privilege of being born into a state of child lab–er, I mean to say “the privilege of growing up on a farm.”
So in that sense, yes, I was a “normal” Kansas teenager. Double heck–I had been driving1My definition of “driving” here is rather broad, up to and including sitting on a parent’s lap and being allowed to steer while they ran the pedals. for 10 years by the time my Sweet Sixteen rolled around.
Yet, lo and behold, there I was almost 3 months after my birthday, and I was still undocumented as the day I was born. “Why?” you may ask?
Because just like the rest of my life, the simple task of passing a major life milestone necessitated an overly complicated plot line for a back story. Noooo, it just couldn’t be straightforward, now could it?
I should have taken Driver’s Ed the summer after 8th grade alongside my other Kansan colleagues. I should have been handed my Learner’s Permit long before that summer was over. And I should have been able to watch that Learner’s Permit magically transform into a bona fide Driver’s License right before my very eyes on my 16th birthday.
The problem? Though I was living in Kansas that particular summer, I was technically a citizen of California, at least in the eyes of the law. That was the Summer of the Custody Battle of ’94, and it wasn’t until that Battle ended in early August when I would officially be a tax-paying Kansan. But by that time, well, I had already missed the boat. And by “boat,” I mean that land-yacht Chevy Suburban that U.S.D. 217 used for their Driver’s Ed classes.
Well, you can see that my teen life was already complicated enough between the custody battle and being denied the full trappings of a Learner’s Permit. And, in the words that make absolutely no sense to anybody who has ever lived in Kansas, “it all just went downhill from there…”
Where to start, where to start? Oh, how about scheduling? The whole reason that I was 16.25 years old and still license-less was because of the “2-4pm, every-other-Thursday” hours that the nearest DMV offered for driving tests. So the first appointment I could make was directly correlated to the first day I wouldn’t be stuck in school at that oddly specific time frame: i.e. Spring Break.
It’s not like I would have been in Cancun otherwise. But still, I had fields to plow–and no, that is not a sexual euphemism–and a trip to Hugoton to take my DL test was going to annoyingly eat into my plowing productivity.
Putting our farming grievances aside, Dad dutifuly pulled my ass off the tractor that fateful day and chauffeured me to my appointment in my step-mom’s hyper-futuristic Eagle Vision.2Because y’all know that the Eagle Vision was the bomb-diggity of cars back in that day! But when we showed up to the Steven’s County Department of Transportation–ok, I confess that in B.F. Egypt-Middle-of-Nowhere Kansas we weren’t even sophisticated enough to have a proper DMV–we ran into an even more serious issue: identity fraud.
Well, maybe not so much as “fraud” as “parental negligence:” no one seemed to really know what my Social Security Number was. I have no idea where the ----- Dad got that number from, but it sure wasn’t mine. Unless…unless they gave out the same number to all Roberts born in Kansas in 1980? Well, at least me and this other guy had that much in common, which may have just been a coincidence. But, no, I was not that Robert, the rightful owner of what I had thereforeto thought to be my SSN.
Somehow, some way, between Dad and the DOT, they eventually figured out my correct number, but in the interim there was a moment there where I truly wondered if I had been swapped at birth…or maybe I had got lost in the system and was, as they say “undocumented”…or was I perhaps a clone, only being grown so the Original Me could harvest me for my body organs as needed…oh, how my mind digressed.
Eventually, after acing the written and eye exam portions of the whole charade, I got my opportunity to go on the World’s Most Awkward Date with a certified driving instructor (famously trained in all things automobile). Yes, I speak of none other than The Road Test.
Of course I was nervous, but for the most part I felt like I was actually kinda nailing it. Until…
Okay, so first you need to understand that Hugoton was literally a “One Stoplight” town. And I was doing just fine until we got to The Stoplight, and I had to make a left turn onto Main.
Light turned green. I paused. I looked. I waited. Oncoming traffic came on, and then finally, it was all clear.
But as I turned left, I took it a little too wide. And I realized halfway through the turn: “Aw fudge, I’m turning into the far lane. I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be turning into the near lane.” [In audio slow-mo:] “Nooooooooooo!”
A millisecond later my inner monologue continued: “Well shit, if I correct it now, I would have to swerve hard to make it to the proper lane, and it would be, as the youths say, ‘totes obvs’ to Mr. Instructor that I had done ----- up.”
“Best to just play it cool and hope he didn’t notice,” I mumbled to myself, as I pretended like I was supposed to do what I had just done…
“Okay, nice job parallel parking. Now just release the parking brake, and we’ll head back to the headquarters. and wrap up the paperwork!”
Oh my god, I couldn’t believe it. Despite my turn-lane screw-up, it looked like I was home-free and bound to be licensed within the hour.
The “Can You Parallel Park/Do You Know Where The Parking Brake Is?” tests were the last items on that clipboard-carrying melonfarmer‘s checklist, and I had aced both of those with flying colors. Nothing was going to stop me now.
With the bravado and hubris of someone who had just kicked some ass and taken some names, I reached down to pull the parking brake release…only to come up empty-handed.
“The fu—?!? What? How? Where? Why is the brake release not here???”
“Son, if we can get going? We need to get back to HQ before they close up shop.”
“Um, yeah, about that…”
It was dawning on me that I had never actually used the parking brake release handle on that car before, and had just assumed it would be in the same spot as in every other vehicle that I had ever been in.
But this fancy-ass, hyper-futuristic Eagle Vision? I guess they forgot that basic part when they were designing their sweet ride. Because it simply did not exist.
And thus, with the parking brake firmly stuck in place, I found myself firmly stuck in a very embarrassing situation. So embarrassing, in fact, that I did the most embarrassing thing a man could do in that moment: ask another, more knowledgeable, man for help.
“Um…so I kinda can’t find the release. Would you be able to help me out here?” I humbly petitioned Mr. Instructor.
“SIGH. Okay, swap seats with me and I’ll help you out of this pickle.”
Well, it turned out Mr. Expert couldn’t figure out the riddle any better than I could:
“Oh, uh, yeah. That is odd. The release handle should be right here. Yet it isn’t…”
“Wait, how do you not know this??? Aw man, now we’re really screwed!”
We then proceeded to turn that sweet, sweet ’94 Eagle Vision inside out and upside down searching for some release mechanism of any kind, sadly all to no avail.
We were growing ever more desperate by the minute…
So desperate, in fact, that we then collectively did the most embarrassing thing a grown-ass man and a half-ass teenage boy could do: we consulted the Owner’s Manual.
I mean, have we no pride?!?
After a good 10-15 minutes of toiling in absurd futility, our sacrificial act seemed to pay handsome divedends when we came across this nugget of wisdom: “To release the emergency break, slightly angle your toe forward as you depress it further a second time.”
We looked quizzically at each other.
“What the heck does that even mean?”
“Aw, hell if I know.”
It was totes obvs that neither of us gave a shit at that point in time and just wanted to get on with our lives.
Surprisingly, it only took us about another 5 minutes of collective effort to decipher the true meaning of that cryptic message and to get the ----- thing finally released.
Needless to say, we had both been so utterly emasculated by that animate object that neither of us said not a word the rest of the way back to HQ…
“You are allowed to get penalized up to 40 points and still pass. That little stunt you pulled turning left at The Stoplight–yes, I saw you ----- that up from a mile away–that only cost you 36 points…”
Finally safe and sound back at HQ, Mr. Expert Instructor was going over the results of the road test with me.
“Whew! That was close! Well, all that matters is that I passed on my first try and won’t have to wait until summer to come back and take the test again…” I didn’t see the need to wait any longer for my hard-earned victory lap.
“…and I had to knock off 5 points for not knowing how to release the parking brake.”
“But you didn’t either!”
“Erm, I wasn’t the one being tested…”
“Wait, then that means–38, 39, 40, 41,42…awww ----- …”
“Sorry son, you failed…”
The point of the story is that I hereby call for the immediate drafting of and subsequent passing of by the Kansas State Legislature, SB42–also known as Robert’s Law–a bill “outlawing any testing relating to and/or pertaining to knowledge of the application of and/or the mechanisms of release of vehicular parking brakes, in the course of issuing driving identifications and permits by the great state of Kansas.”
Let me reiterate that last part: this is Kansas, for fuck’s sake. We FlatLanders have no need for your fancy elitist contraptions, and it’s a violation of our children’s dignity to be tested such offensive and anti-anti-gradientist concepts!
So next time some pompous elevated-living ass-hat tries to use the phrase “It’s all downhill from here,” do just like my stepmom’s Eagle Vision did that fateful March day in 1997, and don’t you dare budge an inch from where you’ve been firmly-yet-involuntarily planted.
Nothing is “downhill from here” around here, you bunghole…
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