The Man With The Screaming Brain

Reality Bites...and so does this movie

2012-01-16T10:57:00.000-06:00

I bet if you went back and cataloged every post on this blog, you would find a surprising number of them that begin with me apologizing for not having posted in a while. Okay, so maybe it wouldn't be so surprising, given the fact that my last post is dated August 30th. Sorry about that.

But it's a New Year now and I'm back once again with a fistful of not altogether boring stories to share with you. Try to contain your enthusiasm.

I recently read an article about the movie "Reality Bites" and how the Sundance Film Festival is screening it this year as an indie classic. I'll leave the debate over whether the film is either indie or classic up to you. But it did get me to thinking about a few things.

I remember seeing the movie when it first came out back in 1991. That was back (way back) in the days before I had kids or a job and could see pretty much every movie that came out during a given year. These days I'm lucky if I make it to 3 or 4 movies a year in the theater. And I'm even luckier if more than one of those movies doesn't feature animated chipmunks.

If you haven't seen "Reality Bites," it's about a group Gen X-ers played by a group of Gen X actors including Ethan Hawke, Winona Ryder, Steve Zahn and Janeane Garafalo for some reason. The plot, what little of it there was, concerned the group facing the harsh realities (they do bite) of life after college and/or high school.

I felt a somewhat strong connection to "Reality Bites." Here was a movie about my generation. My people. Young people struggling to find their way in the world, to hold on to their ideals and integrity and not sell out to the man. Here were people, like me, who sat around endlessly discussing pop culture and dancing ironically to "My Sharona" while working crappy jobs at The Gap. For the record, I have never worked at The Gap, but I have held my share of crappy retail jobs.

At the time, I thought it was a pretty good movie. I happened to see it on cable not long ago and either the movie changed or I did. Watching it now, more than 20 years later, all I could think was "what a bunch of pretentious assholes. Why don't you quit bitching and get a real job?" Why, yes, I am a dad now. Why do you ask?

Yeah, I don't think it was the movie that changed. Viewing it now, through the lens of middle age, I couldn't help but be struck by my reaction to Ethan Hawke's character in particular. He was the rebel. The one who refused to sell out to the man as Winona Ryder's character struggled to start her career in TV or movie producing or something. In 1991 I thought he was cool. In 2012 I wanted to punch him in the face.

Maybe the movie just didn't age well. Maybe it wasn't as good as I remembered it being. I don't have that reaction to other movies of my youth. I can still watch "The Breakfast Club" and find myself identifying with Judd Nelson's bad-ass slacker Bender. Okay fine, with Anthony Michael Hall's nerdy Brian, you happy now?

The point is those characters don't annoy the hell out of me like the characters in "Reality Bites." At the time, the characters in "Reality Bites" seemed realistic to me. I knew people like that. Or at least I thought I did. Looking back at it now, there doesn't seem to be anything real about them. They are all so pretentious, narcissistic and whiny and I can't help but wonder why I didn't see it at the time.

Or maybe I did and I just didn't want to admit that it was staring back at me in the mirror.

Winter Games

2011-08-29T20:10:00.000-05:00

Finally, my dream of a motorized set of wheels had been realized. I drove around everywhere I could on that four-wheeler (and probably more than a few places I shouldn't have). It wasn't long at all before Todd talked his dad into getting him a three-wheeler and we were off. We would ride for hours, much further than we had ever gone on bicycles.

And yet still I had no helmet. Far be it for me to call into question the quality of the parenting I received as a child, but seriously, what were they thinking? I had already proven that I could break bones and do plenty of other damage on my bike, not to mention the mini-bike I crashed into the back of the Capozza's garage and the time I ran myself over with a three-wheeler (although to be fair they didn't know about that one). But with a record like that, I really should have had a helmet straight away. And pads. And armor. Oh, who am I kidding? I should never have been let near a motorized vehicle until I was 30.

Questionable parental decisions aside, I was riding and I was happy. I remember that winter we got a heavy snowfall and when that happened the snowplows would come around our circle and plow the snow so that left giant snowbanks in the center of the circle, like a humongous white doughnut. When we were younger we'd build snow forts there. But now that we had ATVs, the banks presented a new challenge.

The snowmobiles got there first of course and wore down a path, but it wasn't long at all before I got the idea to try to climb the highest snowbank myself. I revved up the engine of the four-wheeler and got a good running start. It was snowing a bit so I was wearing sunglasses to keep the snow out of my eyes and a warm hat for protection. I hit that snowbank with everything I had. And it hit me right back.

I watched the front wheels climb up to the top of the bank, then quickly realized that the weight of the four-wheeler was shifting, and not in the direction I had wanted it to. The next thing I knew, the front wheels were coming off the bank and I could feel myself starting to go backwards. It wasn't that I was that high up. The fall wasn't the problem. The problem was that when I landed I knew the four-wheeler was going to come right down on top of me. I may not have gotten good grades in science class but I knew how gravity worked. And so it did.

As I pushed the four-wheeler off of me, I came to several realizations. One was that the lens of my sunglasses had popped out and cut me just below the eye. The second realization was that the cut was bleeding quite a bit. The third realization was that my side really hurt. Fortunately I was right in front of my house so I didn't have that far to go to get home. That's when the final realization hit me: my parents were never going to let me ride the four-wheeler again.

One bruised kidney and a patched cut on my face later, my parents agreed to let me keep riding the four-wheeler, but not before they bought me a helmet. Which was a good thing. Because the crazy stunts I was going to try on that thing were only just beginning.

Next week: The Snowbank Strikes Back

Four Wheels of Fury

2011-08-15T13:36:00.004-05:00

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted a motorbike. Sure, I had my bicycle, but after awhile, that was no longer enough.

I lived in a fairly rural area and there were miles and miles of trails that went through the woods around my house, and I wanted to see them all. There were older kids all around me who owned motorcycles and they were forever cutting across the end of our driveway to get to Minard's field. The trail cut diagonally across the field, went across Barstow Road on the other side, and into the woods from there.

I had been down that trail a little bit on my bike, but there was only so far I could go before I'd have to turn around and go back. I wanted to see more.

I remember begging and pleading with my dad to let me get a motorbike. And my dream almost came true once, when I was about 10 or so, and Kevin Sampson had one up for sale. Kevin lived several houses down from my friend Todd, and he had a little 50-cc minibike that he wanted to get rid of. Sure it was small, but you've got to start somewhere. I went to my dad and begged like I had never begged before. He finally agreed, on one condition (dad was a salesman, there were always conditions): I had to learn how to ride it first, and show him that I could handle it.

Dad had finally tripped up this time. I was surrounded by people who knew how to ride motorcycles, many of whom were not as smart as I thought I was. How hard could it be? Surprisingly hard, as it turns out. About as hard as the garage wall I hit the first time I tried.

I remember for some reason we started out in the Capozza's driveway across the street from my house. I climbed onto the minibike and Kevin showed me the basics of how it worked. Nervous, but reasonably sure that I had it down, I revved it up and took off around the circle in front of my house. Then I turned onto the Park Road and headed for the other circle where the Abbotts, Clarks and Andrews lived. So far so good. I was ridin' and loving every minute of it.

Until I got back to the Capozza's house and it was time to stop. As I wheeled into the driveway and the open garage loomed large in front of me, I realized I wasn't slowing down. I also realized that in my excitement over riding around the circles without wrecking, I had forgotten where the brake was. It was okay, though, because the back wall of the Capozza's garage was there to stop me.

Thankfully, both I and the bike survived relatively unharmed, as did the garage wall. But my dreams of motorcycle ownership were dead. At least for the time being. But that didn't stop me from planning and plotting and begging to get one.

I did have one other disastrous attempt at learning to ride, this time on a 3-wheeled ATV that belonged to Darren, the boyfriend and future husband of Ann, whose parents owned the aforementioned field. It was in that field that Darren was riding around on his three-wheeler one day when I somehow managed to talk him into letting me take it for a spin. I say "talked him into" but it probably went something like this:

Me: Hey Darren, cool three-wheeler, can I try it?
Darren: Okay.

After a few basic instructions I was off (and this time I made sure to find out where the brake was). I rode laps around the field, or at least part of one anyway. You see, up until that point in my life I had only driven vehicles with two wheels - my bike, the minibike, etc. And when you are driving two-wheeled vehicles, you develop a habit of putting your leg out for balance when you go around a sharp turn. It doesn't work that way with three-wheelers.

As I rounded the corner in Minard's field that was near the end of my driveway, I instinctively put my leg down, and the back tire of the three-wheeler instinctively grabbed it and wouldn't let go. I was pulled to the ground and the three-wheeler kept on going. Yep. I, who had been a straight A and B student throughout elementary school, somehow managed to run myself over. There was even a tire tread mark that went right up my back. Fortunately my parents never found out about that one.

It wasn't until the fall of 1985, when I was just about to turn 14, that my dream finally came true. Although instead of two wheels, I found myself cruising around on four. And after my previous experiences, I was okay with that.

Hurricane Gloria pounded the East Coast that fall, making her way all the way up into Maine and putting out our electricity for a week or so. When you're a kid, losing power is kind of fun for the first day or two, but after a week of no hot water and no refrigerated food, it kind of starts to lose it's luster. I think that outage is the reason why to this day I still get really nervous when the power goes out, even though in my current house it has never stayed off for more than a few hours. I still remember that week and don't really want to re-live it.

Well, certain parts of it anyway. The power outage was bad, but my parents presented me with an early birthday present: a Honda 150-cc, four-wheeled ATV. I was so excited. It even had it's own trailer, though I wasn't sure what I'd need it for until my dad told me he wanted me to clean up all of the brush and tree branches left in the yard by the storm. See? Always a condition. I didn't care, though. I had a four-wheeler.

My first trip on it was of course up to my friend Todd's house to show off. He immediately began begging his own dad for one. It wasn't too much longer before he got a three-wheeler and the two of us were off. But first I had to clean up the yard.

There was one crucial piece of equipment that my parent's had neglected to buy - a helmet. I don't know why I didn't have one right away. It was the 80s. People had a different idea about safety back then, I guess. I did finally get one that winter, but not until I had almost killed myself first.

Next week: Winter Games

I Want a Red One!

2011-07-31T20:29:00.000-05:00

I should have written this post about a month ago, but the idea didn't occur to me until I was on vacation a few weeks ago and I couldn't do anything about it until I got home. Of course, even at the time it occurred to me it was past the date in question. I considered holding off until next year to write it but I probably would have forgotten about it by then and who knows if I'll even still be writing this blog by then anyway?

At any rate, the story I want to tell you is about the 4th of July. My son recently experienced his first fireworks display and was mesmerized by the whole thing. My daughter has seen a few displays by now so she mostly just talked through the whole thing - like she does through most things.

Sadly, none of my siblings were around, as they were off with their families watching their own fireworks or in one case at home being violently ill. But if they had been there it's a safe bet that one of us at some point during the display would have shouted out "I want a red one!" At which point the rest of us would have burst out laughing while everyone around us just looked confused. It's okay. We're used to it.

"I want a red one" is an inside joke in my family that goes back many years. I've mentioned before that my father worked for a company selling Amalie Motor Oil. One of the perks of the job was that Amalie sponsored a lot of sporting events (mostly racing as you would imagine), so we often got tickets to those events.

One of the biggest events we got to go to every year was the Oxford 200 race at the Oxford Plains Speedway. It was held every 4th of July weekend and we went (almost) every year. The best part was we got to sit up in the press booth so we didn't have to hear the noise. I don't know if you've ever been to a stock car race, but it's quite deafening. That's why NASCAR fans don't care when people make fun of them - they can't hear it anyway.

But I loved going to the races. My favorite part was the figure 8 racers. These guys would race in junked up cars around a figure 8 in the center of the track and they wouldn't stop for anything, not even each other. In other words, they were completely insane. You could always count on at least one good smash up during the figure 8 race. I was never sure how they could tell who won the race, though. Probably the only guy who survived.

After the Figure 8 came the big race and after that came the fireworks. They would put on a huge fireworks display every year and it was the only fireworks display I ever saw that had its own announcer. The track announcer - I forget his name, though I probably knew it at one point - would have his own running commentary over the PA system as the bombs burst in air.

His favorite things were the booms and, of course, the red ones. The "booms" would happen when a firework would misfire and there would be a flash of light followed by a huge ka-boom! When that didn't happen, the announcer would be disappointed: "Aww, no boom!"

And every time a new round of fireworks went up, he would shout: "I want a red one!" This was followed by an appropriate "Ooh!" or "Aah!" if he got one and a mock disappointment if he didn't.

As kids, we found this endlessly amusing. As adults, if we are together on the 4th of July, one of us will inevitably shout it out and the others will burst into laughter as a flood of memories comes crashing into our collective consciousness.

When I think back on memories like that - good memories that I have of my childhood - I only hope that one day my children will look back on their own childhoods with a similar fondness. Or at the very least with relief that dear ol' Dad didn't screw them up too badly.

Next week: Four Wheels of Fury

Things That Go Bump in The Night

2011-07-25T09:38:00.009-05:00

I recently returned from a vacation with my family, if you can call traveling halfway across the country with two small children and your mother-in-law a vacation. Still, it was good to at least get away from work for a couple of weeks and see a different part of the country for a while.

We stayed in the home of my wife's cousin, a doctor who is apparently very well paid for his efforts. The house was huge. Each of us - my wife and I, my daughter and my mother-in-law - had our own bedroom with a full bath to ourselves. By my count the house had five huge bedrooms, each with its own full bathroom, plus two half-baths on the main level and in the basement. If you had to pee a lot, this was the house for you.

My daughter is four and is of the age where she is starting to get scared of things - be they real or imagined. Infants and toddlers don't have much fear because they are too young to realize that there are things in this world that can hurt them. When my nephew was two, he would launch himself from the top of the stairs without warning, just assuming that whoever was standing on the steps below him was going to catch him. That's a lack of fear - and presence of faith - that only a child can have.

By the time we reach age four or five, we start to lose that. We start to realize that the world can be a scary place and that's when the monsters come to live in the closet. The first night we stayed in my wife's cousin's house, my daughter was afraid of being in her room all by herself. The closet door had been left open, for one thing, and that didn't help. After thoroughly inspecting the closet for monsters and assuring her that I had found none, I closed the door. She still wasn't convinced. I sat beside her on the bed an explained to her that I, too, used to be scared when I was a kid and slept at someplace new. And it's true. As terrified as I was in my own bedroom, the idea of staying someplace else was even more horrifying to me.

After getting my daughter calmed down, I started thinking about those experiences and there are two that really stick out in my mind. The first was the first time I stayed over at my friend Todd's house. Todd lived just down the street from us and his family was like a second family to me. I was over at his house so much during the day anyway that it was only natural that sooner or later I would end up spending the night.

The thing you have to understand about Todd is that he loved to play pranks on people. Usually those pranks involved convincing someone - usually his mother - of something that wasn't true, watching their reaction, then laughing hysterically. I remember being in on many of these. We'd be at his house and he would nudge me with an elbow. "Watch this," he'd say with a sly grin. "Hey mom, someone just stole my new bike."

"What?"

"Yeah, I left it out in the yard overnight and someone took it."

"I don't know how many times I've told you kids not to leave your bikes out at night, it was bound to happen."

Todd would keep going, pushing his mother just shy of the point of hysterics (which with her was not all that far to go), before he would break. He would smile just slightly or stifle a laugh and she would know instantly that he'd gotten her again. That was usually followed by some high-pitched yelling and a swat on the arm.

Well, that night I stayed at his house for the first time, I was Todd's victim. As we laid there in the dark - me in a strange room and jumping at every little sound I didn't recognize, which was all of them - Todd sensed my fear and ran with it. "What was that?" he said at nothing in particular.

"What?" I said, my ears straining to hear what he heard.

"Shh. I heard something. I think someone's outside."

"Nuh-uh," I said. "You're lying."

"No, I'm not. Shh! Listen!"

I still didn't hear anything. "Stop it!" I said. "You're scaring me." Of course he knew that. He wouldn't be doing it if he wasn't.

"They're out there," he said. "I'm not kidding. I think they're going to egg the house."

Egging someone's house was a common punishment for injustice in our part of town - real or otherwise. And because Todd's mother spent a good amount of her waking hours yelling at other kids in the neighborhood, it was not unreasonable to think that some of them might have decided to pay her back. It would not be the first time it had happened.

After an hour or so of that, I got so scared I wanted to go home. And Todd's father, Joe, God love him, got in the car and drove me back down the street to my house in the middle of the night. I'm sure Todd apologized the next day but even if he didn't it didn't matter. We never held grudges against each other for long anyway.

The other place I remember being too scared to sleep was at my Nana's house. She lived in a small house near Sebago Lake that during the day was a paradise. Toys to play with, a short walk to the beach and a Nana to spoil you rotten.

At night was a different story. When the sun went down and the lights went out and it was time for bed, Nana's house became a carnival of terrors. At least it felt that way to an easily frightened 8 year old.

The evenings weren't bad. Nana would make me my favorite dinner - spaghetti, no sauce, covered in butter. Then we'd sit in the living room and watch TV. She loved "Wheel of Fortune" and was amazed at how quickly I could solve the puzzles.

Then when it was finally time for bed I was ushered off into the guest room, which was right next door to Nana's room and was full of things that look fine with the lights on but somehow became unholy terrors the moment it was dark. Case in point: a painting of an Indian riding his horse on the plains. Actually, he wasn't so much riding as he was slumped over on his horse with a spear either at his side or in it. I always assumed he had lost the battle and was about to die but he could have just been really sad. Okay, that one looked pretty creepy even with the lights on. Bad example.

How about the statue of Jesus on the cross that hung directly over my pillow on the wall behind the bed? Nothing like trying to sleep with a beaten and bloodied savior looking down at you and quite possibly about to come to life at any moment (hey, he did it once already) and swoop from down from his lofty perch to do who knows what. It wasn't about to save my soul, of that I was quite certain. Come to think of it, that one was pretty creepy with the lights on, too.

And then there was the parrot. Or rather, a painting of a parrot that was on a piece of wood that had been varnished to a high shine. I think Nana got it down in Florida or in the tropics somewhere where they sell tacky stuff like that to tourists. Now that one was fine with the light on, but in the dark that parrot took on the shape of a monstrous face that I was sure was going to devour me if I fell asleep.

Needless to say, nights at Nana's were not the most restful nights I ever had. Oh sure, I could go crawl into Nana's bed if I got really scared, but she didn't like that because I apparently kicked a lot at night. Hey, you'd kick too if your only options for sleeping were a room filled with dead Indians and scary parrot faces or one filled with pictures including the portrait of you crying when you were four because the man working the camera said "watch the birdie" and dammit there was no birdie!

Ahem. Anyway, long story short I knew exactly how my daughter felt that night in that strange room and did everything I could to reassure her that there were no monsters around. I think I helped. Hopefully I can do the same when she gets to junior high school and has to deal with the real scary monsters in life - teenagers.

Next week: A belated 4th of July story

Squatchin' the Detectives

2011-07-04T10:31:00.000-05:00

I have a new favorite show. Well, okay, maybe favorite is too strong a word. I have a new show that I watch every week and with which I am becoming extremely fascinated. It's called "Finding Bigfoot" and it airs on Animal Planet every Sunday night.

My childhood fear of Bigfoot has been well documented on this blog. If this show had existed when I was a kid it would have scared the crap out of me. I wouldn't have been able to even watch a single episode. The name alone would have kept me far away. Find him? Why would you want to find him? Leave him alone out there in the deep, dark woods before he becomes angry and rips your face off!

But watching it as an adult, far removed from the ancient, foreboding woods of Maine to the safe, tree-lined streets of suburban Shawnee, KS, it doesn't scare me so much as amuse me. And before I go on, I have to offer a tip o' the plaster footprint to my friend Greg for turning me on to it. Thanks for making me waste an hour of my life each week, buddy!

The concept of the show is simple: four intrepid Bigfoot "experts" go traipsing around the country talking to folks who have allegedly seen the creature and use high-tech sound and video equipment to try and prove its existence. The show presents their findings in a series of recreations of the sightings followed by the inevitable trip into the woods at night using night vision cameras and sound equipment.

These four have all had varying levels of experience in Bigfoot hunting - encounters of their own, years of research on the subject and multiple viewings of "Harry and the Hendersons." There is one skeptic in the bunch - a Scully to the other three Mulders. She's a biologist and, well, isn't nearly as skeptical as you'd think she would be. Rather than screaming at the other three guys that they are all insane and should seek help immediately, she carefully considers each piece of evidence before boldly declaring that it "may or may not" be conclusive evidence of a Sasquatch.

I should point out before going any further that, although the show may be called "Finding Bigfoot," the term "Bigfoot" itself is seldom used. Instead, the team prefers "Sasquatch," often shortened to just "Squatch." Why? Probably because Bigfoot sounds too silly and not scientific enough. Yeah, that must be it.

But getting back to the team. My favorite team member is Bobo, because that name doesn't sound silly or non-scientific at all. Bobo is a grown man with long, shaggy hair who always wears a winter hat over it. He looks like Adam Arkin's character from "Northern Exposure." Or, if that's too obscure, a grown-up version of Jimbo from "The Simpsons."

Regardless of his appearance, I like Bobo because he has one job on the show and he does it well. Whenever the team interviews someone who has photos or video footage of a Squatch, the first order of business is always to try and re-create the evidence to see how easy it would be. Turns out most of the time it's surprisingly easy. More on that in a moment. When they do these re-creations, they need a stand-in, and that's where my man Bobo comes in. Whether it's re-staging someone's blurry photograph or acting out a scene from a blurry video, Bobo is always up to the challenge. If they gave out an Emmy for "Best Stand-in for Sasquatch in an Easily Re-creatable Photo or Video on a Cheesy Basic Cable Reality Show," Bobo would win it every year, hands down.

Now, about those re-creations. The first episode of the show I ever watched featured a video that a man shot at night using some sort of thermal imaging camera. They are big on thermal imaging in this show. So much so that I expected half of the sponsors to be companies who make thermal imaging equipment and was kind of surprised when they weren't. Anyway, the team interviewed the man and watched his video, then decided to try and make it themselves, to see how easy it would be to do. So far so good. Makes good scientific sense. If the video is easy to re-create, then it could just as easily be a fake, right? Not so fast there, Columbo. Things aren't always so cut and dried for the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, as they are officially known.

The video captured by this man featured a thermal image of a blob-like creature reaching up and taking something off of a stump. The man, an amateur Bigfoot hunter, set up the camera after something came scratching on the side of his tent in the middle of the night while he was out camping alone in the heart of a desolate, isolated stretch of woods. Why he didn't jump into his truck and drive like a bat out of hell back to civilization screaming in terror the whole time I will never know, because that's what I would have done.

But this man, sensing an opportunity to capture the elusive Bigfoot on film, set up his camera and placed some bait on a nearby tree stump. The bait in this case happened to be a candy bar, because Squatches are well-known for their sweet tooth. That's another peculiar quirk of this show. These guys have a laundry list of things that Squatches are known for - where they live, what they like to eat, how they kill their prey - in spite of the fact that, you know, no one has ever produced conclusive evidence that Squatches actually exist and that every "fact" they "know" could be easily explained by other creatures living in the woods that really do exist. But that's what I love about the BFRO - they never let reality get in the way of their relentless pursuit of the Sasquatch.

Just as an aside, my favorite Bigfoot factoid that I have learned so far: Squatches can often be found near telephone lines that cut through the woods. That's like a superhighway to a Squatch. And yes, that is almost exactly how one of the team members put it.

So this man sets up his camera, sets up his bait, and leaves the area, lest he scare the Squatch away. He returns to find the footage of the beast, which he later shows to the team. The team sets out to do a re-creation using their own thermal imaging camera and, of course, Bobo. Lo and behold, their footage looks almost identical to that of the amateur hunter. Do they take this as proof that the original video is a fake? Do they scoff at the man, call him out as a fraud and mock him until he breaks down in tears? Oh ho, my friend, you haven't been paying attention, have you?

You see, because the blob in the original video looks identical in size to the Bobo-shaped blob in the re-creation, that means there is no way it could be a 7 or 8 foot tall adult Squatch. Therefore, the only possible scientific explanation could be that it must be...wait for it...a juvenile Sasquatch!

Here's the secret to the BFRO, if you haven't figured it out already - everything, and I mean everything, can be possible evidence of a Squatch if only you have the keen scientific mind to twist it in just the right way so it fits your predetermined conclusion. A deer carcass? Proof. Squatches love deer. A fuzzy photograph shot from a distance on a mountaintop that looks like a dude with a backpack? Proof. It's a Squatch walking hunched over. It doesn't matter what it is, Team Finding Bigfoot will find a way to make it into proof that Bigfoot really does exist.

And that's a kind of scientific dedication you just don't see anymore.

Next week: I will be on vacation for the next two weeks and thus will cease blogging operations during that time.

Fortified

2011-06-26T22:10:00.000-05:00

One of my biggest obsessions when I was a kid was building a fort. Our house - our whole neighborhood, in fact - was surrounded by woods and it was my dream that one day I would have a secret fort out amongst the trees where no one could find me. Except Bigfoot, of course, because those were truly his woods after all and I was terrified at the very thought of him. That is why my fort would be strictly for daytime use. No nighttime camping and risking getting my throat torn out by Bigfoot for me.

Tommy, one of the neighbor kids who lived across the street from us, had a fort. I think his dad helped him build it. It stood on the ground about 4 or 5 feet high, like a miniature log cabin. It was made from wood cut from the surrounding trees and you had to crouch to go in it, but by God it was a fort and I wanted one too.

My dad tried to build us a tree fort out behind our house. It wasn't much more than a platform of boards nailed into a tree about 15 feet off the ground. The boards, I mean. Not the tree. I would have been even more scared of the woods at night if the trees were all hovering 15 feet off the ground. Other boards were nailed into the base of the tree to form a ladder leading up to the platform. I remember going up the ladder once when I was very young and sitting on the platform, only to discover that in addition to Bigfoot I was also terrified of heights and was too scared to climb down. My parents had to come out into the woods with a ladder to get me out. Thus, I decided that all of my forts would be on the ground.

My buddy Todd and I were forever stealing (borrowing?) hammers, nails and whatever else we could scrounge from the sheds of our fathers to go out and build our forts. I think every house in Maine was required to have at least one shed out back that was used for storing lawn mowers, tools, motor oil (both new and used) and whatever else you could cram in there. Our shed was painted the same shade of blue as our house. I remember one winter the snow drifts were tall enough that I was able to climb on top of the shed and jump off the other side into the snow without breaking anything. Somewhere I think there is a picture of me in mid-flight, grinning like a loon.

We made numerous attempts at building forts, most of which ended with nothing more than bent nails and a few loose boards stuck to a tree. But there was one time when we came really close to realizing our dream.

There was a series of trails that ran out behind some of the houses in our neighborhood. The trail started in the woods between Todd's house and the Jenkins' old house. The Jenkins had long since moved out of the neighborhood, but regardless of who lived there, we still referred to it as their house. I'm sure there are people living in the neighborhood to this day who still refer to my house as the Scruton's old house.

The trail snaked around behind the Jenkins' house and formed a loop that went out behind the Andrews and Abbott homes. It circled back around maybe half a mile out behind where several other houses on a different road before coming back to where it started near Todd's house. In the center of the loop there was a scraggly path that would be hard to find if you didn't know where to look for it. That path led to a small clearing. It was there where we built our most magnificent forts.

I say forts because on this adventure there were three of us - me, Todd and another kid named David who was a couple years older than us and only hung out with us until he was old enough to drive. After that, we didn't see much of him. But at this time he was still one of us and the clearing was big enough for all three of us to build our own forts.

We managed to cut down some small pine trees (no doubt with a saw one of us had stolen from his dad's shed) and used a combination of nails and rope to lash them to an even bigger pine tree, forming a sort of lean-to. They weren't exactly structurally sound, but each of us left a gap big enough so we could crawl inside and each have our own fort. But we weren't content to stop there. Either David or Todd, I forget which, had secured a roll of industrial strength plastic garbage bags, and we used those to line the insides of our forts to keep out the rain. It worked surprisingly well.

I don't remember how long we had the forts out there in that clearing, probably not more than a summer. I can't imagine they were strong enough to last the winter, even with the garbage bag linings. But I remember the three of us going out there quite a bit during that summer to share secrets and hide the treasures that only little boys and creepy middle-aged toy collectors consider valuable.

I haven't been back to that clearing since my family moved away when I was in high school. The last time I was in the old neighborhood a few years back you could still make out a faint outline of the trail next to Todd's house. But only if you knew where to look for it.

Next week: Squatchin' the detectives

Al and Me

2011-06-20T20:15:00.000-05:00

One of the first cassette tapes I ever bought (if not the first) was "Weird Al Yankovic in 3D." I was in the sixth grade and at the time I thought it was the greatest thing ever. Hilarious parodies of Michael Jackson ("Eat It"), Survivor ("Theme from Rocky XIII") and the Police ("King of Suede"), what was not to love?

I played that tape so many times and forced so many people to listen to it that some of them probably haven't forgiven me to this day. Such was my new found obsession with Al. It was an obsession that would continue throughout my adolescence and well into my adulthood. Every year or two, Al would release a new album, and I would drool with anticipation.

I would head to the record store on release day (yes, this was back in the 80s when we actually had to leave the house to obtain music and other things we wanted) and snatch up a copy as quickly as I could. I would be laughing at the names of the tracks before I even had a chance to play it, just dying to know which musicians he had skewered this time around. Madonna, Huey Lewis, James Brown, Nirvana. No one was sacred. Each track was pure gold.

And his original songs were always a riot too. He does what he calls style parodies that are not specific song parodies but rather songs sung in the style of a certain artist or genre. For example, the song "Dog Eat Dog" on the album "Polka Party" is a spot-on imitation of the Talking Heads, even though it's not a parody of one of their songs.

You can imagine my excitement back in 1989 when I found out he was making a movie. Though "UHF" did not do well at the box office, it remains a favorite of mine to this day.

I've even seen The Weird One in concert twice. The man puts on a hell of a show with more costume changes than Lady Gaga (the key difference being that Al's are intentionally funny). You haven't lived until you've seen a whole concert hall full of pasty white nerds singing along to "Yoda." Or maybe you have and that's why you've never seen it.

One of the things that has allowed Al such a lengthy career is his uncanny ability to parody songs that explode onto the pop-culture landscape. That's no easy task when you consider the fact that he's working on his albums for months ahead of time and he has to try and anticipate a pop song that will be a huge hit.

Of course, sometimes this works in the reverse, as with "White & Nerdy," his parody of "Ridin' Dirty" by Chamillionaire. In that case, Al's parody turned what was already a moderate hit into a smash success. I know I would have never heard the original if not for Al's version.

And therein lies my problem.

Up until the release of "Poodle Hat" back in 2003, I had always recognized most, if not all, of the songs Al chose to parody. With that CD, it all began to change. Gone were Madonna and Michael Jackson. In their place were Avril Lavigne and Nelly, performers I knew of but wasn't all that familiar with. There was at least one throwback for soon-to-be geezers like me: "Ode to a Superhero," a parody of "Piano Man" by Billy Joel that was about Spider-Man.

His next album, "Straight Outta Lynwood," was even more foreign to me, with parodies of Usher, R. Kelly and the aforementioned Chamillionaire. Not even one throwback for the geezers this time around. Still, I knew the names and with a little effort I could find the original songs and gain some enjoyment from the parodies. But it wasn't the same as when I was a kid and he was spoofing songs I already knew by heart. The excitement I used to feel just wasn't there anymore.

His latest album just came out, which is what started me thinking about all of this. On this one he parodies Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga. Now I have, of course, heard of Lady Gaga, but not because of her music. I know who she is because she's a meat-suit wearing attention whore who is all but impossible to escape these days. I couldn't tell you anything about any of her songs. Same goes for the other performers I mentioned.

I guess I'm just getting old. I don't think I've outgrown my affection for Al. I still think he's a genius and I still love to listen to those old tunes with a smile on my face. But unlike Al, my job does not require me to keep up with the latest in pop music. I just don't have the time or the energy to do it. And every time I do venture out into the wild and examine the latest in popular music, I come back to my cave feeling bitter and disappointed.

Might as well pull my pants up to my armpits and sign me up for an AARP card right now.

Oh well, I've always got the classics to fall back on:

And of course there is this gem, an Al original:

Frenemies Forever

2011-06-06T20:36:00.001-05:00

When you are in kindergarten, you never really have to work at making friends. If a kid is there and wants to play, he or she is your friend. Friendships aren't really all that complicated at that level, unless Jimmy is hogging all of the Legos, in which case he is a booger head and no longer your best friend.

As you get older, though, those relationships begin to change, and you may find yourself with a best friend one day, and a mortal enemy the next. Often they are the same person. This is the way it was with me and Keith. Keith had what today they would likely diagnose as ADHD. Back then we just thought he was a hyperactive little snot.

We were best frenemies all the way from kindergarten through the sixth grade, at which point he just kind of disappeared. I assume he moved away, but I don't ever remember saying goodbye to him. It's possible that we were on an enemy stage at that point, but I can't say for sure.

It's funny, when I look back on it now, I can think of several kids I knew quite well throughout elementary school, but when I picture my days in junior high, they just aren't there. Maybe they moved. Maybe we drifted apart. Maybe I just imagined them all and they never really existed in the first place. Who is to say for sure?

I am sure, though, that Keith existed. I know this because I got in a fight with him once in the third grade. Our school, White Rock Elementary, hosted grades K through three. From there we would move on to Little Falls Elementary for 4th, 5th and 6th grades, then to Shaw Junior High School for pure hell. But more on that later.

The playground at White Rock Elementary school butted up against a wooded area of pine, birch and maple trees that separated it from a residential neighborhood on the other side. There was no fence in those woods and we found that we could go just far enough into the trees to not be seen by the teachers. The teachers, of course, knew this and were forever on the lookout for little children wandering off behind the swing sets.

In those days I fancied myself the good guy. The hero who would stand up for the little guy. Part of this was due to my previously mentioned obsession with Fonzie. The other part of it was just that I was a huge dork. I remember the first time I got a Superman t-shirt I wore it to school underneath another shirt, thinking that if there was trouble I - a mild mannered third grader in a small town school - would rip off the top shirt and swing into action with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men.

Like I said, a dork.

I don't remember if I was wearing my Superman t-shirt the day I got into the fight with Keith, but it's entirely possible. I do know that I felt like Superman when it was all over. We were playing on the edge of the wooded area I mentioned earlier. Whenever you have woods, of course you have sticks. And whenever you have sticks and third-grade boys, you have a sword fight.

The sword fight didn't last long before a teacher started yelling at us to put the sticks down. Being the Force for Goodness and Justice that I was, I complied. His hyperactivity already in full gear, Keith didn't. In fact, not only did he not comply, he began swinging the stick wildly around coming very close to several kids who were standing nearby. It was a pretty good-sized stick, too. More like a small tree limb.

There was danger afoot. It was time for Superman to save the day.

First, a stern warning. "Hey Keith," I said. "The teacher said no sticks."

He ignored me and continued swinging the stick around. It was time for action. I grabbed the stick with two hands. He held onto it with both of his. I gave the stick a violent twist and a jerk that he clearly wasn't expecting. He tumbled to the ground. "The teacher said no sticks," I repeated firmly as I tossed the stick several yards away from him. He was unarmed, but Keith wasn't done with me yet.

He jumped up and charged me. Without even thinking, I grabbed his shirt and fell backward, using his momentum to pull him down with me. As we fell to the ground, I kicked my legs up and shoved with my arms, sending Keith sailing over me. I heard him land with a "thud" on the ground behind me. I jumped up and whirled around, ready for more. But by that time a teacher had made her way out to where we were and the fight was over.

We were sent inside for the rest of recess and I'm sure faced other punishment as well. Even Superman is no match for The Teacher.

Keith and I didn't stay mad at each other for long, though. We were friends again a short while later. And then enemies again after that. Then friends again. And enemies. And so it went until junior high school. You might wonder why I kept going back. Well, the truth is Keith had really cool toys (Millennium Falcon anyone?). And a tree house in his backyard.

We had a tree house of sorts in the woods behind our house, too, but it was really more of a platform. Keith's had a door and windows and a roof. It was pretty cool. I spent years of my youth trying to build a fort of my own. Somehow it never quite came together.

Next week: Fortified

Take Me Out Of The Ball Game

2011-05-15T20:04:00.000-05:00

My illustrious career as a Little League baseball player and dandelion kicker came to an end because of JP Fogg. In spite of that name, he was not some dapper gentleman from the late 1800s who challenged me to a race around the world. Instead, he was the fastest pitcher in the league and he played for a team called Phinney Lumber.

One of the problems with Little League in a small town is that you don't have a very deep roster. If someone gets hurt playing for, say, the Boston Red Sox, there are probably at least two others who could take his place. If someone gets hurt playing for Locust Farm Dairy, you'd be lucky if there was one person who could take his place.

As it happened, that someone who got hurt was me. And also as it happened, that night there were only nine of us who showed up to play. There are only nine positions on a baseball team. It doesn't take a math whiz to see where I'm going with this.

So the Locust Farm Nine took to the field that fateful day, knowing full-well we would likely not beat Phinney Lumber. This was in part because they were a better team than us but also they had more guys show up so if one of them got hurt it wouldn't matter as much.

I don't remember the details of the game itself - what the score was, who won, etc. I do remember my first time up at bat. JP Fogg already had a reputation as the fastest pitcher in the league and as such I was duly terrified. I could hear the words of encouragement from my coach, though just barely because they were almost being drowned out by the chatter from the other team. I made my feelings about chatter known last week, but in this case, the other team was right - I was no hitter.

I remember hearing a sold "thunk" behind me and not being sure what it was I turned my head to investigate just in time to see the catcher throw the ball back to JP. Strike one. I turned my head back toward JP and awaited the next shot from his cannon of an arm. This time I swung the bat at the approximate time I figured the ball was streaking past me. Too late. Strike two. There would be no strike three.

The thing about coach-pitch ball was that the coaches went out of their way to make sure the players didn't get hurt. It was all about building confidence at the plate. The pitchers in Little League didn't care about building self-esteem. They only cared about getting the ball across the plate, no matter who was in the way.

I don't know how fast JP Fogg could actually throw the ball. I've seen fastballs in the major leagues get up to 100 miles per hour. I'm guessing JP was maybe half that, maybe a little more. But it didn't matter because it was still faster than anyone else our age could throw. And it still hurt like crazy when the ball hit me in the elbow. The left elbow. The same elbow I broke when I was in second grade.

Thankfully there were no broken bones this time. Just a lot of tears and the immediate feeling that I wanted to quit the game. However, because there were only nine of us, if I quit that meant a forfeit and a loss. Not wanting to let my team down (not that I really had much choice), I slowly made my way to first base, crying and clutching my arm the whole time.

I don't remember if I scored a run that time out, but I remember my arm was still in pain when I took my position in deep left field. In most games, I hoped the ball would not come near me. In this game, I prayed that it wouldn't.

The fates were not kind to me that day. It wasn't long at all before a line drive made its way between me and the center fielder. I feigned running for it, but let the center fielder get there first. He scooped it up and threw it toward the infield. He looked at me, seeing how slow I was moving, and asked if I was okay. I told him I couldn't move my arm very well.

"Oh," he said thoughtfully. "You got a sunburn or something?"

Such was the passion our team had for the game.

Getting hit once would have been bad enough. But God apparently decided that day that I shouldn't be playing baseball anymore. My second time at bat was even more terrifying than the first. I'm sure I was visibly shaking as the fastballs whizzed past me. I was determined to just stand there and let them go, afraid that if I took a swing the ball would take it personally and come after me again.

So there I was, standing at home plate, just minding my own business and hoping to make it out of the game alive, when the fastball found me again. Right in the same arm. Still no broken bones, but another tearful run to first base.

We finished the game. I don't remember if we won or not, but at least we didn't have to forfeit. Afterward I was treated like a hero for staying in the game. The coach bought me an ice cream, patted me on the back and told me I did a great job. It would have felt great were it not for the two giant bruises forming on my left arm.

After that game I developed a phobia about hitting. I would get unnerved whenever I went to bat, certain that another fastball was going to find its way toward my body. I would flinch whenever the ball came across the plate. It wasn't long after that that I quit baseball for good.

Even to this day, even if it's just playing wiffle ball, I still get nervous when I stand at home plate. I don't know whatever became of JP Fogg. I can only assume that after he almost killed me, he gave up baseball and took up a less dangerous pastime - like balloon racing.

Next week: I Have No Idea!

Movin' Up to the (Little) Big League

2011-05-08T21:53:00.001-05:00

I don't remember exactly at what age I graduated from coach-pitch baseball to kids-my-age-wildly-hurling-balls-in-the-general-direction-of-home-plate baseball, but I do remember the uniforms.

That was one of the cool things about Little League as opposed to the earlier leagues I had been in: we got to wear actual uniforms that looked like those worn by actual baseball teams. If, that is, actual baseball teams had worn purple and white uniforms with the words "Locust Farm Dairy" printed in big block letters on the front.

We didn't even have a cool name for our team - like the Red Sox or the Dodgers. All of the teams in our league were just named after the company that sponsored them. So we were Locust Farm. We played against other teams with equally clever names like Bob's Engine Repair and Ethel's Book Nook. It was truly an intimidating league.

One of the first things I remember learning about in Little League was chatter. This was where you would stand in the field and mock whoever was up to bat for the other team until they started crying and went home. Sure, it was fun if you were on the field, but not so much when you were the one up at bat. The verbal taunts were one thing, but it was especially humiliating when you stepped up to the plate and every player on the opposing team moved forward because they knew you couldn't hit the ball that far and wanted to be ready. Not that this ever happened to me.

Chatter always struck me as such a strange concept because you never saw it anywhere beyond Little League. When, say, Babe Ruth came up to bat, you never saw the players on the other team start chanting "No batter! No batter! No batter!" Not that they would have anyway because Babe would have smashed them in the face with a hard line drive. I could never figure out why they encouraged us to chatter, and at the same time tried to teach us good sportsmanship by having us line up and shake hands with the other team when the game was done.

And make no mistake about the fact that it was encouraged. I remember the coaches often yelling at us when we didn't do it: "All right, come on! Let's hear some chatter out there!" When you think about what that really means, it makes even less sense: "All right, come on! Let's pick on the other team and make them feel insecure about themselves at an age when most kids have self esteem problems already! Let's go, people!"

In Little League, I continued my illustrious career as an outfield dandelion kicker. But by this point, I remember starting to learn a few actual skills thanks to Coach Pete. Pete was a great guy with a big nose who coached Little League for years in our town. The thing I remember most that Pete taught me was to use two hands to catch the ball. I remember this because he yelled it at me every time I dropped a ball, which happened a lot.

I wish I had some inspiring "Bad News Bears"-style story to tell here, about how my team of lovable misfits overcame the odds to win the championship game but I don't because that never happened. Possibly because most of us were fairly average players to begin with and none of us was particularly lovable. Possibly because we were coached by a sober Coach Pete instead of a drunken Walter Matthau. Who's to say for sure?

What I have instead is a mildly amusing story about how my baseball career came to a painful end.

Next week: Take Me Out of the Ball Game

(Don't) Put Me In Coach

2011-05-01T20:41:00.000-05:00

My father is a sports fanatic. I am not. I don't know if those two statements are connected in some deep psychological way, but it's entirely possible. He is a lifelong golfer who played basketball in college and had a part-time job refereeing college games when he got older. My sporting career began with me kicking dandelions in the outfield and ended with two fastballs to the arm several years later.

I don't remember the first organized sport I signed up for, but it was probably tee-ball. I do remember playing basketball at an early age on a team that my dad was coaching, but for some reason that didn't last long. It probably had something to do with my inability to play, in spite of the fact that we had our own basketball hoop in the driveway and I spent hours out there shooting baskets. I'll let you in on a little secret, though: it was never about playing basketball. There was something about shooting hoops by myself that always cleared my head. It gave me a chance to think, and to create. I made up all kinds of stories in my head as the ball flew through the air. A few of them got written down. Most of them are as gone as my jump shot.

But baseball was a different story. I thought I had a better shot at being a baseball player because it didn't require a lot of stamina or effort. Mostly I just stood in the outfield, kicking the aforementioned dandelions until by some miracle a ball happened to find its way to my general vicinity. Using my cat-like reflexes, I would pick the ball up and look at my coach, who was usually screaming at me to throw the ball to a specific player. A moment of panic would ensue, followed by me lobbing the ball in the general direction of the infield and hoping for the best.

But I stuck with baseball for a long time. From t-ball I graduated to coach-pitch baseball, where instead of having the ball served up to you on a tee, the coach would lob it over the plate as softly as possible so you could practice hitting something that was actually moving. This proved to be a challenge for me, but I stuck with it. Even today I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the uniforms. The team I played for was The Orioles and we made this known by wearing bright orange t-shirts and hats with the word "Orioles" printed on them. When we took the field it was an awe-inspiring sight, as though a construction project was about to begin.

I do remember one game when I managed to do something right. I was at my usual station in right field, staring down at my glove (having already kicked every dandelion in sight) and waiting for something to happen while secretly hoping it wouldn't. And it usually didn't. At that age we couldn't hit the ball very far so it was very rare during a given game that I would actually have to do anything. And I was okay with that. This game was different. Suddenly I heard shouting coming from the direction of the infield. Wondering what was going on I raised my head and saw everybody yelling and wildly waiving their arms. Some were pointing at the air above my head.

I looked up, thinking I might get to see a bird or a cool airplane passing by. Instead what I saw was a baseball heading right for me. I stood perfectly still, fearing that the slightest movement would alert the ball to my presence, bringing it close enough to me that I would have to do something about it.

What I did will go down in the annals of coach-pitch baseball history as one of the greatest fear-induced plays of all time. I held out my glove as far away from myself as I could, closed my eyes, and hoped for the best. When enough time passed that I figured the danger was gone I opened my eyes and instinctively began searching the ground around me for the ball. It was nowhere in sight. Unsure of what to do next, I decided to check my glove on the off chance that the ball somehow found its way inside. Lo and behold, there it was.

I was told later on by my parents that the look on my face was one of shock and surprise. I have no doubt that it was. I didn't make plays like that often. Or ever. For that brief moment, though, I was a hero. And that feeling stayed with me at least until it was my turn to bat.

But my career in baseball wasn't all ESPN highlight reel material. Much of it was more like Marv Albert blooper reel material.

Next week: Movin' Up to the Big (Little) League

1994

2011-04-24T20:21:00.000-05:00

Note: I suddenly realized that I didn't have anything written for this week, so here's this. This, in case you were wondering, is the first part of a story I am working on that is a heavily fictionalized version of what happened to me in 1994. I decided it had to be fiction because, while the truth of it is strange enough, fiction gives me the latitude to change things as the story dictates and not have to worry about getting called on it by anyone who was there. It also allows me to fill in the gaps where my memory has failed me with details that better fit the story. But most importantly of all, it just allows me to make stuff up. Please note that the names have been changed to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent.

1994

Chaper 1, Dumb and Dumber

I saw a lot of movies in 1994. That's not so unusual. I see a lot of movies every year. Or at least I did until I had kids. But before then I was at the movies damn near every week. There are certain movies I will always associate with 1994 and that moment in my life when everything fell apart.

At the beginning of the year I had a girlfriend, a best friend and I was well on my way to finishing my senior year in college and venturing out into the world. By the end of the year, it would all be gone and I would be moving back in with my parents with no idea what I was going to do next.

Looking back on it now it's easy to see that what happened was inevitable. Shan and I were never destined to be together. God had other things in mind for me. Better things. But I couldn't see that then. All I could see was her. And she was everything to me.

Our relationship had started the year before when she moved into the house I had - up until that point - shared with Tina and Max. Max had been my first roommate my freshman year of college and Tina was his girlfriend. A skinny, gangly beanpole of a man with glasses and a wisp of a mustache, Max was a good ol' boy who obviously only went to college because Tina was there.

In fact there was a whole group of Max's friends that had come to Manhattan from the same small town just outside of Topeka. I think Max was just along for the ride, scared of being left behind. He was a good guy and we spent many late nights in the dorm that first year cracking each other up and trying to catch a glimpse through the windows of the girls dorm that was across the quad.

I don't know why we were so focused on that dorm when ours was a co-ed dorm and there were girls right down the hall. For Max I suppose it was because he had Tina and all he could do was look anyway. For me, well, that's another story. I never dated in high school. Years of insecurities fostered by my family moving halfway across the country had left me too unsure of myself and too scared to ask any girls out. Fear, you will come to see, has always been a primary motivating factor in my life.

It wasn't until my sophomore year in college that I finally got up the nerve to ask a girl out on a date. It was a disaster. Oh the first date was fine. It even led to a second date and a few more after that. In my mind it was magical. She was a petite blond with big...eyes and a sweet disposition that I'm sure made her feel at least a twinge of guilt later on when she ripped my still beating heart from my chest and sacrificed it on her altar of lies. Oh, did I forget to mention I was a bit melodramatic in those days?

She was also a Wiccan, something I neither understood nor took very seriously at the time. I joked around to all of my friends that I felt like Darren on "Bewitched." The first Darren, mind you. Nothing against Dick Sergeant, but Dick York will always be Durwood to me. Ah, but dating a Wiccan in real life was not nearly as funny as an episode of "Bewitched." There were no wacky misunderstandings and she never turned me into a frog. Though by the end of it I thought I might have been better off if she had.

It didn't last that long, maybe a month, two at the most. While my head was filled with romantic notions and I couldn't believe that a girl would even agree to go out with me let alone make out with her, her head was filled with, well, something else entirely. I was not, as it turned out, the only guy she was dating at the time. A fact I could possibly have learned to live with had it just been one other guy. There were at least three others. That I knew of.

I knew of them, you see, because she had no problem whatsoever with talking about them in front of me. I even met a couple of them. She also introduced me to a concept she liked to call "the surplus male." She had so many guys following her around like little puppy dogs that she always had an extra one around when she needed him. Hence, the surplus male.

They say love is blind. I am inclined to believe that it is also deaf. And possibly mildly retarded. Perhaps a bit insane. It ain't right in the head, is the point I'm getting at. At least it wasn't for me back then. It was like I was standing on the railroad tracks, so busy marveling at how cool the train was that I was oblivious to the fact that it was about to run me over. It would not be the last time I would find myself in that situation.

The thing with the witch came to a head when I finally expressed my feelings for her in a shockingly stupid use of the "L" word and she shot me down. I was the only person in the world who did not see that coming. Ray Charles could have seen that coming. And would have written a kick-ass song about it to boot.

So there you have it. This is just a small part of a much bigger story. I have written more and will probably add to it from time to time. Personally, I think it needs a new opening, but that's just me. The idea is that the movies from that year will come to play a crucial role in the telling of the story. I just haven't quite figured out exactly how it will work. So what do you think?

The Big Mouth Strikes Again

2011-04-17T20:32:00.000-05:00

In Little Falls Elementary School, there were two fourth grade classes. I was in the one taught by the aforementioned giant, Mr. Hammond. The second class was taught by Mrs. Lane, a squat, round woman with big glasses and gray, curly hair.

I remember being in Mr. Hammond's class for most of the day, except when it was time for reading class, then I went over to Mrs. Lane's class. I don't know exactly why this was, though it probably meant that I was either going from the dumb class to the smart class or vice versa. Given the fact that I turned out to be a writer, I'd like to think I was in the smart reading group, but you never know.

During the year in high school in which we lived in Pennsylvania, the brilliant minds in the Bradford School System decided I belonged in the remedial English class. I was never so bored in my life. My mom, clearly recognizing my genius, had to fight to get me into a more advanced class, which in Bradford meant they actually used books.

Meanwhile, back in the fourth grade I slowly began to realize that there was a division between Mr. Hammond's class and Mrs. Lane's class. How much of that division was in my own head I cannot be certain, but I think at least some of it was real. This was one of the first times I remember feeling I wasn't as good as everyone else. I can't really say it was the birth Mr. Low Self Esteem, but it was definitely part of his early childhood.

Nowhere was the division between classes more evident than on the kickball field. Every time our class played their class we lost. Bad. It was to the point where I dreaded going out there. It would not be the last time I dreaded being on a sporting field. My career in sports was short-lived and pointless and will be further detailed in another post. For now, suffice it to say I did not enjoy playing kickball against Mrs. Lane's class.

In fact, I hated it so much that one day I was standing in the outfield (I always played the outfield, even later on in little league baseball) and I was complaining about it to my friend and fellow loser. I'm not sure who it was, exactly, but it might have been Keith, who was my best frenemy all throughout elementary school. I'll have to tell you more about him later too.

So I'm standing there complaining to Keith about how much I hate this and I said something like "We always come out here and lose and we always look like jackasses." Oh yes, I cussed. It was something I was just beginning to experiment with in those days and I rather enjoyed it. So did Keith, judging by his nodding approval.

The only one who did not enjoy it, as it turns out, was Mrs. Lane who, unbeknown to me, was standing within earshot and heard everything. She waddled over to me and demanded to know what I said. Two things bothered me about this. First of all, she had obviously heard me or she wouldn't have come over in the first place. Second of all, I said a bad word. I knew I said a bad word. And she wanted me to repeat it. As if I wasn't already in enough trouble for saying it the first time.

I decided my only option was to lie my ass off.

"N-nothing," I stammered.

"Excuse me?" She said. "You said you'd look like jack-what?"

"No, I said we'd look like jerks," I tried again. She wasn't buying it.

"Hmph," she frowned. "Well, if you can't be a good sport then maybe you shouldn't play at all."

I went over and sat down on the merry-go-round, which was near the kickball diamond, and sulked. A short time later, Mr. Hammond came over and asked me what I was doing. I told him Mrs. Lane said I wasn't allowed to play anymore. Mrs. Lane heard this - I think that woman had dog ears - and came trundling over.

"Now, Terry, I never said you couldn't play," she started.

"Yes you did!" I interrupted. "You said-"

"Terry Scruton!" She shouted. "You march right back into that school right now!"

I had no idea what I had done wrong beyond my initial cursing, which I had of course lied about. But I did know when to retreat. My head down, I trudged into the school and sat down in the hallway by myself. One of our teacher's aides happened by and asked why I was inside. I told her I didn't know and recounted the story, leaving out the part where I used the word "jackass."

After I finished my story and told her I still didn't know what I had done wrong (other than what I did know I had done wrong and lied about), she said I had talked back to a teacher and that was why Mrs. Lane got mad.

Whether I talked back or not, it still didn't seem fair to my twisted 10-year-old brain. Yes, I lied, but she had no proof that I swore and she did say that I couldn't play anymore. Which, come to think of it, was all I had really wanted in the first place.

Next week: More Incoherent Ramblings!

I'm Back (I think)

2011-04-10T20:58:00.000-05:00

The thing I've realized about doing something like this blog is that you have to do it every week because once you stop, it is so hard to get started again. Things have been crazy busy the last few weeks and I just haven't had the time to sit down and do it. And now that I have the time, I find myself lacking the motivation. And yet, here I am.

I don't even remember where I was, to be honest. My last post in the series (excluding the most recent one I spent whining about something or other completely unrelated to the stories I was telling) ended with tag promising a story about me and my big mouth. I think I was going to tell a story about me in the 4th grade and how at the time I lacked the ability to keep my mouth shut - a fact that got me in to trouble on several occasions.

My 4th grade teacher was Mr. Hammond. He was at least 8 feet tall and had hands that could palm the average 4th grader's head like a basketball. He was a nice guy, but not someone you'd want to cross. There were rumors going around that a kid once made him so mad that Mr. Hammond grabbed him and hung him up on the coat rack. I have no doubt he was capable of doing just that. Whether he actually did it or not was irrelevant, because the story alone was enough to keep most kids in line.

I was not most kids. I liked Mr. Hammond a lot and he knew my family pretty well, having had my brother in class a few years before me. He was always asking me to bring him a new hat. I should explain that. My father worked as a sales and marketing guy for a regional oil company at the time that made two brands of motor oil. Kendall was perhaps the most well known. Amalie ("Better Than It Has To Be") was the brand my father sold. He traveled all over New England and down the East Coast selling it to companies everywhere.

One of the perks of his job was that our house had a never-ending supply of Amalie merchandise. We had jackets, hats, stickers, pens and anything else you could think of with the Amalie logo on it. As kids, we were pretty much walking billboards for the stuff. My siblings and I are probably the only people who feel nostalgic when we see a logo for an oil company.

Mr. Hammond, having very little hair of is own (he was so tall - how tall was he? - he was taller than his hair! *rim shot*) always liked to wear hats. So whenever one of the Scruton children would come through his class, our first responsibility was to get him a new Amalie hat, which we always did because we did not want to be hung on a coat rack.

I had a bad habit in those days of talking back in class. It wasn't anything mean, really. Just little smart-alecky comments that would pop into my head (often while Mr. Hammond was talking) and I would feel compelled to share them with the class. I couldn't help myself. I usually got a laugh from the class and my name written on the board by Mr. Hammond. That meant I had to stay inside for five minutes at recess. Each subsequent remark after that would result in a check mark next to my name. Each check mark represented another five minutes of lost recess. There were days when I never saw the sun at all.

I remember one time when Mr. Hammond was giving us a lesson in grammar, I think, and he was using kids in the classroom as examples in whatever sentence structure he was trying to illustrate. He made the mistake of choosing me. "Terry and I are going fishing," he said, scribbling on the dusty green chalk board.

"No we're not," I cleverly retorted. "I get seasick!"

Chuckles from the class. Mr. Hammond was not amused. "You get what?" He said, turning around and staring down at me from miles above.

"I get seasick!" I said. A few more giggles from the class, though not as many as before.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking at my name, which was already on the board from an earlier infraction. "You get WHAT?"

The smile faded from my face. "Another check mark," I sighed. It would not be the last.

I saw Mr. Hammond a few years ago. I thought seeing him as an adult would be different, that my images of him as a head-palming giant were exaggerated memories of my youth. I was wrong. He was still enormous. And still very nice.

My troubles with Mr. Hammond were nothing compared to the trouble my mouth would get me in with Mrs. Lane, the other 4th grade teacher.

Next week: The Big Mouth Strikes Again

Sorry, where was I?

2011-03-20T20:21:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry I didn't post anything last week. I can tell by the outpouring of angry e-mails I didn't get that you were all too distraught to even let me know how much it bothered you. I am sorry to have put you through so much pain and anguish. I would say it won't happen again but I think we all know what a big lie that would be.

Moving on then.

I'll be honest, after having missed just one week I'm having trouble getting motivated enough to start this blog up again. Sometimes I start to think that the stories I'm telling here are too self-involved and that maybe I'm being a bit narcissistic in putting them up there. And God knows we don't need any narcissistic people on the internet. Can you imagine what this place would be like if it was suddenly overrun by whiny, narcissistic attention whores? Scary.

That having been said I'm kind of torn about keeping this up. I have some other things I have been working on and I've been toying with the idea of posting some snippets on here. One is a new project tentatively titled "1994." That year was a very pivotal one in my life and I have very vivid memories of the events that happened as well as the movies I saw that year that will always in my mind be linked to those events. So what I'm working on is a fictionalized account of that year and how the movies that came out that year (Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, just to name a few) became intertwined with what happened that year.

See, here's my problem as a writer. I have a hard time finishing things. Not work-related things. There I do just fine because I have a deadline. I sometimes think that's the only reason I went in to journalism is because I knew I would never get anything done unless there was a deadline. But I'm talking about my non-work-related writings, like this blog and a few stories I have worked on over the years.

I always wanted to be a novelist. A published author. And now here I am pushing 40 and I'm nowhere closer to that goal than I was when I was 20. Oh sure, I've tried. I have started no less than half a dozen ideas that I hoped would be novels, only to get bored, distracted or hypercritical of myself halfway through and never finish.

It's the same pattern every time. I come up with what I think is a great idea. I get all excited about it and start writing away. "This is it!" I say to myself. "This is the one!" I'll get several chapters in and then the newness starts to wear off. I can usually keep pushing in spite of that, but it catches up to me anyway. Then I start to get bored with what I'm writing and I realize that I don't have an ending in sight. I also realize that it's a lot harder than it seems to keep track of characters and plots and settings and everything that's going on.

Then the excuses come. The procrastination. I start to find ways to talk myself out of it. I tell myself it's not good enough to be published. It's not original enough. That story has been done before. Yadda, yadda, yadda. And before long my work on it becomes more sporadic, until it stops altogether.

I think we all have this image of the novelist from movies and TV. He (or she) sits down at a computer and starts typing feverishly away. In older movies it would be a typewriter and there would be a montage of scenes of the writer looking frustrated and crumpled up pieces of paper falling into (and around) the waste basket. But when the montage was over, the writer would have his novel in one neatly piled stack of paper on the desk.

The reality of it isn't even close to that. You can't just sit down at the computer and crank out a novel in one sitting. Honestly, you probably shouldn't even start writing until you have an outline of some sort which, I'll admit, is something I never do. The truth is writing a novel is a lot of hard work and it takes a lot of discipline to get it done, which is something I don't have. At least not a lot of anyway.

I have discovered something recently though and doing this blog has helped me realize it. I have discovered that if I have several projects going at once, I'm less likely to get bored with any one of them. If I do get tired of one, I go work on another one for a while. Then I can come back to the first one later with a fresher approach.

I guess where I'm going with all of this is, well, I don't know where I'm going with all of this. I think I will keep writing the stories I have been writing on this blog. But I think I will also try an experiment and intersperse them with snippets of other things I've been working on that, honestly, I could use some feedback on. So feel free to pile on the love. Or intense, burning hatred. Whichever.

The Shadow Knows

2011-03-06T21:28:00.000-06:00

I have one more thing to say about my relationship with my brother as it relates to my childhood, then I should probably move on to something else before he reverts back to his teenage self and pounds me to a pulp. Just kidding, bro. Please don't hurt me.

I mentioned last week that my brother was kind of like the Bizarro Fonzie, and it was true. He was a very popular kid at school. Something I most definitely was not. Oh sure, people thought I was a nice guy but believe me, if you wanted to be popular in the Gorham school system, that was not a label you wanted to be stuck with. Or so I thought at the time.

I've said this before but it bears repeating: as I look back on these stories more and more it becomes apparent to me how different the reality of them is compared to the way it seemed to me when they were actually happening. I guess 25 or 30 years of distance will do that. Good God I'm getting old.

At any rate, the popular kids weren't necessarily the nice kids. Not that they were all jerks, mind you. It was more like they were...rebels, I guess. They smoked, they listened to loud music and wore ripped jeans and denim jackets with the AC/DC logo on the back. They had long hair and some of them even had pierced ears.

My brother was one of those kids, and everybody knew him. That fact saved me on more than one occasion when a bully was about to lay into me and he found out who my brother was, he usually left me alone. In spite of that advantage, it was not easy living in my brother's shadow.

There were two reactions I usually got once people found out who my brother was. There were reactions similar to the one described above, which was usually followed up by something along the lines of "why aren't you more like your brother?" I even had a girl write in my 8th grade yearbook: "You seem like a nice guy. Be more like your brother and you'll have it made." Let me tell you, when you're insecure already and an attractive girl writes something like that in your yearbook (or even writes in your yearbook at all), it can really make you start to question your lifestyle choices.

The other reaction I got was from the teachers, and it was pretty much the exact opposite of the first reaction. Being a few years behind him in school, I would often have some of the same teachers he did. You could almost see the fear in their eyes when they found out who my brother was, which was often followed later on by relief when they found out I was nothing like him.

I had mixed feelings about that last reaction. On the one hand, I was okay with it, because I didn't really want to be like my brother. On the other hand, he was my brother and who the hell did they think they were anyway? I remember being offended on more than one occasion when a teacher I shared with my brother had some less than kind things to say about him. I may not have liked my brother back then, but I still loved him.

Of course I never had the guts to say anything to the teachers about it. Which is not to say I never talked back to my teachers. I did, but that was before Mr. Low Self-Esteem came along.

Next week: Me and My Big Mouth

Back to the Shack, Part 2: He Ain't Heavy

2011-02-27T15:49:00.000-06:00

When we were very young, my brother and I got along just fine, for the most part. Oh I'm sure we had the usual fights over toys and whatnot that most siblings have, but never anything major. One of the earliest memories of him I have is getting stuck in the garage in our house in South Portland. I'm not sure why but we couldn't get the door open and my parents were nowhere around. I was maybe 4 at the time which would make my brother around 7 or 8. In a panic, my brother thought it would be a good idea to punch the glass on the door. It broke. We got out and he got several stitches and some lifelong scars for his efforts.

It wasn't until we got older and my brother became a teenager that our problems really began. He was off doing whatever teenagers do with his friends and I was his annoying little brother who was always in the way. It was a typical family situation. But somewhere along the line something changed. My brother changed. And at some point he started to scare me, and not in the way he had by jumping out from behind Prince's dog house that night, either.

My brother had a bit of a temper, and he had the holes punched in the wall of his closet to prove it. I don't remember when that temper began to manifest itself, but once it did I realized that Bigfoot wasn't the thing I should be scared of. God forbid I should ever piss off my brother when my parents weren't around. And I had a smart mouth on me, even back then. I suppose it developed as a defense mechanism, but it wasn't a very effective one as it often resulted in making a bad situation even worse.

I won't go into further details because the aim of this is not to embarrass my brother or make him feel guilty. He never physically hurt me, but the intimidation was there and it was often enough. Suffice it to say we did not get along. It didn't help that I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes in those days, either. As I mentioned last week that was brought on - to a certain extent - by my unquestioning worship of The Fonz.

My brother as a teenager was kind of like the Bizarro Fonzie. He was cool, at least to his friends. But he was always doing (what I perceived to be) the wrong thing. He was always getting in trouble with mom and dad, sometimes thanks to a tip off from yours truly, the informer of the house. It made for a very tense living situation at times.

One of those times was when my parents weren't home. I'm not sure where they were, but my brother had a few friends over and they were doing things that Fonzie would certainly not approve of. So naturally, I did not approve either. I remember being down in our half-finished basement watching TV. Every once in a while, I would creep up to the top of the stairs and stick my head out the door in an attempt to voice my disapproval of what was going on, only to be met with a firm "shut up and go back downstairs or I'll kick your ass!" Or words to that effect.

My memory of the exact confrontation between me and my brother is somewhat hazy. I remember finally deciding to go all the way up into the kitchen. I remember him yelling at me in front of all of his friends. I remember them laughing. I remember storming out of the house in tears, getting on my bike and riding down to the shack where I sat and waited for my brother and his friends to leave or for my parents to come home, whichever happened first.

And that was when I made the decision. In my naive state of mind, I blamed my brother's actions on the fact that he was drinking. I hated the way my brother had treated me. And I decided right there and then that if drinking made you into that much of an asshole, I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I never told anyone about that decision until just now. It was a decision I made in my own mind and I stuck to it for many years.

In fact, it was only in my late 20s and Early 30s that I began to drink at all, and even then only socially. And that's pretty much how I am today. I'll have a beer or two every now and then or the occasional rum and coke or white Russian. But I am just not a big drinker. I know plenty of people who like to drink and there's nothing wrong with that. I enjoy a good buzz every once in a while. But I never start drinking with the sole intention of getting drunk. Well, almost never. I've only come close to drinking to the point of throwing up one time, and it was awful. Not an experience I am keen on repeating.

Of course now I know that there was more going on in my brother's life than just drinking that made him the way he was. And I don't fault him for it. I don't hold it against him. There were just some things he had to work through and he did and I'm proud of him for it.

Not that I was without fault myself. It wasn't the first - or the last - time that my smart mouth and my goody-two-shoes attitude would get someone mad at me. But at the time, in every situation, I was doing what I thought was the right thing.

Next Week: The Shadow Knows

Back to the Shack, Part 1: The Fonzie Factor

2011-02-21T11:00:00.000-06:00

So, where was I? Oh yes, The Shack and the momentous decision I made whilst sitting amid its graffiti-covered walls.

Before I begin this post, I should point out that it will detail some things that happened between myself and my brother a long, long time ago. My brother and I have a great relationship now. We get along very well and are pretty close. I have a lot of love and respect for my brother. It wasn't always this way. And before I tell you how it was I feel I have to make it clear that I don't hold any of the things I am about to tell you against him. These stories are things that shaped who I am, and my brother was a very integral part of that, for better or for worse. I love you, bro.

When I was a kid, one of my idols was a certain Mr. Arthur Fonzarelli. That man had an embarrassing amount of influence over me in my formative years. Happy Days was without a doubt my favorite show and Fonzie was without a doubt my favorite character. Why? Well, have you seen the rest of the characters on that show? Except for Mr. and Mrs. C, they were a bunch of nerds. But Fonzie was my favorite for another reason too: because he was something I wasn't and could only hope to be. Fonzie was cool.

The thing about The Fonz was that he always did the right thing. And he always looked cool doing it. He was a badass who could handle himself in a fight, apparently never drank or did drugs, and ate his vegetables (but not liver - don't ever try to make The Fonz eat liver). Of course the flip side is that he apparently slept with every woman in Milwaukee and in real life would probably have fathered at least a dozen illegitimate children and died of VD before he was 30, but by God he would have looked cool doing it.

My father traveled a lot for his job when I was a kid. My brother was a few years older than me and had his own things going on. That, more often than not, left me alone in a house full of estrogen in the form of my mother and two sisters. Fonzie became one of my primary male role models.

I wanted to be like Fonzie in the worst way - on the inside. I was never bold enough to start slicking my hair back or wearing a leather jacket, but I wanted to be the guy who was cool enough to do the right thing and not have everybody think he was a dork because of it. I wanted to be the guy who always got the girl(s) with a snap of his fingers. I wanted to be the guy who busted down the door at the last minute and saved Richie from the clutches of the rival basketball team.

Unfortunately, my desire to be like Fonzie turned me into something of a goody-two-shoes. I had a very clear sense of right and wrong at an early age. What I did not have was a clear sense of exactly when to exercise that sense of right and wrong. To me everything was black and white. If you were doing something wrong, you needed to be called out on it. Period. I was also not in a position, socially speaking, where people thought whatever I did was cool. In fact, few people thought that much of anything I did was cool.

You see, what my naive young brain failed to realize was that Fonzie looked cool because he had writers who wrote cool things for him to say. And because Henry Winkler was a good actor who was good at playing cool. Seriously, have you ever seen an interview with Henry Winkler in real life? He's the exact opposite of Fonzie. That man should have won an Emmy.

So put yourself in my brother's shoes for just a moment. He won't mind, as long as they aren't his nice work shoes. You're a teenager, trying to make a rep for yourself. Just trying to fit in. Trying to be cool. And you've got a Fonzie-worshipping twit of a little brother who keeps ratting you out to mom and dad.

And now the stage is set for what happened next.

Next Week: Back to the Shack, Part 2: He Ain't Heavy

Cat Tales: The Night that Fonzie Died

2011-02-13T20:19:00.000-06:00

Fonzie was the first cat that we had when we moved to Gorham. I think. We had so many cats during that 10 year period that it's hard to keep them all straight. Most of them, of course, came from George and Jenny Burnham's cat, who supplied the neighborhood with kittens for years and probably should have been spayed at some point, but I digress. Fonzie was a gray cat, I remember that much, and we named him after a character in my favorite TV show at the time - The Jeffersons.

The character of Fonzie (yes, I know it's from Happy Days) would have a profound influence on my young, impressionable life. Which means that at some point you will have to endure a blog post about it. But not today. As a side note, though, it's worth pointing out that we were not the only ones obsessed with that show. Our neighbors, the Condons, had a female cat named Pinky. As in Tuscadero. As in Fonzie's girlfriend on the show. As in - oh, never mind. If you don't get it by now, go to YouTube and figure it out for yourself.

Fonzie the cat, meanwhile, was always getting into trouble. He was an outdoor cat and was always getting into things he shouldn't be. It was that need to get into those things that would ultimately be his undoing.

I don't remember too much about Fonzie when he was alive. But I remember very vividly the night he died. I was upstairs watching an episode of my other favorite TV show, BJ And the Bear. If you are not familiar with this wonder of a series, oh man, you missed out. It was a show about a truck driver and his pet chimpanzee named Bear. Yes, it was real. And it was awesome.

So in this particular episode, Bear almost died. He was captured by some scientist or something who wanted to experiment on him, but was rescued by his buddy BJ at the last minute. He was okay, but that near death experience was very traumatic to my young brain. I remember going downstairs when it was over and finding my brother and his friend both in tears. At first, I figured they were upset about the show, as I was. But I soon learned it was something far worse.

Fonzie, as it turns out, had been under the couch where my brother and his friend were watching TV. He had been coughing and retching for quite some time. Then he stopped. And he was gone. We learned from the vet later on that Fonzie had eaten or drank something he shouldn't have. Something poisonous. Poor cat never had a chance.

After Fonzie came Yaz. Yaz was named after Carl Yastremski, left fielder for the Boston Red Sox and one of the greatest baseball players ever. Yaz was a good cat. He liked to sit outside and just watch the world go by. I remember drawing a picture of Yaz sitting outside watching the birds in our driveway. Funny, I can't remember what happened to him, but I'm sure he's long gone.

We had a series of cats after Yaz. I remember we had three of them at one time, just before we moved. We had Sammy, an orange cat; Stripe, gray and black striped cat named for the character of Stripe in the movie "Gremlins" (and, oh yeah, the fact that he had stripes); and a black Maine coon cat (no, that's not racist, that's the kind of cat he was, I swear) named Mouse.

Stripe and Mouse, if I remember correctly, would be the two that made the move with us when we finally left the state of Maine. And that's a story for another time. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself.

Next week: Back to the Shack

Pet Sounds

2011-02-06T20:38:00.001-06:00

Okay, so anyone who read last week's post was probably expecting a continuation this week in which I explain the momentous decision I made whilst sitting in The Shack that fateful day. I will get to that. That post is proving trickier than I thought to write and is going to take me some time to finish.

In the meantime, I mentioned in an earlier post that I would have to do a post about some of the pets we had when I was a kid because we had a lot of them. Well ladies and gentlemen fasten your seat belts because this is that post. Try to contain your enthusiasm.

The first pet I remember having was a beagle named Sparky. That was before we moved to White Rock Park. I was only 3 or 4 at the time Sparky died. I don't remember him dying but I'm assuming he did because I don't remember having him when we moved into our house in Gorham. Also if he hadn't he would be upwards of 35 years old today, which is an unnaturally long time for a dog to live.

When we moved into that house, we had a series of sheep dogs, for some reason. Well, two actually - Brianne and Susie. We had each of them at different times but because I was so young they both kind of blend together in my mind. I don't remember what happened to Brianne, but I will never forget what happened to Susie.

I was down at my friend Todd's house and had Susie with me for some reason. Todd, as you may remember, lived at the corner of The Park Road and the main road. We were there playing in Todd's yard when Susie suddenly darted into the road. I remember calling after her but it was too late. A dump truck came along and put a quick end to her. At least she didn't suffer. I, on the other hand, was devastated. The horrible sight of her mangled body is one that is still burned in my mind to this day. I remember running home and into our living room, where mom was sitting on that hideous sofa we had that folded out into a bed. I burst into the room, tears streaming down my face and tried to explain what happened. I don't remember much after that.

Boy, this post took a dark turn pretty quickly, didn't it? Fortunately, kids rebound from things pretty quickly and we eventually got another dog. This was an Alaskan malamute named Prince. I've mentioned him before and probably will again. Prince is my favorite of all of the pets we had when I was a little kid. He was a big, lumbering lummox of a dog who had a heart of gold. The four of us kids played pretty rough with him and he never once tried to bite us. But if anyone else came after us in a threatening way, well, let's just say that was probably a good way to lose an arm.

Being an Alaskan malamute, Prince loved the snow. He was a perfect dog to have in Maine. We had a harness for him and sometimes during the winter we'd put it on, grab on to his leash and jump into a sled behind him. He happily pulled us around the yard until he got tired or we did. Usually we wore out long before Prince.

But Prince was not perfect. He had a couple of problems. One was that he would chew anything he could get his paws on. I already told you the story of how he ate all of my brother's Christmas presents one year. Prince also liked to chew on golf balls. And because dad was such an avid golfer, we always had plenty around. In those days, golf balls were made with a solid center that was wrapped in rubber bands. It was pretty funny to watch Prince chew the cover off one and get to those rubber bands. He would chew and chew and then jump about five feet in the air whenever one would snap in his face. Then he would go right back to chewing until another one snapped. He was a sweet dog, but not very bright.

I remember another game we used to play with Prince. Our house was set up so that you could run in a circle from the kitchen to the dining room to the living room to the front hallway then back to the kitchen again. One of us would chase Prince around that circle and get him running as fast as he could. The rest of us would lie down in the living room side to side so he would jump over us as he ran. He never once landed on us, thankfully.

Prince's other problem was that he would never stay on his run. I mentioned in an earlier post that we had a run set up for him between two trees in the back yard. He had a well-worn groove between those two trees, but no matter how thick or heavy the chain or line we used to put him on it, he would always chew or break right through it and take off running. And forget about getting him to come back to you when he ran. He knew he was in trouble and wasn't about to come back for that.

Our standard procedure for when Prince got loose was to grab some hot dogs or dog treats and jump in the car to go find him. There were times when he got several miles from home before we caught him. Unfortunately, these Houdini-like escapes would ultimately prove to be his undoing.

Across Minard's field there stood a small house right next door to the Minard's barn. In that house lived the Quints. I couldn't tell you today what they looked like but in my mind at the time I pictured them as a mean, wrinkled old couple who hated all animals except sheep. They had a sheep in their back yard for some reason. No one knows why. Nobody liked them well enough to ask.

We always knew Prince had a bit of blood lust in him, probably a holdover from his wolfish ancestry. One time he got loose and killed a bunch of chickens before we caught up to him. But we knew there was nothing we could do to change him and he never tried to murder any of us so we just let it go.

Until that fateful day when he got loose and the Quints sheep turned up dead. To my knowledge, the Quints never saw Prince kill their sheep. All they saw was Prince and another dog whom they chased from their yard when they discovered the sheep. I was quite certain then - as I am to this day - that Prince was framed by that other dog. For all I know the other dog killed those chickens, too.

But seeing as how we had no proof one way or the other, things didn't look good for Prince. And, like mean old Miss Gulch in the Wizard of Oz, the Quints demanded we have Prince put to sleep. My parents refused, but realizing we couldn't keep him either, they opted to give him away.

The day Prince left was one of the saddest days of my young life. It broke my heart to have to say goodbye to him. I couldn't even bear to go with my parents when they took him, though I think my sisters did. I stayed home alone and cried.

Prince would not be the last dog we had, but he would be the last one for a long time. It wasn't until a few years later when we moved to Kansas that I was able to convince my parents to get another dog. In fact, we would go through a couple more dogs before we got to Zuzu, the Greatest Dog Who Ever Lived. But Zuzu will get a post of her own later on.

In the meantime, though, we did have plenty of cats. And plenty of depressing stories to go along with them. So you've got that to look forward to.

Next week: Cat Tales: The Night that Fonzie Died

The (Love) Shack

2011-01-30T21:55:00.000-06:00

We waited for the bus every day and the end of our subdivision road (a.k.a. "The Park Road," as we called it), where it emptied out on to the main road. Though the main road was in fact a state route, it didn't see a tremendous amount of traffic. And what traffic it did see was mostly local, save for the occasional truck that would rumble through (at which point we would all frantically jerk our arms in the air in the universal sign for "honk your horn" and then cheer wildly when the truck driver would oblige).

So in spite of the fact that we had to wait by this road, we were never really in serious danger of being struck by a vehicle, unless it was through our own stupidity. In fact, we were in more danger of being attacked by the goose that belonged to the family whose house sat directly across the highway from the end of The Park Road. Though I don't remember that thing actually biting anybody, I do remember it honking and flailing its wings about when it felt threatened. Not that we ever did anything that could be perceived to be the least bit threatening by an animal with a brain the size of a peanut. Heavens no.

Well, someone must have thought we were endangered enough from the traffic or the goose because after years of standing at that corner, someone decided we needed a shelter. Now that would have been fine if the shelter had been placed at the corner where we actually waited for the bus. But it wasn't.

Instead, it was placed a couple hundred feet down along the side of the Park Road, far enough back to ensure that we would have to sprint for the bus when it arrived lest we be left behind. And far enough to ensure that if we ever did use it to wait for the bus while it was raining, we would be thoroughly soaked by the time we got to the bus anyway. So for the most part, we never used it. At least not for its intended purpose.

The Shack, as we came to call it, became a repository for all sorts of graffiti and served as little more than that and a jungle gym we could climb on top of on days when we didn't have school. But to read the walls inside The Shack was to read something of the history of White Rock Park. Like centuries-old cave etchings, the words (and sometimes drawings) in there detailed who we were, the people we loved and the people we hated.

One look inside and you would know that Terri and Roger had been an item ("Terri + Roger") or that nobody cared much for Vivian Andrews ("Vivian Andrews stinks"). You could see a tribute to a long lost pet ("Blackie was here, but now he's gone") or a well thought out homage to a classical musician ("AC/DC rules!").

I remember times when I needed to get out of the house. I was mad at my parents or my siblings or I needed to just go someplace and think. I would pedal my bike down to The Shack and sit for a while on the bench inside.

I don't know how long The Shack stayed in that spot. It was there when my family and I eventually moved out of the neighborhood, but I don't think it survived for much longer beyond that. The last time I was there several years ago it was long gone and trees and scrub brush had taken its place.

It might seem a strange thing to get nostalgic about but, well, okay, it is a strange thing to get nostalgic about. But it was a small part of my childhood that would later be the location of one of the most important decisions of my then young life.

Next week: Something Witty and Clever, I'm Sure

Roger and Me

2011-01-20T08:28:00.007-06:00

I don't remember how old I was the first time Roger came to town. I do remember that all of the girls had a crush on him. And this was my first experience in what I like to call The Mystique of the New Kid.

Roger was the grandson of one of our neighbors, a nice couple who lived a few houses down from Todd. George and Jenny. I remember them well for several reasons. One being that Jenny was for years the lunch lady at our elementary school. The other being that Jenny had a cat that was forever having kittens. One of our favorite things to do on a lazy afternoon was to go down to Jenny's to see the latest batch of kittens.

Of course it was never enough for us to just see the kittens. Every time we would fall in love with one and every time we would run home and beg mom to let us have one. We got several cats from Jenny over the years. I'll have to do a post later on about the pets when had when I was a kid, because there were a lot of them.

At any rate, getting back to Roger. Roger had a shock of red hair and he talked differently from the rest of us, in some goofy accent in which he fully pronounced all of his R's. He was from someplace none of us had ever been to before. He was from away.

For those of you who don't know, "from away" is how folks in Maine tend to refer to people from other states. Mostly because we don't know geography and aren't really familiar with other states beyond New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Roger was from somewhere in the Midwest - I want to say Chicago or Wisconsin, but I could be wrong. Either way, it was someplace far away and strange to the rest of us. And that made him automatically much cooler and more interesting than we were. Especially to Terri Duran. Though they couldn't have been any more than 11 or 12 at the time, she and Roger had kind of a thing going. As much of a thing as 12-year-olds can have, I guess.

I remember hanging out with Roger, doing all of the things we usually did - climbing trees, riding bikes and building forts. I also remember the girls giggling uncontrollably whenever he was around and him and Terri sneaking off on their own.

But alas, Roger was only a summer visitor and their romance was not meant to be. He would come back for a few summers and the last time I remember seeing him was the summer after Terri left us for good. More on that later.

What I got from Roger, though, was a lesson: that the new kid in town was always cooler and more interesting than the people who had lived there their whole lives. It was a lesson I would see again in junior high with another new kid in town. And one I eventually hoped would apply to me. I was in for a rude awakening on that score, but that was still several years away.

Though Terri and Roger's romance was not meant to last, there was one place where the memory of it lived on for years to come: The Shack.

Next week: The (Love) Shack (It's not quite what you think)

Night Terrors

2011-01-16T20:17:00.000-06:00

As it turns out, Bigfoot was just the beginning of the things that would scare me in the night. It was the start of a long history of sleepless nights, cowering beneath my sheets, drenched in sweat, unable to even move for fear that something out there, beyond my covers, in the darkest corners of my room - or in my closet or, heaven forbid, under my bed - was just waiting for the right moment to pounce on me and swallow me whole.

I know most kids probably had experiences like this and mine is nothing new. But it really is crucial to the story of Mr. Low Self Esteem. He, like many demons, was born of fear. And for me that fear began in the form of Bigfoot, but it would stick with me for many years and take on many different forms.

I remember once, when I was about 8 or 9, somebody gave me a plastic replica of the creature form the movie "Alien." I don't remember who thought that was such a brilliant gift idea for an easily frightened 8 year old, but it doesn't really matter. What I do remember is that the damn thing glowed in the dark and I was quite certain it was going to come to life and kill me in my in my sleep. That's why I always made sure it was locked safely in the closet before I went to bed.

I also remember being terrified of The Elephant Man. That movie came out when I was about 9 years old and although I would never see it until years later, just the thought of it was enough to give me nightmares. I remember seeing pictures of him in that hood with the single eye hole cut out of it. To my 9-year-old brain there could be nothing but pure evil under that hood.

It's funny when I think about it now, those scary nights. I was all at once too terrified to come out from under my covers, but at the same time I was brave enough (or terrified enough) to make a run for the safety of my parents' room. There were many nights when I found myself bolting down the hallway and asking if I could sleep in their bed. And most nights, God bless them, they let me.

You see, my room was the first room at the top of the stairs in our old house. So it stood to reason that any monsters, madmen or murderers making their way to the second floor would get to me first. My parents, on the other hand, had the room at the farthest end of the hall, so I figured theirs was safer. Of course, they had no other way to exit the second floor other than that hallway, so if Bigfoot did show up he would have me and my folks cornered in that room. Somehow that thought never occurred to me at the time.

That's the thing about fear. Logic doesn't enter into it. Not in the least. Case in point: there were some nights, especially as I got older, when my parents refused to let me into the bed with them. So instead I would drag my blanket and pillow down the hall and camp out on the floor next to the bed. At least there, I reasoned, the only thing I had to fear was being stepped on by my dad in his underwear in the middle of the night. That was scary, to be sure, but nowhere near as scary as Bigfoot.

Eventually, they stopped letting me in the room altogether. That didn't stop me, though. Pillow and blanket in hand, I would sometimes spend the night in my sisters' room, reasoning that if it came to it, I could toss one of them at Bigfoot and make my escape.

More often than not, though, I would go down to the end of the hallway and set up camp outside my parents' bedroom door. Now I ask you, what sense does that make? If Bigfoot came to the top of the stairs, he wasn't likely to stop at my room or even my sisters' room. Not when there was a tasty morsel of a 9-year-old boy just waiting for him right there in the hallway. Like I said, logic doesn't enter into it.

Next Week: Another Thrilling Adventure of Yesteryear (In other words, I have no idea yet what I'm going to write about).

Bigfoot Comes to Town

2011-01-09T09:26:00.000-06:00

In the late 1970s, for some inexplicable reason, Bigfoot fever gripped the nation. The hairy bastard was everywhere - from cheesy movies to cheesy TV shows. He even battled the 6 Million Dollar Man.

But the worst part of it all was that, according to my older brother, he was living in my back yard. Or to be more precise, the woods just beyond my back yard.

I don't know exactly when my fear of Bigfoot started, but I do remember what it was that kicked it off. It was a movie I saw late one night called "The Legend of Boggy Creek." The movie was released in 1972 and was a documentary-style film claiming to tell the true story of a Bigfoot-like monster that terrorized a small town in Arkansas.

It was not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, but it was good enough to terrify an impressionable young boy growing up in the woods of Maine. I remember one scene in particular that scared the bejeezus out of me. There was a woman in a house - I think she was a babysitter there with kids, these things always seem to happen to babysitters. Anyway, the kids were in bed and she was sitting by herself in the living room near a window. All of a sudden, this giant, hairy arm smashed through the window and tried to grab her. I don't remember if she survived because at that moment I ran for cover under my bed and stayed there for several days.

My fear of Bigfoot firmly entrenched in my psyche, it was time for my older brother to swing into action. He wasted no time in convincing me that not just Bigfoot, but a whole family of Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) was living out behind our house. He told me that at night you could see their red eyes glowing in the dark. For months I refused to go near my bedroom window - which looked out over our back yard and the woods - once the sun went down.

I remember one night when it was my turn to feed the dog. We had a dog named Prince - an Alaskan malamute who was the most gentle, protective dog you ever wanted to meet. During the day Prince played with us and had full run of the house. At night, though, he mostly stayed out in his dog house. We had a runner set up between two trees so he had plenty of room to run around. Not that it kept him from escaping on more than one occasion, but that's a story for another time.

Now before anyone goes accusing us of animal cruelty for keeping him outside at night, keep in mind that this is an Alaskan malamute we're talking about here. This is a dog that loved the cold and would bounce around like a rabbit on a pogo stick the first time it snowed every year. This is also a dog that would eat anything and everything in the house if you didn't keep a constant eye on him. My brother learned that fact the hard way one Christmas night when he felt bad for Prince and decided to let him sleep in his bedroom. The next morning my brother awoke to find teeth marks and chunks missing from many of his brand new Christmas presents.

At any rate, one night it was my turn to feed Prince his dinner. I didn't usually like doing this in the winter because at dinner time it was pitch black outside and Prince's dog house sat right on the edge of the woods, thus meaning I had to get closer to Bigfoot (and his wife and kids) than I ever really wanted to. My usual method was to turn on the back porch light, sprint out there as fast as I could, dump the food, and sprint back to the safety of the house before I got eaten. This night was no different.

However, when I reached Prince's bowl and had just finished dumping his food, I heard something move in the trees beyond his dog house. I couldn't see what it was but I was quite sure I did not want to know. I froze for just long enough to see something jump out at me from behind the dog house and hear the roar of a creature I was sure was going to tear me limb from limb. I never ran so fast in my life, screaming the whole way back to the house. I ran inside and slid the sliding door closed behind me, locking it as fast as I could. I ran for the kitchen to find my mother. She would later tell me I was panting and as pale as a ghost.

I don't remember exactly what I told her, but a few minutes later, my brother came into the kitchen, laughing his head off. I was not amused.

And so it was that Bigfoot (and, to a certain extent, my brother) became responsible for countless nights of cowering in fear underneath my covers, too scared to even poke my head out except for the occasional breath of fresh air. I knew I would be safe under there. No monsters - not even Bigfoot - could penetrate the safety of a good set of Dukes of Hazzard bedsheets.

Next Week: Night Terrors

Let the Games Begin

2011-01-02T10:09:00.000-06:00

One of the things I remember most about the early days in my old neighborhood was the games we used to play. One of our favorite games was called "Build-Up." It was a variation on Hide-and-Seek and it has been more than 30 years since I played it, so some of the following details may be wrong. Or completely made up.

A traditional game of Hide-and-Seek went like this: One person was "it" and everybody else had to hide while the person who was "it" counted to some ridiculously large number, giving the others plenty of time to hide. The person who was "it" would have to find everyone. Pretty simple and I'm sure most of you probably knew that already. For the few of you reading this who had no friends (you know who you are) that's how the game worked when you played it with other people.

Build-Up worked in a similar way, but with a few key differences. First, there was an established base, known as - and I may be spelling this wrong - "ghouls." I'm not sure why we called it that. Maybe we just didn't know how to say "goal." When the person who was "it" found someone hiding, the two raced to see who could get back to "ghouls" first. If it was the hider, he or she would then shout "my ghouls 1-2-3!" and get to sit there while "it" went back out to look for more hiders.

If the person who was "it" got there first, then the hider had to join the person who was "it" in looking for the other hiders. As the game went on, if you had enough people playing and a fast enough person was "it," you could conceivably have 5 to 10 kids all looking for one person. Hence the name "Build Up." When the last person was found and he or she raced back to "ghouls" with whoever was "it," the loser of that race would have to be "it" the next time around.

Now, I know there are some flaws in this game and on more than one occasion someone was stuck being "it" for several rounds because the other players would conspire against him to sneak the last remaining hider back to base without "it" knowing. Not that I ever participated in such shenanigans.

In those early days it was a pretty mixed bag of kids that would play with us and we usually played either in my yard or the Condon's yard. A typical group would be me, Todd, my sisters Kim and Kelly, Lori Capozza, Kelly Condon, Terri Duran and occasionally Cindy Abbott.

I remember playing one time at my house and we had a pop-up trailer that we used when we went camping. I have many stories to tell about that trailer and about camping later on. But for this story, the trailer was closed down. In spite of this, you could still open the lower half of the door to get in. It made a good place to hide, or so I thought. I remember that Todd was "it" and he came looking for me. He opened the door to the trailer, saw me inside, slammed it shut and took off running to beat me back to base.

The problem was, Todd had slammed the door shut so hard that it became stuck and I found myself trapped in this dark, cramped space unable to get out. I did what any other resourceful, red-blooded American kid in the same situation would do - I screamed for help and cried like a little girl. To this day, while I wouldn't say I have full blown claustrophobia, I still get a little nervous when I see a pop-up camper.

As we got older, the older girls - Kelly C., Terri and Cindy, went their own separate ways and played with us less and less. As I mentioned, they were all a couple of years older than the rest of us, so that only made sense. The rest of us would still play together occasionally in a co-ed group. but more often than not the boys would split off from the girls and we would play our own games. For Todd and me, it was usually cops and robbers in the form of either pretending to be Bo and Luke Duke or Ponch and John from "CHiPs."

Because we often needed someone to play the bad guy or Sheriff Roscoe on those days, we would recruit Shawn. Shawn was the kid brother of another kid we knew named David. Shawn and David lived across the street from Todd. David was a juvenile delinquent in training and Shawn was, well, different. Shawn would go door-to-door in the neighborhood during the hot summer months and try to sell water. Not bottled water mind you. We didn't really have that in those days. I'm talking about a glass of tap water he brought from his house. He usually went along with whatever we wanted him to do, so it wasn't hard at all to convince him to be the bad guy.

At any rate, I don't remember how old I was when the camper incident happened. But it was one of my earliest memories of being truly terrified of something. There were a couple of earlier ones - being trapped in a garage with my brother when I was four and being awakened in the middle of the night by a talking Batman alarm clock that Santa had, unbeknown to me and my brother, left in our room while we were sleeping - but the camper to me was scarier than both of those.

It was not the last time that fear would play a significant role in my childhood.

Next week: Bigfoot Comes to Town

The Kids Are All Right

2010-12-26T09:22:00.000-06:00

Here's a snap shot of my neighborhood in Maine as it was when we first moved in. I figured that because many of the stories I plan to tell in the coming weeks will take place there, it might be a good idea for me to give you a better idea of what it was like.

It was a very small subdivision called White Rock Park. As I mentioned before, it was on the outskirts of the town of Gorham, Maine. Not a big town by any stretch of the imagination, but hardly a small town, either. When we lived there the population was about 14,000. Now I have since been to sporting events with bigger crowds than that but at the time it seemed like a decent size.

White Rock Park consisted of one road that ran off the main highway, Route 237, and back into a heavily wooded area for about a quarter mile. Along that quarter mile were eight houses and two circles, as we called them. Others might call them cul-de-sacs, but they weren't quite what I picture when I picture a cul-de-sac (as I often do). The road circled around a grassy patch in the middle with some small trees and bushes and there were two houses - one on each side of the circle.

As you went down the road from the main highway, you would first pass my friend Todd's house on the left, though it wasn't officially part of the subdivision as its driveway emptied out onto the main road. Further down the road you would pass the Condon's house on the right and the Jenkins's red house on the left. Other families would eventually move in to those houses, but to the rest of us who lived there, they would always be the Condon's house and the Jenkins's house. That's just the way it works in old neighborhoods.

The Condons had three kids - Christa, Manny and Kelly. Manny was about my brother's age, and Kelly was a couple years older than me. Christa was the oldest and I didn't really see her much. I remember playing many games with the other neighborhood kids at the Condon's house. It seemed to be a focal point of a lot of our activities, even after the Condons moved out. The Jenkins, to my knowledge, didn't have any kids, but they didn't stay in the neighborhood very long after we moved in anyway.

Continuing down the road you would come to the first circle, which would be on your right. There you would find the Capozzas on one side and my house on the other. The Capozzas had three kids - Stacy was the oldest, older than my brother, I think. Tommy was about my brother's age (which is to say about four years older than me) and Lori was the same age as my sisters (about two years younger than me). The things I remember most about the Capozza house are playing with Tommy's superhero action figures and crashing a mini-bike into the back of their garage. More on that story later.

Our house was a two story colonial that was built just before we moved in, meaning we were the first ones to live there. I remember going there while it was being built and watching the construction. It sat back in the woods a bit, connected to the circle by a long, narrow driveway. When we first moved in, the driveway was dirt and there was no garage. Both of those things would change by the time we left.

There was a trail that cut across the front corner of our driveway near the circle. It sliced through a thick patch of trees and into Minard's field beyond. Over the years my father made several attempts to block the trail with tree branches and whatever else he could find to stop motorcycles and snowmobiles from crossing our driveway, but the blockades never lasted very long and he eventually gave up.

Moving past our circle you would come to the Butts house on the right. Yes, that was their real name. They were very nice people though and they had a son whom they chose to give the unfortunate name of Rusty Butts. Rusty was a good kid, though several years younger than me, so he didn't play much with our gang.

Before you got to the second circle you passed the Andrews house on the left. It was easily the biggest house in the neighborhood and the Andrews' served as the neighborhood's token rich family, though how much money they had I don't actually know. We just assumed they were rich because they had the biggest house and a pool out back and Mr. Andrews drove a golf cart around the neighborhood and would often be seen hitting golf balls in Minard's Field. They had a daughter named Tammy who was the same age as my brother.

Moving into the second circle, you would find the Drakes on one side and the Abbotts on the other. I don't remember much about the Drakes, except that they were a married couple with no kids (at least none my age) and they didn't stay in the neighborhood very long after we moved in. They were soon replaced by the Clarks who had a daughter named Wendy who was about a year older than me and who, because she kept to herself and didn't say much, was pretty much perceived by all of us to be snooty. Whether that was true or not was about as relevant to us as whether or not the Andrews' were actually rich. That was how we saw it and that was all that mattered.

The Abbott family also had a pool, but we somehow never considered them to be rich. Maybe because they didn't have a golf cart. But they did have two daughters named Chrissy and Cindy. Cindy was two years older than me and Chrissy was about the same age as my brother.

So there you have a good idea of what my neighborhood was like. Or who was in it at any rate. I did mention Terri Duran in my last post, and she lived out on Route 237, several houses down from Todd. Neither of them was officially part of the White Rock Park subdivision but both of them would play key roles in my childhood.

Next week: Let the Games Begin!

The Longest Two Weeks of My Life

2010-12-19T21:35:00.000-06:00

When I woke up, the first thing I said was that I wanted to put my arm down. My arm, you see, was suspended above me in traction and I was told that, not only could I not put it down, but that I would have to spend the next two weeks laying it a hospital bed with it raised over my head.

That is not something a 7-year-old boy wants to hear.

There are many things I remember about my hospital stay. I remember being in a bed that was not far from a window where I could look down on the street and watch cars and people going by. I seem to remember a lot of other kids being around, but I don't know if that's because I was sharing a room with them or because they wheeled my bed out into a common area from time to time. I do remember my bed being moved to a common area once to see Ronald McDonald when he came to visit, a definite highlight of my stay.

Speaking of McDonald's, I have vivid memories of not liking the hospital food. Except for the mashed potatoes. Those I loved. But my folks would bring me in food from McDonald's from time to time because I refused to eat the food they gave me at the hospital. It's tempting to chalk that up to childhood finickiness, but the few times I've been around hospital food as an adult, my opinion of it has not improved.

The other thing I remember from that time is the visitors. I got lots of visitors during that two weeks, other than Ronald, I mean. Friends and neighbors came by almost daily to see how I was doing. I liked having visitors because more often than not they brought presents. Hey, a kid's got to have his priorities.

There are two presents in particular that I remember quite well. The first was a Crayola game book that was made of laminated cardboard. It came with its own crayons and because it was laminated you could erase any marks you made and play the games over and over again. I don't remember who gave it to me, but I played many rounds of tic-tac-toe during those two long weeks.

The other present I remember was an action figure of The Incredible Hulk that was given to me by the Duran family. The Durans lived up the street and around the corner from us and they had two kids. Donny was about my brother's age, I think, maybe a little older. Terri was about two years older than me, but she had still played with all of us kids in the neighborhood, at least until she got to junior high. What happened then would shake our happy little neighborhood to the core, but that was several years away. In that hospital, she was just a neighbor who had come to pay me a visit and bring me an Incredible Hulk, which I thought was pretty cool.

After I left the hospital, I wore a cast on my arm, sling and all, for another couple of long, itchy months. I was so glad when I finally got that thing removed, although my arm never looked quite the same again.

Because of the way it was broken - right on the elbow - the doctors had to set my arm a certain way. They put a pin in there to keep it in place and said they had to do it the way they did because they were afraid it wouldn't grow properly otherwise. They told me - or told my parents - that when I was fully grown I could have it re-broken and set again so that it would be closer to normal. But having gone through the pain of breaking it once, that idea somehow never appealed to me.

So, to this day, I cannot touch my left shoulder with my left hand. The arm just won't bend far enough. And also, I can put my arm in such a position that it looks like it's twisted around backwards. Been freaking people out with that one for years. It's lots of fun at parties.

Next week: The Kids are All Right

A Broken Arm

2010-12-13T07:40:00.000-06:00

As I said last week, I had no fear on my bike. Doing jumps. Popping wheelies. Standing on the seat. Falling on my face. I did it all. And I always got back up and kept riding. Except for the one time I couldn't because my arm had been smashed to pieces. Yeah, that time, not so much.

There was a field next to my house that belonged to the Minard family. They were a very nice family whose house was situated on the other side of the field from mine. The daughter, Ann, was several years older than me and used to babysit me and my sisters when we were younger. She was very cool and a lot of fun.

One time, my parents won a trip to Brazil on some radio contest or something, so Ann came to stay with us all week while they were gone. One night while Ann was cooking spaghetti for dinner, the phone rang. It was my parents checking in. Being in Brazil and it being the late 1970s, they had to call through an operator, who told Ann to hold for the call.

Ann continued to cook dinner while she wanted and, being as goofy as she was, started to sing. There was a song that was popular at the time called "Yes, I'm Ready" by Jeffrey Osborne (thank you, Google). It was a duet of sorts and the lyrics went something like this: "Are you ready? Yes I'm ready? Are you ready? Yes I'm ready?" Hey, I said it was a popular song. I didn't say it was a good song.

So Anne, who was always trying to make us laugh, starts to sing to the spaghetti as it's cooking. "Spaghetti, are you ready? Yes, I'm ready." We were giggling like mad, she was stirring the spaghetti with one hand and holding the phone with the other. My parents who, unbeknown to Ann had been connected this whole time, were sitting there listening to some crazy woman singing about spaghetti. Turns out, they didn't realize they had been connected either and were wondering why the hell the operator was singing a love song to pasta.

We laughed about that for years to come. But that's not the story I'm here to tell today. Getting back to Minard's Field, as we referred to it. They didn't have any particular use for the field and were kind enough to let us use it for playing touch football or pickup baseball games or whatever else it was we felt like playing that day.

On the day I broke my arm, my brother and some of his friends were out playing touch football on the far end of the field. My mother had sent me and my trusty bike out to tell him it was time to come home for dinner.

There were two paths that led through the field, both of which started at the corner that was closest to the end of my driveway. One path cut diagonally and went past the Minard's house on the other side, across Barstow Road, and into the woods beyond. The other path went up the side of the field along a dense patch of wooded area, through some scrub brush in the far corner, and into another field beyond that. That path had been worn down enough that it had taken on a U-shape, and was close enough to the trees that there were more than a few roots sticking out across that U-shape.

You can sort of see where this is going. I, on the other hand, couldn't. I pedaled furiously down the path, my mind focused only on one thing: getting my brother home for dinner. I don't recall what went through my mind after my tire hit the root and I sailed over the handlebars of my bike through the air, but I'm sure it wasn't my brother.

I hit the ground left elbow first and heard a sickening "crack!" Things get a little hazy after that. I remember crying out in pain and being unable to move my arm. I remember my brother coming over and saying "What happened?"

"I fell off my bike, you idiot!" came my reply. I was never one to put up with stupid questions, especially when I was on the ground writhing in pain. I remember being surrounded by neighbors and someone going off to get my mother. I remember the ambulance ride to the hospital, being taken into the emergency room and being given anesthesia.

After that, everything went dark.

Next week: The Longest Two Weeks of My Life

Life Before Mr. Low Self Esteem

2010-12-06T23:48:00.000-06:00

I was born in Maine. Most everybody reading this knows that already, but this story has to start someplace, so Maine it is. All in all, I had a pretty good childhood. We lived in a small neighborhood on the outskirts of a small town where everybody knew everybody else and parents weren't afraid to let their kids run around outside unsupervised for most of the day (and sometimes even after dark).

We moved to that neighborhood when I was five years old and I soon made friends with a kid named Todd, who lived just down the street. Todd and I became best friends and we still talk at least once a month to this day.

Todd and I spent most of our days riding bikes, climbing trees and getting into trouble. We lived in a heavily wooded area and there were all kinds of bike trails snaking through the trees which, in the winter, became snowmobile trails. These were not the manufactured, paved "trails" you find in Johnson County, Kansas, mind you. These were dirt-covered paths worn down by years of people riding bicycles, motorcycles, ATVs and snowmobiles through the woods.

One of the trails I remember had a steep hill with a mound at the bottom that made for a handy jump. One of our favorite TV shows of that time was "The Dukes of Hazzard," so naturally, any chance to do a jump like the General Lee was a welcome opportunity. We would take turns blasting down that hill as fast as we could go and get airborne once we hit the bottom. Never mind the fact that the trail took a sharp turn about 20 feet beyond the jump and if we didn't time it right we could end up with a face full of tree.

That almost happened to me on more than one occasion. The one that sticks out in my mind, though, is the time that I hit the jump and found myself sliding off the seat of my bike. This was well before the X-Games became popular and I had no idea how to do any fancy stunts or even how to get myself back on the seat. I just knew that my bike appeared to be going further up in the air while my body was heading in the opposite direction. So, I did the only thing I could think of: I let go of the handle bars.

The bike, being much lighter than I was, kept going. My body, being subject to the laws of gravity, headed straight for the ground, which actually turned out to be lucky for me. As my ass landed in the hard dirt with a thud and I waited for my spine to come shooting out the top of my head like a bony missile, I was aware enough to see my bike continue to sail through the air until it was stopped by a tree.

Thankfully, there was minimal damage to both myself and the bike, and there would be many more crazy jumps to come. You see, I was much too young and much too stupid to have much fear of anything in those days. Except for Bigfoot. I was terrified of Bigfoot who, I was quite certain, lived in the woods behind my house. That fact resulted in me spending more than a few nights in my parents room, cowering in fear.

But when it came to that bike I was fearless. I took many more spills over the years, the worst of which resulted in a broken arm and a two week stay in the hospital. But even that didn't stop me from getting back on the bike again.

Next week: A Broken Arm (What, you didn't think I was going to just casually mention that and then not tell the story, did you?)

And So It Begins...

2010-11-28T14:28:00.000-06:00

I think I've hit upon where I want to go with this blog. I've talked before about writing about my love life. And there are plenty of painful, awkward, embarrassing stories I could tell there, believe me. Some of them will still be told, I think, but in a different way. What I want to do now is kind of an origin story.

If you've been reading this blog at all during the past year, then you've read about my old friend Mr. Low Self Esteem. If you haven't (and assuming that you want to), I suggest you take a look back at some of the posts detailing the story of The Bachelor Pad, as he plays a prominent role in that tale.

But Mr. Low Self Esteem didn't get his start in The Bachelor Pad. Oh no, he was around long before that. He wasn't always there, of course. No one is born with Low Self Esteem, though sometimes it feels that way. Mr. Low Self Esteem showed up sometime around the 5th or 6th grade and stayed with me well into my 30s, when I finally put him out of his misery.

That's a long time to have someone like that around and there are a lot of stories to be told within that time frame. So that's what I intend to do. I don't know exactly where this will go yet, but I do know that it won't be easy. And as with the best blogs out there, this story promises to be whiny, self-indulgent and narcissistic. I can only hope you find it funny and entertaining as well.

It's amazing to me now, as I approach 40 and look back on my life so far, just how much of it wasn't true. Oh, the stories I will tell did happen, but they didn't always happen the way I remembered them. I learned that lesson when I blogged about The Bachelor Pad. So much of my life was distorted through the lens of Mr. Low Self Esteem that, looking back on it now, it wasn't really as bad as it seemed at the time.

I don't know if that makes sense, but hopefully it will become more clear as the story progresses. And I mean that for both you and for me.

Okay, I'm starting to confuse even myself now, so I can imagine how you must feel. Let's get on with it already, shall we?

Next Week: Life Before Low Self Esteem

A Daring Escape in Which I Leave My Coworkers to Certain Doom

2010-11-21T21:51:00.000-06:00

So it had come to pass that it was time for me to leave The Sun. Either I went, or my stomach lining did. I chose to preserve my body and what was left of my sanity and begin the search for a new job.

I remember interviewing at several places and having to make up excuses for why I wouldn't be at work on each of those occasions. I think Eric knew what was going on. One day I told him I had I doctor's appointment and he said: "I see. And will you be wearing a tie to this doctor's appointment?"

I finally did find a job at The Packer, a trade publication that covered the produce industry. I was about to spend the next six years of my life writing about fruits and vegetables, which is not really as boring as it sounds. I have some stories from that job as well, but those are for another day.

Back at The Sun, I had to tell Eric I had found another job and was leaving. He wasn't surprised. I think he even wanted me to take him with me. But alas, The Packer had only one position open at that time, and it was going to me.

So I packed up my things and got the hell out of The Sun offices as soon as my two weeks were up. Actually, now that I think about it, I gave three weeks notice because I was in the middle of a big project and I didn't want to leave Eric and the others in my department stuck holding the bag. They would soon be stuck badly enough as it was.

After I left, I stayed in communication with my former coworkers. I felt like a recent parolee exchanging letters with my former cellmates who were still on the inside. Things continued to get worse for them, as a new publisher was put in place who was, by all reports, completely paranoid and more than a little anti-Semitic. Not good qualities to have when one of your publications is The Jewish Chronicle.

About four months or so after my departure, the entire department was sacked and their responsibilities were shifted over to the editorial department (i.e. the real news division of The Sun). That did not go over well.

The Sun was soon plagued by a series of high level resignations and numerous other problems. It got so bad other publications began reporting on it, including The Pitch. I was interviewed for that story. If you're interested, you can read it here. It's a long read, but it gives a more detailed account of what happened at The Sun then I have gotten into here.

I'm happy to say that myself and other ex-Sun employees moved on to bigger and better things. And to this day, no matter how bad my job gets, whenever I have a bad day I take a deep breath and tell myself "It's still not as bad as The Sun." And you know what? It never will be.

So here ends the story of my time at The Sun. Starting next week, I'm going to tell another story. It will be an origin story of sorts, chronicling the early days of an old acquaintance who entered my life at young age and would go one to become one of my most bitter enemies. He has already made some appearances in this blog, but next week his true identity and his amazing story will be revealed.

Stay tuned!

Next Week: So it begins...

It's Always Sunny in Overland Park

2010-11-14T14:27:00.000-06:00

Things went from bad to worse at The Sun after Monica left. There were days when I would go to lunch and upon returning to the building I would sit in my car and have to convince myself to go back in. Monica had provided a buffer between us and Steve Rose and she backed us up when we had to confront the sales staffs about some boneheaded thing they had done. Without her, those protections were gone and our lives became miserable.

I was able to tolerate the misery for a while. Mostly because I had no where else to go. But I soon found myself keeping one eye on the classifieds and updating my resume. I know I wasn't the only one.

The incident that finally made me snap and decide it was time to go involved a special section in The Sun called "The Best of the 'Burbs." The premise of the section was simple: readers voted for their favorites in a variety of categories (e.g. "Best Restaurant" or "Best Grocery Store") and the winners were published in the section.

Of course, this being an advertising section, the readers weren't given just any old places they wanted to choose from. Oh no. They were given a special, pre-selected list of companies that were Sun advertisers and were asked to choose from those. So it wasn't a completely honest contest, but it was as honest as you could get and still make the advertisers happy. Oh sure, there was a place where readers could write in their own choices, but those seldom garnered enough votes to seriously compete with the advertisers. Except for this one time in which they did.

One of our jobs in Marketing Services was to tally the votes and declare the winners. This was usually not a problem. But the year I left The Sun it turned into one. The controversy centered around the ever-popular "Best Hardware Store" category. The winner, with a clear majority of the votes, was Ace Hardware. All fine and dandy, right? The only problem was that one of the sales staff had sold an ad to an Ace Hardware franchise that was not actually owned by the corporate parent company. I don't remember the name, so we'll call it "Bob's Ace Hardware."

Now, to be fair, there were a few votes cast for Bob's Ace Hardware, but the majority of them were written in and simply said Ace Hardware, without specifying which store. Having a degree in journalism and having been ingrained in my training with a desire for a certain level of accuracy, I wanted to give the award to Ace Hardware in general. Having no background in journalism and otherwise being a complete tool, the sales rep wanted to give the award to Bob.

I brought my dispute to Eric, whom who may remember from last week's post as having no spine whatsoever. The sales rep brought his dispute to the then manager of the sales department, who also happened to be Steve Rose's nephew. Gee, I wonder who's going to win this argument?

The whole thing came to a head and, to be fair, Eric put up a valiant fight for at least 30 seconds before collapsing like a house of cards. The award went to Bob and my patience went out the window.

I decided the time had come to salvage what little self-respect and journalistic integrity I had left and get the hell out of there. It's a good thing I did, too, because things didn't get any better after that.

Next week: A Daring Escape in Which I Leave My Coworkers to Certain Doom

Meet the New Boss

2010-11-08T09:54:00.003-06:00

So things went fairly smoothly in the Marketing Services Department for a while after the sale. At least, until Monica decided to leave.

Monica was the manager of the department and was one cool lady. She kept that department together and would readily go to bat for anyone who worked there if any of the sales reps got out of line. She could (and did) even stand up to Steve Rose himself. Not many people could do that without losing their jobs or at the very least their sanity. Monica somehow managed to keep both of those things for a lot longer than most people who worked there.

Well, nothing lasts forever and Monica eventually decided to leave for greener pastures. I can't say I blame her. Even at its best, Sun Publications was hardly a fun factory. When she left the big question became who would take her place. At that point, there had been enough turnover in the department that I had seniority (which should tell you something given that I had only been there about a year or so by then).

But there was another candidate who was a bit older than me and had worked in as a sales rep downstairs before coming up to work in Marketing Services. His name was Eric and he wasn't a bad guy. Hey, anyone who can work quotes from "The Simpsons" into everyday conversation on a regular basis is a-okay with me. Between myself, Eric and another guy who worked there named Matt, we probably drove our fellow coworkers crazy by speaking almost exclusively in Simpsonese.

One of our favorite office pranks was to print out fake names, slip them into the name plates we all had on our desks, and see how long it took for someone - either the owner of the desk or someone outside of the department - to notice. As a result of these pranks, it wasn't long at all before the three of us had all but legally changed our names to Simpsons references. I was Poindexter (one of Homer's many nicknames for Milhouse); Matt was The Pope of Chili Town, which is what Chief Wiggum called Homer during a chili eating contest; and Eric was Captain Wacky, which was supposedly what Homer was originally called when the show was first conceived (at least according to Troy McClure, whom you may remember from such films as "The Revenge of Abraham Lincoln" and "The Wackiest Covered Wagon in the West").

But I digress. Eric ultimately got the job and, while he wasn't a bad guy, as a manager he was, how can I put this? Not good. His first order of business was to start randomly changing things he didn't like for no other reason than the fact that he didn't like them. Never mind the fact that we had these procedures in place for very good reasons (such as - oh, I don't know - because they worked). He didn't like them, so they had to go. Of course, they were almost always back in place within days once Eric realized why they were there to begin with.

The other problem with Eric was that he hadn't been at the company as long as Monica had and didn't have the history that she had with Steve Rose and as such was unable to effectively communicate to him the various and sundry needs of our department. In other words, he was a doormat.

It was this very doormat-like quality that would lead to my biggest conflict with Eric and, ultimately, the last straw that would cause me to finally up and quit The Sun.

Next Week: It's Always Sunny in Overland Park

A Scene I'll Never Forget

2010-11-01T14:47:00.000-05:00

So there we were, the day after many of our friends and coworkers had been fired, gathered on the sales floor outside the conference room where the firings had occurred. We were like cattle standing outside a slaughterhouse wondering if we would be the next to go in.

But never fear! The new owners were about to speak! I don't remember their names, so I'll just call them The Bobs (if you saw "Office Space" you know what I mean by that). The Bobs got up and were all smiles. "The good news," they said, "is that you are all survivors! There will be no further layoffs. If you are here, that means your job is safe!"

It was their enthusiasm that bothered me the most, I think. We had just spent the previous day watching a good chunk of the company get fired and it was almost as if they wanted us to be excited about it. Talk about misreading the crowd.

I was relieved at the time, though I didn't really believe them and I would soon come to wish I had been fired. I couldn't worry about that then, though, because Steve Rose was about to speak.

"I know a lot of you are worried about the changes around here," he said. "But I want you to know that the daily operation of the paper will not change. I will still have my column on the front page of the paper."

Oh, well, thank God for that. I wish I was making that up. But, my hand to God, that is almost word for word what the man said. I have witnesses who were there to back me up on that one.

And that statement, in a nutshell, tells you everything you need to know about Steve Rose. He was so out of touch with the people who worked for him, the common folk, that he genuinely believed we would be concerned about his column continuing to run.

There was further pontificating about the future of Sun Publications and how excited the new owners were at this grand opportunity and yada, yada, yada. It didn't really matter. All that did matter is that we were all scared to death and no one knew what was going to happen next.

The only one who wasn't scared, of course, was Steve. He had just made a boatload of money and he was going to continue to write his column on the front page of the paper every week. What more could a man want?

That having been settled, we all returned to work and things quieted down for a bit. But there was another turn of events about to happen in our department that would lead it on the next step toward its demise.

Next Week: Meet the New Boss

Sold Down the River

2010-10-25T08:57:00.004-05:00

As I said during last week's post, I will finish the story I started about The Sun, whether you like it or not. So where was I? Oh yeah...

After my first year or so at The Sun, the company and all of its publications were sold to a company called Lionheart, which was run by two guys who had a history of buying up smaller publications. And when I say smaller publications, I'm talking weekly shopper-type pubs that made The Sun look like The New York Times.

These guys came in with all sorts of high praise and grand promises about the way things were going to be. The sad truth is they had no idea what they were getting into and many of those promises would turn out to be lies.

One of the promises we were told was that they loved our department. None of the other publications they owned had anything like it and our department - that being Marketing Services, in case you forgot - was one of the reasons they wanted to buy The Sun. Within a year and a half the Marketing Services department would be gone, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

There were plenty of other people who were fired before that. We called it Bloody Tuesday. The sale of the company was announced on a Monday, and on Tuesday, the layoffs began. It was not a pretty picture. People would go into the conference room on the first floor and come out weeping, carrying boxes of personal items that had previously occupied their desks. They would be escorted from the building, never to be heard from again. Okay, that's not entirely true. I'm sure they kept in touch with some of their friends who still worked at The Sun, but it doesn't sound as dramatic that way.

Everyone in the building spent that entire day dreading the moment when they would be called into the conference room. It was a long, long day.

Fortunately, neither myself nor any of the people in my department were led into the Execution Chamber, but the news spread fast around the building and we were shocked and stunned whenever we heard about what person or group had been the next to go. I don't remember how many people were fired that day, but The Kansas City Star and The Pitch wrote articles about it in the following months, so you could probably look it up if you really wanted to. In fact, I was quoted in one of The Pitch articles about a year after I left The Sun. If it's still online, and if I can find it, I'll try to post a link later on.

All I knew back then is that, for the moment, my job was safe, but I was never more scared of losing it in my life. I had already been fired once by that company. It was not an experience I was keen on repeating. The one bright spot, as I mentioned in an earlier post, was that the person who had fired me was herself let go during the bloodletting. But that was a small ray of light in an otherwise dark and dreary day.

After the firings were all said and done (at least the first round anyway, there would be more to come) Steve Rose and the new owners gathered the remaining employees together on the open sales floor just outside the blood-stained Conference Room of Death to let us know how things were going to be from then on.

It was a scene I'll never forget.

Next week: A Scene I'll Never Forget.

In which I ramble incoherently...

2010-10-21T09:20:00.004-05:00

Wow. I just realized I didn't put up a post this week. I also just noticed the complete and total lack of an outcry from my reader (Sorry, Greg!). I'll admit, I'm struggling with this blog again. The Bachelor Pad stories were great. I had something to write about every week and enough of them to keep going for almost a year. Plus, it was a naturally progressing story with a complete arc.

Now all I have is, well, stories about working at The Sun. And while there is a complete arc to those stories and they do get more interesting toward the end, I'm still not sold on that particular direction for this blog. I do have other stories to tell that would be every bit as self indulgent, personal and embarrassing as The Bachelor Pad stories (maybe even more so). But the thing about writing stories like that is that you have to write them without fear. Truly great writers have to be willing to spill their guts out all over the page without regard to what people will think. I was able to do that with The Bachelor Pad stories to a certain extent, but even then I held back a little for fear of offending those who were involved.

And that has always been the real problem with my writing. I've always been afraid to write was was really, truthfully on my mind. Even when it's a fictional story, I get scared because sometimes I base those on real people and real events I don't want people to think I really feel that way about those people and events. So I hold back. And it makes for really half-assed storytelling.

Sometimes I come to this blog and think that I have nothing interesting to write about. One of the reasons I held off so long in starting a blog is that I couldn't imagine people would want to read anything about my life. My life is boring. I've never climbed a mountain or fought in a war or accidentally killed a hooker or any number of things that interesting people do. Yet people found The Bachelor Pad stories interesting. I got more comments and page visits on those than any other posts I've done on this blog. Of course I realize that many of those visits were from the people who were there wanting to see if I was going to write anything bad about them, but still...

So where do I go from here? For the sake of completion I'll finish out The Sun stories. After that, I don't know. I'll have to give it some more thought. If anybody has any ideas, I'd be happy to hear 'em.

Memos from Steve

2010-10-10T20:49:00.003-05:00

My first year or so at The Sun was not bad, as far as jobs go. At least I wasn't working at Blockbuster anymore, so I had that going for me. And someone was paying me to write. After the first year, though, that didn't seem quite as exciting as it had in the beginning.

Things began to change at The Sun after that first year. We began to hear rumors that the company was up for sale. You have to understand that this was a family owned company started by Stan and Shirley Rose back in the 1950s. The Jewish Chronicle had a very loyal audience and even The Sun was a very much beloved publication among a certain elderly (and perhaps senile) segment of the population.

So rumors that the whole company was up for sale were not to be taken lightly. Of course, the man who would make that decision was none other than Steve Rose - son of Stan and Shirley and then owner of the company. I never met Stan or Shirley, but everyone at The Sun spoke very highly of them. They were, by all accounts, decent people to work for. Steve, not so much.

I'm quite certain that during my whole time at The Sun, Steve Rose had no idea who I was. And this was a company of maybe a couple hundred people at most all in one building with two floors, so it's not like we never saw each other. Our paths crossed numerous times whenever his Lordship would venture out of his lofty perch to mingle with the commoners.

What started the rumors of a sale - or at least contributed to them - was an article in the Kansas City Star suggesting the possibility. That article was swiftly followed by a memo from Steve denying that the company was up for sale and forbidding any employee from talking to The Star about the sale, which was of course not happening.

This quickly evolved into a pattern - an article would appear, followed by rumors (although sometimes the rumors would come first) followed by another memo from Steve denying everything. Given the fact that we were not stupid, we began to suspect that something was up.

Our suspicions were confirmed in the final memo we got from Steve on the subject. The one announcing that the paper had, in fact, been sold.

So to recap what happened: All of the memos we got from Steve saying that the articles in the Star were not true were, in fact, lies themselves. So you can see why it was sometimes a confusing place to work.

Next week: Sold Down the River

The Importance of Being Jewish

2010-10-04T08:02:00.003-05:00

It's strange writing this blog "live" again. I had written the last 7 or 8 posts of the Bachelor Pad series all at once several months ago, so I was just posting them once a week without giving it much thought. When those stories ran out, I suddenly found myself in a position of having to write something new each week again. It hasn't been that easy getting back into the habit, hence the lateness of this post.

At any rate, back to our story. When we last left our intrepid hero he was working at Sun Publications, surrounded by unhappy Jewish women. What he didn't realize, however, was that he was about to find himself surrounded by some even unhappier Jewish readers. And it all started with a crouton...

As I mentioned before, I am not Jewish. This fact did not excuse me from my duties of writing and creating special sections for The Jewish Chronicle. Though, in retrospect, it probably should have.

The Jewish Chronicle ran several cookbook sections throughout the year, focused on Jewish holidays. Now most of the time, these were not a problem for a non-Jew, as we had a full supply of Jewish (i.e. Kosher) cookbooks from which to choose recipes fitting any occasion. Any occasion, that is, except Passover.

You see, Passover is a lovely celebration commemorating the story from Exodus in which the slaves were freed from Egypt. And because it is such an extra special occasion, it has extra special rules that go along with the food that must be eaten. One of the biggest rules is that the bread that is served must be unleavened. This is why matzo is so popular for this holiday.

Of course I know all of this important information. Now. I did not, however, know it then. So when it came time to pick out recipes for the Passover section, I turned to my trusty Jewish cookbooks and began picking out recipes for main dishes, side dishes, salads and desserts.

It was the salads that would prove to be my undoing. I unwittingly included a salad recipe that called for croutons. This recipe somehow made it past the usually sharp eye of our editor and into publication. Now you might be thinking "so what? It's just a crouton. What's the big deal."

Ah, but you see, that is the big deal. As the numerous angry letters I got following the publication of that section pointed out, a crouton is made from leavened bread and, as such, would be forbidden in a Passover dish.

It was the first time I had ever received hate mail. Readers demanded to know how a Jewish publication, like the Chronicle, could not know the rules for Passover. There was no excuse and nothing to do but blame it on the non-Jew.

I kept my job, thankfully. I also kept the very first letter I got about it on the bulletin board above my desk as constant reminder to never, ever let a crouton slip into print again.

And I never did.

Next Week: Memos from Steve

The Drunken Russian

2010-09-26T20:45:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned before, communication between the sales staff and my department at Sun Publications was less than stellar. I just never knew what kind of surprises I was going to get when I called up an advertiser to ask about a story for a section.

I forget the name of the titular drunken Russian, so I'll just call him Boris. Boris owned a muffler shop in Overland Park. I don't remember what section he was advertising in, either, but it fell to me to call him up and ask if there was anything new in the muffler business I could write about as part of his advertorial.

So I called, not expecting anything out of the ordinary. I got Boris on the phone and quickly learned that not only was he a drunken Russian, but he was an angry drunken Russian as well. As soon as I told him where I was calling from he started yelling at me in a thick Russian accent.

"You leave me alone!" He screamed. "I try to run business here. I have no time to talk to you!"

"Sir," I said, trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism. "I was calling about the ad you placed in The Jewish Chronicle. It comes with a complimentary story about your business and..."

"I no have time for this!" He screamed again. "You want me to pay money, I have to make money! No time to stand here talking to you all day."

"You don't understand," I said, still trying to keep my calm and assuming there was some sort of language barrier in play. "You already bought the advertisement. I'm just calling about the story that goes along with it."

"No time!" He said. "You people call me all day! I try to run business. No more time for this!"

And with that, the angry, drunken Russian hung up the phone.

Not knowing what else to do, I did what our standard protocol called for when an advertiser was being difficult. I called the sales rep, a woman named Cathy, who was probably the most attractive of the Chronicle ad staff. Of course, that was a lot like being the least gay Backstreet Boy, but still.

Cathy explained to me something she probably should have told me from the beginning. The man who owned the muffler business was a drunk. That much I had figured out on my own. He was also a deadbeat who hadn't paid for the last three advertisements he had placed in the Chronicle. They had sent his account to collections and someone from collections had been calling him all week to try and get some money out of him.

So let me see if I've got this straight. This drunk hasn't paid for his last three advertisements, yet somehow you thought it was a good idea to just go ahead and give him another advertisement that comes with a complimentary story. Not only that, but you obviously didn't explain to him how that worked. And as if that wasn't enough, you didn't even bother to tell me any of this before you let me call and have this man scream at me for 20 minutes. Is that about right?

"Oh don't worry about it," Cathy said. "We've got stories we've run on him before. Just take an old one and run it again."

So now you can sort of see what I was up against. I wish I was making that up.

Next week: The Importance of Being Jewish

The Sun Heats Up

2010-09-19T10:29:00.000-05:00

Ah, where to go from here? The story of the Bachelor Pad I began almost a year ago is now all told. I do have an idea of what I might write about next, but it's a little scary (at least for me) so I'm looking for anything I can find to avoid plunging into it just yet. It's my love life, if you were wondering. It is at turns embarrassing, sad, pathetic, horrifying, funny (unless you were the one it was happening to) and crazy (quite literally, in some cases). But it is a story I'm not sure I'm quite ready to tell yet, so in the meantime, here's this:

As I mentioned last week, my time at The Sun was a pretty miserable experience, my short-lived victory over being fired notwithstanding. I worked in the Marketing Services Department which, as I said last week, was the bastard child of editorial (i.e. straight news coverage) and advertising (i.e. selling your soul to the Devil).

We wrote, edited, designed and laid out all of the special sections that went into all of the publications put out by The Sun - bridal sections, real estate sections, food sections, you name it. There were six of us in the department, each responsible for our own set of special sections.

Sun Publications had several papers/magazines at that time: The Sun Newspapers, of course; The Jewish Chronicle; The Johnson County Business Times; The College Boulevard News; and the Kansas City Nursing News. There were multiple special sections that went into each of those, so you can imagine our workload piled up pretty quick.

There were two kinds of stories we would write for these sections. Feature stories, which were related to the theme of the section and were in no way bought and paid for by the advertisers. And advertorials, which were stories about the companies who advertised in the sections and were completely bought and paid for by the advertisers.

At first, I was so excited that someone - anyone - was paying me to write, that I didn't care what I was writing about. After a while, though, those advertorials began to sting a bit. And the advertisers themselves grew more and more difficult to work with. Or maybe I just grew less and less tolerant of their stupidity. I'm not sure which.

I was responsible for the sections that went into the Jewish Chronicle. I was not, nor have I ever been, Jewish (not that there's anything wrong with that). But virtually everyone else who worked for that paper was, including the advertising staff, which was made up of half a dozen Jewish women. Now, I don't want to stereotype here. I don't want to, but I will. Imagine sitting in a room with six Jewish women and trying to keep them all happy. If it weren't for the free bagels, I never would have made it out alive.

Each of those women had their own list of advertising clients, and each of those clients was special in their own especially special kind of way. What made them even more special was the special treatment promised to them by the special ladies of the ad staff.

We tried to write all of the advertorials in AP Style, to make them look as much like normal news stories as possible, though I really don't think we were fooling anyone. We would call up the advertisers and ask them if they had anything new going on, for example, as some sort of news peg we could hang the story on. Some of them got this and were pretty cool about it. Others never understood it, even after I explained it to them for the hundredth time, and expected me to write an advertisement for their business.

Unfortunately the ad staff, bless their deranged little hearts, never really understood it either. So they would sell an ad, promise the client I would do the story a certain way, not bother to tell me that, and leave me to get into an argument with the client which I would always lose because, well, I wasn't a paying advertiser for The Jewish Chronicle.

You can see now why I had so much fun at that job. And I do have a few stories to tell about it.

Next week: The Drunken Russian

Too Close to the Sun

2010-09-12T14:28:00.000-05:00

This is the story all about how, my life got flipped, turned upside down. I'd like to take a minute just sit right there, I'll tell you how I got fired from The Sun and went back to work for them again two weeks later. Okay, so it doesn't rhyme. Sue me.

I mentioned this story in an earlier post and decided it was good enough to tell here. Back in 1997, I went to work for The Sun Newspaper. I had a degree in journalism, having graduated from Kansas State University in 1994 (more or less), and had previously put it to use gathering dust in my closet while I worked at Blockbuster Video.

In the late winter/early spring of 1997, a good friend of my parents was working as the advertising manager at The Sun, and she offered to get me a job as an advertising assistant. I wanted to be a writer, not sell advertising, but I figured it was a good way to get my foot in the door.

Being an advertising assistant was just about the least glamorous job you could have at a newspaper, just one notch above janitor but below the person who has to answer all of the incoming calls from the loonies who want to know why the paper isn't doing any stories on the squirrels in their back yards.

I was basically the bitch of the advertising department. I did whatever they told me, which was fine with me, except on those days when nobody would tell me what to do and I would just sit there at my desk and try to look busy. I don't recall being given a lot of specific instructions for the job, other than to do what the ad staff needed done which, with that particular ad staff, was damn near everything.

I shouldn't say that, there were a couple of them I got along with. There was a gay guy named Richard who had perhaps the most common sense of the bunch and was the only one who didn't bug the hell out of me on a regular basis. It didn't help, either, that the family friend who had gotten me the job was fired about a month after I started there for clashing with the publisher and owner of the paper over something, I don't know what. But my association with her probably didn't do me any favors at that point.

There were days when I was given no direction whatsoever as to what I was supposed to be doing. On those days I would sometimes sneak up to the second floor to the Marketing Services Department. The Marketing Services Department was like the bastard child of advertising and editorial. They were responsible for putting together all of the special sections - bridal, cooking, real estate, etc. - that went into the paper. And they needed a writer.

Unfortunately, about two months into my tenure as advertising department flunky, Richard came to me on a Friday, his eyes looking back and forth in a conspiratorial way. "Which one of the ad assistants is getting fired?" he wanted to know.

I told him I had no idea. He showed me an ad in the paper - in our paper - looking for someone to fill the position of advertising assistant. There was no doubt what the ad was for and it was right there in black and white. There were three other ad assistants in the building, besides me, and I wondered which one of them was going to get canned. The two people who would have known - the new sales manager and her assistant - were both out of the office for the day so I would have to wait the weekend to find out.

On Monday, I got my answer. The sales manager and her assistant called me into a small conference room and told me the news. When I asked why, the only reason they gave me was that "it just wasn't working out."

I'm sorry? Are you firing me or are we breaking up? What's next? The "it's-not-you-it's-me" speech? You just want to see other people?

Unhappy with their reasoning, I decided to go for broke. "You know," I said. "The next time you're going to fire someone, you might want to wait until they're gone before you start advertising their job in the paper."

I never saw so much backpedaling in my life. They stammered and stumbled and tried to claim that it was for some other position, not mine. I don't think so. It said "advertising assistant" right in the damn thing. Now you're firing me. I may have been a lousy assistant, but I wasn't stupid.

So I was booted out the door and, for the first time in my life, began collecting unemployment. I decided I couldn't go back to Blockbuster when I had come so close to getting my writing career started, so I applied for any and all writing positions I could find. No luck.

Two depressing weeks later, I got a call from Monica, the manager of the Marketing Services department at The Sun. She said they still had a position open and asked if I would be interested. I had to think about it. I mean, did I really want to go back to a place that had just fired me two weeks earlier? I had no other job prospects at that time, so the answer was yes.

As I mentioned before, the Marketing Services department was on the second floor, while the advertising department was on the first, so when I started I went straight upstairs and didn't have to see the people who had fired me. But before long I needed to go down to the first floor for something - I forget what - and it was time to have some fun.

You could almost hear the jaws hitting the floor when I walked into the advertising department with a big smile on my face, and I enjoyed every last second of it. I didn't even say a word. I did whatever I had gone down there to do, then went back upstairs to my department. I'm sure some of them probably thought I had come back to start shooting up the place. There was a time when I felt like doing that, but that didn't come until a couple of years later.

It wasn't long at all before word got around that I was back and most of the sales staff seemed to be okay with it. I spent two years at The Sun honing my writing skills before moving on to bigger and better things.

The best moment of all, though, came about a year later, when the woman who fired me was fired herself. If it weren't for the fact that The Sun turned out to be a generally awful place to work, that would have been one of the most satisfying work experiences of my career.

The Reunion

2010-09-06T08:51:00.000-05:00

It was a rather sad event that brought Teel and I back together nine years later. I won't go into details, but suffice it to say a mutual friend of ours had a death in the family. Teel had seen the notice in the paper and decided to go to the funeral.

We didn't see each other there, but that event, in turn, opened the door for him to start talking to people around me, and it wasn't long at all before word reached me that he wanted to talk to me again.

It had probably been a couple of years since anyone I knew had run into him, so the news that he was a) still alive and b) interested in talking to me came as something of a surprise. Not that I thought he was dead or anything, it's just that after a few years with no sightings he hadn't really entered my mind in a while.

I had changed a lot since the days of the Bachelor Pad. I was no longer a bachelor, for one thing, having married the love of my life almost exactly 10 years after Teel and I had moved into the Pad. I had grown up a lot, too, and cast aside much of my insecurity. It took another disastrous relationship and several months of therapy to do it, but it was done.

Low Self Esteem was gone. It would be interesting to see if his old nemesis, Huge Ego, was still there. There was a part of me that was afraid of just that. I felt like I had come so far in being happy with who I was, I was afraid that if I saw Teel again, I'd slip right back into the same old role of Sidekick - and all the insecurities that went along with it - and I didn't want that to happen. On the other hand, if I didn't see him, I knew I would never really be certain of just how far I had come.

Someone gave him my e-mail address and we exchanged a few messages before agreeing to meet up at Border's Book store and find out if we still hated each other.

We didn't, but it was strange seeing him after all those years. The kid in the rat suit was gone, replaced by a grown man who's face showed that it had seen a few hard times since the last time I had seen it. Which is not to say he looked old, but he looked...different. I'm sure I looked just as different to him.

We started out talking about the general stuff - where we were working now (oddly enough, he's an art teacher - the circle is complete), how we met our spouses and so on and so forth. Since pop culture had been such a staple of our younger lives, we talked about that as well - what movies we had liked and disliked, music, pop culture trends and on and on.

Finally, we started to get down to the meaty stuff. What happened? Why did it all end? Why did we stop talking?

He told me that once, while he was living in the apartment that was right behind mine, he was standing outside when he saw me go by. He was pretty sure that I had seen him, but chose not to say anything. His then girlfriend (and future wife) urged him to talk to me, but he didn't. "Well, you've just burned that bridge," she told him. And he had. But then, so did I on the day I saw him and didn't stop to say hello. It might have even been the same day for all I know.

I won't bore you with the details of the rest of our conversation because, if you've been reading this blog, you've read them already. We both agreed that we had just outgrown each other and that it had been time to move on. We also agreed that we could have handled it better and maybe we could have stayed friends all those years. Apologies were made, and a friendship was reborn.

We both had regrets about the years we missed - we should have been at each other's weddings, or been there when our kids were born and any number of other milestone events. We shouldn't have waited so long to talk to each other, either. But there was nothing we could do to change any of that.

I like to think things had to happen the way they did for a reason. For me, I think if I hadn't been able to get away from Teel, I would have continued to live in his shadow and I might never have been able to find out who I really was (Keyser Soze, if you were wondering). For Teel, I think if he hadn't been able to get away from me, he might never have been able to put the guy in the rat suit behind him and become the guy in the art teacher's apron.

So here we are, he's an art teacher and I'm working in radio. Huge Ego and Low Self Esteem, the hero and sidekick, are distant memories. We're each the heroes in our own stories now, with wives and kids and careers and friends. We can look back on our days in the Bachelor Pad and laugh at how ridiculous it all was while Bruce Springsteen's "Glory Days" plays in the background.

It's amazing when you look back on certain parts of your life and think about things that once consumed your whole world. They seem so trivial now, and yet, if they hadn't happened the way they did, I wouldn't be the person I am today.

So here ends the saga of The Bachelor Pad. What's next for this blog? Good question. Tune in next week to find out. Maybe I'll have an answer by then myself.

The Nine-Year Gap

2010-08-29T22:18:00.000-05:00

I don't remember exactly when Teel and I stopped talking, nor what our last conversation was about. There was never any big, dramatic moment where he went "Fine!" and I went "Fine!" and we both stormed out of the room, slamming doors behind us. Our phone calls and visits became fewer and farther between until one day they just...stopped.

I know it seems like a rather anticlimactic ending to a friendship, considering all we had been through together. But I think we had finally outgrown each other, at least for the time being. Even then I think I knew we'd always meet again at some point. I just didn't realize that point would be nine years away.

And even though we didn't talk during that time, Teel was always there, somehow, on the fringes of my life. For the first couple of years, people would always ask me whatever happened to him. Why don't you guys talk anymore? Why don't you give him a call? I didn't really have good answers to these questions. I still don't.

It seemed like at least once a year, somebody I knew would run into him. He and Kelly broke up around the same time that he and I stopped talking. Kelly and I, being family, still saw each other regularly of course. She ran into him and his future wife at the mall once about a year or so later and I remember her telling me how strange it was to see him again, especially with someone else.

My sister, also named Kelly, ran into him once at Johnson County Community College where she was taking a class and he was working on his second (or maybe third) two-year associate's degree. It seemed like every time someone I knew ran into him, they would tell me about it and I would ask what he was doing. The answer was almost always the same - he's still taking classes at JuCo. I would find out later that he actually reached the limit on the number of credits he could earn at that school, having attended classes there for who knows how many years in a row.

I have to admit there was a part of me that took a small amount of joy in knowing that. My career was moving along, and he was still spinning his wheels at JuCo. Take that, Huge Ego!

I even saw him myself once during those nine years. I was leaving my apartment complex one day (I lived there for about five years after the Bachelor Pad shut down) and I saw him sitting on the sidewalk in front of one of the other apartment buildings. One that happened to be directly behind mine. He was on the phone. And not a cell phone, either, but a cordless house phone.

In spite of what this obviously meant, it never occurred to me at the time that he was actually living there. I guess I thought if he was I would have known about it. He knew where I lived. Surely he would have come over to say hi and let me know he was in the neighborhood. Rather than accept this reality, my brain chose to make up a story about how he had a friend who lived there and he was just visiting him that day I saw him.

Amazingly, I never saw him there again, so that story continued to persist in my mind until he himself put it to rest years later.

Next Week: The Final Chapter! The Reunion.

The Post Bachelor Pad Era

2010-08-22T22:18:00.000-05:00

The post-Bachelor Pad Era was a strange one for me. I was living on my own for the first time since college, and even that had only been a four-month stint.

Though I had been nervous about living alone, I found there was a lot I enjoyed about it. For one thing, I had the whole apartment to myself. I could watch what I wanted to watch on TV, I could use the phone whenever I wanted to and not have to worry that someone was making his 10th call of the night to his girlfriend. I could eat all the frozen pizzas I wanted to and no one would say a word about it.

My career was also starting to take off about that same time. I had left the video-covered walls of Blockbuster behind and started working for an actual newspaper - from which I was unceremoniously fired after two months only to be re-hired in another department two weeks later. That actually happened before I left the Bachelor Pad. I may have to do a separate entry on that story, it's a pretty good one.

As I mentioned before, Teel and I still hung out, at least for a while anyway. I remember going over to his new apartment (which was in our old complex) a few times and thinking how strange it was. I didn't belong there anymore. I was a guest. An outsider.

One of the reasons I didn't want to let go of my friendship with Teel was that I was afraid of becoming a punchline in the story of his life. I had seen firsthand how he talked about other guys who had once been his close friends. Mark with the Hair was one. A guy named TR who he was friends with before I came along was another. He mocked them often and talked about the stupid things they used to do that would annoy him. I was terrified of becoming another one of those stories to his current batch of friends who didn't really know me. Whether that would have actually happened or not, I don't know. I doubt it. But my insecurities were such that the fear was there nonetheless.

At the same time, I was also getting tired of his attitude toward me. I felt like I was already becoming a joke to him and that, for him, hanging out with me was something he felt like he was required to do, rather than something he wanted to do. In truth, I was starting to feel that way about him, too.

He also did a lot of strange things during that time. Well, no stranger than most of the other stuff we had done in our early days, but it seemed strange to me because I was the target this time. I would come home from work and find food on my doorstep. Some cookies or a frozen dinner. At first, I had no idea who was behind it, but Kelly eventually broke down and told me it was Teel, though she couldn't explain why he was doing it.

He thought it was funny, I guess. At the time, I thought it was his way of relegating me to joke status, of not taking me seriously as a friend anymore. I knew the end was getting close. And when it finally did come, I don't think either one of us was too broken up about it.

Note: I realize wrapping this story up has dragged out probably longer than it needed to. I think I've had more "endings" here than the last Lord of the Rings movie. But the story is almost over. Really. I promise. Seriously. Thanks for hanging in there this far.

Next week: The Nine-Year Gap

End of Days

2010-08-15T21:20:00.001-05:00

Our lease on The Bachelor Pad came up for renewal for the second time in August of 1997. By that time, we had lived there for two years and were pretty well sick of each other. So we decided not to sign on for another year and go our own separate ways.

In some ways, it was almost like a break-up. We had to go through the apartment and decide who got what stuff. We didn't have any kids, but there was a vicious custody battle over the videos of the Indiana Jones trilogy.

I'll admit, part of me didn't want to go. As I've mentioned earlier, I realized that it was time for me to live on my own and forge my own identity. But at the same time, I didn't want to give up a lot of those things that were part of who I had been for so many years. For a time, I had thought things would continue on with me and Teel the way they always had been. We'd still do the same stuff, make the same jokes, have the same friendship we always had.

Teel, as it turns out, had other ideas. And I guess deep down I really did too, I just didn't want to accept it yet.

So we closed the doors on the Bachelor Pad and moved into our own apartments. Teel moved into one in the same complex as the Bachelor Pad. I moved into another complex, about a half-mile or so down the street.

One of the first things I did when I got settled into my new place was to record a wacky answering machine message. Like I said, there were some things I just wasn't ready to let go of yet.

It wasn't over for Teel and me, though. Not yet anyway. We continued to talk and hang out for a while after we moved out of the apartment. But it was different. It wasn't as much fun as it used to be. It became more of an obligation and less of a genuine desire to want to hang out with each other. And that went for both of us.

Plus I couldn't escape the feeling that Teel felt like he was doing me a favor every time we hung out. It was not a pleasant feeling.

Within a year, we would stop talking to each other completely. And one of us would be dead.

Sorry, got a bit carried away by the drama. The real ending wasn't nearly that dramatic.

Next week: The Post Bachelor Pad Era

One Last Favor

2010-08-08T22:00:00.001-05:00

Mark did do one last favor for me before we parted ways and closed the doors on the Bachelor Pad for good. I don't think he realized it at the time. He probably still doesn't realize it now. But the truth is if it hadn't been for a sarcastic remark he made, I would never have graduated from college.

I know what you're thinking - hey, wait a minute, all of these stories take place in my post-college days, shouldn't I have already graduated by then? Well, yes and no. The truth is at that point I did not have a diploma from Kansas State University. My last semester in Manhattan, KS, was a pretty miserable one, as I have stated in earlier stories. I wanted nothing more than to finish up school and get the hell out of there.

So there were a couple of classes I had - one anthropology lab in particular - that, well, let's just say I didn't put forth my best effort. I figured I had a passing grade and that was good enough. Imagine my surprise then, in January - after having done the graduation walk in December and moved halfway across the country to live with my parents - when I got my final grade card in the mail and found a big, fat "F" staring me in the face. It was a stupid lab course that I should have taken a year earlier when I took the anthropology lecture that went along with it. Somehow my schedule got screwed up and I ended up stuck there in my last semester at at time when I truly could not have cared less about anthropology. Apparently the TA noticed that and graded me accordingly.

Once I calmed down and my parents talked me down off the roof, I contacted the university and found that I would have to re-take the class - or a class of equal value - at a later date. At that moment in my life, going back to school was the last thing I wanted to do.

Flash forward to two years later in the waning days of The Bachelor Pad. Our VCR was on the fritz. In those days, VCRs were not cheap and my love of movies being what it was I couldn't live without it. So I wasted no time in getting it fixed, which Mark was only too happy to point out.

"So let me get this straight," he said. "The VCR breaks and you get it fixed the same day. Meanwhile you left school two years ago and you still don't have a diploma."

I've got to admit, that stung a little. And at first, I was pretty pissed of that he said it. I think what pissed me off the most was the realization that he was right. I hated it when he was right.

So, after moving out of The Bachelor Pad, I enrolled in a night course at Johnson County Community College - Environmental Biology or something like that - and passed with flying colors.

And I never would have done it if Teel hadn't been so annoyed with me. So you see, some good came out of it. There's really no point to this story other than to note that by the end of our time in the Bachelor Pad, Teel and I had both taken to making our opinions about each other known in no uncertain terms.

He never understood how I could just stay home and veg out on the couch for hours on end, and I never understood why he couldn't. That was just one of many things about me that seemed to bother Teel, and vice versa. It also seemed to bother him for some reason that I liked to eat frozen pizza. I don't know why, but he always had to comment about it whenever I had one, which I'll admit was probably more often than I should have. I guess when you live with someone long enough even the little things begin to get on your nerves.

And I guess that's why we both knew it was time for things to come to an end.

Next week: End of Days

The Battle of the Answering Machine

2010-08-01T17:39:00.001-05:00

As we dealt with the emotional issues and the changes we were both going through, there were smaller, more subtle incidents that happened in the Bachelor Pad that were, in their own way, signaling the end.

During our first year in The Bachelor Pad, Teel and I had several wacky answering machine messages. Yes, we were those guys.

I had a CD full of TV theme songs that I had acquired somewhere along the way and we put it to good use. Well, we put it to use anyway. I'll leave it to you to decide whether it was good or not.

There were two outgoing messages we had that stick out in my mind that we thought were particularly clever at the time. In one, we had the theme from "M*A*S*H" playing in the background and one of us (I think it was me) said something like this:

"You've reached The Teel and Terry. We can't come to the phone right now because the choppers are bringing in more wounded, so we gotta go. But just leave your name and number at the sound of the beep and either one of us or Radar will call you back as soon as we can. And if this is Col. Potter, just relax, we're on our way."

Are you laughing yet? It gets better. The other one we did was more or less the same thing, only with the theme from the 1960s Batman TV show playing in the background:

"You've reached the Teel and Terry. We can't come to the phone right now because the Joker is back in town, so we've gotta run. Leave your name and number at the beep and one of us or Alfred will call you back. If this is Commissioner Gordon, we're on our way."

Clever, huh? I can't remember which one of those we did first, but it doesn't really matter. The point is we thought we were pretty funny. Or at least I thought we were. Looking back on it now, I think one of the signs that The Teel, he was a'changin' was the fact that he stopped liking the wacky answering machine messages.

I know, it seems like a trivial thing, but in retrospect it seems to me that was part of his transformation from The Teel, crazy man who would wear a rat suit or parade around in his underwear just to get a laugh - to Mark Teel, the hip, happening dude who was too cool for any of that silly kid stuff.

It was the third wacky answering machine message that probably sent him over the edge. I did this one on my own and again, I thought it was funny at the time. This time, I had the theme from "The Simpsons" playing in the background and I did both voices (quite well, I thought) in a conversation between Monty Burns and Smithers that went something like this:

Burns: Smithers, how do you work this infernal contraption?
Smithers: It's easy, sir, you just push that button and tell people you can't come to the phone and ask them to leave you a message at the sound of the beep.
Burns: Oh fiddle faddle, that sounds like too much work. Smithers, be a lamb and do it for me, would you?
Smithers: I think I just did, sir.
Burns: Excellent.

I know. Funny, right? Yeah, Teel apparently didn't think so either. It took me several takes to get it just right and I was pretty proud of the results, so you can imagine my chagrin when I came home one day to find out that he had changed it (without even so much as telling me) to a boring old straightforward message. No theme song. No voices. No nothing. Yawn.

I understand now why he did it, but at the time I was not happy about it. What I didn't understand then - and what he wasn't able to communicate to me - was that the was ready to move on. I had no idea what he was doing or what he was going through because he was starting to shut me out. At the time all I saw was my friend turning into a pretentious douche bag who thought he was too good for me (and my hilarious answering machine messages) anymore.

What I see now, looking back on it, is a guy who was trying to grow up. He was trying to put childish things aside and stop being the goofy, crazy, rat-suit wearing guy that he had always been. He stopped liking that guy and everything that went along with him somewhere along the line. Unfortunately, I was one of those things that went along with him. I don't think he meant to cast me aside. I think I just served as a constant reminder of that person he didn't like being and he didn't quite know how to deal with that.

And while I was ready to move on and become my own person, I wasn't quite ready to let go of all the funny, childish, stupid things we used to do. As much as he drove me crazy sometimes, I wasn't quite prepared to say goodbye to Poncho Man.

I know that's an awful lot to extrapolate from an answering machine message, but this is my blog and I'll extrapolate whatever I want from any appliance I choose. Just wait until next week when we'll find out what the toaster had to say about all of this.

A Rat Suit of My Own

2010-07-25T10:35:00.000-05:00

Well, here it is. The low point of my time in The Bachelor Pad. I'm not proud of this story, just as I'm sure Teel isn't proud of the Rat Suit story. But, as that story was told, so too must this one be because it was an integral part of the end of The Bachelor Pad.

Now, with all that build up you're probably expecting something really sordid and juicy. Be prepared to be disappointed.

It was yet another night at Kelly's parent's house during that final, fateful year and a group of us had gathered for the usual evening of games, stories and petty jealousy. Nothing out of the ordinary. It was me, Kelly, Teel and a couple of Kelly's other friends. I don't remember exactly who, but I know at least one was a girl who's name I can't remember at the moment. But I think it began with an A, so we'll just call her that, because she plays kind of a key role in this story.

I don't know how long Teel and Kelly had been going out at this point, but it was long enough for me to have become thoroughly annoyed at the whole thing. They were constantly talking about taking this trip or going here or doing this or that and I was constantly feeling left out. I realize looking back on it now that I had no right to expect to be included in their plans, but you have to understand where I was emotionally at that period in my life. I was an idiot.

So that night, like any other, they began talking about all of their grand plans together and my blood pressure began to rise, a seething, ugly jealousy festering just below the surface that I tried to keep hidden though I'm sure I did a terrible job at it. That is why I don't play poker very often.

The two of them continued to babble merrily on about - I don't even remember specifically what, some trip they wanted to take somewhere. Knowing Kelly, it was probably to Colorado. They went on and on about it until finally I could take it no more.

"What about me?" I blurted out. The silence that followed was deafening. The room was suddenly filled with stunned faces all looking at me. All at once I wanted to grab those words from the air, shove them back into my mouth, swallow them, crap them out the next day, flush them into the sewers and never have to think of them again. But it was too late for that.

It was Kelly's friend, A, who finally broke the silence.

"What an asinine thing to say," she said, glaring at me.

My face, which had been red from anger, soon turned red from embarrassment. There is a subtle shade of difference between the two, though I'm not sure anyone but me noticed it at the time. She was right, of course, but I didn't need to have it pointed out to me.

Unable to think of anything to say and too mortified to say it even if I did, I did the only other thing I could think of: I got up and ran out of the room. I continued running down the hallway, past Kelly's parents in the living room, ignoring their quizzical expressions as I burst out the front door and into the night air.

I got into my car and drove. I wasn't really sure where I was going, I just knew I had to get away from that house and that horrible, horrible moment. But no matter how far or how fast I drove, there was no escaping it. I had finally let my jealousy get the better of me and made a total ass of myself.

At least I wasn't wearing a rat suit when I did it.

The fallout from the incident wasn't major as far as my relationship with Teel and Kelly went, at least not at first. I remember they were both worried about me and checked on me later that night to make sure I was okay. I remember apologizing profusely to both of them and feeling that even that wasn't enough to make up for it. Hell, even today when I see Kelly part of me still wants to apologize.

I know it sounds like I'm making more out of this than it really was, and I probably am, but at the time it was the culmination of months, even years, of emotion finally coming to the surface. I finally had to face up to the fact that I was jealous of Teel. I hated being the "sidekick" to his "hero." I wanted to be my own person, even if I didn't know who that person was just yet.

In order to do that though, it meant making a major change. It meant bringing an end to The Bachelor Pad once and for all.

But there were still a few more minor incidents yet to play out before that would happen.

Next week: The Battle of the Answering Machine

Teel, Ty and the Rat Suit

2010-07-19T06:52:00.000-05:00

As has already been well established over the last couple of posts, my memory of the events surrounding the end of The Bachelor Pad is hazy at best. This post will be no different. I apologize in advance to those who were there for any errors, missing bits of information or stuff that I just completely made up.

The triangle of Teel, Kelly and myself rolled along for several months about as well as you'd expect a triangle to roll. Tell and Kelly grew closer and my jealousy grew, um, jealousy-er. As I mentioned last week, we spent a lot of time at the house of Kelly's parents in those days because, well, that's where she lived.

I remember many nights sitting in her room and playing games and telling stupid jokes and stories, and me becoming more and more infuriated as she and Teel talked about all of their grand plans for trips to Colorado and other things they wanted to do. All without me of course.

Kelly had quite a crazy crew of friends of her own back then (and still does now, come to think of it). The one that stands out most in my admittedly addled brain is Ty. Ty was another in the endless collection of larger-than-life personalities that Kelly was drawn to - and that were drawn to her, it should also be noted. He was not a bad guy and, taken on his own, could be fun to be around.

Put him in a room with Teel, however, and it was a different story altogether. We were approaching the last days of "The Teel" and Mark Teel would soon take his place. But at this moment in time The Teel was still in charge and was still prone to doing whatever crazy thing popped into his head at any given second. And when Teel couldn't think of anything crazy to do, there was Ty to give him ideas.

Like many things involving The Teel of that era, his friendship with Ty was funny at first, then it started to get annoying. The two of them were constantly trying to top each other and let's face it, if I was in the shadows when Teel was around, I was downright invisible when it was him and Ty.

Imagine being trapped in a room with Robin Williams and a clone of Robin Williams. And I'm not talking the latter-day Robin Williams who alternates between crappy comedies and creepy thrillers. I'm talking the full-on, coked-out, "Live at The Met" era Williams. Only two of him. Now you get an idea of what it was like being around Teel and Ty. And there was no off switch in sight.

One of the more infamous stunts they pulled was one that I, thankfully, was not present for, but poor Kelly was. They were out at her house and her dad had some exercise equipment in the basement. I'm not sure who's idea it was, but one of them decided it would be fun to go and work out on the equipment - completely naked. Teel was a lot of things in those days. Modest was not one of them. I'm glad I missed out on that one.

But the most infamous stunt is one I do remember quite well. We were all out at Kelly's house for some kind of a party. I'm not sure what the occasion was, but it doesn't really matter. We were all sitting around outside, laughing and joking around as we tended to do, when somebody noticed that Teel and Ty were gone. That usually meant trouble, and this time was no exception.

No sooner had we posed the question of what they might be up to, then Teel appeared at the door, clad in a giant rat suit. Yes, you read that right, a rat suit. You see, Kelly was quite the theater geek in her high school days and had lots of costumes and such still hanging around her house as a result. She was also very big into dressing up for Halloween, so it might have been an old Halloween costume. I'm not sure.

Whatever it was for, Teel and Ty, like a couple of kids in a candy store, had found the rat costumes and decided it would be fun to put them on and rejoin the party. The trouble, as Teel discovered to his own mortification, was that Ty had apparently chickened out at the last minute, leaving Teel standing there by himself, looking like, well, like a dork in a rat suit.

We laughed a bit, but it was not the hysterical, "Teel's-done-it-again" kind of laughter that usually went along with his stunts. This was more of a nervous, oh-boy-he's-gone-too-far-this-time kind of laughter. And I'll admit now that there was a part of me that secretly enjoyed seeing him fall flat on his face like that.

Kelly was not nearly as amused as she usually was with Teel's antics. And believe it or not, neither was Teel. I believe that moment was a turning point for him, when he realized that he no longer wanted to be The Teel - the guy who would wear a poncho or a rat suit or nothing at all just to get a laugh. It was at that moment, I believe, that he began the transformation toward becoming just plain old Mark Teel once again.

I think I struggled with that transformation almost as much as he did. But not before having my own moment in the proverbial rat suit.

Next Week: Embarrassing Moment #2: A Rat Suit of My Own.

Three's A Crowd

2010-07-12T06:45:00.004-05:00

One of the things that always irritated me about Mark during The Bachelor Pad days was that, while he had his own set of friends that I didn't really know or hang out with much beyond their occasional appearances in the Pad, I did not enjoy the same luxury. For some reason, every new person I made friends with, Mark always had to be friends with them, too.

That wasn't necessarily his fault. People were always drawn to him, waiting to see what crazy thing he'd do next. And you couldn't really blame them for it, either. But being the insecure dork that I was, I was often overshadowed by him to the point where I might as well have been invisible.

Take, for example, my coworkers at Blockbuster Video. Beau was one, Jackie was another. I knew them through work and we hung out a bit outside of work. Teel became friends with them as well and continued to hang out with Jackie long after he and I stopped talking, a fact I didn't realize until years later when we had a Blockbuster reunion which included Teel although he never actually worked there.

I know it sounds petty and it is to a certain extent, but when you live with someone - be it a friend, a roommate or even a spouse - you have to have some things that are separate from that person. If you spend every waking moment together and all of your friends are the same, you'll eventually drive each other crazy. And that's what started to happen with Mark and me. Well, okay, more me than Mark at this point. He had his reasons for wanting to get away from me and out of the apartment as well, but those didn't become apparent to me until the very end. Some not even until years later.

Kelly was a perfect example of the whole his friend/my friend thing. She was my sister-in-law and she and I started hanging out together after the wedding. But it wasn't long at all before Mark entered the picture and the two of them were immediately drawn to each other. At first, Kelly was my friend and Teel hung out with us. That dynamic soon shifted and it became more apparent to me that she was coming over to hang out with Teel and I was the proverbial third wheel.

At least, that was how I saw it. What I had forgotten at the time (and had forgotten now until Mark himself pointed it out to me) was that Teel and Kelly already had a history together. Kelly's sister, Heather, and Teel's brother, Matt, had been close friends in high school. But in my insecure brain that just didn't register. She was my friend and he had stolen her and that was all that mattered.

Any romantic possibility between Kelly and I was snuffed out fairly early on. I think we both knew the drunken bridesmaid was an idiot and we got that conversation out of the way quickly. That did not, however, change the fact that I soon grew jealous of her and Teel. I tried to compete with him for whatever attention I could get but, well, he was The Teel, and I was just a lowly sidekick.

They shared a similar, goofy sense of humor and Kelly found him endlessly amusing, whereas I was beginning to find him endlessly annoying. It wasn't long at all before they started officially dating.

But Kelly, God love her, kept trying to include me in things anyway. Lord knows I would have told me to get lost after about a month or so. But then, I wasn't exactly crazy about myself in those days anyway.

Kelly lived with her parents back then and I remember spending a lot of time at that house. In fact, that house would soon play host to two of the most embarrassing moments in Bachelor Pad history.

Next week: Embarrassing Moment #1 - The Rat Suit

Brother-in-Law of The Bride

2010-07-03T13:17:00.000-05:00

This is the part of the story that gets difficult to tell. Both Mark and I did some things during this time that neither one of us is particularly proud of to this day. No, we didn't kill anyone or even break the law (not this time, anyway) and there were no squirt guns involved. What you're about to read is the story of two twenty-somethings who lived and acted as though they were still in high school. Okay, junior high. Grade school? Would you believe kindergarten?

In retrospect, the names probably should have been changed to protect the innocent, the guilty and pretty much everyone involved. Oh well, too late for that now. Here we go.

As I said in my previous post, it all started with my brother's wedding. My brother got married in October of 1996, not long into the second (and ultimately final) year of The Bachelor Pad. I was the Best Man at the wedding. The Maid of Honor was Kelly, my brother's wife's sister. I think Teel might have been there as well, though he wasn't directly involved in the ceremony.

Kelly is one of the sweetest, most kind-hearted people you could ever hope to meet. She has a goofy sense of humor and is, for some reason, attracted to people with larger-than-life personalities. So it was a given that she and Teel would eventually be drawn to each other.

Earlier that year, Kelly had been unceremoniously dumped by her fiance for reasons that I'm still unclear on to this day. The biggest one that I do know of, though, was simply the fact that he was an idiot. So, going into the wedding, she was nursing a broken heart and it was not going to be easy for her to watch her sister get married. But she sucked it up for her sister Heather's sake.

I don't think Kelly knows this, even now, but somewhere along the line someone - it might have even been Heather - asked me to keep an eye on her during the reception. Just keep her company and make sure she was doing okay. I did my best, talking with her and dancing with her a few times. During one of those dances - or it might have been after - one of Heather's friends, an annoying, drunken woman who shall go unnamed and may or may not have been a bridesmaid, approached the two of us. Waggling a drunken finger in the air back and forth between us, she had a big, stupid-looking smile plastered on her face.

"You two," she said, grinning from ear to ear. "You two would make such a cute couple!"

She stumbled off into the crowd and Kelly and I never said a word about it. But it was too late. In my insecure little brain, the seed had already been planted. Unfortunately, it was a seed that would only grow into an ugly, jealous weed that would have best been poisoned, yanked from the ground and burned.

Poor Kelly had no idea what she was in for at that point. I want to state before proceeding any further that none of what happened next was her fault. She had no idea she was about to get caught in the middle of a psychodrama between Huge Ego and his sidekick, Low Self Esteem. As I said before, I'm not particularly proud of this part of the story. But I've come this far, so I've got to go all the way.

And Kelly, if you're reading this, I'm sorry. I'm not sorry that you're reading this, mind you, but I am sorry that you had to live it.

Now, where was I?

2010-06-25T18:25:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the prolonged absence. It's been a bit busy lately, what with the new baby and all. But things are starting to settle back down now and I'm going to get back to the business at hand with this blog.

I still have a few more stories of the Bachelor Pad left to tell - including how it all came to an end and how Teel and I didn't speak to each other for nine years. I wish I could tell you that it was a dramatic story filled with lots of shouting and slamming of doors, but it wasn't. It was kind of a long, drawn-out process that spread over the span of about two years. One of those years being our final year in the Bachelor Pad.

The first year in the ol' Pad was great. We had lots of fun. Went to lots of concerts. Saw lots of movies. Did lots of aimless driving around town. Worked lots of hours at our pointless jobs. They were, for the most part, happy, care-free days as only those days in your early twenties can be.

But something happened after we signed our names to the lease for a second year in the Bachelor Pad. Something began to change in our friendship. It's hard to pinpoint one single event that started it all, but if I had to choose I'd say it was my brother's wedding back in 1996.

You may have noticed so far in these stories that for a place we called The Bachelor Pad it was surprisingly lacking in women. Well, that's not completely true. There were a few, mostly friends, who hung around. Teel had a couple of girlfriends during that time. I was still nursing the wounds from my college relationship disaster and had neither the willingness nor the self-esteem to put myself out there again.

Which is not to say that I was content in my singledom. In point of fact I was quite miserable. Nor is it to say that there weren't women that I was interested in. There were. I just chose to spend my days pining for them from afar because I was too much of a chicken to do anything about it. I found it easier to live in misery than to chance another rejection.

Teel, on the other hand, had no such problems. He was, if anything, overconfident in himself. At one point, we had started jokingly referring to each other as Huge Ego and his sidekick Low Self Esteem. I'll let you guess who was who. That was another one of those things we had that started out as a joke and eventually became all too real.

Teel dated this girl named Trish for quite a while when we were back in the Bachelor Pad. She seemed nice enough and I had nothing against her personally, but their relationship annoyed the hell out of me. She wasn't even at the Bachelor Pad all that often. He would go to see her, more often than not. What annoyed me was the fact that he would spend all this time with her, then come home and spend all night on the phone with her.

And it wasn't even that he would spend so much time on the phone. If he made just one phone call and left it at that, it would be fine. But I seem to remember he would make several phone calls a night, even after having spent the day with her. It was like he'd get off the phone, then think of something else he wanted to tell her and he'd have to call her back right then and there. I can still hear the beeping of that phone dialing even now. It haunts my dreams.

Of course, it didn't help that I was jealous. Looking back now, it's easy to see that. It's easy to see a lot of things in hindsight. If only there was some sort of saying that encapsulated that feeling in a succinct and pithy way. Oh well.

But my jealousy was the first step on the road toward the end. I'll admit that now. It wasn't the jealousy over Trish, though. It was the jealousy over what - or rather who - would come next.

Next Week: Brother-in-Law of the Bride

Taking a Break

2010-05-30T08:43:00.002-05:00

Just a note to let anyone who stops by know that I am taking a break from this blog for a little while. As some of you know, my wife and I are expecting our second child (a boy) any day now. Between false alarm trips to the hospital and hours spent trying to decide if we should go to the hospital, there has been little time left for blogging lately.

This blog will return, I promise, in a few weeks. Hopefully before June is done. In the meantime, thanks for reading my ramblings. See you soon!

Notes From The Bachelor Pad

2010-05-20T22:12:00.002-05:00

I had a great post I was going to write this week. I was going to write about some of the notes Teel and I used to leave each other in the Bachelor Pad. We often worked different hours and would sometimes go a few days without actually seeing each other, so we had to communicate via notes. We kept a notepad on a table by the front door for just this reason.

I say "had" a great post because I thought that I still had one of those notebooks in my possession and I thought it would be fun to share some of the notes in it, much like I did last week with the quotes. However, after sifting through all of my boxes of crap I refuse to throw away even though most of it is useless to me, I failed to turn up the notebook.

It's too bad, really, because I think the notebook was one of the last ones we used, which means it probably contained some of the juicier, more passive-aggressive notes we wrote. Stuff that we said when it was getting to the point where we really couldn't stand living together anymore. It's probably just as well. That stuff most likely isn't as hilarious as I remember it. It's probably more sad than anything.

The thing about the notes was we almost never used our real names. We would sign them using the names of famous duos throughout history, movies, TV and whatever else we could think of. It would go something like this:

Butch,

You left a pile of dirty dishes in the sink last night. Thanks for not cleaning it up. I didn't have any clean spoons to use for breakfast. Bite me.

Sundance.

Ah, those were the days. We got really inventive with the names and would sometimes work in a group of names in a single note. I do remember one note I left for Teel one day to inform him that my sister Kelly and I were going over to our friend Dave's house to hang out. It went like this:

Rob,

Sally and I are going over to Mel Cooley's house to hang out for a while. We'll catch up with you later.

Buddy

Get it? Okay, it may be a bit obscure. Those are all names from "The Dick Van Dyke Show," in case you didn't guess it.

The tough part about the notes was that we tried to avoid using the same names twice. It became sort of an unspoken contest between us to find new and original names to use each time. After two years you can pretty well imagine we were really reaching. We used everything from Julius Caesar and Brutus to Yogi Bear and Boo Boo.

You can also imagine how nasty those notes were getting toward the end of the two years we lived in The Bachelor Pad. Well, you'll have to imagine it, because I can't find the damn notebook.

And You Can Quote Me on That

2010-05-13T21:30:00.003-05:00

One of the things we did in the Bachelor Pad, at least for a little while, was to keep a notebook full of things that were said - either by us or by people we knew - that we thought were funny. It started on our trip to New York. I bought a note pad with a picture of the Empire State Building on it and we started writing stuff down.

I'm not sure what we planned to do with all of these quotes. I think at one point we thought we might use some of them if we ever got around to writing that movie script. We never did but believe it or not I still have the notebook.

So, with that in mind I will share with you now, for the first time anywhere, a bunch of stupid stuff we thought was funny at the time. I will offer no explanation or context for anything you are about to read, mostly because I can't remember any myself. Proceed at your own risk.

"I get kinda worried when I see a thing like that on a guy's head."

"Your father was right, you do look like a bird."

"That's why we're gonna be roommates, because we can figure out how to order pizza."

"How the hell did I get pizza in my underwear?"

"Good God, there's a pirate in the kitchen!"

"What have you done with Charles Bronson?"

"Sheep are perfectly fine, but hedge trimmers, that's where I draw the line."

"You can make fun of my home planet all you want, but don't call me a weirdo!"

"Yeah, right, she's gonna fax me her breasts and then have the cops after me."

"I'm gonna stick a napkin up there so it won't happen again."

"I just flipped off a barrel."

"I was wondering where the hell Screech was."

"Don't look now, but Fidel Castro is following us."

"Wouldn't that be great if Mike Starr suddenly stepped out and clotheslined him?"

"You look like you should be standing on a corner handing out balloons."

"Dammit all, we're outta monkeys!"

"How the hell could something as goofy looking as that be a Jedi?"

"Every time I come over here, you guys got some kind of goofy shit going on."

"There's just way too much ass in this movie."

"I want a monkey so bad I can taste it."

"At least I don't sleep with scarecrows, penguins and monkeys."

"Steve Buscemi is amused."

"Bud Wheeler's in the bathroom with a banjo."

"I feel like a slinky molester."

"It's the floating severed head of Stymie!"

"It's not bad enough we got all these gnomes and trolls living here, now we got Rod Serling in the closet."

"She was blowing Cosby, it's obvious."

"I'd hate to get my ass kicked by Dick Cavett."

"I'd stick this phone down my pants if I was positive it was gonna ring."

"If you can't tell the difference between a penis and a circus clown I don't want you in my apartment."

Well, there you have it. A glimpse into life in the Bachelor Pad. I'm sorry.

Beau's Mom Part II

2010-05-06T20:20:00.001-05:00

The second time I remember being chased by Beau's mom began at Johnson County Community College. Teel and I had begun spending a fair amount of time there - him more so than me - after he started taking classes there. It was only a two-year school, but Teel would eventually go on to set the record for the most years spent at JCCC or possibly any other two-year school. But that's another story.

One of the things Teel did there was work for the JCCC Ledger, the campus newspaper, as a cartoonist. He drew a comic strip that started out as "The Teel" but was later changed to "Tales From the Bachelor Pad." He was the star. I was his sidekick. It also featured my sister, Kel, a dog named Bo (not to be confused with the actual person Beau - the two had little in common, save for the fact that they both smoked), Dave the Cat, Cantrell and many others. It was hilarious.

Beau also worked as a cartoonist for the paper. He was an extremely talented artist who could draw in a variety of styles. His contributions were often single-panel, Far Side-style cartoons that were pretty funny in their own right.

Though I didn't work there, I spent a number of late nights in the Ledger newsroom during that time, hanging out with Teel, Beau and a couple of the other guys who worked there. In fact, it was in that very newsroom that I was first introduced to the Internet. I remember Beau showing me that creepy dancing baby that would pop up all over the place a few years later. And he introduced me to The Onion, still one of the funniest sites on the Web.

We played video games, talked about stupid stuff like the hottest cartoon characters (Betty Rubble? Daphne? Judy Jetson?), and generally accomplished very little. But then, work really wasn't the point. Well, Teel was there because he worked there, as did Beau, though let's face it, he was more than likely hiding from his mom. I was there because I had nothing better to do.

At any rate, the point is we were at JCCC on that fateful day, for reasons that now escape me. I do remember it was daytime though, so it was not one of our nightly adventures in the newsroom. I think we had been planning to go to a movie and we were picking Beau up at the school. But before we could leave with him, his mom showed up and ordered him to come with her. So he did.

With most people, that would be the end of the story right there. She had her son. We did not. Each of us went on with our lives and never spoke of it again. But we were not dealing with most people. We were dealing with Beau's mom.

So it was that we pulled away from the school and headed down the road, only to notice moments later that she was following us. At first, we tried to chalk it up to coincidence. But when we turned a corner, so did she. This was all starting to seem eerily familiar. We didn't quite know what to do. We didn't have anything she could possibly want and there was really no rational reason for her to be following us. But then, as was usually the case, rational didn't enter into it.

I don't remember how long she followed us. I just remember that we kept making turns until she gave up. I'm not really sure what she wanted. She already had her son and Amy the Black Widow wasn't with us on that trip. Maybe she just wanted to thank me for the last time, when I got out of bed at 2 in the morning to save her son's life.

Beau's Mom

2010-04-29T21:16:00.006-05:00

Editor's Note: I am aware that Beau himself and his sister may likely be reading this. I will try to be as kind as possible out of respect for them. But it won't be easy.

I have so many stories about Beau's mom I'm not sure where to begin. There are two that stand out the most in my mind. The first happened one night after Beau and I worked the closing shift at Blockbuster. There was a girl we worked with named Amy, but she wasn't there that night. I mention her, though, because Beau and Amy were dating at the time. Amy and I would go on to become really good friends, though at that moment in time, we were mostly just co-workers.

Amy lived in an apartment not far from the Blockbuster where we worked and after that shift, Beau was headed over there to meet up with her. We closed the store. He went to her place, I went to the Bachelor Pad and never gave it a second thought.

At about 2 in the morning, the phone rang. It was Beau. He had been waiting outside Amy's apartment for two hours and she hadn't shown up. He needed a ride home but wasn't about to call his mom to come get him. And with good reason. She was not a woman you wanted to cross. Even when you were on her good side, you were never truly safe. Come to think of it, I don't know if I ever saw her good side. I know Amy certainly never did. To Beau's mom, Amy was, in her words, a "black widow" who was trying to steal her son away. If you know Amy at all, then you know how ridiculous that really is. Amy is about as much of a black widow as Mr. Rogers was a Satan worshipping member of a biker gang.

So you can see why Beau didn't want his mom knowing he was at Amy's place. And the reason he called me is because, as was established in last week's post, I was a sucker who couldn't say no to him. In retrospect, I should have. I should have said "sorry, Beau, call your mom to come get you" and gone back to sleep.

And I told myself that over and over again as I was driving over to get him. It was a lot like that scene in "Ferris Beuller's Day Off" when Ferris first calls Cameron to come and get him. I was sitting in my car going "He'll keep calling me. He'll keep calling me until I come over. He'll make me feel guilty. This is...uh. This is ridiculous. Okay, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go! Shit!" I may or may not have been wearing a Detroit Red Wings jersey at the time.

As I pulled into the parking lot of Amy's apartment complex, I saw Beau's mom's van pulling out. I knew it was her van because I had seen it enough times at Blockbuster to recognize it. Also, she was behind the wheel. That was kind of a tip-off. I figured she had Beau and was going to take him home and beat him to death, so I decided to go back to the Bachelor Pad and go back to bed.

Imagine my surprise, then, when Beau's mom started following me. At first I thought maybe it was just a coincidence, that she just happened to be going in the same direction as me. But then I turned in a direction I knew to be going away from Beau's house, and she turned too. No doubt about it, I was being followed. I already knew enough about Beau's mom at this point to know that I did not want her knowing where I lived, so I drove around long enough to lose her, then finally got to go home and go back to bed, which is all I really wanted in the first place.

The next day at work I learned the truth about what had happened. Beau, while waiting for me, had for some reason started walking down the road in front of Amy's apartment complex. Before I got there, he saw his mom's van coming. She was out looking for him and knew exactly where to look. He decided to do the smart thing and hide from her and, by extension, me. When I got there, Beau was cowering in a shrub somewhere and his mom, having failed to find him in the parking lot, was heading out to keep looking when she saw me.

She apparently figured I knew where Beau was and decided to follow me, hence our little chase scene. She eventually went back and found him after I ditched her. But the craziest part was what she said to Beau in the van on the way home. In the midst of yelling at him, she said that "your friend Terry was so worried about you that he got out of bed and came looking for you in the middle of the night!"

Right. Because that's exactly what happened. I was laying in bed and my Spidey Sense began to tingle. "Uh-oh," I thought. "Beau's in trouble! I've got to go find him!" And off I went into the dark night to save my poor, innocent friend from the clutches of the evil Black Widow. I wish I was joking, but that is truthfully how Beau's mom saw the events of that night unfold. She and reality, they were not on speaking terms.

The Spidey Sense thing became a long-running joke between Beau and I. Beau had a pretty good sense of humor about his mom. I guess he had to. It was the only way to survive.

I wish I could say that was the only time I was chased by Beau's mom, but it wasn't. Oh, who am I kidding? I don't wish that at all. I'm glad I can't say it, because it leads me right into the topic of next week's blog: Beau's Mom, Part II - Electric Boogaloo.

Make it a Blockbuster Night

2010-04-22T22:23:00.003-05:00

As previously mentioned, I spent the two years we lived in the Bachelor Pad working at Blockbuster Video. It wasn't my first career choice. I had a journalism degree after all. What I did not have, at that point in my life anyway, was ambition. For two years I was content to stand behind the counter and rent videos to idiots who couldn't figure out that the movies they saw advertised on TV were most likely still in the theaters and hence we did not have them in stock you jackass!

Ahem. Sorry. Little flashback there. I'm okay now.

One of the guys I worked with at Blockbuster was Beau. Beau was a good guy who only came close to getting me fired one time. The thing about Beau was that he had a way about him that made it very difficult to say no to him. I know it sounds strange, especially coming from another guy, but it was true.

So one night we were working and I was the manager on duty. At that time, Blockbuster had begun renting out video game systems. We had Playstations and Nintendo 64s and did a fairly decent business with them. Beau wanted to take home one of the systems. I forget which at this point, but it doesn't really matter. The other thing about Beau was that he never had any money. He was forever asking people for change to buy sodas and snacks and stuff. And we gave it to him because, well, he was Beau.

You can probably see where the story is going from here, but in case you can't (and because I need something to fill out the end of this blog), it went like this: Beau asked me if he could take the game home without checking it out. I said no at first, but he kept after me and eventually wore me down. I figured what's the harm? I told him fine, as long as he brought it back first thing in the morning. He promised he would.

Well, one thing led to another and the store manager (whose name was Mac McMein - another detail unimportant to the story other than the fact that I just like that name. Mac McMein) found out about it and of course came to me.

I didn't think it was that big of a deal, personally. But Mac - Frank Burns to my Hawkeye, Dean Wormer to my Otter, Johnny Lawrence to my Daniel LaRusso (okay, okay, truth be told he was more like Mr. Burns to my Homer Simpson) - treated the whole thing like I had committed a war crime. He said it was the equivalent of stealing from the company, even though nobody else had taken the game system out that night and it was just going to sit there in the store not making money anyway.

The whole thing eventually went to the district manager, a guy named Rod who said he had to "think about" what my punishment would be, although Mac made it clear that my getting fired was a very real possibility. Looking back on it now, I don't think it was. I think Mac was pulling an Officer Smith and trying to scare the hell out of me. I gotta tell you, it worked.

Ultimately, Beau and I got off with a severe warning and a black mark on our records that haunts the both of us to this day, but we got to keep our jobs.

Anyway, I told you that story so I could tell you an even better one next week. My inability to say no to Beau would lead me to tangle with someone far worse than Mac McMein: Beau's mom.

Meanwhile, back at the Bachelor Pad...

2010-04-15T20:32:00.001-05:00

Teel and I recently had a discussion about going to see the movie "Kick-Ass." It's based on a comic book of the same name that's about a kid who decides to dress up in a costume and fight crime. He has no super powers but he soon finds himself in the midst of a group of other so-called superheroes and I'm sure action-packed adventures ensue.

Teel sent me a message saying he wanted to know if I was planning to see it. He wanted to see it, he said, and somehow it didn't seem right seeing it without me. I knew exactly what he meant, though it had been years since I really thought about it.

Back in the Bachelor Pad days - actually, even pre-dating those days - Teel and I had a long list of inside jokes, running gags and strange fantasies that worked their way into our everyday conversations. One of those jokes/gags/fantasies was that he was the hero and I was the sidekick. It all started back in high school, when the infamous P.W. (our former art teacher, if you recall) dubbed him "The Teel."

From those humble beginnings was born a superhero the likes of which the world had never seen. He had no super powers. He wore no costume, other than sunglasses, which he wore at all times, and he never really fought crime. But make no mistake about it, The Teel was there to save the word from, well, something. I don't know what, exactly.

Mark Teel, of course, drew comic strips about The Teel and his adventures with his sidekick, Terry. I didn't have a superhero name because P.W. apparently didn't think I was cool enough to get one. We also had ideas for movies about The Teel. In part 1, he fought against an evil art teacher named P.W. who wanted to flunk the world and who had henchmen with names like "Easel" and "Paintbrush." In some versions, Mark Cantrell (a.k.a. "Mark with the Hair") was a henchman because, well, the dude looked like one.

In part 2, The Teel took on Drew, a gay 7-11 clerk who was out to redecorate the world. Drew, like P.W., was based on an actual guy we knew who was, well, a gay 7-11 clerk. I can't say with any degree of certainty whether or not he really wanted to redecorate the world, but I wouldn't have put it past him. I think we had as many as 4 or 5 movies planned at one point, but those are the two I remember the most. And if that's any judge of the quality of our ideas, it's probably for the best that I don't remember the rest of them.

The cast of the movies was constantly changing. For a long time, Steven Segal was going to play The Teel and Steve Buscemi, I think, was going to play me. Every time a new action movie came out that featured a hero and a sidekick - from buddy cops to buddy hit men - it would change. We would see "Point Break," for example, and decide that we should be played by Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves.

You have to understand, though, that we never took any of this seriously. It was all a big joke. Something to keep us amused when we had nothing better to do - which happened a lot in those days.

Somewhere along the line, though, the joke stopped being funny. The roles we had assigned ourselves in our minds began to bleed over into real life and eventually led to some friction between Teel and me that would ultimately spell the end for the Bachelor Pad.

At the time, though, we had a lot of fun. Sometimes, we made it a point to see movies just because they had heroes and sidekicks in them, no matter how bad they were. "Batman Forever" comes to mind. We saw that one on our trip to New York City for that reason. Even though both of us had seen it before, for some reason, we just had to see it together.

So, I think when "Kick-Ass" hits the theaters, The Teel and his sidekick will ride once again, hopefully this time without getting arrested.

3:10 To Branson

2010-04-08T20:56:00.003-05:00

I'm taking a break from The Bachelor Pad stories this week to share a post-Bachelor Pad story that my friend Greg reminded me of recently. So if this post sucks, it's all Greg's fault.

As I said, this story takes place in the post-Bachelor Pad era. Teel and I had stopped talking to each other by this point and I was living on my own in an apartment with a next door neighbor who was far more annoying than any roommate I ever had. But this is not his story. I'll write more on him later.

This story is about four friends who went on a journey of self discovery and learned some valuable lessons about life along the way. These were young men just trying to make their way in the world and trying to figure out who they were. This trip would change them in ways they wouldn't understand until years later.

Okay, okay, it was me and three friends and we spent the weekend in Branson, Missouri. For those of you who may not be familiar with Branson, I think Homer Simpson summed it up best when he said "It's like Vegas if it was run by Ned Flanders." I know my geek friends will insist that it was Bart who delivered that line, but he was quoting Homer when he said it, so there.

Imagine if, instead of flying all of the hillbillies out to Vegas to see washed up stars perform, you flew all of the washed up stars out to the hillbillies and then took away the gambling. Now you've got a pretty good idea of what Branson is all about.

So why did four young bachelors choose to spend a weekend there? Well, that's still a subject of debate to this day. The trip was Dave's idea, and he claims he just thought it would be a fun thing to do. Greg was moving to Wichita (I was wrong about the date of his move in my last post, as he helpfully pointed out in the comments) and this would be a good farewell adventure to have.

The rest of us, however, remember it just a bit differently. The way we saw it was that Dave planned the whole thing so he could stalk his future wife, a charge he continues to deny. Dave was very interested in dating this girl named Jessica at the time. She was a little unsure about dating him, so he kept plotting inventive ways to be around her without it actually being a date. She eventually caved in and agreed to marry him, but at the time of this story that moment was still a long way away.

So Dave plans this whole guys weekend in Branson and once we get down there, lo and behold, who just happens to be spending the weekend at Silver Dollar City with her family? Oh my lucky stars, what a coincidence, it's Jessica! What are the odds? Pretty good, I'd say.

Silver Dollar City, by the way, is one of the few cool things Branson has going for it. The other, of course, being internationally renowned fiddle-playing superstar Shoji Tabuchi. What? He's world famous in Branson. Silver Dollar City is an 1800s-themed amusement park, which is more fun than it sounds. There are silversmiths, blacksmiths, glass-blowers and candy makers all demonstrating their crafts as they were practiced in the 1800s. There are also roller coasters. Not many people know that the first roller coasters were invented by the pioneers. In those days, of course, they were better known as runaway trains.

So the four of us - me, Dave, Greg and Smitty - descended upon Branson late one Friday afternoon for a weekend of fun. I haven't mentioned Smitty yet in this blog and I think it's high time I did. Smitty's real name wasn't Smitty. It wasn't even Smith. It was Todd. It was Teel, I think, who bestowed the name Smitty upon him one night whilst out for an evening of karaoke. Why Smitty? Well, as Teel says, he just looks like a Smitty. And he really does.

We shared a hotel room that night, because we were poor. And also, Dave never does anything unless it's cheap, and he planned this whole trip out to cost as little as possible. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

On Saturday, we headed out to Silver Dollar City and were promptly ditched by Dave not long after we arrived. He spent much of the day following Jessica and her family around. I'm pretty sure that, after a while, she even knew he was there. What's more, she didn't seem to mind that much. The rest of us were a little annoyed, but we weren't female, so we didn't count.

The four of us did get to spend some time together that day, though. We managed to get Dave to stay with us long enough to take a picture in one of those photo studios where they let you dress up in Old West garb and pretend to be cowboys. It was pretty cool. We even came up with outlaw names for ourselves. I was Six-Gun Scruton, then we had Kid Clamons, Dave "Stormy" Weatherford and, of course, Silver Dollar Smitty. Yeah, we were dorks, but if you've been reading this blog for any amount of time, that really shouldn't come as a surprise to you.

The other thing the four of us did together was to take a tour of a huge cave they have down there. There are many caves beneath that part of Missouri. I can't think of anything funny to say about that. Anyway, this was a guided tour and the guide would stop at various points to tell stories about the history of the cave and when it was discovered and so on and so forth.

At one point during the tour, the guide shuts off the lights and the chamber you're in goes completely dark. It's a little unsettling at first. The guide says this is how the cave looked when so-and-so discovered it back in 19-whenever. Personally, I don't think I could be a cave discoverer unless I could only discover caves that came pre-equipped with interior lighting. So the crowd chuckles politely at the guide's little joke, then he turns the lights back on.

At that moment, before the guide can say anything else, Greg shouts out, in a damn good Shaggy imitation: "Zoinks! Like, Fred's gone, Scoob!" That poor guide never stood a chance. The whole crowd burst out laughing and we spent the rest of the tour making Scooby-Doo jokes. Good times.

So, as you know already, the trip to Branson had a happy ending for one of us. Dave eventually married Jessica and the rest of us stayed single for far longer than any of us really wanted to. Dave's story on the weekend has changed somewhat over the years. At first, he insisted that he had no idea Jess was going to be down there. Later, he amended it to say that he knew her family was planning a trip down there, he just didn't know it was that same weekend.

Right. And Branson would crumble without the awesome star power of Shoji!

Mars Attacks!

2010-04-01T19:02:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the absence of a new blog post last week. I was out of town for work and though I did have access to a computer, I did not have access to my brain as it was occupied by other things.

This week's story comes to you courtesy of Tim Burton's motion picture "Mars Attacks!" The thrilling story of an alien invasion of Earth, where a rag-tag band of all-stars including Jack Nicholson, Michael J. Fox, Sarah Jessica Parker, Pierce Brosnan, James Brown and Tom Jones fights to save humanity armed only with a back catalog of Slim Whitman albums.

The movie was released in 1996, so the story I'm about to tell most likely takes place in 1995. Dave Weatherford was coaching debate at the time, I think, in Junction City, KS. One of his meets, or whatever they call them in debate (possibly "contests" or "death matches") was taking place in the bustling metropolis of El Dorado, KS. And by the way, it's pronounced El Do-RAY-do, not El Do-RAH-do, just so you know.

El Dorado is a town of about, oh, I don't know, 50 or 100 people, located not far from Wichita, where my friend Greg lived at the time. And still lives today, come to think of it. Man, I didn't think anybody could last that long in Wichita. Who knew?

Anyway, so Dave was headed down there and Greg was planning to come by the school where the tournament was being held for a visit. Somehow, Dave found out that Tim Burton was filming part of "Mars Attacks!" in the nearby town of Burns, KS.

If El Dorado is a speck on the map, Burns a microscopic fiber in the paper used to print the map, invisible to the naked eye. I had never heard of either of these places before this time, but, being big Tim Burton fans, Teel and I soon found ourselves on the road to El Dorado (oh come on, you knew that one was coming) and, by extension, Burns.

We met up with Dave and Greg at the school where the tournament was being held on a Saturday. Dave, of course, couldn't come with us because he had to work. But we were determined to press on. As we rolled into Burns, we rolled out of Burns almost as fast. Not that we didn't like the town, it was just that small. One street. No stoplight. And a trailer park. That was about it.

We drove around for a few minutes looking for any sign of a film crew. Not that we would have had to look that hard. In this town, there is no question they would have stood out. But there was nothing to be found. We went back to the main street and stopped at a small diner. Teel ran inside to ask if anyone knew where the film crew was shooting. When he returned with a dejected look on his face, I knew we were too late.

As it turns out, the film crew had been there, but they had left town just the day before. Of course, even if we had seen the film crew, it's doubtful that we would have seen Tim Burton himself. He probably sent some second or third unit director out to Kansas. I can't say I blame him, I would have too.

When we saw the movie the next year, we all loved it, of course. We tried to pick out the scenes they filmed in Kansas. The trailer park ones, naturally, because that's all anyone from Hollywood thinks is in Kansas anyway. I think if they ever came up to the Kansas City area, they might be surprised. I know I was.

Next week: More thrilling adventures from the days of yesteryear!

Poncho Man Lives!

2010-03-18T19:43:00.000-05:00

Stories like the one you are about to read are, in a roundabout way, part of the reason Teel and I would later stop speaking to each other for nine years. Teel eventually reached a point in his life where he no longer wanted to do stupid things, much less be reminded of them. In other words, he grew up. We all did, eventually.

But when Poncho Man came to life, that time was still a long way away. In fact, there's a chance this story may predate The Bachelor Pad, though I can't be sure. I'm finding that as I write these things down, the period in my life from approximately 1993 to 1997 is a bit of a blur. Oh, sure, some things I remember with absolute clarity and know exactly when they happened. The aforementioned year of 1994 is one such case. But Poncho Man is one of many stories that just kind of floats out there on it's own, unconnected to any other events around it.

I may not remember exactly when it happened, but I do remember how. Our friend Dave was dating a girl named Cathy who seemed nice enough and seemed to like Dave. Unfortunately, her father didn't feel the same way. I don't remember exactly why they broke up, but the point is they did and, being the mature, responsible adults we were, we decided one night to go and torment Cathy's parents.

They lived in a cul-de-sac, at the center of which was a big fountain. We decided it might be fun to soap that fountain (although, seeing as it wasn't really theirs, how that would stick it to Cathy's parents I have no idea). Having done that, we pondered what to do next when Teel discovered a poncho in the back of the car. I don't remember whose car it was, but it could have been one of three: The Getaway Car, the Teelmobile, or Future Car.

The Getaway Car was mine, of course. And I don't have to tell you who the Teelmobile belonged to. Future Car was Dave's car and we called it that because it had a digital display for the speedometer, which we thought was kind of cool at the time.

At any rate, Teel found the poncho and decided to put it on. Then he decided to get out of the car and run circles around the fountain screaming "Poncho Man lives! Poncho Man lives!" I should pause at this moment to note that all of us were completely sober at the time. Which makes this story even stranger. If we were drunk that would have been one thing, but sober? The hell?

As Teel did this, Dave and I watched and roared with laughter. It was one of the reasons we liked being around Teel. You could always count on him to do something completely crazy out of nowhere. Something the rest of us would never even think of doing, much less have the guts to go through with it even if we did think of it. Like the time he wore a rat suit. That one I know for a fact was one of the reasons The Bachelor Pad came to an end.

But at the time of Poncho Man's brief existence (and yes, he did live), that end was not even a thought in anybody's mind. We were just young and stupid, and the future - with the exception of the speedometer on Dave's car - was a million years away.

Next week: Mars Attacks!

P.S. If you want to know the story about the rat suit, you can read it here.

The People in Your Neighborhood

2010-03-11T15:50:00.004-06:00

One of the first things Teel and I did upon moving into The Bachelor Pad was to assign comical nicknames to all of our neighbors. Fortunately for us, all of our neighbors had quirky personality traits that made this easy to do.

Take the our next door neighbor, The Oncelor, for example. In order to get to our apartment, we had to walk right past his apartment which, from what we could tell from the outside, consisted mostly of a door with a window right next to it. This man spent a lot of time at that window. He might have had a couch right below it where he liked to sit, but we never knew for sure. What we did know for sure was that every time one of us went in or out of the apartment, we would see our neighbor's hand part the blinds at the window as he checked to see who was outside. Once he saw it was us, the hand would wave, then disappear back inside.

So why The Oncelor? Well, you may remember The Oncelor as a character from the beloved Dr. Seuss children's classic, "The Lorax." The Oncelor was the narrator of the story, and all you ever saw of him was his hands. Oh sure, we could have named him after Thing from "The Addams Family," or The Balladeer from "The Dukes of Hazzard," but somehow The Oncelor just seemed to fit.

I think we actually met him face to face a couple of times, but I couldn't tell you what he looked like. I'm pretty sure that he was more than just a pair of disembodied hands, though I wouldn't swear to it in a court of law. I don't even remember his real name. I seem to recall he was a fairly nice guy who probably had no idea that his neighbors had named him after a Dr. Seuss character.

Upstairs from us lived Shaft and Mrs. Shaft. They got these nicknames for no other reason than the fact that they were a black couple and one of them had a moustache. We didn't interact with them much beyond the occasional nods as we passed each other going up and down the stairs.

One thing I do remember about the Shafts is that they had a very vocal argument in the parking lot one day. I remember hearing some yelling and I looked out the window to find Mrs. Shaft standing in front of Shaft's car as he was trying to leave for work. How do I know he was trying to leave for work? Because he yelled that at her over and over and over. The entire dialogue of the argument went something like this:

"I got to go to work!"
"No!"
"I got to go to work!"
"No!"
"I got to go to work!"
"No!"

It went on like that for quite some time. I don't recall how it ended, but I'm sure she moved at some point and Shaft finally got to go to work, where he presumably fought against The Man.

Downstairs from us lived the Unabomber. We called him that because he was as creepy-looking white dude who seldom left his apartment. We mostly avoided him except for the occasional times when we would knock something off of our balcony and down onto his patio and then hope that he wasn't going to murder us in our sleep.

So you can see that The Bachelor Pad was a fun place to live. Sometimes I wonder if our neighbors ever had any nicknames for us. They probably just referred to us as those two gay guys. Not that we were gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The Bachelor Pad Begins

2010-03-05T18:10:00.000-06:00

Finally, in the summer of 1995, Teel and I moved into the Bachelor Pad at long last. It was a two bedroom apartment at Jefferson Place Apartments in Olathe with a stunning view of the parking lot below. I don't remember where Teel was working at the time, but I think it was Price Chopper. I was continuing my career at Blockbuster under the management of one "Mac" McMein. I don't have much to say about Mac right now other than that I liked his name. It sounded like the name of a private investigator from an old TV show or something. Mac McMein, PI.

Blockbuster, as it turns out, would be a central part of my life for the next two years. At that point, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with my life. Blockbuster paid the bills, plus I got free movie rentals. Well, not the new releases. Or any of the video game systems. But definitely a lot of the older movies, so that was something anyway.

I soon rose to the rank of assistant manager and, at the risk of being immodest, you know how at every Joe job you've ever worked, there was one cool manager and then one or two others that everybody hated? Well, I was sort of the cool manager. As it turns out though, that was mostly by default. The other two assistant managers consisted of a creepy married guy who hit on and/or sexually harassed all of the female employees, and a creepy single guy who hit on and/or sexually harassed all of the female employees. I, on the other hand, was not nearly as creepy and only hit on one of the female employees.

Her name was Alicia and she and I kind of had one of those love/hate, flirting/pissed off at each other things going on for a while. We never really went on a date, but we hung out a few times and there was some tension there. My self-confidence being what it was at the time (which is to say, non-existent), I was never able to bring myself to make a move. I like to tell myself that I never went out with her because deep down I knew she was insane (actually, it wasn't that deep down, she was pretty up front about it) and that I would only get hurt again as I had the year before. But the truth is I was kind of a wuss. But that was one time, I think, that my wussiness saved me a whole lot of heartache.

At any rate, the Bachelor Pad was just beginning for Teel and I. Neither of us, of course, had any idea where it was going - or where we were going, for that matter. But that was half the fun. We worked. We hung out. We watched movies. We sometimes cruised. Teel continued to do embarrassing things that would sometimes get us in trouble. He drew cartoons. I wrote. We talked about writing a movie together. A real movie. Well, at least more real than the one we had previously made with my parents' video camera. We never got around to actually doing it. But we talked about it. A lot.

Movies were a huge part of our lives in those days. We had each seen "Pulp Fiction" no less than half a dozen times in the theater. I, of course, worked at a video store, which kept us in a steady supply of good flicks. A Quentin Tarantino poster hung on the wall in the living room, along with a poster of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch. That one had special meaning. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" was, and still is, one of our favorite movies. I don't know where Teel ranks it today, but it's still my favorite of all time. And there we were, Butch and Sundance, starting off on the grandest adventure of our lives. Or so it seemed at the time. In retrospect, maybe we should have gone someplace like Bolivia.

Next Week: The People in Your Neighborhood

On The Road Again

2010-02-25T18:36:00.003-06:00

Or, "Indiana Teel and the Transmission of Doom."

Our adventure in New York City complete, it was time for Teel and I to begin the long drive across the country to our destiny - The Bachelor Pad. But fate had something else in mind for us. Fate, and whoever designed the transmission on a '91 Dodge Dynasty.

My exact memories of this trip are a bit hazy, so forgive me if I get a few things wrong. But then how would you know? You weren't there. Unless you're Teel, in which case I'm sure I'll hear about it in the comments. And deservedly so.

Anyway, we set of from Connecticut in the aforementioned Dynasty with a U-Haul trailer full of my stuff in tow. It wasn't that big of a trailer, but apparently the Dynasty wasn't up to the challenge. We made it as far as Indianapolis before my keen driving instincts began to sense that something was wrong. And by "sense that something was wrong" I mean that the car suddenly couldn't go any faster than 30 miles per hour.

This is where it gets hazy. I remember getting off the highway in Indianapolis somewhere and trying to find a place where we could get the car looked at. I think there might have been a phone call or two made to The Eliminator (Teel's dad, for those of you who came in late), because that's what we always did when we were screwed. Somehow, we ended up at a repair shop run by a big, burly man in a jumpsuit who at the time we thought was the coolest guy in the world. Sad to say as I write this now, I can't even remember his name. Though I do think I still have his business card tucked away somewhere.

So Burly Mechanic Man tells us it looks like the transmission is going and there's no way the car is going to make it back to Kansas without costly repairs. I did have some money saved up from my lucrative six-month stint at the Danbury, Connecticut Blockbuster Video store, but not enough to repair a transmission.

As it happened, Burly Mechanic Man also rented U-Hauls out of his shop and was able to cut us a deal on a truck big enough to tow the Dynasty behind it. The bad part was we had to move all of my stuff out of the trailer and into this truck.

I don't remember how long we spent in Indianapolis, but it seemed like a long time while it was happening. The end result was that we made it back to Kansas, but my battle to get my transmission fixed was only just beginning.

Once we arrived, I took the car to a transmission shop to have it looked at. They came back with an estimate of $5,000 to fix the thing. Remember when I said I had some money saved up? I don't remember exactly how much it was, but it was nowhere near $5,000. More like $500, if that. And I had used up most of it just making the trip home.

I told the dude at the transmission shop there was no way I could pay that much and that I wanted my car back. He said that would be impossible because the transmission was in pieces in his shop. Nothing like a total stranger getting you by the short hairs. I remember getting pretty pissed at this guy and telling him to throw the transmission in the trunk and I would have my car towed to someplace that wouldn't try to rip me off. He held firm and refused to give up his hostage. In the end I had to borrow the money from my folks to pay for it.

I wasn't going to name the company here for fear of getting sued, but there's only, like, three people who read this blog and I'm pretty sure none of them work for this company, so screw it. If you are ever in need of a transmission repair, I highly recommend you avoid the folks at Cottman Transmission in Olathe.

But the Dynasty, aka The Getaway Car, survived, and Teel and I were ready to begin our adventure in The Bachelor Pad at long last.

Next Week: The Bachelor Pad Begins

The Ballad of Coop

2010-02-18T19:46:00.002-06:00

"Sometimes there's a man, well, he's the man for his time and place. He fits right in there." -The Stranger, "The Big Lebowski"

Coop was such a man. We first met Coop on the streets of New York City, while waiting in the standby line to see David Letterman. We stood out in front of the theater on that warm August day for quite some time and were herded into something resembling a line by a guy who looked and talked like any number of crazy homeless guys you are apt to see in New York. Only this guy worked for the "Late Show." At least, we assumed he did because he was wearing a "Late Show With David Letterman" t-shirt that, well, anybody off the street could buy at the gift shop right next door to the theater.

That, to my knowledge, was his only credential. He didn't have a badge or an ID card or any other sort of document that would prove he worked for the show. He had the t-shirt, and when he told us to move, we listened. That was good enough for us. As he chattered away to anybody and everybody in line, Teel and I started calling him George for two reasons. One was that we had a propensity for giving nicknames to total strangers in those days, and two was that he kind of looked like George Carlin. If George Carlin was a homeless guy in a David Letterman t-shirt.

Eventually, we struck up a conversation with him and almost doubled over with laughter when we found out his name really was George. His last name, he said, was Cooper, and henceforth he was known to us as Coop. Coop was laying down the law to us about all of the rules we were to follow if we got inside. I say "if" because we were in the stand-by line and had no guarantee that we would make it in that night. We expressed our concerns to Coop at one point and he stopped, pointed a finger at us, and said "I tell you what, you get in there, buddy, and you owe me a beer."

This was in 1995 and for some reason Teel and I had taken to quoting lines from the movie "Maverick," starring Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster. It's a very entertaining film with lots of quotable lines. One of our favorites was James Coburn as The Commodore. There's a scene on the riverboat in the final act of the movie when things get rowdy and someone fires off a gun, which was to have been banned from the boat. James Coburn turns to James Garner, who played Marshall Zane Cooper (aka "Coop") and says: "Coop, your security isn't worth a damn. Everybody in here's got a gun!"

As Coop was explaining to us that there was no picture taking allowed inside the theater, we cracked ourselves up by imagining a theater full of cameras and Letterman yelling "Coop, your security isn't worth a damn. Everybody in here's got a camera!"

I guess you had to be there.

The way the stand-by line works is, they let everybody with real tickets in first, and then fill whatever seats they have left with the folks in the stand-by line. They come out to the line and start counting off the number of seats they need. When they get to that number, they stop and everyone behind that number is dismissed.

As it happened, we were the last two people they counted. We were as giddy as school girls. "We're going to see Dave!" we shouted (and probably jumped up and down and giggled, too). At that moment, Coop came over to us, pointed his bony finger at us once again, and said "You owe me a beer!" He then proceeded to go down the line of people who were headed into the show, saying to each one of them: "And you owe me a beer, and you owe me a beer, and you owe me a beer."

Watching David Letterman live was great. We saw Alanis Morrisette perform just when Jagged Little Pill was about to explode. We saw David Brenner tell some funny stories. We saw Biff. We saw Paul. We saw Dave.

When it was all over, we decided that if we could find Coop, we were going to buy him that beer. But when we got outside the theater, he was nowhere to be found. In fact, thinking back on it now, I can't be sure he was even really there to begin with. Such is the legend of Coop.

I went back to New York some years later, this time for work, and managed to get in to see Letterman again. It wasn't quite the same though. I had legitimate tickets that time, for one thing. It was also cold as hell and I had to wait for over an hour in an abandoned ballroom across the street. It wasn't the same without Teel, either. But more than that, it wasn't the same without Coop.

I don't know where you are today, Coop ol' buddy, but wherever it is, I hope you finally got that beer.

Next Week: On The Road Again

The Teel Takes Manhattan

2010-02-11T20:55:00.001-06:00

In the winter of 1994, I fled the state of Kansas to the Los Angeles underground. Wanted by the government, I survived as a soldier of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find me, maybe you can hire...someone else. Not me. I was too busy screwing up my own life to worry about screwing up anyone else's.

I had graduated from K-State and given that my original post-grad plans, such as they were, had involved going wherever my girlfriend was going. And given that she had cheated on me and was no longer my girlfriend. And given that my attempts to remain friends with her (yes, I know it was a stupid idea, quit lecturing me, okay?) only brought on more pain, it was, in the words of REO Speedwagon, time for me to fly.

So I packed up and headed for Connecticut. Why Connecticut? It seemed as good of a place as any for a guy looking to start his career. There are many big companies that have their headquarters there. It's close to New York City, which is just the place for a young journalist to get his teeth wet, or something. Plus, my parents had moved there about six months earlier and, well, I had no where else to go. About six months and a job at Blockbuster Video later, I was ready to come back.

The one great thing about living in Connecticut was that, from where we lived, you could hop on a train and in a little over an hour find yourself in Newark, New Jersey because you got on the wrong train. Board the right train, however, and it would take you right into Grand Central Station in New York City. I loved going to New York City. I didn't even have to be doing anything. I could just walk the streets for hours and people watch. Or rat watch. I saw the biggest rat I have ever seen on one of those trips. You can read that story here, if you are so inclined.

Proximity to New York aside, Connecticut didn't really have much to offer me. Or, rather, I didn't have much to offer it. I know some people would have given anything for a shot at landing a journalism job in New York City. But I was straight out of college with no experience and no confidence in myself and, well, as much as I liked visiting New York, I really had no desire to live or work there. So back to Kansas City it was.

In August of that year, Teel came out to Connecticut. The idea was that he would fly out, spend a few days hanging out, then make the drive back with me to Kansas. He even lined up an apartment for us and The Eliminator had lined up a job at Blockbuster for me that I told myself was only temporary. Little did I know I would come dangerously close to making a career out of it. At that time, though, it didn't matter. The Bachelor Pad was just days away from becoming a reality.

But before that could happen, there was one big adventure left to be had: New York City.

We spent two days in New York City. One of our main goals was to get in to see a taping of Late Night With David Letterman. The first day we went to the Ed Sullivan Theater and found out that, if you didn't order tickets months in advance, you had to get in the stand-by line. In order to do that, you had to show up very early in the morning.

The next day we did just that. We showed up in the morning, they gave us a number and told us to come back at a certain time. That time was our date with destiny. It was our one shot to get in and see Dave. It was also the time that we met a man who would change our lives forever. A man called Coop.

Next Week: A Man Called Coop (Clever, huh?)

Out Here In The Fields

2010-02-04T20:17:00.000-06:00

1994 was one of the worst years of my life and Teel was only partly responsible for it. Actually, that's not true. What happened wasn't really his fault. It was instead the result of some rather stupid expectations on my part.

The Squirt Gun Incident had solidified my friendship with Teel in a way that it never had been before. There's something about being arrested with a guy that brings you closer together. We were in it for the long haul now. Well, at least for the next 7 or 8 years anyway.

Throughout the early 90s, I was in college and Teel was, well, come to think of it, I can't really remember what he was doing during that time. Working. Trying to figure things out. Taking some classes at Johnson County Community College. Some combination of the three, at any rate. I came home from school often and he would come to visit me in Manhattan every once in awhile and hilarious shenanigans would ensue.

One of our favorite things to do was to talk like pirates. This was long before Talk Like a Pirate Day, an idea for which we have never received proper credit. A well-timed "Arrrr!!" was one of the many random things we would shout out of car windows as passers-by. Yes, in spite of the times we spent running from drunken hillbillies, fearing for our lives, we still did that, at least for a while anyway.

I only mention the pirate thing now because I'm reminded of one of the times Teel came to Manhattan to visit me and Dave Weatherford and we spent the weekend trying to hide from Jimmy. Jimmy was a nice enough guy, but annoying as all get out. I had known Jimmy in high school and made the mistake of becoming roommates with him at K-State, but that's another story. Jimmy was the kind of guy who would invite himself along to whatever everybody else was doing, whether they wanted him there or not.

So, as I said, being the mature college students we were, we spent the weekend hiding from Jimmy. At one point, he came knocking on the door of my dorm room. We shut off the lights and tried to keep quiet, but I know he heard the whispers and giggles from within because, well, he told us he did. After a few minutes, he gave up and left the doorway. Several minutes later, my phone rang. I answered and a voice on the other end that sounded suspiciously like Jimmy said he was calling from the front desk and someone had delivered an order of 14 sausage pizzas for a Mr. Mark R. Pirate. I laughed so hard I almost dropped the phone.

We were not nice to Jimmy. There's no doubt about that. But the funny thing was, every time I would start to feel guilty about it, he would invariably do something to piss me off and the guilt would go away. I have more Jimmy stories I could tell but this really isn't about him.

During those days Teel and I had many conversations about becoming roommates, the precursor to the Bachelor Pad, if you will. We talked about him coming out to Manhattan and, well, I don't know what he would do after that. What I failed to realize was that Teel had no interest in enrolling at K-State, so there would be no real reason for him to move out there.

In spite of this, in 1994, I actually got him to put his name on a lease in an apartment in Manhattan. Now, those of you who have been paying really close attention and can do simple math will note that, by 1994, I should have been dangerously close to graduating college. In fact, I was set to leave good ol' KSU in December of that year. Now you may be wondering why I wanted Teel to move out there with me if I was getting ready to graduate and, presumably, leave town. The truth is I have no idea. Like so many of the things Teel and I did together, it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

I was also in the midst of my first real serious relationship in 1994. I was dating a girl I had known in the dorms. I had since moved off campus with my old roommate and his girlfriend. They broke up, and The Girl From the Dorms moved in. Not long after, she and I began dating. Not long after that, I realized she was insane. Okay, so the technical term was manic-depressive. Whatever you want to call it, it was way more than I was capable of dealing with at that point in my life and the whole thing went up in flames when she went home during the summer of '94 and cheated on me.

I don't hold any ill will toward her now, but at the time I was devastated. I was all alone in Manhattan that summer. Dave had graduated in May and left town. Teel hadn't moved to town yet. I did have a couple of friends who lived there in town, without whom I may not have survived.

The break-up happened in August and was quite painful, but I took solace in the fact that Teel and I had just signed the lease on an apartment and that my buddy, my friend, was going to come out to Manhattan and we were going to have the time of our lives.

But alas, the Bachelor Pad was not yet to be. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but somewhere during that ill-fated summer Teel broke the news to me that he wasn't going to make the move. I do remember, however, exactly where it happened. In the middle of a field in Olathe, Kansas.

For some reason, Teel thought it would be a good idea to have Dave drive us out to this field. He said he had something he wanted to tell me. We parked beside the field and made the long trek out into the middle of it, with me pestering him all the while to tell me what was going on. If this was a Martin Scorsese movie, I'm pretty sure I would have been a dead man.

Once we reached the approximate middle of the field, we sat down and he told me. I reacted like any mature adult would have: by screaming and yelling at him and storming back across the field, only to realize that I had not been the one to drive, so I had nowhere to go. Storming off is so much more effective when there's a door to slam. Maybe that's why Teel took us to the field.

Undaunted, I continued storming down the road until Dave rolled up behind me in the car, told me to get in, and tried to calm me down. Teel was back there in the field somewhere, probably hoping I wasn't going to come back and kill him.

I didn't, of course. In the end I think I realized that his moving out to Manhattan at that time was a bad idea. He did pay rent on the place until I was able to find another roommate, a soldier form nearby Fort Riley who was going to school and seemed like a nice guy. The worst thing I can say about him (I can't even remember his name) was that one time I found a used condom sitting on top of the toilet, but the girl he used it with was still in the apartment and was pretty hot and it was rare in those dark days that I even saw a hot girl, let alone had one in my apartment, so I didn't complain about it too much.

The Bachelor Pad would come in it's due time, but until it did there were still plenty of adventures yet to be had.

Next week: The Teel Takes Manhattan

The Making of The Teel

2010-01-28T09:49:00.005-06:00

Teel probably won't like me telling this story. I think it's part of the reason, in a roundabout way, that we didn't talk for nine years. Teel did a lot of things in those days that were silly and embarrassing that he doesn't much like to talk about now. This was one of them: we made a movie.

Well, okay, it was only a movie in the loosest sense of the word. It was me, Teel and Dave Weatherford goofing around with a video camera at my house. And this was in the days before laptops and home computers came fully equipped with editing software, so what little editing there was consisted of us hitting the pause button on the recorder, moving things into position, and starting the recorder back up again.

The movie was called "The Making of The Teel" and was a behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of the movie about Teel's (imagined) life as a superhero. I was his sidekick, of course, and Dave played the role of the film's director, Tim Burton.

The villian was played by Mark Cantrell, whom you may remember from earlier stories as Mark with the Hair. He still had the hair and the giant, Frankensteinian head to go with it. He made a perfect henchman except he had all of the acting ability and charisma of a large block of cement.

During one scene, he was stealing a toaster from my house (yes, it was that ridiculous) and we filmed him on the front steps, holding the toaster aloft and shouting "It's mine! All mine!" He delivered the line with such a lack of conviction that it became a punchline for years to come. To this day, all any one of us has to do is say the line in a deadened monotone and the rest of us will bust out laughing.

We built a dummy to use for stunt scenes, including The Teel flying off the back porch of my house and accidentally getting run over by me during a chase scene. We also had explosions, borrowed liberally from one of our director's earlier films, Batman.

We also had a special guest star in the form of Keanu Reeves. Well, okay, it was a guy my sister was dating at the time who looked sort of vaguely like he could be Keanu Reeves' brother. Or third cousin. Definitely a member of the Reeves family, at any rate.

He played the part of a pizza delivery boy who delivered Teel, disguised as a large sausage pizza, to the lair of the bad guy. I could try to describe the scene, but it really has to be seen to be believed.

All of this was hilarious to us at the time, even though as I write about it now it sounds really, really stupid. I think I still have an old VHS copy of the movie somewhere, which I'm holding on to in case I ever need to blackmail Teel someday. Though come to think of it a public viewing could hurt me just as much as it could him.

It's kind of like threatening to go to the police with a video tape of both of us killing a guy in order to get him in trouble. Not that any such tape exists. As far as you know.

Maybe I'll just burn it instead. The movie, I mean. Not the video tape of us killing a guy. Which of course doesn't exist.

I should really stop typing now.

Next Week: Out Here in the Fields

A Cry for Help: The Danny Miller Story

2010-01-21T15:30:00.003-06:00

Note: This is the final part of the story of the Great Squirt Gun Robbery of '91. Please try not to cry about it and get my blog all wet. Thank you.

There are, of course, two sides to every story. You know one side of this story, assuming you have been reading regularly over the past few weeks. If you haven't been, go ahead into the archives and get caught up now. I'll wait.

Okay, now that we are rid of those people, I can finish telling the story to the really cool people who are still reading this right now.

The other side of this story belongs to one Mr. Danny Miller. Danny, you may recall, was the young man who happened to be emptying the trash out behind the theater that fateful night. When those two evildoers in the white car pulled up beside him and brandished an Uzi from the window of the car, Danny was terrified.

As they pulled away, however, he somehow summoned the courage to chase after the car and - wait a sec. Just now as I was writing this I realized I left out one crucial detail when I told the story before. When Teel and I pulled away from the theater, we noticed someone running after us across the parking lot. Curious (and not too bright), we circled back around the theater again to see what was going on. The person chasing us was gone. We shrugged our shoulders and drove off to meet our destiny with Officer Smith.

What we did not know was that person had been Danny Miller, who heroically chased the car, heroically got the license plate number, and heroically hid in the bushes and wet himself when we came circling back around. He also heroically called the cops on us a few minutes later.

We found out not long after the events of that night that the movie theater in Olathe had been robbed several times that spring. We also found out that Danny Miller had been working during one of those robberies. We didn't know any of this that night, of course, and we felt horrible about it after we found out.

But our guilt didn't last for long. We knew people who worked at the theater and knew people who knew Danny, and we eventually heard through the grapevine that he was kind of being a dick about the whole thing.

Teel and I were put on diversion, which meant we had to be good little boys for six months and not get arrested again and then the whole thing would be taken off our record. I never went back to check and see if that happened. It could be there to this day for all I know.

Danny, meanwhile, was demanding hazard pay from the theater because of what had happened to him that night. And not in a nice, oh-I-was-afraid-for-my-life-and-could-have-been-killed kind of way, either, from what we heard.

Hearing stories like that kind of eroded our guilt but the thing that made it evaporate altogether was the time he tried to have us thrown out of the theater. We went to see a movie several months after the whole thing happened and were sitting there, munching our popcorn and minding our own business when the manager appeared at the end of our aisle and motioned for us to come over.

I don't remember the details of what was said, but the short version was that Danny had told the manager he didn't think we were supposed to be in there. He said he thought it was part of our probation, that we weren't allowed in the theater anymore. We politely informed the manager that was a load of garbage. Our lawyer, Roy - I forgot to mention Roy as well. Roy was great. We loved Roy. Roy kept us out of jail. We sang songs about Roy. Anyway, Roy had never said anything about staying away from the theater.

Danny didn't succeed in throwing us out that day, but he did succeed in using up the rest of our guilt. From that moment on, Danny, unbenknownst to him, became the butt of an endless stream of jokes and, since Teel was an aspiring cartoonist, comic strips. The title of one of those strips - as well as the title of the Lifetime movie about Danny that we came up with - is the title of this blog post.

So it was that the Great Squirt Gun Robbery of '91 became part of our folklore. The other stories we had of cruising and making fun of total strangers, those were just stories. But this was the story. The one we would tell and embellish and laugh about for years to come.

The one I'm still telling today. And it gets better every time.

Parents Just Don't Understand

2010-01-14T22:26:00.002-06:00

Note: This is the fourth part (I think - even I've started to lose track by now) of the story of the Great Squirt Gun Robbery of 1991. The first three parts can be found elsewhere on this blog. The three posts prior to this one, actually. Geez, do I have to spell out everything for you?

Okay, here's the situation: My parents went away on a week's vacation, and they left the keys to the brand new Porsche. Would they mind? Hmm? Well, of course not.

Wait, wait, that wasn't me. Sorry. That was a line from an old folk song of my youth. My parents did go away on a week's vacation during that fateful Spring Break of 1991. And even though I had escaped the clutches of Officer Smith, I knew worse things were in store for me when my parents got home.

But I had some time to figure things out before they got there. I also had the advantage of going with Teel on the same night of the arrest when he told his parents. This was one of the few times that being with Teel actually got me out of trouble. Or at least helped me avoid worse trouble than I was already in.

After we left the police station, we drove straight to his house, too terrified to do anything else. I went inside with him as he prepared to tell his parents what had happened. Hell, I had gone with him this far, I figured I might as well go all the way.

I'll never forget how he broke the news. There wasn't a whole lot of build up or subtlety to it. He just said: "Um, Mom, Dad, we have something to tell you...we got arrested."

See, starting out with that bit of information was a huge mistake. We didn't realize it, of course, until it was too late. Once you start out by saying that you got arrested, your parents aren't going to listen to a single thing you have to say after that. And Teel's parents, I'm sure, never heard another word he said that night.

There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth and lecturing and "what were you thinking?" Of course, after Officer Jackass and the prospect of spending the night in jail, getting yelled at by Jude and The Eliminator (that would be Teel's parents) didn't seem so bad after all.

I had the advantage of a) not being their child and b) taking all of this in so I could learn exactly how not to tell my parents when they came home. After the yelling and the lecturing were over, I went home to my empty house and didn't sleep a wink that night.

By the time my parents came home that week, I was prepared. My parents walked in and I got my grip. I said "Uh, mom, dad, how was your trip?"

Seriously, though, rather than start out the way Teel did, I started out by saying I had something to tell them. "First of all," I said. "The car is fine. There's nothing wrong with the car."

I then proceeded to tell the story from the beginning, starting with the squirt gun and ending up with us getting arrested. They weren't happy about it. They looked as though they were developing ulcers as I spoke. But on the whole I think it went down easier than it did with Teel's parents. They didn't kill me, at any rate.

I think I knew things were going to be okay the next day when Teel called over to the house to make sure I was still alive and my dad answered the phone. "Hey," he said, "is this Two-Gun Teel?"

Yeah, my parents were pretty cool.

Next week: A Cry For Help - The Danny Miller Story

In The Jailhouse Now

2010-01-05T11:35:00.005-06:00

Let's see, where was I before this blog was so rudely interrupted by all of those holidays? Oh, yes, I was in the midst of telling the fourth or fifth greatest story ever told - the story of the Great Squirt Gun Robbery of 91.

When we last left our heroes, one (that would be Teel) was handcuffed in the back of a squad car about to be hauled off to the Olathe jail to meet his fate. The other (that would be me) had been given the opportunity to drive the Getaway Car (as it came to be known) back to that same station to meet a similar fate. He, that is, I, was at that moment pondering whether or not to make a break for it and leave Teel to rot in jail.

I decided that would not be a wise course of action, mostly because I was still surrounded by cops who had all of my information including the make and model of my car and my home address. At that point, even had Barney Fife been the arresting officer, my odds of escape would not have been good.

So it was we were hauled downtown, as they say. Although this particular branch of the Olathe Police Department was about as far from the actual downtown as you could get. What happened next is kind of a blur, and I may have gotten a few things out of order, time-wise, but this is as close as I can recall to the way it went down. They tossed us into an interrogation room and ordered us to begin filling out some forms. Apparently in Olathe you cannot get arrested without filling out the proper paperwork first.

The room, as I remember, was mostly empty, except for the long, rectangular table with two chairs on either side of it. Teel and I sat on one side and our would-be jailers occupied the other side. I remember at one point they left us alone, but not before informing us that we were under video surveillance. Too terrified to actually speak anything out loud, we began frantically trying to mouth words to each other about what we should say when they came back. I couldn't understand a thing Teel was trying to tell me, but I think at one point he wanted me to ask the cops if he could have a bag of peanuts.

You've probably seen the old "good cop/bad cop" routine in the movies or on TV a hundred times. It's used so often that it has become a cop movie cliche. Well, friends, I'm here to tell you from first hand experience that, cliche or not, they actually use it in real life.

Officer Friendly, as I will refer to him for clarity's sake, returned to the room and asked if there was anything we needed and did we have any questions about the paperwork and so on and so forth. Officer Jackass, meanwhile, stormed into the room moments later, slammed the squirt gun down on the table and proceeded to scream and yell at us for what felt like the better part of an hour about how he had never seen anything so *expletive* stupid in all of his *expletive* years on the force and what did we think we were doing and who did we think we were and on and on until spittle began to form at the corners of his mouth.

By the time he started talking about us having to spend the night in jail I was in tears and Teel was as white as a sheet. At that point, he apparently decided we'd had enough and left the room, leaving us in the gentle hands of Officer Friendly.

At that point, all we wanted to know was whether or not we were going to have to spend the night in jail. Officer Friendly said he didn't know. That hadn't been decided yet and they were trying to get in touch with the judge to find out. We were so terrified that it never occurred to either of us to even ask for a phone call. It also never occurred to either of us until much later on that these fine men in blue were purposefully doing everything they could to scare the piss out of us. And it was working.

I have no idea how long we were in that room that night, but it was the most horrifying however long it was of my life. After a while, Officer Jackass returned and told us we were free to go, but not before he got in one more shot at being Officer Jackass. And while I may not remember all of the details of that night, this I remember with total clarity.

As we were leaving the room, he stopped us and said, motioning to Officer Friendly "You know, if either one of us had seen you out there tonight with that squirt gun, we would have shot you. And neither one of us would have been the same again."

Right. Neither one of you would have been the same. What about the two dumb kids who would have had gaping holes in their bodies where none had been before? You think either of them would have been the same again? Forgive me if I'm not exactly concerned about your future in law enforcement at this moment in my life.

Jackass.

Next Week: Facing the Parents

The Crime of the Century

2009-12-18T10:50:00.005-06:00

Note: This is the second installment of the epic adventure known as The Great Squirt Gun Robbery. For part one, please click here. Or don't. It's up to you. All of the really good stuff starts in this one anyway.

I don't remember what the weather was like that night as we rolled up to the back door of the movie theater in my Dad's Dodge Dynasty. It wasn't raining, I know that much. And I don't think it was particularly cold, in might have even been clear. Regardless of what the skies were doing, make no mistake about it, Teel and I were headed into a storm of our own.

As I slowed the car down, we saw a young man taking out the trash. Teel rolled down his window and leaned out with the Uzi-like squirt gun dangling from has hand in full view. It was black against the white paint of the car and no doubt made quite an impression on young Danny Miller.

Unlike most of the other times he had almost gotten us killed, Teel didn't say anything to our intended victim this time. He just looked at him for a moment. Danny froze where he was and looked back, also not saying a word. A few seconds later, Teel pulled his head back in the car and said "Let's get out of here."

I pulled the car out from behind the movie theater and back on to Mur-Len Road, unaware that we were being watched the whole time. Not more than five minutes later, we had crossed Santa Fe and were passing the Price Chopper where Teel would later work when we came to live in the Bachelor Pad, when a police cruiser coming in the opposite direction pulled around behind us and flashed its lights.

I thought nothing of it at first, thinking I had a headlight out or had been going a little too fast, at worst. Little did I know we were about to experience the full wrath of the Olathe Police Department. In later tellings of the story, because we were much too terrified at the time to remember any of the names on any of the badges we saw that night, each cop involved had the name of Officer Smith, and Smith soon became our generic stand-in for any story we had involving the police.

I pulled off on a side street behind the Price Chopper and the police cruiser followed, his lights flashing merrily away the whole time. Suddenly, the entire car was flooded with a white light and we heard what we could only assume was the voice of God giving us orders.

"Driver," Officer God said. "Shut off the car and throw the keys out of the window!"

Teel and I looked at each other as one thought consisting of two words crossed both of our minds at the same time: Oh. Shit.

Teel said something at that very moment that probably saved us from some jail time later on. It was the only time I can recall that his mouth actually got us out of trouble. What he said was this: "Say you thought it was a friend." That may not seem like much, but it would later come to form the crux of our entire excuse - er, story that was completely true - later on.

What followed next was a series of orders barked through the loudspeaker on the police car, each more terrifying than the last: "Driver, reach out with your left hand and open the car door! Driver, step out of the vehicle with your hands in the air! Driver, move slowly toward the back of the vehicle!"

When I was told to do that, I started to turn around and face my would-be jailers, when one of them screamed another order at me: "Turn around! Now!"

I almost pissed my pants.

In short order, I was searched, cuffed and thrown in the back of the police car, where I sat and watched them do the same thing to Teel, putting him into another police car. By then, it seemed half of the Olathe Police Department had shown up to help capture these two desperate criminals. Teel later told me that when they ordered him out of the car, he almost decided to bring the squirt gun with him. Good thing he didn't, or right now I would likely be blogging about the circumstances leading up to his death and it wouldn't be nearly as funny.

I remember having two major thoughts as I sat in the back of the cop car and awaited my fate. The first happened as they were searching my dad's car. I actually thought to myself what if my Dad is a drug dealer and I didn't know it and they find something he stashed somewhere in his car? It's funny the thoughts that go through your head in times of crisis. My Dad is not, to the best of my knowledge, a drug dealer. Though he does live in Florida now, so it's possible that may have changed. It's not something that usually comes up during our weekly phone calls.

The second thought happened after the car was searched and all of the officers were standing around talking. By then, I'm quite certain they had figured out it was a squirt gun. In that moment, though, I had no idea what they thought and what they were going to do with us. What I saw was a bunch of cops standing around laughing. I didn't get the joke. My life was hanging in the balance and these guys are standing around laughing.

I have no idea how long we were locked in the squad cars, but it seemed like most of the night. One of the officers finally came over and opened the door and motioned for me to get out. He uncuffed me and said "If I let you drive your vehicle, will you follow me back to the station?"

Teel was still cuffed in the back of one of the squad cars. For a moment, I considered what would happen if I just drove off and abandoned him. It would have served him right, but I figured they would find me sooner or later and I would only be in deeper trouble than I already was.

I should have known by the fact that they were letting me drive the car rather than keeping me cuffed and stuffed, that they had figured out what happened and that we weren't in serious trouble. But at that moment I was still terrified beyond words, and Officer Smith knew it. He wasn't done with Teel and I just yet. Not by a long shot.

Next week: Part III - In the Jailhouse Now

The Great Squirt Gun Robbery

2009-12-10T15:43:00.005-06:00

Note: This is part of my ongoing Tales From the Bachelor Pad series of posts. You can find the other ones in the archives to the right because I'm getting too lazy to post all of the links here. This is a long story, so it's probably going to take me several posts to tell it all. I hope you can stand the suspense. Enjoy!

Most everybody, I think, has one or two great stories to tell, if they are lucky. This is arguably the greatest of the stories I will tell here on this blog. It is definitely the most significant. So why am I telling it now, with so many more yet to come? Why not save it for last? Because it didn't happen that way. I've been doing this in chronological order so far and it seems silly to stop now.

The way it happened was this...

I went to college in the fall of 1990. Teel was still in High School, having been a year behind me at the time. I left Olathe for Manhattan, KS, to begin my education at Kansas State University. It was there I met Dave Weatherford, but that's a story for another day.

Our story today centers around my first college spring break during that fateful freshman year. Being about as good a college as I was at high school, I didn't bother to go anyplace cool like Padre or Fort Lauderdale. Nope, I went right back to good old Olathe, KS. The fact that I didn't have any money or any friends who wanted to go to those other places were also deciding factors.

So, much like prom, I spent yet another supposed milestone of my youth hanging out with Teel. My parents - who were much more popular than I was (and who still are to this day, come to think of it) - had gone out of town themselves. I don't remember where they went. Could have been Padre for all I know. The point is they were gone.

Now most college-age kids who find themselves at home for a whole week with no parents in sight would do something like throw a party at their house. As we have already clearly established, I was not most kids. Teel and I spent most of the week being bored, hanging out and, yes, cruising.

It was on one of those fateful cruises that we decided to bring a squirt gun. I don't know why. Like I said, we were bored. And this was not the type of squirt gun you see today - the brightly-colored, glow-in-the-dark Super Soaker variety. Oh no. This one looked like an Uzi. Too much like an Uzi, as it turned out. It even had a clip that you could pull out and fill with water to reload the gun and made Uzi-like firing noises when you pulled the trigger. It was pretty sweet. They don't make 'em like that any more and I'm pretty sure Teel and I are part of the reason why.

We drove around for a while and Teel instructed me to drive around to the back of the movie theater to see if his friend Howard was working. This was back when the giant multi-plexes were only just starting to take over the movie-going world. The Olathe Landing theater was not such a multi-plex. It only had 8 screens.

Around we went to the back and Teel told me to slow down. Now the more astute readers out there might be starting to notice there is a pattern to these stories that usually involves three steps: 1) Teel tells whoever is driving to slow down. 2) Teel yells something stupid out the window, and 3) we run for our lives.

In hindsight, of course, that pattern is easy to spot and its even easier to sit here now as I write this and think "I really should have known better." At the time, however, the pattern had not yet manifested itself in my brain and I had not yet figured out the dangers inherent in listening to Teel. In other words, I was dumb enough to do what he told me.

There was someone working out behind the theater that night, but it wasn't Howard. It was a young man by the name of Danny Miller who was taking out the trash, just doing his job. We would soon come to pity Danny. Then to dislike him. Then to mercilessly mock him for years on end. But that was a long way away. At that moment, we had no idea who he was. Although that's not what we told the cops later on.

Next week: The Crime of the Century

More Tales From the Bachelor Pad

2009-12-03T14:13:00.008-06:00

Note: This is part 3 of a series of blogs detailing my life before I got old and boring, back in those wild, crazy days when I was young and boring. You can read part 1 here, and part 2 here.

It occurred to me as I sat down to write this post that, although I've been calling it Tales from The Bachelor Pad, none of the posts so far have involved the actual Bachelor Pad. This one will be no exception. I'll get there, eventually. And the buildup and and anticipation will probably make it very disappointing when I do. But for now, I've got a few more stories to tell.

We spent a lot of those early years just cruising, Teel and I. We weren't looking to get into trouble. And by that I mean we never left the house and said "Hey, let's go get into trouble!" Trouble just sort of happened anyway.

One of the earliest cruising experiences I remember happened the night of Prom. I never went to my prom, either junior or senior year. My junior year I had just moved to town and didn't really know anyone and my senior year - ah, who am I kidding? I was just a big loser who didn't go on a real date until I got to college. There, I said it. You happy now that you've dragged it out of me, you unfeeling bastard?

Sorry. Where was I? Oh yes, Prom. There really isn't much of a story there. I just remember Mark and I driving around in his car that night, following the occasional limo and making smart-ass remarks about whoever may or may not have been inside. It's kind of sad when I look back on it now and I'm not even really sure why I bring it up except that, as I said, it's one of the earliest experiences with Mark I can remember. Now that I think of it, telling a story that includes two dudes hanging out together on prom night and eventually living together seems kind of, well, gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But we weren't gay, said the suddenly and for no reason at all homophobic blogger. In fact, we would each have our own troubles with the opposite sex in due time. But more on that later.

Right now, I want to tell you about something less gay, like the male model we used to hang out with. Damn. Never mind.

Okay, fine, I'll tell you the story anyway. His name was Jeff, but we called him Pretty Boy, though never to his face. I'm not sure how it was we came to be hanging out with him. Mark knew him somehow. I just remember that he was all of a sudden there with us one night and that we spent the better part of a year or so hanging out with him and his dumb sidekick, Jerry. I hated them both right away, but Mark seemed to like them. Well, he liked Jeff anyway. Neither of us liked Jerry. I'm not sure Jeff really did, either.

Pretty Boy was very vain, as those in the modeling profession tend to me. He was still in high school when we knew him, I think, but he did modeling work part time. We didn't have much in common with him. Mark and I spoke in a language of movie quotes and pop culture references that was completely foreign to Pretty Boy. He never wanted to do the things we wanted to do. I always kind of felt like he looked down on us. Or at least on me.

But I think part of the reason we hung around him so much is that there always seemed to be hot girls around when he was around. Not that we ever got anywhere with any of them, but at least they were nice to look at.

Pretty Boy did accompany us on one memorable cruising adventure, though. In fact, he was an instrumental part of it. If I recall correctly, he was even the one driving that night. We were rolling up and down the 'Fe, as we often did on Friday nights when we were bored, which was almost every Friday night. It was me and Teel, of course, and Pretty Boy and Jerry. And I think there was at least one other person with us. A girl, I think, though I can't remember her name or even what she looked like.

We were in a station wagon that I believe belonged to Pretty Boy's mother, Linda. For some reason, whenever Teel and I made fun of Pretty Boy and his mom - which we often did when he wasn't around - we always imagined his mom having a voice like Beavis from Beavis & Butthead. I have no idea why, but it seemed funny to us at the time.

As we cruised the 'Fe in our oh-so-sexy station wagon, we came across a bunch of kids hanging out in a parking lot in front of a store. It was closed for the night and all of the cool kids sat around in their cars talking about whatever it is that cool kids talk about. How cool it is to be cool, I imagine. Teel, true to form, stuck his head out the window and yelled something random, which of course caused all of the cool kids to cease being cool and start being angry.

One of them began screaming and yelling obscenities and daring us to come back. Pretty Boy pulled the car around to where the dude was standing and leaned out of the window.

"You got a problem, man?" He said.

"Not with you," the dude shot back. "I just want that loud-mouthed asshole you got with you."

At that moment Pretty Boy did the one and only cool thing I ever saw him do. He didn't say a word. He just looked at the dude, narrowed his eyes, and shook his head, as if to say "You're not getting him. Not unless you come through me."

As we rolled away, feeling like we had out-cooled the cool kids and glad that we didn't get into a fight, Teel decided he wasn't happy with that outcome and figured it was time to let the world know about it. He leaned out the window and shouted something back at the dude. I don't remember exactly what, but I'm sure it was something stupid.

Maestro, some chase music if you please.

The next thing we knew, we were being chased down Interstate 35 - I'm not sure why we got on the highway, but it seemed like a good idea - by a bunch of guys in a pickup truck. I don't know why it was always guys in pickup trucks who chased us. I guess guys who drive pickup trucks can't take a joke.

I have to admit, Pretty Boy did a good job of handling that station wagon full of idiots as we raced down the Interstate. I probably would have driven us off the road into a guard rail. Not because I'm a bad driver, but because at that moment I wanted to kill Teel, even if I had to take everyone in the car with me to do it.

The situation soon went from bad to worse as two things happened. The first was that Pretty Boy looked down at the fuel gauge and noticed that the car was running low on gas. He announced that he didn't know how much further we would make it without running out. The second thing that happened was that, as we were watching our pursuers, one of us noticed that one of them was brandishing something long and narrow. Now it could have been a stick. It could have been a piece of pipe or a baseball bat. But at that moment we were all thinking the same thing - the dude's got a shotgun.

At that moment, I was pretty sure we were all going to die and it was all Teel's fault. That was not the first time I had that exact thought in my lifetime. It would not be the last.

After several failed attempts to lose them on the highway, Pretty Boy somehow got us turned around and headed back toward Olathe. We must have had more gas than we thought, because we made it all the way back to Santa Fe and got off the highway with the pickup truck still hot on our tail.

We were back on our home turf, but we still didn't know how we were going to lose these guys. At that moment, as all seemed lost, someone in our car spotted a cop car parked in a nearby parking lot. Pretty Boy pulled the car in and sat next to the cop car until the pickup truck passed and was safely out of view. The cops just stared at us, unaware of the pickup truck or why we were parked so close to them.

We let a few more minutes go by before Pretty Boy drove away and we all started digging for change to go buy some gas. We never saw the pickup truck again, but we all agreed on one thing - if it did come back, we were going to toss Mark out of the car and drive away.

Next Week - Part IV: The Great Squirt Gun Robbery

The Day Grandma Went Home

2009-11-24T08:49:00.003-06:00

I was going to post another adventure from my early days this week, but something has happened and I feel the need to write about this instead.

Grandma Weatherford passed away. I realize some of you reading this have no idea who she was, but let me tell you, you missed out. She was the grandmother of Dave Weatherford, my best friend. I've known Dave for close to 20 years now and I knew Grandma probably almost that long.

I don't remember exactly the first time I met her. It was probably in college sometime, because that was when I met Dave. I never knew Dave's grandfather, because he had passed away just before I met Dave. But I knew Grandma, and I'll always be grateful for that.

The times I remember most with Grandma were in the mid to late 1990s. Dave had just come from a teaching job in Junction City, KS, and was teaching in Olathe at the time. He wasn't really making enough money to live on his own and I was hip deep in my Bachelor Pad days with Mark Teel and unavailable as a roommate. Not that we would have gone that route anyway. Dave and I knew each other well enough by then to know that we couldn't stand to live together.

So, Dave went to live with Grandma in her little house on Switzer Road in Stanley. Dave knew that house well. He had grown up there. His own family house was right behind it, just a short walk away. I imagine it was like a second home to him. At one time, it felt that way to me as well.

I know it's a cliche to say that someone is a character, but there really isn't another word that better describes Grandma. And she was Grandma to all of us, whether we were related to her or not. You could always count on her to be ready with some freshly made cinnamon rolls, sugar cookies or an offhand racist remark delivered in the sweetest, most grandmotherly way possible.

I don't say that to be mean. Grandma wasn't some hate-filled Nazi sitting on her front porch with a shotgun blasting away at Jews. As far as I know, she didn't truly hate anybody. She was just from a different generation. When she grew up, black people were colored, women stayed in the kitchen and a kiss on the lips was considered "making love." I know some would have expressed their outrage and tried to tell Grandma that the things she was saying were wrong, but somehow that seemed equally wrong. She was just being Grandma, after all, and that saying about old dogs and new tricks exists for a reason.

We spent a lot of time hanging out at Grandma's house during those years, and I never once felt like I wasn't welcome. She always had hugs for everybody and food which was usually safe to eat unless she had been experimenting with the recipe. Not that she used recipes much. She would often make dishes with whatever she happened to have lying around the kitchen. It made for some interesting dining experiences.

I remember many nights sitting around the table in Grandma's kitchen trying to decide what we were going to do for the evening. Most times it was a movie. Sometimes it was other shenanigans like throwing biscuit dough at traffic signs. Yeah, I know. That one never made any sense to me, either. But whatever we were doing Grandma was always there, in the background, scurrying around the kitchen and tossing out the occasional comment which would usually cause the whole table to erupt in laughter.

I think that's what I remember the most about her. She always had a smile for whoever was in her house. She could always make you laugh, whether she intended to or not. She had the most innocent way of saying the most politically incorrect things, but there was always a little twinkle in her eye that suggested maybe she was in on the joke after all.

I'll never know what she thought of all of us crazy kids sitting around her table, talking about things that probably seemed as strange to her as her views of the world often did to us. I'll never know because she never questioned us. She just accepted us. We were all her children, blood relatives or not. Her house was full and that was what mattered.

Dave told me that, toward the very end, he and his brother Bill, who is a doctor, had to explain to Grandma what was happening and what her choices were. She wasn't going to make it. That much was certain. The choice she had to make was whether she wanted to stay in the hospital or go home. For Grandma, it was really no choice at all. She wanted to go home.

I don't know if her house was full or not when she went, but I'd like to think it was, because that's how she would have wanted it: a house full of people laughing and telling stories. If I had to guess I'd say the only thing that bothered her was that they were making a fuss over her, rather than the other way around.

In her house that just didn't happen. Except on that day it did. Goodbye, Grandma. We'll miss you.

Tales From The Bachelor Pad, Part 2: Cruisin'

2009-11-16T14:05:00.004-06:00

Note: For anyone who came in late, this is part 2 of a series of blogs detailing my life before I got old and boring, back in those wild, crazy days when I was young and boring. You can read part 1 here.

Mark and I became fast friends in school and it wasn't long at all before I was introduced to his best friend, Mark With the Hair. He was called that in part to differentiate him from Mark Teel, but also because he had this thick helmet of Frankenstein-like black hair perched atop his head. He was a tall, goofy guy who looked like some mad scientist had tried to re-create The Beatles by mashing all four of them together and the end result suffered some brain damage in the process.

Mark With the Hair wasn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and it wasn't long before I found out that Mark Teel found him almost as annoying as I did. Maybe even more so, in that special way only friends who've known each other their entire lives can really annoy the crap out of each other.

Little did I know that Mark Teel and I would one day reach that level of annoyance. But that day was a long way off in 1989.

The name confusion between the two Marks didn't last very long, thanks to P.W. I don't remember exactly how it got started, but one day in class P.W. started referring to him as "The Teel," and a new identity was born. The Teel was a superhero, crime fighter and part-time male model for the Jones Store. And I was his sidekick. The streets of Olathe would never be safe again.

In those early days before the Bachelor Pad, we didn't have much to do. Neither of us drank at that time and we weren't exactly the partying type, so our early experiences hanging out with each other often consisted of either seeing a movie or driving aimlessly around town.

One of the more popular activities among the cool kids at that time was known as "Cruisn' the 'Fe." Or, as it was lesser known, driving up and down Santa Fe Street on a Friday night because there wasn't anything better to do in Olathe. Being neither popular nor cool, we decided it would be fun to drive around and make fun of the other kids who were Cruisin' the Fe. Of course, we were technically cruising ourselves, but that subtle distinction in our reason for doing it put us one step above those who were actually cruising for real - they took it seriously, we did it as joke.

I learned very early on that one of The Teel's favorite things to do was to shout random phrases at people as we drove by. And when I say random, I mean random. "Sausage!" was a favorite. "You there!" was another. The goal was just to confuse people, but it more often resulted in making them angry, which we thought was hilarious. Why would you get angry at someone for yelling "Sausage!" out a car window? It was always an added bonus if we could get them to do "The Scarecrow," in which the offended person (usually a guy) would thrust his arms out to the side and give out a dirty look. It was supposed to look menacing, but to us it looked like a Scarecrow calling you out to a fight. And unless you are Batman, that stuff is funny as hell.

Teel's phrases weren't always random, though, and on more than one occasion we actually managed to get people to chase us. It was funny at first, until we realized we didn't know what we would do if they caught up to us.

I remember one night we were cruising around down by Lake Olathe. I'm not sure why. I think we had gotten bored with making fun of kids on The 'Fe and were looking for lakeside partiers to torment. Well, we found some, in the form of a group of big jocks with even bigger pickup trucks having a good old time at the lake as only jocks with pickup trucks can.

As we drove by, Teel told me to slow down, an instruction he would give me often, and one I would just as often come to regret following. This being early on in our friendship and me being too dumb to know better, I slowed the car down. Teel leaned out the window and let loose with a string of profanities involving certain liberties he had taken with the mothers of the aforementioned jocks. To this day, I have no idea what he was thinking.

What I was thinking was "Oh my God have you lost your mind?" That thought was followed by another, scarier thought as I saw the guys scramble for their pickup trucks: "I don't think my Ford K-Car can outrun them."

But by God I had to try, because they were, in the words of Sheriff Buford T. Justice, in hot pursuit. As we raced down the winding road next to the lake - I swear I'm not making this up - a song called "The Secret is to Know When to Stop" by Tom Cochrane came on the radio. It was too perfect.

"You hear that?" I screamed at the man cackling in the seat next to me. "You hear it? The song is right, the secret is to know when to stop!"

But The Teel never learned that lesson. I'm pretty sure Mark Teel knows it, but he was gone at that moment, and wouldn't show up again until about 10 years later.

My car kept us going long enough to get off of the lake road and back onto a paved surface, where I floored it until we came to the parking lot of a school. We pulled in, shut off headlights and ducked down low in the seats. Teel kept poking his head up, I kept yelling at him to keep down. Moments later, a caravan of pick-up trucks went screaming by, oblivious to the two idiots cowering on the floor of a K Car in the parking lot.

I wish I could say we both learned our lessons that night and never caused any trouble again, but I think we all know that didn't happen.

And my life - and these stories - are all the better for it.

Next week, Part 3: Prom and Fashion Models

Tales from the Bachelor Pad, Part 1

2009-11-13T09:46:00.004-06:00

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of lengthy, meandering, self-absorbed stories about my life before I got married and became old and boring. Much of it concerns my friend, Mark, and the time we spent together in an apartment we referred to as "The Bachelor Pad." I know, real original, right? It only gets better from there. Mark was quite entertaining in those days and I have plenty of stories to tell involving me, him, and the stupid things we did.

To understand what the Bachelor Pad was all about, you really have to go back to the beginning. To where it all started.

As near as I can recall (it gets a bit fuzzy after 20 years), it all started in an art class at Olathe South High School. I used to enjoy drawing and painting and creating quite a bit in those days. I say "used to" because the art teacher we had at the time pretty much sucked all of the joy out of those activities for me. All but the writing, of course. We never did any writing in his class, so he couldn't get to that. Good thing, too, or I wouldn't have a career right now. Or this blog, for that matter.

The teacher, whom we affectionately referred to by his initials, P.W., mostly because it drove him crazy, was not a bad man. A little off kilter, perhaps, as art teachers tend to be. His main problem was that he wanted all of his students to draw (or paint or whatever) exactly the way he did. I remember many occasions when I would be drawing a picture of a still-life set up in the center of the room and P.W. would come along, look at what I was doing, take my pencil (or charcoal or whatever we happened to be using that day), and, under the guise of "teaching" proceed to finish a substantial portion of my drawing.

Just so you don't think that I was some pitiful artist wanna be whose "art" was so terrible the teacher couldn't stand it, I should point out that I did win a couple of awards at art competitions in high school and that I was also not the only one he did this to. I remember another kid named Brian, whose last name escapes me at the moment. Brian was a very talented artist and ran with a group of kids we used to call "alternative." Today they might be called "hipsters" or even "douche bags." At the time I thought they were pretty cool and was more than a little envious that I was not part of their clique.

Anyway, Brian was working on a drawing one day and P.W. came along and did his usual shtick, imposing his own style on Brian's work. Brian didn't say a word. When P.W. was finished. Brian crumpled up the drawing and tossed it on the floor. When P.W. demanded to know why, Brian said "because it wasn't my drawing any more. You ruined it."

P.W. had many other peculiarities. He would make little notes about his students in his grade book. And not the typical teacher notes like "talks too much in class" or "didn't finish his homework assignment." He would write personal stuff in there, little tidbits about each student that he would sometimes mention out loud while he was taking attendance. For example, he lived on the other side of the same neighborhood as me. One evening I was out taking my dog for a walk when I saw him drive by. He slowed down and we exchanged a few pleasantries through the window of his car. The next day, he was taking attendance and mentioned something about my dog. Later on, I was up at his desk for some reason and happened to see the grade book open. There, beside my name, was scribbled "walks his dog."

As I said, not a bad man, but very strange.

But this isn't a story about P.W. or Brian. It's about my friend Mark Teel, and how he and I came to meet in that art class. As I said, the details are a bit hazy after 20 years. I remember sitting next to him. I'm not sure if it was my junior or senior year (the only two years I spent at Olathe South because we had just moved to town - a story for another time). I'm almost certain it was my senior year, but I wouldn't swear to it in a court of law. Whatever it was, he was one year behind me.

It's funny, I can remember the specifics of Brian crumpling up his drawing, but I can't recall the specifics of my first conversation with Mark. I think I told him a joke, probably an offensive, politically incorrect joke of the type you can only get away with when you are too young to know any better. Or too old to care.

I think he laughed at the joke. He must have, otherwise there would be no story to tell. Who wants to read about the time I told a joke to some guy in high school and he didn't laugh so I never spoke to him again?

The point is I think we quickly realized we both shared a similar sense of humor. And it was that sense of humor that started us off as friends, and caused us plenty of trouble down the road. But at that moment it was the beginning of the creation of a world that, when I look back on it now, almost seems like fiction to me - populated by strange characters with stranger names like "Mark with the Hair," "Exile Al" and "The Oncelor."

And yet it all happened. And they all existed. And I've decided to do a little experiment with this blog by documenting it all right here, for the first time ever. Well, okay, not exactly for the first time ever. Some of the stories have appeared in print before, in their own way, but we'll get to that later.

For now, suffice it to say that this is only the beginning. I hope you don't find it boring. And, whatever happens, always remember this - it all seemed like a good idea at the time.

Next Week: Part II: Cruisin'.

Grandpa Munster and Me

2009-11-05T08:17:00.004-06:00

Before I start this blog I want to apologize for neglecting it over the last month or so. I sort of got to a point where I was having to force myself to put up posts every week and I started to question why I was doing it. But then, like the man said when he was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, I came to the realization that I must continue this blog because it is a big, giant, deadly mountain and I am clinically insane.

That having been said, here's a story I shared with some co-workers recently when we were discussing celebrity encounters. This was mine:

I once chased Grandpa Munster out of the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Kansas City.

True story. I was there a few years back for the annual off-site staff meeting/team building exercise/huge waste of time that we had to endure at one of my previous employers. We did it off-site each year because, well, if you worked in the office we did, you'd want to get out of there as much as possible too.

That year it was at the Doubletree in one of the meeting rooms they had down in the lower level (also known as the basement, but it was a fancy hotel, so they would, of course, never call it that). It was about mid-morning and we were on a break after a couple of hours of hearing how the newspaper was going in the crapper and the management was desperately trying to save it by charging readers a fortune for "premium online content" or some such nonsense.

I had wandered out into the hallway toward the stairs that led up into the lobby. From the base of the stairs, you could see up into the lobby and the bright light of day. On that morning, I felt like a prisoner looking up from a dungeon as I stretched and craned my neck upward. All of a sudden, I spotted a familiar face staring back down at me and chomping on a big cigar.

I should pause here for a moment to offer some background. Each year, Kansas City used to have a celebration of all things Elvis. No one is really sure why. Elvis has no connection to Kansas City that I am aware of, other than perhaps playing a concert here once. But it's Kansas City, and with teams like the Chiefs and the Royals, we needed something - anything - to celebrate, so Elvis it is.

This celebration took the form of the Elvis Parade, in which an untold number of Elvis impersonators and revelers would march through downtown led by a grand marshall, usually some C through F-level celebrity (think Kathy Griffin or Larry Storch). On rare occasions, a B would slip through, but that was about as far as it went. Sadly, the parade, much like Elvis himself, is no longer with us.

I'm not sure where Grandpa Munster ranks on the celebrity scale, but he was on the A-list in Kansas City that year as Grand Marshall of the Elvis Parade. I'm sure that was inscribed on his tombstone when he died.

So there I was, staring up at Grandpa Munster, Al Lewis, who was staring back down at me. It took me a moment to recognize him, but when I did, I must have made some sort of face that tipped him off because he quickly turned away from the stairwell and disappeared from view.

I turned away from the stairwell and ran to tell my coworkers who I had just seen. They were more excited than I was and a handful of us ran up the stairs to see if we could find him. At first, it looked as if he was gone, but then, we spotted him heading out the front door of the hotel.

I hesitated, not wanted to be arrested for stalking, but another of my coworkers charged forward, determined to have a story she could someday share with her grandkids. I followed behind and by the time we got outside, Grandpa Munster was gone.

We never did figure out where he went. There was probably a car waiting for him or something mundane like that. Personally, I like to think that he just turned into a bat and flew away.

Tales of the Future!

2009-09-22T11:04:00.005-05:00

"Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future." - Criswell, "Plan 9 From Outer Space"

Most writers will tell you that they keep a pad and a pen on their night stand in case inspiration should strike in the middle of the night. I will not tell you that because I am not most writers. Also it would be a lie.

I don't know why I've never done it. I really should. There have been numerous times when I'm drifting off to sleep and an idea will come to me. Rather than get my lazy ass up and do something that might save it for posterity, I let it drift into my brain, hoping I will remember it in the morning. Believe it or not, this sometimes works. And often on those times, in the clear light of day, the idea turns out to be not nearly as clever as it seemed when I was half asleep.

But just as often it doesn't work, and I'll wake up with not only no memory of the idea itself, but no memory of the fact that I even had an idea to begin with. It's only later, as the day goes on, that something will trigger my subconscious and make me remember that I had some sort of vague notion of an idea about something. But by then it has usually scattered to so far into the corners of my brain that I will never get it back again.

Yes, my brain is cube-shaped. Isn't everyone's?

The other night, though, I had a strange experience that could never have happened to a writer twenty or thirty years ago. Even fifteen years ago, it was unlikely at best.

I was drifting off to sleep and I had an idea about a story I have been working on. Just a flash of where it should go next. I tried to tell myself I would remember it in the morning and that I needed to get to sleep right then because the vikings were coming and if the monkeys didn't stop them the entire enchanted forest of hippies was doomed. I did mention I was drifting off to sleep, right?

Anyway, in spite of my best attempts to convince it otherwise, my cube of a brain decided it would not, in fact remember the idea in the morning. I think it decided that just to spite me, but I can't prove it. So I woke myself all the way up and looked around for something upon which to make a note. As I said when this blog post began so very long ago I do not keep a pad and pen on my night stand.

What I do keep on my night stand is my iPod Touch. I reached for it, thinking there might be some useful app on there where I could write down my idea. There is a notepad app, but I hardly ever use it and I knew if I wrote it there I probably wouldn't remember to check it and would stumble across it months later when my story had already gone in an entirely different direction.

My brain, now fully enjoying the idea of keeping me awake, had another idea. E-mail. Unfortunately, despite repeated attempts, I have not been able to access my primary e-mail account through the iPod. So far, I've only been able to set up my Yahoo! account, which I use as a junk account and has therefore been worthless to have on my iPod. However, as it was the only account I had access to without getting out of bed and going downstairs and logging onto my laptop (at which point it would have just been easier to grab a pen and a piece of paper anyway), I decided the Yahoo account would do in a pinch.

So I logged on and e-mailed my idea to my primary e-mail address, where I found it waiting for me the next morning. There's really no other point to this blog post than that. Sorry to disappoint anyone foolish enough to read this far.

I just thought it was an interesting sign of the times. We may not have hoverboards yet (come on, science! What are you waiting for?), but we do have some pretty cool stuff.