School

I have a really hard time making my kids go to school.
School is dumb.
Bad Dad.
I know.
Its just that I am not impressed with teachers.
Never have been.
I had some good ones, even a couple of great ones.
but mostly, some really weird people end up as teachers.
Its a thankless, monotonous, painful job.
And its 99 percent bullshit.
I flunked out of middle school
A lot of people wondered why I went to Jordan instead of Hillcrest, Its no mystery.
It was either that or detention.
Hillcrest would not take me.
Perhaps blowing up the chemistry lab had something to do with that.....
It really was an accident. Sort of.
Or maybe it was when Roger and I launched a model Rocket engine equipped Derby car down the hall.
No one was in any danger, the school was evacuated at the time for a gas leak. A real gas leak, but I had NOTHING to do with that.
Geez, that Frau Doctor Schmidt (may she burn in Nazi Hell) had NO sense of humor.
I admit freely that I was a terrible student. I never paid attention in class, I refused to do homework and if it got too bad, I would just leave.
Stand up in class and walk out.
Walk down the halls and out the door.
Then walkabout for a bit.
Walk down the road to the elementary school and visit my Brother, Hang out inside the giant tire and read a few library books.
Adults are so oblivious.
I would disappear in the middle of the day and show up, you know, whenever.
After a while I didn't even bother to hide it. Just walk out. Do my own thing.
Caught a snake one day.
Walking along the side of the canal.
Just glanced down and saw its head and thought about leaving it in my Brothers lunch-box.
  SUPRISE!
Oh the cleverness of me!
 I was already chuckling at the look on his face.
To think is to act, So, quick as thought I reached down and grabbed it. Right behind its neck.
It wrapped around my arm so fast I almost did not notice the rattles at the end.
God loves morons.

By pure blind luck I had grabbed so close behind its head that it couldn't bite me.
five rattles.
Fangs.
Then it peed on me, and pooped. And it smelled and felt awful.
But even at the young age of 13 I was pretty sure dying would be worse.
So I hung on, arm as straight as I could make it, getting those fangs and creepy wicked looking tongue as far away from me as possible.
Sat down on the banks of the canal and had a good PMC.
(poor me cry)
Then I smashed its head with a rock and threw its body as far as I could.
Walked home.
Did I learn my lesson? See the underlying moral fable in my encounter with the serpent while I was supposed to be in school gaining invaluable knowledge and perhaps unlocking the mysteries of math?
Knowledge that may have been valuable later in life? Important life altering things. Like the difference between a TSP and a TBSP?
nope.
Bad teachers.
What do we expect? We don't pay enough for good ones.

MATH it does a body good

The very first word of anything is always the hardest for me. It will either catch an audience or turn them away. Whether it is writing, speaking or singing it’s all the same. It’s that very first word that matters.

That’s why I grunt so much.

I finish triathlons, I would love to say that I “Race” or that I “Compete” but compared to the wee little elves that actually do these things, I am a scary oversized puffing and slobbering Troll.

They actually have a special class for guys like me.

Just like in school.

They call it Clydesdale.

For Hell's sake!

I would prefer Hercules or Goliath or even Ogre.

Nope, Clydesdale.

It used to be anything over 200 lbs., so I dieted until I thought I was going to blow away in the wind and the powers that be changed it to 195 lbs.

And

They had a weigh in.

198 pounds.

Then they write it on your leg.

So all the little gazelles that pass me know, Fat Ass.

I can hear them smirking at me as they bounce by with their effortless strides, gravity hardly pulling at them at all. I used to throw rocks at them. But I had a really difficult time hiding the body of the last one.

So now I just yell “OH YEAH!!!!!!” in a really mean voice.

It’s all I got.

My nephew (a gazelle) started finishing them with me. I could beat him by a few minutes but only because he couldn’t swim.

Bobbing along in the current dog-paddling does not make for an excellent swim time.

But man, the kid can run. Averaging a 5 ½ minute mile. That’s after the swim and the bike.

Then he beat me. By 8 minutes.

Desperate times etc etc.

I read an article that ascertained that for every pound you dropped you could shave one minute off your finishing times. He had beaten me by 8 minutes, so I did the math and discovered that I needed to lose 12 pounds. (Really bad at math)

Then I read another article, in another  magazine. It’s far too disgusting to ever repeat in any sort of English speaking company.

If you have a weak stomach stop HERE.

Colon Cleansing.

Apparently all of us carry all sorts of vile and unspeakable things about in our colons. Old food, Plaque, Bugs and yucky stuff of all description.

Then I got really excited because it says that the “average person” has about ten pounds of vile in their colon at any given time.

SHAZAM!

Problem solved. I am not average. So I figured 12 pounds was as good as gone.

 The Cleanse

It sounds really ominous. Say it out loud in a raspy breathy Darth Vader voice and it sounds exactly like I felt going into it.

THE CLEEAANNSSSE

It wasn’t that bad.

It was just a seven day deal. I didn’t eat anything at all for seven days. I had to drink this magic potion to help speed things along, but it really was not that bad.

Juice of two lemons

One tbsp. of grade B maple syrup

Cheyenne pepper to taste.

In a Nalgene bottle of Distilled water.

For seven days.

Day 8 was the Kicker. And day nine was the race.

God made the world in 6 days, I made a lot of ahem poo.

It’s amazing actually. I wasn’t eating anything and I was still producing poundage.

It’s the magic poo potion that does it.

Day Seven.

The cleanse instructions said to mix 2.5 TSPs of non-iodized salt with one gallon of warm water and drink the whole thing.

No problem.

Wait!

I failed Home Economics. Stitched my finger to my sachet and caught the oven thingy on fire somehow, Failed with an F. And Math? Who needs Math? That’s why God invented calculators. (Really, I am horrible at Math)

FYI: 1 tablespoon (tbsp) equals 3 teaspoons (tsp)

A TSP is apparently 

different from a TBSP!

Who knew?

So, two giant heaping TBSPs of salt, then a level One cause I couldn’t just fill it half way. Mixed in a gallon of warm water and guzzled. Gagging, coughing, groaning and retching. But I swallered it all. And I kept it down.

God created the world in 6 days then took a day off to sleep.

I created poo for seven days. Then I exploded.

The instructions read something like “After completing the seven day pre-cleanse you will be ready for a gentle salt laxative. This will clean the walls of your colon and finish your cleanse”

Slap me with a giant roasted buffalo.

Gentle?

I thought I was pretty much empty by this point. I had lost ten pounds of vile and was sitting at 196, fighting weight. I figured with the “gentle cleanse” I would expel those last two pounds and slaughter the nephew come day nine.

Shit. And more shit.

Then things that I don’t even like to think about. Then my appendix and I am pretty sure my other tonsil. Bugs critters and stuff that was supposed to stay in came out.

For 14 very long hours.

I lost the weight.

183 lbs. morning of race.

I finished the triathlon. Not dead last. Just dead.

The nephew dog paddled and sprinted his way to beating me by 16 minutes.

Boy,  was I clean.

AMBIEN

I don’t sleep much.

 Not really.  5-6 hours a night is more than enough for me to function semi-normally. Semi only because I could sleep for a year or two and still not behave “normally”

I read an article in the 8^th Grade about how much of our lives we spend in bed, sleeping.

It’s A LOT.

It had a profound effect on me.

 I just quit sleeping. I would go go go until I pretty much passed out from exhaustion.  Or I would just sleep during school. I figured why not? It’s not like I was doing anything important. Life is pretty short, too short to sleep through.

Fast forward a dozen years or so, and suddenly the habit of not sleeping becomes a concern and a problem.  One of those things that seem normal to me but all of a sudden it seems to the people around me that something is “wrong”.   like all of us are bombarded constantly by things that tell us we are sick, we need drugs, we want to be normal we want to be normal. Billboards, commercials and advertisements selling wellness. 

What a crock of shit.

Anyways.

I fell for it. Hard. Went to five different doctors to find out what was “wrong” with me and they all got a chance to practice their witch doctor hoodoo voodoo on me.  All I got out of all of it was a sense of panic and a prescription for AMBIEN. It’s a sleep drug, helps you sleep. They say. Knocks your ass out is what it does.

It works really really well.

Then I started having weirdness.

Waking up in strange places. It wasn’t every day, but it was strange.

I woke up at 330 am in my truck at short term parking in the airport. I woke up walking down the street by my house holding a dog leash with no dog.  I woke up on the sidewalk in front of my old best friends house with truck keys in my hand and no truck in sight.

And then.

I woke up naked on a bench in a strange gym.

At 3 in the morning.

This was something that most certainly was not covered in the boy scouts handbook.

So.

I searched the lockers until I found an abandoned towel, I was hoping for my clothes or keys or phone but no such luck.

 A towel is what I got.

  Clad thusly in towel I ventured out into the gym. It was mostly empty, a few fellow insomniacs (pre-Ambien) working out and a pretty little girl at the desk.

 With really big startled looking eyes.

 I approached her a little warily; she was looking at me kind of funny. The conversation went something like this.

Naked but for a towel me: HI!

Desk Girl with Big Startled Eyes:

Nbfatm: um, did you see me come in?

DGwBSE: a nod

Nbfatm: Great! Um, did I have clothes on?

DGwBSE: a nod

Nbfatm: Excellent! Did you notice if I had a bag?

DGwBSE: a nod, then a point

With a rapid turn I followed her finger direction and saw Child #1s school bag leaned against a wall. Snatching it up I discovered a padlock key and my shirt inside. I went back into the locker room and found the little pink heart padlock that matched the key and discovered some clothes, my keys, my phone and a DVD.

Two problems.

No pants, and I had never seen the DVD before. “Bad Boys 2” was not really on my must see list.

I put on the clothes I had and clad in my (it was mine now) towel and wearing a child’s backpack strode confidently (right) out to the desk again.

Partially Clad me: Hi

DGwBSE:

PCm: Um, by any chance did I take my pants off out here?

DGwBSE: Huge emphatic nod and another point.

I followed the point and found my pants. Safe and sound folded neatly on the leg press.

Three things.

 I never have been back to that Gym, I quit Ambien cold turkey, insomnia is FUN. Oh, and the movie?

 Really sucks.

Fights is Fun

Before reading further be warned.

If you are a pacifist, peace-loving,turn the other cheek or Amish person. THIS WILL OFFEND YOU.

Moving right along. I think fights is fun.

Yelling back and forth at one another, trading verbal jabs and saying snide things. That is not a fight.

That is arguing. It can escalate to a fight, but mostly in todays oh so modern and peacified society everyone seems to think it is perfectly ok to yell at other people.

Its not.

Yelling is not fighting, its yelling. Saying shitty spiteful things to people is not fighting, its shitty. Goading someone into physical violence does not show how awesome you are. Rather, it shows that Darwin was right. Only in todays land of make believe we protect the weak little smart-asses that would have been beaten to death as children in a real world. 

Before litigation and the outlawing of fistcuffs, people were exceedingly polite to each other. Really, you had to be. Even in the 40s and 50s a punch in the mouth was something a wise-ass could expect. 

People were nicer.

All that being said, lets talk about fights.

A fight is when two folks get together and air out their differences by smacking each other with available body parts. Fists, hands, Heads, Knees and Feets are all legitiment tactics.

Training in a fighting style is also perfectly legal in Tom-land.

Its a fight as long as you get the chance to do as much damage to your opponent as he gets to do to you.

On a side note.

Yes, women can fight. I prefer that they do not but I am very liberal in this respect. However I will never hit a women or allow any man in my vicinity to do so.

Its in my Blood. 

Even hearing about a man roughing up a women gets me nigh unto berserker rage.
onwards then.

One of the best fights I ever got in I lost. 

I was in line to go to a haunted house, along with hundreds of other people all jostling each other.

I jostled up against a Samoan guy about my size, he gave me the stink eye so I stink eyed right back.

No words were exchanged, he just pushed my chest with his open hand so I popped him on the eye. I would love to say that I won, I really would. But I hit that guy as many times and as hard as I could, in the head in the face in the stomach and chest and he just took it, waited, then cracked me on the forehead. 

Son of a brother celibate nun! 

That hurt. I slowed down a bit but I kept hitting him, then he cracked me on the forehead again!

The celibate nun was tap dancing in my head.

So i put everything I had into a flying super-human strength monster punch to the face. Pulled my fist right out of orbit and dropped it on him like a meteor.

He blinked twice. Shook his head a little bit,and started laughing.

So I held up my hand and said ok ok ok.

Still Laughing he said . "That was a pretty good shot" and hugged me. 

His name is Raymond Latului, we got to be really good friends. 

Strange.

But thats what fights is.

You win some and you lose some.

You learn to be polite really quickly around guys that will break your nose for an insult.

Pavlov and his freaking Dogs.

Todays society has created the super asshole. These weasely guys that whine and yelll and complain about everything. They bluster and threaten and intimidate. They yell and curse and make obscene gestures from the safety of their cars.

They believe that they are immune to physical violence. They have the law and society firmly in their corner.

I hope for the sake of the rest of us that one day they run into a Neanderthal like me.

Its fair, they can fight back and win. Maybe they can back their mouth with fists of fury.

I doubt it.

But they get the chance.

Rememory

Everywhere I have ever been has a "Mountain View" street.

Even in Georgia, I stood on a street called Mountain View and strained my eyes looking for even a large hill, let alone a mountain.
They still had the street.
I get this feeling that a lot of names get reused like this, take for instance "Widow Maker" if everything that bore that name actually caused some sad and lonely women to minus a husband.......
There would be a lot more cougar activity at the local bar scenes.
Ok, bad joke.
But really, Widow Maker? A thing that kills husbands, usually a steep hill or mountain that men, presumably husbands try and ride motorcycles/cars/dune buggies/pogo sticks and all other manner of loco-motion up.
I assume it makes sense.

right.
This post has nothing whatsoever to do with going up a mountain.
Well, we did have to hike back up after, but this memory has nothing to do with going up.
It has everything to do with going down.
And the hill was named "Widow Maker".
The whole "How it got started?" is fuzzy to me, I remember Mark (his real name) picking me up in his two wheel drive truck and making two stops.

The costume/wardrobe closet at the high school he was attending and that I had recently been kicked out of. (graduated) To stock up on ridiculous coats. His was a bright plaid and mine was lime-ish greenish.

K mart, where we pooled our money and bought a sled. 4 dollars.

It was orange and plastic.
It rocked.





Then we drove down south to the "Point of the Mountain". back in these, Ye olde days, there were no homes out there. People still wanted to live on flat ground and not perched up on cliffs like the Anasazi.
I digress.
We drove to the top of the local "Widow Maker" Being unmarried we knew we were safe.
Walked to the edge and looked down.
Holy narking frozen shit balls.
Straight down about sums it up.
So, we braced the sled on the edge, I got in first and braced my feet to either side, Mark said something witty and got in the front.
I would like to point out at this time for you  to remember "Its only Gay if you make eye contact"
We balanced on the edge and.....
I lifted up my feet
ZHP!
we were at the bottom.
That fast.
I had frozen tears blown back from my eyes and a faint recollection of speed. Our manly screams were still echoing from the surrounding peaks.
It took us an hour and a half to hike back up.
Our second run was even faster.
The tree didn't even slow us down.
It was a spindly little thing, only about ten feet tall and 8 inches around at the base.
We hit it dead center near the bottom of the mountain.
Snapped it clean off at the base and went right over it.
Our super manly screams of terror turned into relieved laughter as we heard it snap.
2 hours this time. All the way to the top and fading light lent us speed.
Entering our supersonic kick-ass sled contrivance Mark said "Hey, I think there is a drop off down there"
I glanced down, It did indeed appear that the mountain fell away into a crevice near the bottom, but being wise in the ways of distance and mirage in fading light I growled "optical illusion" and clambered aboard.
Once again, the brace, the balance, the lifting of the feet and.....
Unreal speed.
Barely able to see I glimpsed the mirage coming up.
I have mentioned that I am dumb? Right?
We sailed out into open air, 20, 30, 40 feet in a blink.
We did not launch, the mountain just dropped away under us.
We flew.
Important safety tip.
Sleds do not fly well, they land worse.
It was a very very long hike back to the truck.

Concrete

You walk on it, drive on never pay attention to it till its got an annoying crack or pothole.
Then you break it up into small pieces.
You throw most of the pieces into the trailer to take to the dump, most of the pieces.
You save one piece.
Its an odd shape, it fits perfectly into your hand.
You hold it till the reconstituted stone attains body temperature and you marvel at the thought and genius that enable men, the ants on the world, to build and pretend that what we do will last......
Then you chuck it at Justin, and run away laughing when it bounces off his head.
There is a lesson in there somewhere.
Who cares.
We picked on Justin.
No real reason.
I mean, he was our age, he was a decent guy. Pretty good athlete and willing to do anything.
Remember those stupid commercials? About Mikey? The dumb-ass little brother that would eat anything?
Justin was sort of like that.
Minus the Dumb-ass part.
Really, if we would have had video cameras readily available the stuff he did would still be circulating on you-tube.
To tell it in words does not really do it Justice.
We lived at the bottom of a very steep hill, we took three sheets of 1/2 plywood and made this RAMP. It was 6 feet tall at the tallest. Sturdy as 5 wee kids could make it.
We spent an eternity of kid-time building it. About two hours. Then we sat around and dared everyone to jump their bike off of it.
No one would.
Until we pooled all of our money and agreed to pay Justin  6 TRILLION DOLLARS!
Who could resist that kind of money?
Certainly not Justin, he was the only boy in a family of sisters. They were scary and mean as Hell. In fact, remind me to tell you about when we tied karolyn to the tree....
Anyways.
He needed the money, they ate a lot.
So.
He pedaled his bike 18 miles to the top of the hill by our house and started pedaling down. It was a near vertical hill, I never understood how they got houses to stick to the side.
After the the first 1/4 mile he was going at least 124 miles an hour.
When he hit the really steep part he gave up on pedaling and coasted at just under the speed of sound to the ramp.
Miraculously it held together under the G forces. Even more miraculously, so did Justin.
In my mind I have this image burned, as If I had seen this out of my body.
There is us. A gaggle of wee boys, heads craned back to the sky, mouths open, eyes all glued to Justin.
Justin.
Who was 15 feet in the air, cut offs protecting almost nothing, no helmet, no crash pad, no video camera.
Just flying. The wind whistled through spokes and almost drowned out the sound of 15 wee boys and one wee Justin Knievel screaming like wee girls.
He didn't really land it.
He sort of bailed mid flight.
He bounced once and then slid 300 feet.
Tuck and roll?
nope.
Skid and peel.
He was OK.
Ok, that's kinda a lie.
He mumbled a lot after that.
Something about owing him money.............
we never did find his bike.

Closet

I cleaned out my closet today.
This is not a metaphor.
I really did.
Its the end of a season and all of the detrius has got to be organized.
 Ever since child #2 started her science experiments I have been somwhat afraid of the closet. The hall closet.
It went like this......
Something died in our house, something big and gross.
Nothing small could have made this smell.
It was awful.
Take the worst smell you have ever smelled, kill it, leave it under a sunlamp for ten days in a sealed plastic bag and then open the bag one inch from your nose.
Thats about a tenth of what this smell was.
And the worst thing was. I couldnt find it.
It would waft around the house on mysterious invisible air currents and attasck your sinus just when you had relaxed. Your nose hairs would curl up and your nostrils would pinch shut in a little known human adaptive evolutionary skill developed by survivors of mustard gas.
The wife would throw up, #1 would throw up and, this should have been a clue, #2 would look puzzled? as if this smell was not entirely unexpected.
I should have asked her.
But we have all learned that.
I
AM
NOT
SMART.
So, one night I walked in and was struck physically punched in the face by this smell.
It kicked my ass.
I fell to the ground and belatedly realized that the smell was emanating from the closet.
Not even bothering to stand up I begin to clean the closet.
Hold up.
TOM DEFINITION: To CLEAN, def#1 to empty objects out of location and then put them back in no particular order when desired object has been found. def#2 call someone and tell them something is dirty.
So, I was laying on the ground cleaning the closet. The smell getting stronger by the second.
I was trying to understand how something so large as the dead bison so obviously hidden somewhere in my closet could have gotten there.
Thats when I found the little clear plastic bag.
A sandwich bag.
It had something in it.
It was not a sandwich.
It was greenish and blueish and I swear it was moving.
I opened it.
about an inch from my nose.
I am told by people that I normally consider reliable that I squealed in a high pitched voice and leapt from a prone position to a dead sprint outside with a simple twitching motion and was gone, still squealing, in a blur.
I have no memory of this.
The next thing I remember is the stars revolving slowly above me, the concrete seemed quite soft and I was just closing my eyes for a well deserved nap when child #2s adorable face swam into view in front of the stars.
"Why did you throw my xspearamint away? it was almost ready"
I passed out then. The monster and threat to all human life my sweet child had become begining to sob in the distance because I had thrown her death bag away.

I cleaned out my closet today.
Why do I keep the single glove?
The Broken Cricket bat?
I found 10 lunch bags.
A few with lunch still in them.
Stuff.
Piles and piles of stuff.
I used to think that I could just be ZEN.
I cleaned out my closet though.
Realization.
To be zen, your closets have to be clean.