I blame Darwin

Evolutionarily speaking, I am a step or two behind a modern human.
No, I do not have a bony ridge on my forehead or multiple layers of teeth.
I am lactose intolerant.
I get depressed without a steady supply of red meat.
I am considered "obese" by the modern BMI.
I cant sleep for longer than 4 hours at a stretch.
I have certain triggers that completely trump my thin veneer of civilization.
Like a fish.
Its like this, if you are fishing, and the fish wont bite. If they are just full up with bugs, or little fish, or whatever it is that they are eating and wont even look at what fly or bait or whatever it is that you are tempting them with.
You put something red on the hook. Just a little flashy piece of red.
Blood in the water.
Its instinctive, hard wired into their cold little brains.
They see blood, they hit it.
Every year, on the forth of July. My little family rides our bicycles over to the park to watch the fireworks display.
We have been doing this for 14 years now.
Same park, same route, same everything.
Its a tradition.
This year was no different, we loaded up the backpacks with blankets, the cooler with drinks and the bike basket with the little plastic snap glowing things that the kids love to run amok with, and headed out.
Fun for all.
Child 1 (15 and beautiful) was in the front, followed by me, child 2 (10 and beautiful) was behind me and the wife (beautiful) was pedaling rear guard. Just a normal traditional fourth of July.
There was a plain black car, following us all, politely slow and fairly well back. The streets were thronged with park goers and the energy and excitement that Americans have for this Holiday was buzzing through the air.
Then this fucking hipster opens his door and knocks child 1 off her bike and into the street.
She did not hit the door, he hit her with the door. Right on her side. She spun a full circle and landed on her back in the street. The backpack full of blankets and her helmeted head hitting the ground.
The hipster stood up, had he, at this point, rushed over to the child, expressed remorse in any way, behaved or acted in any way apologetic. I like to think that the outcome would have been different.
Perhaps not.
What he did do, was raise both his arms in this relatively new gesture that has come to mean "WTF!" and yell to the world "What the Fuck! My Car!"
Blood in the water.
I hit him with my right hand 2 running steps after jumping off my bike.
To his credit, he reacted fast and tried to hit me back.
Sadly for him, he appeared to be an evolved human. 6' 4 or 5", well built, a milk drinker, an eight hour sleeper, a chicken and vegetable eater, a perfectly proportioned BMI.
I grabbed the wrist of the hand he was swinging at me, and his collarbone with my left hand. Then i hit him about 30 times.
Maybe more.
He tried to get away at some point, by crawling into his car.
So i bounced his head off the roof of his car a few times, denting it and his head.
Then I crawled into the car after him.
Still hitting him, and choking him.
You see, I really needed to tell him something.
Through the roaring in my ears I suddenly became aware of several things.
A childs voice, coupled with a bike bell. Ding ding "daddy stop" ding ding "daddy stop"
A wifes Voice, yelling at me to come check child one.
And another voice. Machine amplified. "SIR! SIR! STEP AWAY FROM THE VEHICLE" these amidst the normal cacophony of holidaying humans.
So, I hit him a few more times.
Then I whispered a few words into his ear.
Just a few.
Exiting the car I found my way blocked by a small man pointing a taser at me.
He was saying some thing?
I could see my child then, behind him, still laying in the road.
Blood in the water.
I forearmed the small man to the ground and went to my child.
She was ok.
Helmets and a backpack full of blankets kept her injuries to a sore arm and a mild concussion.
The black car?
Yes, a policeman.
He saw the whole thing, and like me, he thought the hipster had done it on purpose.
The hipster had been drinking, a lot. He and his wife were actually sitting in their car fighting about how much he had been drinking.
So, as darkness fell this fourth of July. I found myself, with my family, sitting on a curb.
Waiting.
Other policemen arrived.
They took statements.
Asked questions.
Gave me the eye.
The first Policeman, who has Daughters as well, convinced the Hipster not to press charges against me.
By the simple method of telling the hipster that he would support me in my counter-suit for causing "intentional bodily harm" to my child.
All's well that ends well.
We continued to the park.
Watched the fireworks.
Went home.
The hipster, a bit rough looking now, what with the bruises and dried blood, apologized to my child. His wife apologized to my wife. There were tears.
My ears were still roaring.
The only things I could hear were the voices of my Family.
I said nothing.
At home I kissed them all and sent them to bed.
Then I sat.
Alone in the dark.
Smoke blowing in the night sky.
Fading, diluting, vanishing.
Blood in the water.

Methinformation

I know how to make meth.

Not from watching television or movies, not even from wiki. 

Its a strange story.

Years ago, I needed a job. Badly. It wasn't the money. I had a little legal dispute with the evil orange empire and they lost. So I was getting a paycheck every two weeks. However, I was going crazier. I have worked since I was 12, part time during school and full time plus during the summer. That's what happens when the Family business is landscaping and construction. You want to eat and not be naked, you work.

So sitting around doing laundry and watching the infant was making me nuts. Really. For three days I rolled dice and wrote down every number that came up to see if there was a predictable pattern.

(Incidentally, 5 is the least common number rolled while 7 and 9 share the title of "most rolled")

At the end of this time of random number prediction the wife took matters into her own hands and started applying me for jobs. One day, when the mental anguish has faded I will write a blog about the painful process of  a 30 year old white guy with a background in construction and money collecting for various semi-shady money lenders interviewing for jobs in the real world. With real humans. As a last resort she applied me to a job working for the Military, the last line of the job description made me laugh "MUST BE ABLE TO DEFEND ONESELF AND OTHERS FROM PHYSICAL ATTACK"

Yeah, right.

So I applied, interviewed and they overlooked my various eclectic skills (I can stick a knife or a 16 penny nail into anything 20 feet away for example) and hired me.

The first day on the job, my hair cut, my steel toed boots and canvas pants fitting quite nicely I reported to the "Chief" to meet my crew.

Federal inmates. All of them facing life and multiple life sentences. Murderers, Rapists, Drug Dealers, Unsuccessful high dollar item thieves, and soft pasty white squishy accountants.

My crew.

I asked if I got a gun, they handed me a shovel. I had a guard, he was supposed to shoot the crew if they tried to escape and or tried to kill someone. (me) He didn't seem to be to enthused about his job, cant say I blamed him. He was half my size and I was half the size of 1/2 the crew. The accountants never lasted more than a week or two. Some of those guys actually scared the hell out of me, some I felt bad for, most though. Were just tattooed bodies getting out in the sun to work away from their box. We talked, a lot. I learned really quickly that there are certain words used in the real world that have entirely different meanings in the box.

As a hint, NEVER call a 6 and 1/2 foot inmate a "punk" they take it badly. Luckily I had my shovel with me.

I got some really cool scars at that job. Got pushed into a roll of concertina wire and got to have the interesting experience of pulling myself off while grown men howled and wept with laughter at my predicament. Saw a little tiny dude knock a really big dude out cold for throwing a spider at him. He really didn't like spiders I guess. It was a job.

Oh, and I learned how to make gin, tattoo ink, tattoo guns and meth.

I've never put any of this knowledge into practice. Although I did think seriously about making the garbage gin for a Halloween party......

The thing about Meth. The thing that astonished me, really truly hurt my brain. Is the fact that it is poison. Really. Poison.

In the real world, the non "breaking bad" real world. Meth is made from the strangest concoctions of chemicals anyone has ever heard of.

Blue aquarium rocks. Drano. A specific brand of stainless steel cookie sheet. Certain paints. Certain permanent markers. A lawn fertilizer. A gopher poison.

Anything you could think of that would kill you to ingest.

Here it is, the thought that I thunk during all of this. 

Who?

Really. Who was the sick minded human that one day, playing in his shed, his lab, his bedroom? Who was the guy that saw evaporated crystals as the result of a botched lawn treatment gopher poison application and said.......

"DUDE! We could TOTALLY smoke that shit!"

Possibly this guy?

Weight

 The gym.
Its one of those places that has its own rules, its own culture.
After New Year's Day gyms are crowded.
For two weeks.
I belonged to a gym once, wow. Read that again.
I belonged.
Interesting thought that.
To rephrase.
I once paid a nominal fee to use equipment that I felt I needed to improve my physical appearance and strength in ways that I felt were unavailable to me anywhere else.
They also had a sauna.
I never spoke to anyone. I just played on the machines and became a student of the science of Weight Lifting.
To say, I lifted up heavy things and put them down again.
I watched people.
I saw things I never in my wildest dreams, or nightmares, thought that I would see.
Three naked female instructors leaving the Sauna early one morning.
A treadmill that ate a walk-man. (how dated)
Pants falling off a girl on an elliptical machine.  (http://colneyhatch.blogspot.com/2012/02/pants.html)
A hirsute naked man doing yogic stretches in the dance room.
Three nipples on a man in the coed hot tub.
A very very heavy man wedge himself inside the shower, who had to be cut out.
So many things. SO many shapes. Big people and little humans. The people that changed shape. Big to little and back again. Skinny to Muscle and more muscle and acne.
I started to notice things.
Over time.
People who did the exact same thing every day.
Every.
Single.
Day.
They stayed exactly the same.
I don't know what their lives outside of the gym were like.
But in the gym.
They stayed the same.
Wait.
Some of the women would get flotation devices implanted.
Some of the men would get balder.
Overall body shapes, of the patterned people.
Stayed the same.
I still go to the Gym.
Still see things that stretch my brain.
Watching the people.
The humans.
Its a microcosm.
Everything is really. If you experience it deeply enough.
I learn a lot.
Doing the same thing, gets the same results.
Same.
We all pick up heavy things from time to time.
The trick, is remembering that we can put them down.

I am a PIRATE!

I really am.
I can prove it.
I have pictures and everything.

Its goes like this.
My parents own a pontoon boat, and really, for being nothing more than a floating floor it is a lot of fun.
we would go up and tow it to one of the lakes, float around a bit, splash, fish and get sunburned.
Fun time for all.
It was a floating floor with a motor.
The motor was sporadic.
My family believes in the buddy system.
If something is broke, or someone is hurt you call around to all your buddies to seek advice.
Invariably someone knows someone or your buddy goes green when he sees that your thumb is actually split in half and you get to get something fixed, or go to the ER.
I absolutely despise the buddy system.
Hate it.
Nothing ever gets fixed right when its a buddy doing the fixing, and a buddy of a buddy? Even worse. They always cut corners.
And waiting 6 hours with a split in half thumb to go to the ER, sucks.
So the tooners motor was a bit sporadic, sometimes it works, sometimes it dont.
This is how I became a Pirate, so I cant really complain.
It makes a fun story.
As a side note, its an odd thing how the things that make me the maddest are what make others laugh the hardest? Its a flaw in me.
anyways.
The wife and I had it down to a science, the unloading of the boat. I would back it in, she would hop in the tooner, I would chuck in the kids and the victuals and then push off the boat, jump into the truck and park the truck and the trailer.
Wife would motor around to the dock and I would step on and off we would go.
Smooooooth.
Putting the tooner away after a bright day was the reverse, motor to the dock, Tom (thats me) steps off and runs to get truck and trailer while wife motors around to pull the boat in as I back the trailer into the water.
Smoooth.
Today we had the nephews with us, good toe heads both of them. spent the whole day out getting sunburned, swearing (just me) at the lack of fish and splashing around.
It was a fantastic day.
A day of good memories.

But, storm clouds gathered and it was time to go.
So we started the routine.
Motor to dock, Tom jumps off, runs to get the truck and waits in line with all the other uber efficient types waiting to get their boats out of the rapidly roughening lake.
Problem.
I get the trailer in the water and, no tooner. No wife and kids, no nephews.
So I looked, and looked, and grabbed the binoculars from some lame fat dude and looked.
And found them.
Drifting.
Halfway across the damn lake.
No other boats around.
So.
(this is my favorite part)
I Parked the truck and the trailer and went running down to the dock, I ran to the end of the dock just as a young kid in a brand new boat was stepping on to the dock to tie his boat off.
I grabbed the rope, pushed the kid back on to the boat and hopped on after him.
"Hi, You arrrrgh going to take me out to that boat (point at the tooner) and tow it in for me."
I said this with my biggest most friendly smile
the kid and his five kid passengers sort of froze.
the kid I had gently led back on to the boat said "a a a a a are you stealing our boat?"
he stuttered, poor kid.
I said
"Oh HELL NO! I am just commandeering it"
Maybe my rollicking laughter at this point was a bit of overkill, but Hey, its what we pirates do.
By the time we got out to the tooner my hostages (ride) were getting into the spirit of the thing. The wee little boys were huddled protectively around the wee little female and casting mutinous glances in my direction. I was standing on the point of the boat, if I had had boobs I would have made a kick ass hood ornament thingy.
The wife and kids were valiantly trying to start the tooner, the toe heads were ? Paddling ? but the paddles did not quite reach the water, so really they were just splashing.
But they felt good about themselves.
The captain, the stuttering boy wonder, hollered, "AHOY THE BOAT" and I stepped gracefully on to the floating floor.
Oh the cleverness of me.
I still had his rope, which was tied to his boat.
and they were fresh out of boarding axes.
So they towed us back.
Arrrgh. I sang sea chanteys all the way home.

Pirate hat arrrgh