The History Of Me

Heroes and clowns, holdin’ my ground.

When I first moved to Denver, I was more than a little nervous about city driving.  At eighteen years old, I had been driving for less than a thousand days, so my driving experience, in general, was already minimal.  Include the fact that the worst traffic in my home town of Alamosa, was the moment when multiple cars arrived at a four way stop sign at the same time, and you’re left with a guy who really should have stuck it out in the suburbs for awhile before venturing out into unmarked sectors.  Kids will be kids, though, and one day my brother and I had to mix it up and do a little D-town exploring.

This endeavor started out favorably enough.  He and I, a couple of suave dudes cruising the streets of Denver in a cherry brown 1980 Subaru GL sedan, decided to tour the metropolis that we had recently made our home.  I can still remember the cool breeze blowing through the rolled down windows and the gentle hum of the imported four cylinder engine.  We were overwhelmed with the sheer size of the city and were haphazardly sightseeing, randomly making turns and delving deeper and deeper into unfamiliar territory.  The streets were packed with rush hour commuters, but my brother and I, listlessly looking for jobs, were completely oblivious to the hustle and bustle attitude of the Denver drivers.  In short, we were on a Sunday cruise.

I, being the driver, was making every attempt possible to avoid the highways, since I knew that I would quickly get myself lost if I got off on the wrong exit, so I essentially shit my pants when I accidently turned onto an on-ramp to I-70.  I was heading north on Peoria when I entered the on-ramp, and realized immediately that I needed to change directions.  As I approached the highway, I noticed an intersecting piece of road that, unbeknownst to me at the time, was the on-ramp for the southbound Peoria traffic.  I made a quick judgment call and quickly mashed on the breaks in an effort to make a near impossible left turn that would have, if done successfully, led me directly into oncoming traffic.  Instead, a semi truck, the driver most likely upset with my erratic driving and following way to closely, smashed into the back of my tiny car.

Since I was in the initial stages of making an absurd left turn, the truck clipped the rear left corner of the Suby.  The car went into a spin, and I remember my brother and I bouncing our heads off of each other before coming to a stop in the middle of the road.  We sat in the stalled car for a moment or two, befuddled about the events that had just transpired, before I noticed the truck driver approaching the car.  I stepped out to let him know I was okay and to inspect the damage.  As soon as I got out of the car, however, I could tell that he was not happy with me.  His anger was obvious by the tone in his voice when he asked me, “What the fuck were you doing?” 

I, still a little bit in shock, hadn’t quite thought the situation through enough, and quickly rebutted with, “I was turning around.”

“You can’t turn around!” 

Touché.

It suddenly hit me.  I made a dumbshit turn and caused the accident.  Wait. I made a dumbshit turn, caused the accident, and just admitted it.  And even worse, I made a dumbshit turn, caused the accident, admitted it, and I don’t have car insurance!  Fuck!

A tow truck (shocking!) was the first on the scene.  The driver approached me and my brother immediately and offered to let us sit in his air-conditioned truck.  We accepted.

“What the Hell happened?”

“I didn’t want to get on the highway so I was going to turn and….”

“You can’t turn there.”

“Yeah, I know that now.”

“Well, don’t tell the cops that.  He ran into you, so he’ll get the ticket.  Just don’t say you were turning around.”

“OK.”

That’s how I found myself sitting in the back of a police car with the truck driver, lying to a cop.  The truck driver, angrily, told his part of the story, including my dumb confession, and I recapitulated, cleverly adding, “I was turning my head around to see if there were any cars coming.”  As you can imagine, the truck driver became furious.

“You didn’t say that!  You said that you were turning around!”

“I was turning around…..to see if there were any cars coming,” I said, calmly.

“No!  Look how your car was hit!  You said you where turning around!  Officer, look at the way his car was hit!”

Officer had had enough.  His reprimand was brief but to the point.  He sternly explained that I had the right to slam on my brakes for the most petty of reasons, and that he, being behind me, was responsible for leaving adequate stopping room between us.  For this reason, he would receive a violation for following to closely.  The driver attempted to interrupt, but was shot down quickly by the cop who threatened to write him a ticket for the larger offense of reckless driving.  He bit his tongue and took his medicine.

I also received a ticket; no proof of insurance.  The car was towed to a nearby dealership, and, after the trucking company offered me a check for 1500 dollars, I quickly settled, since he was pushing the insurance thing, and continued to drive the wrecked Subaru after getting insured and having my charges dropped.  The adjuster had also informed me that the truck driver had a poor driving record and had been laid off, something I felt very bad about.  I also felt bad, though, that I didn’t have insurance, ‘cause I coulda got a Hell of a lot more money.

Eat what’s on your plate, or not.

It’s almost time for supper and I am silently despondent about the outcome of our evening meal.  More often than not, my wife ends up extremely upset with my daughter due to her incredibly picky eating habits.  Never before have I been witness to a child so unwilling to consume even the most basic of dishes.  She refuses to eat conventional childhood staples such as mac and cheese, spaghetti, and pizza, and she won’t even touch a hamburger unless it’s dripping with ketchup.  In her defense, my wife and I have very eclectic taste in food, and are constantly attempting new and different cuisines, but, at the same time, we tend to shy away from vegetable-heavy dishes and meals that require uncommon, weird-textured, or gross-looking ingredients.  Her complaints range from being displeased with the level of char on the hotdog, to just simply “not liking it.”  This ongoing argument typically leads to her being lectured by my wife and having to sit at the table until she eats.  While I understand that this is standard punishment for a child who doesn’t eat supper, I can’t help but feel a little bit of sympathy for her.

I was a picky eater myself, granted not to the extent of my daughter.  My parents, even to this day, usually don’t stray too far from their familiar recipes.  These recipes were also mostly devoid of anything but the most basic ingredients.  This type of cooking is a godsend for a young child.  For example, mom’s lasagna consists of noodles, hamburger, cheese, and marinara.  There is no veggies to not like, no ricotta cheese to be grossed out by, and no strange, spicy sausage to hate.  This type of diet lends itself very well to the selective eater, which, by the way, includes my mom, and it encouraged me, as a kid, to avoid new dishes.

When the occasional curve ball was thrown at the dinner table, usually from my fathers request, I found myself in much the same scenario as my poor sweet little girl.  I, refusing to ingest the inedible atrocities that was served to me, had no other choice than to smuggle out said foodstuff.  One of my earliest and most radical attempts was to simply smoosh the food into a liquid.  It seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. I don’t remember the dish entirely but I remember elbow macaroni was the main ingredient.  I started there.  Taking my fork, I repeatedly squashed a few pieces of macaroni.  I suppose, given enough time, that it may, indeed, be possible to mash pasta into a different state of matter, but I was allotted only an hour or so before phase 2 of my dad’s punishment, The Belt, would take effect, and I was forced to find alternate methods of food disposal after about a twenty minutes of squishing.

The paper napkin was a very reliable method, permitting that you had only a small amount of supper to get rid of.  Anything over a handful would draw immediate attention the moment you traversed the exposed area between the kitchen table and the trash can.  Any larger sized food-filled paper napkins needed to be stored in a nearby kitchen cupboard until a more convenient time when you could return and properly dispose of it.  That is, if you didn’t forget.  I can still remember the disgust in my mom’s voice when she found a days-old napkin wrapped piece of chicken.

Sometimes the trash can, due to the lack of other types of garbage that is needed for covering up the food wad, was not the safest means of disposal.  These items were disposed of in “the door.”  “The door” was an unusable door in the old bedroom that me and my brother shared.  When we first moved into the house, this door had been secured shut but not adequately sealed, mostly towards the bottom.  Thus, cold air would consistently blow in during the winter potentially freezing the room’s  occupants.  My mom’s solution to this dilemma was to secure a piece of scrap carpet across the bottom half of the door preventing the breeze from entering.  I know what you’re thinking, and yes, it was fucking ugly, but it worked.  It also created a sort of wall pocket that, based on the topic of this post, I’m sure you can figure out what we decided it could be used for.  I couldn’t even remotely figure how much food made it’s way into that pocket, but, again, I can still remember the disgust in my mother’s voice. 

Occasionally, I’ll see my daughter sneak over to the trash can and discard her dinner, and I pretend not to notice.  My wife asks her if she ate, the child lies, and I take comfort in the fact that, out of all the possible places to put unwanted food, she chose the most accepted.

Shit Creek

My second annual family get-together is here and gone.  I missed a couple days worth of posts due to it, so you, dear reader and possible subscriber, have my sincerest apologies.  I can’t honestly say, however, that I was giving much of shit as I was pounding beers around a campfire nestled conveniently between the 3000+ square foot vacation cabin that we rented, and the small creek only a stones throw away from the front door.  This dwelling was home to fifteen of us for three wonderful away-from-work days. 

My parents decided last year to quasi-camp on a yearly basis.  Their inspiration stemmed from the once a year family hunting trip that my parents regularly attended when I was young.  The week long gathering consisted of my grandparents, parents, brothers, cousins, aunts, and uncles, and was a much anticipated occasion by all involved.  Our amenities were a little less extravagant, though, taking up shelter in pop-up campers, and travel trailers.  My grandfather had somehow acquired an old school bus that had been modified with all of the options of a camper, however, it still retained the school bus colors, lights, wording, and the characteristic side mounted stop sign.  The first course of action upon arriving at the camp site was to construct the crude lavatory that had been invented by my uncle.  The makeshift toilet, consisting of a wood chair and a toilet seat, was placed over a three or four foot hole, and a stall, built from custom poles and a blue tarp, was assembled around it.  This type of luxury, my friends, is what separates you from the rest of the crowd when it comes to camping.

While the parents were hard at work putting together the latrine, us kids, would quickly make our way down to the adjacent creek.  This creek would serve to be our playground for the majority of the time we were there.  Years later, as my son, daughter, nephews, and nieces were playing around at a similar creek, I found myself consistently having to protect their right to do this, amidst the nervous, overprotecting adults.  My daughter ended up slipping and falling into the twelve foot wide creek, and I was harshly reprimanded by my parents for having supported the children’s cause.  Obviously, my parents had forgotten about the many hours of unsupervised creek time that their children had logged during the hunting trips.  We, as kids, fell in plenty of times, and, routinely attempted increasingly difficult crossings.  I stand by my choice to let them play, knowing full well that kids are not completely naive to the fact that a running stream does impose a fair amount of danger and that certain precautions are necessary.  If, contrary to what I believe, a child does not understand this, and finds himself or herself struggling to stay afloat while jaunting downstream against their will, I can only assume that they are not trying hard enough to stay alive and will, most likely, end up causing their demise in some other reckless fashion.  Needless to say, my daughter survived with a small scratch and some wet clothes.

Us kids were also avid climbers.  We simply climbed until we were tired.  I would dare say that we would trek a few thousand feet up the mountainside.  One trip we found ourselves incarcerated in the trailer after the parents, while sitting around the campsite, noticed their seeming miniscule children high atop a mountain peak, jumping and cheering.  I was told by my mom that a similar attempt was made by a few of the adults the next day.  The hike resulted in failure, with the grown-ups turning around less than halfway up.

Once, my younger brother threw a stick at a bird.  The twenty-five foot throw was amazingly accurate, and the fowl found it’s unfortunate death at the hands of a twelve year old kid with a lucky throw.  The humor of the situation was replaced almost immediately with sheer panic as we came to the realization that the discovery of the corpse would ultimately incriminate us and Dad would bust our asses.  We hastily kicked the dead bird down the hill next to the creek.  We considered throwing the carcass in, but could not convince ourselves that it wouldn’t get caught on a tree or a rock and be spotted further down the creek, so we concluded that throwing a large rock over it was the best coarse of action.  Our cover up was successful and our crime was never uncovered.

Another time, while adventuring further down the stream than any others before me, I discovered an amazing landmark that I immediately dubbed, with my namesake, as Jacob Falls.  I haven’t seen the falls, a small narrowing of the creek with a few large rocks creating a small edge for the water to fall down through, as an adult, but I’m told by my cousins that it is less than spectacular.  As a kid, though, I remember the falls as being nothing short of magnificent.  I slipped off one of the large rocks once, and experienced the slow-motion last moments of life event that you hear about, only to find myself knee deep in slow moving current.  Like my daughter after me, I lived.

There was anywhere from eight to twelve of us kids running around that stream and none of us ever died.  I honestly believe that these occurrences help teach children about danger and common sense.  I’m glad my daughter fell in.  She respects the river more now, and understands that water + rocks = slippery.  She’ll log this survival technique next to fire = hot, and it will, hopefully, make her able to endure more hardships in life.  Hopefully my logic is sound on this topic and my kids survive their childhood antics, otherwise, the wife is going to way pissed at me.

Arson 101

“Get out of here, you bastard! I’ll burn you up! I’ll fry you!” – Charlie McGee (Firestarter)

Fire is just plain cool.  We all know it’s dangerous and potentially lethal, but most of us often find it difficult to restrain ourselves from the unbridled excitement of playing with it.  I was in second grade when I started my pyromaniac tendencies.  A couple of friends and I would walk to school every morning, and would test the flammability of random objects on the way.  They would usually show up at my house, since it was the closest to the school, with matchbooks.  I, on the other hand, had the mad hookup, matchsticks.  Matchsticks, as you may already know, are way cooler than their weak-ass paper counterpart.  They burn longer, have a larger flame, and you can light them with your freakin’ fingernail.  They’re in a league of their own.

I tried to be as responsible as I could, if that is even possible, when we were starting things on fire.  I remember one time when this kid I was with  lit some dried vegetation afire.  He let it burn for a couple seconds and then walked away.  Even at the young age of eight, I had to run back to make sure that the fire was completely out.  That very same day, on my way home, I walked past the charred remains of the entire patch of brush that the kid had lit on fire.  I’m sure that the homeowner noticed some burnt weeds on his property and, being that controlled burns was an accepted means of fire prevention in my hometown, had decided to eliminate the dried weeds before some stupid kids burnt his house down, but I was terrified that Dumb Shit had destroyed this guys yard.  Shortly thereafter, the same kid got busted with the matches at school, and promptly ratted me out.  Gerald Lujan, you’re a fucking idiot.

I wrote my name in gasoline in our lawn-free back yard once, and lit it on fire.  Obviously, when the fire started, short of having a small helicopter, there was no way to tell what the fire spelled.  Mere moments later, I heard fire trucks coming.  The sirens were getting closer and closer, and it was proving impossible to douse the gasoline induced flames from the ground.  I was throwing dirt on the flames like a madman, and, when the sirens sounded like they were completely upon me, the final trace of fire vanished.  I don’t remember seeing the fire trucks, and doubt very much that they would dispatch for that reason, but it sure scared the Hell out of me.

It used to be my job to start the barbecue.  I think I offered to do it a time or two, so my dad just had me do it rather than risk opening up any can of worms with my brothers that could result in somebody getting “whipped with the belt.”  Nevertheless, I found a very creative way to start the propane grill.  Step 1: Turn on the gas and close lid.  Step 2:  Wait a couple minutes.  Step 3: Stick match in starting hole.  Step 4:  Enjoy effect of small fireball slightly lifting the lid off the grill.  Of course, step 2 is intricate in determining the volume of the results.  Take it from me, if you happen to lose track of time, it is imperative that you abort the entire procedure.  Unbeknownst to me, I had turned my father’s barbecue into a fucking bomb.  The explosion was brief, but deafening.  The lid of the grill blew open with enough force to tweak the hinges, and the flame that shot out completely singed the hair on my arms, face, and head.

A couple years later while watching the news one evening with my parents, I got a glimpse of a participant of a riot in some other country tossing a Molotov cocktail into the street.  Warning, fire based weapons on T.V. are larger than they appear.  My cocktail was in the form of a glass 16oz Pepsi bottle filled with gasoline.  I rode my bike to a dry drainage ditch on the outskirts of my neighborhood, lit the wick, and promptly tossed said incendiary device into the brush.  The resulting fireball, at least in my little kid mentality, was nothing short of massive.  I considered an attempt to extinguish the flames, but almost immediately opted for plan B.  I jumped on my bike and rode like Hell.

Here’s a cool trick.  Take a can of hairspray, thoroughly coat your arm with hair product, and ignite.  If done properly, you can wave your flaming arm around in front of all your friends while bellowing “flame on!”  If done improperly, however, the resulting blisters in-between your fingers where you failed to adequately cover your skin will cause much pain and discomfort for many days to come.

As an adult, though, I’ve matured enough to take fire a little more seriously…..not.  A couple years ago, on one of the only camping trips that I’ve been on, my friend and I discovered that spraying Crown Royal from your mouth into the campfire created the coolest pro wrestling style fireball ever.  My wife’s threats of divorce if I disfigured myself went unnoticed as we repeatedly attempted larger and larger fireballs.  Ultimately, it was my buddy’s dad, disgusted by the blatant waste of high dollar alcohol, who pried the bottle from our hands and promptly poured himself a drink.

Would you like to play a game?

I love computers.  In 1995 I took my first step into credit card abyss by paying 19.99% interest on a brand spanking new Packard Bell PC.  The raw power of the Pentium 133 processor and 32MB of RAM was outstanding.  The 1.2GB hard drive was large enough to install AOL, Myst, and Leisure Suit Larry, even with the cutting edge Windows 95 OS taking up a full 50MB.  Most software was distributed on multiple 3.5” floppies at the time, but this baby still housed a state of the art CD-Rom drive that could, well, play CDs, and, if I had the time to wait for my 14,400 baud dial-up modem to download them, the 15” monitor would beautifully display life-like pictures of naked women.  It’s fucking amazing what $1800 dollars can buy you.

I spent hours upon hours on that machine.  Ripping CDs was next to impossible, but the AOL chat rooms were as addictive as Meth.  I constantly tinkered with the operating system and hardware settings, resulting in many frustrating reformats, which warranted me to be fairly adept at navigating myself through DOS.  I frequently needed to clean the rubber ball and rollers in the mouse or readjust the keystone settings on the monitor.  All of this was an incredible learning experience which makes using modern computers a piece of cake. 

About ten years prior, however, is when I got my hands on my very first computer.  My parents had come across a massively discounted Texas Instrument 99/4a home computer.  They purchased it, along with a few cartridge based games, and excitedly placed it under the Christmas tree for my brothers and I.  The games were mostly rip-off titles.  Parsec was a Defender clone, TI Invaders was a copycat of Space Invaders, and I’ll give you three guesses which popular video game was the inspiration for Munch Man.  We also had a game called Hunt the Wumpus which is an adventure version of Minesweeper.  There are some flash versions on the web.  Do yourself a favor, stop reading right now and go play a couple rounds.  Hunt the Wumpus, for the fuckin’ win!

The computer part of the system utilized BASIC programming.  The manual that came with it touched on the basics of the code.  Commands such as goto, print, input, if/then, end, and next were exampled in the manual, and allowed me to immediately begin writing small pieces of code.  Most of my programs were small variations of a “hello world” script, though, sometimes, I would incorporate small graphics into the mix.  I had a pad of graph paper that I would design the pixels with, and then, painstakingly, program in the plots.  In the back of the manual was a 3000 line code that created a slot machine game.  I programmed it in once and it took me an entire afternoon, I spent the remainder of the evening debugging, going through line after line of code looking for mistypes.  By the time I finished, and the program was up and running, it was a mere thirty minutes from my bedtime.  I had only “pulled” the handle on the virtual slot machine a dozen times or so when my father yelled at us to get to bed.

OK, you say?  Pop in a floppy, hit save, go to bed, return the next day?  Hello?  1984, bitches.  This particular model didn’t come with a 5.25” floppy drive.  Nor did it, for that matter, have an internal hard disk.  Both items were available as add-on peripherals, but I, unfortunately, was not blessed enough to have either.  I asked my dad if I could turn the T.V. off (yes it connected to the television) and leave the computer on during the night so I wouldn’t lose the information, and he looked at me like I had asked him to wear a dress.  So, with the flick of a single switch, hours upon hours of coding was gone forever.  Fuck my life.

I also discovered a set of books called Micro Adventure.  They were similar, in style, to the Choose Your Own Adventure series, but these required you to input small snippets of BASIC code into your PC, and then interact with the story-relevant program.  The only problem was that as you were entering the code, you would almost always be able to figure out what the end result of the program was going to be.  Example :

10 input “What is the secret code to disarm the big-ass bomb? ”, u$
20 If u$ = “12345” then goto 50
30 print “You suck balls and, therefore, must die in a fiery explosion!!”
40 end
50 print “You have entered the correct code.  We will blow up someone else.  Thanks.”
60 end

You don’t have to be Bill Gates to figure that one out.

At present time, there are five computers in my house, four of which are custom built by me.  My laptop rests conveniently next to my living room chair, and is my lifeline to all the internets.  My other PC sits monolithically atop my desk in the office next to a 24” widescreen monitor.  The desktop is reserved, appropriately, for the likes of Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3.  A set of Sennheiser headphones lay next to it, as the decibel level of the five large fans makes the use of speakers nearly impossible.  Between the overclocked processor and the high end video card, the room temperature actually rises when I’m playing this thing.  This computer is a force to be reckoned with and is, by far, the sickest machine I’ve ever assembled.  My TI 99/4a, though, will always be my most memorable.

Movin’ out of the sticks.

You know what they say.  You can take the boy out of the small town, but you can’t take the small town out of the boy.  Fuck all that.  I’ve been away from my podunk hometown of Alamosa for seventeen years now, and I constantly wonder how anyone could choose to live there.  I had never planned on leaving, although, I can’t say that I really had any plans for the future.  At one point, having a strong aspiration to fly jets, I wanted to join the NAVY.  Ultimately, though, the constant nagging from recruiters turned me off to the armed forces, so I found myself somewhat content with my evening job as a KFC cook.  Fuck you, don’t laugh.  After all, I was only seventeen, living with my wife, and, as far as I know, was the only high school student in town with his own apartment.  Oh, the fun.

Understandably, a young couple, such as ourselves, are bound to endure many hardships trying to overcome the tribulations of delving into an adult world, while, at the same time, attempting to develop a healthy relationship between two, seemingly polar opposite, personalities.  That being said, we had our problems.  After about eight months we decided to call it quits.  I moved back in with my parents, and her with her dad.  Strangely, we still kept in touch, and she surrendered a 1983 Camaro Z28, that her dad had given her, to me.

Thinking back, that car was a piece of shit.  The swapped-in engine guzzled way too much gas, the t-tops were scratched to shit, and the thing rode like a fucking horse carriage.  I remember loving that car, though, and, after spending a couple thousand dollars fixing it up a little, was crushed when I learned that my future father-in-law had picked it up from the paint shop before I even had a chance to drive it.  That’s when I decided to leave.

Within about an hour, thanks to the speed of small town gossip, my estranged girlfriend met up with me and immediately started pleading her case that she was not involved at all with her dad’s actions.  I told her that I didn’t care anymore and that I was leaving town.  She had lived most of her life with her mom in the Denver area, and had been trying to get me to leave for months, so she immediately responded, “Take me with you.”  I did.

We had less than a thousand dollars in our pockets, and we told no one that we were leaving.  I left my job hanging with a no-call no-show, and didn’t even call my parents for about three weeks.  I would find out years later, that my folks resented me for quite awhile for that, but I couldn’t bring myself to discuss it.  We left on a spur of the moment decision, and we didn’t want to be talked out of it.  I know now that it was a stupid move, but, even in the wisdom of my older age, I can’t condemn that decision. I honestly believe that it was the best choice that I’ve ever made.

Our first Denver home was a Motel 6.  It overlooked north I-25, and had a great view of downtown.  It occurred to us, very quickly, that a grand wasn’t going to get us very far, so we set out looking for jobs early on.  Finding gainful employment became a hurdle right away.  Our job applications were scrutinized harshly for not having a legitimate mailing address, and our requests for apartments were constantly turned down based on our unemployed status.  While I was out job hunting one day, my wife met with a landlord who had a small one bedroom apartment for rent.  The rent was cheap, but the unit was located above a liquor store in a rough part of town, and the only way to access the entry stairwell was from a dimly lit alleyway in the back.  I choose life.

Finally, my wife’s grandparents cosigned a lease for us.  They spent a significant amount of time lecturing us on the importance of not taking advantage of their risk.  We understood, and we held up our end of the bargain, removing them from the lease within six months, after we were working and settled in.  I got a job at Lamps Plus, as the evening shift warehouse guy, and my wife scored a part-time gig as a phone solicitor for the DAV.  In short, we had a shit apartment, shit jobs, shit for money, and a shitload of pissed off people 250 miles away.  It was our new beginning, though, and we both are grateful that we took that chance.

We are both city snobs now.  We love our malls, restaurants, and attractions.  My family still lives in Alamosa and, when we visit, we can’t keep ourselves from making fun of the yokels that populate that area.  We laugh to ourselves when my mom drives to three different restaurants to find one that’s not “full,” and when my dad haggles with Dominos and Pizza Hut.  They and my brothers talk about how great it is to have piece of mind in a small town life, while simultaneously gossiping about the goings-on of the community.  All the while, me and my wife secretly long for long lines, rush hour traffic, and the soothing sounds of police sirens.

Kids do the darndest things.

My son’s fifteenth birthday is coming up, and the spoiled shit is receiving a fancy new netbook from his mom and I.  Our kids are accustomed to getting fairly good birthday and Christmas presents due to the fact that my wife and I made a joint decision to not randomly buy things for the children throughout the year.  When my son was much younger, we would frequently purchase toys and gifts for him on a whim.  It was not a mystery to me that we would do so because, in general, toys are cool, and, being young parents we seemed to enjoy the toys as much as he did.

It didn’t take long however to realize a trend that was taking place.  The lifespan of his toys were becoming increasingly shortened.  He played with them only as long as there was not a newer one in his possession.  His toy box was overflowed with barely used action figures, cars, and small handheld electronic pets, all of which had been cast aside.  Nary a shopping trip happened where some form of a child’s plaything didn’t make it’s way into our shopping cart, and so, when Christmas or birthday presents were to be had, it was just another day in the life of Junior.

Like most before this generation, I didn’t have that luxury.  My parents weren’t the most financially responsible people in the world, and, due to that, my childhood booty was lacking, at best.  Occasionally mom would surprise us with a Matchbox car, or a G.I. Joe action figure.  Maybe a random comic would appear, but those times were far and few.  In fact, those three previous mentioned items would span an entire year.  Without the support of mass-produced plastic playthings, my brothers and I became very adept at making use of the materials at hand.  We were the Macgyvers of kids toys.

For some unknown reason, our back yard was infested with four foot tall weeds.  These became a forest.  A roadway was planned and designed for the Matchbox cars to navigate through, and with many minutes of diligent weed removal, in an amazing testament to child-kind’s  transportation engineering, a beautiful winding road was constructed.  A lake was needed, as well.  That, we supposed, was why God made garden hoses and shovels.  Next, we needed a small town on the outskirts.  My dad’s small supply of bricks, wood, and other small project materials fit the bill perfectly.

We continued the construction for most of the day, building a larger and more elaborate landscape.  Then the inevitable happened.  Dad came home.  He was less than impressed with the “mess” that we had made of the backyard.  In a hail of screams and scowls, we were ordered to clean the yard up immediately.  With that, the roads were demolished, the buildings were dismantled, and the lakes and pools were filled in.

We dug holes from time to time, as well.  Just random holes with my dad’s shovels.  Sometimes we would try for deep, other times, width.  One day my younger brother and I managed to dig deep enough to reach some clay soil.  This, I can tell you, was second only to finding buried treasure.  Being that our Play-doh preservation techniques were seriously lacking, we had been denied a supply by our parents.  Our archaeological discovery, had warranted the purchase of Hasbro’s product obsolete.

We removed a large slab and immediately began sculpting.  Somewhere along the line, we decided to produce artwork in the human form.  The consistency of the clay, however, was somewhat less than desirable as we were struggling at keeping the limbs attached to our crudely sculpted torsos.  A quick trip inside to retrieve a handful of toothpicks that my dad kept on hand for his after-meal teeth cleaning would solve that.  It worked like a charm.  Before we knew it, we had constructed an entire population of Clay-people.  While in the process of modeling a “giant” version, we realized, suddenly, that we had exhausted our supply of makeshift skeletal material.  Panic time.

Dad was going to flip his shit when he realized that the toothpicks were gone.  We rummaged through the cabinets looking for a backup supply and found none.  We had no other choice.  The Clay-people were sacrificed and their bones were collected, washed in the sink, and returned to the small ceramic receptacle that sat in the middle of the kitchen table.  Quickly inspecting the small wood slivers, we determined that we had about a 50/50 chance of pulling this one off.

Luckily, I never heard my dad complain about the quality of the contaminated toothpicks and, as far as I know, he never had any parasites removed.  We had managed to cover our tracks.  In hindsight, maybe if we had a few throwaway toys, we may have had less tendencies to destroy backyards and defile dental instruments.

I’ll be home when I get home.

My wife and I went on a date last night.  We never get out anymore without the little rug rats.  They always seem to be hanging around, intruding on our privacy.  Yesterday they went to their grandma’s to spend the night so “my love” and I decided to go out to eat at our  restaurant, The Bonefish Grill.  We’ve been fans of Sea Bass since the first time we ate there, and are even privy to a secret, not on the menu, gorgonzola and spinach sauce that is fucking incredible.  They don’t skimp on the whiskey for my double Crown and Cokes, and the wait staff has always been nothing short of extraordinary.   The children have never been there with us, and, most likely never will.  Once, we took them to our steakhouse, The Keg.  They fought, argued, acted up, and behaved like the hooligans that they are, wrecking our evening.  We haven’t been able to enjoy that restaurant since.  Needless to say, we will not make the same mistake twice, and I will not allow these half-people to ruin what is my favorite seafood dining experience.

After the meal, we decided to hit up the local comedy club.  The show was good, but I was amazed how light the crowd was.  Tough economic times, I guess.  The waitresses were pushing drinks and food like a motherfucker to make up for it.  We were told that, at present time, they were strictly adhering to the two drink minimum, not that I would have a problem filling that request, but I was a tad put out to have it pushed in my face.  That didn’t stop me from doubling the minimum, though.  In their defense, we were enjoying the show in a newly remodeled facility, the bathrooms were cleaner, there was more legroom, and the sound system and lighting was substantially improved.  It all comes at a cost.

The location was previously a pool hall by the name of Pinky’s.   Dozens of pink-felted pool tables had adorned the establishment and were complimented perfectly by the slew of waitress whose only below the waist attire were Playboy-esque fishnet stockings.  The place was well know throughout the Denver metro area, and, years ago, was a major hotspot for the north suburban night-life crowd.  I may have been there a time or two.

To be perfectly honest, me and some friends were regular patrons for awhile.  A quick IMDB search for the movie Friday made it easy to pinpoint the exact era, fourteen years ago, since the movie was the inspiration for a couple of our appointed nicknames.  Pat was the tough guy.  He was a large, burly, mid-west farm boy, whom we nicknamed Debo after watching the movie for about the thirtieth time.  Jeff was our token long-haired hippie pothead.  He, for obvious reasons, became Smokey.  There was one other nickname borrowed from Ice Cube’s classic film.  While not part of the weekend warriors, we worked with a, shall we say, big-boned girl who, having never seen the movie, willingly accepted the name of Big Worm.  She answered to it for a year before seeing Faizon Love’s perfected character, and then immediately rebuked her assigned moniker.

Usually a half dozen of us would met up at Pinky’s every Friday night, shoot pool, and drink beer for a couple hours, before heading off to the local strip club, Cheerleaders.  There we would continue with libations while simultaneously contributing to the well-being of our society’s unskilled, yet sexy and naked, adult entertainers.  A few hours later, after closing the club out, we would make our way to someone’s apartment and continue the party there.

The only real problem with this arrangement, was that my wife, live-in girlfriend and mother of my son at the time, was at home stewing at the fact that I was gallivanting around with a ragtag group of guys.  She was adamant that I be home at our predetermined time, and I constantly disappointed her.  To this day, she still doesn’t believe that we could stay up until six in the morning drinking beer and playing Jet Moto on the original Playstation.  I, being young, and an asshole, started to tire of her arguing with me about not being home on time, and, somehow rationalized that it would be better if I simply refused to agree to a time.  When that didn’t work, I would suggest that we agree to a more reasonable time, like 8:00 AM.  That, for some reason, was unacceptable as well.

The crew eventually disbanded, and I was able to begin rectifying the many problems with my relationship now that I was distraction free.  A decade and a half later, as my wife and I are sharing a brownie sundae and laughing at the stand-up comic, sitting in almost the exact same geographical location where I used to subconsciously attempt to destroy my relationship, I am sincerely amazed by her fortitude.

Criminal Minds

My dad had this thing with curfew and bedtimes.  I don’t think that my brothers and I were bad kids by any means, and, for the most part, we stayed out of serious trouble.  That really made no difference to my dad, though, since he was a little shit growing up.  I know he spent a large portion of his childhood fighting and getting into trouble, but he has always been a little reluctant to give us any details.  He likes to drink now, so I can only assume that he was drinking as a teenager.  I’m pretty sure that he never got in trouble with the cops, but I’ve heard him talk of my grandfather kicking his ass for being a menace.  Regardless of the level of his tomfoolery, he was always worried that we were going to wreak havoc on society if left unattended after dark.  Granted, we did a little.

With the exception of my youngest brother (he is almost six years younger than me, and I had moved away by the time he had hit troublemaker age, so I never witnessed any of his antics), our juvenile delinquent status was minimal.  Growing up in a small town, you had to be somewhat covert when you were up to no good.  We were well aware that any slip up that revealed our identity would undoubtedly result in a quick telephone call to Pops, and would serious hinder our childhood independence.  That, and he had this big-ass brown belt that he would fold over and beat our asses with to the point of bruising.  Not that it was terrible.  Sure, by today’s standards, swatting your child to that extent is tantamount to child abuse, but, back then, it was merely a painful reminder to not get caught.

It seemed to me that it was the small things that I got in trouble for.  Things like, eating half the box of Twinkies, shooting the television screen with a nerf dart gun, or sneaking a peak at a looted Playboy magazine.  The bigger, more severe shenanigans were executed with the precision and poise of the motherfuckin’ CIA.  Dad was no dummy.  He seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to catching us in the act.  I say this because I want it to be known that my father wasn’t one of those ignorant, niave parents who thinks that their children are sweet little saints who simply need a little positive encouragement.  He would stick his foot up our asses if he had even an inkling that we were fucking around.  So, like I said, the motherfuckin’ CIA.

I remember breaking into a Rainbow bread truck one night after sneaking out of the house.  It was one of those van-type trucks with the rolling door in the back.  Why?  I couldn’t tell you.  It wasn’t even locked, so there wasn’t even the challenge of breaking in.  Me and a couple friends simply slid the door open and rummaged through shit.  We knew that we had to fuck something up, per unwritten teenager code, so we opened up a couple loaves and threw them in the street.  Yeah, thug life.  Needless to say, tossing food products into the road wasn’t the least bit satisfying.  Hell, I don’t even think that we could get a littering ticket since the birds would most likely consume the slices by the end of the next day.  I quickly rummaged through the truck a little more and found a large roll of small round red stickers advertising “99¢.”  These would definitely come in handy.

 An hour later, we were becoming increasingly uneasy.  We were a mere four blocks from the crime scene, and I was beginning to doubt whether I had covered my tracks adequately.  I carried the roll of stickers in my hand as we made our way to our neighborhood, fully aware that a simple fingerprint dusting would expose me as the sole suspect.  I needed to get rid of them.  As an adult, I can think back and realize that the best coarse of action would be to throw them in a trash can or into a bush, or simply drop them and walk away.  Apparently, I was retarded at that age, because none of those solutions came to mind, and, when we were but half a block from my house, I somehow came to the decision that the an old pickup truck in front of some poor saps house was the perfect way to dispose of our new-found cornucopia of discount labels.  That truck didn’t stand a chance.  The attack seemed to last only a couple minutes, but I remember that, at some point, we were struggling to find bare spots to place stickers.  Our stifled laughs seemed to echo through the empty night, and we were forced to ditch the remainder of the red labels and make a run for home.

I left my buddies to continue on with their evening, and I snuck back into the house through my brother’s bedroom window.  The next day, my dad had, indeed, heard about the bread truck.  Turns out, he and the guy who drove the truck were kinda friends, and they were both appalled at the fact that kids could perform such a heinous act. My dad told us that if they ever found out who did it, they would knock the shit out of the little punks.  I chose to sit out on the discussion.  Fortunately for me, they didn’t find out.  I never went back to the defiled pickup, and never told anyone about the bread truck.  I did, however, walk past that brightly colored Rainbow truck a couple weeks later, and wasn’t surprised to see a shiny new padlock latched onto the rolling door.

Wild Horses

I was kicked in the face by horse when I was a little kid. It was my older brother’s fault. I vaguely remember him playing with a small ball and accidentally rolling it under the fence where my grandfather’s horses were kept. The horses had full access to acres and acres of field on the property, while a small unfenced area was designated living space for my parents, grandparents, and siblings. The horses, three of them, still spent most of their time gathered closely at the gate waiting to be fed.

I know nothing about horses, nor do I care to. I went on a horseback-riding trip once when I was about twelve, and was unlucky enough to have to saddle up on the fattest, laziest fuck of a horse on the planet.

“He likes to be talked to,” the trail guide had said.

Therefore, I spent the next hour and a half atop an uncooperative equine, trailing behind the rest of my group. The horse wanted to rest, eat, and sway. When he finally did decide to walk, it was usually in the direction opposite the rest of the group. I did talk to it, though, and when we arrived back at the camp, the guide excitedly told me how the horse had done a surprisingly good job for me. Good job? Fuck that horse. I hope it broke its leg later that week and had to be shot in the head. Come to think of it, what the Hell was that horse doing on the trail? If, indeed, it had performed exemplary for me, than how was he the day before?

I have a colleague who’s ex-wife loves these animals. They couldn’t afford them, but that didn’t stop her from owning two. In fact, when one of them got sick and had to be euthanized, my co-worker was ecstatic. He was thrilled to death that his income could now be used for slightly more important purposes such as housing, food, or baby formula. Selfish prick. Imagine his surprise when his bitch wife showed up with a replacement horse.

I couldn’t tell you much about my grandfather’s horses. I know that he was bucked off one when I was about thirteen. My cousins were trying to ride it and it was acting up. Gramps jumped on the thing and started giving it hell. Showing it who was boss, I suppose. Apparently the leg straps were too short, set up for the smaller kids, and he bounced off the motherfucker, knocked himself unconscious, and freaked out the entire family.

I remember thinking that it was payback from a few years earlier when my Grandpa was feeding them. I can’t remember the chain of events exactly, but the end result was the horse getting punched in the side of the head. Believe me, it is extremely comical to see an old man closed-fist punching a horse in his huge ass head.

I, on the other hand, didn’t deserve to be mistreated. I was a whopping four years old, and when my older brother asked me to retrieve the ball, I was happy to oblige. I remember crawling under the fence, making my way towards the toy, and that’s all. According to my Mom, the doctors were amazed that I wasn’t dead. They deduced that I was either close enough that the horses kick had minimal force, or far enough away that his reach was maxed out when contact with his hoof and my face was made. I don’t remember having any real problems relating to that incident, but I did have to go through a deviated septum surgery to improve my breathing, and, last I checked, I’ve never had a cocaine habit.

Fuck that horse.