A Pimp-Walk and a Prayer

So I have a story to tell all of you (both of you), but what you’ll need to know right off the bat is that I’m a trained educator. I know, you'd never know it with all my grammatical errors and foul language, but it's true. I don’t have a permanent job as a teacher or anything, so I just fill in for schools whenever they’re short-staffed or need some extra help. I’m kind of like a mercenary, a mercenary that people refer to as a supply teacher. Anywho, you're up to speed now.

LET’S DO THIS THANG!

So, this morning, I am getting ready to go to a school, and I’m in a rush to get out of the house in time. I’m 99.9% ready, the only thing I need is my belt. Usually, I can’t find my belt in the mornings, but I was smart last night and left it in the pants I had on yesterday. BRILLIANT MANEUVER, says I to you.

So, I locate yesterday's pants and I start trying to slide the belt out of the loops. The problem is the belt is old and worn, and the breaks and creases in the leather get caught up on the belt loops. I’m cursing and freaking out at these pants that won’t let go of my belt and I think, Are you really going to be made a fool of by an old pair of jeans and a worn-out leather belt? 

NO WAY! 

So, I tells myself, I’m a MAN and I’m not messing around with this screwy belt no more! 

I use my man-muscles to yank that mischievous belt right on out of those loops. When I do this, two unexpected things happen.  First, one of the belt loops in my jeans rips (now I have four belt loops and one denim tassel on these jeans). The second thing that happens is that my belt snaps in two, leaving a much shorter belt which would only fit a much thinner man. As it is, I am beltless.

"Greeeat," I spit sarcastically, "No belt!"

"You’ve got your blue and white one" my girlfriend says groggily from beneath a pile of blankets on our bed.

The belt she’s referring to is a white leather belt with a bright-blue and black diamond pattern on it. I bought it as part of a clown costume a while back, and I had worn it once or twice with jeans just to show how hip I was when it came to ironic fashion. What is ironic now, however, is that my ironic belt is the only one I have, and I’m not nearly hip enough to wear it to work with black dress pants.

With no time to sit and think, I let out a sigh and decide that I’ll simply have to wear my old black dress pants; the ones that are tight enough around the waist to stay up on their own. I nab these pants and throw them on, they sag a little, but they’ll have to do. I charge out the door and head to school.

The morning goes reasonably well until I’m on my way inside from supervising the kids on recess. On my way into the school, I snag my pants pocket on the door handle and hear a tic-tic-tic sound as the button from my pants skitters down the hallway and into a sea of moving feet. I’m still moving forward, but I can feel my already sagging pants loosening and my zipper beginning to inch downward. It would be helpful to have a belt at this point. At this moment, I would pay $500 for a nice white leather belt with really loony blue and black diamond patterns on it.

I manage to zip into the staff washroom and slam the door closed just as my pants drop to my ankles. On the back of the bathroom door there’s a long mirror which forces me to look at myself in this position. I'm dressed professionally from the top of my head all the way down to my waist, and then shit gets weird. There's a surprise of colour provided by my Ghostbusters boxer shorts, then it's pale legs down to the black dress socks that are sticking up from out of the crumpled pile of my dropped pants. This is an unacceptable scene. No one else can be permitted to see this. 

I look at the time on my cell phone. DAMMIT! I only have 4 minutes before I’m supposed to be supervising some Grade 2 kids for one of the teachers.

With nothing at my disposal, I get my pants up and zip the zipper as high and tight as I can. I do a quick knee-bend and the zipper rockets down.  My pants are on the floor again. I try again, but this time I don't try to test the zipper with the knee-bend. It holds, for now. I look at my phone; I have 1 minute left. I'm going to have to risk it and just take things as easy as I can until I can find some time to fix this.

Fearfully, I exit the washroom. I take a deep breath and start walking. I walk slowly and smoothly, leaning backwards a bit and carefully placing each foot forward and then easing my weight onto it. I pass classrooms where some of students stare out at me in confusion as I pimp-walk my way to class with nothing but a prayer holding up my pants.

I ease around the classroom, trying as best I can not to make any sudden movements. One kid drops a bookbag full of stuff all over the floor and I watch coldly as they pick it up. Sorry, Junior, you're not going to be getting any assistance from me, I've got my own problems here. The class goes by without a hitch, and by the time the regular teacher comes back, I've relaxed a little bit. We're chatting away with one another when I feel the zipper slip down a bit. Immediately, I lose all interest in our conversation. While she's talking, my face goes slack and my eyes get hazy and distant. I'm not really talking now, I’m just nodding and saying "Mmm Hmm", and "Oh yeah?" every few seconds. In my head, I'm pleading with whatever deities might be out there: Please, please, PLEEEEASE don't let my pants blow wide open while I'm talking to this woman.

I tell myself that if the worst happens, if these badboys drop, and this woman and a whole classroom of 7-year olds sees me in my Ghostbuster underwear, I'm just going to do a Van Halen-style jump kick, yell "WHO YA GONNA CALL?!" while in the air, then walk out....possibly into oncoming traffic.

The pants hold, and my conversation with the teacher comes to an end. Finally, I have a few minutes to fix this problem. Actually, I have exactly 10 minutes. I pimp-walk my way back to the staff washroom, but make a stop at the office to grab some supplies on the way. Not knowing exactly what I'm going to do, I decide I better take anything that might be useful: rubber bands, paperclips, clamps, scissors, and a stapler. The secretary looks at me like I might be crazy, and I look back at her like she might be right. Then it's into the bathroom.

At first I try one of those black clamps with the little metal levers. It's a no-go, so I get more extreme. I hold my pants closed and try to staple them shut. This sounds like a better idea than it is, and it doesn’t even really sound like that good of an idea. The waist of my pants is too thick to staple together and when I try to drive an open staple into the pants to act as a "hook", all I manage to do is drive a staple into my bikini-zone. Scrapping the stapler plan, I move on to rubber bands. Surely this will work. I use the scissors to cut a hole where the button used to be and try to loop the rubber bands through with the hopes of tying them. Both of the bands snap in half. 

I check the time. I have 2 minutes. Enough fucking around.

I pull out two heavy-duty paperclips and call upon my man-muscles for the second time today to straighten the clips out. I feed them through the two holes in my pants, cross the ends, and start to twist. I twist them up until the remaining ends snap off. Where the button used to be, I now have a sharp little knot of twisted metal that pokes into me whenever I lean forward. I haul on the pants and shake them and test my work. 

It's perfect! I'm not even sure how I'm going to get these pants off later. It's then that I realize I probably should have taken that piss I've been holding in for the past hour before I tied my pants shut with twisted steel.

I spend the rest of the day holding in my piss and being scared that somehow the paperclip knot digging into my body is going to let go. I have the junior high kids in the afternoon, and I reeeeally don’t want to lose my pants in front of them. With the little kids, I might have been able to laugh it off. I mean, come on, they do embarrassing shit all the time, but the older kids, that would be awful. They would tease me ruthlessly and I would probably die of embarrassment. If I did, there'd be no one to explain what had actually happened. All anyone would know is that I dropped my pants in front of a bunch of kids. I'd be that known as that sick bastard who wore underwear with cartoons on them and drove staples into his own groin for kicks. No, I can't have that happen to me, so I just take it reeeaaally easy for the rest of the day, playing it safe by pimp-walking everywhere even though I probably don't have to.

I manage to hold my piss in until the end of the day. I'm thankful for this because the only thing worse than dropping your pants in front of colleagues and students is pissing your pants in front of them and then not being able to get the pissy pants off your body. There’s no way I could have undone those pants at the school. When I got home that afternoon, I had to use a pair of wirecutters to get out of them while I did the potty-dance. I managed to pinch myself twice with the cutters.

Anyway, that was my day. My groin took a beating what with all the staples, pokey metal knots, and the wire-cutter pinches, but you know what, that's the life of a supply teacher.

And that's that.  I'm going to bed.

The Ladies Man

I used to go to Prince Edward Island every summer when I was a kid.  For a few years there was a kid there named Josh who was approximately the same age as me—about 13 or 14—and who stayed in the cabin beside the one my family stayed in.  Josh and I were best friends during those summers.   We liked the same things (cheeseburgers and candy) and both loved hanging out at the beach where we could stomp on dead jellyfish and kill crabs.  Ah, youth!

One summer, there was a new family on the other side of our cabin who had two kids about my little sister’s age as well as a daughter who was a year or two older than I was.  My sister had become fast friends with the two younger kids, and spent most of her day playing with them while I hung around with Josh.

Now, it just so happened that one afternoon Josh and I were lounging on the deck of the cabin when the eldest daughter of the family next door happened to come outside to sunbathe.  The girl looked like an angel.  She was like D.J. Tanner from Full House.  She was goddamn perfect.

Being 13 year old boys, we nonchalantly (actually, it was probably very fucking chalant) moved our lawn chairs to a position where we could stare at this poor girl all afternoon.  Whereas before we had been talking about movies we liked, now we said nothing, we just sat silently in our chairs behind our mirrored sunglasses.  Not creepy at all.  When she went back inside—after about 10 minutes—Josh and I immediately started in with the locker room talk.  Never mind the fact that this girl’s cabin was only 10 feet away and she was only behind a screen door, we were all about this girl, we didn’t care if she heard us.  She was a “total babe”.  Our conversation was full of all those testosterone-fueled comments that teenage boys like to think sound manly but really only prove how little they know about anything. 

“I’d put my hand in her back pocket”

“I’d French with her”

“She could sleep over at my house, ANY time”

We were pathetic.

Later that evening, Josh and I were inside the cabin eating our way through an oversized bag of cheap-ass no-name wannabe-Doritos with a picture of Garfield wearing a Sombrero on the front when my Dad came in and said that there was going to be a big campfire in the backyard that night with my sister’s friends and their family.  Josh was welcome to come as well.

Josh and I thought the same thing, That babe is gonna be here!

Then we both thought the same thing again, But which of us is going to be her boyfriend?

And then again, one more time, we both thought, I am!

We decided to be gentlemen.  We’d each take our shot, and to the victor would go the spoils.  We agreed to take some time to get cleaned up for the evening, then meet back at my cabin in about an hour.  I showered, put on my newest-looking swimming trunks and my best Batman t-shirt.  I kicked on my least-stinkiest flip-flops and took a look in the mirror to see what my hair was doing these days.  Roguishly windblown.  That was perfect.  Mix the unruly hair with my tanned skin and freckled face and I looked like the very spirit of youth.  I looked like Tom Sawyer.  Who could resist that?  [Sadly, it would turn out that most women could resist that, and for years to come.]

I went outside onto the deck and sat down in the chair.  The air was rich with the smell of the salt water, and a warm breeze carried the scent of smoke from the various campfires.  It was going to be a magical night.  Josh was taking a while so, while I waited, I fantasized about showing this girl off to all my friends back home.

“Hey Dudes, what’s up?  Oh, her?  Pfft, that’s just my girlfriend.  Yeah, she’s from the island.  Yeah I guess she does sort of look like D.J. Tanner, no big deal or anything.  I’m actually getting kind of bored with her”.

Then she comes over and I totally put my hand in her back pocket like it’s not even a big deal either, and I am immediately crowned King Shit.  There might actually be a crown, I’d just have to wait and see about that part.

Yeah, that’s how this shit was going to go.  After tonight, a lot of things were going to change.  Tonight would mark the beginning of my rise to power.

Eventually I heard the screen door on Josh’s cabin screech open and bang shut.  He walked towards me in the twilight.  At first my heart sank, and then it began to fill with rage.  This piece of shit coming towards me was wearing dress shoes, new blue jeans, a maroon windbreaker (with no t-shirt on underneath), and a gold chain necklace.  He was dressed to kill.

“Hey”, he said, “I’m ready”.

As he stood next to me, the smell of the campfires surrendered to the overpowering scent of his Old Spice.  His hair had been over-gelled and combed straight back like a cool 80’s movie villain. 

Dammit, I thought, Ladies love the badboys.  This guy’s done his homework.

He looked like a young Val Kilmer and I looked like one of the Little Rascals.  I had lost this shit already.  I felt sick.  With disappointment in my heart, I walked behind Josh to the fire.  That was my place, after all, behind him.  Second-place.  Always last.  Sigh  We got to the fire and stood there for a bit.  Everyone was there except for the babe.  After about 15 minutes, we managed to snag her little brother for a second.

“Where's your older sister” I asked.

"She went to a campfire down the beach with some guys...your Dad bought us SPARKLERS for tonight!"

Josh jumped in, "What did he say?"

The little boy repeated, "We got SPARKLERS!"

"No, not that" Josh spat at him, "where is your sister?"

"I dunno, some campfire on the beach somewhere"

Josh sounded desperate, he clearly had a lot riding on this.

"Where on the beach?" he demanded.

But the kid had already lost interest and was running away with his arms out, pretending to be an airplane, a very unhelpful airplane.

We stood there for a bit longer, and I could see Josh was trying to think of a plan.

“Wanna go for a walk?” he asked

“Where?” I replied, just to piss him off.

“I dunno, down the beach or something”

“Sure, I guess so” I said, not really wanting to go.

We trudged up the beach one way about a mile.  There were only a few fires on the beach because the tide had just gone out and everything was still pretty wet.  When we did come across a fire, Josh would veer towards it enough to get a look at who was there.  Mostly it was older teenagers who said things like, “Don’t you guys look romantic?”, and “Nice fucking windbreaker!”  Once we had gone the mile, Josh insisted we turn around and check about the same distance the other way.  We spent most of the night walking on the beach being harassed by guys with backwards baseball hats who made it clear how ridiculous they thought we were and, in one case, threw handfuls of wet sand at us.

The walking wasn’t bothering me; I was wearing shorts and flip-flops, but Josh’s dress shoes were soaked from walking through the wet sand, and his pantlegs had taken on water and become so heavy that he had to hold his pants up by the pockets as he walked.  The effort had caused him to break out in a sweat and his windbreaker stuck to his clammy skin.  Eventually he gave up his search, and we trudged back to the fire at the cabin, Josh grumbling the whole way.

He plopped himself down in a lawn chair in front of the fire and let the heat dry his shoes and pantlegs.  The heat of the fire also loosened the product in his hair.  It mixed with his sweat and dripped down onto his forehead and shoulders in globs, drying to leave disgusting white spots.

The night wasn’t a total loss.  The campfire at the cabin was nice, and I did get the consolation prize of listening to the little kids tell Josh all the gross things they thought his too-much-cologne smelled like until he got so mad he had to go inside to wash some off and towel some of the sweat-gel out of his hair. I also watched in quiet satisfaction as the sparks from the campfire and the sparklers my Dad had bought melted little holes in his fancy-ass maroon windbreaker while he sat unaware, pounding marshmallows into his face.

Now, here’s the best part.  Before the night ended, the Total Babe came back from her fire (wherever the hell it had been) and checked in with her parents at the one we were all at.  She was only quickly introduced to everyone before she went into the cabin to watch television, but when Josh got his turn to say “Hello”, he tried to do it all smokey-voiced and didn’t even look at her.  He just thrusted his marshmallow roasting stick in the fire a few times, like “Yeah, pffft, whatever”.  Everyone noticed, and the parents kind of smirked at how silly he looked.

I just stared at him and smiled.

Yeah, that's it. Enjoy those tasty marshmallows, cool guy.  Your shoes are wrecked, your cologne made people sick to their stomachs, your hair looks fucked, and that sweat-bag you call a coat is ready for the garbage.  You’re gonna sit there looking like a homeless person and play hard to get when you’re clearly hard to want?  Nice strategy, Ladies Man!

So, neither of us got the girl.  It was actually the first in what would become a long run of romantic failures for me.  I’m not sure how Josh made out with his love life, but I like to think he failed a lot too, and that he probably got beat up at least twice a summer for most of his life.

That was actually the last summer Josh and I hung out.  The next year my family went to Old Orchard Beach instead of Prince Edward Island, and I made friends with two Dutch boys .  They couldn’t speak English worth a damn, but they had a smoking-hot mom who traipsed around in a bikini all day and called me “Zveetheart”. 

Top that, Josh.

HAWK - 1, BIRD - 0

I went paintballing two weekends ago and it was pretty good times.  I recommend it if you’ve never been; that said, I don't recommend you go with me.  Paintballing brought out the worst of my personality.  It also made me realize that if the Apocalypse ever goes down, and we all have to fight for survival, I'll be next to useless to any of you.  My go-to strategy in a crisis is self-preservation at all costs.  My motto in warfare is: "Charge late, be quick to take cover, and retreat early".  I have some bad news, Private Ryan, you're on your own.  I always call for cover before I make a move, even when I don't need it, and in order to conserve ammo, I never give cover when it's called for by others.  If I think I can hit an enemy without getting out from behind my tree or stump or whatever, I will fire, even if it means I might have to wing one of my own teammates in the process.  Anything in front of me is fair game, and I shoot people in the back just as well as front.  Interestingly, despite my devotion to protecting myself, I still manage to get shot quite frequently, go figure.

Anyway, so we played paintball for a few hours one Saturday afternoon.  The refs/owners of the field broke the day up into about 5 or 6 little games or war scenarios.  In one of these games, our team had to defend an old shed from enemies who were trying to plant a bomb (an old metal ammo box) inside it.  Pretending I was a team player, I told my team captain, "I'll rush the field and get right inside that shed and defend it!"

My teammates all thought I was very brave.  Really though, I was just tired of all the running around and hiding.  I thought spending 10 minutes in a shed where I could relax would be great.  The refs blew the whistle to start the game, and I bolted for that shed.  Unfortunately, I tripped on the way there because I can't do anything right, and I smashed my knee up on a root.  I rolled around for a minute, like a turtle trying to get off its back, then I picked up my gun and limped the rest of the way to the shed while two of my teammates put themselves in harm's way to cover me.  I got inside safely and sat down to relax for a minute.  Outside, I could hear my teammates shouting for me to cover them so they could get to safety, and one guy who covered me on my way to the shed kept begging me to toss him some ammo out the window, apparently he was all out or something, I don't know.  I had just sat down, y'know?  Like, holy boys, give me a fucking second.  I just skinned my knee for god's sake!  Anyway, the hero that ran out of ammo, he got shot pretty soon after that, so I didn't have to listen to him anymore, which was good.  From where I was sitting in the shed, I could see a couple more of my teammates get picked off too.  Too bad for them.  Once I had had a chance to relax for a bit, I stood up, took position, and leaned out the door to shoot some people.  Rather than lean out too far and expose myself to my enemies, I more or less just stuck the barrel of my gun out the door and blind-fired.  I usually missed, but a few times I managed to hit some people in the knuckles, or the side of the neck.  Apparently that's not fair, or not honourable or something, but whatever, I didn't care.  Complain all you want crybabies, you're still out!  That's war, look it up.  Man, it was so easy to win at paintball this way.

I was having a pretty good time shooting at people who didn't know where I was, and then, all of the sudden somebody slid the bomb into the shed, right in front of me!  Forget that noise! This shed was mine!  I grabbed the bomb and tossed it right back outside the shed (which was all that was required to "defuse" it).  I meant to throw it where I could still see it; I figured if anyone tried to pick it up I could shoot them in the fingers.  However, because I stupidly tossed it out of my line of sight, I had to I adjust my gun and lean out the door.  As I leaned out, Adam, a co-worker of mine who was on the other team, was leaning in at the same time.  I was face-to-face with my enemy.  Time stood still.

Now, while time is standing still, let me explain some things to you.

I had been shot about 9 times that day.  Of those 9 shots, about 6 of them had come from Adam.  That guy just always seemed to be wherever I was.  In each of the games I would see him step out from behind a tree or a bush and I would unload on him, shot after shot, and nothing would hit him.  It was almost supernatural.  It was like in the ending of Ernest Goes to Camp, when the bad guy tries to shoot Ernest at close-range and somehow misses three times in a row because Ernest was protected by the Spirit of the Land or some shit because he crazy-nice to all the troubled inner-city kids.  Anyway, Adam must have been pretty nice to some street urchins at some point, because he was protected by the Spirit of the Paintball Grounds.  I couldn't hit him no matter what I did, and he'd raise his gun all calm and "gentle warrior" like and put one in my chest.  It was bullshit!

There was a point in one of the games when I could see the top of Adam's head above a big pile of dirt, and I spent 8 minutes trying to hit it.  8 MINUTES!!!  I didn't move from where I was.  I just sent shot after shot whizzing by his melon.  Then, someone else on my team took him out with a single shot!  In another game, I ended up on one side of a small copse of trees, saplings really, with Adam on the other.  We were probably only about 15 feet away from one another when we both opened fire.  At no time did we lose sight of one another, but none of our paintballs reached each other.  The little trees provided enough of a screen to stop most of the shots from getting through.  Both of us shimmied, jinked, and danced from side to side, trying not to get hit.  We looked ridiculous.  It looked like an impromptu "So you think you can dance" competition on a battlefield.  It looked like we might have been gassed with some sort of neurotoxin that makes your booty shake before you start convulsing so hard you snap your own spinal cord.  If aliens had been watching us, they might have thought we were engaged in some sort of mating ritual dance to attract each other [I can assure you it didn't work!].  Anyway, while I was getting all crump and jive on one side of the trees, Adam gets wise and stops dancing long enough to take a step to the side of the trees and shoot me in the shoulder like a punk.  What a dick,eh?!

The point of my telling you all of this is just to point out that Adam was my obsession that day.  It was like that line from The Hagakure: "...taking an enemy on the battlefield is like a hawk taking a bird. Even though it enters into the midst of a thousand of them, it gives no attention to any bird than the one it first marked."

So that brings us back to me leaning out of the shed and being face-to-face with Adam.
The Hawk had finally found the Bird!

According to Adam, he said "I surrender" when he leaned in the shed and saw me with my gun.  I call bullshit on that, though.  I didn't hear him say shit, but I have to be honest, even if I had heard it, at that point Adam was getting shot regardless.  Anyway, I didn't hear it, and all I saw was Adam bring his arms up, raising his gun.  Now, maybe this was the beginning of a hands-up "I surrender"-type move, but I wasn't waiting around to find out.  I didn't even bring my gun up all the way, I shot from the hip and nailed that man, point-blank, right in the bikini zone.

My regret, much like Adam's pain, was immediate.  He doubled over in pain for a second, and I felt horrible.  What had I become?  I had come here to have a good time, and now here I was, hiding in a shed with a smashed kneecap, letting my teammates get mowed down, and shooting my own friends point-blank in the groin.  I think that one action speaks volumes about the kind of person I am.  

When the chips are down, I shoots for the genitals.

Now don't go feeling too bad for Adam, he got me back.  In the very last game of the day I got pinned down inside the cab of a broken down truck.  I got blown away like Sonny Corleone in The Godfather.  It was epic.  Though a number of people shot me, it was Adam who snuck around behind me and blasted me with three shots close-range shots to the kidneys.  They left welts the size of quarters.  Good for him, I deserved it.  That said, apparently Adam's bikini zone bruised so horrendously the next day he took some pictures of it (possibly in the hopes of pursuing legal action) and he showed the guys at work.  Now they call him "Peaches" because he bruises so easy.

Hawk -1     Bird - 0

Esta noche bailamos!

Alright, so, I don't dance...like ever!

It's just not something I'm able to do. I'm too conscious of my own movements. When I've tried to dance in the past, it was just a horrible out of control situation with my brain trying to regulate everything I was doing:

"Hey, Left Leg, stop that! Where the hell are you going, Right Arm?! Hips! Don't you dare thrust again!"

It's exhausting, and to other people, it probably looks like a cross between someone having a seizure and someone that has walked face-first into a large spiderweb that no one else can see. I've slow-danced a few times, and I've been grinded a couple times, but that doesn't really count. I don't, can't, and won't dance. End of discussion.

So, here's the story:
My buddy and I went to a friend's wedding this past weekend. It was fun. Nice ceremony. Great reception. Delicious food. Everything was great. What I want to tell you about though, is the dance that took place after the wedding.

The bride and her family are Spanish, you see, and so half of the attendees were also Spanish. There were some white people there too, the husband's side, some guests, but there's just something about us white people, we tend to become background when there are people with an actual culture present.

My buddy and I, we are both very white. We've got skin the colour of cooked-salmon. The skin of Irish men who sit around too much and get flustered over little things very easily. Either one of us would probably allow a great number of horrible things happen to our loved ones before we would even think about approaching a dance floor. We're just in the wrong place this evening. We don't even look like we're at the wedding, we look like security guards, really useless security guards.

Now, when I tell you that the Spanish people at this wedding enjoyed dancing, please don't think I'm just saying "Hey, these people like to dance".  No, no, you need to listen to me! These people look like they're under some sort of spell. Remember in that movie about the witches, Hocus Pocus, when Bette Midler curses all the adults of the town into dancing uncontrollably? That's exactly what this looks like, except, what's even more supernatural, is the fact that ALL of these people can dance like they've been professionally trained, and it's not just the adults! Whether they're seven or seventy, pregnant, on crutches, missing legs, it doesn't fucking matter, these people are all on FIRE! The white people are clearly outmatched. The DJ played some country, and some rock, but that was more or less just to give the Spanish people a chance to pee, smoke, or breathe. It was the only time they stopped.

My buddy and I, we're invited out to dance a number of times, but I can promise you that there was no way that shit was happening.

"We don't dance" we say again and again. We should have brought signs.

"There's no better time to start, come on!" one girl says when she stops to chat with us. [NOTE: While she talked with us, she continued to dance where she was standing, not even joking]

With regards to her point that there would be no better time to start dancing, I have to disagree. A good time to learn to dance would be alone in front of a forgiving mirror, or with a small group of beginners in a controlled setting, faaaar away from the public eye, or maybe even in a school for the blind. The absolute worst time to take up dancing would be right now, out there on the dance floor with all these people who are definitely not fucking around.

No, I'm sorry! If I go out there now, I'll be trampled under the fast-moving shoes of a cat named Paco who, as near as I can tell, made a deal with the Devil at some point in his life to be able to destroy that dancefloor any time he chooses. The soles of this guy's shoes have to be about 150 degrees right now. He's been going for 40 minutes and hasn't even broken a sweat. Even if he did break a sweat, it would probably just be a few drops of wine. The wine is like gasoline for their legs! The alcohol doesn't seem to slow them down or make them clumsy, on the contrary, it's enhancing their already amazing abilities. I find myself seriously wondering if there's ever been a time when a dance floor has caught fire due to the friction-heat of shoes. If it ever has, I bet Paco was there for it, and I bet he kept dancing.

There was a point at which I realized I had had too much to drink, and I told my buddy it was time to go. He agreed. You see, the danger is that we get too drunk to remember that we can't dance, and get out there to try. Ugh, I feel sick just thinking about it. It would have been awful. They probably would have stopped the music, turned on all the lights, and made an announcement like, "For their own safety, the Vanillas are reminded to stay off the dance floor". Either that, or Paco would see us struggling out there and be forced to deliver a coup de grace to each of us with a tear in his eye.

I mean no disrespect, Spanish people. If I could be born into a different culture or race, I'd pick something Spanish, for sure. I'm just generalizing and propagating a stereotype here. I'm sure there are lots of Spanish people who can't dance; but, I'm also sure those ones get banished from their communities like lepers or werewolves.

Whatever happens to those Spanish people who can't dance, I know one thing, they certainly didn't get invited to this party.

Pool Ladders

A few summers ago, the whole family was camping/cabining in Prince Edward Island.  I was swimming in the campground pool with my sister and her boyfriend one extremely hot afternoon.  It actually wasn’t all that refreshing because the owners of the campground kept the pool at 30 degrees Celsius.  It was a lot like swimming in a pool of still-hot-from-the-body urine.  Anyway, my sister and her man went back to the cabin for supper, and I was fixing to do the same.  I finished up pretending to be Aquaman and grabbed hold of the pool ladder in the deep end.  I tried to prove how strong I was by launching myself out of the water and onto the rungs of the ladder.  When I hauled myself out of the pool, I actually hauled myself right out of my own swimming trunks.  My bare ass and I went up the ladder, my shorts stayed put.

Instantly, my hands let go of the ladder and went to my shorts, which were around my ankles.  Now I was half bent over, which probably made things a thousand times worse for the people in the pool behind me.  I teetered on the ladder for a fraction of a second, bare-assed to all of the other swimmers.  Then I made a quick decision to sacrifice myself.  I just let gravity claim me.  I scraped and ground my shin along the steps of the ladder as my large half-naked body fell back into the pool with an incredible splash.  

I was underwater; I tried to stay under there for as long as I could.  I knew that everyone above water was laughing at me, and I just couldn’t be up there for that.  I’d drown if I had to.  I moved along the bottom of the pool, underneath the other swimmers, all the way to the shallow end.  As I crawled out of the little kid area of the pool, with my pride wounded, my shin numb, swollen, and oozing blood, I could hear the other swimmers snickering.  I walked out of there, head low, and vowed never to be so careless around a pool again.

Okay, now you’re up to speed.  The point was that I developed a phobia about exiting pools too quickly and pantsing myself in front of others.  Now, we’re jumping ahead in time to this past weekend.

I had been swimming in our backyard pool with my girlfriend and our daughter.  My girlfriend’s best friend dropped by with her little girl, and my daughter wanted to get out of the pool to play with her.  My girlfriend got out of the pool as well, so I just sloshed around on my own for a while, pretending to be a crocodile.  Eventually, I decided to get out and started to climb the ladder.  Sounding familiar?  This time, though, I exited slowly.  NO WAY was I exposing my ass again!  No, Sir!  We were doing this nice and slow.

I got to the top of the ladder and turned around to start my way down.  What I didn’t realize was that because I was going about all of this so slowly and cautiously, the water that was dripping off of my trunks and I was pooling on the top steps.  The ladder is only about 5 feet high, but I was standing at the very top.  When my feet slipped, I was about 10 feet from the ground.

I fell from the sky like I had been thrown from the heavens.  On my way down to the earth, I thought, “Your poor ribs, you’re totally going to break most of them.”  When I collided with the ground, my body behaved the same way a ball of play-dough would behave if you dropped it off the Empire State Building.  Nothing in me splintered or cracked, but I’m pretty sure the tip of my nose poked my own asshole at one point.  The medical term for what I did to myself is probably something like, “Internal Trauma due to blunt force”, but I know what’s up.  I don’t need a doctor to tell me that I smooshed myself.

At first I was surprised by how little it hurt, so I jumped to my feet, hoping nobody saw me fall.  They hadn’t!  Sweet!  Then I realized that my left leg, arm, shoulder, and lung weren’t working properly.  My limbs were numb, I could barely breathe, and I had a pounding headache from where the back of my head had snapped against the ground.  It’s funny, when I was a kid I would have walked around, shaking the parts of me that hurt, maybe crying or saying, “Ow, Ow, Ow”, but definitely making an effort to “walk it off”.   Now though, my first reaction was to try and make it to my own bed so my bleeding organs could kill me in peace.

I took a nap, which is always a good idea after a serious fall.  The sleep I got, it was that dark and dreamless sleep that comes with head injury.  It went on for hours.  Unfortunately, when I woke up, the numbness had left me, and in its place was stiffness and a good deal of agony.  I pushed through it though.  I told myself that this was exactly how Batman would feel after a night of crime-fighting.  Hurting this badly, it made me like Batman….EXACTLY like Batman, in fact.

You’d be surprised how much easier it was to cope with the pain while thinking that.  It’s all about how you look at things, I guess.  I wasn’t dead, nothing was broken, and even though I had gotten hurt really badly, I got out of that pool without anyone seeing my bare ass.

Campground Shower

(A Prince Edward Island campground.  Early morning.) 
The sun’s up and the sky is cloudless.  It’s going to be an awesome day of beaches, boardwalks, and spending money on pirate memorabilia.  I head towards the nearest washroom facility to our campsite, and it’s completely empty.  I’m pleased about this; I’ve beat the insane crowd that normally hits this place in the morning.  I go into one of the two shower stalls, and, having forgotten my flip-flops, I stand one foot on a plastic bag, and the other on the empty box from my bar of soap.  I’m always careful not to let my bare feet touch the floor.  The stall is comically tiny.  At any given moment, most of me is touching the slimy walls.  This disgusts me, but I do what I always do in order to get through something gross, I imagine how much worse it would have been for cavemen.  Cavemen (and cavewomen), they probably had to shower in much smaller stalls, and they were probably even slimier than this one. They probably didn’t even have soap, and I bet they had to use dead birds for flip-flops, and squirrels for face-cloths and luffas.  I shower away, thinking about cavepeople, and then I hear someone enter the shower stall beside mine.  I hear voices, two voices, speaking French.  [French people seem to love camping, ever notice that?]  At first I think one of them is waiting his turn outside the stall, but then I realize, no, there are two people in the same undersized shower stall.  I listen really carefully now.  One voice calls the other voice, “Dad”.  Aha!  All’s well, it’s a father and son.  No big deal.  The father probably didn’t want his little kid to be alone and unattended in a campground bathroom while he showered.  I get that.  I ignore them as best I can even though they keep shaking the stall and squeaking against the slimy walls as they try to shower at the same time.  I go back to thinking about cavepersons and how they would probably try to ignore other showering cavepersons even though they were probably right in front of one another with no shower-stall walls.  I finish my disgusting shower, stand on my dirty t-shirt until my feet are dry, then I sneaker-up and exit the stall.  I’m brushing my teeth in front of the sinks when the other shower-stall opens.  A man in his late-40’s/early-50’s, clearly the father, exits the tiny stall.  Behind him, I expect to see a little boy; instead, a damn-near 6-foot tall teenager with stubble on his face steps out.

Think about that.

Right Field

Right field has developed a reputation in Little League as being a position where less talented players can be "hidden" without damaging a team's defense in any significant way. [from Wikipedia]

I played right field, and, contrary to what Wikipedia may tell you, I damaged my team’s defense in a very significant way.  Either directly, by screwing up even the simplest of plays, or indirectly, by lowering the rest of the team’s morale to the point of near-suicide.

I had been marooned out in right field by a coach that hated my guts.  Really though, I was happy to be out there where I could study bees and pick dandelions strategically so as to leave a decent impression of Michaelangelo (the ninja turtle with yellow mask) on the field.  I was in my own little world.  When I’d hear the crack of the bat against the ball, I’d panic: “Oh God, Oh God, where’s the ball?! Where is it?! Is it mine, is it mine?”  Usually it never came anywhere near me, but when it did, I didn’t catch it.  Sometimes I’d trip over myself trying to pick it up, or it would roll between my legs, or I’d step on the ball trying to chase it down and twist my ankle.  On those rare occasions when I did manage to get the ball, I couldn’t even come close to throwing it back to the infield.  I would give it a feeble toss and it would land somewhere else in right field.  Usually the first or second baseman would sigh, and go get it.  I was the weakest of links, and comments like, “Jesus, is he TRYING to help the other team?!” were common.

As bad as I was in the field, the real show was when I got up to bat.  I never swung at anything.  Ever.  Literally, in all the games I played, I swung only once.  That time, I only did it because my Dad had bribed me to.  He said he’d buy me a new baseball glove if I swung at something.  Why that man would sink a single red cent into baseball equipment for me is a mystery.  Anyway, back to not swinging.  I was famous for it.  The Harpy women that perched in the stands (usually the mothers of the kids with the worst teeth) used to chant, “Easy Out! Easy Out” when I got up to the plate.  If these women had finished high school, the irony of their chant might not have been lost on them.  I never struck out!  Because I didn’t swing at anything, it was up to the pitchers to deliver three strikes before they threw enough balls to give me a walk.  I always walked.  Pitchers fucking hated me.

My own teammates despised me, too.  When I was in the dugout, waiting to go to “bat”, I used to irritate everyone with questions like, “Why do the batters run counter-clockwise around the bases?“, “Why isn’t there a shortstop between 1^st and 2^nd base?”, and, “How many times do you suppose that ball has been hit by bats?”.  I was a pariah.  If we had been aboard a ship at sea, I would have been tossed overboard.  If we had been at boot camp, I would have been pinned down and beaten with pillowcases loaded with bars of soap.  I didn’t understand the game, even after playing it for months, and I had no desire to learn it.  I was just pathetic.  I can admit that.  When we won, I felt like I didn’t even have the right to be happy about it because I had done NOTHING to help, and when we lost, I felt guilty because I knew I had caused it.  Those aren’t digs for sympathy either, those are just the facts.  I torpedoed our team in nearly every game.  I was like a gremlin.

Anyway, yap, yap, yap, here’s the story.

It was a hot summer evening, and we were playing a pretty good game; that is, I hadn’t screwed anything up yet (that is, nobody had hit anything to right field).  I had downed about 2L of Gatorade.  Never mind the fact that I had done nothing to break a sweat, staying hydrated is crucial.  We had just come back onto the field after three quick outs.  This was unfortunate because I had been waiting to piss for a while, and I wasn’t going to get the chance anytime soon.  I was stuck way out in right field again, and the outhouses we used were just a speck on the horizon.  I couldn’t leave my post; right field was too important to go unmanned.  “What would a professional right fielder do in this situation,” I asked myself.  Then it came to me.  He would man-up, buckle-down, and piss his pants.  It seemed like the only logical answer.  So, that’s just what I did.  I stood there, proud in the sun, with the bees buzzing around me, and I unloaded 2L of used Gatorade into my uniform pants.  It was empowering.  The game was more important than dry pants.  I was so pro.

By some miracle the grey of my uniform pants didn’t show the stain very much, and the sun beaming down on the field dried them quickly.  Now, the only evidence of what I had done was the faint scent of urine about me.  It went over so well the first time, that I started doing it every game.  I wasn’t trucking it to that godforsaken outhouse ever again.  I started stepping it up a notch too, I wasn’t just going once a game, I was going every time we were in the field.  I was free to down as much Gatorade as I wanted now.  My game was sure to improve under such an efficient system.

Anyway, I pissed myself throughout the season until my mother started questioning why my dufflebag smelled so bad.  She recognized the smell of piss, and so, feeling no shame, and being proud of my devotion to right field and of my ingenuity, I told her exactly where the smell was coming from.  I don’t know what you call a mixture of disgust, surprise, and concern, but that’s what she had.  I got chewed out pretty bad for it, and both of my parents made it quite clear that they were concerned there was something wrong with me.

Whatever!  The point is that I wasn’t allowed to piss my pants anymore.  My efficient system had been shut down, and I had been doomed to remain a crappy right fielder until my father finally gave up on me and let me quit.

My First (and Last) Piano Recital

So, when I was about 13 years old, my mother decided that it would be good for my sister and I to start taking piano lessons.  How this decision was made I’ll never now; I was not invited to the meeting, and I was not forwarded the minutes.  There I was, at the ripe age of 13, about to step into the world of the piano.

Imagine my enthusiasm.

I’m not sure how long we went to this girl, or how many lessons we did, but I learned precisely nothing.  My fingers are stubby and fat, and I tended to mash the keys with my palms rather than let my fingertips dance across the whites and blacks like little ballerinas or some shit.  This instructor would have gotten better tunes out of a pig strapped to the bench smashing the keys with its muddy little hooves.

The point of all this is that I hated piano lessons, I sucked at piano, and my mother didn’t care and wouldn’t let me quit.  This brings us to the recital [quickly and awkwardly, I agree, but I’m not getting paid to write these things].  All of the people in the community that played the piano apparently belonged to some sort of club or guild or something.  They were all in cahoots.  Anyway, the oldest of these piano-people served as grandmasters to their little club, and they organized a Christmas recital every year.

If you’ve ever been to a piano recital in a small rural community, you’ll know that it’s not exactly the most edge-of-your-seat show.  But still, if enough kids drag their parents and grandparents, you end up with a fair size audience.  I was entered into the recital against my will, and I was the oldest performer by at least 5 years.  So it’s a bunch of 6, 7, and 8 year olds, and then me at 13.  The piece I was to play wasn’t even my choice.  I was supposed to do “Good King Wenceslas”, or about 40 seconds of it anyway.  I’m sure when I went to the piano, all of the people in the audience thought, “Oh, well he’s a fair bit older than everyone else, he might actually play something interesting and with a bit more complexity."  WRONG!  All night, little 6 year olds had been playing full blown Christmas songs, and here I step up, all frumpy and hot in my too-tight dress shirt and my itchy black slacks, and I plink-plonk out the worst fucking rendition of Good King Wenceslas that anyone’s ever had the misfortune of hearing.  Then I stand up, do a quick bow, and march back to my seat with my head down while about 4 people give me pity applause.  The rest of the people are all checking the recital programs to figure out who the hell I am and what the hell it was I was trying to play.

Now, none of that was the good part.  

A week before the recital, I was asked by one of these piano grandmasters if I would play Santa Claus for the kids at the recital.  They only asked me to do this because I’m fat, which kind of makes them jerks, but whatever.  I said I would do it because I hate disappointing anyone but my parents.  A few days before the recital, somebody dropped off the “Community Santa Claus Costume” that had been travelling from event to event and sweaty fat man to sweaty fat man since the 1970’s.  It smelled like a baked-bean-fed donkey had splatter-shat in the suit before they packed it up for the year, and the beard was stained yellow in the places where it would touch your face.  I tried it on, and guess what?  It fit perfectly.  [How’s that feel?  You’re 13 years old and have Santa’s physique.  Oh, there’s a long future of comic books and being “just friends” with girls in store for you.]

So I go to the recital I just told you about, and bomb that, and then, when everyone had played their piece, I had to rush upstairs to put the Santa suit on.  The kids all gather downstairs and I make my big entrance.  I try out a “Ho! Ho! Ho!”, and I’m instantly the most unconvincing Santa Claus that’s ever been.  I’m not Santa; I’m that fat kid that just destroyed Good King Wenceslas, except now I’m in a smelly red suit and an ugly white beard.  These kids aren’t fooled, and they just feel insulted that I suck so bad.  “You’re not Santa!” they each take a turn saying to me.  At first I feel the pressure to be more convincing, and a couple of the piano-people tell me to act more jolly and more Santa-esque, but, you know what?  No.  Fuck this whole operation.  The illusion is gone, if there ever was one, and I’m not doing anything but firing these gifts out to the kids and going the hell home.  I even drop the fake Santa voice.  Now it’s just me in a stupid suit, getting angrier and angrier at these kids who won’t come get their gifts when I call them.  “Todd Brown, come get your gift please….TODD BROWN, your Secret Santa gift is here.…MISTER BROWN, Gift!!!....LAST CHANCE TODD….TODD!  Yeah, you, do you want this or not?”.

Santa says stuff like that, “Last Chance!” and “Do you want this or not?”.

Anyway, this went on waaay too long and I could see in the grandmasters faces that I wasn’t going to be asked to do this again.  What did they expect though?  What 13 year old wants to: first of all, go to a piano recital, and second, be asked to play Santa Claus?!

Here’s a tip ladies, next time don’t be so goddamned shallow and just pick the first fat person you see!  Maybe next time you should start with someone that’s even the least bit jolly and just stuff a pillow in his shirt if he isn’t round enough for your collective tastes.   

Take it as a lesson learned, piano snobs! Merry Christmas!

Oh, P.S.  I got a gift too.  My Secret Santa gave me a Snakes and Ladders board game.  Snakes and Goddamned Ladders.  I guess I can’t blame my Secret Santa though, he or she probably assumed it would be a 7 year old getting it.  Anyway, it was bullshit, the gift, the Santa gig, the recital, everything.  I gave the Snakes and Ladders board game to my little cousin and told my mother I was quitting piano.

The Waffle-Maker

I never win anything.  You know how we say some people have a horseshoe up their ass?  Well, my ass would contain all the missing horseshoe-nails.  Even when the Wheel of Fortune does turn in my favour, however accidentally, it always seeks to rectify it as soon as possible. 

Let me prove it to you.

I was working in a contact center (call center) a few years back, and the company had some sort of draw or raffle.  A draw or raffle which, to my complete astonishment, I won.  My prize: a brand new waffle-maker! You should have seen it; it was so beautiful.  It was all tricked out with a list of features!  I was so proud of it, I accepted it like an Academy Award.  My first win.  Maybe this was the start of a streak?

I set the waffle-maker on my desk.   I admired it for hours.  Later that night, when the cleaning lady, Renee, came in for her shift, I couldn’t wait to tell her all about my luck.  Renee and I had become good friends over the years.  I smoked back then, and so did Renee, and since we both worked a late shift, we often took our breaks together.  Renee and I were pals.  We WERE pals, until the following bullshit went down.  Imagine this:

Renee is running her vacuum cleaner, and as she passes my desk, I yell to her.

“Hey Renee!  I won a Waffle-maker!” 

She sees I'm trying to talk to her, but she can’t hear me so she moves closer with a hand cupping her ear.

“I said, I won a Waffle-maker!”

She smiles a surprised little smile and shuts her vacuum cleaner off.  She comes over to my desk and picks up the box, looking it over.

“Wow, where’d you get this?” she asks, sounding genuinely impressed.

“I won it today.”  So proud of myself.

Renee continues to look very impressed and, still holding the waffle-maker, she takes a step away from my desk. 

Where is she going?

“Well, thank you very much!” Renee says graciously.

You know that moment when you suddenly understand something, but the understanding is horrible?  Well I have one of those.  It’s not quite a “lightbulb moment”, it’s more like a “you’re about to lose your fucking waffle-maker” moment.  Renee isn’t joking; when I said, “I won a waffle-maker” through the noise of the vacuum cleaner, she must have heard, “Want a waffle-maker?”

I have to think fast if I’m going to keep that—

“OH…You’re very welcome!” comes out my traitorous mouth.

What the fuck?!?  Where did that come from?

Somehow, I've just given my waffle-maker away!  Renee’s flipping the box over in her arms, and not very carefully I might add—she doesn’t give a shit about this waffle-maker, I just know it!— as she reads about all of the awesome features I will now not be getting to try tonight.

“My kids will LOVE this!” she chooses to say, “you’re sure you don’t want it?”

I hate you.

“No, no” I say with a dismissive wave towards the box, “it’s all yours”.

I'll get you back for this!  So help me God!

But it was over.  I sat down in my seat, crushed, and tried to figure out how the hell that just happened.  An hour later, my shift was over and it was time for me to go home without a waffle-maker.  On my way out the door, Renee snagged me for one last smoke, and I had to listen to her go on and on about all the great things you could do with a waffle-maker and just how much better life would be for her now that she had one.  I resisted the urge to stub my cigarette out in her eye and instead I told her just how welcome she was to that beautiful machine I had owned for 7 hours.

There was no point in going home right away now, so instead I went to meet a friend for a coffee.  Still upset, I told him the story and he laughed really hard because he's an an idiot.  He didn’t understand how awesome the waffle-maker had been.  I resisted more cigarette-in-eye urges and went home.

A few weeks later my buddy and his girlfriend bought me a new waffle-maker because they felt so bad for me.  FINALLY, I had my very own waffle-maker!  I took it home the night they gave it to me and used it right away.  The waffles were alright.  A bit doughy, actually.  But, I told myself I would use it every day, you know, get better at waffle-making, but those machines are pretty clunky.  They’re also a huge pain in the ass to clean.  So, I put the waffle-maker in the back of the cupboard with all the juicers and Slap-Chops and shit.

I guess that doesn’t matter though, I should be thankful for what I have.  What matters is that I ended up with my waffle-maker, and I didn’t have to go through with my plan to buy bags of Hostess Hickory Sticks to spread around in all the hard to vacuum areas at work.