Ghostbusters

My old elementary school used to be pretty hard up for school events.  Sometimes we would all gather in the gym and watch a cartoon, or we’d assemble to have some old guy tell us how dangerous bears were, or sometimes a dude would bring a bunch of reptiles to school, but, other than that, there really wasn’t a lot happening.  

One of the things the school did to try and spruce things up a bit was to have “Talent Shows” a few times a year.  Now, they were called Talent Shows, but nobody had any real talents.  What this assembly always turned into was a bunch of skits that weren't very funny or entertaining followed by a number of lip-sync/air-band routines where people got up and pretended to play instruments and sing to their favorite songs.  You know, exactly what people do in front of their mirrors at home with their bedroom doors closed, only in this case it was done in front of a gymnasium full of people.

Now, the skits were more just for the really little kids; the Kindergarteners and Grade One kids would come up and act out scenes or songs from their favorite cartoons.  Air-bands, on the other hand, were for the big kids, the cool kids.  Nobody from our school had ever played any instruments, so over the years we had all become air-band connoisseurs.  You couldn’t get up there and just pretend you had an instrument; that’s fucking stupid! No, no, what you did was go to the equipment room in the gym and gather up things that could stand in for instruments.  Mop handles were microphone stands, badminton-racquets were guitars, pylons were trumpets, batons were drumsticks, etc.  Everybody had to have something unless it was an all-girl air-band, in which case there might be a few dancers, but dancers were the only ones that were allowed to be up there without an “instrument”.  After an air-band had performed, it wasn’t silly in the least to say things like, “Oh, man, did you see the way Trevor totally nailed that guitar solo?!” or “Brian’s drumroll blew my mind!”  If the right song was chosen, an air-band could even get a standing ovation.  It was like the entire school suffered from a mass delusion when it came to these Talent Shows.  I couldn’t even tell you what visitors to the school must have thought when they saw the way we went nuts for imaginary musicians.  It must have looked like a rock concert in a mental hospital.

Anyway, I remember attending one of these talent shows when I was in Grade 2 or 3, and seeing an older girl I had a crush on (yeah, I had crushes in Grade 2) doing an interpretive dance routine/imaginary music video to "I Think We're Alone Now" while lip-syncing the lyrics.  She had her "boyfriend" come up and be a part of the scene too.  He sat there, slumped in a chair, looking all cool while this angel "sang" to him.  She looked like she could sound just like Tiffany.  I sat in the crowd, years younger than the two of them, fuming that this guy had the cojones to smirk and laugh and pay attention to his buddies in the crowd while this girl pretended-to-sing her heart out for him.  In my twisted young mind I thought:

"This guy doesn't understand you!  What are you doing with him? Sure, maybe he looks cool in the tight black jeans with the three parallel tears on each thigh, and that black leather jacket over the Metallica T-shirt is pretty rad, I’ll give him that, but c'mon, this guy is just a Slash-wannabe.  If you stay with this Grease-stain you’re headed down a path that that leads to unemployment, Zesty Doritos for supper, dope-smoking, and receiving nothing but cartons of cigarettes in your stocking every Christmas."

I guess she wasn’t the brightest girl around because she stayed with that dirtbag for most of the schoolyear.  It didn’t matter though, my crush only got more intense.  When the next Talent Show came up, I decided I had to get in on it.  I knew this girl was into music and performing arts and crap, so being in the Talent Show was an excellent way to get her to notice me.

Luckily for me, one of the more meek and quiet students in my class had had a sudden burst of confidence, and decided he was going to organize an air-band routine to the Ghostbusters theme-song.  It was perfect!  Everybody loved that fucking song.  Standing ovation for sure!  I asked this guy if I could be a part of the band, and he said it was no problem.  He then very stupidly went on to tell six other guys that it was also no problem for them to join either.

On the day of the talent show the eight of us were discussing our positions.  We’d have two singers with mop handles, two badminton-racquet guitar players, two tennis-racquet bass players, a baton drummer, and a pylon trumpeter.  I was to be a guitar player.  Ladies love guitar players, I was so in.  All I had to do was a real legit-looking solo, maybe play the badminton racquet with my teeth like a real guitar god, and this girl was going to flush the fucking toilet on her current boyfriend and come running to me.  Yessir, I’d be dating an older woman by recess.  A real cougar, now that would be just aces.

While I was day-dreaming about my soon-to-be girlfriend serenading me with Tiffany songs, we were called up to perform.  I was SO ready!  We went to our positions, and suddenly, something went wrong.  There was only one mop handle, so one of the singers grabbed the pylon, which meant that the pylon guy had to grab a badminton racquet, which meant that when I went to grab MY badminton racquet there were none left.  I quickly scanned around for anything I could turn into an “instrument”.  I didn’t care what, I’d turn a vacuum cleaner into a tuba at this point, but everything had been claimed.  I had banked it all on a badminton-racquet and lost.

I had just become a dancer.

Now, when I tell you that I froze with stage-fright, please understand that no one has ever frozen as badly as I did that day.  I mean I froze up goddamned solid.  I went catatonic.  I stood there like a perfect statue, mouth half-open, staring wide-eyed at the entire school staring back at me.  It didn't matter how catchy the Ghostbusters theme-song was.  It didn't matter how realistic the guys with the badminton-racquets looked.  All eyes were on the fat kid having some sort of psychological episode in front of them.  I could see some of the older boys laughing, including that Slash-wannabe motherfucker my future-wife was dating.  My eyes scanned the crowd and when I spotted her my heart split in two.  The look on her face was a mixture of horror and disgust. 

"Jesus, what's wrong with that fat kid," I could hear her thinking, “I would NEVER date anyone that uncool. I’m soooo glad I have my current shit-rat boyfriend”.

A teacher at the back was waving her arms at me, trying to get my attention.  My eyes moved to her, and I could see her pretending to dance and mouthing the words, “Dance! You have to dance!" to me.  Sorry, Ma'am.  I appreciate your attempts to help me out here, I’m sure you’ll go to heaven for that and all, but I think we both know it’s too late for me.  I've been frozen here for almost a full minute.  To unfreeze now would just be even weirder.  If I were to suddenly burst into a dance right now it would just startle these people so bad that they’d probably jump a little.  No, if the alternative to what I’m doing right now carries with it any risk of me looking even MORE crazy, then I’ll just stick with what I’m doing.

Afraid that I was ruining his chances of getting a standing ovation, the geek that arranged this whole thing tried to salvage it by doing a big Corey Hart-esque running knee-slide on the last note of the song.  What he forgot was that Corey Hart didn’t do knee-slides on waxed gymnasium floors while wearing “Where’s Waldo” jogging pants.  This dork crashed into the first row of the audience, a bunch of Grade 1 kids still congratulating themselves on a smashing rendition of that “Chim-Chim-Cher-ee” song from Mary Poppins.  This guy slams into some little kids with a running knee-slide at the end of the Ghostbusters theme-song, and somehow I was still the one remembered as being the jackass that ruined the routine. 

Whatever.

I spent the rest of the year NOT having that cougar girlfriend and hating the guts of the opportunistic arsehole who had jumped from mop-handle singer to pylon-trumpeter and thrown everything into chaos.  To this day I can’t listen to “I Think We’re Alone Now” without getting teary-eyed, and the Ghostbusters theme-song makes me have to go to the bathroom.

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.