I had a roommate once that we just addressed as Pursifull. He was an odd fellow, which made for some hilarious, frightening and sometimes confusing occurrences. One fine April Fools morning my other roommate jumped into the shower and turned it on. The water didn’t come out of the shower head at first, then it just drizzled out. He turned off the water and removed the shower head. He opened the door and called me over. When I got to the bathroom door he said, “Look what I found in the shower head.” It was an entire pack of Kool Aid. If you haven’t heard of this gag, it involves packing some Kool Aid into a shower head so that a person ends up taking a shower in purple or red water that can stain them. You are supposed to pack the Kool Aid in something that will slowly dissolve inside the shower head and release the Kool Aid after some time has passed, like toilet paper. Well, Pursifull had just shoved a full unopened packet of Kool Aid into the shower and clogged it up.
When I was working at a service station with a friend one fine summer day, I saw a bee fly into our little building. It was slow day and no one really seemed to need oil changes or gasoline and as you know by now, I have always enjoyed taking the life of insects. I decided to annihilate this bee to stave off the boredom. He flew behind the blinds in the window and I smashed the blinds into him.
I was out mowing the lawn one fine Saturday morning when I started mowing near a fence post for the chain link fence around the backyard. I had noticed a few hornets flying around the yard earlier and I know there were quite a few nests hanging off the side of the house. As I got the mower very close to the post I suddenly felt a stinging sensation, right on my left forearm. I smacked at the culprit with my bare hand and when he hit the ground I used all my fury to crush the life out of him on the lawn. Just when I had destroyed him I felt another sting further up my left arm I reached back and grabbed the new stinger and threw him onto the driveway where I stepped on him. I really hate being stung and it just makes me downright angry. I was in this state of rage when 4 or 5 other hornets swooped by my head. I said, “That’s it” and I went inside to get a bottle of bug spray. I came back out and saw that there were what looked like 30 or so hornets swarming around the lawnmower. Normally I would say, “Forget that” and head back inside until they left, but I was still fuming mad from the previous 2 stings. I had vengeance on the perpetrators but now I wanted to kill their whole family. I went over to the mower and sprayed three of them off of the handle. To my delight the bug spray worked fairly quickly. One of them shot straight for my head when I sprayed him out of midair. More of them tried the same trick and met the same fate. I would also swing at them with my hand and knock them to the ground where I would kill them. I was en fuego, I could not miss, I do admit that I must have looked like a madman to any neighbors that may have been watching, but in my hood it might be a bonus to appear unstable to your neighbors. I had cleared away almost all of them when I noticed some more of them coming out of the fence post. “Ahaaa!!”, I thought, “I have found the nest.” I must have angered them earlier by vibrating the nest with the mower. They didn’t have to come out and sting me, I am a rational guy they could have just asked me to steer clear of the post. But no, they took it right to the physical confrontation level. Well now they would all pay with their lives. I walked over to the fence post, smacking hornets out of the air as I made my way. When I got to the post I immediately started spraying down the hole in the top. Hornets were scrambling towards the top and when they got there they would drop dead. The hornets trapped underneath them would keep climbing and would push their bodies over the edge of the top of the post. It was really cool looking. When the dead ones dropped over the edge the lower hornets would get hit by the spray and die. Oh sweet, lopsided, over-reactive justice.
I am nerdy and do enjoy a good amount of shark week on the discovery channel. Since it is warming up outside and bees, hornets and wasps are starting to fly around again, I think it is a good time to have Wasp Week.
The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines “STUPID” as – a: slow of mind b: given to unintelligent decisions or acts : acting in an unintelligent or careless manner c: lacking intelligence or reason.
When I was a kid we would visit my grandparents every year or so. They always had a lot of really old toys around for everyone to play with. The hot ticket items that everyone wanted to play with were the scooters. We would ride them down the sidewalk in front of the house or around the sidewalks in the park behind the house. When I was about 13 I realized that I didn’t like playing on the scooters and I took stock of exactly why. I came up with many examples of why I should never play on Grandma’s death scoots again. I also figured out that scooters had been bad luck for me in general, but especially at Grandma’s house.
When I was 19 I had to have a surgery to remove my wisdom teeth. I set up my appointment and pulled enough cash out of the bank to pay for it, hoping that I wouldn’t get mugged. My mother took me down to the surgeon’s office. They hooked me up to something through an IV and gave me gas as well. I remember the gas mask coming down and my mind was totally clear then I began to hear what sounded like cicadas and then I saw black for what felt like about 2 seconds. After the short blackness the nurse told me to stand up when I felt that I could. I immediately thought I could but didn’t try. I was very dizzy. I thought, “But they haven’t even taken my teeth out.” As I did get up and walk down the hall I felt like I was crooked and I knocked some pictures on the wall sideways. My mother took me outside and I leaned on a sign in front of the office with my arms crossed and my chin on my arms. I remember having a stupid smile on my face at that point then I stumbled into the car. Once in the car I passed out. When I came to, I was sitting at a Sonic Drive In with my mother and she was asking me something. I answered yes to her even though I was not clear on the question. After saying yes I magically had a strawberry float in my hands which I remember tasting like coins and cotton. Then I barely remember walking into the house and plopping on the couch. I fell asleep there wondering why they hadn’t operated on me.
One fine Saturday I was out with some friends hitting up shoe stores. I needed some new kicks for hooping it up with the youngsters. We wandered into one store where they must have been offering big bonuses for sales because we got swarmed by employees. It felt like being accosted by a mob of referees. I was wearing some old leather slip-on shoes. They were nice and scuffed; just the way I like them. I have a long standing dislike for shoe polish and I just like the way leather shoes look when they get old and worn out, so sue me.
One night I was driving our family’s 1988 Honda Civic Wagon, which at that moment was packed to the gills with people. There were a bunch of my friends as well as my brother and his friend. My brother was in the very back where there was no seat. A truck pulled up very close behind us and the next thing I knew was that they were opening their doors and getting out to head for us. As the car in front of me drove away I quickly pulled ahead. The people from the truck got back into the truck and followed us onto a larger busy street. I made a quick left turn, in front of a group of oncoming cars, off of the busy street onto a side street. (Yes we could have gotten out and beat the people up, but I have always enjoyed a good car chase.)The oncoming cars gave us a chance to put some distance between us and the truck. I made another quick right turn down a residential street and when we got near a place to turn off of that street, we saw the truck come onto the other end of the street. I turned left off of that street and then immediately left again down the alley for that street. I got about 40 yards down the alley, took my foot off the brake after stopping and turned off the lights. As we watched to see if the truck would turn behind us I said, “I feel like Han Solo hiding in the cave that was actually a giant worm.” We saw the truck drive by the end of the alley and all felt relieved. Someone said that my brother had flipped off the people in the truck from the very back of the car.
When Jared was younger, in addition to keeping me awake at night, he would enjoy playing with fire. He started a fire in the garage, burned a good amount of money, started a giant tumble weed on fire under a power line and many, many more. One day I told him to hold his hands out in a cupping shape. Then I filled his hands with Off insect repellent. I took a lighter to it and told him to hold still. I had done this trick to myself and thought it was cool. The pool of spray would burn down to your hands and get warmer till the spray had burned off, then you just hold your hands on the floor and snuff out the fire. When I lit Jared up he flipped out. He jumped up and let the spray out of it’s pool and it ran down his arms a bit and all over the back of his hands. He ran around flailing his arms like a madman with fire blazing from his limbs. I grabbed a blanket and told him to run back to me. We put the blanket around his arms and stopped the fire. No harm done. He was shaken up for a while and nothing seemed to catch fire around our house after that. Jared did not fear fire at all and after the Off experience he had a respect for fire.
Read more on My Brother Jared, The Hero – Setting the Record Straight…
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