Tag: True Story

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Teen

Teen may be the ugliest of four letter words. We have teen angst, teen idols, teenie boppers, teen sensations, teen pregnancy and yes, even teenagers; all of which are stupid in one way or another. I know what you are thinking: “But you were a teenager once too.” Yes I was and I hated every minute of it. Let me take you on my journey of disgust for all things teen.

When I was in the third grade, I was walking past the high school on my way home from my elementary school. Ahead, I saw a bunch of the aforementioned teenagers loitering in front of the school. The previous day had brought a very rare snow storm to our Texas town and there was still some snow lingering around. As I got directly perpendicular to the wall where the teens were goofing off I could hear their idiotic laughter get suddenly silent. I felt like I should start running but I didn’t, I just kept my previous pace. Out of a flash my head was jerked to one side and I stumbled off the sidewalk. As I regained my composure I once again heard the stupid laughter from the group. I looked over and one of these fine upstanding youths was standing as though he had just thrown something at me and he was laughing with the others in a hilarious uproar behind him. He had thrown the most tightly packed, gigantic ice ball I had ever come across at my head. Surely he could have used his talent for accuracy in a better way such as baseball or football, but he felt the desire to harm young children. I reached up and felt my ear and when I brought my hand back I saw blood. I wanted so badly to pull a Ralphie on the guy, but he was a teenager and I was a little third grader. So I ran home. Thus began my dislike for teenagers.

When I myself became a teenager I would often find myself being looked at by adults as though I was in cahoots with the rest of the teens in the world. I wanted to say to them, “It’s not me. I am not the one who behaves stupidly.” I never took an opportunity to say that and I regret it. One day when I was 15, I was playing dunk ball on the old elementary school playground with my brother and a friend. We got thirsty and had a couple of quarters that we could use on a water bottle refill station just a few yards down the road. We went and got some water out of the dispenser and as our first gallon purchase was running out a woman pulled up in her car, with her young daughter inside. We put in one more quarter for more water and I noticed the woman get her water bottle out and walk towards another filling station. She then suddenly took the bottle back to her car though and drove away towards an adjacent 7/11. We walked back to the basketball courts and continued playing ball. A few minutes later a police car pulled up near the court and an officer got out while yelling at us to come over to him. He was very angry and asked us why we had harassed a woman and her daughter. We were totally perplexed as we had done no such thing. He told us that a woman had just called from 7/11 saying that three teenagers harassed her and her daughter at the water station. She claimed that we had threatened to do some horrible things to her and her daughter and that we threw a basketball at her. We explained repeatedly to the officer that we were just getting a drink and cooling off and that we had absolutely no interaction with anyone else. It took 10 to 15 minutes to convince the policeman that our side of the story was correct and the woman had completely lied. Luckily he believed us and let us go on our way. If it was an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence for teenagers to harass people we might have had an easier time convincing the officer of the truth.

There are a whole host of other instances similar to these that have led me to dislike teens even when I was one.

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Stupid Balloon Prank

Since April fools I have been thinking about dumb things I have done to people. Some of them I must plea the 5th on and some are fairly harmless. I was talking with Brandon about this one that we pulled on one of our old roommates. We were really really bored and had some balloons, so we filled them up, put faces on them and placed them in strategic locations where our roommate would run across them at different times.

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For some reason I think he didn’t find it as funny as we did. But I could just be remembering his general reaction to almost everything, which could be why we always messed with him.

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Worst April Fools Prank Ever

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.

At that moment Pursifull was in his shower singing very loudly. I took the Kool Aid from my roommate and went over to the other bathroom. The door was unlocked and I let myself in. I crept up to the shower curtain with the now opened Kool Aid packet ready to toss. Pursifull kept singing as I advanced closer. As I reached up to dump the Kool Aid over the curtain Pursifull seemed to get louder. “I’m a little teapot short and st……….uh oh!!!” I had dumped the Kool Aid and ran out of there. For the next day he had a big purple streak on the left side of his face.

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Wasp Week pt. 3: Killer Bees

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.

With the satisfaction of a job well done still hanging over me, I had a quick thought of a news report that I had seen the day before. They said that killer bees had been found migrating through the area. I also recalled that the bee I had just disposed of did not look like the usual bee. I went back over to the window to find that I hadn’t even fully killed the bee it was shaking and buzzing a little still. The way he was moving brought to my mind some sort of bee Morse Code. I crushed him again and made sure he had gone to the after life.

As soon as I was sure he was dead I told my friend to close the front door and I closed the door that led to the garage. I stuffed our oil rags under the doors to block the gaps and while I was doing that I saw other bees begin to fly around our station. My friend and I both got excited at the prospect of seeing a real swarm of killer bees and we were really excited to not get killed by one. We armed ourselves with a can of hornet spray and watched bees climb all over the windows. We sprayed a few of the bees that figured out that the door to the garage had more gaps at the top of the door.

I wish we could say that the windows were blacked out by bees, because that is the mental image I had when I pictured a swarm of angry killer bees. In reality it was somewhat unimpressive and only a few hundred bees seemed to care that I had crushed their friend. Twenty minutes later the bees were all gone and we still hadn’t seen a customer. I like to remind myself that even though they didn’t cover the windows they were still angry killer bees.

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Wasp Week pt. 2: Hornet Battle

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.

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Wasp Week

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.

Growing up in Texas, I would often be in the backyard with my siblings when we would hear cicadas screaming bloody murder and we would watch as a “cicada killer” wasp would stab its victim repeatedly in mid-flight while lowering it to the ground. The screeching cicada would be helpless as the gargantuan predator had swooped in from above and grabbed hold, never to let go until it was time to eat. When the screaming stopped the enormous wasp would carry away the not so small cicada. When we would see the cicada killers we would respect their space and not mess with them at all.

One day when I had just arrived at the pool that my friends and I used to frequent, I was walking around the pool with my shirt on still. My belly suddenly felt itchy so I reached in to scratch it. When my hand began scratching I felt what seemed to be an electric shock through my entire body that started from the end of my middle finger. I quickly pulled up the bottom of my shirt and started to shake it out when I heard a deep flapping of wings that vibrated the core of my soul. I soon beheld one of the largest “cicada killer” wasps I had ever seen. It flew up towards my face then went to make a getaway. In my moment of anger over being stung I wanted revenge on this buzzing beast and I grabbed a nearby child’s pool noodle and swung at the freakish monster. When the noodle actually hit, it felt like I smacked a baseball. The cicada killer fell to the ground and I ran over and stomped it to death with my sandals. I could have swore that it was about to lift my leg up before I killed it though, it was huge. To this day I still can’t believe that I was stung by a cicada killer and didn’t get carried away afterward.

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Bad Luck With Scooters

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.

3 or 4 years old – I was sitting on one of the scooters when it slipped out from under me sending my head towards the pavement. My head started bleeding like crazy and I had to have stitches.

8 years old – Riding a scooter in the back yard my brother threw some rocks in front of it and jammed up the wheels. My hands remained on the handle bars leaving my front tooth to try to catch my fall. No more front tooth.

9 years old – Riding scooters and skateboards down a sidewalk on a hill in the park behind Grandma’s house. My brother and I were sharing the one skateboard that hadn’t been taken to the front yard. I went down the hill and crashed into a fence. The chain link fence stabbed into my ankle and If I tried to pull my foot it hurt like crazy. I wasn’t strong enough to pull it out with my bare hands. The skateboard was a few feet away from me and I thought I could slip it under the fence and get my foot out. I asked my brother to hand it to me but he took it and ran to the front of the house because he didn’t want to share it with me. It felt like a couple of hours that I was stuck under the fence bleeding on the pavement but it was really probably 20 minutes. My cousin had the other skateboard and he came out and we used the skateboard to pry up while we pulled the fence out of my leg and my leg out from under the fence.

11 years old – Riding in the front of the house I fell off the scooter and landed on my wrist folding it up under my body.

12 years old – Riding in the park fell off scooter and ripped off my fingernail.

In addition to the above I also had countless jammed fingers, skinned knees and gravel filled hands.

I was either extremely bad at riding on things or very unlucky. If I was bad at it I didn’t want to try to get better. I have watched a great many other kids wipe out extremely hard on scooters and it has only deepened my hatred for them. And those two wheeled “Razor” things, well I have officially named them “Death Scoots” and will never ride one as I believe it will be the end of my existence.

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Wisdom Teeth

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.

After some time, I am not sure how much, I woke up without the haze and found my cheeks stuffed with bloody gauze pads. I threw them away and checked out the stitches in my mouth. I was blown away that the 2 seconds I couldn’t see anything was enough time for an operation. I had a burger for dinner that night and healed up pretty quickly without swelling.

When I saw this video it took me back to the haze for a second.

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Oh, Now the Truth Comes Out

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 of the salesmen was pushing some special shoe polish. He went on about how you can put it on once and it would last for months. He explained that he used it himself and it made it so that he hardly ever had to polish his shoes. I didn’t really pay too much attention to his sales pitch as I was actually looking at basketball shoes. As I tried on shoes and such, this guy decided to do a demonstration. He quickly rubbed a streak across my shoe and then proudly declared, “Look at the difference. And you’ll hardly have to use much at all.” He looked up at me and found me glaring daggers at him as I said, “I like my shoes scratched up.” He hastily gathered his bottle and cloth, and as he stood up he said, “Oh, it’ll come right off. Don’t worry about that.” Luckily he was not telling the truth as he was pitching his product to us and it did come right off within a couple of days.

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Millennium Falcon

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.

Just after this was proposed as the reason for the chase one of my friends yelled out, “They’re coming down the alley!!!” I took off as fast as a fully weighed down Honda Civic wagon could. About half way down the alley there was what appeared to be a turn for an intersecting alley. I took the right turn and was surprised to find us traveling through a city park. There was a house near the edge of the park and I headed straight for it in hopes that I could use the driveway. But the park was on the opposite side of the house from the driveway. The front yard for this home consisted of some diamond shaped openings for trees cut out of cobblestone. I ran over two of these diamonds and then headed for the curb. It seemed like the highest curb that had ever been crafted. As the Honda flew off of it I got a very sick feeling in my stomach as did everyone else in the car did I am sure. While in flight I thought of the scene in Ferris Bueller’s day off when the car attendants caught air in Cameron’s Father’s car with the Star Wars soundtrack playing over it. We hit the street with a loud crash and scrape followed by the sound of a muffler dragging on the ground.

We drove down the street a little and pulled over to inspect the damage. There really wasn’t any new damage. The muffler had never been properly attached as long as I had driven the car but rather, was held up from the ground by a rubber strap. I reattached the strap and we headed out. From then on, we called that car the Millennium Falcon and I would make Chewbacca noises randomly while driving.