Category: Stories

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Worst Vacation Ever

I didn’t want to go. I had made it perfectly clear several times that I was not going to enjoy a family trip to Atlanta during spring break. In spite of my efforts I still had to go. The actual vacation was pretty uneventful. The only slightly enjoyable thing was going to Stone Mountain which apparently has a disturbing history.

After being lugged around town for a week, I was finally excited to go home and get back to school. But wouldn’t you know, something went wrong with our old Dodge Ram 15 seater van. We spent a good portion of our last day in Atlanta sitting next to a Pep Boys while they took a look at our battery. All they did was charge it up and send us on our way.

The next morning when we left to go home we drove for about 45 minutes and then the car died. We sat around again while we got a new battery and then went 45 more minutes down the road. Oh guess what, the alternator is bad. We played in a swampy Alabama forest while the hard working gents at Sid’s Chop Shop fixed the alternator. When they were done it was time to stop for the night.

Then again, the next morning we headed out and we made it a little further down the road. This time we weren’t as lucky in our breakdown location and had to push the Megavan about a mile up the freeway to the next town. We waited for a tow truck at the mini-mart and then had the van taken to a dealership. My Dad rented something like a Suzuki Samurai to cram 10 people into and drive around town. At this stop the car broke because the bad alternator had blown the computer chip in the van. The part wouldn’t arrive until the next day so we stayed another night in Alabama.

In the morning we made much better time and made it into Louisiana. While heading through a swamp I felt like the van was shaking from side to side as we went along. I knew that it was a sign that a tire was going bad and told my Dad and brother that we should check it out. We didn’t check it out and continued down the road. A short while later there was a loud bang and our van swerved out of control. Luckily we got over to the side of the road without rolling or hitting any other vehicles. We got out and started playing in the swamp again while my Dad tried to use a puny car jack to lift the Megavan. The jack broke and we were left without any means of changing the tire. A tow truck happened by and lifted the back end of the van so we could put a spare on. We headed into town to buy another tire but all the tire places were closed. We spent the night there and got a new tire in the morning.

After we got the new tire we headed back into Texas. It was smooth sailing until we got near Abilene. There came a very loud grumbling from under the van. Oh joy, we get to stop again. The place we stopped said it was a bad catalytic converter and we all just jumped back in and headed home with the loud noise.

Not only did the vacation take up my spring break but I missed a few days of school and had a lot of make-up work to do. If any vacation ever tops that one as my worst it will most definitely be my last vacation.

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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. 4: Cartoon Bear

I was walking through the woods one day when I saw the biggest beehive I have ever seen. I had always wanted to taste honey straight from the hive and it looked like no one was home. I thought it was strange that I didn’t see one single bee around this beehive, but I decided that it was the perfect opportunity to fulfill my lifelong dream of tasting super-fresh honey.

I climbed up the tree that the hive was in and set myself on a branch by it. I reached over to try to figure out how to get inside it when I saw a bee come out of it. The bee headed straight for me and I slapped it out of the air. Then suddenly I could hear what I couldn’t hear a second before, it was the buzzing of what must have been thousands of bees. I decided that was a good time to get the heck out of Dodge. I quickly dropped out of the tree just as the hordes of bees emerged to protect their domicile. Once I hit the ground with a thud, I figured, “Hey, why not see what the absolute fastest I can run is? That sounds like fun.” As I started to run it felt like I wasn’t even moving, but my legs were just spinning in the air for a second. By the time the bees caught up with me I was moving at an extremely fast rate. I turned back for a split second to see how close they were and it appeared that they had gathered in a formation that looked like a cannon. The bees in the front retracted backwards and then quickly forward and when they did that, a large group of bees from the middle would blast towards my head. I had to tuck my head inside of my shirt to dodge them. I thought I had already reached maximum speed but when I saw them get ready for another shot I somehow increased my speed to about 4 times faster than it was before.

I knew I definitely could not keep up the pace for much longer and luckily I saw a nearby pond. I headed over to it and jumped in. Serendipitously I found a hollow reed that I could breathe through. When I put it above the surface the bees filed down the hole straight into my mouth. The surprise of this and the pain from having my tongue get stung, caused me to jump clear out of the pond. I took off running into the sunset with the bees flying behind me and lurching forward every second and a half to sting me which caused me to jump in the air and yelp in pain. It was a rough day.

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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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I CAN SEE MY HOUSE FROM HERE (oh wait…nope!)

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.

Now if this were a multiple choice quiz on which definition correctly applies to the actions in this story the correct answer would be SECRET choice d: all of the above.

Back in High School there was a family that goes to our church who lives in Mound City. Every year they would get the city pool reserved so that whoever wanted to from our church could go there. We always had picnics and games and swimming of course. there was a park next to the pool and in the park there was a basketball court. I have never been very “active” in doing ANY kinds of sports, with the exception of the OCCASIONAL front yard football and baseball games that we played every once in while. My best friend back then and my VERY best friend to this day is named Carl. I love Carl to death and i mean no disrespect AT ALL when i say that Carl is a pretty BIG guy. Growing up I think he was about 300 pounds or so. Well Carl and I had finished eating and had wandered off and ended up on the basketball court. We found and basketball and just started shooting around. Have you ever seen that movie “Along Came Polly”? It has Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, and Philip Seymore Hoffman. There is one part in the movie where Ben Stiller and Philip Seymore Hoffman are on a basketball court shooting around and Philip Seymore Hoffman keeps shooting the basketball thinking he is “THE MAN” but every time he shoots he misses… that is kinda what this was like. We kept shooting the basketball and missing like CRAZY!!! Well we stopped for a bit and Carl gets this BRIGHT idea in his head. Now one of Carl and I’s favorite movies growing up was the movie “BIO-DOME” with Pauly Shore and Stephan Baldwin. (i watch A LOT of movies and tend to relate things to movies if you couldn’t tell.) Well in the movie there are a couple parts when Pauly Shore needs to climb up to things and so he tells Stephan Baldwin to “TURN INTO A TABLE.” At which point Stephan Baldwin gets down on all fours and Pauly Shore climbs on his back. Well as we were standing there Carl says to me “Hey do you think I could dunk the ball if i jumped off your back? Quick TURN INTO A TABLE!!!” At this point of the story i would like to remind you of Carl’s weight!!! I looked at him like he was crazy and I said “NO WAY!!” so then he was like “Well how about if i turn into a table and you can try to dunk it.” Well APPARENTLY for some reason i thought this was a GREAT idea because i totally was going to try it. So Carl gets down on all fours and i climbed on his back with basketball in hand. Now i don’t know how many of you people reading this have ever tried to jump off of a fat man’s back so let me just say it doesn’t work AT ALL!!! When I tried to push off of his back with my feet to get some “air” all that really happened is my foot ROLLED off of his “back fat”. As i was falling Carl dove out of the way so i wouldn’t fall on him. As i was laying there on the ground in pain Carl walks over and says “Man, you think you got it bad, my back hurts!!” By this time one of the church members who saw the whole thing had run over to check to make sure everyone was okay. After we told him we were okay I had only 2 questions for him. Question #1 “Did I make the dunk before i fell?” He told me that i didn’t. So the other question i HAD to ask. Question #2 “Did it at least look cool when I did that?” I don’t know if he was just trying to be nice or if I did really look cool but he did tell us it looked pretty cool. So that made it ALL worth it!!!!! The life lesson i learned that day is “It is okay to do stupid things as long as you look cool doing them!!!!”

* To see the part of Along Came Polly I am talking about go to this website.

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EMBARASSING MOMENT!!

First let me WARN you that i was HORRIBLE in english growing up. i have no idea how to properly punctuate and whatnot. I also tend to write like i talk which is considered a big NO NO in the English world. When i write i will go like whole paragraphs without using more than like two periods. Now let me set up the story of… MY MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT!!!! (also i must warn you i take sleeping pills regularly to help me sleep and it is close to my bedtime so i am feeling a little “out of it” which could make this interesting!!!!!)

The Set Up
I had got a paper route when i was going into my middle school year. It was just a couple of streets around the neighborhood i grew up in. my brother helped me out throwing papers. we only delivered about 60 papers. Because we wanted to keep the people happy we made sure to walk the paper to the doorstep. i have never been the most “active” person in the world so occasional i would stand at the bottom of hills and chuck the paper up hoping that it would land close enough to the porch. i also walked through peoples yard’s A LOT to get from house to house. There was this one house in particular that i can remember. I would throw the news paper on the doorstep and then to get to the next house i cut through their yard which had this BIG hill. well at least it seemed big to a little ol 7th grader. toward the end of the hill there was a chunk of ground missing from where there used to be a tree. from time to time i would either forget about the hole or be walking around still half dazed from waking up at 4am i would step in the hole and it would “trip” me. i can’t even remember how many times that sticking hole tripped me i lost count after 50. my most embarrassing moment happened on this hill….

I woke up it was a nice, bright, sunshiny, snowy, freezing, DARK morning. yes i realized i totally contradicted my self tons right there that is what makes it great… any who where was i before i was soo rudely interrupted…. oh yes… I had woke up and threw on some warm clothes so i could make the 100 ft. “trek” out ot the end of the driveway to get our newspapers for the day and as i was out there i noticed it had snowed… A LOT!!! i brought the bundle inside so i could start wrapping the papers. As i was Wrapping i was watching the weather channel waiting for the “local on the 8’s” weather forecast. it had said that it was negative 10 degrees out and negative 35 with windchill. I had finished wrapping my papers and got all bundled up. I had my coverall’s, my boots, my gloves, ski mask and scarf all on now it was time for the most important thing…. my official st. joseph news press paper carrying bag. as i put it on i had noticed how worn it was getting from all o fit’s “faithful” years with me. i noticed some stray strings hanging from the bag. I put it on loaded up and set off on my Important mission to bring the news to the masses. i got to the part of my route that i had told you about earlier… you remember the big hill with the hole… well i tried my best to slowly make my way down the hill but i started sliding a little. when i stopped i was happy that i was still standing. i took a couple steps and found the hole. when i fell i heard a loud SNAP. as i was laying on the ground i quickly sat up and started looking around to see “what it could’ve been that made that loud snapping sound.” I looked around and didn’t see anything. So i quickly hopped up to proceed when i noticed i fell right back to the ground. this puzzled me a bit and i tried again.. i hopped up but quickly fell again. upon closer evaluation i realized my left leg was missing. I looked around and found my leg still standing upright in the hole. As i scooted toward my leg i felt SOOOO EMBARRASSED!!!! i grabbed my leg and was wondering how i would ever be able to finish my paper route with only one leg. when then out of the corner of my eye i saw that loose string from my paper bag flapping in the wind. Suddenly a certain MacGyver instinct suddenly took over me. i reached into my coverall pockets and grabbed out the “buck” brand pocket knife given to me by a friend for a birthday present. using the knife i cut off a long piece of string from my bag. Then i took that piece of string and tied it to my knife and i slowly started “sewing” my leg back on. It took me about a half hour to get it all back on. but it worked as good as new and i have never had any problems with it… But i got gotta say that the time i stepped in the hole and snapped my leg clean off would have to be “hands down” the most embarrassing event in my life.