Stories – Page 4 – Everyday Normal

February 16, 2009

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.

February 9, 2009

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.

February 6, 2009

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.

January 26, 2009

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.

January 16, 2009April 11, 2024

My Brother Jared, The Hero – Setting the Record Straight

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.

Let’s move forward a few years. Jared was now in high school and I was visiting my family. I was sitting in a chair when Jared came home from school. He ran through the front door very quickly and headed back to hide in the bathroom. As he passed me he said, “If any reporters or anything come to the door, they want to talk about a fire, tell them I am not here.” A couple of minutes later, lo and behold, some reporters found their way to our house with notepads and a couple of cameras. In my mind I thought, “Did Jared light the school on fire?” After the reporters had gone I went back to talk to Jared. He told me that he had been in Chemistry class when his teacher was teaching about chemicals and such, when something someone was using caught on fire and spread like, well, like a wildfire. There was one girl who was near to the flames who was engulfed. Jared said he got a hold of the emergency blanket and ran to her. He bundled her up and took her out of the class. When he got out of the class where everyone had run to, he saw another student named David who had taken his shirt off, because it caught fire, and was stomping around the hall cussing his head off. Jared left the girl and took the blanket back in to put out the fire. He told me that the fire had gotten pretty huge and he threw the blanket down on part of it, but it just swirled around the blanket and almost got him. He said the smoke was really unbearable and he decided to head out of there. (I seem to recall that he put out fires on other students as well.) When I saw Jared, he had no hair on his forearms and the hairs higher up his arm had curled ends. He said that he went to the football field house when the reporters came for him. He told the coaches to get rid of them. Then he bolted out of there to come home. He never took any recognition for what he had done. The guy named David that was cussing in the hallway was recognized as the hero of the incident for some reason. I think he was given some scholarship stuff and named as the honoree in some annual local award. I think he even got the key to the city. I have always wished that Jared had talked to the reporters. But I can’t say that I personally would have wanted any attention if I were in his shoes. It is easier to tell him to do it. Jared should have been in item number four on this list. I always thought Jared would be a firefighter or some kind of crocodile hunter. With this incident he pushed me more towards believing the former.

So now, almost a decade late, I give Jared a semi-public piece of recognition. He saved a girl’s life and took no credit. If you see him, shower him with praise. He is a hero.

Full Text

December 8, 2008

Bad Boss

At one point I wanted to do construction for work. I enjoyed shop class in high school and I liked the drafting section so much that the teacher had to make extra assignments for me to keep me busy. While in college I was at talking to a man who owned a construction company when he asked me how much I was making at the telephone survey place I was working at. I told him $7.35 an hour and he started to laugh with another man who was with us. They talked for a little about many people starting at $14 an hour and the like. He told me to come by his office and he would give me a job and he said, with the laugh slightly reappearing, “Oh we can beat $7.35.” I was interested for sure. So I quit my other job and went on down. He gave me the initial talking to about construction and such then he sent me out on my first day of work. I came back and asked him, “What am I going to be paid?” He seemed to not remember laughing at my old wage at all and he asked me again how much I had been making. I told him $7.35 and he came back with “Well, we can put you at $8.00.” $8.00???? I had been a supervisor at a telephone survey company for $7.35. At that job I was inside all day, no manual labor, I got to associate with people all day and it was generally an enjoyable experience at the company for someone who doesn’t have to make phone calls. Now I was going to be working like a dog, sweating and hurting, outdoors many times and in many strange and dangerous places for an extra $0.65 an hour. Remember he laughed at my old wage. $0.65 does not warrant a laughable difference in wage. Especially with the difference in workload.

Well, I kept working for him for peanuts. I learned a few things that everyone should know about how to build and repair things. After working for him for a while he sent me to do a job at an Air Force base. On the base workers must get paid Davis and Bacon wages which is just a minimum that the government requires people building stuff for them get. I was excited as I was to get about $13.00 an hour. I also had to drive a couple of hours to get there everyday. My boss would only give me gas money for half of my trips. I took the early morning drive many times across ice and snow which slowed me down even more. The first paycheck did not include a gas reimbursement and I was told it would be added up near the end of the project. For the last two weeks of the project I put in 15 hours of overtime and was really excited for my check. When I got my check there was no gas reimbursment and my overtime hours had been taken off. I brought it up with my boss and he said I was going to have to talk to the guy who he had put in charge of the project. Like a sucker I just waited till I saw the other guy, which didn’t really happen unless it was a bad time to talk. Then I got laid off because the company had no more projects. I was soured on the construction business because my boss was an idiot and a liar.

November 25, 2008

Work Work Work

My Grandpa taught my siblings and I what a good days work was. When I was thirteen we lived with our Grandparents for a bit and I cannot remember a Saturday when we did not have some project that we were assigned to do. Our tasks included helping Grandpa fix up a car for our Aunt, building a fence, helping to move an old shack to be used as a barber shop and of course, the usual mowing and caring for the yard. I appreciate the lessons learned now, but at the time it felt pretty brutal.

Flash forward a few years when I had moved closer to my grandparents to go to school. My brother Cole and I went down to our Grandparents house for Thanksgiving. We brought along our friend Dave and spent the night in the basement. In the morning we went out to throw a football around. We went to the front yard which had some snow in it. We were tossing the old pigskin around when my Grandpa came out and said, “You should go to the backyard where there is less snow.” We all thought, “Yeah that makes sense.” But there was still something in the back of our minds that didn’t seem right. Dave can smell manual labor from 10 miles away and disappeared into the house without saying anything. Cole and I went around to the back and hadn’t even thrown a pass when Grandpa said, “Hey, while you’re back here, come give me a hand with this.” We dropped the ball and went to help. It seemed like a 2 minute task. He wanted us to load an old fridge onto a trailer. We loaded it up easily enough then Grandpa asked us to drive it over to his shed and unload it. We got to the shed and we had to reorganize the shed with him. You can see how things just snowball.

Well, after we were done we went back into the house to find Dave. He was in the basement playing Grandma’s video games. Dave said he knew what was coming so he got out of there. That’s just fine, especially since he was a guest and shouldn’t have to work, it’s just funny that he disappeared so quickly.

We wouldn’t really remember just throwing a football around, but we definitely remember the time Grandpa tricked us into working on Thanksgiving morning.

October 28, 2008

I Don’t Golf Anymore

I used to like to go golfing every now and then, but now, for me, it has lost its luster and any enjoyment that I may have once had is gone. This desire to hit a ball and then walk in the direction that it went didn’t slowly wither away, but rather was killed inside of me one day as I was starting a round with a friend. Come along and I will tell you the tale.

I wasn’t an extremely frequent golfer and as such, I did not see any real reason to purchase my own set of clubs. It would have been nice to have clubs that would work better for someone with a 6 foot 7 inch frame but I thought that borrowing a set of clubs from my friend was fine. He had one driver that was longer than the others which was my weapon of choice when whacking balls in various directions. For some reason, that I will not tell now, his long driver was missing on the day in question when I began this round with another friend.

I watched my friend tee off with great ease and then his brother-in-law, who came along with us, hit a good ball as well. I set up my ball and chose the longest driver that my friend had remaining in his bag when I borrowed it. I squared up and got in my usual not-so-confident stance. I felt like I was really bending over to reach the ball though. I reared back and swung a mighty swing. WHIFF!!! Nothing but air. Ouch, that’s embarrassing.

Oh well, it happens sometimes. I bent my knees a little more to really get down there and lined up for another shot. As I did this, two sweet old ladies pulled up behind us in their golf cart. I pulled back for my redemption shot and let her rip. I could have sworn that the ball went flying for about a mile, but when I looked down at my feet, there it was.

My friend and his brother-in-law had a good little laugh at that one and I think I heard one of the old ladies chuckle a little. At this moment I swore that I would not strike out. I tried to realign my chakra and calm down for a good solid hit. I swung again and missed.

Both of the old ladies laughed out loud at this miss which just encouraged my friend’s laughter more. After this I gave up on good form and control over where the ball goes. I decided, it was better to go after a stray ball than to look the fool again. I went down for a sloppy fourth swing and missed completely.

The laughter from the third miss had not died down yet and so only continued and grew louder with this fourth. I grew more frantic. I had to get that ball out of there so I could get away from these once sweet old ladies and away from the evil laughter.

With my heart rate raised and all my confidence crushed and murdered, I took an even more sloppy and hurried swing. It should be no surprise that I missed again a fifth time. Was I going to strike out twice? Through the roaring laughter I took a one armed swing which was once again errant.

I had struck out, not only once, but twice. For my seventh try I decided to settle down and maybe get a real hit in, but to no avail. Both of the old ladies had fallen out of their cart and were rolling on the ground with tears pouring from their eyes (At least I felt like they had.) I am certain that my friend and his brother-in-law really did have tears from laughing. It felt like I was at Def Comedy Jam but there were no comedians.

This was it, my eighth try. I was determined to not fail again. When you put your mind and will to it you can do anything. I pulled back and pushed all of the scorn and shame that I had felt down my arms to the end of the short club I was using. It swung like a wrecking ball towards a gigantic building that could not be missed. I was swinging for every starving child in the world, every abused woman and anyone who had ever been trodden down in this life. There was a special power in this swing that was going to solve all the world’s problems when it hit that little dimpled representation of all that is evil in this world. As you can tell, by the fact that you still have problems, I missed. I picked up the ball, threw it as far as I could and quickly walked away from the howling laughter and searing cackles.

I don’t golf anymore.

October 22, 2008

Jumping Phase

As someone who was once a young boy I must say I am guilty as charged in this article.

It was an exciting time in life. Everything in the world was up. I had discovered that I could jump and actually touch things located higher than my usual reach. I must also bring attention to the fact that this stage also included, for me, the desire to brace my body between two walls in hallways and climb upward. This joyful and wondrous time came quickly to a close when I one day hit my head on the ceiling fan.

I saw two of my brothers fighting in the living room on the other side of the coffee table. In an effort to get to the other side of the table as quickly as possible to break up the fight, I jumped over the table which was below the fan. The fan was on and spinning at top speed and after my forehead hit the blade I fell to the ground hitting my head on the corner of the coffee table on the way down. This did break up the fight as my brothers were startled by all the ruckus and then began to laugh at me.

October 21, 2008

Category: Stories