Dear Baby E,
You are now 7 months old. As I write this, you are a little cranky because you’re teething. I’m cheering you up by clapping my hands together, which is very amusing to you, for some reason. I don’t care what I have to do to get you to smile, no matter how small or goofy it may be. Seeing you smile is one of the greatest things in the whole world and I will do whatever I have to keep a smile on your face.
Well this could end up being disastrous. I mean, what if what I write ends up making absolutely no sense? Wait, does anything I ever write ever make any sense? I don’t know. Jeez.. This is gonna suck. Continue reading
Write page three of your autobiography.
Autobiography: Page 3
I accomplished a great many things as a youngster. I had a memorable childhood and many enjoyable times. I achieved many successes, and I’d like to take a moment to list some of my greatest awards:
Winner of the Great Pee Contest. My brothers and I competed in the Great Pee Contest. Yes, it was a pissing contest. The goal is to see who can urinate highest on the wall. I may have had a slight advantage since I was the oldest (and still am…weird) and, thus, bigger, but that doesn’t subtract from the pride I feel for winning this hard-fought contest. My stream reached so high the mirror needed to be taken down from the bathroom wall so that the wall could be cleaned.
My dad was pissed, though. I’m not sure why. You’re supposed to be proud when your child wins. Campbell Hausfeld was intrigued and wanted to copy my technological prowess for their new power washer line, but since I was a minor a deal couldn’t be reached.
Most Gruesome Injury. This is an award that I could honestly live without, but since I have it I display it with pride. When I was seven, my brothers and I were playing in the basement, where my dad had built us a huge toy box out of huge pieces of plywood. Unfortunately, when the gargantuan lid for this toy box was open it rested against the railing for the steps going upstairs. I happened to be retrieving a toy from said toy box as my youngest brother was heading up the stairs. Dragging his hand along the rail. His hand hit the lid and sent it careening down.
I saw the lid zeroing in on me, and quickly yanked my hand out from the toy box. The lid seemed to nick my left ring finger, so I brought my hand up so I could examine it, only to find the tip of my ring finger was missing. ER doctors were able to sew it back on, but it didn’t grow back properly and has looked fairly gruesome ever since.
Most Spectacular Bike Wreck. Ironically, I won this award the very first time I sat atop a bicycle. A friend convinced me to take his bike to the top of a hill and to ride it down. Not wanting to be a “chicken,” I mounted the bike and it began to roll. Down the sidewalk.
I’m not sure why my friend put me on the sidewalk. Maybe so I wouldn’t hit, or be hit by, a car. Maybe because he’s a cruel bastard. I’ll never know.
So there I was, steadily picking up speed while traversing the slim sidewalk down a steep hill. By the time I reached the bottom I was traveling at a pretty high rate of speed, and that’s when it happened.
A little girl had sat down to play on the sidewalk. Shit. Do I run into her or attempt to steer this runaway train off the tracks? I wisely (for that girl’s sake, anyhow) chose the latter. So I slowly veered left off the sidewalk and into a neighbor’s yard only to find a fire hydrant directly in my path. I was going too fast to avoid it. The bike struck the hydrant, at what I can only guess was between 20 and 30 miles per hour. The bike’s forward momentum halted. Mine didn’t.
This dramatic reenactment of my accident is a little TOO dramatic. The bike didn’t fall apart, but I did go flying like this.
I went flying across the yard. Somehow during my flight I flipped forward so that when I landed, I landed on my back. Luckily I was unhurt in the accident, but I laid there for some time trying to collect my thoughts and wondering why the hell I let myself get talked into doing something so fantastically stupid.
Most Dislocated Elbows in One Week. As a 2-year old, I had each elbow dislocated in the same week. As I was walking along one day, I started to lose my balance. My mother grabbed my hand and yanked on it in an attempt to keep me upright. Pop!
A week later, my babysitter was swinging my around by my arms. Not sure how it happened, but somehow my other elbow popped out of its socket.
Yeah, mom! It shouldn’t hurt!!
Social services showed up at our house the next day. I have no idea why.
There were other dubious awards won during my childhood, but this is the most notable of them. My trophy room is full of nonsensical awards and ridiculous ribbons. I had a proud and wonderful childhood, and these was just some of the highlights. Next we will discuss why my parents are to blame for every flaw I possess, and how nothing bad I do is ever my fault.
So that’s awesome My dad told my 13-year old son to put ice cream bars in the fridge and he complied without question.
Yesterday we had an event at the house. The roof over the bay window at the house leaked through the ceiling…and onto the entertainment center. Luckily my wife and the twins were home yesterday when this happened and were able to move everything away from the leak.
Last night, after a repair man had fixed the roof and patched the dry wall, my dad and I started piecing the living room back together. I was behind the entertainment center hooking the cables back up to the TV, but I was having trouble seeing anything back there because it was dark. I reflexively reached for my phone, which has an app on it that turns the camera flash into a flashlight. Then I remembered Baby C had it because he was eating and will only eat if he’s watching Elmo.
So my dad went and grabbed his phone and shoved it right in front of the connections on the back of the TV. Not only was this not helpful because his phone is so huge it was completely blocking my vision, but the light from his screen was insufficient. So I yanked the phone from his hand and downloaded the Galaxy Torch app for his phone.
Once downloaded I was able to utilize his phone as a flashlight. Once my dad had noticed what I had done he was amazed.
“It turns your phone into a flashlight?” he asked like an excited child.
“Yup,” I answered.
“I gotta get that for my phone!”
“Dad, this is your phone,” I deadpanned.
“Oh, yeah.”
Un bouffon.
Oy vey. Sometimes it’s extremely difficult being the only intelligent person participating in a conversation.
What question do you hate to be asked? Why?
I hate being asked questions with obvious answers. I’m impatient and have an intolerance for stupidity, which unfortunately, there’s an overabundance of in our society.
For example, a couple of weeks ago, after my boss left work for the day, he called my desk phone.
“End user support. This is Twindaddy speaking,” I answered in the most professional voice I could muster.
“Hey, this is (your boss). Have you left yet?” he asked stupidly.
Now, if you’re confused as to why this is a stupid question, I’ll explain it to you. Once. I answered my DESK PHONE. Where the hell else would I have been? If I had left I wouldn’t have even heard the frickin’ phone ring!
The dumbest question I get, and have been getting for the last 13 years, is, “Are they twins?” This goes right through me. Of course they’re twins! They look the same. They sound the same. They are the same height. When they were younger, they wore the same outfits, only in different colors so we could easily tell which one was which. We (my ex and I) still were asked if they were twins.
Please, people. Don’t ask questions with obvious answers.
Are they twins? Really? You have to ask? (These aren’t mine, by the way, but mine look just as identical)
That’s what question I hate being asked the most. What about you?
I ask you, dear reader, is there a song which, every time you hear it, it reminds you of a certain period of your life? A time full of happy (or sad) memories? Do you get nostalgic every time you hear this certain song? A song you can relate to? When you hear the lyrics you can readily identify with them?
I do. And I do. And I do.
There are actually a handful of songs that instigate this nostalgia, but I’ll talk about one in particular today. The song is called (10) and Counting, performed by Boy Sets Fire.
This song describes a time when you’re so downtrodden, so destitute, that you’re literally scraping to make ends meet. In this song they dealt with the pain by escaping in alcohol, which is something I have never done, but nevertheless this song still reminds me of my senior year in high school.
My mother, my brother, and I all shared an apartment in Jeffersontown, Kentucky. My step-dad (who is a ginormous douche-canoe who married my mother even though he was in the closet) was an over-the-r0ad truck driver. He decided, for reasons I don’t know, to stop sending money home to help pay the rent. My mother worked 3rd shift at Wal-Mart. She barely brought home enough money to make her car payment and pay the rent.
So my brother and I got part-time jobs. Well, mine was supposed to be part-time and it ended up being full-time which almost caused me to flunk out of school, but that’s another post for another time. I got a job working for Mr. Gatti’s pizza and my brother worked for KFC.
The Colonel says, “It’s finger-lickin’ good, bitches!”
Because we both worked for restaurants, and we both closed every night, we were able to bring food home every night. Since there was hardly any money for groceries this food was our salvation.
Each night my brother and I would get home at roughly the same time and we’d eagerly exchange our food as I was tired of pizza and he was tired of chicken.
“Give me the hot wings!” I’d yell.
“Give me the pizza, bitch!” he’d retort.
All of this was said endearingly, of course.
So we would trade food and leave the leftovers in the fridge for mom and for breakfast in the morning. We literally subsisted on pizza and chicken for most of the school year. I’d often get called in on my days off to work. Being that I was working full-time, in addition to being a full-time student, I was frequently fatigued and indifferent when I received these calls. But they knew all they had to do was say, “I’ll let you have a couple free pizza’s,” and I’d say yes. Lord only knows what they thought of me for being so easy to bribe with free food, but that food fed my family so I really didn’t care what they thought.
Evidently it’s just Gatti’s Pizza now. They appear to have dropped the formal name. How gauche. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
On the nights I closed, I was able to make my own pizzas. Mr. Gatti’s made their dough fresh daily and pitched whatever was left over at the end of the day. So instead of pitching it all, those of us who closed were allowed to make our own pizza after everything was finished for the night. My specialty was affectionately dubbed, “the mo’ cheese pizza.” My brother and I loved this. Each night I’d pile pepperoni and sausage onto the crust and then pile loads of cheese on the pizza – hence the name mo’ cheese - and, wa la, we had our pizza. Once, cooked, this pizza looked like a lake full of melted, gooey cheese that you could just swim in. And it was fantastic.
It was this cheesy, only more so. I heart cheese.
In addition to going to school and working, my nights were spent caring for a one-year old girl. See, one of my mom’s co-workers had been beaten by her boyfriend. The boyfriend was convicted and sent to jail, but the coworker couldn’t afford to live on her own. So mom let her move in with us. She worked 3rd shift as well, so it was left to me to care for the daughter while they were at work. Luckily the little girl was very easy to care for. She was well-behaved and always slept through the night.
Some might say or think that these are sad, or even grim, memories. The fact that we had no money for food didn’t matter to us as we were able to get food via other avenues. We didn’t need gas money because both KFC and Mr. Gatti’s were within walking distance of our apartment. I look back fondly on these days. Even though we didn’t have much, we had each other and that was all we needed. We had many a great time every night trading our food and telling each other about our respective days. Plus, it felt a little rewarding to be able to help mom out in whatever small ways we could. We both brought enough food home every night that the only thing we really ever needed to get from the grocery store were a few odd and end things such as napkins, paper plates, and stuph to drink. Even though most of my money was going into a savings account so I could get my own car, I pitched in a couple of times to pay the utility bills. This time in my life taught me a lot of lessons, the most important of which is this: money doesn’t equal happiness. You can be dirt-poor and still be happy.
Is there a song that makes you nostalgic? What memories does that song evoke?
I was actually contemplating this topic not too long ago and thinking of writing a post about it. How fortuitous that The Daily Post made me follow through with this.
My earliest memory is of my youngest brother falling off of the changing table and breaking his leg. Neat, huh?
See, I was 4 years old at the time. My mother had put my brother on the changing table, but needed to go get something before she could change him (I can’t remember what). She asked me if I would hold my brother on the table so she could go get whatever she needed. I did.
When my mother returned, I headed out of the room. I was halfway through the bedroom door when I turned and looked back into the room. I have no idea what made me look back. But nevertheless I turned in time to see my mother standing there fiddling with whatever it was she had gone to get while my brother rolled right off the changing table.
My brother hit the floor and immediately began to wail. My mother dropped what was in her hands, threw them up in the air, and shouted, “I BROKE MY BABY!”
My brother, who was only a few months old at the time, ended up in a body cast. Evidently they didn’t want him moving his leg at all so they mummified him. I can only imagine how much fun it was for my mom to change his diaper after that.
This isn’t him, but this picture is pretty much what he looked like afterward. (Photo courtesy of judysturman.typepad.com)
Anyhow, that, dearest reader, is my earliest recollection. What’s yours?
I started doing this a year and a half ago as a funny way to correct the twins’ grammar. It’s not really a big deal and I don’t get really irritated by it, it’s just something funny I do.
However, the other day it struck me that I’ve been doing this for over a year and they still haven’t caught on. What the hell?
Basically, when either one of me asks me if they can do something (Dad, can I go outside to play? Dad, can get something to eat? Dad, can I ask you an unending stream of pointless questions without you getting upset? ) I look at them and say, “I don’t know. Can you?”
They always get it right the second time…thankfully. And THEN they ask, “May I…”
The boys truly are smart. They do great in school, but I guess they’re just at the age where their attention span is about as long as a celebrity marriage and they still haven’t developed any common sense.
Anyhow, I suggest using this trick at work. It’s really fun doing this to your coworkers. For instance, a week or so ago I had just gotten finished using a particular computer to ship a package. The guy that sits next to me walked up to the computer and, unsure if I was still using it, asks, “Can I use this computer?”
Out of habit I replied, “I don’t know. Can you?”
A bird came flying at me immediately followed by an impressive string of obscenities.
So try it next time somebody asks you if they can “do” something and report back here and leave the results in the comments.
My kids are slow at, well, everything. The one year old has an excuse because, hey, he’s one. The twins, however, have no excuse.
This morning they were ready for school almost an hour before we had to leave. At 7:10, I told them it was time to go fully anticipating it would take them 5 minutes to actually get downstairs even though they were already dressed and their notebooks for school were down in the living room. So I went to pack my lunch and brush my teeth.
At 7:15 they still weren’t downstairs. So I went to the steps and hollered for them again. I then went to take my Zyrtec. They still weren’t downstairs.
I walked over to the steps and hollered one more time only to have Baby B come to the top of the steps to tell me Baby A was taking a dump.
So even though they were ready almost an hour before it was time to leave that little punk waited until I said it was time to leave before going to drop a deuce. Nice.
Instead of leaving at 7:15 like I had planned we didn’t leave until 7:25. Guess how late I was to work? Yup, 10 minutes.
I think every time they make me late I’m going to make them late so they get detention or something. This is getting old. But it’s all good, now. I’m chillin’ with a Mike’s Hard Lemonade…
So after our discussion about birds and bees the other day, Baby A’s girlfriend randomly shows up at my front door. She’d never been here before and the only time I’ve ever seen her is at school functions like the boys’ basketball games or at a school play.
Anyhow, I answered the door and there she is. She asks if Baby A is home and I asked her to wait while I hollered for him. He comes barreling down the stairs like a stampede of wild buffalo and goes to the door. He steps outside for a minute and then comes back in and asks if she can come in. I was immediately skeptical. I had just gotten done discussing sex with both of my boys. Bad omen. Naturally, I started asking questions. Is she just coming in for a minute or is she wanting to stay awhile? What exactly do you two plan on doing? How did you know where I live? How did you get here?
In the midst of asking these questions, I see a busted-ass minivan pull out of the driveway and take off. That, evidently, was her step-dad.
Now we have problems. This guy just drops of someone else’s kid at my door and takes off as soon as she’s inside. That’s bad in many ways. First, he has no idea who I am. I could be a sex offender (I’m not but I’m a sexy offender – okay, not really, but I can dream, can’t I?) or some other psychopath that might hurt his wife’s daughter. Secondly, even if I’m not some serial rapist how does he know that I’ll supervise those two while she’s here? I could be just as negligent a parent as he is and just let them do whatever they want. Third, it’s just fucking rude to drop your kid off and run like that. I don’t know you and you don’t know me. You just don’t do that to people. I had no number to call in case of emergency. I had no idea what her parents names were and I still don’t.
So my anticipated afternoon of relaxation was not so relaxing. I had to consistently check-in on those two to make sure nothing illegal was going on (hey, I don’t know this girl) and I had no idea when or even if someone was coming to pick her up.
After a couple of hours had gone by I had just about had enough and was going to make her give me a phone number of someone I could call when suddenly a horn starts blowing annoyingly from my driveway. Before I know it, she’s out the door and gone.
Later I asked Baby A how she knew where we lived and he was at a loss. The only thing he could come up with is that they went to his mom’s house first, which is a block away, and got directions from her.
Needless to say, if she shows up on my doorstep again like some stray dog my ass is marching out to that busted-ass minivan and having a word with somebody. That shit doesn’t fly around here.
