This morning I was getting into my car that was parked right outside of the apartment. Parked next to me was a truck, and in the bed of the truck was a man who was putting away his tools. He was parked pretty close to me and had his front door open which was going to make it difficult for me to back out.
“I’ll be done is a second, man,” he said.
“No problem,” I replied.
I got into my car, and after he finished putting everything into his truck and shut his door, he motioned to me that I should pull down my window.
When I did, he said, “Hey, just wanted you to know that I do a lot of utility work around here. Plumping, carpeting, whatever.”
At this point he took a business card out of his pocket.
“Here you go. This isn’t my business card, but if you need any assistance in your apartment give me a call.”
“Will do.”
I took the card, said goodbye, and drove away. As I was driving, I looked at the card. When he said, “this isn’t my business card,” he wasn’t kidding. He gave me the business card of a woman named Rebecca who distributes natural supplements that strengthen your immune system.
?
What the hell? How… wh…. I… I don’t get it. Why did he give me this? He knew that it wasn’t his. How am I supposed to contact him when neither his name nor his number is on the card? I’ve tried to come up with possible scenarios all day that would explain why he did this. I’ve come up with three…
1) He pulled out the wrong business card, and instead of going back into his pocket and picking out the right one, he felt that he was too close to handing me a business card and decided to just let me have it and inform me that it wasn’t his. But that just seems too stupid.
2) He actually isn’t a handyman, but a full time business card distributor. And I must say, if that’s true, it kind of works. I’m a little interested in this supplement that improves my immune system… or at least contacting the person who sells it to see why this creepy dude had her business card. Either way, he delivered that card this morning, and it’s all I’ve been able to think about since. He might be a marketing genius disguised as a handyman.
3) He kidnapped the woman on the card, and in her attempt to be found, since she knew he had a knack for handing out his business cards, she switched his cards with hers. The man, not wanting to appear suspicious, gave me the business card instead of withdrawing it rapidly and saying, “WHAT HAS SHE DONE?!?! ANOTHER DAY IN THE DUNGEON FOR HER!!!!!”
From the age of 7 to 10, I had long hair. At least that’s what I like to say. But in reality, if I’m being perfectly honest, I had a mullet. Total business in the front and party in the back.
(Not Third Grade Me, But Close)
My hair was down to my shoulders, and for reasons unknown, the ladies loved it. I’ve never been more popular with the opposite sex than when I had my hermaphrodite haircut. However, although there were benefits to looking like a young Debbie Gibson, there was also a downfall: gender identity.
I knew I was a boy. My classmates knew I was a boy. My teachers knew I was a boy. But there was a group of people that not only weren’t aware that I was a boy, but also didn’t believe me when I informed them of this fact: the elderly.
Although there may have been many times in my childhood where I was accused of being a girl by an old person, there are only two times in particular that I can remember clearly.
The First Incident Occurred During An American Legion Christmas Party.
Since my grandparents belong to the American Legion, my family was allowed to go to their Christmas party. I was nine at the time, and any kid 12 and under was eligible to receive a Christmas gift. All I had to do was go up to the old man that was handing out the presents and tell him my age. Sounds easy, right? Not when you’re a little boy that looks like a little girl.
I walked up to the gentlemen, said “9,” and stood there. He stared at me for a moment and then handed me a present labeled ‘9/F.’
The “F” stood for female.
I got a girls present.
I looked at it for a moment and said, “No, I’m a boy.” He responded with, “No you’re not.”
It’s tough when an elderly man accuses a young boy of lying about his gender. This person is older and wiser than me, and since I was always told to respect and trust my elders, it made me question myself for a moment. Am I a girl? My older brother had always called me a girl, but I had always figured that he was joking.
After reassuring myself that I was a boy, I stood my ground.
“No, I’m a boy.”
His response: “Really?”
I guess after a certain age, politeness gets thrown out the window.
“Yes.”
“That’s surprising.”
Holding back tears, I received the present that I wished I had never asked for.
The Other Time This Happened Was On My Paper Route.
When I was in second grade, I shared a paper route with my older brother. On a night when I was collecting the money that my customers owed, I went up to the door of a large white house and knocked. A man in his nineties answered.
“Hello little girl. How can I help you?”
I didn’t feel like correcting him. I told him that I was the paper boy and I was collecting for the Daily Courier News. He went in and got some money, and when he returned he began some small talk.
“Didn’t your sister deliver our paper the other day?”
I figured he meant my mom, who occasionally frequently delivered papers for me when I would complain too much about delivering them myself.
“That was my mom.”
“No, I know your mom. That was your sister.”
I was confused. At the time my sister was probably 6 months old. I wasn’t around her all the time, but I was pretty sure that she wasn’t sneaking out of the house and delivering papers for me, especially since she couldn’t walk yet. Then it hit me. He was talking about my older brother, who shared the same feminine haircut as me. I was happy to know that I wasn’t the only child that struggled with gender identity.
I remember being 7 years old and hearing “Pump up the Jam” by Technotronic for the first time. Back then I thought that it was the best song ever created. Now I’m 28 and still waiting for someone to my prove 7 year old self wrong.
I remember the first time I drove a car alone. I just got my license and was extremely excited. I yelled “WOOOOOOO!” as soon as I was on the road. Two seconds later I pulled into an intersection and almost got hit by a truck. I remember never wanting to drive again after that happened.
I remember my first grade teacher telling the class that if you swallowed a penny, you would die. That same year I was laying on my back when a penny fell into my mouth and I accidentally swallowed it. I was convinced that I was going to die that evening. After miraculously making it through the night, I told my teacher that I had swallowed a penny and survived. She called me a liar. I love public school.
I remember hating the Channel 11 show Pinwheel, but was forced to watch it because it aired between my two favorite programs, Sesame Street and Todays Special. When I say forced to watch it, I mean that instead of actually going outside for once, my lazy childhood self decided to sit there and watch it. I probably spent 127 hours of my childhood watching a show that I didn’t like. I did the same this past Winter when my girlfriend decided to get into So You Think You Can Dance.
I remember thinking OJ didn’t do it. At the time I chose to ignore the overwhelming evidence against him and focus on the fact that I liked his character in the Naked Gun movies. As much as I tried to hold onto this belief over the years, it has become apparent that he was probably the murderer since he WROTE A hypothetical BOOK ABOUT HOW HEwould have KILLED HIS WIFE.
I remember the lunch ladies at my grade school always mispronouncing my first name. They called me “See-Ann.” Combine that with their mispronunciation of my last name, and you get a child that all the lunch ladies knew as “See-Ann Mil-in-du-an-nah-moe.”
I remember in second grade we were given personalized blue cards. On this card was your name, then four human traits, one of which was circled to indicate which trait best described you. I believe the traits were “Smart,” “Friendly,” “Athletic,” and “Good Smile.” “Good Smile” was circled on mine. At the time I thought it was great. The early twenties good looking TA was the one who filled out my card, and for weeks I would smile every time I was around her since she obviously loved it. When I got older I realized that she was a liar. I had a terrible gap toothed smile at that age. It looked disgusting. To make things worse, I realized that she also didn’t think I was smart, friendly, or athletic. That little blue card is a daily reminder that my second grade TA felt that I was a waste of an eight year old. I love public school.
I was 8 years old. I hadn’t been sledding all year, and my friend’s dad had promised to take us after school.
Like any other 8 year old, I had done my fair share of sledding. My family had a long blue plastic sled that we used every winter, and I had become very comfortable with it. Unfortunately I didn’t bring it on this trip, so instead I had to use the extra grey tin saucer sled that my friend had.
My family had one of those sleds in our garage. However my brother and I never used it because it looked old, dangerous and stupid. But I guess my friend’s parents refused to fork over the $7 it cost to buy a sled from the twentieth century, so these were the only kind that they had. I was skeptical about using an unfamiliar sled, but I was assured that they were just as fun.
We went sledding at the Wing Park Pavilion in Elgin, Il.
This was, and still may be, a local hot spot for sledding. You have to look in the back of the picture to see the hill, and seeing it now I realize that it looks pretty weak. But as a child this hill was Mt. Everest.
For our first run, my friend and I decided to go down the hill on our tin death sleds at the same time. As we began, it immediately became obvious that my friend was an expert at controlling these sleds… and it immediately became clear that I had no idea what I was doing.
For about one second we were traveling along side each other. Then he decided to slow down his speed, while I did nothing of the sort because I didn’t know how. Keep in mind that I’m 8 years old and unaware that the physics behind slowing down a sled is consistent regardless of what model or brand is being used.
I was flying down this hill at a dangerous speed. Then about halfway down, as I was approaching the sound barrier, my saucer sled spun my body around 180 degrees without decreasing in speed.
Now I was going down this hill backwards at a speed that in only reached in time travel experiments. As the picture above shows, there are scattered trees on this hill. On top of that, on this particular day this place was packed with fellow sledders. So not being able to see in front of me is the worst thing that could happen.
I vaguely remember my friend yelling, “jump off!” But I was so terrified that my body was in a state of comatose. All I could do was hold onto that sled and hope that there was a God.
By some miracle I avoided all the trees and innocent bystanders. But that didn’t mean I was in the clear. If you look at the picture again you will notice a group of benches at the bottom of the hill. That day, while going down that hill backwards at the speed of light, I slammed back first into the corner of one of those benches.
It immediately knocked the wind out of me. I blacked out for a second, and when I came to there was a bunch of kids staring at me with shocked expressions. They probably thought they just saw a kid die right before their eyes.
I decided to get up. This must have scared the kids even more, because when I got up, because the wind had gotten knocked out of me, I was making this noise…
The kids just stared as I was stumbling towards them. I remember one kid saying,
“Shit, are you alright?”
But I couldn’t stop making that noise, and I couldn’t walk straight. I imagine with my moaning and crippled posture, I looked a lot like Frankenstein. And just like kids do when they see Frankenstein, they all ran away from me when I got too close. My friend’s dad rushed down to help me out, and after catching my breath and getting the feeling back in my spine, I headed towards the top of the hill.
Because of my horrific experience, I was hesitant to sled anymore. As my friend and his little brother went up and down the hill, I stayed at the top and observed. My friend’s dad, feeling bad for me, went back to his car and got a different sled that he thought I might be more comfortable with. It turned out to be the same type of long plastic sled that I was accustomed to.
What the hell?!? This guy had this in his trunk the whole time?!? He put me on his rocket ship widow maker sled when he had a plastic one designed to not kill children in his trunk all along?!? I was baffled. But I was also ready to sled again.
When my friend and his brother were sledding without me, they kept hitting a manmade ramp that was built at the bottom of the hill. They did it with ease, and the air time they were getting was nothing that would suggest that this was a dangerous undertaking. So I decided to forget about the past and dominate the ramp at the bottom of the hill.
I was off. I was going down the hill at a reasonable speed while controlling my sled’s every maneuver. I was in my comfort zone, and as I approached the ramp, I was proud of my sledding abilities.
I hit the ramp.
……….
I have very few visual memories from my early childhood. If I had to count them, I would say that I can visually remember about four or five things. What I experienced here was one of them.
After hitting the ramp, I was immediately looking at my legs and feet against a winter sky backdrop. Confused? So was I.
For reasons unknown, instead of simply hitting a bump and going over it, the ramp threw me into the air at a 90 degree angle. As a visual, imagine the kid in this picture, only instead of laying on the ground, I’m six feet above the ground and flying.
It seemed like I was in the air for hours. I knew I was in for a crash landing, and all I could do was brace myself. Eventually I hit the ground, falling on my back and hitting my head onto the pavement.
What a terrible day. I was so excited two hours earlier. But at this point I had tried sledding twice, and I had failed twice. I was done. There was no way I was going down that hill anymore. Ever. In fact, I don’t think I’ve been on that hill since.
My friend’s dad rushed down the hill again and helped me back up. I was a wreck. I couldn’t stop getting hurt. I felt like the coyote from the roadrunner cartoons. His dad realized that I had been through enough trauma and decided to take me home. When I walked into my house my mom asked me if I had fun. Instead of explaining my story, I just broke down and cried.
It was two nights ago and I was watching the Men’s NCAA National Championship game. I was in good spirits because earlier the Cubs had won their opening day game against the Braves. (I turned it off after the top of the 1st knowing that they would win. If you try telling me that they lost by more than 10, I won’t believe you.)
At about 10pm, the NCAA game was nearing its end. Butler was down by one, and they took a timeout with 13 seconds left. This was so exciting that I decided to get up on my feet. They came out of the timeout and got back onto the court when…
BOOM!
… a lightning bolt hit the telephone pole located about 20 feet from where I was standing. No joke.
I love watching thunderstorms, so that night I had the shades open. At the moment of impact there was a thunderous boom and a huge flash of light that I saw out of the corner of my eye. I looked out the window to see sparks pouring down from the telephone pole.
Probably thinking that I finally blew up the oven, my girlfriend ran out of the bedroom startled and wondering what just happened. I told her about the lightning bolt and pointed at the telephone pole, which was now slightly on fire.
I was excited. This was closest I ever came to lightning, and I immediately thought of the Saved by the Bell episode where Screech got hit by lightning and could tell the future. Even though I didn’t get hit, maybe I was close enough to the lightning bolt to have gained at least a little psychic ability. “I’m going to buy a lotto ticket tomorrow,” I thought to myself. But then I quickly realized a problem.
The electricity was out.
With 13 seconds left in one of the greatest NCAA final games in history, a damn lightning bolt struck the nearest telephone pole and cut the electricity. It was like something that would happen on According to Jim.
About fifteen minutes later the fire department showed up, and a lone fireman walked up to the telephone pole and shone his flashlight towards the top of it. I thought to myself, “I can be a great help!” So I went downstairs and approached the fireman with vital information.
“That pole was hit by lighting.”
This was no help at all. They had undoubtedly gotten a phone call about a telephone pole getting hit by lightning, and it was obvious that the telephone pole with the tiny electrical fire was the one that was hit. He responded with,
“I know.”
Hmmm. Awkward. I thought I would lighten the mood.
“The electricity went out with 13 seconds left in the basketball game. You think I can get a discount from Comcast?”
I don’t know what I expected him to say here. Maybe deep down I was hoping that he would say, “That’s hilarious! You know, my brother is a Hollywood agent and he’s looking for some talent! A fresh voice like yours would be perfect! Here’s his number!” But that wasn’t the case. His response was,
“I don’t know.”
(Four second pause)
“We got called here with three seconds left in the game.”
I replied, ”bummer.”
“………..”
I didn’t know what to say. Should I thank him for his service? Should I tell him that he’s a hero? After standing there for an uncomfortable twenty seconds, I decided to just say, “good night.”
With no electricity and no battery operated cable televisions laying around, I went to sleep. The next thing I know…
BEBEBEBEBEBEBEBE!!!!!!!!
It’s four a.m. and the fire alarm is going off. Me and the girlfriend wake up in a panic since we’ve never heard the fire alarm go off before… which is obvious considering how we both reacted to it.
My emergency reaction was to get up and run to the bathroom, because I really had to go. While in there I could hear our neighbors evacuating the building. When I got out of the bathroom, the girlfriend was on a chair, disconnecting our smoke detector. Unfortunately the smoke detector was not the alarm that was going off… it was the apartment complex’s fire alarm.
So basically, in the event of a crisis, my initial emergency response is to use to the bathroom, and her initial emergency response is to disconnect any device that is warning us of the emergency. I don’t see fireman in our occupational futures.
We quickly got dressed and headed outside. Since I was hurrying, I didn’t really pay attention to my wardrobe until we were surrounded by our neighbors. I quickly realized that I was wearing pajama pants and a seven year old University of Illinois long sleeved shirt with a huge hole in the nipple.
Understand that this fire drill is the first time I have seen many of the people that live in my building, and my attire was that of a struggling stripper. To make things worse, a majority of my neighbors looked pretty nice. People were wearing khaki’s, polo shirts, dress pants… I felt like a homeless guy that snuck into a J-Crew photo shoot. I don’t know why they were dressed so nice. Maybe they have special fire alarm outfits. Maybe everyone in my building works at Abercrombie. Either way they looked great, and I was exposing a nipple.
Eventually we got the clear from the firemen and were allowed to go back inside. Once in the apartment, we tried to reconnect the smoke detector with no luck. After a few minutes we decided to go to bed and worry about it in the morning. Unfortunately once every minute the smoke detector would beep, and even though it was in the other room, it was loud and completely annoying. So we removed the battery from the smoke detector, placed it next to the bed, and layed back down. Then a minute later…
beep
My girlfriend, without moving, simply said, “how?”
I laughed, put the alarm under a huge pile of clothing, and went to sleep.
Before reading this, be forewarned that this is my dweebiest blog to date
The Main Focus is a Video Game
I use the term “gamer”
I use the term “game wizard”
There is a Star Wars Episode III reference
I admit to almost seeing a Disney movie by myself
Please enjoy. And don’t judge.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!
With this sabbatical I made various goals for myself. Some goals were pretty lofty (win the lottery twice) and some not so lofty (wake up at least once a week before the street lights come on). In between those two extremes was a goal I’ve had since I was ten:
Beat Road Rash 2
I loved this video game when I was younger. To sum it up in a few words, it’s a motorcycle racing game for Sega Genesis where you fight other players for five levels, each level having five separate races you must win to advance.
As passionate as I was about this game when I was a kid, I could never get past the third level. As time went on my interest in the game diminished. My family eventually got rid of our Genesis when I was in high school, and I was never able to conquer this beast.
For years it was always at the back of my mind that I never beat this game. So a few Christmas’ ago I bought my little brother a Genesis and this video game, telling him it would be something cool to have when he goes away to college. Who was I kidding? The truth was that I had unfinished business with Road Rash 2 and haven’t been able to sleep for over a decade because of it.
I thought beating this game would be one of my easier sabbatical goals to accomplish. I was wrong. This game is impossible. As an adult (kind of), I still couldn’t get past the third level. Apparently my hand eye coordination and mental capabilities have not improved since the fourth grade.
A few weeks ago my friend Adam suggested finding a cheat code that will take me to the fifth and final level. I’d never thought of doing that. I’ve explored other options in my mind, such as kidnapping a game wizard and forcing him to beat Road Rash 2 at gun point… but I never thought of simply looking up a cheat code. After searching the internet for less than four seconds, Adam found a cheat code that took us to the last level, and we only had to win one race to beat the whole game.
Only one race? No problem.
Problem.
Adam and I spent an entire Saturday afternoon trying to win this one race with absolutely no luck. It was impossible. Even Adam, who is a much better gamer than I, couldn’t do it. I figured Road Rash 2 was my own personal hell, and mentally I gave up trying to escape it.
Last Wednesday I was bored out of my mind. More bored than ever. I was considering going to the movies to see The Princess and the Frog I was so bored. But instead of seeing an animated Disney movie by myself in the middle of the day, a move that would quickly get me on every child predator watch list in the nation, I decided to give beating Road Rash 2 another shot.
I sat down on my bed and began. And let me tell you, the first race I played, I was on fire! It was like I had Savants Syndrome (what Rain Man had). I couldn’t lose. I hadn’t crashed once and I was in first place. Then, a mile away from the finish line, about fifteen seconds away from the promised land, I crashed. And a cop was there. I was arrested. Game over.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
I shouted so loud that the neighbors must have thought that I just found out a family member was murdered… or that I was in the process of murdering a family member. My Savants Syndrome was cured at the most inopportune time. I was crushed.
Luckily, because it was so cold outside, I stopped short of chucking the Sega Genesis out the window. Instead I decided to try again. This time…
I won.
I couldn’t believe it. I beat the game. Granted, I used a cheat code that got me to the last level with the best motorcycle and only one race to go, but so what? The game is still impossible. And I beat it. Now I was ready for the pay off.
A big reason I wanted to win this game was to not only feel like I was a better person than I was in fourth grade, but I also wanted to see what happens when you actually beat it.
In my mind, considering how difficult the game was for me…
This is what I thought would happen:
I get a knock at the door. It’s a high class prostitute sent from EA sports. She tells me that she heard about my win and was paid to do anything I want. I tell her that I want her to fix the engine in my car so I can pass my emissions test. She leaves to do just that. But she’s left behind a lease to a summer share at the Jersey Shore.
While signing all the necessary papers for my summer share, I get a phone call. It’s President Barack Obama calling to congratulate me. He offers to send me another high class prostitute. I tell him that I already got one and she’s fixing my car, but if there is something he can do about getting more Taco Bell locations in Roselle, I would be thrilled. He makes it his highest priority (sorry people without health care).
I get another knock at the door. It’s Steven Speilberg asking if he can hire me as a writer. He’s willing to pay me an enormous amount of money. I tell him no. I’m no sell out.
The high class prostitute comes back and leaves with Steven Spielberg. I regret my decision. Not with Spielberg, but with the prostitute. I should have had her clean the apartment. It’s a pigsty.
But…
This is what actually happened:
A short video is played of your guy hopping onto a truck bed with his motorcycle. Then a helicopter comes down. You grab onto a ladder coming from the helicopter and it flies you away. The end.
………
what…..
the…..
fuck….
It didn’t even say congratulations. In fact, the game doesn’t even end. It just takes you back to the 5th level and gives you the opportunity to play it over. No prostitute, no Jersey Shore lease, no phone call from the president. Just a short four second movie followed by the realization of how much time you’ve wasted in your life.
I sat for a while in shock.
“That was it? Nothing else happens?” It was more disappointing than the ending of The Sopranos.
I considered getting a bottle of champagne and celebrating, but partaking in celebratory drinking by myself on a Wednesday afternoon because I won a video game from the early nineties sounded more depressing than my original Princess and the Frog plan. So I took a nap.
It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Sycamore, Il. My friend Adam and I were in town to celebrate my cousin Scott’s birthday, who was living in Sycamore at the time and had just turned twenty-six.
Like gentlemen, we decided to start drinking at 1 pm. We began at a bar that offered $1 beers and $1 burgers, a food and drink special that has lead to thousands of heart attacks and alcohol addictions.
Before we knew it it was 8pm. We had spent 7 hours at one bar, and since there are several bars around the area we decided that it was time to cash out and explore the exotic Sycamore nightlife. To our surprise, even with dollar burgers and beers, we were able to rack up a $140 bill. It didn’t seem physically possible. In fact, it’s not physically possible. If we drank and ate $140 worth of liquor and hamburgers on dollar beer/burger day, we would all be dead. But we weren’t. We also weren’t in the right state of mind to put up a logical argument. Since it was Scott’s birthday I picked up his tab, and then we headed out on the town.
The first bar we stopped at was a karaoke/biker bar across the street. I’ve never heard of a karaoke/biker bar. It’s like having a Nascar/gay bar. But the concept works. The bar was crowded. We hurried in to get some drinks and to sign up to sing karaoke. Unfortunately, Adam and I hurried in so fast that we didn’t notice that Scott was no longer with us.
After about twenty minutes in the bar, we started to realize that Scott wasn’t around. We didn’t think much of it at first, but after waiting around for another thirty minutes and not reaching him on his cell phone, we figured there was a problem. We decided to leave the bar and see if we could find him.
He was nowhere to be found. We called his cellphone numerous times with no luck. He was gone. After walking around for a while and looking for him, we noticed that there was a charter bus parked in a nearby parking lot.
It was a pretty nice bus, so I jokingly suggested that we should go in, see if there were keys, and if so, drive around and find Scott. Even though we would have never gone through with stealing a charter bus, we enthusiastically headed towards it anyways.
The front door was unlocked, so we opened it up and walked in. There was no one in sight. Giggling, I sat in the drivers seat, looking to see if I could find the keys.
Then from the back of the bus someone yelled, “GET OUT OF HERE!!!”
We turned around to see a fully naked man frantically running towards us.
“OH MY GOD!”
Terrified, we bolted out of the bus and into the parking lot, struggling to run away at a fast pace because of how much we were laughing.
“WHY THE HELL WAS THERE A NAKED GUY ON THAT BUS?!?”
What we had just seen made no absolutely no sense. After laughing for a few minutes, we gained our composure and found ourselves back at square one: drunk and alone in Sycamore without the only guy we knew who was familiar with the area.
As we were walking around trying to figure out our next move, we came upon a cop car with a policeman inside. Adam and I approached him and asked if he’d seen a drunk attractive blonde man walking around. It was the only way we know how to describe Scott. We also gave the cop Scott’s first and last name. He put out an APB, asking all the local policemen if they had seen him. There were no reports of him turning up anywhere.
“However, if we see him, we’ll pick him up.”
…oops…
I had just ratted Scott out for being publicly intoxicated. I hoped to God that they wouldn’t find him and arrest him, and if they did, I sure wasn’t going to tell him that I was the one who informed Sycamore’s finest of his drunken state. I walked away from the cop feeling like Benedict Arnold, and since it was getting cold, Adam and I went into the closest bar for shelter.
After two hours of drinking at the bar it was closing time. We still haden’t gotten a hold of Scott, and because we’d been drinking for another two hours, we were drunker than we’d been all night. We stayed until they kicked us out.
At 2 am we found ourselves in the lonely streets of Sycamore with nowhere to go.
Now what?
We knew that Scott’s house was about two miles away, but we had no idea which direction to go. Plus it was dark and we were drunk. We asked anyone we could find if they knew where the closest hotel was. The best answer we got was that there was a bed and breakfast down the road. That sounded expensive. Typically in a life and death situation, like the one we currently found ourselves in, we would be willing to pay that amount for shelter. But we had already had an expensive night. I dropped almost my entire life savings earlier at a bar where everything cost a dollar, and Adam had done the same. Plus we were buying beers for hours afterwards. We didn’t want to spend another hundred dollars. So we walked.
Eventually we stumbled to the Sycamore Fire Department.
The back door was open, so we entered. At first we couldn’t find anyone. However, because fireman have shifts where they work for three days straight, we knew they were somewhere in the building sleeping. And since fireman are supposed to help people, we figured they would be more than willing to give us a lift back to Elgin, which, if you go fast enough, is only a hour drive round trip.
Luckily, although my judgement was dangerously distorted, it was functional enough for me to immediately realize that breaking into a fire department to wake up a sleeping fireman and request a ride was a ridiculous idea. Adam couldn’t have agreed more. We left.
We were back on the street with nowhere to go. There was a teenager skateboarding around at this ungodly hour, so we talked to him for a while. Part of me hoped that he would become our friend and eventually invite us to his place for a sleep over.
“Great,” I thought to myself. “Sycamore has turned me into a child predator.”
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I would never want to stay at this kid’s place. The type of parent that allows their son to be out in the streets at 3am is not the type of parent that owns a house that I would want to sleep at. But it was getting cold and I didn’t have a coat, so it was becoming essential that we find a place to stay. That’s when the teenager informed us of a location that would take us in…
The 24 Hour White Hen Pantry up the street!!
We were saved! We’d found a place that we could stay at for free!
We rushed to the White Hen and informed the attendant of our plans to stay there for the next three or four hours. He seemed a little weary of the idea, but we assured him that we would buy stuff and wouldn’t be sleeping there. After he agreed, Adam bought us eight 5-Hour Energy Drinks and a bouncy ball.
After we downed two 5-Hour Energy Drinks each in 10 minutes and got my body temperature stabilized, we headed outside to play with our brand new ball.
Instead of playing the typical game of catch, we decided to play a game where we threw the ball as hard as we could at the pay phone attached to the White Hen. Unfortunately, because of the thirteen hours of drinking that preceded the purchase of the ball, our aim was off. Unwillingly the objective of the game went from throwing the ball as hard as we could at the pay phone to throwing the ball as hard as we could at the window next to the pay phone.
The attendant wasn’t excited about this game.
He informed us that we could play with the ball, but since we almost broke the front window at the White Hen over a dozen times, we could no longer throw the ball at the building. Fair enough. We quit our previous game and started playing monkey in the middle, with the White Hen building acting as the monkey. We were tossing the ball over the roof to each other, and within minutes, while trying to catch the ball, I tripped over a cement block and fell straight backwards, violently hitting my head on the pavement. Thanks to Bud Light I felt no pain, but that fall will most likely cause me some sort of mental disability in the future.
Because my brain had just physically shifted in my head, playing ball no longer seemed fun to me. We sat back inside until it was getting close to 5 am. Since the sun would be coming up soon, Adam and I decided to try and walk to Scott’s house. We drank two more 5-Hour Energy Drinks (making it 40 hours of energy consumed in a two hour period between the both of us) and started heading to Scott’s house.
We walked…
and walked…
and walked…
By 7 am the sun had come up and I was freezing. The worst part is that we were nowhere near a residential area. We were completely lost. We walked past a sign informing us that St. Charles was 24 miles away. This wasn’t good.
Then my phone rang.
It was Scott.
“Dude… I’m so sorry. I just saw that I missed sixty calls from you guys last night. Where are you?”
“We’re near a soccer field. Are we close to your place?”
“…… oh my God… not at all. Wait there. I’ll come and get you guys.”
We had walked in the opposite direction of Scott’s house.
Ten minutes Scott later came and picked us up. It turns out that the biker/karaoke bar wouldn’t let him in because his license had expired two days earlier, and his first instinct was to run back home. Literally, he ran home. Because he had been drinking he fell a few times on the way and had the scrapes to prove it. Then when he got home he went into one of the deepest sleeps ever, rivaled only by Juliet Capulet and Rip Van Winkle. He never heard his phone ring once.
Scott was living with his parents at the time. So when he took us back to his place to get some rest, my aunt, who suggested that I blog about this experience, was awake. We told her the full story, from the naked guy chasing us to Adam and I turning White Hen into a homeless shelter. When we were done telling our tale of survival, she asked…
“Why didn’t you just call the house and have me pick you up?”
Lately I have been seeing a ton of Top Ten lists about the past decade: Top Ten Sports Teams, Top Ten Songs, Top Ten Movies, etc. Recently it was suggested that I should create my own Top Ten list of the decade. After thinking it over, I’ve decided to make a list of…
SEAN’S TOP TEN THINGS HE THOUGHT WOULD HAPPEN TO HIM BY THE END OF THE DECADE, BUT DIDN’T
10. LOSE MY PASSION FOR LFO MUSIC - When I was 18, I was a closet LFO fan… and by closet fan I mean that my closet was full of the finest LFO paraphernalia. At the time I felt that this was just something that every adolescent boy went through, and I was sure that the obsession would fade. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Today if hear an LFO song I morph into a thirteen year old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert: I faint, I cry, and because I’m so aroused, I feel like I’m finally on my way to becoming a woman.
9. HAVE A BACHELORS DEGREE IN FILM DIRECTING - So close, yet so far. I was twenty four credits away from becoming the next Steven Spielberg, and here I am today, sitting in a robe at 3pm wondering when I’ll have to start prostituting myself to pay rent. Although I didn’t get my bachelors in film, I did get a degree in English which, unless you are going to be a teacher, is about as useless as a Happy 33rd Birthday card for Brittany Murphy.
8. I WOULD LIVE IN THE CITY OF SCHAUMBURG - Again, so close, yet so far. Two miles separate me from one of my greatest childhood ambitions. What little boy doesn’t dream about living in Schaumburg, Il? They have Gameworks, Portillos, and a baseball team belonging to the illustrious Midwest Northern League, the powerhouse of the upper-middle northeast Single A Baseball Division. If I lived in Schaumburg I could attend four Schaumburg Fliers vs. Fargo-Moorhead Red Hawks baseball games a year! But because I live in Roselle, Schaumburg’s drug addicted younger step-brother, I don’t feel welcome.
7. I WOULD OWN MY OWN MINI-VAN -When I was eighteen, I was riding around in my parents’ black 1990 Ford Aerostar mini-van. Besides its lack of reliability and frightening carbon dioxide emissions, it was the perfect automobile. I was sure that in ten years I would own one myself. I don’t. I drive a regular car. It’s very embarrassing for a twenty-eight year old to have to drive around in a vehicle that is not a mini-van. All I can say is, I’m sorry my former eighteen year old soccer mom spirited self… I’ve let you down.
6. I WOULD BE A SELLOUT - Because of the fame that I predicted I would have, I figured that I would be asked to be a spokesman for various products… and I would accept every single offer. Car batteries, blank cd’s, chicken wire, door knobs, scissors, air pressure… I wouldn’t care. But that didn’t happen. Instead at twenty eight I’m the posterboy for career suicide.
5. I WOULD STOP GETTING ACNE -
nope
4. I WOULD HAVE AN EXTENSIVE AND FASHIONABLE WARDROBE -
nope
3. I WOULD RUIN MY CAREER AT A LIVE AWARDS SHOW -Whether it befrommaking loudfarting noises during an emotional acceptance speech or laughing out loud during the “In Memorium” portion of the Golden Globes, I anticipated damaging my film career at an awards show. You think Kanye was bad? Imagine me at the 2009 Oscars interrupting Heath Ledger’s grieving family to announce that, “I’m really happy for you, and I’m going to let you finish… but Josh Brolin in Milk gave one of the best supporting actor performances of all time!”
2. I WOULD HAVE A CELEBRITY ENTOURAGE - Since I was going to be a filmmaker, I figured I would be surrounded with celebrity friends. Adam Sandler would be my golfing buddy, Bill Murray would be my poker buddy, and Johnny Depp would be the guy who got me into cocaine. Yet here I am, at twenty-eight, and the closest I’ve gotten to making a celebrity friend is when I creeped out Taylor Hicks… and I’m not even sure if he’s considered a celebrity anymore.
1. I WOULD BE WEALTHY BEYOND MY WILDEST DREAMS - How far I am from that prediction became very clear to me yesterday, when I got all Oprah’s-favorite-things-excited after winning $4 on a scratch off ticket.
On a Friday during my first semester at the University of Illinois, my friend Courtney and I had made plans to see the second best 80s metal cover band in the midwest:
Hairbangers Ball 2
Panama: The Story of my 80s Mishap
Hairbangers Ball is an 80s cover band that frequently plays around the Chicagoland area. Right before I left for school, my older brother took me to one of their shows. It was amazing. Within an hour the lead singer was on stage pouring Jack Daniels into my mouth. Aside from seeing LFO at the Allstate Arena, that was the single best concert experience of my life. So when I heard that their back up band was coming to U of I, I knew that I had to be there. And I also knew that I had to go with Courtney because she was a huge 80s rock fan… so much so that she showed up that evening wearing an 80s snake skin jacket.
Acknowledgment of My 80s Music Devotion
Before I go on with the story, I want to make it clear that I am a fan of 80s music. It’s delightful. However, I am not the biggest 80s rock fan that you’ll find. I enjoy the music, I enjoy the transgender outfits the guys wore, and I really enjoy hearing about the drug problems they all had. However, there are other musical genres that I appreciate more, and my knowledge of 80s metal pales in comparison to others. Sure, I know most of the big 80’s hits and have a few Bon Jovi cds… but when track 9 off of Warrant’s third album is being played, I have no idea what it is.
Side Story
Before we headed to the venue, we decided to stop at a bar along the way to do some pre-drinking. While we were there, Courtney bumped into a guy she knew. Since it was so long ago I can’t remember what he looked like, but I do remember that he was sporting a beautiful brown leather jacket. I was fascinated with it. When Courtney left to go get a drink, I had to let him know how much I admired it.
“I like your coat.”
After I said this, he looked at me with a devastated face. Then with a somber voice he responded.
“It was my grandpa’s.”
…………..
oops.
Anytime your first attempt at small talk leads to an emotional declaration about a recently deceased relative, it really discourages you from asking anymore questions. So after having the shortest conversation in the history of our country, we sat there silently until Courtney came back.
The Concert
The venue that the band was playing at wasn’t very big. This was good because it made it easy to get up to the front row even though there was a pretty decent crowd. After me and Courtney grabbed a drink, we headed towards the stage to get the best spots available.
When the band first came out on stage, I knew it was going to be a great night. Why? Because the snakeskin pants that the lead singer was wearing perfectly matched the snakeskin coat that Courtney had on. It was like witnessing the reunion of long lost twins. He quickly spotted Courtney’s coat and pointed to his pants to signal that he noticed the match. All was grand.
The first hour of the show was a good for me, but not great. Although they played some songs that I knew, a pretty fair amount of their set list was unfamiliar to me. I put up a front like I knew all the songs, but I was struggling. In fact, I put up such a good front that when the female singer was belting out yet another song that I didn’t know, she put her head by mine and the microphone between us so I could sing along with her. Unfortunately I had to just stand there silently with an uncomfortable smile until she took the mic away and found a guy that actually knew the song. Although it was a tad humiliating, I was fortunate enough to get the chance to redeem myself in front of everyone.
After playing a couple more songs that I’d never heard of, they started playing “Panama” by Van Halen. I was ecstatic to finally be rocking out to a song that I was familiar with, and I displayed this excitement with constant jumping and fist pumping. The lead singer noticed how much I was digging the song, and when it got to the chorus he gave me the microphone.
For those of you who don’t know, right before the chorus hits in “Panama,” there is a break in the singing, a guitar riff, and the lead singer yells, “PANAMA!” It’s brilliant.
I couldn’t believe I was getting the chance to sing the chorus. When the microphone was put up to my face, I grabbed it, looked into the lead singers eyes, and belted out, “PANAMA!!!”
Boom! I had redeemed myself! Everyone around me now knew that I was a huge 80s fan, and the mishap earlier was all a fluke. But after my moment of redemption, I immediately sensed there was a problem.
After passionately screaming “PANAMA!” into the microphone, the lead singer took it away from me and gave me a funny look. Then he continued singing the words, “What goes around, comes around.”
“What the hell is he singing?” I thought to myself. Then it quickly hit me.
“Oh shit! I sang the wrong song!”
He was singing “Round and Round” by Ratt, a song that I’d maybe heard twice before in my life, and a song that, to me, sounds exactly like Van Halen’s “Panama.” I had been given the keys to the 80s rock kingdom, and I blew it. My lack of 80s knowledge was exposed to all the people around me, and for the rest of the show I stayed away from the front of the stage.
To this day, if I hear “Panama” or “Round and Round,” I wait til the chorus until I start singing along. Actually, if the song turns out to be “Round and Round” I just turn it off, for not only does the song invoke painful and humiliating memories, but it also kind of sucks.
I always hated the grab bags we would have in grade school. Not because I always got a bad gift… but because I always got the exact same bad gift during my entire elementary school career. It’s the single worst present that can be given to a child, because when it’s wrapped up it looks like it could be awesome. Yet it is anything but. I’m talking about…
The Roll Up Sled
First off, don’t let the look on this kids face fool you: he’s not having fun. His mom ordered him to smile for the camera. After he refused to do so, she threatened that he would not receive Christmas gifts if he didn’t show his teeth, prompting him to give the performance of his lifetime and appear to be excited to be riding the worst sled ever created. Even though I wasn’t present at the time this photo was taken, I know that there is no other logical explanation as to why this kid has a happy look on his face.
Back to the constant disappointment I felt during the grade school grab bag
It was the same every year. If you were a boy, you would buy a gift for a boy, and the girls would do the same. We were never assigned to a certain person, we were just told to bring in a gift a boy would like that was around $10.
On the day before Christmas vacation we would bring our gifts in, and each year I would immediately spot the large tubular present and pray to God that it wasn’t assigned to me. Actually that’s not true for every year: in kindergarten everyone wanted to pick this gift because of its size, and because we had no idea what it was. In our minds that could have been a bazooka, and what 6 year old wouldn’t want to be playing with an oversized war weapon? So that year I felt very lucky to be given the first pick of the grab bag draft. But after opening it up and seeing what it was, the prosperous feeling quickly went away, and after playing with that piece of crap for two minutes I knew, even at the age of six, that this was the worst gift I would ever get.
Here’s the problem with the roll up sled
Here are the numerous problems with the roll up sled
First thing’s first: the roll up sled doesn’t work. Plastic glides on snow, but the plastic used to manufacture the roll up sled doesn’t. It defies the law of physics. When I get on a sled, I assume that I will go down a hill at a somewhat accelerated pace. I’m not a thrill seeker, nor was I as a child, so I don’t expect to be traveling at 94 mph. But when I’m sledding I do expect to get to the bottom of a hill faster than I can walk to it. That doesn’t happen with the roll up sled. In fact, any kid that attempts to stay loyal to the roll up sled and slide it all the way to the bottom of a hill either dies of starvation or goes insane due to sleep deprivation.
Another problem with this piece of junk is that the roll up sled does exactly what it’s title suggests: it rolls up during a sledding session. Take another look at the kid.
He is barely on that thing! About fifty percent of the sled is already out of commission, and he hasn’t even travelled eight feet! Every inch he goes down the hill his ass gets an inch closer to being in the snow, and within seconds the sled will be rolled up into its original cylinder shape and he’ll be sitting in the snow, depressed and determined to live in a tropical area when he grows up.
The final flaw with the roll up sled is also my favorite part about it: it breaks immediately. After two attempted trips down a hill, it rips (since all of my plastic containers have been in the Milnamow family for many generations, this again makes me wonder what kind of plastic they use to manufacture this sled). Typically a child is upset when their toy breaks, but with this toy children are delighted at it’s demise. It’s like watching a villain in a Disney movie die. The kid is no longer obligated to associate himself with this embarrassing novelty, and can now move forward with his life free of guilt.
Back to my childhood
As I said before, after kindergarten I knew that I never wanted a roll up sled again. Yet for the next six years of my life, my grab bag gift was always a large devilish cylinder disguised in pleasant Christmas paper. I know what you’re wondering: why not avoid the gift? Well, after being rewarded with the first pick in kindergarten, I put up an impressive streak of getting the last pick every year after. And since every kid was trained to avoid the large cylinder gift as if it were Keanu Reeves movie, that was always the present left for me.
(Not Third Grade Me, But Close)
After we downed two 5-Hour Energy Drinks each in 10 minutes and got my body temperature stabilized, we headed outside to play with our brand new ball.
nope
nope
