In The Dog House
Ever wonder how you get dragged into an argument with your significant other? You know what I mean, the kind of argument where you don’t speak to each other for two days? Usually it begins with playful banter.
“You’re so silly sometimes.”
“What why?”
“You just are. You’re so silly.”
“Nut-uh. You’re silly.”
“Oh yeah, well you retarded.”
“Retarded? Well at least I’m not silly and retarded.”
“You’re as silly as a five year old retarded kid.”
“Stop calling me retarded.”
This progresses to where you’re saying things like, “Well you’re a retarded silly little slut.”
“Oh yeah, well you’re retarded and have a small penis,” she says.
And your best come back is, “I told you to stop calling me retarded.”
Before you know it the gloves come off and anything goes. You’re like a blood thirsty animal going in for the kill and nothing is off limits. From past relationships to ugly members of their family, anything and everything is on the table.
“Your mother’s overbearing!”
“Yeah well my last boyfriend’s penis was three times as big as yours!”
“Stop talking about my penis!”
This progresses to talking about annoying habits, to their deepest insecurities that only you know about.
When your wrapped up in this frenzy you feel like a washed up old baseball player who’s still swinging for the fences. And when the dust settles, all you have left is two hurt, broken people, who are suppose to care about each other more than anything in the world and they end up being the people who hurts each other the most.
It takes a couple of days before you get over the insults and the pain. You pass each other like strangers in your own home with little grunts and head nods. And then who ever drops their pride first, is the one who apologizes.
“I’m sorry that I said those things and I’m sorry I hurt your feelings.”
“Yeah me too. The whole thing was silly.”
“Yeah, the whole thing was silly. But you know, you just act so silly sometimes?”
“Me? What about you? You act sillier than me, ya silly freak.”
And before you know it, you’re back in the doghouse again.
Miss Fortune
Miss Fortune
Is at my doorstep
again
and this time
she’s carrying 2 bags.
She only stops by
when she needs something.
And that something, this time,
is 400 bucks and
a ride home
after the procedure.
Well Miss Thing
guess what?
You can keep
the keys
and the baby
cuz I’ve gotta
a bike and a job.
You don’t like Poetry?
It’s been brought to my attention by a long-time reader that he doesn’t like my poetry. He says he loves my, “sarcastic stories with a punch-line at the end.” He’s also asked me in the past, “When are you going to write a story about me?”
Well I hear ya buddy, on both accounts. I didn’t care for poetry either, but I’m taking poetry this semester, so that’s what I’ll be writing for a while.
For those of you who don’t know, I write for Missouri Runner and Triathlete Magazine. I also participate in the events that I write about, which means I swim, bike, or run, four to six days a week.
I’ve also been working on a memoir about my trip to India for four years now. I’m on the fourth chapter of my third draft. When I finish this draft, I’ll be sending it off to an editor. After that, I will start submitting it to get published. This is on top of having a wife, a daughter, a job and a life, but I digress. The point is you might be reading poetry for a while.
And on that note, do you know that a recent survey in Esquire magazine said that 12% of men can’t see their penis when they’re standing up straight? I’m guessing the guy who said he doesn’t like my poetry is in that 12%.
What? He asked that I write a story about him and he said he likes the sarcastic punch-lines at the end. Wish granted.
Tall Tales
Sometimes when you’re as tall as I am, people say things that they think are clever, but really, it’s just annoying. Things like, “How’s the weather up there?” Or a slight variation of that, “How’s the view?”
Neither of those statements are funny when you’ve heard it at least twice a day for twenty straight years. I really want to spit my coffee all over these people and say, “It’s a torrential downpour,” but I don’t. I usually give a fake laugh and say, “Never heard that one before.”
Sometimes people are naive enough to say, “You haven’t?”
And I say, “Well, it’s the first for the day,” and I leave them standing in their stupidity.
One thing that’s hard about being tall is dating. The first question that any woman asks me, even before they ask for my name is, “How tall are you?”
“6’10” I say.
“Ewwww, that’s tall. You know what they say about tall guys,”
“They have knee and back problems?” I
“No silly—That they’ve got big…you know?”
I’ve had the same conversation with 100’s of girls and it usually stops right there because I don’t dare tell them about the Irish curse. This is the main reason I looked into an elective height reduction surgery.
“What?” you might be saying, “I know you, you’re not 6’10”.”
And I’d say, “Not anymore buddy. Not anymore.”
Home-Lunch Ban
There’s earthquakes all over the world, toxic waste polluting the Pacific, America’s 15 trillion in debt, and now this. A Chicago school has banned home-lunches. What’s next, a ban on chewing gum? We’ve got our eyes on you Singapore.
Administrators at Little Village Academy, a public school in Chicago, say the policy is all in the name of good health. Principal Elsa Carmona told the Chicago Tribune she created the policy after watching students bring, “bottles of soda and flaming hot chips,” for their lunch.
Personally I don’t think school administrators should be meddling in what kids eat at school. They have a hard enough time teaching kids to learn. Dozens of kids have walked their trays up to the trash can and thrown the food-trays away without eating a bite. I’m sure this is going to help them pay attention to the teacher after lunch.
My only question to the students is, “Are you going to eat those tatter-totts?”
Black Widows
I saw an airbrushed painting of a Black Widow the other day and I couldn’t stop staring at it. The way her red hour-glass body balanced on those white-ghostly webs was mesmerizing. For a brief moment, I psychically felt the fear, which the fly in the painting would have felt, as her eight eyes stared down at her prey.
A female Black Widow sometimes eats her mate after copulation. Although most serial killers are male, female serial killers who kill their husbands or boyfriends are known as Black Widows.
Belle Gunness is considered to be the most prolific female serial killer to date. Gunness had at least 42 confirmed victims in the early 1900’s. Some experts estimate Gunness had as much as a fifty or more unconfirmed victims. She killed many of her victims for insurance money.
Gunness was never sentenced for the murders she committed and her death is a mystery. But in all likelihood, Gunness died in 1931 while awaiting trial for a poisoning under the assumed name Esther Carlson. This goes to prove that sometimes a Black Widow’s poison can come back to bite them.
Ways to Make More Time
If you have some ideas or hobbies that you want to pursue, you have to make the time to do them. How am I supposed to do that, you may ask? Here are some ways to make more time for yourself.
1. Kill your TV.
If you ask someone, “How much time do you spend watching T.V?” The answer is almost always the same, “I hardly watch any T.V. Maybe an hour in the morning before work, but that doesn’t really count. Then a probably a couple hours in the evening.”
Then you ask them to keep track of it. Use a journal or write it on the calendar where you can see it. Most people don’t make it past two or three days before they realize they are watching way more TV than they thought they were.
2. Focus one hour
Focus on something you want to work on one hour a day. Chances are if you set one hour a day aside to work on something, you will eventually get it done. That would be 30 hours a month that you normally wouldn’t have focused on your project. And because it’s your project, and supposed to be fun, you should look forward to doing it. One hour shouldn’t be that bad.
3. Go to sleep one hour earlier.
“Oh my God! That is ridiculous,” you may be saying. Studies show that sleep affects the rest of your body. If you don’t have enough rest you can’t focus on anything else. Also if you go to sleep an hour earlier you, can get up an hour earlier so you can apply
Step 2.
“Yeah right, I’m not doing that!”
Drastic times call for drastic measures. What are you willing to do? If you were as unhappy as I was in past jobs, you’d do whatever it took to change the situation.
4. Use your off day as a half-day.
Your new project, whatever it is, is going to need some attention to get done. If you can’t afford to quit your job and work on it full-time, you’ll need to at least work on it part-time.
I’ve had a full-time job while I’ve worked two part-time jobs just to make ends meet. But if you’ve got a full-time job, you better start treating your project like a part-time job. That means you need to show up, just like any other part-time job, to get the work done. The difference in this case is you’re the boss and you like what you’re doing, but at the same time you’re not going to have anyone looking over your shoulder telling you what to do. If you think you may need some help, this is a good time to start looking for a coach or mentor to help you get through.
These are just a few ideas to help free-up some time. No matter how busy your life is, you should make time for yourself. Good luck with whatever it is you choose to pursue.
Spring Training
Haiku is a poetic form and a type of poetry from the Japanese culture. Haiku, which the plural form is also Haiku, are usually written about nature, seasons, feelings or everyday experiences. The first line usually contains five syllables, the second line seven syllables, and the third line contains five syllables.
This is the Haiku I wrote for my new poetry class.
Spring Training
Swim, bike, running climbs
Triathlons fresh on my mind
Start times, finish lines
Street Justice
I was in Surat, India in late January 2008. My wife was sick. This is how she spends much of her time in India, so she went to bed. Her uncle Adij-bhai, #2, #3, which is what I called the other uncles because I couldn’t pronounce their names, and Neil, Tejal’s little cousin, wanted to take me out and show me Surat on a scooter. It was about 11 at night.
I looked at Neil who was 13 and asked, “Do you have a license?”
“Gearless. Gearless,” he replied.
“You don’t have a license, you’re not old enough to drive,” I said.
“Gearless. No need license,” Neil said.
I think my father-in-law knew he wasn’t legit, but he let it slide because we were with the Uncles.
As we drove through dark narrow back-alley’s, we merged onto a street into traffic. Thousands of people were still out on the sidewalks, hanging around shops and traffic was still very heavy.
After 15 minutes of driving, we pulled up to a sidewalk, which hundreds of people were standing on, to a little food stand. Many of the men were smoking and everyone was looking at me like I was lost. I hadn’t had a cigarette in days.
“You like pan?” Adij-bahi asked.
“What’s that?” I said.
“You try,” he said.
There are two types of pan one is beetle nut wrapped with a green edible leaf. You chew it like tobacco and spit the juice. The other type of pan is dessert and wrapped in a leaf. It is sweet and you eat it whole. We had the second kind.
I asked for a Coke which was handed to me in a glass bottle.
“Want anything else?”
“Yeah a menthol cigarette,” I said.
I’ve never seen anyplace that sold single cigarettes, but this place did.
I ate my pan with dozens of people watching to see if I would spit it out. I chewed and swallowed it. Then I took a big drink of Coke.
“Does it taste the same as in America?” they asked
“Yep. Sure does—exactly the same,” I said.
Then a beggar came up and started tapping me and asking for money. Hemmel-bhai, a.k.a. #2, said something in Gujarti and the beggar scampered away.
I smoked my cigarette and we climbed back on to the scooters. We drove around the city. We happened upon a street intersection. There was a guy walking his bike across the street. We had a red light. When the light turned green, the guy walking his bike stopped in the middle of the intersection. Hundreds of rickshaws and scooters took off and b-lined straight towards the guy. He tired to make his way through the traffic, then we heard a loud bang. A rickshaw had flipped over.
A cop ran over to help. Then everyone realized that an old woman and two children were in the back of the rickshaw. Instead of trying to get them out, the cop grabbed the guy with the bike and punched him several times in the head and face. Then four other guys jumped in and started kicking and punching him too.
Neil pulled the scooter up right next to the scene. We were only about four or five feet from the chaos. Neil started laughing hysterically.
“The guy get punched, hah?” Smiling and shaking his head up and down.
I did not want to get caught up in the mini-riot and I started yelling at Neil, “Go. Go. Go!”
“Go over there,” I screamed into his ear and pointed at the sidewalk across the street.
When he finally got us to safety I yelled, “Why did you go over there? You don’t even have a fucking license!”
He laughed and said, “Gearless,” and waved his hand in the universal sign for don’t worry.
A couple of minutes later the Uncles pulled up.
“Did you guys see that?” I said.
“Yeah,” #2 said. “In India there’s no need for courts on things like that. You handle them there in the streets. It’s called street justice.”
Sometimes I wish we could do things like that here in the States, that is unless I’m the one who caused the accident.
Iron Don
Don Davenport was huffing his 220 lbs. body up a three mile hill on a red and white, Cannondale race-bike that he bought as part of his New Year’s resolution. Sweat rolled down from his head. He squinted as it hit his eyes, the stinging sensation felt like diluted battery acid. He wanted to wipe the sweat away but the incline was too steep to take his hands off the handle bars. It really didn’t matter since he had forgotten his white wrist-band that he usually wore on his training days. Mental note, he thought, next time don’t forget wrist band.
As Don’s legs began to burn with each pedal. He thought about the affirmation his coach taught him, I’m strong mentally and physically and forward motion gets me there. Don imagined himself crossing the finish line at Ironman Kona. He hadn’t raced in an Ironman yet, therefore he didn’t qualify to race at Kona. But he imagined himself getting off his bike and going for a long, 26.2 mile jog through the parched lava fields on the Big Island of Hawaii after his 112 mile bike ride and 2 ½ mile swim. But he knew that was at least a year away.
As he thought about the run, Don pictured him and his dad watching ABC’s Wide World of Sports when he was five years old. He remembered Julie Moss, a physical education major, crawling to the finish line. She had only eaten half of a Snicker’s candy bar the entire race. She threw the other half away when she realized that ABC’s van had pulled up beside her and was filming her out in first place. She hadn’t even trained for the race, and within yards of the finish line, her body was shutting down. Don remembered turning to his dad and saying, “I’m going to do that someday.” His dad said, “Well then maybe we should take off your training wheels.”
Don snapped back to reality when he swerved his front wheel to miss a pothole in the road as he crested the hill. He realized that his legs weren’t burning anymore. He repeated what his coach told him, this time out loud, “I’m strong mentally and physically and forward motion gets me there. And even if I don’t qualify for Kona, I will finish my first Ironman next year, even if I fall down dead at the finish line.”