So this week, I flew to Arizona for a little R & R (resist and retaliate) with the ‘rents. Now, my parents are easy going ex-hippies, so I’ve kind of, sort of, mostly always done whatever the hell I felt like. But the biggest surprise for me on this latest trip, is that my parents don’t get upset when I tell them about my various shenanigans with drug use, drinking, and hanging out in ghetto bars and bad neighborhoods, but if I let one grammatically incorrect sentence slip from my mouth in their presence, then the next forty minutes of my life is like one giant after-school lecture about staying away from nazi-youth-Crystal-Meth-taking-hitchhikers who want to get me pregnant (even though I’m a dude) so they can then abort my as-of-yet unborn fetus and then force me to eat it as some sort of gang rite ritual. Seriously, I was visiting my parents and we were in a shoe store, and all I said was “those ones” when referring to a pair of shoes, and they flipped out about my poor grammar for nearly twenty minutes. Apparently, it is incorrect to say ‘those ones’. You have to say those, when referring to objects. This is very important. So remember that, friends, the next time you visit your parents, or anyone else’s parents. Oh yeah, and my dad says that I dress like a homeless person, but not a hobo, because hobo’s dress nicer than I do. Teach your children well.
So, what’s up with hugging, and friends? Whenever I see someone I know, I’m never sure if I’m supposed to hug him or her or not. I mean, first of all, do you hug them hello, and do you hug them goodbye, or do you just hug on one side of the meeting? Secondly, if you choose not to hug, but you see that they are going in for the hug, do you compromise, and go in for the half hug n’ pat, or do you stand strong in your convictions and avoid the hug? What’s the protocol for our sarcastic and apathetic generation? And why do some people require like six hugs every time you see them? If our generation is going to continue to pretend that we don’t feel things, and that nothing matters anymore, then I think hugging kind of ruins the sham. And another thing I’ve noticed about hugging, at least in Portland, is that the better you get to know someone, the less you hug them, and the less physical your friendship becomes. It’s like we’re all afraid of giving off the wrong vibe by either not hugging or hugging, so we all come across as the shy kid in the corner of the gym at the seventh grade dance when the first slow song comes on.
And the same thing goes for ridiculous handshake combinations. Look, if you want me to do more than high five or shake your hand, you better take me aside and practice your ridiculous routine, because I’m sick of feeling retarded in front of a bunch of strangers as some tool-bag twists my fingers, pulls at my hand, tries to make our fingers snap like rice krispies in milk, pulls my arm back, and then tries to pound my fist. I know that we humans descend from chimpanzees, but we’ve supposedly evolved, so why don’t all you cool handshake inventing kids just learn to say hello with your mouth and then buy me a pint? That seems to make a lot more sense to me than trying to get me to perform your own Cirque Du Soleil with our hands every time that I see you.
After exploring my ridiculous fear of ladder’s last week, I’d like to introduce “This week’s irrational fear”: Getting locked in a bathroom. So when I was like six years old, I refused to ride in elevators and developed a mild sense of claustrophobia, because after eating a delicious breakfast one morning, I went to use the restaurant’s bathroom, and I got locked in there for like 10 solid minutes, which in kid world is something like four and a half days. I remember the slowly growing feeling of terror as I pounded on the door, and flooded the bathroom with legitimate ‘scared kid tears’, but the bathroom was in the very back of the restaurant, behind the loud kitchen, so nobody could hear me. Finally, using whatever little brain I had back then (and I think my brain has actually shrunk since then, thanks to lots of smoking and drinking) I managed to break free, but ever since then, whenever I use a public bathroom, I always manage to take note of the closest proximity to a human who could hear me pounding on the door, how sophisticated the locking mechanism is, and I make sure that if I am going to be stuck in there, that there’s plenty of running water, not too bad of a smell, and that the room is comfortably lit. Shit, I think I also just described my last studio apartment – which was indeed an oversized public bathroom. How embarrassing.
I’m not sure how I feel about kids anymore. I mean, I’m pretty damn sure I want to be a dad someday, but I am also constantly reminded that having kids is like playing roulette; you have a fifty-fifty chance, at best, of winning, and having a well behaved kid, versus losing, and getting some little monster like the kid who sat behind me on my flight home from Phoenix. I mean, what in the hell possesses a sentient human over the age of eleven to act like she still doesn’t conceptualize the idea that it’s not okay to talk as loud as you feel like on a crowded plane, that it’s not okay to kick seats in irregular rhythmic patterns that don’t follow any sort of beat I can follow or tap along to, and that it’s not okay to just throw your crap all around the plane and whine if less than four people are staring at you with dagger-eyes of hatred? That sort of piss-poor etiquette flies alright with me if you’re completely hammered at a kegger, mentally retarded, or if you’re still in pre-school, but if you can operate an I-Pod, read Harry Potter, and you can utilize some fancy portable video game machine that makes my original Nintendo at home, circa 1986, look like it’s from the 1800’s (seriously, have you seen this new technology, it makes me feel the way I imagine my grandfathers’ first felt when they first flew in an airplane) then you should know better, and you’ve officially become a brat. I just hope that these kids recognize that this is the reason they will graduate high school without any good friends and why no one will want to be their roommate when they go to college someday. It starts early, folks, so, again, teach your children well.
Something that I find funny about our fascist government is that they still feel that it’s necessary to warn women in bars that “pregnancy and alcohol do no mix.” First of all, are we still living in the Stone Age? Who in the hell does not realize, in this day and age, that things like drinking a substance that makes you dizzy, stupid, and nauseous isn’t good for you, and that what you do to your body, and put in your body when pregnant will most likely affect the child you are carrying IN YOUR BODY? With that said, I think they should change the warning to: Drinking may lead to pregnancy, and pregnancies are painful, long, and expensive, and raising children is even longer, more painful, and more expensive, so be careful how much you drink, who you go home with, and what you do, because someone’s genes might seem like ‘the shit’ when you’re drunk at the bar, but one bad night could lead to nine months of no drinking, followed by being the parent of a kid who kicks seats on airplanes and yells really loud all the time.
Side note: What the hell is the $5.00 “9/11 security fee” that gets attached to all airline tickets purchased in the United States? I mean, I’m not cheap, so I’m not complaining about the price tag, but as someone who has flown more than ten times a year for about ten years straight, I have to say, security is worse now than it was when I was younger, and that means that this money is being allocated very poorly by our current government (big surprise!). For example, on my return flight home, some half-dead guy with droopy eyes looked at a piece of paper that I printed out at home from Southwest.com, and then he casually spent about two seconds eying my driver’s license, glanced up at my lower left cheek, and then moved his hand forward about a quarter of an inch, signaling the ‘all clear’ so that I could have my shoes x-rayed while I went through a metal detector. We may have successfully gotten rid of guns on planes, but any random person could have walked through that gate that night with a photo ID and a piece of paper with a flight number and date on it, so really, where’s all this money going to? Those same x-ray devices and metal detectors that they are using were there in the eighties—I remember them— and the only new aspects of airline security that I can see are this new ‘check in dude,’ and the shoe thing, so I just know that the five bucks is being wasted, and that upsets me! Okay, that wasn’t really a side note. I just don’t like bureaucracy, and I want my five bucks back.
And finally, I’d like to spend a little time being more angry and serious than normal, to share with you my feelings about show-offs and arrogant people who brag about their lives to service industry employees. First of all, let me be the first to say: “screw you and your green grass.” If you want me to be envious of you, then why don’t you quietly flaunt your wonderful life by living it, instead of spending your time talking to strangers like me about how great it is? When you come into my restaurant, and berate me with stories about how great your life is, all I really think about is how much I should charge you for turning me into your fake friend. The least you could do is give me a larger than normal tip for making me sit there and listen to you talk and talk about how great your Saturday night was, and how great your career is, and how you think this girl is going to call you back and want to date you and then marry you – I mean, c’mon, if everything is going so great, then you’d be too busy feeling great and reveling in your good fortune to spend an hour telling a stranger about it, and you’d also be so far removed from Earth as you prance around on cloud-nine that you would barely notice me, let alone waste your own time filling me in on how great things are going for you. I guess what I’m saying is, happy people come across as happy, because they are, but unhappy people seem to think that if they tell people about how happy they are, then they will actually be happy. But if you’re trying to convince other people and yourself about the quality of your won life, then guess what? You’re probably not really fooling anyone. Quiet, cool confidence— that’s what happy people carry about them, and that’s what attracts us to happy people. So please, if you’re going out to eat, keep your fake plastic green grass away from your server, ‘cause we’re not interested in buying it, and we don’t even want to play in it. And regardless of how green my grass may or may not seem to you, it’s mine, and I’m proud of it, even if it’s muddy, at least it’s real, and I keep it to myself. Except when I write about it publicly and send it out for you to read. I suddenly feel like a real schmuck.