Up in Smoke

The summer of 1995 was filled with some big changes in my life:  I turned 20, finally got my drivers license, got my first car, and officially moved to Stillwater full-time. However, the biggest change that summer came about several weeks after my move when I got a call letting me know that my parents house -- the only home I had ever really known -- had burned down.

Thankfully, nobody was hurt in the fire -- neither of my parents were home when it happened, and luckily they had let the cat out before they left.  After confirming that no life was lost, the next thing my parents assured me in that call was "Don't worry: your comic books survived."  To be honest, the condition of my comic book collection hadn't even crossed me mind until they brought it up, and it caught me off-guard.  It would catch me even more off-guard over the next few weeks when every single family member I would talk to would bring up the survival of my comic books almost immediately.

Of course, when I finally got a chance to go see the charred husk of my childhood home, their emphasis made more sense, as my bedroom's location on the opposite end of the house from the living room where the fire started meant that it was the least damaged, although all that meant was that my room suffered mostly heat and smoke damage rather than fire and water damage. It was an odd experience sifting through the debris, attempting to find anything salvageable.  I could see the spot where all of my longboxes filled with comics had been sitting, and was amazed to see that on one side of that spot there was the melted remains of my plastic pencil sharpener, and on the other side, the melted remains of my record player.  The fact that the cardboard boxes filled with comic books wrapped in plastic bags had emerged from the ordeal with little more than some smoke stains to the boxes was unbelievable.  I was able to recover a few other smoke damaged books and papers, many of which are still boxed up in my apartment.  However a great number of these items, including my high school yearbooks, were placed in storage at my Grandma Ann's house along with all of the stuff my parents had already recovered before I got there.

Over the years since then, I've often told the story of the fire, and invariably someone will make a comment about how relieved I must have been not to have lost all those comics because of how much they were worth, to which I would reply, "Actually, the only books I had that might have been worth something had been put away for safekeeping in my parents' room, so they didn't make it."  A nice bit of irony there, don't you think?

So, what's brought this incident to my mind?  Well, let's fastforward 15 years -- following my Grandma Ann's passing earlier this year, my family was able to sell her house fairly quickly, with the end result that my parents' current house is now overflowing with stuff they had to remove to make the sale.  Friday night I got a call from my dad who had been sorting through the stuff and found something he thought might be of interest to me.

"Was going through the stuff we brought over from mom's," he tells me, "and came across some of your comics."

"Really?" I replied, momentarily stumped at what it could have been -- the only thing I could think of off the top of my head was my long-lost run of original Offical Handbook of the Marvel Universe, which had disappeared at Papaw and Grandma Ann's farmhouse when I was still in Junior High, and that possibility was, to say the least unlikely.

"Yes.  It says it's a 'bagged, collector's edition complete with trading card' of '--"

"X-force #1." I finished for him, momentarily shocked.

"That's right.  And there's five of them!"

"Yes, one for each of the different cards," I commented.  He started to tell me that there were a few other books with them, but I didn't really need him to tell me the other titles, as I could picture them in my head fine:  the first Excalibur Special Edition that introduced my favorite X-team, and the first couple of issues of The 'Nam which dad had purchased himself.

Yes, after all these years, it turns out that the books I had put away for safekeeping had survived the blaze after all -- they had just gotten swept up in my parents' original salvage run and lost among everything else, thus making my long-standing ironic story ending unusable.

"But," you might be thinking, "shouldn't you be happy that the valuable books survived?"

Well, my Book Monkeys, for those of you unacquainted with the vagaries of the comic book explosion of the early 90s, and the subsequent implosion, let me sum it up this way:  those five "collector issues" I had purchased were emblematic of the speculator's mindset which drove the comic book industry for several years, in which comic book companies churned out countless variant issues which were snatched up by countless comic book fans wanting to be in on the ground floor of the next big thing, with nobody thinking through the fact that if everyone and their dog owns a copy of X-Force #1, then it's never going to be worth anything because, well, everyone already owns a copy.

Long story short, a quick view on eBay shows bagged copies of X-Force #1 going for as low as $0.99 cents -- and getting no bids.

So, in the long run, the value of the books did go up in smoke after all -- just not the way I had always thought.

Another 25 Random Things - The Wyandotte Edition

Well, since Flunky Lover complained that my last list of random things wasn't anything she didn't already know, I figured I'd try to come up with another list that might be more enlightening, focusing on my pre-collegiate years.

1. I never really skipped school because (a) I was a bit of a goody two-shoes -- okay, a MAJOR goody two-shoes -- and (b) I knew that if I had skipped, my mom would have found out about it very quickly, and that would have been that. About the closest I ever came to skipping was when a group of us were heading to Miami to compete in an Academic Bowl. We were just getting ready to get in the car when someone came running out to say that there had been a mistake, and we weren't really supposed to leave for another couple of hours. We all looked at each other, yelled back "tell them you missed us," hopped in the car, and headed to NEO, where we feigned ignorance and goofed off in the Student Union for a couple of hours.

2. I have not always bled Orange and Black; in my younger days, I was raised in a very Sooner-friendly household. It wasn't until I got to go to OSU to play at a half-time show for High School Band Day that I began to see the light. Getting to sit right next to the OSU band and get caught up in the energy and excitement of the game made a huge impact on my appreciation for the school; it makes me ashamed to know that the first thing I did upon putting together my saxophone earlier that day was play "Boomer Sooner" and laugh about it -- so, so ashamed.

3. When it comes to Christmas tree toppings, I have always preferred stars to angels. For ages, we had a very funky, art deco-ish star that graced the top of tree after tree, and despite it becoming worn down, beat up, and faded, I loved that ugly, ugly, ugs-in-the-ugly thing. So, when mom tried replacing it with an angel, I objected. And while I personally don't remember saying the following, my mom will never let me live down the fact that my objection apparently came by way of me complaining that I didn't want to see an angel with a tree up its butt.

4. When it comes to social situations, I am almost always early, sometimes to the point of having to sit outside in my car and wait for it to get close enough to the prescribed arrival time for me to go in. There's a lot of factors involved (fear of getting lost, fear of missing out on stuff), but a lot of it comes from the fact that mom and dad were always very lackadaisical about such things. "Oh, don't worry the bus won't leave without you," mom once said to me as we were running late to drop me off for a TSA trip; she, however, was wrong, as the bus was pulling away from the school as we drove up. After that I became much more insistent about being early, which actually earned me the "Early Bird Award" at Speech Camp that following summer.

5. Speech Camp was not exactly the most thrilling time of my life, and outside of finding a new creepy prose piece to replace "The October Game" and discovering that Extemporaneous Speaking wasn't as bad as I'd thought and was a prime way of meeting Mrs. Sharbutt's "you must compete in 3 events at each tournament" rule without actually having to prepare more material, most of the time we spent there consisted of us finding other ways to entertain ourselves. The one that sticks out the most was our compilation of a list of movies with one word titles, a list I became somewhat obsessed with and fixated on as I'm wont to do, working on it at home as well, a fact that earned me strange looks and derision from others when I mentioned it; of course, they also didn't understand why I insisted on disqualifying films for having initial articles or a subtitle. Yes, I was that anal.

6. Going along with that whole "goody-two-shoes" thing, I rarely if ever cussed when I was younger, but by the time I had gotten to Jr. High I had settled into the mind-set that most curse words were really just frowned upon because of social mores and not for any inherent evil in the words themselves; I still avoided using them because I knew I'd get in trouble, but not out of any inner distaste at the language. So, when one of my classmates dared me to say a curse word and I did with little to no hesitation, she was both startled and entertained, and soon made a game out of it, randomly turning to me and saying "Hey, Todd . . . say [expletive deleted]." I would good-naturedly roll my eyes and comply. The only exception: taking the Lord's name in vain. Even during my moderately foul-mouthed college years, I might not hesitate to drop an f-bomb from time to time, but nary a g.d. would pass my lips.

7. The same classmate who delighted in getting me to cuss later on declared that she was going to marry me when we grew up because she knew I'd be successful, a promise that she made sure to include while signing my yearbook. However, I was not going to be her first husband; no, she also planned to marry Troy Aikman first, but would leave him for me at some point. Later on, she also added another one of my classmates to the list, bumping me back to husband number three; my mom informed her that she didn't know about letting her baby boy be third on the list, to which my erstwhile future spouse replied "Oh, don't worry Mrs. Enoch, I'll save myself for him; I'm practically president of the V Club!." Later, when she found out I was majoring in English, the promises of matrimony disappeared . . .

8. Up until some point in high school I was pretty sheltered and naive about quite a few things; I can't count how many times somebody would make a sexual innuendo and I wouldn't have the foggiest idea what they were talking about, often putting my foot in my mouth. The odd thing is, my parents did not consciously shelter me; if I came up to them and asked "What does so-and-so mean?" they would freely answer me. At least a couple of times, even they were surprised by how little I knew . . .

9. I have never really enjoyed being in a leadership position in any organization; honestly, most of the times I ran for an office it was because I felt like it was expected of me. If I wasn't the most lackluster Student Council president Wyandotte had ever seen, I was probably pretty high up the list. I guess most people just didn't realize that I was just a slacker at heart. Which is not to say that me getting beat out for an office was a relief; I hated losing regardless of whether I really wanted it or not.

10. The Student Council state convention was always interesting because you wound up staying at a host family's house. It got even more interesting my Senior year, when my host family was Asian, and another StuCo attendee and I got dragged along to the restaurant owned by the host family because it was the grandmother's birthday; however, being white devils, we were not allowed at the party itself, and so were stuck at a little table on the other side of the restaurant. On the up side, that's when I learned I liked shrimp tempura . . .

11. I did not get my drivers license until after I'd been away at college for a couple of years. To be honest, the biggest reason why I didn't try to learn to drive was because I'd convinced myself I was too uncoordinated and lacking of spatial sense to handle a motor vehicle and would probably kill myself if I ever tried. While this put a definite crimp in my social life, it worked to my advantage at the aforementioned StuCo state convention, when the kid whose family we were staying with tried to drag us to a drunken party and wanted me to be designated driver. If I had just tried to play the "I"m a goody-two-shoes, uncomfortable with going to a drunken party, and really don't want to navigate my way around the big city at night carting around a couple of inebriated underagers" card, the debate might have lasted for ages, but saying that I didn't have a license put it to bed pretty quickly. He wasn't all that friendly to me after that, for some reason.

12. For most of my life, my parents have been pretty hands off when it comes to my decisions about what avenues to pursue, not wanting to become those pushy parents who try to live vicariously through their children. So, there are only two times when I can remember my mom forcing me to join an organization: 4-H in 4th grade and TSA in 8th. They both turned out to be great moves for me, as 4-H helped me discover my knack for public speaking, and TSA expanded on that knack, gave me the opportunity to travel places I might never have otherwise, and also helped me break out of my shell. In retrospect, maybe they should have been pushy a little more often . . .

13. My first year in 4-H, our chapter did a circus themed skit for the local Share-the-Fun. My role was that of a hyper-active poodle whose trainer finally cries out in exasperation "get down!" . . . at which point, I would start to boogie-oogie-oogie on down off the stage. However, when it came time for us to come on stage, the Ringmaster's index cards stuck together, and he skipped right over our intro and we never got to go on stage. While I was pretty upset at the time, in retrospect I should probably thank Brandon for saving me from humiliating myself in public like that.

14. My Senior year I took two classes as independent study because the times of the actual classes conflicted with two other classes I really wanted to take. The two independent study classes where Chemistry, which I took at the same time as the Physics class, and Geometry, which I took at the same time as an Algebra I class. For Chemistry, I was pretty much a part of the actual Physics class, for which I will be eternally grateful, because watching my classmates do their best to drive Coach Crowley to distraction was endlessly entertaining. But for Geometry I was segregated to the computer room attached to the main math class room, for which I will be eternally grateful, because it meant that I was able to goof off endlessly when I was supposed to be hard at work, especially since the teacher didn't give me any assignments to hand in, trusting that I would work all the problems because I was a good little over-achiever. Again; people really didn't pick up on that whole "inner slacker' thing.

15. I still remember the first time I saw one of those 3-d hidden pictures; it was the afternoon of Senior Day at North Eastern Oklahoma A&M. After we got done, we weren't expected to go back to school, so some of us decided to head to Joplin to the mall. Somehow I wound up going with Regan and Craig, which was a little odd since none of us ever really hung out with each other; can't remember how that grouping got formed. Anyway, while we were roaming around the mall we came across a display of one of the pictures at Off the Wall, I believe. Later, when I watched Mallrats, I would greatly identify with Willam's dogged determination to see the picture. When it finally clicked, I was treated to a collection of dinosaurs. I don't remember if I saw it first, or if Regan did; I just remember that Craig was having a devil of a time getting the hang of it and we burned a lot of time because he refused to leave until he finally saw something.

16. In 12 years of attending school at Wyandotte, I never once ate cafeteria food for lunch. In the beginning, this was a product of my extreme pickiness as a child; as I grew older, it became a strange and twisted point of pride. The day after Freshman graduation when I could finally walk uptown to Butterfield's and get my own burger instead of having to rope some upperclassman into it was a grand, grand day.

17. Going back to the goody-two-shoes thing again-- that does seem to pop up a lot in my youth, doesn't it? -- I also made it through my entire scholastic career without getting swats. Which is not to say I never got in trouble; I did get detention and have to write sentences once in a while, but I never acted up enough to warrant swats -- much to the dismay of Mr. Phillips, my 7th and 8th grade history teacher, who sort of prided himself on being able to provoke students into acting out so he could give them swats; he once complained to my mom that I refused to rise to his bait. I'll never forget the day he told one of my classmates "Travis, you laugh like a little girl," and Travis replied "Yeah, well, you laugh like a pig." Boom, swat time.

18. Not too long before starting kindergarten, I misheard something someone said about the playground at the school and the slides and concrete; I thought that instead of "concrete" they had said "some creek," and so I was freaked out about going there, because all of the slides would be in the middle of the water, and you'd have to swim to them, and I couldn't swim.

19. Because we can't hit the goody-two-shoes theme too many times: I was so incredibly worried about not breaking rules that I would occasionally drive me parents to distraction. When I was about 6 or 7 we were over at my Papaw's house and he had some cinnamon schnapps which he let dad try; dad only took a sip, but I freaked out, because he was the one who was going to drive me home and, y'know, he'd been drinking. Another time mom and dad had to change plans and drop me off at Papaw's instead of taking me to the movies with them because I had realized the movie they were going to take me to was rated R, and I knew I was far too young to see anything like that.

20. The day I realized I was going to have to get glasses was one of the worst days of my young life. I was in Jr. High, and trying desperately -- without much success, may I add -- to "reinvent" myself, break out of that "super-nerd" mold I'd been stuck in forever. The thought of suddenly becoming a Four Eyes tore me up, even though in all my years I had never heard anyone at my school actually being taunted for their eye-wear. Of course, my very first day at school with my glasses, one of my classmates who shall remain nameless saw me in the halls and loudly made a crack along the lines of how funny it was that "Mr. Perfect" -- his words, not mine, trust me -- had to wear glasses now; just the sort of positive reinforcement my young neurotic self needed, no?

21. I remember sitting on the band bus in the 9th grade on the way to an away football game and hearing all of the upperclassmen spouting such bizarre phrases as "A sphincter says what?" and "Schwing!" which made me very curious to check out this "Wayne's World" thing everyone was so into. And thus began my love affair with early 90s Saturday Night Live, which was pretty much my first ever "water cooler" show -- or water fountain, as the case may be. Although my tastes might not have always been in step with my schoolmates -- I couldn't understand why everyone was talking about that first Chicago Superfans skit the next day at school when it hadn't even made me chuckle at all -- my discovery of that iteration of SNL gave me more of a consistent conversational common ground with the people around me than pretty much anything else had ever. A shallow connection, perhaps, but socially backward teen Todd was thankful for any crutch he could grab on to.

22. When I was in 7th grade, our school had a policy of having an Exemption Day for semester tests for students with high enough grades and attendance; despite having the highest GPA in my class, and hardly ever missing school, paranoid, worst-case-scenario neurotic that I was I would never allow myself to believe that I was actually going to be exempt until the list was actually announced. I know on at least one occasion this earned me the enmity of most of my classmates when one teacher asked everyone who was going to be exempt to raise their hands, and I wouldn't do it. I'm not sure if my classmates thought I was showing false modesty, trying for attention, or just being incredibly stupid for a smart kid, but I can clearly remember the rancor in their voices as they cajoled me "come on, Todd, put your hand up, you now you're going to be exempt, just put your hand up, stop being stupid, just put your hand up already!" But in my mind, Murphy's Law was paramount, so I remained steadfast. And I wonder why I wasn't more popular . . .

23. During recess in elementary school,when my friends were playing basketball, I would avoid getting drawn into the actual game, and would instead pretend that I was a sports reporter, trying to interview them about the game in progress. Man, was I a colossal dork.

24. My sophomore year our class decided to do a walk-a-thon as a fund raiser for some reason; however, the day we were scheduled to do it happened to be incredibly rainy, so instead of walking around the track as originally planned, we instead walked around the Old Gym. To help pass the time, someone decided to play some music; however, they only had one tape available: Vanilla Ice's "To the Extreme." Not sure how many times I got to hear Mr. Van Winkle's magnum opus that day, but let's just say that there's a good reason why, even though I have never listened to that album all the way through anytime before or since then, I will still randomly get the chorus to "Stop That Train (I Want to Get Off)" stuck in my head.

25. My graduating class had quite a reputation; okay, so we had several. A reputation for running off math teachers; a reputation for steadily losing members so that our Senior graduating class was just a fraction of our Freshman graduating class; a reputation for intense slackerdom and internal strife. I can only remember the class as a whole pulling together one time, and that was our Junior year, when word came that the Seniors were convinced that we were going to throw them a horrible prom; the common joke was that we were going to have it at Farley Hill, and the banquet would just be a wiener roast. For some reason, this particular bit of derision galvanized my classmates, and we set out to throw the Seniors pretty much the same prom they had thrown the year before, raising enough money to hold it on the Cherokee Queen. In retrospect, maybe people should have ticked us off more often, who knows what we could have accomplished . . .

Fragmented Friday - Ulterior Smile

Was getting ready to type up a Fragmented Friday post when I noticed that there was one saved in my drafts which I had started last November, before NaNoWriMo derailed my blogging but good. So, first, some old stories from before Cap'n Shack-Fu set off to Quantico.

• One weekend Shack-Fu, Li'l Random and I got together for dinner and a movie. At one point during our meal -- which was shockingly not at Texas Roadhouse -- Shack left himself wide open for a crack at his expense, and I took full advantage of it. As Shack gave me the menacing death glare, Li'l Random began to laugh; Shack quickly turned the glare in Li'l Brother's direction and asked "What are you laughing at?" Random replied "Oh, I just took a bite of my sandwich, and the lettuce tickled." He then quickly took another bite, let out a little tee-hee and said "Look, there it goes again."
  
  
• A little while later during the same meal, Li'l Brother got a funny little grin on his face as Shack-Fu and I were having some more back-and-forth, prompting Shack to ask what he was smiling about. Li'l Brother asked "What, I can't smile now?" My response was that it was obviously an ulterior smile.
  
  
• Another time a week or so later, the three of us were eating at Texas Roadhouse -- I know, how unlike us, right? We wound up with a waitress who had not had the pleasure of serving us before, nor had her co-workers warned her about the joys of dealing with a trio of HyperForce 3000ers. Li'l Random almost blew her brain with his randomness, but she got her revenge - albeit inadvertent - a bit later. First she asked Shack-Fu if he was a preacher -- "You just give off that kind of vibe," quoth she -- and when he told her that actually he and Li'l Brother worked together, she expressed disbelief, stating that she had been sure Li'l Babyface was only 16.
  

And now for a few more recent things

• Let's start with a more up-to-date Shack-Fu tidbit; my best bud has received his orders for his first assignment after the academy. For his first two years as an agent, Shack will be working out of Tulsa, OK. While he had been hoping for an OKC assignment, due to it being closer to friends and family, Tulsa really isn't that much farther away. Sure, the extra two hours distance will mean the day trips to visit aren't quite as feasible, but at least he'll be close enough that we won't need air fare to make a quick visit possible.
  
  
• For the first time in my life, I completed my tax return before April. Part of this whole "trying to be organized" thing I'm trying out. We'll see how long that lasts
  
  
• Hand in hand with my move towards organization is my New Years resolution to start eating better and exercising regularly in an effort to lose some weight. Okay, not just some weight; a lot of weight. So far, it's going well. I'm working out at least 5 times a week, even without Cap'n Shack-Fu around to drag me off my butt; I've been fixing my own meals at home rather than succumbing to my fast food cravings; and, most impressively to some, I have cut down my Coca-cola intake to one day a week. I'm finding it much easier to stick to the diet now that I'm living alone and don't have to worry about tempting food brought in by my roomies. I'm also being much more open about my attempt than I have in the past; I used to tell very few people, because I was afraid of failing, but now I figure that the more people who know, the more accountability there is. My initial goal is to lose 40 lbs; I'm already a little over 1/3 of the way there.
  
  
• A few days ago I posted a few pictures from high school on Facebook; being from the early 90s, there were many examples of female hairdos that defied the laws of physics. For some reason, some of these females weren't exactly happy to have their early stylistic choices put on view for all Facebook to see. And thus began a wave of photos being posted online in what I like to call The Nostalgia Wars; at this moment, Redneck Diva seems to be the clear winner, armed as she is with a range of Student Council, Band, and Competitive Speech photos, but it's early days yet in the war; early days*.
  
  
• Zinger posited the other day that the reason for the lack of blogging was because my life is so much more boring now that I'm living alone. I do think that's part of it; life without day-to-day interaction with The Lovable PigPen is definitely not as interesting, although it might be slightly healthier for my ego. And with Cap'n Shack-Fu at Quantico, and Li'l Brother travelling with work, most of the sources for good blog fodder just aren't as handy as they once were. But the recent Wyandottian explosion on Facebook is stirring up the high school memories like crazy, so there may be some more nostalgia-laden posts from that as well.
  

*Sadly, I don't have much more ammo in my arsenal, having lost a ton of pictures when our house burned down years ago

Look Who's Back . . .No, Honest, I Mean It This Time

Remember last month when I said I was back on the blogging track?

Obviously, I lied.

Sadly, no really good excuse for my lack of posts, other than a general lack of inspiration and desire. Had planned on getting back into it over Christmas break, but wound up just reading old comics and watching lots of movies. Then I had thought "alright, let's make 'posting regularly' one of my New Year's Resolutions!" But, yeah, that didn't happen either. And while I was trying again and again to motivate myself to post, as usual it fell to a pointed comment from Zinger to get me moving: "Can't believe Rosenberg is only going to be updating Goats three days a week. Next thing you know, he's only updating once a week, then once every couple of weeks, then not at all. We all know how frustrating it is to keep checking a site that never updates, right?"

Point taken, my friend, point taken

So, what's been happening in my life since the last time I actually posted?

CHRISTMAS: Cap'n Cluck and Angel hosted a White Elephant gift exchange at their house the Friday before Christmas. My contribution? A framed photocopy of the picture I had posted at work for the "Guess whose parents these are" game

Gotta love the 70s, right? Anyway, Fluffy was the lucky recipient of my parents' wedding photo, along with a beat up copy of the 2000 Video Hound Movie Guide, added to give the box some weight.

I spent the first week of my Christmas break in Miami, OK where I gleefully introduced my parents to such Odd-Squodd-esque films as In Bruges, Burn After Reading, Mister Foe, Sasquatch Gang, etc. Dad and I also got to enjoy a couple of entertaining horror-comedies The Cottage and Dance of the Dead, which I plan to talk more about on Monday. Honestly, a good portion of my enjoyment of spending time with my folks is introducing them to films I know they'll like but which they would never rent on their own.

The second week of Christmas break was spent largely just sitting around my house watching Netflix and DVRed shows. Man, I love my DVR.

NEW YEARS: I spent the bulk of New Year's Eve fighting with a nasty piece of malware on my PC which not only kept most of my anti-spyware and anti-virus from opening and/or updating, but also blocked me from accessing several web sites devoted to fighting such things. Luckily, I now have WiFi and a laptop, so I was able to download the software needed to clean up the PC onto the laptop and then burn it to disc to get it onto the PC. After about 6 hours or so of messing with it, finally get it all cleared up, and so was able to make it to the Singles New Year's Eve Luau with no problem, especially with the help of the new TomTom GPS unit my folks got my for Christmas.

The Singles party was a lot of fun, even if it did remind me just how horribly out of shape I've gotten in the last few months without PigPen and Cap'n Shack-Fu around to get me off my butt. Dancing can take quite a toll when you're old, fat, and have no endurance. I also about lost my voice doing karaoke. Good times, good times.

I got to try out the TomTom again on New Years Day when I drove out to Van Alstyne to visit Clan Flunky. Flunky's folks had bought around 8 acres there a few months back, and Flunky had spent most of his Christmas vacation helping his dad with landscaping. When he invited me out to visit, Flunky told me I could bring my work gloves and pay for my lunch with hard labor; I opted to just be a mooch instead. I was really glad I got to spend the day with Flunky, Flunky Lover, and their two spawn, since I hadn't seen them face to face in probably two years. The elder spawn is not nearly as hypnotically cute as he once was, but he makes up for it with his mind-bending joke telling ability.

Spawn: Knock knock
Me: Who's there?
Spawn: Chair! [erupts into gales of laughter] That's how we play this game!

CAP'N SHACK-FU: My best bud Shack-Fu has now been at the FBI academy for a little over a month. The first few weeks were pretty rough as they tried to weed people out, but things seem to have settled down a bit . . . of course, "settled down" for the FBI academy is relative term. He has put down Oklahoma City as his top choice for a duty assignment after graduation, so we're all praying that that pans out, since he'd only be a couple of hours away then. Right now I'm hoping to head up to Quantico for his graduation in May; with luck I can work it so I can also swing by Maryland and see Clan Flunky again while I'm in the general area.

And, for the record, yes, it is still horribly surreal for me to think that my best friend in the world is on the verge of becoming a full-fledged FBI agent.

FACEBOOK: I know I mentioned back in September that there had been an increase in the number of Wyandottians on Facebook, but it has been steadily increasing ever since then. As of this moment, I now have over 50 former classmates from Wyandotte as friends on Facebook. Kind of interesting, seeing where everybody is these days. Plus, I enjoy knowing that some of them who never had much exposure to the "real" Todd are now getting to see a brief glimpse of my insanity as evidence by my random status updates.

In addition to the Wyandottians, I've also managed to reconnect with my old pal from the Stillwater Public Library Days J.D., along with his wife and mother-in-law; now that we're in contact again, there may be hope that we can actually get our schedules to line up so that we can meet up at some point, since I can't even remember the last time I got to see them.

Oh, and earlier today I added CoIM to the Facebook Blog Network; if those of you blog monkeys with Facebook accounts could take a moment to go here and confirm me as the blog author, it would be greatly appreciated. If nothing else, I'd like to get the number of readers to rise above 2.

Fragmented Friday - Five for Five

• Earlier today I got a message from Zinger: "This could be your first full week of posting in a long time" Well, despite being nearly overwhelmed by a desire not to post just to be contrary, I finally decided to buckle down and type something up, making this my first M-F posting schedule since last June.
  
  
• Despite the great benefits of the saline nasal rinse, I have been having a horrible time with my allergies these last couple of weeks. I've had to restock on Claritin-D and antihistamines to keep things under control; when I went to watch PigPen and Cap'n Bumper play softball on Wednesday I barely made it through the first game of their double header, and had to bow out of the second one. I'm afraid I might also have to cut short my time at the Single's campfire at Cap'n Cluck's parents' house tonight, which is a shame, since they're selling the house making this our last one there.
  
  
• Tomorrow I'm heading down to Lucas to visit Clan Stoneheart. All through the week Zinger's been asking me what I was wanting to do while I was down there, and my answer was pretty much a consistent "I dunno." Well, a little while ago he called me to tell me that he and Pooh-bear had come up with something for us to do that night and that I'd want to make sure I brought some slacks and a polo-type shirt with me. Haven't the foggiest idea what we'll be doing, but with luck it will help with blog fodder for next week.
  
  
• Speaking of blog fodder, when I was typing up yesterday's post about short films, it dawned on me that, although I've made passing comments about it and have pledged to go into greater detail several times, I still have not done a full-fledged post about my trip to the Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham, AL back in '02. Look for it next Thursday; if it's not here, then I will have failed in my duty as a faithful blogger. But, what else is new?
  
  
• I mentioned that I'd watched one of my tapes with PigPen and Cap'n Peanut on Saturday, but I didn't mention that although PigPen had originally said they would try to make it up here, I wound up watching it at their place. See, during the heaviest part of the rain dumped on us by Ike on Saturday, I texted PigPen to see if they were still coming up; he replied that it would depend on the weather, plus Peanut's parents were taking him out to dinner for his birthday, and there was no telling when they'd get done, but if I wanted, he could let me know when they were back and then I could come down there and watch it. My first thought was "doubt I'll go," since I hate driving in the rain and I hate driving at night, and I really hate driving in the rain at night. Almost immediately following this thought, however, was a practical question I quickly posited to him: "Did you guys get a VCR?" He quickly replied in the negative, saying I would have to provide that as well. Glad I asked, huh? By the time he texted to see if I was still wanting to come down, it was no longer rainign, and I was so restless after a day of botched plans* that I didn't even let the worry that it might start raining again keep me from hopping in the car with my VCR, which I had stuffed in my backpack to help keep it dry. No sooner had I started the car than I got another text from PigPen reminding me that I needed to bring the VCR. I shook my head at his lack of faith in me and backed out of the driveway, not realizing until I was half-way there that while I had remembere the VCR, I had forgotten its remote control.
  
  
• Only one more week until Miss ArkanSass comes to visit; hopefull Li'l Random will be back from deployment by then . . .
  
  
• There's been a small explosion of familiar faces popping up on Facebook recently, both from high school** and college. Two of the Wyandottians, neither of whom I've seen or talked to in ages, both mentioned that they've read my blog, which surprised me; I have this mental image that my blog only gets read by people I have regular contact with. Of course, one of them mentioned she found it through Redneck Diva, which explains it.
  
  
• One of the Facebook features is a "People You May Know" suggestion, which shows you the names of other Facebook members who have at least two friends in common with you. Most of the time I have no idea who the suggested people are, and so have to look at the common friends to find out why they've been suggested; generally, the common friends will make sense (Zinger and Pooh-bear; Cap'n Bubbles and her roomied Brown-Eyed Girl; etc.), but every once in a while there will be one that throws me, like when I saw that one of the suggested people was friends with my long-time Parkerite friend Coronela and also with my young cousin who's a senior in high school; turns out the suggested friend is classmates with my cousing, and one of Coronela's step-sisters. Last night I had four or five suggestions pop up who were all friends with a Wyandottian who was a Senior when I was in 8th grade and also with my college roomie Wrath teh Berzerkr's younger sibling; not sure where the connection there comes in.

*This was also the day that my movie watching and costume shopping with Li'l Random got scrapped due to his being deployed.
**So far, only two people from my graduating class have joined, one of whom pretty much joined, accepted my friend request, and hasn't been back one since. Was it something I said?

Thankful Thursday 2008

This past year has been a bit of a roller-coaster ride for me. Joy over finally getting back into working out was dampened by multiple injuries; despair over the loss of the Blue Beast was tempered by the acquisition of my new car*; pleasure at finally getting a significant raise was strained by the fact that for several months I was the only one of my roommates getting a steady paycheck, and then I had car payments to worry about, and then medical bills on top of that . . . and then the bulk of the last four months I've been fighting to climb out of the downward spiral that my broken digit, subsequent surgery, and ongoing recovery have plunged me into. Yes, over the past year I've suffered through intense humiliation, rampant paranoia, and senseless depression the likes of which have not been seen since my college days; on at least one occasion I was so overcome with hurt and anger that I lost all capacity for speech and could only stand there, fighting back tears of rage. And yet, despite the pitfalls the befell me throughout the year, I am still thankful for many things, most especially my friends.

I am thankful for Cap'n Peanut who has become a really good friend to me over the last several months, and who is at the forefront of the "motivate Todd to get off his butt and get in shape" movement.

I am thankful for Redneck Diva, who went out of her way to make sure that my birthday spent away from the friends I had planned to be with was not a birthday spent without friends after all.

I am thankful for Zinger, and Poohbear, and Bubblegum Tate, and Kookamama, and Cedric the Destroyer, and all of those whose efforts to keep in touch help remind me that, depsite my paranoia, out of sight does not automatically mean out of mind.

I am thankful for new friends like Cap'n Bubbles and Mei-Mei and Doc Jetson and Blondie Blaarrrgghhh** and the other, still nicknameless ones whose presence has added new energy to the Singles group.

I am thankful for my not-so-new friends (too numerous to name lest I be accused of playing favorites) who have been a source of support through unstable times.

And, last but not least, I am thankful that, for the first time in over a decade***, I have added to the ranks of those I consider my Best Friends; it's hard for me to believe that at this time last year I was still just getting to know PigPen and Cap'n Shack-Fu, and barely knew Li'l Random at all and now they're like family to me. I am thankful for the countless times over the last year that they have suffered through one of my neurotic attacks, have patiently talked me through my black moods, have dragged me kicking and screaming out of the realm of negativity, have responded to my crazy ways with nothing but compassion, understanding, and the occasional metaphoric slap upside the head****. I am thankful that, on occasion, I have been able to offer them help and advice as well, although I can't help but feel they're getting the short end of the stick, here. I am thankful because this only child now has four people who are like brothers to him, and that's four more than he ever thought he'd have growing up.

Happy Thanksgiving, my blog monkeys; don't forget to tell those you care about how thankful you are for their presence in your lives.

*No, Li'l Random, I have not named it yet.
**Look, Blondie, I figure out how to spell it!
***Good grief, was college really that long ago?
****And the slightly less frequent physical slap, such as The Lovable PigPen delivered to me Tuesday night every time I'd apologize needlessly "Stop saying you're sorry!" [slap!] Happy Slapsgiving, indeed.

Fragmented Friday - Bummer Days

• A few days after our mini-high-school reunion, Redneck Diva (who wrote her own account here) informed me that talking with me now is exactly like talking with me in high school; "It was kind of eerie at first" she said, "like I'd slipped into a time warp." Apparently my mannerisms and speech patterns have been set in stone for quite a while, not quite sure what that says about me; either I matured early, or not at all. I think we all know where the safe money goes on that bet . . .
  
  
• Just got word that the annual library "talent and hobby showcase" will be coming up again next month. The last two years I've performed two out of the three competitive speech pieces I still have memorized, but I'm not sure if the library staff is quite ready for #3, "The October Game" by Ray Bradbury. So, if I do decide to do something I'll have to decide if I want to learn a new piece to perform; just read an example of my short stories or blogs; or just finish up the competitive speech trifecta by doing the story about the guy who chops up his daughter and passes her body parts around like party favors.
  
  
• Along similar lines (to the library/performing thing, not chopping up body parts thing), several staff members have now expressed an interest in developing a Book Cart Drill Team to perform at the next Texas Library Association conference; since I had mentioned the Drill Team in my submission to the library newsletter about the TLA conference, and since everyone apparently knows that I have little fear of getting up and making a fool of myself in such situations, I have been persistently pursued to partake because, as one staffer said, "We need a guy." How can I pass up sweet-talk like that?
  
  
• I've been figuring out what my budget is going to be like with the addition of car payments and and increase in car insurance; I am now officially depressed. Bye-bye eating out ever again; bye-bye crazy amount of Netflix movies checked out at once; bye-bye *choke* comic book purchases -- you will be sorely missed.
  
  
• Had a surprise party thrown in my honor last night; unfortunately, I had grown suspicious and wasn't really all that surprised; even more unfortunately, I opened my big mouth and said so and then had to watch all the light and joy drain out of the party-planners' faces. Just call me Cap'n Ingrate.
  
  
• I'm afraid I've been lax in promoting the latest round of the Write in the Thick of It challenge, probably largely due to the fact that I, stressed out and distracted by my personal woes, never was able to find inspiration for Tate's words, and wound up phoning it in. Voting is still open until tomorrow night, after which time Diva is proposing some rule changes for at least the next round to shake things up; I'll be very interested to see how it works out.
  
  
• Several of the Singles are planning on going to Six Flags tomorrow; I, who procrastinated so long in getting my season pass that I can no longer justify the expense, probably wouldn't go even if I did have the money; the tailbone, it is still not healed, and somehow I don't think the massive g-force from my favorite rides would be conducive to its recovery. Very bummed.
  
  
• When I came in to work on Wednesday, I discovered that my coworkers had taken my comment that I only really like one picture of myself -- my profile pic -- and had much fun with it for my birthday, plastering a couple of dozen copies around my monitor. The original plan had been to tape them to the action figures and miscellaneous creatures which adorn my desk, which I think would have been funny, but instead I get to stare at myself all day long, which isn't necessarily improving my mood. And then I wandered into the break room and saw this taped up on the dry erase board:I would say that some people have too much time on their hands, but then I recall the HyperTwins picture and realize I have no room to talk.

Silver Lining

Although the sudden trip to OK to pick up a new car has thrown a monkeywrench into birthday plans with the Singles*, something positive has come out of it: Redneck Diva has volunteered to contact some of our former high school classmates and host a cookout at her place. The fun part came when she asked "Who all should I invite?" and my mind kind of went blank. I mean, Cedric the Destroyer and The Photographer, being the only other Wyandottians I'm in regular contact with, were givens, but beyond that, I've had little to no contact with most of my former schoolmates. Oh, sure, I've added a few to my MySpace friends list over the past few months, but the paranoid part of me kept insisting that there's a far cry from accepting a MySpace friend invitation and actually wanting to see me face to face. But, I did my best Squiggly impression and told the paranoia "Shut your face!"** I then made a brief list of the folks I used to hang out with most in high school and passed it on to Diva so she can invite those she can get ahold of.

My philosophy is going to be this: if people are willing and able to show up, great! If, on the other hand, they get an invitation and think to themselves "Why in the world would he think I would want to hang out with him, I didn't even really like him all that much back then" (as the paranoid part of my mind insists they will), well, who needs 'em? I mean, if nothing else, I'll get to see Diva and Cedric for the first time in, oh, probably close to 15 years,*** which will make it all worth it.


*And not just my plans, as Cap'n Shack-Fu let slip that a surprise of some sort had been in the works for tomorrow evening when I informed him that I was flying out tomorrow morning
**Sorry, Squiggly; too good to resist.
***Dang, does that make me feel old

What, Me Random?

As has become my custom on boredom-laden Fridays, I give to you yet another collection of random thoughts and occurrences that don't really rate full blog treatments by themselves, but which combine to form a blog that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Or something like that

• Upon reading my statement that better men than him have tried and failed to break me of my negativity, PigPen responded pretty much how I predicted he would: "Todd, there are no men better than me." It's nice to have someone so reliable around.
  
  
• Along similar lines, I have taken entirely too much pleasure out of ratcheting up my self-deprecating comments several notches just to get a reaction out of PigPen. The situation would normally go like this: PigPen would make a typical jab in my direction; I would not only agree whole-heartedly with the insult, I would also magnify it to a "I'm a totally worthless excuse for a human being" degree; PigPen would give me the Glare of Doom. At one point last week I told him "I can't help myself, it's too easy: you set me up, and I knock me down."
  
  
• I played racquetball for the first time in well over a week, which was good, because the lack of exercise was starting to make me grumpy, as anyone who was around me for the past couple of days could easily testify. The reason for the lack of activity was my right knee, which was giving me some problems after subjecting it to several days of basketball. I finally found a knee-brace to fit my leg, and after walking around with it for almost a week, I finally felt up to trying some activity. Good news is that today my knee isn't bothering me; bad news is that I can't say the same for every other part of my body. Woke up several times in the night due leg cramps, which is always fun, and I'm actually bruised in a few spots due to one of PigPen's pals nailing me pretty good with the ball a few times. And yet, despite the aches and pains, I'm in about a zillion times better mood today than I have been in a while; go figure.
  
  
• Got the word early this morning that we only have to work half a day due to it being Good Friday. I'm excited, not just because I get off at noon, but also because this means that I can go see the afternoon matinee of Grindhouse.
  
  
• When it comes to a love of the strange and unusual in cinema, I have discovered a kindred spirit in the form of Li'l Dill. Finally, someone else who appreciates the last third of Adaptation! A call to firm up plans for Grindhouse viewing last night turned into a long conversation about various off-beat films. It's always nice to have another person to whom I can recommend those really bizarre films which appeal to almost nobody else.
  
  
• I'm really enjoying taking part in Diva's writing challenge; I haven't written much in the way of fiction since I finished up In a Cabin, so it's been nice to exercise those mental muscles a bit. I know a couple of people voted for me last time because they thought it was the most accessible (read: least bizarre), so I'm wondering how they'll feel about my foray into costumed herodom. Maybe next time I'll do something dark and twisty, so Diva doesn't feel like she's the only one whose mind goes to those places. I'm hoping that more people start submitting stories; I know PigPen got about halfway through one before life got in the way, which is too bad, since I was looking forward to seeing what he came up with.
  
  
• Got to have lunch with fellow Wyandotte Class of 93 alumni The Photographer earlier this week; her husband had to come down to Ft. Worth for a few days for work, so she came down with him. When she asked for suggestions of where to eat, I asked "Do you want Mexican or Cajun?" She replied "How about Mexican one day, and Cajun the next?" I almost instantly sent Zinger an IM gloating about the fact that I was going to get to eat at Frillys; unfortunately I gloated too soon, for after lunch at El Guapos on Wednesday, The Photographer informed me that she and her hubby had to head back earlier than she thought, so no Frillys for me. Zinger, of course, took great pleasure in my despair.

The Following Was Inspired by a Recent Message from Frost-E Frost

In the days of the Book Monkeys it was Buffy, Angel and Dawson; nowadays it's Lost, The Office, and Heroes; but back in the Wyandotte days, there were only two shows which really counted as water-cooler (or, since it was high school, water-fountain) shows. The first was Saturday Night Live, which was, in the early 90s, at one of its high points. This was the time of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, of Chris Farley and David Spade, of Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider, of Julia Sweeney and the late, lamented Phil Hartman; this was the time of Toonces the Driving Cat, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, Wayne's World, It's Pat, Chicago Super Fans, and, of course, Happy Fun Ball. Each Saturday night, there would be multiple skits which would provide ample fodder for inside jokes and running gags for weeks at a time. But while SNL engaged a wide variety of fellow students, the other much-discussed show appealed to a much narrower demographic. The name of the show? Seinfeld.

The biggest Seinfeld fan I knew at the time was Frost-E Frost, who went around mimicking Kramer's head injury inspired speech patterns from Season 4 for months; I still can't hear the name "Yo Yo Ma" without thinking of Frost-E. It was during this season that Seinfeld aired the infamous episode, "The Contest," which revolved around a topic so taboo on TV at the time that the actual word, despite being the focus, was never used throughout the episode.* This was the episode which won Larry David an Emmy for best screenplay; it has been named as one of the best episodes of the series on countless, countless lists and was, at the time, one of the funniest things I had ever seen on TV. I was looking forward to hearing Frost-E's thoughts on it the next day, but when I asked him about it, I just got a resigned grunt.

You see, of all nights, that was one in which Frost-E's mom sat down to watch the show with him. Horribly conscious that he was watching a show about The Sin of Onan with his mother, Frost-E was too busy concentrating on not laughing to fully enjoy the episode. Which is funny in and of itself, in a laugh-at-your-friend’s-discomfort sort of way; what's even funnier is that not too long after that, his mom told my mom that she, self-conscious about him being there, had also stifled any and all amusement she had had at the risqué episode. So there they sat, both doing their darndest not to let the other know that they found anything about the show even the slightest bit funny.

Of course, my mom and I had also watched the episode together . . . and both laughed our butts off through the whole thing.


*Even though it had been used on screen just a few episodes earlier; those crazy censors

The Grudge

I try to be an understanding and forgiving person, and I think, for the most part, I succeed. A large part of that is due to my mom, who would always meet my childhood rants and raves about those who had wronged me with insights into their lives, forcing me to always look beyond the surface into the root causes of behavior. In fact, she trained me so well that she later came to regret it, as she would become incensed on my behalf, questioning why I was still friends with so-and-so after they did such-and-such, only to have the "you have to understand where they're coming from" line thrown back at her. Because of this, few and far between were the instances in which I gave way to utter loathing for those who crossed me. One of the ones that did manage to stick started in Junior High, thanks to the 7th grade hazing process known as Initiation.

I don't know when I first started hearing the horror stories of Initiation, but I'm sure they were in full swing by the end of my 6th grade year. Being a painfully nerdy boy, I was understandably nervous about the prospect of being set upon by upperclassmen, fearful of the accompanying physical pain in the way that only those who've never experienced any such pain can be. But while there was a part of me that was fearful, I somehow managed to rise above it and not obsess over the possibilities. Honestly, it's truly amazing just how un-bullied I was a child, considering my nerdiness and fear of confrontation, and there was a part of me that thought I might be left off the hook since my mom was one of the more feared teachers at the school. No, I never played the "you know who my mom is" card, but on at least one occasion I know that a potential bully was stopped by one of his compatriots who invoked the name of Mrs. E. And so, as the first week or two of Junior High passed with no sign of a devastating Initiation on the horizon, I relaxed and forgot about it . . . until the day an 8th grader came up to me between classes and said "You're initiated" moments after punching me in the family jewels.

Now, this wasn't the first time I'd suffered trauma to the testicles, nor would it be the last; heck, it wasn't even the most painful. But it was the first and only time that said injury had been deliberate. My reaction is a bit of a blur; all I remember is making a bee-line for the restroom, in hopes of escaping the halls before the inevitable tears started flowing. Did I tear up a little or bawl like a baby? My recollection is the former, since I mainly felt shocked and numb, but I could be mistaken. Of course, I might not have had much of a chance to break down, since as soon as I made it into the restroom I was almost immediately surrounded by several upperclassmen who had witnessed the Initiation, and who weren't happy about it. Why weren’t they happy? Was it because I was such a beloved figure at the school that the very thought of someone assaulting me was enough to drive them into paroxysm of rage? Surprisingly enough, no, that wasn’t it at all. The real reason was simple: they were all Freshmen who had been raked over the coals the previous year after the initiated boys ran and told on them. So, seeing one of the previous year’s tattlers engaging in Initiation on the new generation . . . nosir, not happy campers at all.

Were there any consequences for the 8th grade ball puncher? Not that I'm aware of. I mean, yes, word did get back to some of the teachers, and one in particular did tear into the 8th graders about how ticked she was that they had gone and done to others what they had whined to her about having done unto them the previous year, but I never officially ratted out the offending party, and if anything happened to him at the hands of others, I was not privy to it. Regardless, that started my 5 year grudge against the red-headed racker.

Now, my biggest complaint against the guy wasn't that he had punched me in a highly sensitive area; I mean, yeah, I wasn't too happy about that, but I think I could have gotten over that relatively easily. No, what really griped me was that not a week before I had seen him just lightly punch one of my more popular classmates on the arm and say "That's it, you're initiated." Little bit of a difference there, no? It was that discrepancy that went all over me. For me, getting socked in the groin wasn't just a hazing ritual that applied to all of my classmates equally; no, it was a very clear message of where I stood in the grand scheme of things, a reminder that I was at the bottom of the social ladder and had little to no chance of climbing up. And so for years, a part of me hated him for that.

Oh, there was no really outward sign of that irrational loathing; sure, we had a few friends in common, but we didn't really run in the same social circles, and we never had a class together, so my contact with him was fairly limited. And my distaste of him demonstrated itself in the way it often does: my complete and total shutting down of any and all verbal activity in his presence. His voice grated on my nerves, his every word and deed seemed to me filled with the cockiness and arrogance that fueled the fires of my long-simmering anger, but all of that just stayed locked up inside me, repressed.

The full strength of my despising him wouldn't actually dissipate until the first time that I was around him for an extended period of time. It was at a TSA conference at NEO; I had been active in TSA for years at that point, but it was pretty much the only time the object of my ire had gone on a TSA trip. There was a pretty big gap in-between competitive events for a few of us, so we wound up sitting together in one of the lounges just talking. I think the fact that we were sort of on my turf might have helped a bit; I was more relaxed and acting like my real self than I usually did at school, and consequently actually had almost normal interaction with this person who had, up until that point, pretty much loomed in my mind as a total waste of space who held me in nothing but contempt. But the truth was that to this guy, I probably wasn't even a blip on the radar, and in all the time I'd spent directing negative vibes his way, he probably never gave me a second thought. And, after an hour or two of having normal human interaction with him, I felt years of built up bile fade away.

Of course, there was no sort of long-term bonding born of this. Outside of that one afternoon I doubt I ever spoke to him more than a couple of times in the following years, and at least one of those was when I ran into him at the Hastings in Stillwater my Junior year at OSU. But while we may not have become the best of buds, the whole experience did reinforce in me the futility of holding grudges. Which is not to say I never fell into that trap again; I have been known to irrationally harbor ill feeling towards a person or two. However, I don't think I've fallen into it quite as far or as hard. Yes, there are people I don't like, and people I try to avoid, and people who make me want to claw out my brains rather than have to deal with them, but on the whole those are based on long-standing and fundamental personality conflicts, and not predicated on a one-time burst of juvenile behavior.

Maybe Cedric Was Right . . . Some Things Are Best Left Buried . . .

Diva mentioned in a reply that she had not only found a picture of us with her green teddy bear (as mentioned in The Ballad of Mr. Green Rabbit's Foot), but had also posted it to her own blog a while back. Curious, I did a quick blogger search and, sure enough, found the relevant post. If you'd like to see some more pictures of the lovely and talented Diva (and, come on, who wouldn't?), then click here; but, if you just want to see a picture of 14 year old Cap'n Neurotic in order to mock him (and, come on, who wouldn't?), then look no further.



I don't know what's scarier: the way Cedric the Destroyer is just sort of oozing out of the darkness to swipe GT (the green teddy) away from Diva, or the look on my face.

Nope, it's my face; definitely my face.

"Oh, So That's What That Means": a Cap'n Neurotic Cheat Sheet

Last Sunday night Scuba-girl invited several of the Singles over to her place for dinner after Papa Lightbulb's ordination (yes, he's now the Right Reverend Lightbulb); after dinner we were playing Six Card Golf and someone flipped over their last cards, zeroing out their score, prompting me to exclaim "Nothing! Absolutely nothing!"; in response to the blank stares I merely said "If Zinger were here he'd have gotten that."

You see, one of the hurdles of having so many different groups to hang out with (outside of the logistics of finding time to hang out with them all) is keeping track of what references are applicable for what group, made all the more frustrating at the times when a comment springs to mind, only to die before passing my lips because it dawns on me that it's a Book Monkey comment, and would be lost on The Singles, or vice versa. And then there are those times like Sunday, when the comments slip out anyway, and I get a blank stare from my audience. In an effort to forestall (or at least reduce) these blank stares, I’ve decided to expound upon some of the inside jokes, catch-phrases, running gags, and such that fill my fevered brain. As usual, we'll be starting out chronologically with the Wyandotte years.

There's a ton of jokes and references from my youth that litter my mind; I can't hear Kumbaya without also hearing Frost-E-Frost singing "Someone's burning lord, Flaming Joe"; nor can I see Jasmine Guy without hearing Diva exclaim, in her best Whitley impression, "He invaded my boudoir!" I also still get the first seven lines of "The Stone" stuck in my head every so often, but rarely is it applicable to any given situation. But while these are triggered semi-regularly, there are many others which are more likely to escape my lips.

The mind wobbles. This quote came from one of the first episodes of Married With Children I ever saw when dim-bulb Kelly, confronted with some "astounding" fact, mangles the phrase "The mind boggles." It amused me then, and it amuses me still: I still use this phrase in everyday conversation.

Right, Timmy. Many moons ago there was a TV commercial about microwaveable brownies which included an exchange between two brothers: "Right, Timmy?" "Right, Bobby!" The over-the-top acting of the pair struck a chord with my mom and me, and she would often ask for confirmation on something by asking "Right, Timmy?" However, over time the phrase mutated in its tone, and she began to use it in response to students who she felt were being less than truthful, so that "Right, Timmy" became more of an "Oh, whatever."

I'm feeling much better now. This one comes from John Astin's recurring character on Night Court who would inform people that he had been in a psychiatric hospital but was feeling much better now in a voice that belied the point; think my mom still uses this one a lot.

It burns, it burns! Don't recall exactly why he started it, but one of my former classmates used to say this all the time in his best psychopathic voice, and now, so do I.

"Hey, you; I know you, I know you." My high school years were a prime time for the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, and references to the latest Saturday Night Live skits peppered our discussions: Wayne's World, Toonces the Driving Cat, Chicago Super-Fans, Happy Fun Ball, etc. But one of the most frequently quoted bits came from an SNL anniversary special which replayed the "men's synchronized swimming" skit. This special came out around the time that our school had a student-run closed-circuit morning show, and for a long period of time the opening to the show was comprised of clips from the special; lord knows how many times I sat through the swimmers or the "chopping broccoli" song that year. Anyway, out of the swimming skit came two oft-repeated catch-phrases, of which this line from choreographer Corky St. Clair is the first; it was usually used as a greeting of sorts.

"I'm not . . . I'm not that -- strong a swimmer." I find myself quoting Martin Short's line from the same skit anytime the possibility of going to a pool, waterpark, etc. comes up. Both of these gained prominence during my time in competitive speech, which was a breeding ground for these obscure references, many of which were pilfered from the pieces we performed

"I know that sounds simple and stupid, and maybe I am." Diva and I have already discussed the way that lines from her DD from Steel Magnolias have permanently bonded to our brains, and this is one of the two that come to my mind the most often. Self-deprecation, you are my friend.

"I'm fine, I'm fine! I could jog to Texas and back, but my daughter can't! She never could!" Not a lot of chances to use this one in everyday conversation, yet still, it lives in my head. On a related note, one thing I always enjoyed was going up to somebody who was freaking out, offering them a cup and saying in a heavy drawl "Drink your juice, Shelby."

"Are you mockin' me, Mr. Finch? Makin' fun of me? Ah don't have to take yo' sass, Ah ain't called upon to take it!" Another speech quote, this is from a DD I did from To Kill a Mockingbird: I seldom get out the whole thing, but will often respond to jokes at my expense with at least the first (heavily drawled) sentence or so.

"'Tis a pity" this comes from when we were having to go through collections of skits to find stuff to add to our speech files, and someone came across a scene from the play 'Tis Pity She's a Whore; this title of course struck us as scandalous, and soon became a sort of short-hand insult.

" . . . Compleatly out of character. An early one that was oft-used, but whose exact origins are fuzzy; I know it was a mocking of a phrase used by someone from another school, with the mockery enhanced by the mimicry of the original performer’s delivery of his phrase about people "doing things compleatly out of character." Without context I doubt it will do much for you (heck, it barely does anything for me, nowadays), but at the time it struck us all as so funny that I put it in the introduction to an HD (an introduction that I quickly composed the morning of the competition); of course, when I did the intro, all of the Wyandotte kids in the audience cracked up, while everyone else just gave us blank looks . . . an early example of the "know your audience" principle . . . a principle that would have served me well this past Sunday, huh?

This concludes the first phase of the Cap’n Neurotic cheat sheet; I’m sure there are many more remnants of my younger years that inform my behavior of today, but the preceding were the ones which sprang to mind the easiest; if anything else resurfaces, I’ll be sure to make a note of it for future posts. In the meantime, I’ll be compiling my list of similar turns of phrase that come from my time with the Parkerites.

This could take a while.

The Ballad of Mr. Green Rabbit's Foot.

As promised yesterday, today you will learn about my encounter with Mr. Green Rabbit's Foot.

The story takes place my Freshman year of high school during my very first Regional Speech tournament. Regionals meant an overnight trip; we drove down on Friday, spent the night at a hotel, and then headed over early on Saturday for the day long competition. My first event of the day was an HD based on "Don Brown's Body," and it was an unusually somber round; a few folks were laughing, but not a lot. Especially stoic was one of the judges, a man wearing a green rabbit's foot attached to his shirt pocket, presumably because of St. Patrick's Day.

Not too long after the round ended I headed to my preliminary Prose round, only to find that the door was still locked; I waited outside with some other contestants when Mr. Green Rabbit's Foot walks up to me and proceeds to tell me that the HD I had just performed was the worst thing he had ever seen, that there wasn't a single funny thing in it, that he couldn't believe something so horrible had made it to Regionals, etc. He had barely finished tearing into me when someone arrived to open up the room; Mr. GRF then went in and plopped himself down, getting out his judging sheets. Yup, that's right, minutes after being eviscerated by him in the hallway, I had to get up and perform in front of him again.

Now, don't forget, this isn't the semi-sorta-kinda-stable Cap'n Neurotic of today; no, this was the doubt-filled, paranoid, self-conscious, 14-year old Cap'n Neurotic. Needless to say, I was a bit of a wreck, mentally. I was so shocked by the confrontation that I couldn't even begin to process it; I'm kind of proud of myself for being able to put it out of my mind and compete as if nothing happened. Even then, my skills at repression were top notch.

After the round was over, I went in search of my friends in order to fill them in on my run-in with Mr. GRF; it wasn't long before word spread to our speech coach, Mrs. S., who was livid, as was one of our chaperones, which is understandable, since it was my mom. It's probably a really good thing that MR. GRF never ran into my mom that day; he might not have survived. Anyway, Mrs. S. went to file a complaint with the people running the tourney, and I tried to focus on other things; when the list was posted for the finals for Prose and I saw my name on the list, I stopped worrying about the incident.

Of course, in the midst of all of the Mr. GRF hullabaloo there was lots of other stuff going on, both competition wise and "we're bored out of our gourds and must entertain ourselves" wise. The biggest competition related event that I remember was when my HD partner, who was, at best, a reluctant participant in Competitive Speech, and who had been forced into doing Extemp by Mrs. S., basically just blew off his Extemp round; Mrs. S. was not amused. The biggest memory I have of self-entertainment actually involved Diva, Cedric the Destroyer, and a green teddy bear.

The teddy bear was Diva's, and was, I assume, there partially due to it being St. Patrick's Day. While waiting between rounds, Cedric decided to demonstrate his creativity by transforming the green teddy bear into a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, complete with a styrofoam bowl for a shell and mini-ninja weapons made out of paper. I don't think Diva was quite as amused as we were, and restored her bear to normal. A bit later, her bear went missing; in its place was a blackmail note, complete with pictures of the bear involved in questionable activities involving whips, chains, and leather. Diva left the area for a while, and then returned to find that her bear, overcome with shame and guilt from the blackmail, had hung itself.

Please, a moment of silence for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Bear.

Anyway, the time came for me to go perform my Prose piece in the final round. I went in, a little nervous but not too bad, until I saw who one of the judges was; you guessed it, there large as life sat Mr. Green Rabbit's Foot, also known as the man who had just had a complaint lodged against him on my behalf. I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter, that he probably didn't even know yet, etc. Once again, I got up to perform my piece in a highly agitated state of mind, but it must not have thrown off my game too much, since when the awards ceremony rolled around I was named as one of those qualifying for State; the only other qualifiers from my school were the lovely and talented Diva and her DD partner.

On the way home we stopped at a McDonalds for dinner; so did another couple of busses full of speech kids. While we were eating, one guy came over to our table with one of his friends and pointed me out as the freaky guy who did the really sick and twisted Prose piece. My response? Grabbing a French fry, dipping it in ketchup, reciting a key line from "The October Game" in my best spooky voice ("The witch came to harm and this is her arm"), and then taking a huge bite out of the fry. Reactions from my table: laughter. Reaction from the other guys: looks of fear, confusion, and disgust. It was at that moment that we heard a tapping on the window next to our booth; our heads whipped around to see Cedric outside, mouth firmly placed against the glass and blowing hard, doing his best impression of Anthony Rapp in Adventures in Babysitting. Our table erupted into laughter while the guys from the other school mumbled something about "freaks" and then scurried away.

How people like that made it into Competitive Speech, I'll never know.

But the story of Mr. GRF does not end there: one of the nice things about Competitive Speech was that after a competition you got to keep copies of your score sheets, so you were able to see how each judge ranked you and see what sort of comments they made. It was easy to figure out which judge was Mr. GRF, since he was the only threepeat name on the sheets. For the prelim round, he ranked me #1; for the final, post-complaint round, he ranked me #8 out of . . . 8. Coincidence? Well, since the other judges gave me high enough scores for me to move on to State, I'd say there's a good chance that there was some spite involved.

But, hey, it sure made for a good story, huh?

The World of Competitive Speechifying

All right, the updated Singles Cast List has stalled out yet again; big shocker, I know. Instead, I've been caught in a "remember that time in high school when . . ." loop. Right now the bulk of my nostalgia is focused on my years in Competitive Speech.

I suppose I should start with a brief primer on the different Competitive Speech events for the uninitiated. The basic speech events (in OK, anyway) were:

• Prose: reciting a prose piece using no movement or gestures
  
• Poetry: reciting a poetry piece using no movement or gestures
• Humorous Interpretation (HI): one person performing a comedy piece with limited movement and voicing at least two characters
  
• Dramatic Interpretation (DI): one person performing a dramatic piece with limited movement and voicing at least two characters
• Humorous Duet (HD): two people performing a comedy piece with unlimited range of movement and characters and two chairs as props
  
• Dramatic Duet (DD): two people performing a dramatic piece with unlimited range of movement and characters and two chairs as props
• Extemporaneous Speaking: persuasive speech based on a randomly drawn topic with limited preparation time; split into Foreign and Domestic categories.
  
• Standard Oratory: reciting a memorized speech written by someone else
  
• Original Oratory: reciting a memorized speech written by yourself
  
• Monologue: one person performing a brief comedy piece with one character and a brief dramatic piece with one character
  

There was also two forms of debate (Lincoln-Douglas and Cross-Ex), but almost nobody from Wyandotte ever participated in that aspect of it, and I avoided it like the plague (too much preparation and thinking-on-your-feet for my tastes) so I can't speak about it much.

Out of the other events listed, I competed in all except for the two interps. I think my favorites to do were Prose and HD, since they kind of played to my strengths; in Prose I just had to tell the story in a compelling way and was able to pick things that were a bit dark and unusual, while in HD I could let my goofy side out but also had a partner acting goofy onstage with me; I don't think I was very confident in my ability to carry an HI off without that backup, and so I avoided it in competition, only performing Roald Dahl's Jack and the Beanstalk (which I had done as an HD) as an HI at talent shows. My first HD was with Diva, a piece called "The Treehouse;" my character's name was Harold J. Snugglewumpy, or a reasonable facsimile thereof; I can't for the life of me remember her character's name; I do, however, remember how there was another group from our school who also did the same piece, and how the girl in that group had a very unique line reading. I think just about anyone else on earth would see the line "Hey, why are the guys all running around shouting 'Harold's got a girlfriend, Harold's got a girlfriend' over and over?" and do the chant in the typical sing-song style (HAR-old's GOT-a GIRL-friend, HAR-old's GOTa GIRL-friend); she, however, recited it like it was all one word, with the pitch and volume jumping up only on the last syllable: haroldsgotagirlFRIEND, haroldsgotagirlFRIEND. Kind of freaky.

I also enjoyed doing Extemp, insofar as it really didn't require any preparation at all. Oh, sure, our speech coach wanted us to read papers and magazines and clip out articles about world events to use as references, but we were way too lazy for that. I know at least one girl from my school made up some quotes for a competition at Welch, citing some fictitious man's opinion from a fictitious man-on-the-street interview, concluding the fiction with the line "And why does Mr. Fake-Name's opinion matter? Because he's an American that's why!" . . . pretty sure she placed, too. My all time favorite Extemp question was at a tourney in Commerce: "What does God think about pre-marital sex?" That was a fun one to do, since our prep-room was the school library, which gave me access to a Bible to find the relevant scriptures. My most frustrating question (outside of ones where I honestly had no clue what the questions were talking about and had to fly by the seat of my pants) was one about the Olympics, wherein I mentioned that they had decided to stagger Winter and Summer games, and the judges criticized me for because they just knew that they weren't going to split up the games; not having any physical sources with me, I couldn't dispute their disputations. Probably the most embarrassing Extemp story I know happened to one of the girls from my school, who got a question about whether the electoral college should be eliminated or not, and proceeded to do a speech about universities; the judges waited until she was done to tell her "Um, just so you know . . ."

As for the other events, I didn't mind DDs, was bored doing Standard Oratories, wrote my Original Oratory "The Nerd's Soliloquy" the day of competition, and pretty much loathed doing Monologues with their half-serious/half-comedy/all-eyes-on-me-and-me-alone set-up; only did most of these because Mrs. S. insisted that we take at least 3 things to each tourney, and once you'd qualified for Regionals in an event, you couldn't compete in it again except in "Champ" rounds, and there weren't that many tourneys that offered those.

As I've mentioned before, my first year in Competitive Speech was also the first year for my school to have the program; the bulk of the material we had to draw from in the beginning was provided by Gargamel's speech program, which was nice since we didn't have to start from scratch, but bad in that they were basically Picher's hand-me-down pieces which everyone and their dog had already done. It always bugged me when I'd get my score sheets back and they would compliment me on my performance but rip me apart for doing such an over-done piece; in retrospect I can understand their pain. After all, if I never hear "The Nightingale and the Rose" or "A Sandpiper to Bring You Joy" again in my life it will be too soon.

"Sandpiper" is the worse of the two for me, I think: "Nightingale" drove me crazy because I had to hear the same girl do the same over-dramatic reading of it at umpteen competitions, so I always hear her very Shatner-esque reading of it in my head: "The . . . Nigh-ting-gale . . . sang." Painful the first time around, becoming more excruciating with each additional viewing. "Sandpiper," on the other hand, never bothered me all that much until one round of the Prose prelims at State. I recognized one of the girls in the round and knew that she was doing "Sandpiper," which I'd heard several times before at that point; since we knew what order people were supposed to perform in, I excused myself to go to the restroom while she performed so I wouldn't have to hear it again. I waited outside until I heard the polite applause that followed most performances, and then let myself back in. No sooner had I sat down than the next person to perform got up and launched into (you guessed it) "A Sandpiper to Bring You Joy" . . . as did the person after that . . . and yet one more before the round was over. And then I get comments about doing an "overdone" piece like "The October Game" which I never heard anyone else perform . . . but I digress.

One thing that speech students become very good at very quickly is finding ways to entertain themselves during the long, long wait between rounds; some tourneys were notorious for having interminable waits, with Miamuh's being one of the worst; I don't think a single year went by that we didn't go delirious sitting around the cafeteria, waiting for the names for the finals to be posted. And, being Competitive Speech students (which is really just another way of saying Drama Geeks), our methods of entertaining ourselves were usually loud, often silly, and frequently involved mocking and/or mimicking others; some of these mimockeries were debuted at tourneys and then brought back for an encore back home. I can still vividly recall Diva's rendition of an overly-dramatic monologue she witnessed which began with the performer saying (in a raspy voice), "The first time I saw an abortion, the baby was sucked [inward gasp of air] . . . from the mother's womb," and ended with the screamed phrase "The babies! THE BABIES!" It's hard to do it justice in print

I wouldn't say that I was that great at Competitive Speech, but I wasn't that bad either; I rarely took first place, but there was seldom a local tourney where I didn't place in the top three in at least one event. The only time I remember ever placing first was at my very last speech tournament my Senior year in Picher; I took first in Poetry with my reading of a piece by that world-renowned poet, "Weird" Al Yankovic. But, while placing at local competitions was common, placing at Regionals was less so; out of three Regional competitions attended (the one my Senior being skipped due to my trip to Mexico), I only qualified for State at one, and then just barely, thanks to Mr. Green Rabbit's Foot . . . but that's a story for another time.

Like, tomorrow.

Thomas Crown Affair! Thomas Crown Affair!

A few random things.

• since every time a new blog monkey jumps on board the CoIM express they tend to ask the same things, I decided to make an F.A.Q.; you can see the link on my sidebar
• Courtesy of Zinger: a music video blast from the past
• I've lost track of the number of times I've had to forcibly remind myself that today is not Friday; tomorrow is going to be a looooooooong day
• Also courtesy of Zinger: fun messing with Best Buy employees
• They are releasing the original cuts of Star Wars, Empire, and Jedi on DVD; responses have varied from joy over being able to hear the Ewok victory song and see Han shoot first to anger and disappointment at what feels like money-grubbing on Lucas's part
• I have every intention of having an updated Singles cast page up before the weekend is over
• I have had this intention before, so do not be surprised if it does not come to pass
• I skimmed through practically every post I've written so far (minus the Secret Origins series; didn't feel like depressing myself) in preparation for my F.A.Q., and I noticed a steady decline in Parkerite focused posts; why, it's been forever since I've called G'ovich Eeeeeeeeevil or taken a pot shot at Flunky. Shameful. We'll have to see what we can do about that
• Being in contact with Diva, Cedric, et al again has made me nostalgic for the days of band and competitive speech (man, that sounds so geeky), so expect some Wyandottian themed posts sometime soon. And speaking of Wyandotte . . .
• While doing one of those mindless surveys on MySpace about Jr. High, I got the idea to do a search for my school fight song, only to discover that it was nowhere to be found online. Well, as the first born son of the woman who's pretty much single-handedly responsible for almost every high school graduate for the past 20+ years knowing the words to the school song, I believe it is my duty to rectify that situation.
  
  March Wyandotte High
  With your colors on high
  And shout proudly for
  Dear old school we love so well
  Sing to our dear banner of
  Black and white
  So we will be true
  As we march onward and yell
  The bears will fight!
  The bears will fight!
  The bears will fight fight fight fight fight fight fight!
  The bears will fight!
  The bears will fight!
  The bears will fight fight fight fight fight fight fight!
  Here's to the school that we
  Love best of all
  We march with her colors
  Of black and white on high
  Loyal and true we will
  Come to her call
  And prove that her spirit
  And pep will never die
  Rah-rah!
• I'm going to go now so I can plot with Bubblegum Tate on the best ways to shamelessly promote They Came From Earth-K Our goal: at least one non-spam comment before 2056; keep your fingers crossed!
  

Back in the Day When I Was Young, I'm Not a Kid Anymore, But Sometimes I Sit and Wish I Was a Kid Again

I've been tagged by Rocket G'ovich with a newish meme; since she was one of the few to actually participate in my previous game of tag, I decided it would only be fair for me to play along.

List 5 things from childhood that define who you were/are and how you thought/think. Weird things you did (and sometimes still do) as a child. They could be kind of typical things, not necessarily “original” things that ONLY you did, but maybe your weird brain did some of them in a different way.

1. My Coca-Cola addiction goes back as far as I can remember. My ears were specially attuned to the sound of a 2 liter bottle being opened; many's the time I would be sitting in the living room, watching TV, only to suddenly race into the kitchen, spurred by the sharp hiss of carbonation escaping from the newly opened bottle of Coke. To this day, the sound of a 2 liter bottle being opened causes my head to whip around towards the source.

2. For years I preferred to sleep on the hideabed in the living room rather than my actual bed in my bedroom. I did not sleep on it lengthwise, because the bars in the frame were pretty uncomfortable, but instead maneuvered myself into the groove in between the bars, which became increasingly ungainly as I grew taller. But in addition to this idiosyncrasy, I would also often squeeze down into the hollow inside the couch where the bed usually rested; before the purchase of the hideabed I would often do the same sort of thing with my regular bed whose wooden frame with drawers on the bottom afforded the same sort of enclosed, hidden area. I'm not sure what it was that appealed to me about that; perhaps it was like my own private world, dark and secure, playing into the obsession my younger self had with secret rooms and hidden passages. Or, perhaps I was just a freak.

3. When I was playing with my toys, I did my best to integrate all of the different styles and brands into a cohesive universe, so that there was a reason that Masters of the Universe were hanging out with G.I. Joes and Transformers. This would result in world-building of a sort, as I imparted all of the action figures with super-powers of some sort or another; in the case of the G.I. Joes it was usually based on their code-name in some way, shape or form, although it was sometimes a stretch (I'm looking at you, Grand Slam and Gung Ho). If a figure was maimed in some way, that also worked its way into my stories; I wound up creating a world populated by legless people to accommodate several mutilated Star Wars and G.I. Joe figures, not to mention Lieutenant Ilia from Star Trek: The Motion Picture (who was also psychic, what with her being bald like Professor X and all). And then there was my crowning achievement in imaginary rationalization: I somehow wound up with two Scarlett figures, one of which lost half of its right arm; this disabled figure then became Scarlett's evil twin, Crimson.

4. Along similar lines, outside of the action figures and my totally original creations (a few of whom would be familiar to the few among you who've actually read In a Cabin in the Woods), a large portion of my creative energies in my younger days were spent creating super-hero style scenarios based around pre-existing source material. For example, I had a long-standing storyline in my head revolving around characters based upon Stephen King movies, some of which (Carrie, Firestarter, The Shining) lent themselves more easily to the task than others (Cat's Eye, Creepshow). I also had a random assortment of characters based on everything from the light cycles in Tron to creatures from old Star Trek episodes. And then, of course, there were the never-ending comic book iterations; I might conjure up the story of the children of heroes I liked, granting them variations on their parents powers; I might create an alternate, all-star menagerie of characters culled from the pages of Who's Who in the DC Universe or The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, often going so far as to fill notebook pages with the character line-ups; and, perhaps oddest of all, I would often impose upon myself the restriction of crafting stories about characters based solely on the visual representation of powers on the cover of a book, occasionally going so far as to construct a story based on the wildly divergent scenes in consecutive issues. Hey, when you're an only child with limited social skills, you have to find ways to entertain yourself, right?

5. I'm sure most people who are around me a lot have noticed that I almost always have something to occupy my hands, whether it be a rubber band, an ink pen, or some other random object I've picked up and started fiddling around with; this has been going on for as long as I can remember, and at one point manifested itself in one type of item in particular. You see, some kids have security blankets and some cling to a stuffed animals; I, on the other hand, had a security stick. Multiple sticks, actually. The earliest ones were prizes won at the school carnival; one was a bamboo spear complete with a plastic Indian arrowhead as a tip and multicolored feathers, while another was a thin red rod with a dark blue removable handle. These both served as tools for my imaginary adventures, the red rod serving as a laser sword (hold the empty handle, do the "activation" motion, then make the obligatory light saber noise as stick goes into handle) and spear serving as a mystical medicine stick. But it wasn't long before the spear lost its tip, and then became cracked, and I was forced to repair it with electrical tape, which became its de facto hilt. The stick was sword, magic wand, gun and laser beam and whatever else I could come up with. There would come many other sticks, including a shillelagh carved by my Great-grandfather Sutton which became a favorite for a while, but that old, cracked, school carnival spear was probably the longest lasting one.

Well, that just about does it for that meme, I guess. As for tagging others with the meme, I’ll go ahead and tag a couple of high school friends (Redneck Diva and Andi) and a couple of former co-workers (iamam and Fellow Book Monkey and Blogger Bubblegum Tate); any bet’s on see how many of them actually respond to this tag?