The Next Level

I worked with Gordon for some time and sort of thought of his personality as the "upper-limit" of directness and brutal honesty but after checking his family blog I am left disillusioned. For instance, people liked to dim the lights at work in the late hours. One night a coworker was looking for the correct combination of which lights should be on and which left off. Drawing the attention of the entire wing of the office, he looked at his audience and said, "What are you all staring at?"

Gordon stands up and shouts from a hundred feet away (Was it over the heads of just one or was it two supervisors? I can't remember.), he shouts, "We're looking at the retard flipping the lights on and off! Now sit your doughy ass down!" That's just one example. However, his brother has recently posted a picture of himself wearing nothing but a cowboy hat on his knob. No hands, no strings. I believe this to be the same brother who previously posted a picture of his browner, mushier, stinkier "newborn." Apparently, the bar is set pretty high in that family if you want to be on top.

Years ago, I had a roommate named Sam. He was young and wild. You had to worry about him the way you would worry about an overactive puppy in a roomful of priceless vases. But then one time all of his friends came to visit and suddenly Sam was the very model of self-composure and even good-judgment and responsibility. He did his best to control them: Don't rub bumpers as were driving through the canyon. Don't pick the locks to the girls' dorms. Don't capture the wallabies in the Logan Zoo. I did think it was funny how Sam and his girlfriend made frequent and whole-hearted attempts to depants each other in public. One day, we went out to play football in the snow. Sam tackled Slimy Sculpin and, a few seconds too late, Sam's friends decided they should all dogpile on top of them, crushing Sculpin through the snow into the mucky earth. Slimy Sculpin rose up and punched Sam in the face. Don't worry, it's a sign of affection between manly men and we are all still friends. The point is, it was strange to see the role change in Sam when his friends came to visit. Aside: Sam was the best skiing partner ever, but he broke his back skiing in the Alps.

When I started high school on the indian reservation in northern California I had two friends that were brothers and I spent some weekends at their house. One weekend we picked up another kid from school named John. John was entertaining but could become annoying really fast. My first time ever playing Super Techmo Bowl was at John's house. We shot some arrows into some bails of hay even though the draw on his bow was too long for my arms and we boxed with his boxing gloves. We went cruising around and when it got dark we drove down the country lane to John's house. His dad met us in the driveway and started yelling, "You guys need to be quiet. I could hear you yelling from a mile down the road!"

John said, "What?" and his dad said, "Don't play stupid with me. Do you want me to kick your ass right here in front of your friends? Now go inside! You guys need to go home."

The way John went to a darkened side of the house and stood like a kid being punished in elementary school gave me the sense that the talk of an "ass kicking" was not uncommon nor an exaggeration. After that I decided John could be annoying around me all he wanted.