Return To and Escape From Cow Country High

Last year I made a News Years Resolution that I would Chronicle my experience of moving to Utah and attending a strange redneck high school. I did pretty good for awhile but then hit a speedbump. This New Years I would like to reaffirm my lastyears resolution by continuing the saga.

I moved to Utah in January of 1991 and despite my many postings I did not even tell the story through May to finish my sophomore year of school.

When I think back to those final months of that term there are only a couple of mentional events that stand out in my mind.

A girl who we shall call Tony Faye Baker introduced herself to me. If anyone thinks that I chose a mean name then I will have you know I toned it down from Tony Fay Barker. I made an effort to be less of a jerk but that's all you get.

Pretty close to the time I arrived at Cow Country High, Tony Faye introduced herself to me. She's short, curvy, short, has red hair and wears a lot of make up. And she's short. Quite short. She caught up to me after school and followed me to the bus I rode to the other side of the lake. Judging me by my long hair and Metallica T-shirts, she said, "It is so nice to finally have someone COOL in this school."

To tell the truth, I don't remember how I responded to that. Nor do I remember the rest of the chit chat that she made as we walked from my locker to the bus. I do remember that she made a desperate, last-ditch effort to get my attention when I started climbing the stairs to the bus. She blurted out, "Do you smoke?"

I stopped and said, "No." She seemed disappointed, like that could have been OUR THING that we did together. Our bond. I told her, "All of my friends started smoking and doing other drugs in middle school and by the time I even considered smoking, they were all trying to quit. So I figured, why bother?"

It wasn't much later that Tony's friend approached me. I could tell that it was going to be awkward. Her friend approache me and asked me if I knew about the Sweetheart Ball that was coming up. I tensed up at the idea that she was going to ask me to the dance. But she didn't. She asked me to ask Tony Faye to the Sweatheart Ball. She told me that Tony Faye realy wanted me to take her. And then she begged. And begged.

I felt bad, so I told her I would think about it. After that, every time I saw the friend she would bug me about it. "Are you going to ask her? She really wants you to ask her? Just ask her!" But I kept putting off giving a definite answer.

Then one day I figured it out. PAY ATTENTION HERE because what I am about to tell you could save your life. I found the ultimate out. I came up with the ultimate excuse. And it wasn't just an excuse. It was the truth. It was simple, incontrovertible fact. It was a guilt-free, bullet-proof way out.

The next time I saw Tony's friend, she was pressuring me: "Are you going to do it? Just do it!"

And I calmly and confidently fed her my line. I said, "I can't go to the Sweetheart's Ball... because it's formal and I. DON'T. DRESS. UP. I don't. I don't wear shirts and ties and junk. It's nothing personal. It's the way it is. My hands are practically tied. I couldn't go if I wanted to. On account that I. DON'T. DRESS. UP."

And do you know what happened next. The girl let out a heavy sigh and then she turned and walked away. And she never bothered me about it again. There are no cracks in this defense. There is no chink in this armor. If you don't dress up then you don't dress up. People understand that it is rude to ask you to change such a deep-rooted personal rule. I couldn't believe the answer had been under my nose the entire time.

Keep that in mind when you wake up on your wedding day with cold feet. Believe me, they will all understand.

About six months ago I was telling my wife that I wasn't sure about what to post next in regard to Cow Country. I said, all I can think of from that time period is the story about how I DIDN'T ask a girl to a dance and how I actually believed that I had really given an infallible reason as to why I couldn't go. I told her the fast version of the story and she started laughing so hard that the water she was drinking came bursting out of her mouth. She said, "Stupid! Don't tell me funny things when I'm taking a drink." I told her that I also hadn't realized it was such a funny story.

Anyway, back in Cow Country, I came to learn that there was a house full of blonde amazon girls who lived on my side of the lake. The tallest at 6'4", Athena, was in my grade. I had Algebra II with her older sister, Venus, who was about 6 foot. And I met the youngest one, Firestarter, a paltry 5' 10", one day while riding the bus home. Just to see what she was like, I said a bunch of dumb stuff to her and she listened to me babble with wide eyes and a silly grin and she rightly treated me like an idiot.

Flaming Gorge is a pretty place with a lot to take in visually. You can drive around for hours and be content just to stare. Before Minnow moved to the area I had to find ways to entertain myself besides reading and listening to music to pass all that time when I wasn't driving around.

Even at that age, I liked to write and I was actually excited when one of the first assignments given to me was to write a fictional story. My English teacher was also the Principal (Principal It-Rubs-The-Lotion-On-Its-Skin) and my immediate thought was to write a story that was good enough that you couldn't just stamp it with an "F" and throw it out but also to write a story which was powerfully and inequivocally.... annoying.

It took me a week or so of dedicated work but I finished the story more than a week before it was due. However, the final draft of the story had to be typed to be turned in and I did not have a computer and I also thought "double spaced" was something involving the Spacebar. I heard that Minnow's sister, The Epitome of Sweetness, was good at typing and I asked her to type it up for me. She said she would but she never finished. The last day of school found me in the computer room typing up the story two months late. I gave it to the principal and he told me the best grade he could possibly give me was a "C" because it was so late. But he liked it so much that he gave me a "B" anyway.

The story has a lot of influences. Some are obvious, such as the SNL Wayne's World skits and Ninja Turtles. But there are also a lot of unsung influences like my little brother (who constantly played Monopoly against himself as a kid), like my fifth grade girlfriend who once asked me "Don't you think that Barnacle Billy Bob is the funniest name you've ever heard?" which it wasn't but I put it in anyhow. And in my English classes in California I had a friend named Jeremy. One time the teacher was reading us a story and he alone kept busting up with uproarious laughter. The teacher asked him why he kept laughing at a story about a destitute family enduring a hard cruel winter and he told her it was because the author kept saying things like, "They were completely penniless, except for the $62 they had."

When the Principal instructed us on the art of telling a story, he told us time and again that using a line like "It was a dark and stormy night" was the worst possible thing you could do. He promised violence against student who would dare to start their story with a line of this type. So, of course, that's how I started my story. He never got violent with me though. He just called me a schmuck.

Another humorous aspect to the story is that it was WRITTEN BY A 15 YEAR OLD. Obviously, I don't always spells things correctly or use appropriate grammar. And much, much worse is the way I wanted to sound smart by inserting fancy words from the vocabulary section of an SAT preparation book that I had. It's embarrassing and funny to me at the same time but when I typed it up, I tried to leave all of that stuff in there. So you can laugh at me with me.

Here is the link to the story. Please read it if you have time.

When I gave that story to Minnow to ask his opinion he started laughing and laughing. I thought he was laughing because it was written so poorly and I was surprised when he said he was laughing because it was funny. It was only meant to be annoying.

Anyway, that was the last day of my sophomore year and I was pleased to learn that everyone in the school brings shaving cream to have a big foam fight when they depart for summer. One redneck punk sucker-slapped me in the face with a handful of foam and I chased him to give him what-for. But he ran off and I couldn't catch him so I just yelled, "Get back here and fight like the men you dream about!"

Here to stay is a new bird

I haven't forgotten the blog, it's just the crazy holiday season. We usually have things taken care of by now but this year we were very poor until about a week ago. Due to money constraints we are now forced to do all of our holiday stuff in the busy final week before Christmas. I hope this explains why we didn't send anyone Christmas cards.

It's funny because once we finally got some money there were things we needed right away. Christmas is less than a week away but I immediately went out and bought myself a couple pairs of jeans and a cheap pair of shoes. It was getting sad. Even my 4 yr old daughter was coming up to me, saying, "Dad, ALL of your pants are ripped." And I would just say, "I know" and then mumble angry things under my breath.

I hate to be materialistic, but once I bought the clothes I really did feel better. I think there was just a drastic switch between working my rough and dirty daytime job, which left me weary and with permanent screwed up hair from the hard hat, and finally being able to wear normal untorn, unfilthy clothes and not have my hair messed up all the time.

I don't think I'm stylish or anything, I just don't look like so much of a scumbag anymore. My daughter and I went to Costco the other day and bought my wife a present. My daughter looks like a little princess in her pink, wool, Christmasy trench coat thingy and people constantly look at her and then smile at me and say things like "adorable" and "precious." I think people always notice my daughter first and then they notice the guy standing next to her. But the other day we were coming out of Costco and two young ladies were walking in and one of them said, "I'm surprised how many really good looking dads there are." And I like to think she was talking about me because there wasn't really anyone else around and she really seemed like she was trying to keep her voice down.

And that's what I told my wife about it. When guys wear new clothes, people don't think "whoa, that guy is on the cutting edge," they just don't automatically generalize you as a scumbag in torn up, dirty clothes. Maybe girls are just attracted to guys that look like they've got things together while guys think, "How can I not be manly? I just moved that dirty 400 pound thing from here to there? This isn't sweat, it's testosterone. Raaahhhh!"

And my wife needs to take a turn getting pants and shoes just to get to an acceptable state but we're so busy working and Christmas shopping that she's just going to have to look like a scumbag for a little while.

It also feels good to pile up all my old ripped up clothes and get them ready for the trashcan. But I have one t-shirt that I feel is going before it's time. It's a shirt from the Solitude ski resort. I don't want to throw it out but it has holes all along the tops of the shoulders and the sleeves are unraveled on the ends and holes are appearing in random places. So when my wife told me to make a Christmas list with the things I want in order of importance, the first thing I wrote was "new shirt from Solitude" and we went up to the resort lastnight to get one but all the stores were closed. We just stood in the snow and watched people ice skate for a minute and then we came back home.

Anywho, I've got a ton to do today. Just because you haven't seen stuff on the blog doesn't mean I haven't been working on it. You'll get more soon. Maybe you'll see me on the street struttin' around in my new duds, hollerin' at the ladies, "That's right, baby, I shop at Mervyn's!"

To think less of what is written than what's wrote between the lines

I was talking to the 18 year old at work the other night and here are the words that came out of our mouths:

Me: "It looks like we'll finish tonight about the same time we finished lastnight."

Him: "No. We have better people working tonight. Josh is in a really bad mood so he's working really fast."

Me: "Cool. You're probably right. Look at Rafa right there. He's been working fast all night. He usually just sits around. He must want a big bonus this week."


But here is the nonverbal conversation we were having simultaneously:

Me: "Do you want a candy cane? Here have two."

Him: "What? Why do you have candy canes? That's so gay. But I have been working hard for the past couple of hours so I'm not going to turn down candy. Man! How do you get these things apart."

Me: "Yeah, you can't get them apart without crushing the candy. That's why I gave you two."

Him: "Well, I was going to give one back but I guess I'll just eat them both. I still think it's gay that you have candy canes with you, though."

Me: "Merry Christmas."

Him: "And to you and yours as well. God bless us, everyone."

I Run the Marathon to the Very Last Mile

I don't like to be insensitive to the fragility of life, but every time I see a news report where someone has died while running a marathon, I don't wish I was the person giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but I do wish I was next to that guy getting in the runners face during their last moments of life saying, "I told you so."

So while you are reading this, imagine yourself wearing short shorts and collapsed on the ground of some busy city street while hundreds trample on past you.

First and foremost, a MARATHON owes its name to a legend from ancient Greece about some dude named Pheidippides who ran 26 miles from a place called Marathon to Athens to spread word of a Greek victory over wouldbe invading persians. He made the run and shouted out "Nenikékamen!" (We have won or We are victorious) and DIED ON THE SPOT. Maybe that should be our first clue that the premise of this event may be on the unnecessarily risky side.

And let's talk about running in general for a moment. Yes, it's an athletic thing to do. There's no doubt about that. But, by running, aren't we really pointing out one of the many weak points in our human design? Most people can't even outrun flying bugs. Am I right or am I right? And I mean bugs smaller than bees. Can we outrun jungle cats? Housecats? Housecats have been pampered since before the time of Cleopatra.

I get bored when I run. Even my top speed is slow and tedious to the point that I feel like I should throw punches like Rocky Balboa to create an illusion like I'm doing something productive. And I don't expect to keep up with cars when I run but if you go to the top of a 100 yard hill and get ready to run to the bottom and you also put an unridden skateboard at the top of same hill and let the skateboard go while you run, I must say that my money is probably on the piece of wood with the 1.5 inch wheels to make it to the bottom first. Humans. Run. Slowly. That's why we invented bikes and roller skates.

This article says that their study found that only four of over 215,000 marathon runners died in the races they were watching. So I'm not saying that running is a risk to your health. I only stand behind my original statement that running is boring and depressing in a way and that I only run because it's better walking but don't get me started on walking because walking is extra-lame. What I AM saying about running marathons is that it is a tough way to find out about your underlying heart disease. And it seems like the simple thing to say would be, make sure you consult your doctor before preparing for a marathon, but what assurance does that really offer? Look at this Olympic runner Ryan Shay. It would appear that he regularly checked in with his doctor even with special attention being given to his heart. And now he's dead.

You know, there is a good chance that you could survive a ride over Niagara Falls in a barrel. If you made your own special barrel. You could even call it a sport. But just because you CAN doesn't mean you should. I've heard stories about people who have done the barrel ride but then died a day or two later from heart problems.

Why tempt fate? I don't think running of this kind is as good for you as you might think.

You can't spell Christmas without CSI

Do you remember when we were kids and our favorite thing to do was to play "Murder Scene Investigator" and we pretended we found that severed head with maggots dripping out of the nasal cavity? Those were the days, weren't they? Next time, I get to be the coroner.

Anyone suggesting an E-card gets kicked in the nuts

So the holidays are here again and we are Christmasy people. We've got our tree. We've got endless present ideas for the kids, but as usual I am at a loss on what to get for my wife. Help?

She has asked for these things:

1. Stuff for the walls (like paintings)
2. Clothes

1. I think I probably have much different taste than my wife when it comes to wall stuff. If I'm going to buy art then I like REAL art and it's probably out of my price range. Should I stoop to getting the lame furniture store art? Are people impressed by "a tree silouette at sunset," "the field with the stream meandering through," "the vase full of flowers on a yellow background?" It all seems cliche to me. I know we have a HUGE painting of parrots at the furniture store. Would that be good. We already own mirrors and sconces and stuff. It's just a tough request for me to come through in an awesome way.

2. Most the time I just let my wife pick out her own clothes but I am actually okay at picking out an outfit for her. I've done it a few times. The real dilemna is that she works at an alternative high school and she feels like she's being rude to the poor kids if she dresses nice. That means anything flashy is out. To be on the safe side, I would just want to buy her jeans or something but I know that only 1 in 100 pairs of jeans fits her in a way she likes. She owns coats. She owns boots. Should I be content to buy her a sweater or something? That seems really boring.

Any advice?

I Get It, I Got It, I Know It's Good

Uh oh. Nobody commented to say they didn't like the mofo stories so now all I can do is punish you by telling you more. Now you've REALLY done it.

The furniture store used to let us break as much stuff as we wanted without recourse. For the past few months they've been threatening to fire us if we break too many things. They say the program is working great and they are now saving a lot of money. To make up for all the threats and make good use of the millions of dollars they are now saving, they also give us monthly rewards. The first month they gave everyone a $25 gas card. The second month, they gave away a bunch of X-Box 360s. Three guys I know pretty well won X-Boxes. Two of them already owned an X-Box. The 18 yr old (I need to stop calling him that because he just turned 19 a little while ago) I know wants me to have an X Box so he told me he would give me the brand new X Box with two games for half the retail price. I've been wanting an X-Box and I knew this was the only way I was ever going to get one because by the time I save up $400 to buy one at the store I will realize there are things I want MORE than an X-Box.

But Before I tell you about the actual transaction, please allow me to jump to a few days prior to that: The 18 yr old came driving up to me and said, "Hey! Are you coming to the Waffle House with us tonight? Sucky Shaq has been coming with us lately and it's hilarious. He has a weird poop fetish. He always talks about how he wants a hot girl to poop on his face. He said he would pay a girl to do that so I asked him if I could just put on a wig and poop on his face for money."

I said, "Awww. I think you'd probably make a pretty cute girl if you put a wig on."

While flipping me off, he said, "I would look just like that girl from the restaurant, huh?"

I did end up going to the Waffle House that night and Sucky Shaq DID talk about girls and their brown emissions.

When I brought the 18 yr old the money for the X-Box I gave it to him during work. Later on we went out to the parking lot to move the X-Box from his car to my car. The 18 yr old said, "I've glad I've got this cash. We're all going to strip club tonight."

I said, "That's funny. When I handed you the money I was going to tell you to make sure and have all those 20s changed into 1s before you went to the strip club but it was too loud inside."

He said, "Sucky Shaq is coming with us, too."

I said, "Oh geez. Are you sure that's a good idea? He's going to be up there yelling at the girls: C'MON, SHOW ME THE PRAIRIE DOG, BABY!"

The next day I asked him if he bought himself a girlfriend. He said he gave those girls $140 but spread it out pretty evenly. I asked him if Sucky Shaq caused any problems. He said that a stripper did come over and Shaq said, "Damn girl. You're hella-fine. I want you to pee on my face."

She thought she heard him wrong and said, "What?"

He tried to repeat it, but some other mofos were already working damage control and yelled at her, "He says you have an ANGELS FACE!"

The situation was already awkward and the girl made a B-line out of there.

The bottom line is that we have an X-Box now. Now do you retards see how it pays to be nice to people, even the angry loners?

Know Your Mofo: Jeff

Jeff is one of my favorites. He's crude and crass and vulgar but something about him is endearing. Jeff is about 30. He's like a high school jock who never got over it and he still considers himself an athlete. He's the most likely of the mofos to shoot you with an airsoft gun while your walking to your car or hit you with a snowball when you're not looking. He doesn't work at the furniture store anymore but he still came and played football with us on Thanksgiving.

At first I thought he was a scumbag because all I knew about the guy is that he has endless amounts of naked pictures and sex videos of him and his 18 year old girlfriend on his cell phone. He'll show them to you if you like. So I just thought he was a perv at first.

He talks gross and I blame him that when we go to my inlaws house for dinner and my wife asks her mother something like, "where's a good place to toss my salad?" I get all worried, like, "Whoa! Did she just say that in front of her mother?" And then I remember, "Oh yeah. They're not nasty and gross like the mofos."

One time we were playing basketball and Jeff's band-aid flew off his finger revealing a nasty bloody cut. I said, "What happened to your finger Jeff?"

And he said, in all seriousness, "Me and my girlfriend were having sex on a glass table and..."

I said, "Okay, okay, okay. I get it. You don't need to finish the story." But he did let me know that her butt looked worse than his finger.

Later on, I found out more about Jeff. He had been married for a good number of years and he has two children. He thought everything was going fine and then one day his wife told him that she had met someone online and that she wanted to take the kids with her to New York to live with the guy. Just like that.

They got a divorce but he told her she couldn't take the kids to New York. He's even been with his girlfriend for a couple of years now. And I guess if taking a bunch of naked pictures of your girlfriend is the most you act out after a bad divorce then things really could be worse. Jeff is open with a lot of the details. He said he's had his car impounded because of his wife. He's filed for bankruptcy. All that.

On holiday weekends, Jeff likes to open a booth at small fairs and sell sports stuff. He says he makes a few thousand dollars in a good weekend and that it's kind of fun to get your girlfriend and camp in the booth. Even during Utah winters. He says his goal now is to do his booths to the point where he can pay cash for one of those four-door Jeep Wranglers and then get his girlfriend and his kids and go camping.

One time, I was driving on a bumper car with Chad (of Jamming with Chad fame) and Jeff yelled something derogatory at us. Chad yelled something back and topped it off by calling Jeff a queef. A few minutes later we saw Jeff again and Chad said, "I was just kidding about calling you a queef." Then he paused and said, "Do you know what a queef is?" He didn't mean it to sound patronizing but its hard to ask a mofo a question like that and not have it sound that way.

Jeff said sarcastically, "No Chad! I'm 30 f***ing years old and I have no idea what a queef is! But that reminds me of a story..."

Jeff said:

It's about the second girl I ever had sex with. I was 15 and I was working as a dishwasher at a pizza place. I remember that I was a dishwasher because one of the waitresses there was 26 and she came up to me and used this stupid line, "Hey, you can come to MY PLACE and wash MY DISHES."

I was so young and stupid that when I showed up at her place I was all like, "Okay, so where are your dishes at? Shouldn't I do your dishes?" I WAS REALLY GOING TO WASH THEM! But then we were having sex and I thought I heard her fart but I didn't know for sure. Then I heard it again and I stopped everything. The girl was like, "What's wrong?" And I asked her if she was okay. She said she was so we started again but then she started farting again and it was too much for me so I got up and left.

I probably don't write Jeff very well. Somehow he comes off as a nice guy when you meet him. Through all the crap he still seems like a kid. And I picked him first for my football team because I didn't want to have to tackle him.

Know Your Mofo: Cody

I trained Cody on his first day of work. He's a rough looking guy in his early twenties with red hair and a receding hairline. The first night I worked with him he told me a lot about his past.

He said he used to have a good job painting cars. He said he started painting cars when he was 15 or 16 years old and when he was in high school he was making more money than his parents. This might have been what attracted one of his teachers to him.

Cody said that he'd been sleeping with one of his teachers for nearly three years of his high school career. He practically lived with her and he practically bought her a car because when they got together he started making all of her car payments for her.

About the time high school ended, Cody had been going to the doctor because his lungs were bothering him. His lungs and been burned up by painting chemicals to the point where Cody couldn't paint cars anymore. Not even with a respirator. Worse, when Cody turned 18 and was finishing high school, the teacher he had been seeing told him the thrill was gone and she broke things off with him.

Now Cody is just another mofo. When I went and jammed with Chad last winter, Cody was there with his new girlfriend. They recorded our first jam song on Cody's cell phone. I asked him if he could send me the video but he never did.

Cody's girlfriend also had red hair and looked like a well-put-together professional. She probably just worked in a call center or something. People started telling me that she was very strict with Cody and one day Cody came to work with claw marks scratched across his cheek. He said his girlfriend had done it. His girlfriend totally got it on with Boomhauer while they were together as well.

Cody quit the furniture store to take a different job but I heard he didn't like the new job either. Nothing left to do now but swear.

Time To Know Your Mofo

I am picking up a lot of extra hours with the mofos and I have decided to do a know-your-mofo stretch here. Mostly so I don't forget the strange people I work with and also to illustrate how mofos operate and hint at where they come from. I frequently write about how girls are picked on but these posts will also show that girl farts stink too.

So first up is Boomhauer. I mentioned him a long time ago. He was also known at work as "effity-eff" because he swears a lot, even for a mofo. He's legendary for his swearing. The bosses were trying to describe him to someone once and they said, "He was walking up on the mezzanine saying F*** THIS AND F*** THAT and customers were walking around on the floor below him so we yelled at him Boomhauer! Shut up! and he just yelled back at us F*** YOU! and just kept right on talking."

For awhile Boomhauer was getting into MySpace but then decided he hated MySpace because when you meet girls there "all they do is come over and smoke all of your pot."

Surprisingly, Boomhauer took his furniture-moving job quite seriously. As with most jobs, most of the people at the furniture store cheat to make their stats look good. So Boomhauer learned all of those "skunk tricks" so he could out-cheat the other workers AND he worked his butt off. He was our most productive worker for a few months.

One time I asked him, "Do you ever think about the Triangle of Stability and weight distribution and all that stuff they taught us in forklift training?"

To which he answered, "F*** the Triangle of Stability, it's f***ing bullshit!" And he said it with so much conviction that you might believe that the Triangle of Stability had personally killed his parents, beat him to a pulp as a child and left him naked in the desert.

"Okay, okay. I'm sorry I talked about the Triangle."

But when I quit work at the furniture store to take another job it seemed like he started tearing up or something. I told him I was leaving and he said with a resentful sniffle, "Well I didn't come here to f***ing make friends anyway." And I think that was as emotional as he could get about it. That actually happens more than I would expect. People get upset at me for taking other jobs, BUT WHO AM I GOING TO TALK TO NOW? And I have to tell them that I can't stay at a dead end job just so we can talk.

While I was gone working a different job, Boomhauer got in a pretty good fight. The other mofos were telling me about it:

"I guess Boomhauer went to the gas station at lunch time to get something to eat. When he went to the counter to pay for his food, some little mexican woman butted in front of him in line. Nobody is sure what he said to the little lady but it is safe to assume that there was a minimum of two F-bombs involved.

But Boomhauer bought his nachos and drove back to work and the little mexican lady followed him in her car. When he got back to work, Boomhauer sat along the cement porch with a bunch of other mofos and ate his food. It was summer afterall.

He had only been eating for a second when the little mexican lady came stomping up to him and smacked his nachos up against his chest.

Is that why he was out there with his shirt off?

Yeah, because it had nacho cheese all over it.

Oh, I thought he was walking around with shirt off cuz he was trying to look like a bad ass.

The lady slapped his food out of his hand and made a mess on his shirt and told him that she had called her son and he was on his way there to kick his ass. Boomhauer said okay, took off his messy shirt and waited.

This is where the mofos give Boomhauer props because Boomhauer isn't a very big guy. He's actually on the smaller side. But what they seemed to forget is that he's 100% motherf***er. He could have gone inside to work and let security deal with the guy who wanted to kick his ass but he didn't. He paced around with his shirt off in front of the store and waited.

About ten minutes later a guy pulled up in his car. The mofos say he was twice Boomhauer's size, which is likely an exaggeration, but everyone seems to agree that the guy was pretty big. And there was no formality. No mincing of words. The guy got out of his car. The mother pointed Boomhauer out. And they fought.

In true mofo-style, none of the other mofos did anything but watch. They said he gave as good as he got. He got in a few good punches. But then the big guy got ahold of Boomhauer and started throwing him around. Parts of the fight took place on several different cars in the parking lot including one of the bosses. And while they were wrestling, Boomhauer managed to wrap his body around the dudes head and started choking him out. The mofos said it started to look like Ultimate Fighting. The big guy was on the ground and he wasn't moving much. The mofos started to worry that Boomhauer was going to strangle the guy to death so one of them finally got up and tried to pull him off. While the other mofo was trying to pull Boomhauer off, the mother and her friend came over and started kicking Boomhauer in the head. REALLY HARD. And at the same time, two more cars full of mexicans came blazing into the parking lot.

But by that time, one of the bosses had heard that people were fighting on the hood of his car and he came out and told everyone that he was calling the police and they all scattered. He didn't really call the police.

Boomhauer got up and went inside and worked the remaining six hours of his shift. Someone asked him if he was okay and the only thing anyone remembered him saying was, "This part of my head feels really fat."

I asked, "Did anyone tell him: That's what's known as a concussion?"

Nobody did.

When I came back to the job he was there for a couple of weeks but quit on my night off. Apparently he got worked up at a meeting and went on a tirade about cheating. Saying it could easily be eliminated. Saying people who don't actually do any work shouldn't shine bright on paper because they know the skunk tricks. The bosses laughed at him. In front of everyone. They laughed and laughed. So he said, "F*** you." and walked out and didn't come back.

I'm not worried about him though because he told me that he had enough experience that he never had to take any job for less than $8/hr. And were talking 2006 dollars here. He's out there waiting for your mom to write him on MySpace.

Can You Pretend I'm Amazing?

Good News/Bad News: I got "laid off" for a few weeks from my daytime job. It's bad for money but I assume it will be good for the blog. But I'm sick of working all the time anyway. I'm tired of the constant struggle ensuring my good behavior and I was thinking it's probably time for some civil disobedience. I probably won't burn down any billboards or fly away in my head on drugs. I'll probably just poke more fun at the insitution on my lame blog. But it's weird to have any time to myself.

Rest assured, when I'm not here I'm feeling like this:

One Man In His Time Plays Many Parts

A long time ago, my older sister gave me a book called "The Education of Little Tree." It is my favorite book. I make everybody read it. I buy several copies and loan them to people until the book falls apart.

When my first son was born I read it to him out loud over the first couple of days of his life (I also read him "Lord of the Flies"). Now I have three kids and they are getting big enough to understand some things so I wanted to read it to them again.

But there is much you need to know to understand the book. It was actually first released as a biography but then there was some controversy over who wrote the book, with a strong suspicion that it had been penned by a racist political speech writer and renowned Ku Klux Klan leader. All of that is still a mystery. It doesn't make sense that a native american would become a renowned KKK leader. But wherever it came from, the book is awesome.

It was reclassified as a "Young Adult" book, which also makes no sense to me because the book has some tough stuff in it. I can't imagine that a 12 year old would understand the humor in a 5 yr old boy being so naive as not to understand when people are making derogatory, racist remarks towards him and his family. And that the man and woman making fun of them on the bus are actually a pimp and his bloody-mouthed, smacked-up ho. And that's just Chapter 1.

The story is about a 5 yr old who goes to live with his Native American grandparents after his mother dies. The grandparents live in a shack in the Appalacian mountains. It's pretty simple living. The grandpa attempts to teach the boy the proper way to hunt and farm and he even teaches him to make whiskey, because that's the only trade he knows. He tells his grandson that he will probably want to switch trades later but for the moment that is the only way he knows to make money. They also teach him that it's important not to end up with a hickory-nut soul.

Before I started reading the book to my kids, there are other things they needed to know as well. About The Great Depression, about Catholics, about history (like George Washington and Julius Ceaser) and about Shakespeare.

The family likes to stay up listening to grandma read books from the library and their favorites are the ones written by Mr. Shakespeare. These book get grandpa all fired up. Before I read this part of the book to my kids I figured I'd better teach them who Shakespeare is.

We have a kid's book in the house called "William Shakespeare & The Globe" by Akili. "The Globe" is the theater where Shakespeare's plays were performed while he was writing them. The book tells all about Shakespeare starting from his birth.

The book says that he went to school at "Guild Church and Grammar School" and "his classmates were all boys, as girls did not go to grammar school in those days." Also, when his plays were performed in the old Wooden-O of a theater, boys had to play the parts of women because girls were not allowed to be in the plays. When I read these parts to my daughter I told her it was because people used to think girls were dumber than boys, that girls just weren't as good. I told her some people still believe this.

First she asked me if I was serious. When I said that I was, she said, "That's stupid, daddy." Which it is.

After we read about Shakespeare, we all watched this old version of Romeo and Juliet which I happen to own on VHS:



The kids went to bed when the movie was over and my wife told me. "You'd better go talk to your daughter. She's crying."

Sure enough, my daughter was lying in bed with the blankets pulled up to her nose and her face was soaking wet. I asked, "Why are you crying?" and she said, "I didn't want them to die."

I said, "Yeah, that's sad. But for some reason a lot of people like sad stories that make them cry. A lot of people like that story." And I reminded her, "It's just pretend. It didn't really happen. And also Romeo and Juliet's families finally stopped fighting all the time. So that's one good thing that happened."

So far, I've only explained Shakespeare. I still have to tell them about all that other stuff. But my daughter is awesome. When she looked at the Little Tree book, she asked, "Where are the pictures? There aren't any pictures?" I said, "Sorry, you have to use your imagination." And she said, "Can we DRAW pictures for the book?" And I said, "Yes." And she got all excited and she drew pictures for the first two chapters. She complains when we finish a chapter and she constantly asks when we will read some more.

You should read it, too. Draw some pictures if you like but don't watch the Little Tree movie. It blows.