A Trip to the Market

At the age of seven a boy’s interest in candy has really kicked into full speed. The scrumptiousness of milk chocolate is quite difficult to resist at that age and apparently at any age for women as my wife has repeatedly informed me. Chocolate for my wife is placed high of her revised Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs nestled between Esteem and Self-Actualization. I once tried to explain to her that chocolate was a want and not a need. All I remember is a flurry of tears and “You just don’t understand” statements.

More women need to come with a warning attached to them.

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon when my brother and I received our one dollar allowances from our parents. A wise child would quickly take this money and put it in their piggy bank so they could purchase a really nice toy after several months of saving. I, on the other hand, was not a wise child and was bound and determined to spend every last cent on candy. The two kids from across the street (a kindergartner and a 2nd grader), along with my brother and I (3rd and 1st graders respectively), decided we were going to obtain and then eat candy.

Must... have!

We had two choices. The first choice was a three mile bicycle trip to the AM/PM, purchase candy and ride safely back. The second choice, brought up by my brother, was to go to a local market called YJ’s Foods that was located directly across the interstate from our houses. The idea was to strategically cross the interstate by foot, purchase the candy, and safely return back home before any parent knew what we had done. We did what any responsible children would do and set off across the interstate.

Why does Hawaii have an interstate?

Their house backed up to the freeway so all we had to do was stack firewood against the fence to create a makeshift stairway to get our stubby little bodies over. It was particularly difficult for our friend Kelly as he was almost as wide as he was tall. We decided the three of us would just get behind him and shove him over. This really must have looked odd to the motorists passing by on the interstate as they saw a six year old fat kid flop over the wall like a sack of rice.

With all that "muscle" you would think he could have pulled himself over the fence.

As we all stood at the edge of the precipice we waited for my brother to start the charge. As my brother yelled all four of us ran across the two lanes of traffic to the median and paused to regroup. I looked over and noticed Kelly was on his hands and knees trying to catch his breath as if he had just finished an Ironman triathlon. Pulling Kelly up to his feet my brother yelled again and we ran across the other two lanes of the freeway.

Kelly would have died halfway across this one.

As soon as I crossed over I turned my head only to see Kelly trip and fall. To this day I have still never seen anyone bounce quite like that before. He came to a stop just five feet from the side of the road with a look of terror on his face as if someone had just informed him the person in front of him in line had just purchased the last bear claw. Accompanied by the sound of tires screeching and horns blasting Kelly made it to his feet and somehow managed to make it across.

The look of someone who is about to be hit by a car.

Once we arrived at YJ’s Foods we purchased our candy and wisely decided to take the long way back home as the color had not yet returned to Kelly’s face, not to mention he was still shaking and talking to himself. Our family moved four months later and Kelly never spoke of the incident as long as we lived there. Today I imagine his hefty body lying on a couch trying to explain to a psychologist how he was almost ran over by a 78 Dodge in a desperate attempt to obtain a Whatchamacallit bar.

My parents found out about the freeway crossing incident when my brother and I were reminiscing about it in high school. Apparently the statute of limitations on leading an expedition across the interstate to get candy had not yet run out. Who would have thought spankings would still sting a little at age 16.

Brain Dead

By the year AD 2578 we all will be brain dead. Let me explain.

A few points must be stated first in order to put this puzzle together. The first is that we must accept that the Bible is correct (II Timothy 3:16). For non-Christians, and sadly for some Christians, this may be a big one.  In doing so we can put together all the important events, dates and ages of people mentioned and come up with an actual year of Adam’s birth. Depending on who is doing the investigating most researchers come up with a date between 4000 BC and 4100 BC.

Of course you can always believe that the Bible is completely false... Good luck with that.

The second point is that man was created in God’s own image (Genesis 1:27). Adam, being the first man, was physically the most perfect man ever because after Adam and Eve sin entered the world.. He was created in perfect health and to quite possibly to never die (Romans 5:12)… he must have looked nothing like me I would imagine.  Adam was created before there were any diseases, birth defects, DNA mutations and a plethora of other illnesses that could degrade the human body. Adam and Eve were the only humans that were physically the exact way God designed humans.  This leads me to believe that Adam most likely was able to use entire brain to the utmost of God’s design. To state it plainly, Adam must have been brilliant.

Ok... maybe not brilliant.

Since Adam was created physically perfect his DNA must have been also perfect. DNA now in 2010 is imperfect. All someone has to do is look at all the genetic disorders to see that DNA is not what it used to be. We can hardly get people to live over a hundred now if they’re lucky. It is so badly degraded that if the population isn’t big enough or the distance in the family tree isn’t great enough birth defects start to appear. Today if you took two people and started a new population with their children and their children’s children after a few generations there would be some major genetic abnormalities. This was never the case in Adam’s time. Adam’s children ended up marrying their sisters and his grand children married their sisters or first cousins. Gross and disgusting, yes, but it worked.

Inbreeding... Just say NO.

According to Albert Einstein, circa 1920, the average person only uses around 10% of their brain and if they could use the other 90% “they could become savants who remember π to the twenty-thousandth decimal place.”  Now today many neurologists would disagree with Einstein as many believe today that we use all of our brain, but not at the same time. Of course these are the same scientists that brought us the grand Theory of Evolution so take it with a grain of salt.

This is photographic evidence that we are not evolving but in fact getting dumber.

So using simple math we can see that around 4000 BC to 4100 BC man’s brain was humming at full power and now, if we believe Einstein, we are only firing on 10% power. With that knowledge we can extrapolate the brain decline out and discover that at the earliest we could be down to 0% brain power by the year AD 2578.

How much brain power do you have left?

Now that is assuming we can still operate at anything lower than 5% brain power. I imagine that around that time we will lose the power to tie our shoes. At around 4% brain power we will be saying things like, “Ogg like rock” and “Me like girl.” When we get down to around 3% we may just be drooling on ourselves. I can’t imagine we will be able to breed after that, although if I know us men… we will figure it out.

Your brain in 200 years, "I'm givin' her all she got! She can't take no more!"

This means that my great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will be morons. So as I see it Jesus better come back within the next two hundred years or we may have deteriorated so much that there may not be anything to come back to.

The Tan That Was No More

I am a recovering sun worshiper. There was a time when spring rolled around that I would layout without any sunscreen so that I could get my first burn of the season over with and lay the solid foundation for a beautiful tan. I would at times use suntan lotion with an SPF of 4, yes I said 4, so I wouldn’t get too red. A minor burn was a small price to pay for a gorgeous tan.

Remember to hydrate after you are in the sun.

Once I had my base tan down it was very easy to get a great tan for the summer as I have quite a bit of Spanish blood in my pedigree which yields nice skin for tanning. My friends and I would get together to compare tans. I would always win. I was quite proud of my tanness. That’s when I was reminded of the old biblical saying, “Pride comes before the fall.”

I say I am a recovering sun worshiper because in the fall of 2003 I had a mole that started to tingle and itch. I took a trip to the dermatologist who unfortunately informed me that I had a melanoma… skin cancer… The big C. Of course I, being a sun worshiper at the time, had no knowledge about melanomas so when the doctor asked me to make an appointment in the next day or two to come in and get it removed I told him I was booked up for two weeks. I scheduled an appointment 17 days out.

This woman has a nice tan.

Once I arrived home I figured I should look on the internet and find out what this melanoma thing I had was… because if you want to know about serious life and death issues you turn to the internet. I was dialing the phone number to the doctor’s office three minutes later with a look of terror on my face like an old woman who just discovered the corner market is out of Depends. I was so flustered I misdialed and couldn’t figure out why my doctor’s receptionist spoke Russian.

Who knew you could die from being in the sun!  They really should tell people.

The next day I was in the doctor’s office getting my finger operated on. They took a huge chunk out of my pinkie finger and then sewed me back up. I didn’t have enough flesh left on that finger to allow it to bend for months so I looked very pompous when I drank anything as my pinkie stuck out. It actually looked like someone had sewn my finger back on. It was quite disgusting. I love it.

SPF 100?  This stuff will make you whiter.

I often tell my wife that I want to participate in the Cancer Survivor walks. I just imagine a woman who had an entire breast removed or a man who had a wife die of cancer asks me what I had I can say, “I had an itchy mole. They gave me a local on my pinkie… it was rough. I have a… *cough*… scar.” My wife doesn’t think it is a good idea. I think they must have a ranking system on those walks; breast cancer and other life threatening cancers in the front followed by cancers that you probably gave to yourself, like lung cancer, and then skin cancer and people who thought they had cancer once in the back.

I could just get a fake tan like these two gentlemen.  No one would ever know.

I miss my tan. Of course I am not as white as my wife. I often wear sunglasses around her not necessarily for the sun, but the glare off her skin. I actually thought she was wearing white nylons one time… she wasn’t. Now that I say that, guess which one of us will not have age spots, wrinkles and skin cancer. Yep. My wife.

In a few years I will need to start bathing in this stuff.

In a recent development I have discovered this creamy substance called sunscreen. Apparently you rub it on your body and it keeps you white.  As I type this out with my pasty white fingers I remember how blessed I am that they only had to take a hunk out of my finger and it did not spread to the rest of my body. This story could have ended so much different. God is good. 

The First Diaper Change

It was about seven hours, if I remember right, after the birth of our first child when my beautiful wife noticed that our new bundle of joy had made his first little poopie. She had just underwent a Caesarean section so she was in no shape to change the little poopie so I took my new son and places him on the hospital’s changing table. My cute little baby boy looked up at me with only one eye open like poopie little pirate.

Yarrr!  Change me diaper!

As I unfastened the sides of the miniature diaper… Now let me pause for a moment. The people who call what babies do when they are born “poopie” are liars. Poopie is a cute word that implies tiny cute poops but what comes out of a newborn baby is nothing like what the name alludes to. The medical field calls it meconium. It is a thick, black tar-like substance that is clingier than a lonely guy at a singles bar. Anyway… back to the story.

Are you sure you don't want to give me your number?   My mom says I'm a real catch.

As I unfastened the sides of the diaper I quickly noticed that my baby’s diaper looked like BP had been there first. What I was looking at was something that was created in the furthest depths of hell and somehow crawled out of my child’s rear-end. It gurgled and I am quite sure I heard it say, “I have come for you.”

Above: Artist's Rendition of what was seen.

At this moment in time I quickly realized that no one has taught me how to change a diaper. I looked over at my wife who apparently had ample enough energy to get the camera and was taking snapshots of the situation at hand, laughing the entire time. She advised me to go get the nurse.

I raced out of the room to the nurse’s station and quickly alerted them there was an emergency in the room. The four nurses sprang into action and with stethoscopes flying they ran down the hall to our room. It was like a scene from ER as they darted into the room one at a time and quickly huddled around my wife who was just lying on the bed smiling and pointing at the baby. The four of them swung around and I saw their eyebrows rise as they took in the whole scene; a panicked father standing next to his naked newborn son who had kicked black snot all over himself. I must admit it wasn’t one of my finest moments.

I have learned that certain equipment is needed for this type of endeavour.

There was quite a bit of eye rolling as three of them left the room. One nurse had mercy on me and stayed to clean up the boy and put a new diaper on him, all the while lecturing me on how “we do not leave a newborn baby alone on the changing table.” She apparently did not understand the full scope of the situation. After she finished cleaning the baby, the changing table, the wall, floor and parts of me she walked out of the room shaking her head.

The only thing worst than an eye roll head shake is a facepalm.

Once the nurse had left I turned to see my wife giggling happily with camera in hand. The poor thing must have been sitting on the morphine button.

By the way, if you are wondering what happened to the pictures of this event… boy… I just don’t know…

My Trip to In-N-Out Burger

My wife is a very caring, thoughtful and loving woman. She is so thoughtful that when it came time for our family vacation she took the time to look online to see if there were any In-N-Out Burgers in the area near our destination (Portland, OR). Let me explain why that is so thoughtful.

I have the best wife ever!

One thing you need to know about me is the fact that I love cheeseburgers. Now, when I say that I love cheeseburgers, I mean that they are the greatest food ever created. I have a theory that the manna that God provided to the Israelites to sustain them for forty years of wandering the desert was in fact cheeseburgers. This may be in part why, by the end of the forty years, none of the original Israelites were alive to enter the Promised Land.

Thank you God for the cheeseburgers!

Secondly, In-N-Out Burger is the greatest burger chain in the United States, and dare I say, the world. So to anyone who loves cheeseburgers In-N-Out Burger is like the mother ship calling you home. This is why it was so thoughtful when my wife took time to look it up for me. Not only did she look it up, but she found one in Salem, OR and another in Olympia, WA.

God bless America!

For the next three weeks I salivated every time I thought of that delicious double-doubswe… sorry, my finger slipped from the drool. Finally the day came. On the third day of our vacation I woke up to a beautiful partly cloudy day and decided to skip breakfast, so I would have more room for cheeseburgers, loaded up the family and drove three hours to the nearest In-N-Out Burger which happened to be in Olympia, WA. Don’t judge me. A man has to have a good cheeseburger!

Anyway, back to the story. When we finally arrived in Olympia and I pulled out my Blackberry to find the restaurants in the area and almost dropped it because I was so hungry. Oddly enough I could not find any In-N-Out Burgers in the area. Frustrated I called the In-N-Out corporate office, don’t ask me how I have that number on my phone, and asked where the nearest restaurant was. Two states away!

Why God why?!?

I slowly hung up the phone and turned to my beautiful wife, who I could hardly see now because apparently my body was now eating my eyeballs for sustenance and calmly asked her where she got the idea that there was an In-N-Out Burger in Olympia. She turned to me with a worried look and said that there was a map on the website that had stars over those cities.

Hey look!  There's also an In-N-Out Burger in Boise and Sacramento.

Even in my now half starved state I started to put the pieces together. Stars on the map. Salem is the capital of Oregon. Olympia is the capital of Washington. Stars on a map mean a capital city! Yes, she had mistaken the star marked capitals of Oregon and Washington as locations for In-N-Out Burgers.

Kaaaaaaaaaaahn!

For the next two days of our vacation the only words my wife could get out of me were, “Stars on map” and “capital city” as I laughed and talked to myself in the corner of my hotel room.  When I regained my ability to make a coherent sentence I told my lovely wife that she could make it up to me by flying down to California to get me a cheeseburger. As I watch her reading her magazine I don't think she took me serious.

The Murder Interrogation

Unfortunately the only thing on television these days are “reality shows” and “cop dramas” so I usually find myself watching the latter as “reality shows” make my brain feel like it’s melting. In doing so I have found many things that irritate me about these shows. Let me tell you about one of these irritants.

"You cannot have a conversation about irritants with out me!"

Why is it that when the detectives come to question someone regarding a murder that person doesn’t even stop what they are doing as they talk to law enforcement? They, instead, keep on doing what ever they are doing while talking to the police as if a detective questioning them about a murder is an everyday occurrence.

I was watching Law & Order the other day and the two detectives walked into a local flower shop to question the owner regarding a murder. Murder mind you! So what does that owner do? She keeps putting flower arrangements together while she answers the questions of our two detectives.

As if I"m going to be fixing flowers with these two men interrogating me.

Yes, I said men.

Now, let me tell you that when a police detective walks into your place of employment and ask to question you regarding a murder, doing your job will not be on your mind. The only thing that goes through your brain, after you discover that you have soiled yourself, is the list of all the bad things you have done since the age of five. “They must have found out about the quarter I took from Mikey Nigrelli’s house when I was five!”

I may or may not have eaten the brownie, officer.

This is not just an isolated incident. This is the same scene that plays out in almost every single television show and movie I have ever seen that has a scene where a police officer or detective who goes to a place of employment to question someone. I challenge you to watch for it next time you see this scene in any “cop drama.”

Speaking of watching out... watch out for this news anchor.

Last night I was watching a French crime thriller called The Crimson Rivers and the detective goes to question an ophthalmologist regarding a murder. The doctor proceeds to change his clothes and restock some medical supplies while being questioned. Really? Because the last time I was talked to by a police detective I may or may not have recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

Those coppers will never find out my true identity!

Nothing about the task you were doing before the police walked in ever enters your mind when you are being questioned for murder. Trust me! I know! Wait… I’ve said too much… Where is the backspace key?

An Unpleasant Surprise

During college I paid the bills by working at the “Happiest Place on Earth”, otherwise known as Disneyland.

One evening I received a call from the Matterhorn attraction that there was a male in a hot pink miniskirt wearing nothing underneath. How did they know, you may be asking yourself? Because upon sitting in a Matterhorn bobsled you must spread your legs to allow another person to sit between them as you ride tandem. This allowed for a rather unpleasant view for all those waiting in line.

Oh the humanity!

As I arrived at I saw two males, one dressed in the hot pink miniskirt in question, and a rather striking female that was accompanying them. Pink miniskirt was a taller than average male with an excess of body hair. Now, when I say excess I am not talking about your run of the mill excess, I mean Enron CEO bonus excess. It was like walking up to a gorilla in drag accompanied by his two handlers.

Does this skirt hide my love handles Morty?

I walked up to Pink Miniskirt and advised him that he had to have underwear on if he wanted to continue his evening in the park. He then proceeded to inform me that he did not have any underwear on his person, but did have a pair of pink hot pants in his purse. What kind of logic is this? “I’m going to a place full of small children and families, what should I bring? Underwear? No. Pink hot pants? YES!”

May God have mercy on the stupid.

Of course I couldn’t help but picture this Sasquatch in hot pants and spent the next few moments furiously trying to scrub my minds eye out. When I regained my composure, I asked him to follow me to the nearest restroom where he could change. When I arrived at the men’s restroom I checked to make sure no one was inside and told him he could go in.

This would have been useful in this particular situation.

Pink miniskirt went into the restroom followed by his male companion but then the female tried to go in as well. I put my arm out and told her that she was not allowed in. It was then that this beautiful woman turned to me and in a deep baritone voice said, “Why not?” 

This is the lead singer for Tokio Hotel.  His name is Bill.

I don’t remember anything after that. I all I heard in my head was “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” (at least I hope it was in my head) followed by a trip to the break room to call my then girlfriend, now my wife, to reaffirm my manhood. Reality as I knew it, where men looked like men, collapsed around like a fat man crossing the finish line at 1k fun run. It felt like a scene out of the Crying Game but no one was yelling “CUT!

To this day I still flinch when I see a hot pink miniskirt.