Boys to Men

Given the "everybody gets a trophy" era we currently find ourselves in, I've decided to loose another dangerous thought that's been rolling around in my head for weeks and unleash it on the internet. I believe that men should receive figurative or real badges, like the ones from Pokemon, in their teens and early 20s for doing things that propel them into manhood (Badge One would probably be to stop referencing things like Pokemon).Tonight I will be earning my Cook Steaks on the Grill badge.

I can't wait! I'm currently riding a tidal wave of testosterone this week as I've already earned my Drive Somewhere Without Stopping For Directions And Get Within A .4 Mile Radius Of Where I'm Going But Then Drive Around In Circles For A Half Hour badge, the all-important Blast "Single Ladies" While I'm In The Car By Myself Then When I Stop At A Red Light And A Car Pulls Up Next To Me And This Old Asian Woman Glares At Me Disapprovingly Wondering How When She Was A Little Girl In Beijing Her Dad Could Have Referred To This Ludicrous Person Filled Landmass As The Land Of Opportunity , Then I Switch The Radio To A News Talk Show And Nod My Head And Stroke The Pitiful Growth Of Facial Fuzz That Has Accumulated Under My Chin After Four Days Of Not Shaving badge. Lastly, the Stand In Front Of The Guy At The Gym Who Has Clearly Mistaken The Pec Fly Machine Used For Exercising For A Park Bench Used For Lounging And Talk To Him For Several Minutes About Various Muscle Groups Which I'm Pretty Sure That The Both Of Us Are Completely Making Up, But Through All Of This Gymenese Biceptual Banter The Message I'm Really Trying To Communicate Is Get Your Social Butterfly Butt Off Of The Machine So That I Can Finish My Workout badge. Coincidentally, I have just earned my Tell A Story And Completely Forget Where I'm Going With It And Thus Make The Tale Twenty Minutes Longer Than It Needs To Be badge about 60 years before I had planned to get it.  

A Glass Case of Emotion

Being someone who's worn glasses since the age of 2, I've grown up surrounded by people who assume that I can help them with their homework and they readily assume that I spend my free time watching history channel shows about the architecture of 9th century French cathedrals. Sadly, the optically impaired lifestyle is not all Transition shades in the summertime and lollipops at the eye doctors' office. People without glasses will never understand those horrifying moments of vertigo that follow getting a pizza out of the oven or putting glasses on after stepping out of the shower. And forgive me for complaining here, but if I was called Four Eyes in preschool just because I wore "eyes" over my eyes, why weren't kids wearing casts on their arm called Machamp? Well, Mark because it would be rude to single someone out like that because they had some sort of noticeable physical difference.......Just a thought.

The Hexed Generation

A short time ago, I rummaged through my bachelor-style stocked refrigerator and realized that the contents within had dwindled down to a pouch of Easy Mac and a bottle of ketchup. I understand that these two ingredients constitute what would be a suitable meal for some people, but after seeing the visual result of the yellow and red mix together like that it is not at all something I’d call aesthetically pleasing, let alone edible. To me, the only place yellow and red look good together is on a traffic light. So, that was just something I was not willing to try. From the kitchen I loudly called up to my mother. After several moments of silence, I became acutely aware of the fact that I no longer lived with my parents. Surely I needed to make someone aware of the vital vacancies that existed in the refrigerator, so next I called to my butler. I was again only greeted by silence and the reminder that I had yet to invent something which would make such a financial investment as having my own butler even remotely feasible. These thoughts gave way to the sad realization that I would need to make a trip to an area which I believe to be the birthplace of bad driving habits, the grocery store. What makes people think that they can just park their cart horizontally across an entire aisle? I’ve had to pull moves that would make me a shoo-in for an opening at the police department. I don’t care if someone is amped out of their mind plowing out of the energy drink aisle, they can’t just blindly bash back into the main flow of traffic. However, what truly caught my attention and the reason I have brought us all here today was not something I saw, but rather an encounter that started out with something I heard.

As I was going up and down the produce aisle like a vexed VeggieTale, a small child in the next row over began to scream bloody murder the moment that asparagus was placed in his carriage. I realize that the screaming child in public rant is a bit played out in this day and age and sadly, he is not the one I took issue with at first. The worn-out woman attached to the other end of the cart looked him right in the eyes and somewhat sternly said “Trevor, if you don’t quiet down, I’m going to have to take your IPad.” Not at all phased by the empty threat, Trailer Trash Trevor continued on his tantrum. So the woman who was seemingly placed in charge of turning this miniature menace into a valued member of society wrestled the device from his hands like a crocodile tearing at the flesh of a zebra. At this point, Trevor decided, as any adequately raised infant would, to sit quietly as his mother finished her shopping……………No. This act of maternal mutiny sent his screaming into a volume that would’ve had David Draiman shouting “Can you turn that thing down please?!” After Forty-two seconds of this (trust me, I was counting) the mother goes “Fine!” and tossed the IPad back to him.
I can sense that you are as irritated as I was about this sequence of events and I promise that we are going to work through this calmly, chronologically and communally.

First off, she bought the asparagus the day before it was going on sale. Buying regular priced produce is like buying bagels that aren’t pre-sliced, it makes absolutely no sense and why anyone would think to do it is beyond me.

Secondly, at this stage in the life of Trevor the Treacherous, all he has to do with asparagus is eat it. There will come a point in this little turd of a toddler’s existence (as long as his clearly annoyed mother sees fit to grant him continued life) that he will have to: Go get it. Pay for it. Cook it. Eat it. So you, Mr. Market Basket Menace, are essentially on the first base of your relationship with asparagus. If you have survived long enough and happen to be reading this, for the sake of your own sanity and the salvaging of the hearing of those within a 4½ mile radius, I strongly suggest that you suck it up just a little bit.

Thirdly, what the (insert expletive of your choice that I’d rather not have my parents read here) is a kid doing being the incompetent owner of an IPad?! My original thought was that if an individual is not capable of reciting their 12’s time tables, they should not have access to that kind of technology. However, after bearing witness to some atrocious attempts at arithmetic in the checkout aisle, I’ve come to the conclusion that implementing this strategy may very well send us plummeting back into the Dark Ages.

So when is that one should be given that rite of passage then? When should someone be allowed to own an IPad? My thoughts, at least for men, is that IPads and Guy Cards should be handed out to a member of the male species on the day he decides within himself that the occurrences which he deems acceptable to tear up at have been dwindled down to the following:
1. The Sight of his bride walking down the aisle
2. The birth of one (or more) of his children
3. The scene in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King when Sam and Frodo are struggling to the top of Mt. Doom in order to destroy The One Ring and Samwise Gamgee is like “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” because while we all have life struggles that we must ultimately choose to overcome and find our footing from on our own, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have someone there to carry us from time to time. That’s it! This list should not include the painful, but necessary purchasing of produce.

The last thing I want to do is sound like some old guy going “Darn kids today and their fancy oven-havin’ pizza delivery cars.” All that I’m trying to get at here is that I’m noticing a downward trend that needs to be stopped. In my dads’ generation, he was taken outside to be properly dealt with. In my generation, I was sent outside when my parents didn’t want to deal with me. My fear is that the only “outside” that the next generation will know is in Skyrim when you pick up a plate and are suddenly able to run through walls.

I will go a step further and openly admit to some of the the errors caused by the millennials. Around the time I hit sixth grade, belts on the hips of young men everywhere suddenly vanished. The belt of truth became an extinct accessory. The results were disgusting. Young men began to waddle around the streets looking like some miscreant Mumble the penguin. Let’s keep whether you’re a Hanes having man or Fruit of the Loom follower between you and your bathroom mirror, okay? There is no defending this kind of detestable behavior, but Baby Boomers, Generation X men and women, allow me to pose a question: do you have fond memories of “the belt?” General William T. Sherman once said “War is Hell.” British poet William Congreve wrote “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Every time my dad put on a suit, he looked like he was having wartime flashbacks, because apparently my dear sweet cookie baking, kiss giving grandmother was quite different back in the 60s.
The next aspect of this series of unfathomable events that I’d like to address is the fact that this mother lifted her punishment simply because it was met with angst and attrition. Do you know what happened to me if I started debating a disciplinary decision made by my parents? It wasn’t reversed, it was doubled!

This was just one isolated incident that I felt perfectly addressed a much broader issue on several fronts. Parents, stop letting someone who’s capable of walking under the kitchen table while standing fully upright run the household! It may have worked for Napoleon Bonaparte, but it shall not prevail! Kids, it’s a great big world out there when you’re not crushing candy or angering birds. Technology is not a curse, but it’s not everything either. For me, the greatest sense of accomplishment comes from when I’ve written the last line of some idea for a story that’s been pinballing around my head for weeks (Crap, kids today probably don’t know what pinball is) I feel like Mario on star power when I’ve finished writing a story. (Is that still too old for some people? Crap! I get angrier than a bunch of freakin’ birds when my readers don’t get the references I’m making!) The point is find something you are passionate about and pursue it with everything you’ve got. In the very much misquoted words of Bane “when you have reached an ancient and old age and have lived a life of fulfillment through service to others and are ready to become little more than ashes, then you have my permission to die.”  

I Might Be A Vampire

One of my least favorite feelings in the world is going to see a movie at noon. Yeah, there’s no feeling quite like walking out of an 11:30 showing of Twilight and after spending some quality time hopping around the dark forests of Washington State on Edwards’ back with Bella then you get outside and see the sun for the first time in two hours and you’re like IT BURNS!!!  That’s when you start to question yourself thinking sunlight didn’t bother me before seeing this movie with vampires……who are also bothered by sunlight…..so…..I must be a vampire! NOOOO!!!! And I’m not going act like after watching the Star Wars movies my brother and I didn’t have epic air light saber duels. There’s just something about when that crescendo of notes kicks in at the end of the movie that makes you think that there’s a strong possibility that the person next to you in the theater is going to push you into the Great Pit of Carkoon the second you get into the parking lot.

Oh, The Horror!

I think scary movies are pretty lame. Either that or I’m a huge wuss. But seriously, I have a couple of guidelines that would apply to different types of scary movies, but it would also make them a lot shorter and quite a bit more realistic, which clearly isn’t their aim. Rule number one is what I like to call the Celebrity Marriage Approach. This is when a group of ridiculously stupid teenagers agree that splitting up five minutes into the movie at the first sign of trouble is the best course of action. What’s the plan there? Ok, I’ll run in circles in this direction, you go that way and zigzag all over the place in a haphazard manner. And you, hot blond chick that was plastered all over the commercials to pull male viewers in, but you’re only going to be alive for 10 more minutes or so, you run that way in an exaggerated fashion that calls attention to your beautifully shaped figure. No really guys, I think we can tire the dude in the goalie mask out before he can reach us. Alright, on one, on one, break! The victims always just die in some quick gruesome way. Why can’t there be like an emotional last conversation like in the Lord of the Rings when Aragon was kneeling beside Boromir and Aragon is like “You fought bravely and will live on in our hearts in honor.” And Boromir’s like “I’ve never served under such a fine warrior, but since I have you here….ummm you got in the way of like twelve of my kills, screw honor! I told you I had those guys, but no! You just had to keep dancing around just hacking away!

But since in these horror movies it’s just a group of teenagers getting stalked I don’t know what kind of emotional last conversation they would have, but for the sake of this show I have written a climactic death scene of a blockbuster horror film as imagined by Mark Woonton. It gets pretty emotional, so any spots where there is supposed to be crying will be denoted by a [c] so here we go. So it’s just some guy standing over his buddy in a pool of blood like “Dude, in case I die, you’ve got to tell me one thing, remember that time you drove my sister home and you guys were gone for two hours and you said it was because your car broke down? I remember you told me that you had your car inspected that morning, what really happened?”

“Dude, I really think you should…” 

“TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED!”

 (Crying) Ok….(c) on that fateful night, I didn’t take your sister to the mechanic {c} I took her to the Olive Garden. I held both her car door and the door to the restaurant open for her and after pulling out her chair so that she could sit down, I got her the fettuccine alfraedo. After paying for the meal, we stopped at Friendly’s and split a Mint Cookie Crunch sundae {c} and when I went to drop her off {c} she opened the car door, turned to me and said {c} if you ever tell my brother about this I’ll kill you. (uncontrollable sobbing. Sniffle) Well, I think I hear someone coming and since no one in this quiet little neighborhood has come out to complain about the first 87 gunshots, I’m going to assume it’s that guy that wants us dead. Peace! 

And the victims are always the dumbest people too. You’ll never see a horror moving set to take place in a Harvard University dorm room. A kid bursts into his room and goes “Dude, creepy guy in a paintball mask and winter jacket in the hall with a machete, we gotta go!” And his Asian roommate is like…..Ok, so I don’t know what would be more disrespectful here, me trying and butchering the Vietnamese accent or me not even giving it a shot? I’m pretty sure me just trying to rationalize my way out of that was worse than either of those. Anyway, while he’s freaking’ out his roommate would just be like “Nah dude, it’s cool, I fashioned a bazooka out of coat hangers and fire crackers, we’re good.” And my rule on  the movie with the lost travelers coming up to the creepy house is spend the night sleeping outside the Wal-Mart in town with all of the other homeless people and if the house looks less creepy in the morning once its finally stopped raining, which it never will! It’s always raining every night in those movies. Like what, do those people live in a rural area of the desert? But if the house looks good in the morning, then go ask for directions.

Planning For My Funeral

The following was originally meant to be based on a true story……… but when you consider the fact that I am trying to recall events that happened six years ago, couple that with my major ADD when it comes to writing and staying on topic and the fact that my parents, my ex-girlfriends and my neurologist can all verify that memory is an area where I tend to struggle (although the syllable count and amount of profanity in their exact word selection varies greatly)  you can probably guess that, much like a teenager trying to throw a story together to tell his parents why he’s arrived home three hours passed curfew, sure there is a dash of truth to this story, but those moments are far outweighed by the over exaggeration of the unimportant and the haziness of vital details that would give this story any hope of being presented in a linear fashion. So, what you have here is failure to communicate. Some memories I just can’t reach. I can’t even remember what I wrote on here last week and that’s not the way I want it. Well, you get it. I don’t like it any more than you do.  Once all of that is factored in, you are left with something that goes a little like this……

My dad hung up the phone and declared “We’re all signed up!” So the training begins. I sat down on the couch after the exhausting five mile run. The morning sun sliced through the trees and into the house, enveloping the family room in a pinkish glow. My dad was quick to yell at me for sitting on the couch while I was still sweaty. Ugh! Some supernatural force lifted my body from its momentary leathery lavish vacation and allowed me to stand upright. Well, I was about as upright as a toddler on a rocking ship. I wouldn’t even be halfway done at five miles I thought with slightly more than a hint of depression.

After peeling me off the floor with the pitch fork that my father kept handy for when personal willpower just wasn’t cutting it, we sat down to plan out our death….I mean, our training schedule for the half marathon. All of the running experts (or as I like to call them, Kenyans) say that the best way to train is to run five or six days a week and take one or two days off, no more than two though. We also read that we would benefit greatly from planning a designated Long Run Day. In preparation for these days, you check the weather to see when it is expected to rain the hardest, and pencil your long run in for that day. This way, you get the personal satisfaction of saying you are going to do something admirable, but when it comes time to actually follow through with it, your health is at risk and you wouldn’t want to chance catching a cold.

So that was how it went. We would run Monday through Friday, do our long run of the week on Saturday and go to church on Sunday praying for some divine intervention and miraculous healing on our aching bodies so we could begin the process all over again twenty-four hours later.

We wrote down our mileage for the next three months in a daily calendar in order to give our relatives some advance warning to plan the time and place of our burial. I am the kind of person who works better with lists. I like the feeling of crossing items off as I complete them.  This gives me a feeling of accomplishment. Writing the mileage down in an organized schedule also made the task less daunting.  The fact that we still had three months before the race in October allowed us to slowly increase our mileage each week in order to reach our goal of thirteen miles. This also gave me ample time to do some private internet research on which serious, but non-deadly diseases that might get one out of running for an unnecessary amount of time were the easiest to fake.

Another aspect of our training that we had to monitor was our fluid intake, specifically water (I say that because there were several buddies of mine in college who certainly would have had a more memorable college experience, or any memory of college at all, had they monitored their fluid intake, but this is neither the time nor the place for discussions about poor beverage selection and my personal choice to hang out with these people simply to feel better about myself and will be left alone following the end of the parenthesis). Staying hydrated had several benefits including keeping my miniscule, half marathon runner muscles loose which would decrease the likelihood of incurring an episode of intense cramps. An experience which my father describes as “Oh geez. Yeah, that’s bad. Yup, we’re going to be here for a while.” Secondly, drinking a lot of water prevents the mouth from drying out while running which can cause the lips to crack and girlfriends to become unhappy about the rough, skeletal smooching they are forced to endure if the odorous anti- aphrodisiac permeating from ones clothing after a long run is not enough to keep bae at bay. Lastly, increasing the amount of fluids going into my body would give me the one excuse that had historically been successful in allowing me to procrastinate on homework, outdoor chores and would surely allow me to cut some of these agonizingly long runs down to a sane distance, the need to go to the bathroom more frequently. Not even the strictest, most hard-nosed and excessively English nanny would deny a child of the basic urinary right to go to the bathroom.

Aside from fluids, my food intake changed as well. I had to decrease the amount of fat in my diet and increase the amount of carbohydrates I was eating. This made the whole family unhappy. I was forced to forfeit ice cream and my mom was sentenced to several months of hard labor without the possibility of parole, because preparing spaghetti was an all-day operation. A writer who does little to no research for his writing once told me that carbohydrates are a main source of energy for our bodies. And lord knows I would need lots of energy if my non-stop nagging and agonizing war of attrition to complain until we were scratched from the race was to work.

Fortunately for me, the half marathon in Detroit came at the end of my school’s cross country season which meant that an already in place running schedule and nonexistent social life due to my choice in extracurricular activities and resulting place at the bottom of the schools’ social scale, left me lots of open time to run.

On Saturdays, my dad and I would head outside and stretch before we began our runs. We chose to run outside because running on treadmills for a long period of time can lead to insanity and a deadly dependence on daytime television.

I hated these runs for three reasons.  First off, my dad and I began each run promptly at eight in the morning. Now, I don’t know how familiar the majority of the earth’s population is with the 12,000 step program of the weekend waking of a teenager at eight in the morning, but if you would like to experience an emotional equivalent, go deep into the woods in the middle of January and find the nearest cave occupied by a mama bear and her cub. Repeatedly poke the furry, friendly-looking bundles of cuddliness with a stick or if you’re feeling idiotically adventurous, just poke them with your finger. However, I would personally advise you to do the poking with as long a branch as possible as cordial greetings will be completely bypassed and your first encounter with Not So Gentle Ben will largely involve you running for your life. See, the running is already starting to pay off!

Secondly, my dad and I did most of our running in the trails at Muldoon Park. Aside from runners, there are three other occupants that utilize these rugged runways. Horses, with diarrhea, whom by the odor, seem to feed on nothing but outdated taco meat. These horses have the impeccable timing of choosing only to relieve themselves on the crest of the most difficult hills that the trails have to offer. This is a time when my attention is focused on getting to the top of the hill whilst maintaining the breathing pattern equivalent to that of a teenage girl that just got backstage passes to a meet and greet with Adam Levine and my attention is not focused on the month old hay with mosquito seasoning scattered throughout the path.

The second beast which calls Muldoon Park home are dogs with Samson-like strength who specialize in breaking free of leashes. On the inattentive other end of these leashes are handlers who seem to have, at best, a 99% grasp on the English language up to their understanding of words such as “friendly” and phrases like “He won’t bite.” These statements seem to provide the false comfort of a high school parent that allows children to drink, but insists on taking the inebriated adolescents keys. My discomfort with the demonic Dalmatians stems from the fact that as the owner is speaking, saliva begins to ooze from the cuddly K-9’s mouth and the dogs malicious, mirage creating mind transforms me into a juicy piece of steak.

The third and without a doubt most annoying creature inhabiting  the deep, dark woods of Muldoon are mosquitoes who, much like Christian Grey, have a singular taste for human flesh. This annoying attribute is accompanied by a buzz which can reach a volume of about 999,999,999,999 decibels as they enter the ear, causing me to flail my arms around like idiotic air marshal.

As the weeks went on, my confidence rose as our mileage increased. I became determined to pour all of my energy and effort into this race. I will never forget the feeling of preparedness I had after my last long run with my dad one week before the race; I can do this. I will never forget the confidence I had as I stretched at the starting line; hey ladies, you doing anything after the race? I knew that enduring through all of the training, changes in my diet and aching in my muscles would pay off. Like any mother telling a lie to her child the pain was worth it. I knew that the sound of the starting gun meant that it was time to execute. This is it. What the thirty-seven other gunshots I heard at seemingly random points throughout the race as I ran through the city streets of Detroit were meant to be symbolic of, I have no idea. I will never forget that feeling of satisfaction as I made the final stride across the finish line, I always knew I could do this.

If Holidays Were Realistic

As of lately, our country seems to be in search of using everyday language which is deemed politically correct. I’ve always found that terminology to be a bit ironic, because if there’s a group of people I’d consider looking to as an absolute last resort as a moral compass, it’s politicians.

This attitude of being politically correct seems to particularly show itself during the holidays. We are constantly being told what we can and cannot say, because we don’t want to offend anyone. The line of thought here seems to be “Well, I don’t celebrate this day and it’s not about me. Therefore, I am offended by it.” If that’s the case, then why aren’t we offended when we get invited to someone’s birthday party? Why is it that on that day, we can choose to just be happy for someone else? Although, if we really looked at birthdays, I think we’d realize that we’ve been going about those all wrong too. If anything, on that day we should be celebrating the mother.

“Tommy, take off that stupid hat! Today’s not about you. Now, go hug your mother and tell her that you’re sorry.”

But we can’t do that. If you take toys, candy and attention away from a little kid he would just lay there crying and babbling incoherently and there is not a more realistic depiction of the role that that little snot nosed kid played on his day of birth than that.

The root of the problem is a self-centered attitude. Again, it’s this thinking that “I don’t celebrate this day and I couldn’t just be openly happy for someone else so “bah humbug!” Although, this statement in itself is reference to a holiday novel.

If someone came up to me on April 23^rd and enthusiastically greeted me by saying “Hey man, Happy Avocado Day!” I wouldn’t think “Ummmm, the purchasing and consumption of avocados does not line up with my personal set of beliefs.” No. I’d run a hand through my hair and go “Geez! That’s today??!! We need to get me an avocado now!” I’ve taken it upon myself to come up with descriptions of various holidays throughout the year that will allow us all to participate in that day’s festivities in friendly, unified way.

First up, we have Valentine’s Day. Just as a reminder for all of the men out there, this holiday falls on February 14^th every year. This holiday was created by the greeting card, flower and candy industries because they haven’t gotten inside the consumer’s pocket since Christmas. On February 14^th, couples are blissful and happy while singles are bitter and anger. But take heart bachelors and bachelorettes, because for pretty much every other day of the year, that mood ring shines in their favor. Being single on Valentine’s Day is a lot like being British on the Fourth of July. Somewhere in the world, there’s a party going on that you’re not invited to, but deep down everyone knows that you have the classiest, sexiest voice that they’ve ever heard.

Slightly west of jolly old England, we move to Ireland for the March 17^th celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. Simply put, this is a day that we’ve set aside to recognize and honor short, clever men who are constantly forgetting where they put things. This day has also given many people an excuse to get unmercifully inebriated. It’s truly a poor reflection on the people of Ireland and is a similar assumption to thinking that everyone in New Jersey is a buff, tattooed meathead with a two syllable word vocabulary limit and that their license plates would be more accurate if they read The Guido State.

A little over a week later. On March 27^th is Easter Sunday. This was the one day each year that I became more and more convinced that, at some point in his life, my father was on body dismemberment and disposal duty for the Irish mob, because he hid Easter baskets as if he thought that there’d be legal ramifications if someone were to find them.. This day took the man who is partially responsible for bringing the handsome hunk of hotness that is myself, in to this world and made him an unenthusiastic Katy Perry karaoke participant as after an hour of unsuccessfully searching for our Easter baskets, my brother and I would walk around the hose pointing at stuff and my dad would say “You’re hot. Now you’re cold. Over there…..Yes!......No!” So, my advice don’t even hide anything. Tell your kids that there’s candy under the dirty dishes in the sink or beneath the pile of laundry in the bathroom. You’ll keep your children busy and get a lot of work done in the process.

Next on the calendar, we head in to April and stop on the very first day. April 1^st, or April Fool’s Day is the one day each year where little white lies and emotionally, if not physically harmful pranks are supposed to be tolerated provided that at the conclusion of whatever the person says or does comes the enthusiastic punchline “April Fools!” A documentary was made showing what April Fool’s Day would look like in the dystopian societies of a Donald Trump led America. To see what this holiday might look like in the future, go rent The Purge.

Shortly after we’ve all eaten our fill of tacos and reluctantly put our lips around a bottle of Corona, we come to May 8^th and Mother’s Day. For me, this day was the culmination of having spent the other 364 days practicing walking around and saying “wow, how interesting!” in a tone that conveyed some sense of believability, because I was sure to spend the entire day trudging around an art museum repetitiously  answering the question “How does this one make you feel?” Angry! It makes me absolutely furious. Not because I feel as though looking at art is a waste of time. No, the rise of abstract art has driven me bananas due to the fact that these artistic acid trip art pieces sell for hundreds if not thousands of dollars and they look very similar to the work I did in my elementary school art class and received nothing more than a C+ and a twenty minute lecture about effort.

In the United States, the next big holiday is the Fourth of July celebration marking the nations’ birth. We Americans celebrate this day by partaking in the two activities that the rest of the world knows us best for, eating lots of food and blowing stuff up.

The unofficial end of summer and return to school for many students is marked by Labor Day weekend. The mindset of this holiday seems to be that the working class got together and said “we’ve been doing a lot of work, we deserve some time off.” Not So Fun Fact for you, the average American currently carries $8,000 in credit card debt, $10,000 in auto loan debt and $25,000 in student loan debt and owes $100,000 on their mortgage, but yeah, let’s totally shut down the economy for the day. With the economic deficit where it’s at in this country I believe that the most honest way to celebrate this day is to head down to your nearest college or university, find the student in the library writing the 10-page paper on Abraham Lincoln who has mustered up the will to type the words “Abraham Lincoln was the….” And tell him “You’ve been working really hard, why don’t you spend the rest of the day playing Ultimate Frisbee on the quad.”

On October 10, we celebrate Columbus Day and remember events that lead to the most intense “ask for directions” argument in recorded history. Christopher Columbus was looking for a route to China, but unfortunately due to some construction going on in the Indian Ocean was rerouted to the Bahamas. Here’s how I recommend you celebrate this day:

1.      Make plans with a friend that leaves to the east of you

2.      Drive to the house of a friend who lives to the west of you

3.      Despite their understandable confusion upon your arrival, insist that this was your plan all along

4.      Go all throughout the home of the horrified hostess stealing a bunch of their things

5.      It is preferable to do this on a day that you are not feeling too well so that everyone living in the house becomes sick

6.      Prior to leaving the house, turn and say “This is mine now.”  

As the leaves begin to die, so do my hopes for the future generation of children turning this country around. Next on our list is Halloween on October 31^st. This is a night where kids dress really weird and pretend to be someone they’re not. For most people, this practice stops once they enter high school because they claim to have “outgrown” such a childish activity. Or as one teen puts it “Doing the same thing every second of every day is lame and exhausting.”

October shifts to November and we soon arrive at Thanksgiving Day on November 24^th. This is a day when large families get together and engage in a handful of cumbersome cross-table conversations, because whoever was left in charge of the seating arrangements is apparently an absolute moron. The sounds of the kitchen soon resemble a food-fueled opening of the New York Stock Exchange. Everyone at the table earns valuable job experience as an assembly line worker, because the ratio of time spent passing something to someone versus time spent actually eating is about as even as the score of the end of the season hockey game back when I was a Squirt and the kids didn’t know how to lose with grace and the dads didn’t know how to dial it down a notch.

Hanukkah is a celebration that lasts eight days and really confuses Jewish boys between the ages of one and eight with a birthday that falls between December 24^th and January 1^st. During this time, families willingly increase their chances of having a house fire by roughly 12.5% each night.

As we continue to expect more from our children, we continue to confuse the crap out of them. This is made very apparent by the way in which we celebrate Christmas on December 25^th. 364 days out of the year if an old bearded guy tells me that he has presents for me in his magically powered transportation vehicle, I’m supposed to run like hell. However, during this special time of year, I am specifically instructed to leave dairy products and baked goods out all night for some guy who has apparently been given the code to the garage and is only interested in having me sit on his lap and tell him what I want.

Lastly on our list, I have chosen to couple together New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day wherein a day that people promise themselves they are going to get in shape and change their life around is ironically preceded by a night most people spend their time getting way less sleep than they should and absolutely destroying their liver.     

So, I look forward to our first unified holiday celebration and I’d like to close with the reminder that the beer companies halfheartedly give you at the end of their commercials to please celebrate responsibly.  

Save The Date

While I was in school, I was always more interested in English and Social Studies classes. Mostly because the application of what I was being taught in math class always seemed to reference Dust Bowl farmers or trapeze artists and the necessity for them to have a great knowledge of angles. I believe we should be taught multiplication, division, addition and subtraction, that’s it. I will admit to a little bias because my dad got me interested in American history at a young age. But you know what? That interest has enabled me to walk Pickett’s Charge (well, run because ¾ of a mile seems like a 10K when you need to pee and your bladder is weighing you down like a military pack) I got a week excused absence from school to go to Williamsburg, Virginia as long as I promised to dress in Colonial boy garb and create a video documentary explaining the everyday life of someone who lived in 17^th century Williamsburg. At one point in time, there was video of me playing Hoop and Stick (based on how the game is played, I imagine that this activity lead to familial arguments very similar to those resulting from today’s text-immersed teens bumping into their parents in the hallway.) There was also footage of me learning how to load a colonial musket. I was told that a well-trained soldier could load and fire a musket three or four times per minute. The five minute video lasts longer than my life as a member of the Colonial Regulars would have. However, in a very sad and completely accidental fire, this footage of me and all of my brother’s action figures were destroyed.

The question that seemed to be asked most often on test day in social studies class was “Are we going to need to remember dates?” Asking this question is like asking if you will need to remember numbers for your math test, yes. At least this should be the case. While yes, remembering dates is tedious and seemingly unimportant and I will readily admit that the content of the Magna Carta has not yet played a vital role in my life as an adult, it is a skill that will serve you well later in life, especially for those men who want to become a successful boyfriend and eventually, husband. I don’t want to freak anyone out, but I’d like to disclose the practical application of what I am talking about in the form of a pop quiz:

Question One: When did you and your wife go on your first date?

Question Two: When is your wife’s birthday?

Question Three: When is your anniversary?

Question Four: When is Mother’s Day? (If you didn’t answer questions 2 and 3 correctly, odds are you can skip this one)

Question Five: What day of the year do you and your wife have your biggest fight? (Here’s your freebie, it’s April 18^th)

Question Six: When is Valentine’s Day? (Yes, it’s one of those holidays that’s on the same date each year)

Question Seven: When is your mother-in-law’s birthday? (In most cases, June 6, 1944 is not an acceptable answer)

Still don't think dates are important? If you wish to be a successful husband, I suggest you make a concerted effort to change how you view the importance of date recall. For those of you who couldn’t answer all of these questions correctly, please give Michael Vick my best and prepare yourself for a night with the couch and a date which will live in infamy.