Today in the 2nd grade classroom I gave my first spelling test. I went slightly off script so I just walked around the classroom like:
"sister"
"cinema"
"Psychology"
"Tsunami"
"filibuster"
"philanthropy"
"notes"
"knowledge"
"ghastly"
"Gigantic"
"gnarled"
"pneumonia"
It's that special time of year when I will be driving down the road and see an Amazon truck on one side of the road and a FedEx truck on the other and I tightly grip the steering wheel and brace for shots fired.
Unlike Harry Potter, my glasses are more of a rectangle than a circle. Also, the results of my series of surgeries have left me with scars that do not look like a lightning bolt but the scars on my chest more closely resemble that streak of fluffy fart clouds planes leave in the sky. However, I can't help but feel like Mark may not be a muggle as I empty the dishwasher, the most effective strategy for getting the water out of the straws is in fact the "swish and flick" hand motion whilst saying the phrase "wick water lavabamos a me hermosa." While the long-term and internal effects of this spell remain to be seen, it appears to be a mood-altering spell as it causes a happy and otherwise content person to become immediately upset.
I don't do a real Christmas tree anymore. However, I do park outside and given how windy it has been lately every morning as I go to leave about one trees worth of pine and sticks slides off of my roof.
I will never know what it feels like to have the mic snatched from my hands by the emcee at a vicious rap battle, nor will I experience a moderator interjecting as I reach my time limit in laying out my case for office at a heated presidential debate. However, this morning I was leaving someone a voicemail and it just cut out and I was like "Hey, I was still talking!" but then I looked down at the phone and went "Dang, 2:30?!?! I really have got to learn to be more concise 😏😏😏 but would you really expect anything less from me???
Has anyone ever walked from a waiting room to the doctor's office, and it is just like a straight shot? Of course not! Why is it always this corn maze to get your clavicle checked out, a labyrinth to determine why you have that limp and why does every place that practices medicine insist on being a maze?
There is a vision and hair gel requirement that will forever keep out of being a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. However, I always feel as though I gain a glimpse into that world when a car comes out of a gas station and pulls up next to me at a stoplight having not secured their gas cap. I start frantically signing like their tail is on fire or they have a bandit on their 6 and I'm sure they are thinking I want to race or enlist them as a member of the Wootang Clan or something when in reality I am just carrying on the creed set forth by Maverick in Top Gun "I feel the desire for you not to spill gas on your tire."
Just in case you thought you were cool, here's a reminder that today in 1901 was the first barrel ride down Niagra Falls. I would like to think I am not a jaded person, but my relationship with Niagra Falls begs to differ. In visiting my family in Michigan, we typically drive which can take 10.5 to 14 hours depending on who is driving. The route we take goes from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York up into Canada and down into Michigan. Throughout my lifetime we typically go twice a year and we have probably stopped at Niagara Falls about half of the time (I would not recommend this as your stopping point if you already have to go to the bathroom really bad.) It sounds incredibly spoiled of me, but at this point I am like "It's water, I get it. Let's hit the road." I know the offer tours on the "Maid of the Mist" but if you would rather follow around a grumbling, rapidly aging bitter man around the outskirts of the falls I will now be offering tours called "The Way to Get Pissed." Tours start at $30, US dollar only although I will also accept Dunkin Donuts or Tim Hortons coffee.
There is an expression "Don't lend money unless you are prepared to not see it back." And after doing some cleaning in my car, backpack and my room along with some honest self-reflection I have come to the solemn conclusion that you should probably never lend me a writing implement. Over the years I have curated a crap-ton of Bics I never gave back, Ticonderoga I have taken and many a Faber-Castell have become a castaway now in my possession. These have come from current jobs, former jobs, jobs I interviewed for with no intention of taking. I have become the John Dillinger of the dentist's office, the Clyde "Borrow and never give back" at the Barnes and Noble and the Pen and "El Cap-o" of the elementary school I work at. Sorry, everyone! I will write myself a note to return these items, but if I could have a pen/pencil to do so would be appreciated.
I was going through some old bins in the attic, and I found this, stating that on one chilly December day I, Mark Woonton, excelled at sports. Yes, it turns out that my golden age of athleticism that was deemed worthy of recognition was twelve years old. Back in 2004, the year that Martha Stewart went from oven roasted turkey to jail bird. Bacon was the #1 food trend according to hobbylark.com and Usher and Ludacris made good use of Lil John's limited vocabulary to create the #1 song of the year. Now, throughout my time of playing sports I have been on teams named after top predatory animals like eagles, sharks or bobcats. I have been a member of teams named for historically aggressive warriors like Vikings, Patriots or Spartans. As you can see, no such names appear here. These are the names of companies that make and sell hockey gear. I have several meetings throughout history I wish I could have sat in on, among them are Lee's surrender at Appomattox, a meeting of the Inklings which was a discussion group at the University of Oxford with members J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and lastly, would be the meeting that took place nearly two decades ago that ended with the affirmation that the best way to get a bunch of Salem, New Hampshire area youth fired up and passionate about the sport of hockey would be to name the teams after hockey equipment manufacturers. I'm sorry, but is this hockey or NASCAR? I understand that participants in both are missing most or all of their teeth, but I'm pretty sure that the similarities end there. I was loyal too. I was representing East side from my neck guard to my skates. I was brand loyal long before Meghan Trainor started singing about it. Two things to close to the folks over at Easton, your boy just gave you some major exposure and your sales are about to go through the roof so how about you hook a brother up with some free gear, huh? And lastly, CCM, I unfortunately had to include you in this picture so just know I put on the full armor of Marian Gaborik. So, just know if you even THINK of sending me your hockey pants of perfidiousness, chest protector of wrongfulness, the skates of sleeping through practice, the shin pads of shame and the stick of the kid who is scared to get hit, all of these items will be burned in a glorious fire in my backyard. I know what you are thinking, "Mark, why is it that your go to tough guy is named Marian? He doesn't sound all that imposing." And to that I say "Hey, at least his middle name isn't Francis." At this point there is a particular member of the Woonton clan who has his feathers ruffled and I know for a fact he's not going to do anything about it, but here is what said individual can do, he can go for a little walk off a short pier and jump into Lake St. Clair which, while not officially one of the Great Lakes itself, it is a small but integral part of the Great Lakes system.
A few days ago, I went to Subway and got the "All American Club" and I said, "Can I get a chocolate chip cookie, too?" He said "OK, your total is $17.76, here's your receipt." I looked at it and said "Ha! I got the All-American Club, and my total was $17.76? That's hilarious!" and he said " Ha! You are probably my favorite customer of all-time! You know, most people wouldn't understand why that is funny." I said, "I don't blame you, I'm pretty flippin' awesome and excuse me, sir but I believe you are grossly underestimating the intellect of the American citizen and I won't stand for it!" He said something in response, but his words were drowned out by the sound of someone attempting to enter the establishment by pushing on a door that said "PULL" across the handle. I stood there thinking "Oh dang, you could be right." I asked if I could take a Zoom call while I was at my table and he said, "You bought something so do whatever you want." Over the course of my life, I have probably said the pledge of allegiance thousands of times. I have voted in every election since I was 18 years old and I have stood at Little Round Top in Gettysburg National Park where the 20th Maine held the extreme left flank of the Union line, but ordering a dessert to bring my spending total to a patriotic price point is the most American thing I have ever done. If you would like to discuss it with me further, I have taken up residence in the Pelham Subway, I will be the guy with two employees under his arm as they attempt to usher me through the door as I shout, "I'm a paying customer and an American, now unhand me immediately!"
Who is one person you would want to interview? Is it a political figure? A musician? An actor?
I was driving home a few days ago and there was this guy standing in the middle of the road leafing through letters and cursing out Comcast under his breath and muttering "come on, hit me. I want you to do it." Luckily (for me, I guess) nothing happened. I would love to sit down and talk to the first person whose mailbox was on the other side of the street from their house. I absolutely have to know, was it the thousand little panic attacks every day of having to storm across the street like a Best Buy shopper on Black Friday that eventually got to them or one day were they like "The newspaper is here! I wonder which picture they are going to use for my obituary?!" And it was one unfortunately timed encounter with a Ford Explorer?
I don't think I am ready for fatherhood.
Over the summer while I was working at the local parks and rec camp, we were eating lunch by the basketball courts and a kid came up to me absolutely bawling his eyes out. As he approached, I did a visual look over: He still had four limbs, there was no blood, and I noticed no snake flailing from his body as he came closer. I thought that maybe he was feeling warm or perhaps he had a breakup with a little camp crush or something. However, with a horror movie style high pitched scream, my inquiry was answered as he exclaimed "My mom packed me Gushers and I DON'T LIKE GUSHERS!!!" This feeling of relief washed over me so immediately and so completely it is not even funny like "Oh, okay you are crying over nonsense." Like kid, do you have any idea how lucky you are? My mom packed me grapes and carrots every day. Little did she know that during the trading at the Snack Time Stock Exchange there was this kid, who we will just call Cody, because that may or may not be his real name, who would trade zebra cakes, Doritos or Cosmic Brownies for my grapes and carrots. Now, will Cody undoubtedly live longer than me because of the healthy choices he made? Of course! But you know what? Life is not the amount of breaths you take, it's the moment that you get an entire pizza for yourself and are six or seven pieces in and think "All of my capillaries are clogged, but I'm not going to waste foil on one or two pieces of pizza!" and finish it off. While Cody seemed content with this exchange of goods, in my opinion, this was a more unfair trade than when........OK, here I was planning to incorporate a famously lopsided trade in sports history, but one day at camp I was playing catch with a football and on two different occasions I underran a ball that proceeded to bounce off the ground and clock me in the face. I have been taught a lot through my life experiences: one taught me love, one taught me patience, one taught me pain, one taught me that if you are going to attempt to be incognito about slipping popular girl power anthem lyrics into your silly story, it is best to not call out that you are doing it. This event with the football facial reconstruction spoke to me and it said "Hey, how about we leave the sports analogies to someone a little more qualified, mmkay?" I had him sit down next to me and attempted to calm him down by asking him if he had eaten other food he enjoyed and if he had been having fun at camp. He persisted with his claim that he had told his mother on numerous occasions that Gushers were not on his mind's menu. Now, if I had EVER told my mother what she was/was not allowed to pack in my lunch I would not be sitting here typing. There is another element of this that doesn't look good that I feel it is important for you to know. Allow me to explain, the back of the camp counselor shirts say "Staff" and while I was sitting on the rocks trying to apply emotional Band-Aids to the Gusher geyser, I was reminded of Psalm 23 that says "'your rod and your staff, they comfort me' and I thought "I'm 'staff', I'm comforting someone.........ha!" This means that if someone were to be viewing this third-rate therapy session from afar at just the right (or wrong) moment, they would see a kid gripping Gushers with the Ganges River pouring out of his face and then they would see me with a slow, stupid smile spreading over my face.
My freshman year of high school I had a shunt malfunction which resulted in a five week stay at Children’s Hospital in Boston. It was not all bad though as during that time I was visited by New England Patriots linebacker, Adalius Thomas who had a few journalists in toe. I got an autographed football, a great conversation and later on, a newspaper article out of it. In the article it talks about Adalius’s experience playing with the Baltimore Ravens and then going to become a member of the Patriots. Prior to the move, his wife who is a schoolteacher orchestrated this great send off for him with all the kids at her school in the gym. She said it was one of the few times in his life she saw him get emotional. It was at this point in the article that the journalist shifts from the roaring, cheering thunderous applause of a packed gymnasium to talk about Adalius’s visit to the hospital. The way the writer achieved this transition was with a juxtaposition and the phrase “However, no one came to visit fifteen-year-old Pelham native, Mark Woonton, who was in Boston Children’s Hospital for brain surgery.” Now, I am totally over it, I don’t care, and it doesn’t matter (which is why I feel the need to bring it up 16 years later.) I am sure we have all received a less than favorable review at work, a hateful voicemail, disparaging text message or a fortune cookie message that didn't make sense. However, if an employed journalist has never come to your hospital bedside and then put into print and circulation the inference that you were some no friend having, sudoku strewn about your tray table, chocolate pudding stains on your johnny loser, for all of the readers of the Lowell Sun sports section to see you should count your blessings because we are not all so lucky.
That trip to Goodwill is pretty nerve-wracking, huh? Driving down the road like a mobile game of I Spy like "I see in my CR-V, a bike, a lamp and a Jaromir Jagr rookie card." The drive itself is pretty tense trying not to damage anything and then at every stop I also feel like people are looking in my back window asking themselves if I straight up robbed a house at 2:30 in the afternoon on a Monday.
Previously on "The Many Misreadings of Mark Woonton" I purchased Avocado Ranch dressing, extra crunchy peanut butter and fiery hot Doritos. After consuming the Avocado Ranch dressing, the only noticeable difference to me was I became much more critical of my four year old nieces artwork describing it as "unoriginal" and "wreaking of impressionism." The extra crunchy peanut butter had little to no effect on me after years of playing hockey. The fiery hot Doritos had been sprinkled with sawdust from the sixth circle of hell. I hypothesize that the reason for this misunderstandings is that the product name is written as big as the freakin' Hollywood sign while these indicators of individuality are a font size akin to the messages on CDs warning people that if they run the product through their cloning machine without the expressed written consent of the national football league, the offender will be sentenced to write "I will not make unnecessary copies of things" in cursive on a chalkboard one hundred times. On this weeks episode, I use something that says "shampoo and body wash" and to complete the quintet of communication, preceding all of that written in the "itsy bitsy teenie weenie, small so small all of y'all can't read me" font that causes people to crane their neck like they are on a roller coaster, was the word "baby." Now, I do not know what the difference is between this baby shampoo and body wash and the Jocko Wilnick's steel wool wipes that I use, but my guess is that it is more sensitive on the skin. Unless other effects of the "baby" brand are very apparent I am probably not going to notice a difference, because I am already relatively uncoordinated, cry when I am hungry or tired and am topped off with a cranium container that is disproportionately large for my body. If it is anything beyond that I will let you know
The biggest irritation in my life right now is the pace at which water moves out of the dispenser in the refrigerator. Am I asking for a speed and volume that requires a helmet, raft, paddle, life vest, a burly boat guide and a brown sign on the street headed up to the house? No. However, something a little faster than a stalactite drip would be appreciated. In the past, I have been late predominantly because of wrong turns and traffic, but with each passing day that this issue is not addressed I get ever closer to peeling into some parking lot or driveway, exiting the vehicle with water in hand and mutter "Sorry I'm late, I was filling up my water."
There is something about sitting at my gate at the airport with a suitcase and backpack closely nestled into me and a travel pillow behind me while scarfing down a bagel and suspiciously eyeing everyone around me that definitely makes me feel like a homeless person
