The New Guy

I was fortunate in that I did not move around a lot as a child.

 After being born in Detroit, I moved to New Hampshire when I was one year old (I typically fabricate the amount of time I spent on the mean streets of the midwest because when people of the serene, still and slow moving suburbs hear that I am from Detroit they have a tendency to BACK OFF!) So I can't empathize with people who walk into a new school and think "I have no idea who these people are, where I am or where I'm supposed to be."

However, this is essentially the feeling I have any time I walk out of a store and look out on the vastness of vehicles in any parking lot bigger than a two car garage. My life will never be turned into a movie because there's not nearly enough conflict or romance to keep anyone's interest and sadly, the title "Dude, Where's My Car?" has already been taken. With the amount of time I've spent standing at a crosswalk with a bag full of freezer meals and ice cream, I can honestly say that the most aptly named invention I've ever encountered is the panic button.

Hopeless Shopper and the Goblet of Flavorlessness

So far, since moving out on my own I have accidentally purchased plantains instead of bananas, extra crunchy peanut butter instead of normal peanut butter that doesn’t serve as a viable alternative to gravel and avocado flavored Ranch dressing instead of regular ranch dressing because I firmly believe that not everything needs to taste like avocados. In what is now the fourth  installment of “My Mistakes at Market Basket” I accidentally bought an apple juice labeled “Tots First Apple Juice” which boasts about having 40% less sugar which is kind of the equivalent of me bragging about my income to my dad. “Hey you know that useful stuff that you love? Well, this things got wayyy less of it!” So, if I resort back to “baby babble” and throwing a tantrum about eating fruits and vegetables, you all know why. I paid for it, so I’m going to drink it, but the plan is to start paying attention and sincerely hope that there is not a follow up to Hopeless Shopper and the Goblet of Flavorlessness.

DorkCenter Top 10

Sometimes I feel like I don’t get enough credit. Like when a pen rolls off the table and I catch it in midair and then look  around like “Did you see that?!?!” Then  I remember that I live by myself.

Or when I’m walking past a door that suddenly flies open so I juke out of the way and avoid being hit. I instantly get the impression that I should be dubbed the “Dion Lewis of the Doorways.” They ought to come up with something for situations like that. Something for people with no athletic aspirations whatsoever who show brief moments of brilliance, ya know? Like a “DorkCenter Top 10.”

Stranger Danger

This afternoon I was walking down my street and there was some guy in a big ole truck parked on the side of the road. I stopped and talked to him for a while because now that I live on my own my "words per day" count has gone wayyy down and every now and again I stumble upon some unfortunate soul who becomes a victim of my daily dialogue dump, the vacating of all of my vowels and the coughing up of all of my consonants. We talked for a while and then he asked me "Which house do you live in?"

That threw up a huge red flag and I was like  "ummmmm.........over there........" and arbitrarily pointed at a bunch of trees. I just found it very odd to ask someone where they live and I'm not just saying that because he was a trucker. If he had been in a Subaru Outback I wouldn't have been like "Here's where I live, here's when I'm home and here's where I keep my spare key. You make me feel safe.” He seemed like a nice guy, but I didn't want to take any chances. I walked home thinking "What if that guy was some weirdo and robbed me or something? I really dodged a bullet there." So I walked away from that situation feeling pretty good. Also, not that life is a competition, but I got a little boost because he told me that my credit card number and social security number were wayyy bigger than his.

Wishful Sinking

Today I was cleaning some dishes in the sink and as I was rinsing off the last few pieces of silverware I noticed that I was bleeding. After the initial shock, the aftershock, the static shock and listening to Timbaland’s album, Shock Value, I had this surreal and straight up serendipitous moment of Samson-like strength as I thought “Dang, I was bleeding and didn’t even know it?! I must be bad to the bone!” I looked closer in order to assess the injury and came up with the demoralizing diagnosis that this substance seeping from finger was ketchup from the dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets I had eaten for dinner.

Puppy Party

Having a puppy means that I perpetually walk around my house with the demeanor of a parent who is sure their kid had a party at the house while they were gone, but they haven’t found any evidence to support the theory yet. Except instead of beer and smokes I’m looking for pee and poop.

“Just be honest. Tell me what happened and I promise I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.”

Laugh Coach

I feel as though I'd greatly benefit from having a Laugh Coach.

It's like a life coach for social settings when I'm with a group of friends and conversation is going great and everyone is laughing and having a good time and then I go and say something completely off the wall and erroneous that brings out this chorus of comedy killing crickets and conversation quickly takes a resuscitation rerouting to a topic such as sports or weather.

On the flip side, believe or not, but not every thought I've ever had has made the mental migration from mind to mouth and sometimes I'll think "Nah, that's stupid." But then two seconds later someone else says it, everyone laughs hysterically like it's the first joke they've ever heard and tells them that the joke restored their faith in humanity and I'm left sitting there like a pouting preschooler who just got his toy truck stolen on the playground like "Hey, that was mine!"

I don't know, maybe I'll pay the judges from Last Comic Standing to follow me around and be like "Yes! Say that, quickly!" or "No! What are you, insane? Don't say that!" But now that I've typed this out, I've realized that I think the thing I'm describing is a conscience and the moral of the story is "Think before I speak."