Meet the Parents

"Meeting the parents" can be a very stressful interaction. However, the one thing no one bothers to prepare for is the first time your brother meets your girlfriends grandparents.

While my brother, his girlfriend and I were driving back from Michigan, we made a stop in New York to have dinner with her grandparents. Upon answering the door, her grandfather said "Hi, I am Bill and this is my wife, Margaret."

We sat down to a nice dinner and as old folks do, the grandparents got to talking and telling all sorts of stories. Bill punctuated each of his anecdotes by saying "Isn't that right, Mark?" I nodded politely and continued to eat the free food, happy that Bill wanted to include me in the conversation. This continued for some time as Bill rambled his way through retelling after retelling of tales from his younger years, always fact checking his historical accuracy by saying "Right, Mark?"

Now, you are probably well ahead of me on this one and know that he was not saying Mark, but was using a precious little pet name for his beloved wife, Marg, and he was pronouncing the "G" as in "Good going!" and not "G" as in "Gee, I wonder if he is going to embarrass me in any way, shape or form at this dinner?" I had never heard this pronunciation at any prior point in my life.

Because I am self-absorbed with a spotty attention span, this entire time I had thought Bill had been saying my name and of all of the times I could have chosen to finally illicit some acknowledgement, I picked the wrong one. Bill walked over to the fridge and after shuffling a few thing around said "Marg, where's the butter?" Having been snapped out of the spell cast by the scrumptious supper, in a very confused tone I said "I.......couldn't tell you."

They both looked at me with carefree, unmasked judgement that old age allows and I decided it best that I not say anything else for the remainder of the meal.

As much as I hate to reach the end of this story and provide you with a moral that you probably could have given me at the beginning here's the deal: In my lifetime, I performed admirably as Left Wing for the Salem Saints hockey team, I walk into a Buffalo Wild Wings and management there immediately calls their distributors to adjust accordingly for the immense hit that there in stock items are about to take (a fact that I am dang proud of). However, I am not and will never claim to be the greatest wing man in the world.

If the Shoe Fits

I have sank to a new low in my life.

I looked at the shoe rack in my basement and came to the horrifying realization that I can no longer count the pairs of shoes I own on two hands as I am now the out of control owner of 11 different pairs of footwear. I can blame part of that on my move to the city as having trash pickup made it necessary to have a pair of shoes I could slip on and off. My job also made it mandatory to wear a pair of slip-resistant shoes (judging by the effectiveness of these, I'm guessing they tested them out by having a tightrope walking Buddhist Monk Black Belt put them on and walk across some pavement that someone had spilled some water from a pipette onto......"yeah, they're good.") I also have a pair of running shoes that haven't been touched since high school, but are there to look good in case company shows up. Otherwise, they serve as a "Remember your non-lazy self?" on a shelf. Undoubtedly this admission of guilt has split people into one of two camps, neither of which bodes well for me, because right now you are either thinking "HA! LOSER!" or you have the attitude of any of the anabolic enthusiasts with a work schedule that causes them to share a gym time slot with me as these people have a tendency to look at my greatest athletic efforts and think "aw, that's cute."

(I Scream, You Scream) We All Scream for.....

I have been on the road driving behind antique cars and in front of cops, but by far, the weirdest array of emotions came a few days ago when I was driving behind an ice cream truck for a solid twenty minutes. It was weird for me because I noticed in two separate areas the truck had printed on it the phrase “watch for children.” I don’t know at what point something meant to be attention grabbing and informative becomes unnecessary and awkward, but for me, that number is apparently two. It doesn’t matter who your products target demographic is, that seems to be a little much. After a while, it got hot out and I started to want some ice cream, but I didn’t have any cash so I thought about what would happen if I tried to rob them with nothing, but a pair of keys, a sideways baseball cap and the first ever carjacking with the opening line of “excuse me, but if it’s not too much trouble......” but I have this fear that ice cream trucks are all retired converted military vehicles and my unconvincing assault will be met with someone from behind the counter shoving a bazooka in my face. I don’t know where this deep desire of mine came from to hold them up for a few hoodsie cups, because I never played violent video games games growing up, I played Madden and NHL, so my best bet would be to hop in a genetics lab and create a team of employees that all have customer service, speed and dessert knowledge overall ratings of 99% and demolish the competition. Unfortunately, I remembered that driving is a “full attention” task for me and I don’t do well when it is hot out and any ice cream man who glances in his rear view mirror to see someone pouring sweat with this intense look on their face has probably already called for backup

Street School

Now that I am an "adult" summer vacation is not really a thing, but in recognition of school being out for the summer I'd like to share with you the things I learned over the years outside of the classroom and reflect on the time I spent in it.

I think it's only appropriate that we start out with a lesson from Alice Cooper. The first time I ever heard the word "incognito" was in his song "No More Mr. Nice Guy" so I asked my dad what it meant and thus increased my vocabulary.

To this day, when spelling bananas, I put way too much emphasis on the "B" and say the rest of it rather rhythmically, thanks a lot Gwen Stefani!

I spell Florida by spelling Flo Rida and putting them together

In my Finance class, we learned how to write a complaint letter and my paper was the only one that got an "A" and I'm still confused whether this says something good or bad about me as a person.

I've learned not to compare myself to others. However, one area of self-evaluation does cause me to beam with pride. You see, I've started down the slippery slope of coffee consumption, but a piece of information from my dad made me realize there are degrees to ones dependence. There's a little switch on my coffee maker just above where the pot goes and my dad told me that the purpose of this little doohickey is so that people can pour themselves a cup of coffee as it's still brewing. Removing the pot trips the switch and causes the flow of coffee to stop. Who the hell is this for?!?! I start brewing my coffee and I go about my day until it finishes. I'm not claiming to be Sister Starbucks just because I possess this rational level of restraint and patience, but who sets this thing up and then stands there salivating like some kind of Maxwell House mad scientist mumbling to themselves "Come on, give me the coffee! Give me the precious!"

I have learned it is okay to disagree with someone else's position and not be a jerk about it. The amount of negativity on social media is mind boggling! On any public page dedicated to certain subject matter, the top comment seems more often than not to be some irate internet user going off as to why they don't like whatever it is that is being talked about and why their personal point of view is correct. I guess if people want to spend their time in such a way that is completely up to them, but it doesn't make sense for someone to stop into every store they see in order to let the owner know that they have no intention of shopping there, because that would be a gigantic waste of everyone's time.

I learned that my level of automotive intellect is in dire need of some fine tuning because any time I am with a group of people and conversation turns to cars I end up standing there and saying something like "Yeah.....steering wheels are crazy, right?"

Being a first time home owner has also been a wakeup call, because any time I so much as change a lightbulb I get this feeling like "Why don't I have my own HGTV show yet?"

I learned my 7s times tables by counting touchdown passes by Tom Brady and my division by how many of those touchdowns got called back because of doing something illegal.

I learned about the 9s times tables "trick" long after I had use for it and I opted to just do the math in my head like a normal person, but it did provide me with some relief, because for years I thought that the girl sitting next to me was some kind of witch trying to put a spell on her math test.

Survival of the Wittiest

Yesterday while walking my dog, Sammy, around the ‘hood this giant, half dog, half wolf, half bodybuilder that was too busy lifting weights to bother with learning fractions came barreling around the corner and Sammy gave me this precious look like “You’re going to protect me, right?”

In my best attempt at cross-species communication, I looked at him as if to say “Strength is not my strong suit. I was on the debate team, the geography club and the track team so I can try to convince him that eating us is a bad idea, I can suggest he move to a location with the highest density of dogs or we can get the heck out of here, your pick.”

Paws

I know that me teaching proper etiquette is like getting a vocabulary lesson from a Vulpix, but It is considered good manners to sit with your chair tucked in and to situate oneself a balled up fist away from the table.

While I’m sure this is to prevent people from just smashing their face into their food like they are bobbing for appetizers, I have found it serves another purpose. You see, every breakfast I now have a barking beggar right beside me. He lurks at every lunch and seeks to devour every dinner. Watching........waiting for that inevitable incident where I have a motor skills meltdown, where my hand-eye coordination takes it’s habitual hiatus and food hits the floor. He has a bowl full of water and a dish packed to the brim with food that I have hunted down and provided, but like a kindergartner who struggles with contentment, he wants what I have. In the past, I have gone scuba diving in the Caribbean and mingled amongst sting rays and sharks. Nothing makes me more uneasy than trying to enjoy a plateful of pizza while being ever so aware of the puppy’s presence......Circling........Savoring and getting me to say “I think I’m gonna need a bigger plate.”

Honey, I Shrunk the Roommates!

Here's something they didn't tell me when I first got my puppy: Eventually, I would start to find tiny little teeth around the house.

The first one I saw I was like “I don’t have popcorn in the house, what the heck is this?!” It’s turned into a little "Easter enamel hunt like “Where will the next one be?” I feel as though I moved into a house where a hockey player, a beaver, the tooth fairy and a version of the children’s toy, “Crocodile Dentist” that came to life were best friends in high school so they made the novice mistake of deciding “Let’s all live together! We’ll learn about each other’s nasty habits and weird quirks and ultimately, that we can only tolerate each other in small, spaced out doses and everything will be totally fine!”

Verbal jousting eventually turned to violence. In order to salvage the situation one of them thought “I know, let’s use a shrink ray, scale ourselves down so we’re not getting all up in each other’s grizzy so often.” (because that’s how the Crocodile Dentist talks) Sadly, the trail of tiny teeth only serves as evidence to the inevitable ending that while there have made a valiant effort to coexist peacefully, it’s just not going to work out.