We bought a new tree this year to celebrate the birth of Jaaaaaay-sus. Mrs. Hokeblarg got to choose the color and I got to choose the tree-topper.
“Victory shall be Christmas!”
Posts Tagged ‘the wife’
A Little Holiday Decorating.
Friday, November 27th, 2009It's a Heck of a Job (The Wife Tells a Tale From Retail Hell).
Friday, October 16th, 2009
My wife works in retail. If you or anyone you know has served time in a retail establishment then you know how very soul-deadening it can be. Customers are a large part of the problem, as my wife points out below, but even the people who work alongside you can be pretty awful. The trick is, my wife tells me, that you try to make friends with the great, caring, loving people you work with, and you try to avoid talking to the racist, homophobic, melodramatic, thieving, manipulative, back-stabbing, hate-filled, vengeful, beastly, drug-addicted, demon people. Also, she says, some of the guys she works with can be pretty mean, too.
Of course, in the current economic climate, having a job is certainly preferable to the alternative: the unemployed leer at the employed with hunger in their eyes, a greasy desperation oozing from every pore. They roam the streets and stare in glassy-eyed wonder through store windows at things they wish they could buy, useless and pretty gadgets and trinkets they can no longer purchase on a whim. They deluge online job offers with hundreds of thousands of online resumes in the hope that perhaps their bachelor’s in avionics might help them land that administrative assistant position, but it won’t. It won’t. My wife counts herself lucky in this regard.
The one thing that keeps your average retail worker sane is being able to vent to a compassionate spouse or circle of friends. And so I listen, dutifully, nodding at the right times, and concurring that, yes, that lady was a bitch, or, no, you were right not to honor a coupon from a different store. Occasionally, very rarely, but sometimes I will yawn while she’s talking about her day.
“Did you just yawn? Am I boring you?” she’ll ask, her eyes narrowed in annoyance.
“Err, no, my honey-lamb. I was just thinking of something boring that I heard the other day,” I reply. Good save, self. New husbands take note.
I listen day after day to my wife recount stories of customers who just… they just…. they…
THEY’RE SO STUPID!!! AUGH!!! WHERE DO THESE SLACKJAWED MORONS COME FROM?!?! WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY ALLOWS THESE PEOPLE TO ROAM FREE AND BREED?!
I’m sorry. I forget myself sometimes. Instead of rambling on about the stories my wife tells, I will simply transcribe one of her stories right here, right now, for your reading pleasure. Keep in mind while you read this story that it’s completely true and that my wife did not conclude the incident by throwing her hands up in the air and saying “Fuck this fucking bullshit!” and storming out, never to return, but instead she went about the rest of her day just trying not to think about it too much. I’m convinced that Mother Theresa herself, in the same situation, would have doled out some serious ass-beatings. Goodness knows I would have.
“Okay, so I’m standing there ringing up customers when this lady, with two little kids with her, reaches the front of the line. I ring up all of her items, most of which are craft stuff and only a few of which are dollar-bin toys, and then she hands me a coupon. I recognize it immediately as a coupon from a few weeks ago and, upon further inspection, I see that the expiration date is two weeks past.
“So I say to the lady, ‘I’m sorry, Ma’am, but I can’t take this coupon. It’s expired.’ and she says, ‘WHAT? That is UNACCEPTABLE! Everyone else accepts expired coupons!’. I calmly tell her that it’s against store policy and I’m sorry that I can’t help her. ‘THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! I want to speak with your manager right now!’, she says. So I called over Sue*, the manager-on-duty.
“Sue walked over and and the woman points at me and says, ‘This retard won’t honor my fucking coupon!” I explain to Sue that the coupon is expired and Sue looks right at the woman and says ‘She’s absolutely right. Store policy forbids us from accepting expired coupons. I’m sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you.’ Now, occasionally, and I’m talking once per season here, a manager will honor an expired coupon for a super-nice old lady who drops a few thousand dollars on ribbon and lace every month (Note: My wife works at an arts and crafts store.). This was not one of those situations, this was obviously just a bitch who was used to getting her way if she screamed loudly enough. Some customers think that by causing a tantrum and jamming up the lines, that they’ll get their way. And many stores actually cave to this behavior. To me, this is no different than extortion. It’s bullying. I mean, what’s the point of having store policies if someone can just throw a hissy-fit until they get what they want? What kind of society does that encourage?
“Anyway, by now a sizable line of customers has formed behind this woman. Instead of just paying the money for her items and leaving, she looks down at her young kids (a boy and a girl, by the way) and says to them, ‘Well, sorry, kids, but this fucking bitch won’t honor a perfectly legitimate coupon, so I can’t afford to buy you your toys. Why don’t you tell her how that makes you feel?’ I tell the lady that that’s not very fair and she tells me to shut the fuck up. ‘NO! You wouldn’t honor the coupon and now you have to listen to my children cry!’ she replies.
She goes off on the kids about how they aren’t going to get any toys because of the mean lady until the kids actually burst into tears, sobbing and wailing. She continues to tell me that it’s my fault that her kids are crying and to ‘look at what’ I did to them. I ask her if she wants to purchase the items I’ve rung up and she says no, so I brush her items aside and start helping the next customer in line. Sue tells the woman that she has to leave now and the woman yells at Sue to ’shut the fuck up’. Sue gets on the phone and calls security. The woman and her kids actually move around to the outside of the checkout counter to make room for the next customer and she keeps saying things to keep them crying. They cry as I ring up the next customer, they cry as I bag up her items, and they cry as I start ringing up the third customer.
“Finally, after several minutes of this have gone by, the kids finally stop crying and the woman looks at me with daggers in her eyes and says, ‘I hope you’re happy with yourself.’ and then leaves. The woman in line looks at me and says ‘Wow. What a horrible, horrible woman. And those poor children!’ and I tell her that, surprisingly, that was not the worst reaction to an expired coupon I’ve ever seen first-hand. The worst was, of course, the guy who threw the paint cans at me.”
* Names have been changed to protect identities.
Bonus Links: Retail Hell, The Customer Is Not Always Right, Punk Your Coworker/Boss, Nice Job Application
On The Subject Of Beaver Testicles…
Thursday, July 30th, 2009As we watched the tv-edited version of the movie “Bring It On” (it plays on cable quite a bit, I’ve come to realize), my wife, who has been laid up with a hurt back (she’ll be fine, I sprayed a little Windex on the area) over the last week (and who I have been waiting on hand and foot for the last week, husband-of-the-year award pending) began telling me about a program she watched yesterday through a Vicodin-induced haze, while I was at a gig.
“It was a show about dirty jobs in which…” she started.
“Was it the show ‘Dirty Jobs’?” I inquired.
“Well, no. Maybe? I don’t know. Perhaps. Anyway, on this show, it had these people, farmers I think, and they would squeeze the testicles of these animals and out would pop these white things…”
At this point I’m already making horrified faces at her. She continues on.
“…these white things would pop out, and, even though they had a tool for the purpose, the farmers would bite these white things, which I think were the testicles themselves, and pull them off with their teeth.” She still had a puzzled look on her face, as if this were a distant memory she was trying to grasp, but it’s edges were gossamer threads on the wind of flittering…
Oh, nevermind. I’m not affixing such a lovingly crafted metaphor to a post on testicles. It’s insulting to the English language, and I’m just not going to do it.
“Wait, they would squeeze the testicles of small animals and… did they cut open the, err, ‘pouch’?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
She had my full attention at this point, and I’d muted the television, leaving Kirsten Dunst to flip around and whatnot in a silent world. I also stopped eating my yogurt, which suddenly looked unappetizing.
“What kind of animals were these? Sheep? I mean, I’ve heard of that, somewhere, I think, farmers biting off sheep’s testicles. I pity their wives…”
“I don’t think they were sheep though, they were like small… bears. Yes, they were bear-like creatures. But small.”
“What-what now? Bears? Small bears? Like Tasmanian devils?” I suddenly had a vision of Bugs Bunny biting the testicles off of that whirling Tasmanian devil from the cartoons. Suddenly those large front teeth looked a little threatening.
“Yes, bear-like. But this was in the Appalachian Mountains, so I doubt it was a Tasmanian devil.”
Hmmm. I wondered about this for a minute, then asked my wife a relevant question, I thought.
“Are you high, like, right now?” She scowled at me. I’m going to take that as a ‘no’.
I was stymied. So, I do what I always do when I’m confounded: I googled it. I actually googled the phrase “biting the testicles off of small bear-like animals”, which is a phrase I never thought I’d ever type, let alone google. Luckily, I did not come up with any videos, instead I found a few rather informative yet unhelpful articles.
Also, I came up with this picture, which I saved, because, well, if I died tomorrow, this is exactly the kind of thing I want someone to find on my computer. I’ve put it in a folder along with a picture of a bunny rabbit with a pancake on it’s head. What? Oh, yes, the picture. Here it is:
Yes, that’s a beaver* biting off it’s own testicles. I’m thinking of making it my desktop wallpaper.
I love the guy’s hand that’s pointing at the beaver in the picture, like he’s saying “Don’t you bite those off! Don’t you dare… aww, he’s doing it! Ewwwww.” Also, is it my imagination or does that beaver look a little blasé about the whole thing?
Allegedly, according to Aesop’s fables, the beaver was once hunted for it’s testicles**, and, knowing this, would, when cornered by hunters, bite off it’s own ‘huevos’ and throw them at the hunters, thus escaping death.
Ah, the miracles of nature.
This is, of course, a fallacy. Aesop was a drinker and a pervert, I reason, and prone to fabulous tales that would later be recognized as fit for reading to children, despite their dark nature. Or am I thinking of Grimm? Oh, I’m just lashing out.
Although, I must admit, it’s a rather elegant defense mechanism, not unlike a lizard losing it’s tail to avoid being eaten by a hawk. Although tails grow back, ‘nuts’ don’t. It’s a trick that can only be done once. You’ve got to really be in peril, I’d think, and even then it would be a toss-up for most male animals.
Also, how many hunters or attackers would continue with their attack after having a set of furry little balls tossed at them in a forest glade? Imagine chasing down a pack of beavers and dodging a bevy of testicular missiles, some of them inevitably hitting you with a velvet ‘thud’. I’d stop in my tracks, I would. I’d really have to reconsider my choice of prey. I might have to reconsider my whole way of life, really. I’d walk home in a daze, have a cup of tea and consider taking up another line of work. That sort of assault can really break your spirit, you know? Do you know what I mean?
I rather hope you don’t.
* The wife doesn’t think that looks like a beaver at all. “I’m telling you, it looks way more like a dog or a raccoon. Why are we even having this argument?!” In my defense, she started it.
** They have magical powers, the beaver’s testes, according to Aesop. I’ll now refrain from making a crude joke implying my own magical anatomy. Again, husband-of-the-year award pending.
Hey! I’m going to be featured at The Guy’s Perspective later this month! Neat! Many thanks to the Sai Ghose for inclusion in the Relationship Humor Carnival. I’ll be posting a link to it later in the month, so stay tuned.
On Wal-Mart, Women, and Wanting.
Monday, June 22nd, 2009This is one of my old Gentleman Savant blog posts. I actually had a request to repost this one, so here it is.
“Holy Jesus!” I exclaimed in the Wal-Mart. “This lamp is only five dollars! Why, for that price, I could afford to light up every corner of every room in the house… twice, probably…”
“No, they can’t be that cheap!” my wife asked, and then, upon seeing the lamp’s price tag, “That can’t be right. It doesn’t SEEM right, does it? Maybe it’s a mistake.”
“It’s got to be right. They’re all marked like that. I saw the same damn lamp at Gottschalks for, I think, twenty-five bucks, and here it is for practically nothing.”
“Well, it doesn’t come with a bulb, see? Right there on the box, it says ‘Does not include bulb’. That’s where they get you.” she points out, “That’s where they get you, and then they ‘f’ you. They bend you over and they ‘eff’ you right in the ‘a’.” She’s channeling a self-censoring version of Joe Pesci. Not that she’s got any sort of aversion to swearing in public, I think she just likes to change it up to keep it interesting.
I don’t like to go to the local Wal-Mart because I really believe them to be an evil organization of kitten-eating lizard-people. Sometimes, however, I find myself there, buying something for someone. Like today, for instance. Buying a hot-pink vacuum cleaner. For the wife. And whenever I do find myself there, I am always awestruck by the amazing prices. There is simply nothing more beautiful to me than an incredible deal. Nothing.
“My god, there’s, like, 500 Otter-Pops here for two-dollars and thirty-seven cents! If I ate one Otter-Pop per day, it would take me… one year, four months, and a fortnight to eat all of them! And, look, they’ve got the same characters on them that they did when I was a little bastard: Alexander the Grape, Poncho Punch… Hmmm… They don’t quite seem so clever now that I’m grown up. ‘Sir Isaac Lime’? How is the word ‘Lime’ at all like ‘Newton’? I mean, sure, I get the ‘Little Orphan Orange’ being, obviously, ‘Little Orphan Annie’, but it’s not exactly clever, right…?”
It’s about this time that I realize my wife has left long ago and I’m talking to an elderly Mexican woman who looks confused, but is smiling politely.
“Oh… err.. sorry.” And then I try to explain my jubilation to alleviate the awkwardness. “Otter-Pops for… umm… dos dólares and… uh… treinta siete… err… centavos.”
Well, now. Where did that come from? I’ve picked up a bit more Spanish over the years than I’d thought. I was giving myself a mental pat-on-the-back when she replied to my statement.
“Yes, I know.” she says in perfect English, rolling her eyes. “I can ALSO see the label.”
Oh. My bad, I think, as I drop two boxes (that’s a solid 1,000 packets of sugar-water, mate) into my cart and get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.
Earlier, at home, I’d had a talk with my wife where I explained the game plan. “We’re going to get in there,” I said, “get the damned pink vacuum cleaner, and then get the hell out before you find something else you can’t live without.”
“Well, what if I want to look around?” she said to me. “I might see something that catches my eye…”
“We can’t afford to just go browsing around, spending money right and left. This is a time to be fiscally prudent. Who knows how bad the economy will get?” I’m making this up as I go along, really. I’m honestly just a cheap bastard, unless it’s a really, really good deal. Then I’m willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money.
“Whatever.” my wife replies flippantly.
Women, I thought to myself on the drive to the Wal-Mart, they’ve just got no willpower when it comes to shopping. I think I may have even shook my head and chuckled at the thought.
The vague memory and realization of it’s evident irony evaporates instantly, though, as I round a corner and nearly run right into an enormous display, nay, a veritable mountain before me, of compact fluorescent lightbulbs for only ninety-three cents each.
“Dear sweet merciful heavens…” I say in hushed reverence.
Upon examining a package sitting near the base of the peak, I learn that the compact fluorescent bulb can last from between 8-10 years and, by just replacing your existing lightbulbs with these CFL bulbs, you can save up to fifty cents per month on your electric bill, PER BULB. The savings are really incredible.
“Are those tears?” my wife asks me, and I turn away slightly, not realizing she’d sneaked up right next to me.
“So-what-if-they-are?” I snap, “It’s just… *sniff*… such a good DEAL…” I say, dabbing my eyes with my shirtsleeve while I read on about wattage and candlepower. It’s got a graph and everything.
My wife sighs and puts her hand on my shoulder. “We’re going to need a second cart, aren’t we?” she asks.
“At the very least, baby-doll.” I say, holding my head up high to stave off more tears. “At the very least.”
On a related note, I still haven’t used up those bulbs I bought that day. Score one more for self, baby.
If At First You Don't Succeed, My Friends…
Friday, June 19th, 2009I give up. Not on writing but on video blog posts. I’m just not cut out for it, so I hereby will no longer do any more ‘vlogs’. To celebrate, I’ll be doing something I rarely do: I’ll be having a can of Coca-Cola. But this, dear reader, is no ordinary rabbit, err, can of sody-pop. There is a story behind this one.
Last night I asked the wife to go on a walk with me. Since there’s nothing much surrounding our wee cottage in the woods and I crave visual stimulus when I go for a stroll, we decided that we’d go into town and walk amongst the common folk for a bit. I do what I can to stay in touch with the people, you know.
Actually, come to think of it, it was really the wife’s idea to go downtown and, since she drove (I’m still having a small disagreement with the local courts system about how much money I owe them for not wearing my seatbelt, not having my car’s registration up-to-date, and driving on an expired driver’s license.) and decided where we were to park, I don’t believe it is the coincidence that I previously thought it was that our downtown walking route took us right in front of Miller’s Candy Emporium, a place she’d been quite vocal about visiting in the last few weeks, ever since she learned of it’s existence.
Anyway, we stopped in at the candy shop, which was a fun little detour that effectively canceled out any good that we’d done for our bodies by the walking, and then continued on our way. We stopped outside of a little place called “The Uncarved Block”, which is a Taoist term, you know, and since I’ve been dabbling in and out of Taoism, Buddhism, Snake-Handling, Zoroastrianism and several other religions over the years, I thought it would be fun to go in. It could be a cult!
It turns out that the place was a shop that sells crystals and polished stones with little cards next to them that tell about metaphysical gibberish and is owned by a very nice dope-smoking (presumably, based on his glassy eyed demeanor and personal recommendation of a decorative wire-wrapped pipe-cleaner) hippy gentleman apparently suffering from some sort of back ailment, as he was bent slightly but constantly from the middle the entire time we were there and speaking to one another. He was stooped over, in other words.
“Welcome friends! Please let me know if you’d like me to show you anything, but also, like, go ahead and feel free to touch whatever looks interesting to you. You can’t come into a store like this without touching things, you know? Just go ahead and touch whatever you feel like, friends.” he said as we walked in. He was like a walking/talking parody of a hippy. Rather refreshing point of view for a shop owner, though.
As we walked around I noticed that, interspersed between the glass cases full of red agates and moonstones and aquamarine pendants and such, there were quite a number of examples of supposed Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia memorabilia. Shocking, I know.
There was a guitar and one Jerry’s amplifiers and some signed posters and blotter art and objects created by people who had been high and hallucinating that they were talented, but it was obvious what the prize of the collection was, the pinnacle of Deadheadedness in the immediate vicinity:
Jerry. Garcia’s. Fridge.
Yes, still running, it was a sort of darkened cream color that was obviously a patina (Love that word, ‘patina’. If I ever have a daughter, that’s what I’ll name her.) that had come from years of pot/incense smoke. It loomed there in the corner, a powerful monolith that stood for counter-culturism and sticking it to the man and VW minibuses and not wearing a bra and such.
So naturally I asked if I could take a picture of it.
“Yeah, man, of course. I’ll even, like, take a picture of you IN FRONT of it.” he answered cheerfully.
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary…” I said.
“No, no wait. I’ll even SELL you a can of Coca-Cola from INSIDE of it and then take a picture of you WITH the can of coke, STANDING IN FRONT OF IT!”
“You, sir, just blew my mind,” is what I should have said. Instead I begged off again, and simply took a picture of the fridge myself.
“Would you like to buy a soda from inside the fridge?” he asked.
You’ve got to love this guy. He’s got a rose quartz sphere that’s bigger than my head right over there in the window that’s priced at $1800 and he’s pushing a 75-cent can of soda at me. I couldn’t refuse. Also, I bought a guitar pick made out of glass from him (not used by Jerry Garcia mind you).
And so, I drink to him, to Deadheads in general, and, mostly, for the spirit of quitting. For it is only in quitting something that doesn’t work out for you right away that we may find something even more awesome to take up the hours during which we should be working on your novel.
On that note, I’ll be debuting a little something I’ve been working on for a while within a few days, and here are a few hints about what it is: It’s humorous, educational, slightly offensive, full of sexual innuendo, and it’s an audio podcast series.
Haunted By The Zombie Owl
Saturday, April 11th, 2009When I was first learning how to drive, I had an irrational fear of pigs. At a young age my Grandfather had impressed upon me the fact that, were I to hit a pig with my car while out for a leisurely drive, I would suffer a horrible fate.
“Pigs,” he told me, “are unlike other animals you may hit with your car. A deer, having long legs and most of it’s body mass a few feet off the ground, will pop up over your hood, or, since it’s not very heavy, it’ll bounce off of your bumper without causing too much damage. A ‘possum or raccoon will go beneath your vehicle and you’ll feel a small bump, nothing more. In both of these cases, you’re pretty safe.”
At this point he would pause, and then, staring right into my eyes so I knew he meant business he’d say: “But not… a pig.”
“A pig,” he’d continue, “will not go over your hood or under your wheels. If you hit a pig, you’ll hit it square on. Now, your average pig can weigh anywhere from 200 to 1,000 pounds, and when you combine that with the velocity of your car?” At this point he’d clap his hands together, loud. “Wham! It’s like hitting a brick wall. You’re gone. You’re dead.”
Of course, my grandfather grew up in a rural area of West Virginia, so this makes sense to him. Pigs wandered into the road there and it was a real concern at night that you might go over a hill on your way back from the sock-hop or the hamburger stand and there would be a sow and whammo! Of course, we were all living in Northern California now. I haven’t even seen a pig in years. I rarely even eat bacon. But that did not stop my Grandfather from impressing upon me the grave fate that would befall me if I were to encounter a pig on the road. I would die, is what I’d do.
So when I started driving, I’d watch. Sure, I thought to myself, I’m just being careful. There could be a dog in the road, or worse, a woman with a stroller might step off the curb. There’s no pigs out here, I’d remind myself. But in the back of my mind lurked that pig. I’d see a shadow in the road up ahead and I’d think, instinctually, for a split second, “Pig?!” but no. It would always turn out to be a ‘possum or a fluffy white cat who would look very shocked up until the moment I lost sight of them under my bumper. Just a little “bump” as my tires rolled over it’s poor little skull. No “Wham!” Not even a “Smack!” Sigh. I never hit anything exciting.*
That was, of course, until I hit the zombie owl.
No, that’s not exactly right. Technically, the owl was not a zombie until after I’d hit it and it came back to life, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
“It was on a night just like tonight…” I tell my nephew as I drive him over to my place so that he may escape the wretched boredom that is my parent’s house for a night. I’ve got a fridge full of Coca-Cola and more video games than a grown man should probably own, which makes me a rather ‘cool’ grown-up, in his book. What can I say? My wife tells me I’ve got the heart of a child. Which, I think, really says something creepy about her, you know, sexually. (The pervert.) But I digress.
“…on this very same stretch of road…” I continue, saying it slow, for effect.
He rolls his eyes. He’s a teenager now, so he’s really good at it. “This isn’t the ‘zombie owl’ story again, is it?”
“You just listen, or I’ll take you right to the closest minimum-security orphanarium. And don’t think I can’t explain my reasons to your mother. I’m gifted with words and horribly persuasive.” Oh, he knows I’m joking. I don’t even know where the orphanarium is located. And the paperwork would take SO long!
“And, yes, it’s about the zombie owl. I don’t care if you’ve heard it before. If you want to drink Coca-Cola until you’re silly with sugar and caffeine, you’ll be quiet and let me tell my story.” He rolls his eyes, but waves his hand in a manner that tells me to go ahead with my tale.
“Anyway, like I was saying, night like tonight, same stretch of road, and, oh yeah, around this very same bend! It was two in the morning and I was in my big Chevy diesel pickup truck, coming home from a gig.”
“The truck where you spilled an entire 32-ounce strawberry-pineapple smoothie right into the pocket of the driver’s side door?” He asks, giggling.
“Yeah. That’s the one. Now shut up. Like I was saying, as I came around that bend, right back there, I was suddenly confronted with an image I will never forget. A pure snowy-white owl with a wingspan as wide as my truck stood in the middle of the road, stooped over eating, probably, a person. It could have been a vampire he was eating, which might explain his unwillingness to die. You know, like a transfer of powers where, through eating the flesh of a vampire, the owl gains the ability to come back from the grave? What do you think?”
“I think… that…,” he stalls for a moment, and is, I assume, carefully weighing soda-pop and video games with the perfect opportunity to verbally bash my silliness. It’s a test of my authority. He decides to play it safe. “I think that’s an interesting theory. Yep, interesting.” Well played, young man. Well played.
“Well, anyway, he was stooped over, eating, and when my headlights hit him he spread his wings out to take flight and that’s right when I hit him, head on.”
I notice that I’m using the pronoun ‘he’ a lot. Who’s to say this beast wasn’t a female? If we’re going by the theory that “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”, then ’she’ might be a bit more accurate. But that’s just a theory, too.
“He bounced right over my hood, and right by my open driver’s side window, and I could swear I caught a glimpse of a blood-and-gore-encrusted beak and some enormous talons, but I can’t be sure. He crashed over my truck with a few weighty ‘thumps’ and I came to a …screeching** halt. I pulled over and got out, taking my big ol’ metal flashlight with me, to see if, against odds, the owl was still alive and I could put it into my truck bed and save it’s life. I envisioned myself bringing this great big, possibly endangered snowy white owl into the animal emergency room, just in time to revive it. I’d visit it occasionally during it’s healing process, and there would be an article in the local paper, detailing my compassion and heroism. Possibly I’d receive a medal. I’m just saying.”
“Yeah. Right. A medal.” My nephew said.
“It could happen. So, I walked back along the road to the point where I’d hit the thing, and there it was. No, not the owl. A pile of white feathers with blood on them. The owl was nowhere to be found, and neither was the carcass I’d seen it chewing on. Nothing else. I was confused. And horrified. Had it dragged itself away, into the bushes next to the road? Had is flown away on twisted, broken wings? Had a lurking predator made off with the fresh owl and it’s meal? I mean, what the hell had just happened?”
“You’d hit an owl.” My nephew deadpanned. “With your truck.”
“Yeah, thanks. Anyway, I got back into my truck and drove home. When I got out of my truck I had the bright idea to check out my bumper to see if there was blood or anything to prove my story to the wife, any evidence. And there was. Wedged right into the gap between my headlight and it’s frame, there were white down feathers. The frame around the headlight was broken, too, cracked through the plastic. The headlight was fine, though.”
“Well, thank goodness for that.” My nephew said sarcastically. He’s too young to appreciate how expensive a headlight is to replace on a 1985 Chevy truck.
“So, as I was checking out the feathers, I heard the most blood-curdling screech right behind me, coming from the direction of my front door. Then, a sound of something scraping against the wood shingles of my roof, something evil. Then, whatever it was that was on my roof fell off and landed in the bushes. So I did what came naturally to me. I got the fuck in my house and shut the door.”
“Hey, you can’t say the ‘F’ word around me! I’m an impressionable youth!” My nephew said, suddenly paying attention to me after hearing my accidental swearing.
“What are you like, thirteen now? I can say the ‘F’ word, you can’t. That’s life, buddy. It’s a double standard.”
“That sucks.” He replied.
“Don’t say ’sucks’.” I said. Then I laughed. “I’m just kidding, you can say ’sucks’ all you want. I don’t give a shit. So, I got into the house and told your aunt Traci all about it and she listened to the story, half-asleep. She said it probably just dragged itself into a ravine, and she’s probably right. But here’s the thing. Ever since that night, I’ve heard, probably about once a month at least, that hideous screech that I’d never heard before. I can practically see him out there, creeping around in the dark on broken, ragged wings, his rotted feathers crawling with worms, his eye sockets hollow and his beak gleaming and sharp as a razor. He rises every night and roams the countryside, attacking people who resemble me and old Chevy trucks, hoping to one day sink his beak into my throat, and when he eventually does? Then he will finally rest. And I’ll be dead, the only person on Earth to have been killed by a bloody vengeful owl.”
We pull up to my house and my wife hears us and opens the door, creating a golden parallelogram of light that spills out invitingly, with herself silhouetted in the middle. We get out and walk up to the house, my nephew carrying his backpack with clothes and CD’s and teenager stuff.
“He told me the one about the zombie owl again.” He tells Traci, and she rolls her eyes, just as good as he can.
“Again?” she says.
“He’s out there somewhere.” I tell her, narrowing my eyes and turning to stare meaningfully out into the darkness with my arm around her. “Oh, yes. He’s out there. Waiting.”
* Don’t give me that look! Let me explain: I live in the wine country and the roads I use to get to and from gigs and errands are long and windy and just full of cute little woodland creatures harboring suicidal tendencies. These circumstances (combined with the fact that I come home from gigs at 2- or 3- or even 5AM) mean that I run over a couple of groggy little critters every month. It’s a “them or me” mentality. (Or, rather more correctly, a “themselves or I” mentality.) I’m not about to swerve off the road and ram into one of our famous thousand-year-old redwoods, killing my wife and I, while that furry little bastard hippety-hops away to father another few thousand garden-ruining runts.
** Ha! Owls, screeching, you know? ”How does he come up with these?”, you’re probably asking yourself. Magic, my friends. Magic.
Tags: zombie, owl, nephew, teenager, chevy truck, the wife, haunted, evil, bunnies
A Hit And Run He Never Saw Coming
Wednesday, April 1st, 2009Today, after the wife got off of work at about 1:30 PM, she informed me that she had an appointment with the chiropractor, to which I replied “Yippee!” because that meant we’d be going to Sonoma Valley Bagel, where I would be able to devour my favorite bagel in this dimension, toasted garlic, that would imbue my breath with a not-so-subtle ability to melt a man’s (or woman’s) face off at a distance of 3 meters. (Remember that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark? It’s kinda like that.)
Sonoma Valley Bagel is a unique business in that they are owned by a wonderful Asian (Korean maybe?) couple who don’t speak much English and, in order to help them communicate with customers, they hired on a young Latin girl who, quite frankly, speaks English even worse, if that’s possible. Between their mangled attempts at relaying to each other what my order might have originally been, I’m lucky if I order a bagel, toasted, with cream cheese and end up with a sack of dried kiwi, a short-stack of blueberry pancakes and a cup of rum punch.
So why do I keep going back? Well, they’re nice people, really. Also, their dried kiwis are delicious. And, additionally, inertia, I guess. A sort of life-inertia that makes me do all sorts of things that I do that I don’t necessarily have a reason for or enjoy in the slightest.
(Just as a quick example, I order coffee when I go places, even though it makes me ill and I don’t really like it. I like dark English teas with a drop of milk and no sugar, and yet I order coffee or, say, a mocha. Why? What the hell? And why doesn’t anyone stop me? Wife? Little help here?)
Anyway, while driving away from the bagel shop we encountered an unprotected left-turn light. The truck in front of us pulled into the intersection and we pulled up a bit, just in time for the light to turn red and prohibit our turn. So, we’re blocking the crosswalk.
No big deal, right?
Well, it is if you happen to be blind and trying to walk across the very crosswalk my car is blocking and your (admittedly kinda cool) collapsible cane doesn’t help you because you’re not expecting the large ostensibly-floating front end of a 1989 Volvo to be sticking out into your intended path.
So, the birdy chirp is sounding to let blind-dude (probably 40-years-old, by the way) know that it’s okay to cross the street and blind-dude starts walking and my wife and I see what’s about to happen. My wife grabs for the knob to roll the window down so she can warn this guy and, I’m not kidding, the knob pops off the door. So, she’s scrambling to put the knob back on the window and then tries to open her door, but it’s locked and by the time she pulls up the locking mechanism it’s too late.
He hits the front fender with his knee pretty hard (WHACK), which sends the front half of his body forward, bent at the waist, and he smacks his forehead right on the hood (BONG). He doesn’t fall, thank goodness, but rather stumbles back a step, sways for a moment, then goes WAY around the front of our car, and continues on his way like nothing happened. I wanted to run out there and see if he was okay, but, well:
- The light changed and someone honked at us from behind.
- It wouldn’t have been safe for me to run through traffic like that.
- He, honestly, seemed completely fine. No limp, nothing.
- I was laughing too hard.
Yeah, I know. I’m ashamed now, you know. Does that count?
My wife (who, let the record show, was driving the car this whole time) pulls through the intersection and then turns to me after a beat and says, “So… that just happened.”
“Yeah.” I agreed, wiping a hysterics-induced tear from my eye and pulling myself back together.
“He was pretty casual about it, wasn’t he? Just kind of shook it off and continued walking. Do you think that happens to him a lot?”
“You mean getting blind-sided like that?” I said.
“You’re horrible, Chris.” My wife said, pulling into the chiropractor’s office parking lot.
Baby, don’t I know it.
Tags: ouch, blind, car, evil, laughter, the wife, bagels, language
