At Times I Am Downright Maniacal

            I stood by the entrance of the store waiting for something to happen. For anything to happen. Thursday afternoon isn’t the greatest time to sell toys, I suppose. Finally an old man in a Knights of Columbus windbreaker approached me.

            “One of the cheetahs in your window is missing,” he said. It was true, of course, someone wanted to buy one and we didn’t have any more in the back. “I think,” he continued, “that the lions ate him.”

            “Oh?” I asked, laughing.

            “Yeah. I saw a show on the Discovery Channel about it.” We went back and forth for a minute or two about the dining habits of plush lions.

            “Well,” I said finally, “A cheetah is a pretty big meal. I’m pretty sure those lions are stuffed.”

I think we need to face a few facts here. Marriage ain’t easy. True story. Hell, what, half of marriages end in divorce. Good odds for betting on a horse but not on the rest of your entire life!

Know why it happens? Not truly because of horrible arguments, tantalizing infidelity, or mind-numbing monotony. No! “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” so they say, and the crucial first step is the proposal.

Times are changing, people. That whole “down on one knee with a ring” claptrap is passé now. Get with the times! Want to fit in with the young and hip, you square? Consider these new proposal traditions that will totally set you up to score. (Let’s face it. You get married for the honeymoon and that’s it.)

The new standard proposal is not set in some smaltzy restaurant with violins and that garbage. No, these days the most appropriate backdrop for the first day of the rest of your life is the ballpark. The Jumbo-tron! Big-league, baby! Nothing says “I wanna love you forever” like proposing to your sweetie while thousands of people watch her on a huge screen. She’s not wearing makeup and she has on that sort of crummy windbreaker she keeps meaning to replace but she wore anyway because nothing exciting ever happens at a Mets game anyway? Perfect! It’s romantic and she’ll love it and you can probably get a free hotdog or something if she says yes.

Too tame for you? Want something that really shows how great a guy you are? Women love commitment. Everyone knows that. Ever since a caveman cracked a woman in the skull with a rock and took her back to his cave and then, the next day, cracked that ­same woman with that same rock, men have known commitment is a big deal. Does a little circle of metal really show you’re commited? Heck no! It shows you have enough money to buy a briquette that got compressed by pressure and crystallized differently. No no, soon-to-be groom, take a page from your high-school playbook and call shotgun. Calling shotgun on your way to a car shows that you are committed enough to this drive that you want to ride as the passenger. So what better way to tell a woman you want her to be a passenger in your tricked-out lowrider to your golden years than a shotgun wedding? Truly there is nothing more wonderful than the sounds of an apparently non-forward thinking father-to-be shouting “oh my God you’re what? What? Mine? What?! Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod your dad is going to kill me!”

But still, these matters of proposing to that special someone are not good enough for me. Laugh at my arrogance if you must, but the fact is I want a wedding proposal that is full of risk, action, drama, and romance. Like an episode of “Cops” with commercials for “Desperate Housewives.” Women, as mentioned, like commitment. They also like self-confidence and a man who makes plans. Not dinner plans. Life plans. A lot of wedding-stress comes from the actual planning of the wedding. Do not let that fall on my darling’s shoulders! I will plan it. I will plan everything. You know how much people love surprise parties, right? Imagine a surprise wedding! Naturally I can’t invite any of her friends since they’d probably blow it. Her family is out too, unless she has a sister with a taste for hijinks. I’ll pick her up, tell her to dress nice because we’re going someplace fancy like Red Lobster or Medieval Times, and then holy crap we’re at the church! (Unless she wants a non-religious ceremony, but then again I can’t really ask her so yeah, the church.) Even now my heart flutters with thoughts of her voice crying out with delight:

“What the hell? What is this? A what?! Are you insane? Get away from me! No! Get away! This is the worst third date ever!”

            When I go out to a bar, what with the music and the dancing and all, I’m well aware of the fact I have no idea what I’m doing. Not in a black-out what-did-I-do-last-night drunk kind of a way, just in a total social ineptitude sense. Sometimes I entertain the possibility that maybe I do not know a lot about these things.

Last night I went out to just such a bar where my total lack of social grace and confidence could run free. We’d been there for maybe an hour or so when I notice a girl from across the bar (cliché!) looking at me. When we made eye contact she pointed at her eyes with her index and middle fingers and then pointed at me. I had to mentally and consciously prevent myself from looking around before I did the traditional “point at your own chest and mouth ‘me?’” maneuver. She responded to my crazy smooth only-mouthed-me bit by doing the eye pointing bit again. So I did it back. So… she did it back. This continued for a longer time than might be acceptable. Finally I squeeze my way around the bachelorette party she was a part of (if the woman in the veil wasn’t telling sign, the straws shaped like penises were) and started a conversation. I told her I had no idea what the hand gesture meant. (A lie, we all saw Meet the Parents) She said it meant she had her eye on me. Indeed? She could not tell me if this was good (romantic, in my mind) or bad (an impending street fight perhaps) even when pressed. We talked about important and deep things. Like the penis straws. Then after a while we wandered apart. Later when my wanderings brought us back together we began to talk again.

I can’t remember why, exactly, but another member of the party was brought in to the conversation. This new girl begins to tell me what a catch my new friend is. Why is that, I asked. I was treated to a list of fairly generic sounding traits like “awesome” and “smart” and some other adjectives I couldn’t hear over the band’s cover of “Take Me Out.” Then she said something about “two years too late.” Late for what?

For the last two years my new friend has been in a relationship with a doctor. Pardon me? True story! I understand that I am a majestic figure of a man and it’s only natural that one might watch me as I wander the bar, but do not telegraph this point to me unless you have a good reason! So we continued to talk and then the bride to be descended upon me. She was a nice enough person, for all her boisterous drunken enthusiasm. She pointed out all the accoutrements of the bachelorette- the veil, the penis straw, the white tank top with “bride to be” picked out across the chest in rhinestones. Then she asked me if I was single. Now, idiot though I may be, I suspected that this woman might have had a boyfriend. I don’t know why, something I just couldn’t put my finger on. I told her I didn’t and she began listing off reasons I should and she couldn’t believe I didn’t. Another list of somewhat generic terms came forth. “Tall,” “funny,” “nice,” “cute.” Erm, thank you? I shall remember this information? Good luck on your wedding?

And so, after that, the bride to be and her bridesmaids drifted out of the bar. But I like to think that I will forever be a part of that wonderful quilted tapestry of memory. Specifically the little square of fabric that says “remember that guy who hit on Jackie at the bachelorette party? Haha hilarious!”

It was a startling day at the Bradgelina home today as the couple announced their intent to adopt again.

“We have so much love to give,” said Angelina Jolie when approached for comment. “We don’t see why we shouldn’t give it to as many children as possible.”

Jolie is already the busy mother of six, but that didn’t come close to stopping her from signing the adoption papers on another five children from several different countries. Brad Pitt was more than happy to talk to the press outside his trailer on the set of his new movie, What’s the deal with you and George Clooney, anyway?

            “Adoption is way important to Angelina. It’s more than just saving children from terrible living conditions. It’s like a hobby, y’know? She said she wants our family to be like a sort of nationality sampler platter and I couldn’t be more excited about it.”

The five children are indeed from all over the globe. The Pitts are now the proud and legal guardians of a boy from Russia, a boy from South Africa, a girl from North Korea, a boy from Iceland, and a girl from Canada who allegedly didn’t want to leave her birth parents. Furthermore, Angelina was approached leaving the downtown office of her attorney where she announced that they were working on the final paperwork for a sixth adoption: a 37-year-old man from Iowa.

“Dale is great,” she said, “very energetic and so full of knowledge. He studied art history at Iowa State. There’s a lot he can teach us. And what better way for him to do that than as our son?”

When we called the attorney’s office for more information he told us he could not spare time for an interview as he was busy with the paperwork for the next adoption- a three year old tiger named Sammy.

I love words. I love clichés and colloquialisms and all those little phrases that scurry around through the English language. But damn do I ever hate when someone fucks them up.

Imagine this, if you will. You are a writer. You may not be an actual published writer or anything, but it’s how you classify yourself. Maybe it isn’t but you still care about grammar and such. Now imagine someone says “James and me went to the store.” Or writes “Don’t forget you’re appointment on the eighth.” Makes you cringes a little, right? I know! Now I hate those things, too. I saw that I’d used the wrong form of “your” in an old piece and I was actually a little mad at myself! But I digress.

The problem with the colloquial phrases arises from a lack of knowledge in etymology and the issue of homonyms. People use these phrases every day, but they might not know where they come from. And they know what they sound like so they transfer them to paper incorrectly.

I know people who do this sometimes and it doesn’t make me hate them or anything. Hell, I quite like a girl who frequently uses “u” instead of “you” and has, in fact, written “your” instead of “you’re.” But perhaps I can better teach through example.

Say, for example, I am sitting with my friend and they look out the window and say “Man, it is raining cats and dogs out there.” I would look over and say “Damn! It is!” If they were talking to me online, though, and said “Man, it is rain in cats and dogs over here.” I would say “it’s raining.“

If a friend were preparing for a debate, ran it by me, and said “that’s the basis for my argument. What do you think?” I might say “sounds good to me, man.” (If it were a good argument.) If they said “that’s the bases for my argument. What do you think?” I’d say “basis.”

I am cool with using these phrases. Really! I like them too. But if you aren’t sure how to write them down… just don’t.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. My door is always a pin. You’re wishing my command.

I have a little brother. He’s little only in the technical sense of the term, as he’ll be 21 this fall and he’s probably more mature than I am. I also have a sort of little sister.

She’s not related to me. Not by blood, marriage, adoption, or any other methods through which one usually gets a sibling. She just sort of showed up. A bit more explanation may be in order.

When I worked at my very lucrative, challenging, and fulfilling role in an ice cream store (cue laugh track) I worked alongside, and then above, a lot of people you could refer to as kids. I was always the oldest, the next oldest being my assistant manager, aged 21. Most workers were high school students. They liked me, I liked them- we were all buddy-buddy. I didn’t hang out with most of them outside work except maybe for after-work trips to the diner for pie. Little Josie being an exception.

Josie became good friends with Katie, the aforementioned assistant manager. When I became good friends with Katie, the transitive theory of relationships meant I became friends with Josie. Then we, too, grew close.

She doesn’t have it easy (on top of being friends with me) and still she’s usually bright and happy. The more I learned about what she was dealing with outside the setting of work or just hanging out, the more protective I felt of her. Things such as jackass boyfriends were now things I found wildly intolerable. However, I didn’t realize the extent of these feelings until two things happened just a few days apart.

We were at Katie’s playing the Wii and having a few drinks for Josie’s birthday. (She wasn’t drinking of course because she was turning seventeen) She was exhausted from work but stayed awake long enough for midnight to pas and for Katie and I to be the first to wish her a happy birthday on the actual day. Josie then almost immediately curled up next to me on the sofa and fell asleep. As Katie and I continued playing Wii, I couldn’t help but glance over and smile once in a while.

The other event was much more dramatic. This morning she vanished. Katie’s brother, Mark, works with Josie and drives her to work every morning. Apparently he called her this morning and she didn’t answer. He drove to her house and knocked and there was no answer. She didn’t show up for work. When I found this out, I called her and she didn’t answer. Needless to say, Mark, Katie, and I were concerned. We couldn’t find her mom’s home phone number. We had no way of finding her. I was close to driving over there myself until Katie told me they’d found her. She had put her phone on silent to ignore persistent calls from her huge idiot ex, Kenny. Then she accidentally slept in. Now I would be worried if any of my friends went mysteriously missing, of course, but maybe not to the extent of driving over to their house and pounding on their door.

If a friend was dating a complete jackass, I’d probably bite my tongue. Kenny, though, makes me furious. I’m hoping that Josie gives me the go-ahead to call him up and have a little chat. Nothing overtly threatening, of course, just a tête-à-tête between two dudes, one who hates the other with a fair amount of intensity.

What can I say? I love my little sister.

I have never been particularly great with the fairer sex. “But JD,” I hear you cry, “you are so handsome and charming and witty to boot!” Thank you. That is so kind of you to say. You are a good person. “True,” I reply, “I am all these things and more, but how can I showcase my humor and linguistic grace if I never actually start a conversation?”

The fact of the matter is that I’m a bit shy and nervous about these things. I’ll go out with a friend or two, cruise the bars, have a few beers or what-have-you, but I don’t talk to strangers. (This is good advice, actually. They should teach that to kids.) I’ve never actually done the singles scene outside of college. So what the hell do I do? It is a social scene for which I have little frame of reference. The first night out I watched people. Since I’m over six and a half feet tall, I can easily look down on a somewhat crowded bar and observe. Some guys would simply go up and introduce themselves, hand outstretched. They looked a bit like used car salesmen. Still others would just go up and begin dancing with the girl of his choice sans her consent. I do not approve of launching myself headlong into someone else’s personal space, so this is not the route for me.

Furthermore, once I’m in the conversation, things are going well, good times all around, I have no clue how to segue into the “well how about you give me your number and I’ll give you a call sometime.” Aside from the fact that a lot of people have told me “no one really picks people up in bars, not for real relationships” it IS (and I know I run the risk of sounding like a misogynist but here I go anyway) almost like a score. A touchdown, if you will. Katie, my comrade in arms for these skirmishes in the battle of the sexes, and I have a running game to see who can get more numbers on these bar outings. The score is lame to depressing in the first quarter. She has home field advantage, though. She’s a girl. To change metaphor-gears into something a bit more historical, she’s a gatherer, she’s supposed to gather. As the big hairy man, it is my task to stalk the plains and hunt.

Hunt for numbers? Yes indeed! My pride is on the line now that there’s a running challenge. So be it, then, Katie, bring your A-game. Tonight is round three. The score is currently a very 1960’s luv-all, but I have a fresh batch of confidence and some beer money. Game on!

I was born and raised in the ruined remains of a pirate ship planted atop a rocky plateau in northern New Jersey. I was named, in the language of my tribe, “asnosmaniac,” meaning “one who has no sense of smell and is kinda crazy.” Once again, the village elders were spot on with their naming tradition. My family made money by growing a crop of Russet potatoes that we would then sell. We sold some at local farmers markets, but primarily to the British. Thanks to the exchange rate, we made roughly five thousand dollars per potato. As an infant, I did typical infant things. I ate, burped, vomited on myself, and fought vociferously for a lowering of the British tariff on American potatoes.

At the age of four, I enjoyed scribbling on bits of paper with my crayons. I was lucky enough to have the box of crayons with the attached sharpener, which came in handy for sharpening my crayons to a point fine enough to defend against deadly assassins. I eventually discovered the principle of lift. However, when my mother informed me that Bernoulli had in fact discovered this some years before, I cried and cried until I was put down for my nap.

At seven years of age, I learned that I was quite adept at composing sonnets and epic poems. I frequented trendy coffeehouses for open microphone nights. One memory that sticks out most clearly is sitting, sipping my mocha, when a young Edgar Allen Poe approached the mic. He read us a poem about a man lamenting the loss of his wife who was pestered by a brightly colored macaw.

“Eddie,” I recall saying to him, “Eddie, why not make it some sort of scarier bird? Perhaps some type of crow?” He looked at me and nodded. “And,” I continued, “I love the repetition of the ’-ite’ sound, but don’t you think it would sound a bit better if there was a repetition of words that rhyme with ‘ore?’” I distinctly recall, even though it was a spoken conversation, specifically saying “ore” as in raw iron and not “oar” as in primitive boat locomotion. We lost touch, though, so I never got to hear a final draft.

On my twelfth birthday, after a year of rigorously playing Pokémon (the red version) I spun my cocoon out of silk and fecal pellets (better to deter predators) and entered my pupal stage.

I emerged roughly a dozen years later, tall and hairy. I quickly discovered that I had lost the ability to compose poetry or even understand poetry written by others. This skill had been replaced with an incredible ability to totally nail any really hot chicks that I saw. I got a job working in a coal mine, murdering canaries before they could ignite pockets of natural gas. I continued this career until I realized that I could still, in fact, write works of fiction. I immediately bought a typewriter and began composing my autolieography. Despite the urgings of my parents to return to the potato farm atop the plateau or at the very least finish my schooling at the College of Robot Mechanics, I pressed on. Once my opus was completed, I hired a Sherpa to guide me to a hidden temple of monks, who I then forced, at gunpoint, to transfer my typewritten pages onto a computer. Also onto a grain of rice, just for the hell of it.

*SPOILER ALERT! I AM GOING TO SPOIL PREMONITION AND THE LAKE HOUSE. THEY SPOIL THEMSELVES BUT I AM GOING TO SPOIL THEM MORE!*

Sandra Bullock. You are an ok lady. However, I am going to have to submit to you, in writing, my request that you stop making time travel movies from here on out.

No, I know, they aren’t time travel movies like Back to the Future. They simply involve you somehow changing the time stream. Really, you could take some notes from Doc Brown and Marty McFly because they know how to move through time and not mess everything up.

Premonition? Now, ok, that wasn’t too terrible. Your husband dies and, somehow, you pull a Billy Pilgrim and become unstuck in time. Unlike Mr. Pilgrim, however, you only move through time when you go to sleep at night.

Listen, Mrs. Bullock, I’m not going to lie to you. I did not pay close attention to the movie. Somehow you managed to run around in your chronologic confusion and implicate yourself in your husband’s fatal car accident so that you are suspected of foul play? Then you hate him and you’re glad he’s going to/did die, then you love him and try and make sure he doesn’t/won’t die. Your panicked phone calls make him pull his car over and then, wanting to rush home to you, pull out in front of a truck and die! This is a prime example of the dangers of time travel!

But look, we all know what this letter is really about, don’t we? That’s right. The Lake House. You and Keanu Reeves live in the same house two years apart, but manage to send one another letters. Adorable. Here’s my problem, if you’ll indulge me. You play a doctor. You’re eating lunch with your mom or something and a dude gets hit by a car. You try and save him but you can’t and he dies. You are very sad. A fellow doctor says that you should go someplace far away whenever you aren’t at work because you won’t be as sad. So you move into the titular home. You get letters from Keanu who lives two years behind you, as I already mentioned. You have some sort of weird penpal relationship. You fall in love. Keanu takes it upon himself to come meet you. He remembers how you wrote about the day you were eating lunch with your mom or something and, on his way to see you, gets hit by a car. I totally did not see that coming! Keanu is the man you couldn’t save! You realize this and stop him from coming to see you and then propose that you meet at a later date. He doesn’t go to see you, he doesn’t die, and you live happily ever after.

Wait.

Wait wait. See? Doc Brown would be friggin’ furious with you! That is a paradox of the highest degree! You move into the lake house because of a traumatic event that you then prevent from ever happening. So there’s no trauma. No need for a big glass house on a lake! You wouldn’t write to him! But if you don’t write to him, how could you tell him not to come meet you (not to mention that you wouldn’t write to him in the first place) so he would get hit by the car and you would be traumatized and I have even confused myself.

Therefore, it is on behalf of myself and anyone else who even remotely likes time travel as an element of a story I ask you to please refrain from making any more movies about changing history or traveling through time or any other chronologic hijinks.

Thank you.

When I was maybe a freshman in high school, I had a major crush on this girl. That’s hardly an original thing for a high schooler to have, but I digress. Kat had a regular babysitting gig for some family in town. One day she asked me if there was any chance I could fill in for her, since she had something she had to do. (It was probably a date or something. Yeah I was that guy in high school.) Anyway, money is money and I like kids so sure, I’ll do it.

The babies to be sat were two girls, the older one was maybe in the early years of middle school and her sister was a few years younger. I played with them, read to them, we drew pictures, generally fun stuff. Then it was time to put them to bed. Let me preface this part of the story with a note. I had never had a babysitting job before. Never. I didn’t know the standard dynamic. So when the kids fell asleep after I read to them, I stayed in the room. I sat in a chair in the corner and read to myself by a dim desk lamp. I later learned that a good babysitter will leave the room, ransack the fridge, and watch late-night TV til the parents come home and pay you. My bad. I hope I did not come across as creepy.

Flash forward a few years. Now I’m in college and my little brother is in high school. I never heard tell of him going out with a girl or anything. He was, I assumed, a late bloomer just like me. In retrospect I think that was a stupid assumption and that he was just out partying with girls and we never knew back home. It comes to light that my little bro has landed a girlfriend. Well isn’t that cute. I meet her. She’s nice and good-looking to boot. Way to go, Ryan. After they’ve been going out for a few months, there’s going to be a family party and this girl’s family is going to come, too!

Well isn’t that swell. The families (future in-laws?) all together having a blast. Well when the little lady’s parents show up, they look a little familiar. And then they drop the bomb. “Yeah, you babysat the girls a few times, don’t you remember? Sally swore us to secrecy at first. Don’t tell Ryan, she said! Haha, isn’t that funny?”

Oh yes. It’s hilarious. I love knowing my brother is having wicked hot makeouts with a little girl I used to read bedtime stories to. And I’m sure she loves coming over for family dinners and seeing the guy that made sure she’d brushed her teeth and washed her face. That’s Deliverance funny, right there.