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!”

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 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.

When I was a sophomore in college I was introduced, via the internet, to a friend of a friend (of a friend, in all honesty). There was a group of us chattering away on AOL Instant Messenger, usually in a chatroom, having discussions about absolutely nothing. What was peculiar was that my friend lived in Arizona, where he had moved junior year of high school. He met this other guy, who introduced him to his friends from the internet. One of these friends ironically lived maybe an hour or two away from me in South Jersey. After a while we began to hang out, and one day we decided she would come visit me at my school so we could party and have fun. At this point I was a junior and had discovered the joys of drinking so we were set to have a blast. We dropped her car at my mom’s house (I went to school 20 minutes away but lived on campus) and headed back to good old Daniels University.

Sheila and I were a lot alike. She was a girl and a lot shorter than I was, but personality-wise we were a good fit. We told stupid jokes, giggled, (Er, she giggled. As a man I gave a hearty guffaw) and generally enjoyed each other’s company for the usual two or three days she’d visit. We were basically good kids. Until we decided to become the Bonnie and Clyde of New Jersey. We were driving along, almost to campus, and drove by a series of road cones strewn about by the curb.

“Huh,” I said, passingly, “those aren’t really doing much, huh?” She agreed. Somehow the idea came up that we could take two. “One for me, and one for you.” I forget whose idea it was, but I quickly turned the car around and drove back to the scattered pylons. Little Sheila hopped out and quickly scooped up our booty and we sped back off into the night.

Three blocks later I was stopped at a red light and glanced in my rear-view mirror. The fuzz! “Sheila!” I spat out in a frantic whisper, “There’s a cop behind us. Hide the cones!” She twisted in the passenger seat and tried to cover them with a jacket. In retrospect this was probably a bad idea, as the cruiser’s roof almost immediately blazed into red and blue lights.

Let me take a moment to describe the town Daniels is in. It is not a college town. It’s your typical little Jersey town full of big houses and rich people. This means that there is little a college kid can do to get in a lot of trouble. This also means there is very little for the police to do.

Fairly soon a second cruiser, roof alight, pulled up. The first officer approached my car and asked us to step out. We were asked a few questions, but it was for show. They had us pegged. Someone had seen us and ratted us out. They took back our hot goods and one officer looked around inside my car a bit while we waited. I turned to the other, prepared to deliver the most macho thing anyone has ever said to the police ever.

“Uh. Um. Officer?”

“Yeah?”

“I er, have this anxiety thing so if, uh, I throw up it’s not because I’ve been drinking or on drugs or, like, anything? Ok?” (Whenever I recount this story, that’s the part that drives the women crazy.)

“There’s nothing to worry about, we just have to ask you some questions. Calm down.” Ok, so, they were gonna take the cones back, give us what-for, slap on the wrist, send us on our way. Then they separated us for questioning. There was one key question. “Who took the cones?”

“Er. We did.”

“No. Which one of you actually took them?” Oh. So it came down to this. I was the wheelman. The getaway driver. I kept the motor running; my little Bonnie grabbed the goods. I like to think what I did next was honorable. Even if it was lying to a cop.

“Me. I took them.”

“Ok.” He returned to his back-up who was questioning Sheila. About this time a third police car, this one an SUV, pulled up on the opposite curb lit up like a Christmas tree. Did I mention that we were literally in front of the police station? I could see it. I was not shaping up to be a good criminal mastermind. My officer came back. “So… you say you took the cones. But she’s saying that she took them. Which is it?” I wanted to keep up my lie, but I was afraid Sheila would stick to her story too, which had the benefit of being true, and then I’d be in trouble for stealing and lying to a policeman. I came clean.

“S-she did.”

“Alright.” Our story clear, it was time for our slap on the wrist. Or so I thought. Sheila was cuffed and stuffed into the back of the cruiser. We could have walked to the station, but I guess it had to be done by the books. Then one of the cops came towards me. I halfheartedly held out my arms, wrists close together. Would they tow my car? Just leave it here? Why oh why did I turn to this life of crime?!

“Alright. Go on. Get out of here.”

I stared at him, lowering my wrists a fraction. “What?”

“We’ve gotta process her. You can go.”

“I- what? But she…” I looked over his shoulder at my sullen friend locked in the back of the car. “Shouldn’t I come too? Can’t I stay with her?”

“No. It’s gonna take a while. Hour or two. It’s best if you just go home and we’ll call you when we’re done.”

And so I was forced to get back into my car and leave Sheila to her fate. I drove the remaining few blocks to campus like any criminal would after narrowly escaping the coppers- sobbing uncontrollably with fear and guilt.

Dear girl who shot down my party invitation,

What is the deal, girl who shot down my party invitation? I don’t think you appreciate the work that went into trying to get you to that party! My friend thought you were cute and pointed you out when we went to your place of work, a bizarre Chinese-Mexican combo place. You knew his name and paid slightly more attention to him than you did to me. I am so super hot that this can only mean that you are into him or myopic. I tried to get him to invite you to the party and he chatted you up while your co-worker fed me all sorts of spicy food. I do not like spicy food, girl who shot down my party invitation!

So he didn’t ask you that night. The party was in a scant few days! We did what we had to do. We went back the next day! You were not even working. We had to sit in gloomy defeat and eat Chinese food quesadillas for the second day in a row. Do you know what happens when you eat Chinese food quesadillas two days in a row? You get a lot of time to yourself, sitting on the toilet until your feet go numb.

Well, we are no quitters and you had told my buddy that your little shop of gastrointestinal horrors would be selling special delicious cookies on Saturday. Saturday was the day of the party and, incidentally, the day after visit two! That’s right, we came back for cookies! However someone with the worst taste ever decided to have their wedding reception at a Chinese-Mexican fast food place. While I meandered around so he could ask you, the boss of the whole store offered me free samples. I took it, to be polite, but it was chicken with green crap on it. I pretended to like it and threw it away when he wasn’t looking. I was beginning to get the impression that my friend was not going to ask you and the very act of being in that store was making my intestines slither and my bowels weep so I told him I was going to ask you and get it over with. I sauntered over when you were by yourself setting up the buffet and tried to start a conversation. Turns out I talk a big game but when it comes down to it I couldn’t ask you either. Sorry girl who shot down my party invitation but I couldn’t think of a segue from “is that guy really the owner” to “come to this party tonight to make out with my friend.”

Finally you were back behind the counter and it was time to make the move. You came to help us. I said we had been told your store would be selling very special cookies that day. I acted like I knew nothing about them, even though I had choked down a sample earlier. You asked how many I wanted, six or twelve. I turned to my friend. “What do you think? A dozen? We should get some for the party.” Then I turned back to you. “We’re having a party tonight. Would you like to come?” Girl who shot down my party invitation, this was not an off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment idea. This was carefully formulated to appear casual! And you told me you had to go to a barbeque. I let this roll away as if it were just a little idea that was not the basis for going to the same eatery three days in a row. But then you asked me what my name was.

Girl who shot down my party invitation, I was not asking you out on my behalf. You gave me agony of the colon. This is not something I look for in a girl. Quit sweating me.

Sincerely,
JD

Sleep. You fickle bitch. I don’t need you! You’ve been a bit of a flake lately anyway. You don’t come over til way late, for starts. Where are you all night? You’re off someplace and I’m sitting up at home waiting for you. You finally traipse in around three or four in the morning and then you bend me to your whims until the next afternoon? Bah! Whatever!

So you didn’t come over last night. Where were you? Don’t answer that, I don’t care. I don’t NEED YOU. I had a lovely evening (morning) of video games and movies. I must have watched three or four movies already today and it’s only eleven! Ok sure I can’t remember what all the movies were. I think I watched something before Knocked Up, but I’m not sure. But who cares! I can have a good time without you. I’m fine without you! I don’t need you!

…please come back.