back in biz

Things are looking a little better around here. We had some technical problems with our internet but it looks like we've got 'em figured out now. We rerouted a couple of tubes and put a new gearbox in the ol' truck and now everything's humming along again. Hot damn.

Pretty decent weekend. Laundry, softball, beers, kid. Went out to medium-deep Brooklyn where somehow it still feels like 1977.

What follows is a little theory about my life. My life may not be interesting to you, in which case take comfort in the fact that you are chilling with 99.9999999% of the world's population. You may now resume watching the 1996 film The Rock, starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage. But if you are among the elite few who give a damn, read on.

When I was in elementary school, I was a smart kid. Really smart. I know, we all were. But I was the smartest kid in the class, generally speaking. A good kid. The only time I ever got in trouble was when Kissel ratted me out to Ms. Levy for bending my toy Triceratops's tail back between his legs like a penis. I was mischievous, but still a pretty decent kid. Class President in 5th grade, bitches. And for the most part a happy, happy little fella.

Then I got to junior high school and suddenly I was an average student, nothing more. Some classes were better than others. Assignments started to back up. And I started to carry around a ball of stress in my stomach, probably due to the fact that I felt like I was struggling to keep up with the work.

Then I got to high school and I fell apart. Pretty much completely. I'm not one of those people who looks back on high school and says, what a horrible time thank God it's over, but maybe I should be. I felt severely anxious almost every day.

I recovered slightly in college and I've done OK since then. I always get high marks on performance reviews but never really get anywhere. And I still carry around a lot of anxiety, sometimes over the simplest, stupidest things.*

Usually when I try to figure out where the anxiety set in I think back to that awful time in high school when I was basically flunking out and feeling helpless about it. But the truth is that at some point between 5th and 6th grades, something changed. I got stupider, and as a result I eventually became less carefree and less sure of myself. That dropoff, that feeling that suddenly I wasn't as smart as I thought I was, damaged my self-confidence for life.

I've thought about the possible reasons why school suddenly became such a bitch for me, and here they are in order of likeliness:

1) School gets harder in 6th grade. I had developed bad work habits because the work in elementary school was so easy, and I was unable or unwilling to improve those habits.
2) My parents' divorce screwed me up somehow, and it took a couple of years for the screwing up to take hold (they were divorced in the summer between 4th and 5th grades).
3) I went through the usual adolescent crises and it reflected in my schoolwork.
4) I wasn't really that smart when you really think about it.
5) Some other deeper problem was making it hard for me to concentrate.
6) There are a million more possibilities, including this latest:

Right around that time, my dad became friendly with Colonel Tony Herbert, a decorated war hero who had come under fire for criticizing the military brass during Vietnam. Colonel Herbert took us sailing on his catamaran, he treated us to some nice dinners, and he gave us some lead soldiers. He also gave us the molds for the lead soldiers, and about 30 pounds of lead.

We wanted to make some more soldiers, so my dad and I then melted down the remaining lead in a saucepan and poured it into the molds. In our kitchen. With the window cracked just a little. There was a visible plume of lead smoke coming off the saucepan, and we would try to avoid it as it spun around the pot and spilled out in every direction. Most of the time, you got lucky. Sometimes it hit you right in the face.

Let me reiterate: my father and I would be standing in our kitchen making lead soldiers on the stove and trying to dodge the fumes.

I think maybe that's when I got dumb.

Somebody please tell me if this is possible. Maybe it wasn't lead. Lead melts at like 600 degrees fahrenheit. Can a stovetop reach 600 degrees? Whatever the case, we made metal soldiers in a pan on our stove and that's probably when I got dumb.

Here is an uncomprehensive list of places I've been spectacularly drunk. Truth is I haven't traveled much. Points have been awarded appropriately, and I have decided not to punish people who repeated other people's guesses.

Madison, WI
Milwaukee, WI
Marshfield, WI
Osceola, WI
Star Prairie, WI
Stillwater, MN
Minneapolis, MN
St. Paul, MN
Bloomington, MN
Eagle River, WI
New York, NY
Brooklyn, NY
Queens, NY
Staten Island, NY
Bronx, NY
Riverhead, NY
Boston, MA
Cambridge, MA
Chicago, IL
Libertyville, IL
Mundelein, IL
Los Angeles, CA
Atlantic City, NJ
New Orleans, LA
Kakauna, WI
High Cliff, WI
Appleton, WI
Oshkosh, WI
DePere, WI
Daytona Beach, FL
Cape Cod, MA
Nantucket, MA
San Juan, PR
Florence, Italy
Woodstock, NY
Evanston, IL
San Diego, CA

For five points, one guess to a customer, tell me in which of those cities I slept on a waterbed.

Now tell me song (8 points) and artist (8 points) and for the love of Jesus please don't google:

Back with some shit that gots to bump
As you pull up in the park you pops the trunk
Just to floss it like a motherfucker, clownin an' shit
Got the Dana's on your hooptie and your fly-ass bitch

I just got some tremendous, tremendous news. My friend, hero and Pictionary partner BC the Bigot Slaya is moving to NYC soon! Wow. He's lived all over the world and now he'll be my neighbor. Dude, I hope you get here in time for the final softball game of the year.

New softball recap is up.

* Which isn't to say I'm an unhappy person. Far from it. I love life and I feel lucky to be a part of this universe.