by Richard Timothy | Dec 27, 2010 | Borrowed Smirk, Holiday Banter
I’m not sure why, but this holiday poem has stuck with me over the years. I believe it was originally from a Mad Magazine that my oldest brother treasured back in the early 80s, but I’m not 100% sure. All I can tell you for certain is that this is a borrowed Smirk, and not something of my own devising. Is it truly mad? Well, let’s just say for the record that I’m about 72% sure it was from the magazine. So please enjoy this Mad Holiday Poem:
‘Twas the night after Christmas and all though the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
For one had indulged in a tumbler of scotch,
Another smoked cigarettes as he kept watch.
One had used saccharine to sweeten her sherry,
Some swallowed red dye from a maraschino cherry.
A few crumbs of bacon were found were they’d dropped,
A feast had been eaten round some spilled diet pop.
Beer was drunk heartily and all went to bed,
By morning the Surgeon General had pronounced them all dead.
And that, as they say, is it. Cheers and I hope you all had a brilliant holiday.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: drunk mouse.
by Richard Timothy | Nov 30, 2010 | Holiday Banter, I Think There's a Point, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
With the holidays officially afoot I figure what better time than now to give the gift of a child’s curse. I’m not sure why it is, but in its purest and most innocent form a child’s curse is something a always brings a smile to my face. So what exactly is a child’s curse? Here is a prime example of one that I witnessed last Christmas while I was a my parents house with the whole family, including my five year old niece.
After indulging in excessive amounts of food, like you do, it was time to huddle around the television and watch my families holiday tradition of watching some kid in glasses shoot his eye out with an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle. My niece, was of the disposition that if the television was on, but not playing something Disney princess or Scooby-Doo related then it was not worth watching. This meant that while everyone else was down stairs watching the film, I was sitting on the floor next to the tree, upstairs, while Natalie played house with Barbie’s and Scooby-Doo action figures.
After Shaggy had turned down a marriage proposal from his third Barbie suitor… suitorette, I did my best to encourage her to play something else. Like maybe one of the Barbies could help Shag and Scoob with the Mystery of the solitary blinking Christmas tree light. It worked rather well… until…
Natalie ventured over to the tree with one of her Barbies to check out the light, then she noticed something under the tree. She put down her doll and picked up a hot pad and oven mitt set that was a gift to my mom. The set was covered in a holiday theme with reign deer and candy canes on them. The oven mitt looked a little like a puppet though. The thumb piece section of the mitt was made to be the bottom piece of the deer’s mouth. That way when you pulled a pan out of the oven it would look like it was in the reign deer’s mouth. If falls into the same realm as ugly holiday sweaters and was probably the same designer.
As Natalie is looking at it, she is filled with honest and genuine confusion. She walks up to me with the set in her hands, her brow lightly furrowed. Then, as she gently hands it to me, she asks in the most sincere and inquisitive voice I’ve yet to hear from a five year old, “What the hell is this?”
The problem with laughing at a five year old who is sincere and intent on getting an answer to the question they just asked is the have a tendency to think you are laughing at them. Her dirty looks only fueled my inability to gain my composure. Once she started crying, well, it stopped being as funny. Eventually I was forgiven, but it took one cookie and an ice cream cone, and Shaggy agreeing to marry the Barbie of her choice.
Of course I told everyone, promptly after I got her to stop crying. I just had to make sure she was not in the room when I told everyone… little people (kids) can be so sensitive. Still, there is something innocently smirk inspiring about a little kid cursing when they have no idea its considered a no no. It’s just a word to them. Something they picked up, probably from their parents… or me, but more than likely from their parents. I have a few more that I’m sure I’ll share at time goes on, but I figured this would be a good one to get you all started for the holiday season. Cheers.
So, do you have any kid curse stories of your own? I’d love to hear it.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: what the hell, and cursing kid.
by Richard Timothy | Nov 1, 2010 | Adolescent Shenanigans, Holiday Banter, I Think There's a Point, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, Lightbulbs and Soapboxes, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking
Well, it’s finally happened. This year I became “that guy” for Halloween. No, not “That Guy” that guy, but the one that looks at all those little people dressed up in what I consider to be essentially a collection of multiple dimension origins of alternative Oliver Twist outfits, and thinks, “You’ve had enough.” Sure, I might be stretching a bit with that, but the fact of the matter is that all these kids dress up for the sole purpose of begging for candy. Not that Oliver ever begged for candy, but he is the one person most people reenact when begging, or attempting to beg by saying, “Please sir, may I…” well, you know the rest.
With the sugar overload that is Halloween, this year I found myself thinking, “I should get some apples or oranges for those little high fructose corn syrup addicts, instead of candy.” Then I remembered what I did when I was a kid when someone tried that crap with me. First, I would wait for two or three additional sets of trick-or-treaters to go through the “knock of disappointment” as we would call it. Then I would hurl my newly acquired orange at the distributor’s front door and run like hell.
What? When you’re ten and jacked up on sweets it seems like a perfectly good idea at the time. So oranges and apples are officially off the trick-or-treat menu. Also, in the event that you do receive a piece of fruit and take it home, parents never let you eat it because of that stories about razorblades being stuck in fruit on Halloween. So, even though you try to do a good thing and pass out something healthy, it gets tossed into the trash by the parents once they get home.
Instead I opted to go with something else… something in a sealed container. Something so heinous in the minds of most youth that then word got out my house would be dubbed some adolescent term that carries the same meaning and emotional abrasion as the black plague. Hey, if there is one thing I know about little kids it’s their complete and utter lack of being overly dramatic about any and every given situation. I figure if I could get the word out early on then none of the other kids would stop by and our house. We would be skipped out of respect to the commercialized and candy filled holiday Halloween had become in mainstream society.
Raisins, I got those cute little boxes of raisins to pass out. Hey, it might have taken me five months to get to them, but once all of the candy from, Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine’s day had been consumed and all that was left were those three boxes of raisins, they too were eaten as a last resort… which means after I my siblings and I had eaten all the sugared cereal in the house as well. But they were eaten, and I remember thinking that they really weren’t that bad… as a last resort.
So did I pass out raisins for Halloween this year and become the person received an evening of disappointed signs from the Oliver Twist wannabes when they noticed me handing them a box of raisins? No, but only because my sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh took me to the movies to avoid being home for trick-or-treaters. Yeah, so instead of ‘that guy’ I was that other ‘that guy’, which is still completely different from “That Guy!” who usually hangs out at bars making comments about, well, you know.
Still, I did have little boxes of humiliated grapes ready to go. It’s funny, it only took me about thirty years to figure out what was going though the mind of that ‘crazy’ lady that gave me my first box of raisins when I was trick-or-treating all those years ago. I get it now, and if I’m home for the holiday next year I’ll probably be passing them out. I’m ok being ‘that guy’ and they will be new boxes, because now, for the next few months I have a two bags of baby sized boxes of raisin to take to work with me as part of my lunch. So, at least I’ve got that going for me.
What are your thoughts on a healthy Halloween?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: Oliver Twist, throwing oranges, box of raisins, and sack lunch.
by Richard Timothy | Oct 29, 2010 | Holiday Banter, I Just Don't Get It, I Think There's a Point, Lightbulbs and Soapboxes, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, When I Was a Kid
To begin let me start with a heartfelt “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” to all the pagans out there. Hey if the Christians can pretend that December 25th is the birthday of that Jesus chap, then I feel perfectly comfortable redistributing the meaning of this whole Halloween holiday as the official birthday of Paganism.
With that being said, let’s all step into the WABAC Machine and go way back to the time when a young lad in Wyoming experienced some actually diversity in a town of 1500 people. It happened on a dark and chilly night on the 31st of October in 1982. I was eight, and probably a vampire. Of course this was back when vampires were still cool in a creepy kind of way, instead of the trendy bastardized shells of misunderstood models brooding and pouting in an attempt to get sympathy and instill crushes from thirteen year old girls and soccer moms. And I don’t care if you point out that you could see the strings when the vampire would change into a bad and flying around on strings, they were better damn it!
So there I was standing next to my brother on the doorstep of a rather plain looking home that was 100% devoid of any holiday decorations. I placed the plastic glow in the dark vampire teeth that would that would only glow for about 30 seconds after holding them up to a light for about a minute, in my mouth, you know, so I could get into character before giving the people behind the door my, “Sshick or ssseeeat” plea for more candy (those teeth always made it hard to talk clearly.) Once the teeth were in, I nodded at Mike and we knocked on the door.
As the door opened, Mike and I yelled in unison, “Trick or trea…”
“We don’t believe in Halloween,” interrupts the lady who opened the door.
This had never happened to us before. I figured she was kidding. So I said treat or treat again.
“We don’t celebrate holidays,” she said.
“Why?”
“The bible tells us not to,” adding, “goodbye.”
Nothing harshes and eight year olds unbridled sugar buzz quite like a stranger refusing to give you candy on Hallowing because the bible told them not to. It made no sense, and to be honest, it pissed me off a little. I even hung around for the next set of kids to come to her door, just to make sure what just happened really happened… it did. Poor things were just as baffled as I was. Still, hanging with the new batch of kids allowed us to compare notes on who passed out the best candy in the neighborhoods we had not yet hit. Soon we parted ways and Mike and I were in route to the big payoff houses a few blocks down, forgetting completely about the anti-Halloween house… until the following year.
The same damn thing happened. Then the following year, it happened all over again. It’s amazing how easily you forget which are the ‘no candy’ homes once the trick-or-treating actually begins. I made a mental note to skip the house a day or two before Halloween, but on the night of there I was on their step with an open sack holding all my candy, and an open mouth full of disbelief that the people in front of me didn’t believe in Halloween. I do remember that with each passing year the patience of the person answering the door grew shorter and shorter.
Over the years I learned that the family were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and that they were actually telling me the truth when they said they didn’t believe in celebrating holidays. For years my friends and I thought they were just cheap, and lied about not believing so they didn’t have to buy candy for other peoples kids. I don’t know why their deity is so hell bent against on having people celebrate holidays, but that’s deities for you… getting upset for no reason whatsoever and always, and I mean ALWAYS, trying to take the blast out of blasphemy.
There always was one rather depressing experience that happened from knocking on their door. It was seeing the children stuck in that house, sitting in the front room looking in amazement at kids their own age all dressed up, pretending to be something other than what they were, laughing, and asking strangers for candy every time the door would open.
Halloween was always my favorite holiday as a kid. I think it usually is for most kids because it is full of the one thing they have ample amounts of, imagination. The only thing I can figure is that the kids had been very naughty and the parents were trying to teach them a lesson. I wonder if the parents ever, after they closed the door, told their kids, “I know it might look like those kids were having fun being with their friends, unsupervised, running around asking for free candy and getting it, but the joke is on them! They aren’t having any fun at all.”
Maybe it was some cruel and unusual anti-imagination activity, like taking them kids to the Disney Land parking lot to collect bugs for a science project and telling them, “Just imagine there is no Disney Land beyond that fence. Instead imagine an empty field with beige flowers and nothing else, not even the bugs you are trying to collect. So there is no reason to even look in that direction. Oh and just ignore all that joy and laughter you ear coming from behind that fence.” Perhaps breaking down and hindering a child’s imagination is part of their religious agenda. Honestly, I have no idea. Although, I imagine if you get rid of the imagination early on, you don’t get questions like, “What does this all mean?” or “Do I really believe what you are telling me?” or “What does happy mean?” You know, things like that.
The other thing I never understood is why the parents would leave all their lights on. It was the equivalent of a child in wolves clothing… oh wait… I mean in reverse. When you leave your lights on, on Halloween, it gives every kid, and adults with kids, an inviting green light. It tells them that you are home and waiting around with no other purpose than to open your door to pass out handfuls of sugary goodness to anyone that knocks. Leaving all of your lights on and then answering your door just to tell the person knocking that you do not believe in the holiday and sending them away treatless, well, that’s just mean. I mean at the very least you could put up a sign! And that’s exactly what happened. Granted it only took seven years to figure it out (perhaps it was due to a lack of imagination?), but it did the trick. I mean sure, we still walked up to the door, but left in peace once we finished reading their anti-holiday proclamation.
I do have to say one thing though, saying you don’t believe in a holiday and then partially participating in that holiday by answering your door just to tell the costume clad person who knocked, and who is celebrating the holiday that you do not believe that holiday… well that’s kind of like going camping and then smearing honey all over your face and then telling the bear that has just showed up for an afternoon smorgasbord that you don’t believe in them. Whether you believe in it or not, it’s still there and still very real.
Although, I get people choosing not to participate in celebrating a holiday. Holidays are created all the time that I choose not to participate in… That’s right! I’m talking to you Hallmark! Quit it! Besides, I’m not sure a holiday goes away just because you choose not to believe in it. If that were the case Halloween would have disappeared a long, long time ago when the Catholic Church was avidly working on expunging all the Pagans, their beliefs, and their holidays.
In the end, I suppose that as long as these people are well and their anti-holiday belief isn’t hurting anyone then by all means, continue not to believe. To help with this whole thing I’ve devised a plan… so to any Witnesses reading this let me be the first to wish you a “Happy No Holiday At All Day!” I hope it treats you well.
Any anti-Halloween stories of your own you’d like to share? Please do.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: Happy Halloween, glow in the dark fangs, trick or treat, Jehovah’s Witnesses, imagination, house lights, and happy non party.
by Richard Timothy | Sep 8, 2010 | Holiday Banter, My Cutie Baby Sweetie Pie, My List of Things that Don't Suck, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Reviewed and Recommended
“Those are big sheep,” Angela said from the passenger’s side of the front seat.
I made a quick glance into a field and as my eyes returned to the road I chuckled a bit and said, “Um, honey, those are llamas.”
She turned around to look out the back window and double checked. “Oh! Well I only saw their woolly backs.”
It wasn’t my cutie-baby-sweetie-pie’s first animal misidentification of the trip and it wasn’t going to be the last. The first happened as we were traveling along the freeway across some sagebrush infested plains. She looked out the window and said, “Oh look, deer.”
Focusing more on passing a Winnebago than looking at what she saw I made one small assumption and asked, “Are you sure they’re not antelope?”
“They could be. They are funny looking deer.”
People have different strengths, identifying animals in nature is really not one Angela’s. But she still tries… and I love that about her. Plus it keeps us laughing as the miles roll by.
For Labor Day weekend this year, we did something that we had not done in years… we left town. It was actually a joint effort. Three of our dear friends, one of which grew up in the same town in Wyoming as I did, and Angela and I decided to go to Star Valley for Labor Day weekend to do some hiking, and so our friend and I could introduce them to the place we identified as our “hometown” on our Facebook profiles. Our friend’s parents, who still lived in town and had the extra space, were kind enough to put us up for two nights (Saturday and Sunday).
We all arrived at our friend’s parent’s house within the same half hour. After we got our cars unpacked, we all piled into Angela’s car and headed up the canyon to go on a hike to see the world’s largest intermittent spring. Sure there were a lot of cowboy’s and jacked up trucks I had to deal with growing up, but the water… it’s liquid perfection. Whenever I have the treat of being able to drink some, it always takes me back. It is the flavor of my youth… well that and Mountain Dew.
After our hike, which is now mostly a stroll due to a lot of trail reformation thanks to excessive use of a CAT, we made our way to a little chocolate shop on Main Street. We even parked next to the only street light in town; a flashing yellow light where a crosswalk is in the middle of Main Street. It just so happens to be resting on right under a mammoth (as in large and not the extinct animal of the woolly variety) arch made of elk horns that spans across the entire four lane width of Main Street. The claim is that it’s a largest elk horn arch in the world. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it’s always stricken me as an odd source of town pride… and it’s been there as long as I can remember making the people of Afton very proud.
Star Valley is beautiful… I will give it that well deserved credit. I say Star Valley instead of Afton because Afton is in Star Valley. See there are about nine or ten little towns in the forty mile stretch that makes up Star Valley. So even though there are a bunch of elementary schools there is only one junior high school and high school, both of which bare the title Star Valley. So when I say Star Valley I do mean Afton as well, but I also mean all of the other towns that make up the valley as well.
One thing I did manage to do while driving everyone around town was to show them all of the buildings I had climbed on top of and thrown tomatoes, water balloons, and eggs off of. There was that one Molotov cocktail that was thrown off the movie theater once, but I had nothing to do with… I mean I was there, but I didn’t help make the thing, or light it… or throw it… I might verbally suggested that the culprit give the thing a toss once it had been lit, but that’s it, I swear. It was late at night too, so most everyone was asleep and the flames only lasted about five minutes anyway. The police never even showed up to investigate… and the flames were only about 100 yards from the dispatch center, so it’s not like they would have far to go if they had noticed.
It’s funny, but after almost 20 years of not living there, most things still look the same. There are a few new buildings that are pretty and a few remolded ones that are the kind of eye sore that had your eyes their own appendages they would poke themselves in the eye just so they wouldn’t have to look at it. I’m talking about you Courtesy Ford.
Saturday consisted of enjoying dinner with our friend’s parents, followed by a discussion about post-modern movement of philosophy. It was actually a lovely discussion, which we rewarded ourselves but getting shakes at the local drive-in restaurant the Red Baron, which is still as good as I remember. Well done and thank you for not letting my nostalgic taste buds down. Then went and caught the late show at the only theater in town, which is part of that same eye sore car dealership of a building.
Because Star Valley was settled by religious folk, and the offspring of these said religious folk still make up 95+% of the entire valley’s population this can only mean one thing… nothing is open on Sundays. So to address this issue, we went to Jackson (Jackson Hole) for the day instead, because in Jackson, tourism trumps religion every time. It was a bit blustery, but we still made it to some nice spots and took lots of pictures of the illustrious Tetons. We even had another Angela animal sighting… turned out to be an elk… pretending to be a moose.
We stopped at the grocery before leaving town so we could A) get some food for dinner because the grocery in Star Valley was closed and B) so we could buy some wine for dinner. Let’s just say liquor stores in Star Valley are not renowned for their wine selections… unless you consider all of the flavors of Boone’s Farm flavored malt beverages to count as wine. For my ‘take home and save for a special occasion’ find I scored a bottle of ‘Old Codger’ an Australian Port. I have no idea if it’s good or not, but seriously, how could you pass up a port called ‘Old Codger.’ I smile every time I look at the bottle.
Sunday evening ended with us sitting around the dinner in the guest kitchen, eating cheese and bread, enjoying aged balsamic vinegar with the cheese and bread and filling the night with sips of wine and conversation about how we came out of a small Wyoming town ‘normal’ and with a liberal perspective. We then topped the evening off with a few eyefuls of stars thank to our friend bringing his telescope.
I do have to say though, that there was one thing that kept cracking me up the whole trip. I’m sure I was the only one to notice, but it was the constant use of the phrase, “I’ve got 3G coverage here,” or the other just as used phrase, “I’ve got no signal here.” I guess when you use your phone as a paper weight with a monthly payment plan phrases like that never come to mind. But for those that use their phones to update Facebook, use the GPS so we don’t miss our turn, or Google one of the little sites we are seeing to get a more in-depth history about it, I can see how that could be important.
All in all, it was a brilliant Labor Day weekend… and I only scared the hell out of my wife about 23 different times passing cars on the small back highways the lead out of Wyoming back to Utah… but for the record, we did make good time, and that nervous twitch in her eye is gone now. As for Star Valley, I’m glad I don’t live there anymore, but it is a groovy little place to spend a weekend…. you know, before the snow sets in. Thanks for the memories you little valley of stars.
How was your Labor Day weekend?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: road trip couple, periodic spring, elk horn arch, Courtesy Ford, Cunningham’s Cabin, Old Codger port, and Star Valley.
by Richard Timothy | Sep 7, 2010 | Holiday Banter, Non-Fiction, Observationally Speaking, Public Service Announcement
The end of labor is to gain leisure. ~Aristotle
Have you ever wondered about Labor Day? I know I haven’t. It has always been one of those things that I never cared about when I had a job that made me work on the holiday and that I took for granted when I finally had a job that paid me not to come to work on that day.
So I finally did it this year, I looked it up. Turns out Labor Day is a US holiday and is always celebrated on the first Monday of September. Because I’ve never taken the time to learn anything about Labor Day, I always made something up when the topic came up. I decided that it was a holiday for the working class. It is a day to celebrate all those people in the US that have jobs. It came was originated by corporations who traditionally treat their employees like crap. In an attempt to keep the workers calm, corporations would give them a paid day off once a year. This would appease the workers and pacify them enough to keep them organizing and attempting some type of upheaval… Hey it sounded pretty good the first time a made that up to explain what Labor Day was all about.
Having actually looked it up there were a few things about the holiday that I did not know. Things like the holiday being around since 1894. Turns out the true origins of Labor Day have something to do with President Grover Cleveland trying to make things better after a number of works were killed during a strike by police and military. I think the truly amazing thing is that the government was able to rush legislation of making Labor Day a national holiday and having it pass unanimously and become a law in only six days after the strike ended. When was the last time the US government was able to do that? And for the record, that was a rhetorical question.
Upon further reading about the topic, turns out after 100+ years the holiday has adopted a number of additional symbolic meanings. For most people these days, Labor Day marks the end of summer. This helps explain why so many people try to get out into the wild for one last camping weekend before the season changes. Another Labor Day meaning I discovered, the beginning of football season… who knew? I even asked a few of my football watching friends if this was true. They neither confirmed nor denied it, but I did get a few looks. It was the look you give people when they say something that is so obvious that you’re not sure want to get to close to them because you are afraid that some of their lack of obviousness might rub off on you and bring you closer to a live action version of Homer Simpson.
Due to getting this look a lot in my life due to my completely and utter lack of sports knowledge, I’ve learned a trick when this situation occurs. I simply count, in my head, to ten and then say out loud in my best “matter-of-fact” voice, “The Packers rock.” This is either accompanied by nods of agreement or shaking side to side, questioning my choice of team patronage. Still, because I have praised a team in this sporting genre, the people tend forgive and forget my previous sports knowledge blunder. You’d be surprised how many times that little trick has come in handy in my life.
And that’s Labor Day for you. Personally, I like my origin better… and so do the conspiracy theorists.
As for my Labor Day this year I did something I had not done in years… I went on a bit of a weekend holiday… in the town I grew up in! Come back tomorrow and I’ll tell you all about it.
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: Labor Day, end of summer, and Packers.
I’m not sure why, but this holiday poem has stuck with me over the years. I believe it was originally from a Mad Magazine that my oldest brother treasured back in the early 80s, but I’m not 100% sure. All I can tell you for certain is that this is a borrowed Smirk, and not something of my own devising. Is it truly mad? Well, let’s just say for the record that I’m about 72% sure it was from the magazine. So please enjoy this Mad Holiday Poem:
