How to lose me in conversation in 10 seconds

I don’t know if you’ve heard the story – he hates to tell it - but my roommate Jommy lived in Taiwan. I’m only now piecing together all the details of the expedition, but it was two years ago, and had something to do with teaching Asian babies long division.

Anyway, Jommy is more worldly than I am, a fact shared by all adult humans (and most children). He’s also more compassionate. It’s not like I’m a bastard or anything, but he’s a touch softer, and that’s sweet/gay of him. Really, he just likes people to be comfortable.
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I have no ear for accents. None. Growing up in White Settlement, Missouri*, I was subjected to very few words, most of which were poorly put together, and all of which were spoken by northern Missouri Caucasians. This was well and good until college, when I had to meet people from gasp – elsewhere. And I’m not talking about foreigners…Georgians gave me trouble. I once went to a bar and literally could not hold a conversation with a Canadian girl. It’s an issue.

*Editor’s Note: I’ve come to learn that I have an accent. People guess that I’m from Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Texas, or, as deduced by one student, a cornfield. I was once told by a group of old women that I sounded just like Matthew McCoughnahey. Not sure if that’s a win.

Jommy does not share this flaw. He relishes the opportunity to talk to foreigners, taught for a year in Taiwan (bet you forgot!), and knows enough Spanish to get by if the Mexican knows a bit of English.

Along with his bleeding heart – or perhaps because of it – Jommy also has a linguistic quirk. While speaking to someone of a different nationality, he actually attempts to pattern his speech to theirs. In short, he takes English words and tries to say them like a Mexican or Asian (sorry for lumping you all together, Asians) or German would.

Only he can’t do it. In trying to make the second-language speaker more comfortable, he creates some bizzarro dialect that 1) sounds effeminate when he’s talking to Mexicans 2) Jamaican when he’s speaking to Russians or 3) is tone deaf when pretending to be JFK.

And I make fun of him. Every. Single. Time.

He can’t help it, I guess…he’s just trying to make those uncomfortable with English a little less self-conscious. And he probably does.

Hearing English spoken as awkwardly as he does would make anyone feel better.

One of us is from Texas. The other is me.

Free things, and shameless ways to get them.

“I’ve been stung!”

She had not been.

“There’s a wasp in your store, and it stung me right here,” she shouted, pointing above her right eye. “Is it red?” Tears welled.

It was red, the cashier affirmed. Not the wasp, of course – there wasn’t one – but the right half of her face was indisputably flush. It looked kind of like she’d hit herself in the face.

But, for now, let’s rewind.
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The Schnucks in my neighborhood is of the ghetto variety, not because the patrons are from the ghetto, necessarily, but because they wouldn’t be out of place there. They have the kind of clientele* that, you know, does a lot of drugs, or might up stories about getting stung in the face by wasps in November.

*Editor’s Note: Yes, I also shop there. Full disclosure: I am, like, *so poor.

Anyway, so I’m piloting my cart betwixt the various shelves, picking up off-brand Cookie Crisp (Kookies!) here, and off-brand Diet Dr. Pepper (Diet Dr. Phizz) there, and as I’m making my approach, scouting which aisle has the fewest people/doesn’t have the gay guy who flirts with me as he checks out my things in it, I see a woman, mid-forties, heavier-set and trollish, doing the same. She has a child with her, a sixish year-old girl, and one item, which I could not make out at the time. She may or may not have been a meth head*.

*Editor’s Note: Accusing people – strangers, especially - of being meth heads, without proof, is not my thing. It’s a serious charge. So, no, I’m not saying this woman probably was a meth head. I mean, she might have been. She definitely might have been a meth head. Maybe even probably. She might have been the worst meth head I’ve ever seen. But I wouldn’t say that.
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So, as I was saying before, meth head, old girl, out of nowhere, smacks herself in the face and walks the three feet over to the open cashier line, telling her tale. “I’ve been stung,” she screeched, making enough of a scene that a lady manager in a horrible blazer rushed over.

“A wasp, I don’t know where it went, but a wasp stung me right in the face. I was trying to protect my daughter, and....”

The manager was horrified. What did she need, she asked…what could she do for her? It had been quite the ordeal for her, no doubt.

Sometimes, though…sometimes, God smiles on us. Occasionally, after a raging storm or, you know, like a pretend wasp sting, a rainbow appears.

“Well, I only came in for one thing,” she said, brandishing a small, rectangular box. “And, since I have to use it now, I don’t think I should have to pay for it.”

The product?

Cortizone-10...perfect for itches, rashes, and make-believe wasp attacks.

Say I hang out at a Schnucks again and Imma stab you in tha face!

The (Formerly) Young and the Hopeless

At 2 a.m. on any given Saturday night, the El Rancho in downtown Columbia, Mo., serves capably as the last refuge for both the hungry and the hopeful. Those looking for their Mexican fix need look no further, while those still looking at the end of a fruitless night continue their search within. Among the party crowd, after hours visits are tradition.

At 2 a.m. this past Saturday, Jommy and I made our pilgrimage, with hunger checking in somewhere behind hopefulness. In truth, we had nowhere to stay. Banking on the charity of Columbia’s prettiest, we neglected to make sleeping arrangements. It was intriguing, if potentially calamitous. What’s the worst that could happen, though? I still had friends about…surely they’d answer their respective phones and take us in, right? At any rate, we were down to our final hope, with two long-shot leads left to chase.
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No matter how drunk they are, it’s always endlessly pleasurable when attractive women fawn over you. And, let’s be clear, the young lady in the green hat and black tights was very, very drunk. Pretty, pretty drunk, one and the other and both at the same time. At any rate, it took little effort to see that hope lived, and that hunger would be satiated in order to help it along. The only problem at time seemed to be the gangly fellow next to her, but he didn’t appear to be a threat.
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I had the chicken nachos, Jommy something equally as unnecessary at the current hour, and our girl in green had the lanky boy with her two tables back. At ours, or rather the one we had joined, Jommy worked his angle, but for reasons we won’t list (the girl’s friend was a bitch), he faced long odds. At the time, my car seemed likely to house us for the night.
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1531 Rolling Rock

“This is where I’m going,” the hatted lass said, having walked up to my table then showing me the address listed in her phone. “You should come.”

Having no better options, we set out in search of a cab.
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“We’re a non-charter, charter bus,” our cabbie told the officer who had stopped him in the middle of the street.

“You can’t make stops here,” the officer said.

“I didn’t want to stop here,” the cabbie shot back. “They wanted in.”
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As the drive toward 1531 Rolling Rock progressed, it became clear that not only was this not a taxi, but this also wasn’t a really bus, either, charter or otherwise. It was just a black guy in a van taking $5 a head to take you where you wanted to be. Payment appeared to be optional, so long as you didn’t mind him telling you that you were a thief and that he’d sue you.

“If I ask you something, would you tell me the truth?” I inquired.

“Probably not,” not-cabbie said.
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1531 Rolling Rock is one-half of a duplex along Rock Quarry Road two miles from the Mizzou campus, and it also apparently is the home of a college-aged guy named Cass, short for Cassidy, who may or may not have been the boyfriend of our adorable El Rancho love interest.

Whatever the case, Cass was having something of a party, although the seven or so nerdy gentlemen riding the couches weren’t particularly raucous. Of the two girls there, our hated heroine was the most-high by a large margin. Whether this was the reason she couldn’t form words, or whether it was because the random guy that she invited to her boyfriend’s house had actually shown up had made things a bit awkward for her is in doubt.
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Rock Quarry is the most dangerous road in Columbia, with no legitimate challengers to its crown. There are no streetlights, there are no sidewalks, there is no shoulder and if there is more than forty yards of pavement that runs perfectly straight, I would be surprised. Drunken and defeated, Jommy and I set our sights on campus. Having torn up the card of our non-charter, charter, random-black dude, and with my friends proving unable or unwilling to answer their phones, we set forth on foot.

Hope was dead, at least until next Saturday night.

Killing Them Softly

I guess I should start off with an apology – I never write you anymore, and I’m sorry. I suck, I know, but it’s not you, it’s me. You’re there where I left you, waiting, clicking the refresh button, and a new Hit on It writing spectacular never comes. A perpetual tease, this one is.

The good news? I haven’t changed, not much. I’m still out doing hilariously ill-advised things* and I’m still just dying to tell you about them, but there’s this whole adult thing to contend with now, which brings us to a discussion of appearances.

Editor’s Note: Except this winter. I didn’t do ANYTHING all winter.

You have heard the “those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind” refrain before, which is a snappy little quote that isn’t really true at all. Appearances matter, and if you don’t think so, try masturbating in public sometime. I mean, why not? Those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind. That dude by the mall fountain covering the eyes of his confused children? Fuck that guy. Your mom is totally cool with it.

Most how-to-live-your-life quotes are bullshit – life is about learning to dance in the rain? Really? You’re analogizing your life with a rainstorm? – but the appearance one bothers me as much as any. Appearances do matter, and they’re the reason this blog has mostly gone dark. As many of you know, I teach school now, and that carries a few more responsibilities than I had as a sportswriter.

It may come as a shock, I know, but people aren’t that concerned with your booze-soaked womanizing when you’re writing about a ballgame – in fact, it used to be the default for the profession. Show up a little loose to the event, make a few sexist jokes in the box, hit the bar after filing your story, and so long as you didn’t accidentally write “Fuck” in the headline, you were OK.

When tasked with schooling the nation’s youth, however, the League of Adults looks with a pre-furrowed brow. Drink if you want, they say, chase women if you must, but do us a solid and keep that shit quiet. Now, ten years ago, this was no problem. If you were to be caught boozing, it was only going to be if you showed up in the newspaper or smelled of it during recess. Today, what with Facebook and all, little Sophie’s parents have a shorter route to your secrets. Or, rather, your would’ve been secrets, set free when your friends flooded the zone with pics of you “asleep” on the sidewalk.

Is this to say you can’t be doing a bang up job as a third grade teacher while doing a bang up job on the weekends? It is not. In fact, God save the adult with a life. But appearances matter. And that’s why I’m making fewer of them.

Don't Quote Me

I love quotes. Good quotes, anyway...that inside joke stuff people put on their Facebook page is beyond lame. Anyway, at their best, quotes can be insightful and illuminating, powerful and pointed. Great thoughts can be conveyed in a perfect one, while others are effortlessly humorous or purposely abstract. They are snapshots, the cliff notes of ideas. Suitably detailed life lessons aren’t so easily remembered; the quotable are aware.

For ease of communication, the quote distillation process often sifts out nuance and context. Today, we take a quote at face value.
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The quote: “Live like you were dying.”
The take-away: Life is short, so live it to the fullest. Tell your family you love them, do what you’ve always wanted, find what’s important and focus on it.

Recently popularized by an eponymous song by Tim McGraw (I had to Google that), the “live like you were dying” concept isn’t a fresh one, it’s just “Live every day like it was your last,” with a new bow on top.

Taken literally: Living like you were dying is a great notion, if not the way the song draws it up. Faith’s husband croons about sky diving, Rocky Mountain climbing, and riding bulls named after mustaches, but figuring out what you were dying from should probably be your first order of business, or at least well before any bull riding shenanigans.

Do you need surgery to remove a bowel obstruction? Maybe a bullet wound stitched up? If it’s just old age, knocking out that will is a good idea before the grandkids start fighting over who gets the Buick. Whatever the case, you’re probably not in good enough shape to climb the Rocky Fucking Mountains.

Anyway, did I mention that this would all be, you know, super sad? I mean, your constantly-preparing-for-death shtick is going to prompt multiple crying bouts a day, at least five by your mother alone. Not only that, but folks are going to get confused, particularly if you aren’t actually dying. If you’re sporting a clean bill of health at 30 and start blowing the kid’s college fund because you always wanted to name a fleet of Harley’s after Santa’s reindeer, well, your wife is moderately more likely to cut off your balls than she was previously.

Tim McGraw has drawn up a nice song here. Or, rather, some nameless lyricist has, because Timmy hasn’t done a one good thing since Indian Outlaw.

My advice? Live as though you are aware you’ll die at some point, but be sure not to flake out at work just yet. And, unless you’ve always wanted to see a plastic surgeon, avoid bulls.

All his friends call him Bear Claw.