GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #416: THE FIRST TIME I EVER DROVE

This is probably how Gramps saw me at the time

 

I remember the first time I got behind the wheel of a car and drove. I terrified everyone involved. I was about five years old.

Gramps had a boat of a Chevy in those days. I watched The Dukes of Hazzard religiously as a child, so it should come as no surprise that I didn't open the door of the car to get in. No, I jumped through the window feet first like them Duke boys. It irritated the shit out of Mom and Grandma, but Gramps thought it was fine. I remember long night drives while laying on the shelf just below the back glass of this car. The car had seatbelts, but we never wore them. Sometimes I marvel at how I survived my childhood.

Anyway, the day in question, Gramps was supposed to take me to preschool to drop me off. He'd already started the car, but he forgot something inside, so he went back in the house. At the time, I used to pretend to drive every chance I got. Usually the car wasn't on, so I didn't expect anything to happen when I grabbed the shifter and put the car into reverse.

The car slowly moved backwards down the driveway toward the street. For a second I panicked, but then I realized I was driving, and that was pretty cool. My feet couldn't reach the pedal, thankfully, so the car continued to crawl backwards. I steered the car pretty well, if I don't say so myself, looking back just like Gramps always did when in reverse. Well, I had to boost myself up a bit. Gramps always put his arm over the top of the bench seat when doing this. I grabbed the top and pulled myself up so I could see.

I reached the street, where I was supposed to turn the wheel, but I realized that I was supposed to hit the brake while doing this. Like I said, my foot couldn't reach, and that's when true panic set in. I realized I had no idea what the fuck I was doing, and I was powerless to stop the vehicle as it backed up into the neighbor's driveway across the street from home. Very slowly the back of the car approached their garage door, and I figured that I was just going to crash into it. I braced for impact.

Gramps suddenly appeared next to the car, and he reached into the window and threw the car into park. I was going slow enough that it didn't throw out the transmission or anything, but he looked scared as all shit. He caught his breath, and then fear turned to anger, and he yelled at me for a while. As he should have, I think.

Guess who stopped playing driving games after that. This guy, right here. *hooks thumbs back*

Gramps had to run pretty quickly to catch up with me. I wish I'd seen it because he was never much of a runner. I don't think I've ever seen him run in his entire life. I'm sure it would have been a scene to behold.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #415: HIGH SCHOOL BATHROOMS

 At work there are two stalls in the men's room, and one of them has a door that never closes. No matter what you do, it will always open on you.

That made me think about something. I remembered in high school, none of the stalls in the men's room had doors. I was the kid who never went to the bathroom at school. The main reason was that I really didn't want to go to that horrorshow of a bathroom. I also didn't want to have to take a shit because of the lack of doors. I went through a lot of indignities, including the horrible shower room after PE, but one thing I couldn't (and still can't) do is shit in front of others. I know no one is looking. No one wants to see that. At the same time, I don't want the mere risk of someone looking at me while I strain and grunt and sometimes do gymnastics to get a shit out of me. Shitting is a very private thing for me.

Do you know why there were no doors on the stalls? The faculty and staff were deathly afraid that someone might be sneaking a smoke in there. Can't have that, now, can we? It's like it's the end of the fucking world if a kid smoked a cigarette in the bathroom. Thankfully the smokers had plenty of other places to indulge themselves. But honestly? If you can't tell whether or not someone is smoking behind a closed toilet stall? You might not be all that bright, anyway.

So as I thought about those old days, I also thought about these new days. A lot of stuff has changed since I was a kid. I have to wonder if this is one of them. Like, do kids still destroy other people's property just for the sheer hell of it? Do kids still fire bottle rockets at each other? And do they have to deal with the indignity of shitting in front of their peers?

I'd wager not. In this day and age when adults actually do care about kids' feelings (or at the very least they to pretend to), there's no way there are doorless stalls in high school bathrooms.

Right?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #414: CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED

To the best of my memory, I had this one.

 

So I watched The Many Saints of Newark when it came out, and I liked it. It was good. Not great. But something happened in it that reminded me slightly of my own childhood. There is a scene where a young Tony Soprano is reading a comic book. It's the Classics Illustrated version of Ivanhoe. When he's caught, he's given shit for not reading superhero comics like a regular kid.

It didn't happen that way in my own childhood, but it kinda-sorta happened. Aside from reading actual books, I had a collection of Classics Illustrated given to me by my paternal grandmother. She was a teacher, so it was very important to her that I became a reader. She was a little late to the party on that one. Mom had already started me reading at a very early age. I've been told that my first word was "book."

My favorites of the CI issues were A Christmas Carol and a collection of Edgar Allan Poe stories. But the best was probably Poe's The Gold Bug. That was a lot of fun.

A lot of people know my love of comic books, but they're puzzled that I have no love of superhero comics. That started at a pretty early age for me. My dad tried to get me into them, and I still have copies of Spider-Man and Incredible Hulk that he got for me, but even then I thought they were kind of stupid. I liked the TV shows, but the comics bored the hell out of me. I stuck to the Classics Illustrated books until I discovered GI Joe and Transformers. Those books were the shit! They were so good that when Marvel canceled them both, I gave up on comics entirely and refused to read another one until my friend, CJ, put a copy of Evil Ernie into my hands during senior year of high school. I still don't read superhero books, unless they're written by someone I respect a great deal. I only read one superhero book currently: Batman: Reptilian. That's because Garth Ennis is writing it.

I still have my Classics Illustrated books somewhere. I think I know where, but they're under a lot of other stuff right now. Very hard to get to them. I'm thinking I should dig 'em out again to see if they still have the same power.

Well shit. It just occurred to me that not all of them were Classics Illustrated, after all. Some were the knockoff King Classics. But what the hell. Look at that glorious cover!

Behold! the glory!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #413: TM

Words to live by

 

When I first heard of Transcendental Meditation it was as a kid because my parents loved the Beatles. It seemed kind of silly to me, so I forgot the whole thing. And then I saw Twin Peaks when I was a bit older, and it interested me a little more, but not enough to try it. And then I read David Lynch's Catching the Big Fish, and I figured, why not?

First of all, and this is very important, the way I use TM is *not* to transcend or do anything spiritual. That still sounds very silly to me. As far as I can tell, Lynch doesn't use it for that, either. From my interpretation, it helps him think a lot clearer, and it does the same thing for me. It clears my head, and it helps me think about things from different angles.

Remember a while back when I talked about teaching myself to cook? TM is how I did it.

So this might help you, too. This is what I do.

I mediate twice a day (if I'm lucky). Once in the morning before work, once in the evening after work. I set twenty minutes aside for each session. You're supposed to find somewhere quiet with no distractions, but I don't have that luxury. I live close to the expressway and the train tracks, which are constantly noisy. Birds nest just outside my bedroom window, and the neighbor has a dog that barks constantly. To say nothing of screaming children walking through the alley behind my house.

But I do the best with what I've got. I sit comfortably. I cross my legs, but that's not important. Just so long as I'm comfortable, I can meditate. I close my eyes, and for the next twenty minutes I say my mantra over and over again in my head.

It important to choose a mantra that doesn't get said in regular conversation. It's like training an attack dog. The attack word should not be something someone might say accidentally around your dog. The mantra itself means nothing. It's just a thing for you to concentrate on. For example, I use a made up word. You're not supposed to say what it is to anyone else. That's probably bullshit, but I won't mention it here.

There are risks. Sometimes your thoughts will intrude on your mantra. That's natural. Get back to your mantra as soon as you can. You might start getting itches all over your body. Some will say to ignore it, but I find that if I do, all I can think about are the itches, so just scratch 'em and get back to the mantra as soon as possible. And the mantra might start morphing on you into another word. Try to stay focused.

By the time twenty minutes are up, you won't even think it was twenty. Today I thought I was meditating for ten minutes when my alarm went off and brought me out of it.

It refreshes the mind and promotes deeper thought. I recommend it.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #412: MY SECRET ROSE

 A few months back, when I walked from my car to the office building, I would see a hidden rose in the bushes next to the sidewalk. It was way back in there, surrounded by plenty of plants so it was hard to see. I only noticed because I saw a flash of red one day and decided to check it out. It was as perfect as a rose could be, and it was pleasant to look at. It gave me a moment of beauty before I punched in and slogged through my workday. I only looked for maybe five seconds each time, but it was enough. I'm pretty sure no one else looked at it. Everyone who walks up to that building watches the doors, probably because they know they're in for a shitty 8-hour day.

Naturally, the rose started dying. Its petals withered and fell away until only a bulb on a stalk remained, and soon that, too, was gone. I missed it.

Earlier this week a new rose appeared, and I was glad to have my moment of beauty once again. My life sucks. I know, that doesn't make me special. Still, we need to get our moments of beauty where we can get them.

Yesterday someone must have cut it out of the ground. I didn't see it go through the process of dying. It was there one day, gone the next, stalk and all. That irritated me. I liked it where it was.

Here's something you might not know about me. I don't get flowers for romantic partners. Never. There are two reasons. The most important is because I like them to remain alive and in the ground where they can be their most beautiful. I don't want to be responsible for their deaths. The secondary reason is because when they're in the ground, they're removing deadly CO2 from the air and giving us precious oxygen.

Wait, I hear you say. Why don't you get them fake flowers? Well, I did that once, and the woman I gave them to advised me that fake flowers aren't a good substitute for real ones. It's actually kind of tacky. I saw her point and adopted it.

So yeah. I advise leaving flowers in the ground where they belong. Also, stick to chocolates as a romantic gift.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #411: BAND PICTURE

 Recently on Twitter I've noticed people posting pictures of themselves that look like band pictures. I don't have any of those of me, or at least I don't think so. But it did bring to mind a moment from about two years ago in which I felt like I was in a punk band's picture.

For those who don't know me, I'm very much against consuming fruits and vegetables. I can tolerate apples, corn, carrots, watermelon and pears, but it doesn't mean I like it. I steer clear whenever possible.

So I was hanging out with a friend, and I was getting ready to leave. She was very concerned that I'm not getting enough potassium. To be fair, she was right. My kidneys have tried to kill me for this very reason. It's why I take potassium supplements these days.

As I was about to leave, she confronted me with a banana. "You don't get to leave unless you eat this."

No way, I told her. Not just no, but fuck no.

"Fine. Just take a bite, okay?"

Nope.

She got fed up with me to the point where she decided she was going to make me eat it. She's a pretty strong person. I remember once when she felt that she had to teach me self-defense, mostly against my will, and she accidentally punched me in the face. It was a solid hit. So it was very much within the realm of possibility that she actually could make me eat it.

I tried to escape, but resistance was futile. She had me on the kitchen floor, sitting on my stomach, her robe open, exposing her nudity beneath. And she held that banana like it was a knife she was going to stab me with.

In that moment I knew this image should be on the cover of a punk album. I really wish someone had taken a picture of that.

Anyway, she gave up and let me go. Bananas are fucking disgusting. They're slimy and they smell terrible. I'm very glad I didn't get that thing in my mouth.

And so I live to face another day . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #410: A SUIT OF ARMOR

 

When I was a kid, all I ever really wanted out of life was to have a suit of armor in my bedroom. This passion came from horror movies and cartoons. Imagine my surprise when I went to my stepfather's parents' place, and they had a suit of armor. I thought it was the greatest thing ever.

Quick side story: Scary German Guy from Monster Squad always reminded me of my stepfather's dad. He looked older than SGG, but otherwise it was pretty spot on. He fought in WWII, and I'm not sure which side he fought on. When I was a kid he gave me a bunch of coins, and many of them were from Nazi Germany, swastika and all. I'm kinda hoping he just picked those up while he was there as mementos, but, well. Oddly enough, both he and my second stepmom's dad were in WWII, and they both lost the same finger, so they could do the magic trick where you slide your thumb down, pretending it's a finger, but they could do it really fucking well.

Anyway, I'd hang out around that suit of armor wondering if it was possible to convince them to part with it in the interest of granting a child's finest wish. Never happened. But they gave me a plastic army dude with a parachute, and the top of their staircase was the perfect spot to drop him. Poor bastard's parachute never fully opened, and he always dropped like a rock. But he got to die at the feet of a suit of armor, which I think he would have liked.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. I had a bunch of shit to do, so I left home. As I was driving by the front I saw my neighbor from two doors down had a yard sale going on.

AND HE WAS SELLING A SUIT OF ARMOR!

I had to keep going on my way, but I vowed that if it was still there when I got back, I would buy it, no matter the price. Yeah, that's an irrational thought, especially since I don't really have all that much money, and I have no idea where I'd put a suit of armor in this cluttered house. But goddammit, I wanted that suit of armor.

Imagine my disappointment when I got home and saw it was gone. Motherfucker.

Fuck.