Last week we discussed my astonishing level of immaturity and my complete inability or willingness to censor myself. Most rational human beings were born with a filter in their heads. You know, the one between your brain and your mouth that determines whether or not what you are thinking can be put to words without offending someone. I unfortunately was constructed without this feature. I can only assume it’s the result of a birth defect. Hence my thought-to-verbiage process doesn’t always go through the editing department before I blurt something out. I apologize to any “mixed company” I’ve ever been in whose ability to hear and conjure mental images have ever been unwillingly assaulted by my rants.
I told a few stories to site examples of how my sense of humor is not always appreciated or understood by everyone. I often find myself in awkward situations during which I don’t always get the response I was hoping for to things that I find humorous. The more I wrote, the more stories I thought of to illustrate this concept. So without further adieu, here are a few more true stories to provide you with reasons to question my sanity.
Working behind a bar, I have call on a nightly basis to engage in conversations with people as part of my job. Sometimes I know these people, but very often I do not. Living and working in a resort town, there is always a steady turnover and influx of new folks to chat with. I always try to find some common ground topics to discuss with people regardless of their age or background. If you are willing to dig deep enough, you can find something to discuss with just about anyone.
Sometimes it’s harder than others. These are the situations when I go to my “fall backs” and talk about things I know. More often than not, my go-to subject is my children. This is my absolute favorite topic to talk about and one of only two that I can speak of intelligibly. The other being bad 70’s and 80’s music performed by one hit wonders. I’m not proud of it, but I’m like some kind of savant with that crap. Perhaps not the loftiest two topics, but that’s what I bring to the table. I’m not one of those bartenders who will perform cheesy parlor tricks or recite bad jokes I read in mass e-mails to entertain you. Sorry if that is what you are looking for, but it’s just not in my chemical make- up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it is absolutely thrilling to many to see a simulated crab walking across a bar by twisting the corners of a beverage napkin and rolling it on a piece of fruit. But it’s just not me.
Back to the subject of my kids. I’m not one of those annoying parents who just spews forth unwanted information about them unless solicited. At least, I don’t think I am. But once someone has asked me about them, I could go on for hours. As I’ve stated, they are my favorite subject and possibly the only things I’ve ever done that I’m truly proud of. I’m in a unique situation as a parent having started spawning very early in life and then resuming the process again as I got up in age. So there is a substantial age gap between my eldest child and my youngest. The product of my procreation at the former end of that spectrum will be of legal drinking age on his next birthday—not exactly a source of comfort to me. He is a genetic reproduction of me as the result of what I like to call “The Mother’s Curse”. When I was about sixteen years old and a complete ass in every sense of the word, my Mom looked me square in the eye one day in anger and said,
“I hope you have a son exactly like you one day!”
I found this humorous at the time, but now as a man in my forties with a host of disturbing images in the rearview mirror of my vehicle of life, I’m no longer laughing. My Mother however viewing this from her seat in Heaven is no doubt getting quite a chuckle out of my situation.
While discussing my children and their ages with my customers, not a week goes by that I don’t have someone say to me,
“You don’t look old enough to have a child that age”.
I’m not bragging by any means. It’s simply a combination of the fact that I act like I’m fourteen years old and that I keep the lights in the bar dim enough that they can’t see the grey hair and wrinkles. Whenever some stranger unwittingly flatters me with this statement, I always give them my standard response. Which is:
“Yeah, I was only nine when he was born”.
This usually invokes laughter from the participants. Most people would leave it at that, but I invariably follow it up with,
“It was one of those weird student/ teacher relationships.”
Yet again, the conversation could end there humorously. But true to form, me being me, I’ve found the line in the sand and I now feel inexplicably compelled to cross it. This is when I say,
“The creepy part is that I was home schooled.”
And then I just walk away as if I have something to do at the other end of the bar. A bit warped, I know, but it’s fun for me. The subsequent responses vary.
I think I might have just earned myself the “disclaimer” paragraph at the end of my column from the editing department…AGAIN.
Another example of me learning that not everyone shares my sense of humor happened in my early twenties. At this juncture in my life I was not exactly notorious for my sound decision making skills. Retrospectively speaking, that era could best be described as, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
I was visiting the home of some friends and they had a cat. They treated their feline friend as if it were their own child. They were one of those couples with no intention of bearing any human offspring so their fondness for the whiskered menace was understandable. But this cat for some reason hated me and constantly made sure that I knew it. On this particular night, my thought process was by no means the result of sobriety or clarity. I had noticed that my friends had recently received a large package in the mail that had been draped in sheets of bubble wrap. For reasons I still to this day cannot explain, an idea was hatched in my demented brain. I decided to play a little practical joke.
While no one was paying attention to me, I discreetly grabbed the empty box and the bubble wrap and went into the other room. I found my way to where my friends kept the litter box for the evil cat. I then emptied the litter from the cat’s box into the empty cardboard box. After which, I cut the sheet of bubble wrap to the exact dimensions of the bottom of the cat box. After lining the base of kitty’s crap receptacle with the bubble paper, I then covered it with the litter camouflaging the fun little pockets of air just begging to be popped.
Apparently, the house lion didn’t have call to void itself again until about 4:00 a.m., long after my hosts had gone to bed, and long after I had gone home completely forgetting about my mischievous deed. I don’t think I need to go into graphic details about what woke my friends up that night, but I think you get the point. As a result of the incident, the cat developed a bit of a nervous stomach condition. This would probably be bad enough without the fact that he never, ever went near the litter box again. For some reason, even though there were several people at the party that night, my friends instinctively knew who was responsible for the ordeal. I was never invited over again. I’m not sure why.
Incidentally, before I get put on PETA’s watch list, the cat enjoyed a very lengthy and healthy life—nine of them in fact. I also now have a cat of my own. So, you see how sometimes not everyone shares my sense of humor?
Thanks for playing along.
Until next week,
Syd Nichols
