My Boss Can Beat Up Your Boss

For some reason my boss thinks I grew up wearing a trench coat.

Come on now that doesn’t fit me at all, does it? I have never been a part of the mafia, or listened to a full verse of any song by Insane Clown Posse.  I am no Jared Burton. 

For full effect, download “Workin’ For The Man” by PJ Harvey, and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. 

On most Friday afternoons, the majority of our country’s population would be using their personal blogs to vent about how awful their boss is, how power-hungry, how over-working, or how bald, fat, and ugly he is, but in my situation that’s not the case.  I’ve got a great boss, a heck of a supervisor, a man that secretly steals my phone, hacks my Facebook account, and uploads the status, “Karl Malone is the most overrated basketball player of all time.” Come on now, what’s not to L-word about this guy?

Now don’t misinterpret me on this post, this is by no means a form of brown-nosing, or an attempt to get on my bosses good side and hope for a raise in the future.  For all I know the man will never read this post.  Ever.  He’s practically deleted himself from the world of social media, and makes fun of me for actually thinking that blogs have value.  Read this?  Yeah right.  Brown-nosing is when I laugh at stupid jokes when they’re not funny and tell someone that their daughter doesn’t look like a one-legged Rottweiler with Bell’s palsy. 

But in all seriousness, my boss, is “the shiz” as Snoop Dogg would say.  He’s a man you would want on your team no matter what sport you’re playing; basketball, croquet, or jai alai.  The guy will fight for you when he doesn’t have to, build you up when you need it the most, and can eat an entire box of Rice Krispie Treats cereal in one sitting.  Yeah, he’s that kind of guy.   

Historically, bosses have been given a bad stereotype, like they’re the ones who are anal-retentive, showing up to work with navy suspenders and a cornflower blue tie on Tuesdays, annoying you to death by their constant hounding and repetitive requests to come in Saturday morning and finish a departmental inventory of socks.  My boss, he’s none of that. My boss dumps a quart of salt in your ice water when you’re not looking, and then makes you feel like a thousand bucks by genuinely complimenting you on a 30-second video clip that’s just barely above par.  Yeah, he’s kind of a big deal.   

Now you may be shaking your head and saying to yourself, “Brock, your boss really isn’t that cool, my boss is equal to, or greater than the caliber of your boss in levels of quality.”  Oh yeah, well did your boss help you make a 70-foot March Madness bracket on the windows of your office last March?  Does your boss give you a diet and workout regiment for how to run a marathon?  Can your boss do a spot-on impression of Professor Fink from “The Simpsons”?

My Boss/Professor Fink: “As you can see, the uh, clavin, time warp transmogrifier is out of whack for all future tomfoolery, clavin.”

Yeah, now your boss looks like Kevin Spacey’s character in the film, “Horrible Bosses”; a cornflower blue paper pusher with 37 pieces of flair on who’s asking if you got the memo on the cover sheet for those TPS reports.  My boss eats pieces of crap like that for breakfast every day of the week.  The guy’s got an English degree and has actually done something with it, besides settling for an assistant librarian’s job in Bonanza, Oregon.

Without question, where I’m currently working is by far the best job I have had in my entire life, and the same can be said about the man I’m working for.  A guy who works for one-hundredth of his actual value, and has a mean mid-range jump shot to boot.  I still haven’t figured out where he got his suspicion about me being a part of the trench coat mafia when I was an undergraduate, but either way, he’s a big reason why I enjoy showing up to work every morning. 

And who knows, maybe one of these days I’ll dig up my black leather slicker and surprise the old guy.  

If I Die Young

Statistically speaking I have now narrowed down the three most heavily trafficked time slots on the Internet: Tuesday evenings between seven and eight, Friday afternoons from two to three, and Sunday mornings somewhere in between eleven and one.  I only tell you this because it has been a great discovery in helping me see when to publish this grand old blog of mine and get the most readers.  83% of you are going to browse Facebook on Tuesday night just after finishing “Pretty Little Liars”, or on Fridays after lunch when you have already checked out of work and are ready for the weekend, or also on Sunday mornings when your Sunday School teacher forgot to read the manual on how not to suck at teaching the gospel.  It’s because of this that I will consistently reward you with the best blogposts you’ll read all week. 

Thanks for being such a reliable clientele.

For full effect, download “Old Man” by Neil Young, and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. 

Before I delve into diabetic chaps with braided ear hair, I would like to make a small suggestion that perhaps may improve the quality of your life.  When your words are on display, whether in a public forum or in a massive e-mail sent to your fellow employees, be a good chap and don’t use the most elaborate, bewildering, polysyllabic words possible to try and impress those around you.  We don’t care that you lay in bed at night and use the thesaurus app to find more extensive language that will put you a level up on the rest of the field who simply use “normal” vocabulary.  Besides, we all know that you’re only going to amount to being an assistant city librarian with an Associates Degree in English anyway, so why look like a fool trying to astonish everybody with big words?  You’re better than that and you know it.  

Anyway, back to ear hair.

Yesterday afternoon the Rhinestone Cowboy and myself took a nice spring ride across St. George as we continued our preparation for that giant triathlon thingy happening in a few weeks.  Great times, I will say.  I didn’t care about the young couple riding those weird looking giant tricycles, or those 100-year old Grandmas picking up their Scottish Terrier’s poop on the trail, they weren’t in the way at all.  Just being outside, with a nice spring wind on our backs, our legs pounding away the miles while the sun beat down on us; it was a glorious day I tell you. 

I sound like I’m writing some kind of romance novel here that stay at home Moms would drool over. 

Ginger protagonist: “And then I saw him there, standing upright in the field of lilies.  He reached over to me and…”

Alright, enough of that… So we’re wrapping up our ride, our legs barely turning the gears as we’re crossing an intersection, when a geezer who might as well be Colonel Sanders’ little brother yells at us while we pass him by.

Little Colonel Sanders: “SLOW DOWN!”

I did a double take in my head wondering if the wrinkled senior was saying that in all seriousness, or if perhaps his granddaughter might have perhaps taught him the delicate art of sarcasm.  He must have been joking.  After all, we were barely moving, nay, crawling past the man.  We were pedaling so slow I nearly lost my entire balance and collapsed on the road, yet this KFC wannabe was asking us to slow down?

Is this what happens when we get old?  Do we begin to see the world at an actual snail’s pace?

We often mock and criticize the elderly for being pioneers of the geriatric, and stubbornly living in their own generation, unable to think outside the box or be able to keep up with the world going on around them, but is this some sort of mental gloss that gets waxed over everybody’s temporal lobes once they hit 70?  Is there a point when we will all wake up in the morning, stare at our wrinkled, grey, beehive-haircutted heads and say, “Alright, I’m done! No more progression! I’m in my own world from here on out, and nobody better ever get in my way!”

Scary to think about, but I think that’s the verdict for everyone

At times I do feel like an old man, like I am pulling a classic Keith Tronic, complaining about giving up the ideal parking spot for my Honda Pilot, or how I need to invest in a more reliable leather couch, and I’m not always proud of that.  The world is a railway express every single day of our lives, with more decisions, responsibilities, and executions to be handled on a non-stop basis. But at what point will we all throw in the towel, live on our own time, and turn to a pair of young’ns walking their bikes past us on the intersection and yell at them to “SLOW DOWN”!?

Whenever that is, I just won’t use really big words.  That way I’ll avoid being stereotyped as both old, and a douchebag.  

Driving Miss Harvey

I think I fell in L-word once.  Well, almost. 

When I was 17 years old a beautiful girl with intoxicating black hair knocked on my apartment door and asked if anyone was going north for the weekend.  This is the part where you slow time down to a standstill with “Lady in Red” playing in the background while I nod my head slowly and have a Subway sandwich falling out of my mouth, stunned by the surprise maiden’s beauty. 

“Uh, yeah… I am.” I said.  I really wasn’t.

“Great.  Well how about we take off in half an hour?  Does that work for you?” she asked.

I nodded my head in a stupor. 

“You are such a lifesaver.  Thank you SO much! Oh and my name’s Chelsey.  Chelsey Harvey.”

I smiled like a twitterpated third-grader and watched her walk back to her apartment.  I think this is what Hollywood screenwriters call “being smitten”.  You see kids, I had no reason whatsoever to drive five hours north that weekend, none at all.  In fact, that distance was one of the main reasons I went to college in the first place; to get as far away from the place that I wasn’t proud to call home, only popping back in every third Christmas when I had to.  But when Miss Harvey knocked on my door and asked for a ride, all of my reasoning went out the window. That’s usually the case when 17-year old pimples like myself get a taste of what society calls “the L-word”.

In my eyes, Miss Harvey was out of my league.  WAY, out of my league.  She was a drop-dead gorgeous dancer with standards and values that put Mother Teresa to shame. Meanwhile, I was a 17-year old nincompoop living off nachos and Mt. Dew who used Chris Farley as a role model.  Out of my league I tell you. I didn’t even feel like I belonged in the same time zone as this girl, let alone to be used as her personal chauffer.  

“You have a lot of music in here” she asked me on the ride home.  “Do you like to sing or something?”

I smiled back at her.  “Well, I was in choir back in high school, but I’m nothin’ special.”

Her eyes lit up. “Really?  Sing me something.  Anything!  I want to hear!”

This is the part where the clock on my dashboard clicked just after midnight, and the mile markers rolled on somewhere in the mid 150’s, and I bashfully sang an acoustic version of “More Than Words” with BBMak as my accompaniment.  Meanwhile Miss Harvey sat wide-eyed in the passenger bucket seat and savored every note that rolled off my tongue. 

“Sing it again.” She said when the final chord faded out.   

I gave her a puzzled look back.

“Again.  Sing it again.  Or sing me something else.  You are incredible!  And I just want to hear you sing to me.”

Hearing those words coming from who I pictured as the most beautiful girl I had laid eyes on in my entire 17-year existence will really boost a teenager’s self esteem.  Hearing those words made me feel like I was starting to fall in L-word with someone. Shocking, I know. 

And that’s how it began.  Every few weeks Miss Harvey would come knocking on cue on a Friday afternoon, ask around if anyone was headed north, in which I would toss whatever responsibilities and prior engagements I had to the side and pack up my 92 Nissan pickup with our duffel bags. I didn’t care about loads of homework, potential work shifts, or anything else for that matter, my life revolved around this girl, whenever she needed a lift. 

For two years we did this.  Spur of the moment trips where the two of us would hit the road together.  Countless rides were shared where she would tell me about her family, about her dancing career, about her best friend who was getting ready to go on a mission, and I would sing to her for hours while we passed Fillmore and Beaver and Cedar City, with her restarting the songs every time I thought she had drifted off to sleep. Every few weeks for two whole years we just shared the road together. I sang, she talked, and the miles just passed us by.  You can’t write a better chick-flick plot, I’m telling you. 

At that point in my life, rides with Miss Harvey were some of the only things that I looked forward to. They were my motivation to be a better person, to truly care for another individual whole-heartedly, to sacrifice time, money, and passing grades in History 1700 just to be with another person.  But, as with everything in life, things change. People go different ways.  I packed my bags for two years in Virginia, and she had one of those formal ceremonies that changed her last name to Peterson. We never had our rides anymore, and as one of my only regrets in life, I never got to tell the girl that I think I loved her.

As cliché as the phrase sounds, hindsight truly is always 20/20.        

I don’t think this story has been triggered by a rush of emotions, or that I’m at the precipice of a serious relationship and there is someone I think I’m truly falling for, that’s not the case at all.  I’m just a young buck who lives vicariously through Ted Mosby and still thinks Dumb and Dumber is a quality movie.  All I’m saying is this: if at some point in my meager existence I was willing to do absolutely anything and everything I could to please a girl who I hands down didn’t deserve; if those feelings were stirred somehow in the slightest degree whatsoever, then at least I know they exist. That they are real, that true L-word really is out there.   

And maybe I’ll feel those same things again the next time a random girl knocks on my door needing a ride somewhere.

The Best Ten Seconds

I often condemn social media for the shortchanging of our relationships.  But this time, I’m kind of a fan. 

For full effect, download “As Good As I Once Was” by Toby Keith and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. 

On a side note, I would like to give a shout out to Asia the EMT who is pulling an all-nighter, preparing to be gooped up with electrodes and monitored while she drools and shakes in her sleep.  Been there, done that, no fun. 

Sitting in a Las Vegas high school gymnasium talking to 17-year olds isn’t really the most desirable way to turn over another calendar year of my life, but hey, I gots kids to feed man, I gots to pay da bills! Maybe my slang accent doesn’t sound as realistic with the voice in your head reading that last sentence, but I think I do a pretty good job pulling that off when I’m hopped up in a car stuffed full of cheesecake.    

Birthdays aren’t really my thing.  I’m not a fan of them whatsoever.  They’re that awkward moment when you’re standing on the porch of your prom date in the ruffled pink dress who is ten levels out of your league, and you uncomfortably give her a side hug goodnight.  Birthdays are that feeling; all day long.  A streaming inventory of forced responses from people telling you how much they L-word you, when in reality, you’re just eh…to them. 

I remember when I turned seven years old and my Grandpa took me for a night on the town where he said we would “shop till we dropped.”  Go ahead and picture a 58-year old Air Force Colonel pushing a shopping cart full of K-mart toys around with an ornery little brat like me walking next to him.  Those certainly were some of the best days of my life.  And boy, do I sure miss that old man.   

Times have changed, and thanks to Mark Zuckerberg every one of us can now give out a ten-second digital congratulations once a year whenever we check the upper right hand corner of our Facebook feed.  The birthday prompt that we all see is one of the most half-hearted reminders of the validity in our relationships, and every day it causes us to second guess ourselves whether or not the name in the corner is deserving of a 15-character celebratory salutation.

The cynic inside of me would normally rip this social media glitch to shreds, but for some reason that’s just not me anymore.  I could of course blame this on the fact that I might be evolving a bit wiser as the years pass by, or that I’ve let go of some past aggression due to the fact that “How I Met Your Mother” has been renewed for a 9^th season, but whatever it is, I L-worded how social media came through yesterday in a big way. 

Because yesterday, hundreds of you showed that you cared about me for ten seconds.  And that made the difference. 

I heard from everybody.  Friends, foes, sisters, co-workers, buddies, ex-girlfriends, buddies ex-girlfriends, old roommates, new roommates, parents, BFFs, wives of BFFs, high school crushes, college crushes, old coaches, old bosses, new bosses, wives of old and new bosses, buddies girlfriends who I met at a wedding last week, old neighbors, aunts, uncles, mortal enemies, anybody and everybody you can think of.  I was bombarded with posts, texts, messages, pokes, likes, any way possible that you could wish me happy birthday in just ten seconds.     

Again, it may have been just a quick swipe of your hand, with your actual feelings for me barely on autopilot as you posted on my wall or sent off that text.  But yesterday, to me, that was ten times better than an off-key group of waitresses at Applebee’s singing one of the many pieces of audible flair that gets regurgitated with a free brownie sundae at least 10 times a day.  Yesterday, the posts, they erased a little part of the Grinch inside of me. 

And as I sat in a high school gymnasium and listened to an overweight fool stumble through a power point about ACT scores, I must say that I was grateful to have some of the greatest people in my life let me know that I matter to them, that I am worth an extra mouse click, that I mean more to them than just a handful of awkward memories of “that one kid with seizures”. Yesterday was one of the best birthdays that I ever had; in the desert, trying to talk high school kids into higher education, with Facebook and a cell phone my only allies to social interaction. Yesterday was some of the best ten seconds that you ever spent in your whole life. 

And I thank you for that.    

When The World Ends

I’m sitting here on a Tuesday afternoon trying to “get all caught up on the blog” as most married women my age say, meanwhile uploading their bi-monthly barrage of infant photos and backcountry crusades in Kanab from last summer. 

That’s fine.  I enjoy pics of a two-year old sitting next to a campfire roasting his first marshmallow, go ahead, post 27 more of the same shot.     

For full effect, download “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Billy Joel, and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. By the way, if there is anyone out there that knows every single word to “We Didn’t Start The Fire” I will give you $20 to prove it to me.  Go ahead, make my day. 

If you’ve been a loyal, dedicated reader of this random piece of work for longer than a year, you may remember the last time I raised an unanswered question; wondering what was the main reason why any of us blog, and why you’re even reading this blog in the first place.  I still haven’t figured out why you continue to devour my posts.  Am I that funny?  Are these words really putting a smile across your face?  Does my blog give you some sort of motivation to be a better person?

I can’t imagine so.  My last two posts were about Cougar Moms and Facebook Executions, those aren’t inspiring at all. 

On another random side note, and this being for future reference, if any of you readers out there are looking to franchise a cupcake store, I would suggest not naming it “Muffintops”.  I’m no business or marketing major, but I can see that being a giant catastrophe that would anger a large demographic of stay-at-home Moms. 

But going back to the original question, why do I blog?  Do I do it for me, for some kind of literary gratification that evolves every post I publish, thus causing a decent influx of comments and Facebook likes?  Do I do it for you so your day might be that much brighter after you read inspiring posts about my former mission companion, next-door neighbor, or old college roommate?

Originally I started doing this blogging thing in order to find common ground with a girl I was hoping to potentially date in the future.  My reasoning was that if she would find my posts to be witty, poignant, and well-worded, then she might find me more of an attractive catch.  (Yes, most men’s logical reasoning makes no sense, I know.)  But as you may remember that relationship ended in an awkward text message debacle and it has just been me and the blog ever since. 

But as the years have now passed, and the rest of the social media world has graduated to a more lethargic way of thinking with Pinterest and FourSquare, blogging has now been given the reputation for being the Grandfather of all Internet communication.  Heck, two of my ambassadors made fun of me today for actually being a dedicated blogger, saying it was outdated and old-fashioned.

Alissa Carlson: “I hate blogging! I’m only doing it for my Humanities class and I think it’s stupid!”

Five-year old me: “No YOU’RE stupid!”

She’s really not, I just get a bit defensive at times. 

Do you want to know the truth as to why I pull out a solid 700-word piece every three days, aside from my mental motivation to make you like me just an ounce more because of the sarcastic metaphor I used mocking schizophrenic girlfriends? Do you want to know what is the real reason I constantly keep writing pieces about the most random topics possible; topics ranging from marathons to Costco?

I do it for my kids.  

This is the part where you give a sour look at your monitor, turn your head to the side at a 45-degree angle, and look up to the ceiling asking yourself, ‘Does Brock have any kids that I don’t know about?’ ‘Is there something that he hasn’t told us yet?’ ‘Is Muffintops really such a bad name for a cupcake store?’

Yes, it’s a terrible name for a cupcake store. 

You see, I haven’t met my kids.  Not yet, anyway.  And for all I know whenever they decide to show up I’m going to turn into a gigantic hypocrite by giving all of you a ridiculous slew of pictures my wife took of them when they decided to smother macaroni and cheese all over their face and smile for the camera.  Yes, I will be that kind of a Father. 

But my kids are my motivation for writing this blog, because I want them to know who I am.  I want them to know what my life was like growing up in St. George, and that other place that shall not be named.  I want them to read the stories about how hilariously amusing my life is, and maybe put a smile on their face whenever they decide to pull out the old, “Book of Brock.”  I want my kids to know about the life that their Dad lived. And what a great life it has been thus far.

Sooner or later the world is going to come to an end.  And let’s face it, the fact that Zombies STILL haven’t gone out of style is an early indication that one day a pandemic virus will turn the world into flesh-eating monsters.  But whenever that happens, and civilization is transformed into a real-life set of “The Walking Dead”, I hope and pray that somewhere these stories get bound and packaged so that my posterity can get a sore stomach laughing at the tales I had to tell. 

That’s a good enough reason, isn’t it?

Welcome To Cougar Town

“Wawama wama wa wamawa” she mouthed. 

I took out Linkin Park from my earphones.  “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“I said, that was one heck of a run.” The mid-life crisis in neon pink spandex said to me.   

“Oh, yeah.  That’s what I’m here for.”

“You do a lot of triathlons then?” She smiled at me.  I looked down at the 4-carat wedding ring stapled to her fake-baked finger. 

“I uh…”

“I read the back of your shirt.  My, you’re probably in great shape.” She said, picking up a matching neon pink towel used only for fashion purposes. 

“Yep.” Plugging back in Linkin Park I shunned the cougar and went back to my regularly scheduled workout routine.

40-year old Cougars are on the lookout everywhere out there, and they’re on a mission to pounce on us single gents if we’re not keeping the eyes in the back of our heads peeled. 

I would say for full comedic effect, download an episode of “Cougar Town” and watch at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post.  But then again, you shouldn’t be put through something as awful as that sitcom.  I don’t care if Abed L-words it, “Cougar Town” is a disgrace. 

Wrinkled women are on the prowl, searching for any type of fully flexed meat they can find that’s half their age.  The above-mentioned scenario is not a hypothetical conversation that I think might happen between a Cougar and a young chap; that conversation in fact DID happen ten days ago, as I was finishing up a run at Gold’s Gym.  It’s because of that conversation that I abandoned the treadmill and graduated to the 160-meter track circling on the second floor above me. 

But the thing is, Cougars aren’t just on treadmills.  Cougars are EVERYWHERE!

Take my run that happened three days ago for instance.  In the midst of a rather lengthy, rather enduring 110 laps around, there appeared four matching 40-year olds who seated themselves on the inner left side, and began a 45-minute stretching session while staking out the prey running ovals around them.  There they sat for almost an hour.  Stretching muscles that don’t even exist on their bodies, just so they could flap their extended eyelashes and bend over with their posteriors facing outward on cue and hope that some dim-witted meathead born in the 80’s would take out his earphones and play a little game of flirting tag with them.  That’s how pathetic these Cougars are.

What is wrong with these women?  Are they in the middle of some kind of mid-life mood swing waking up next to fat comb-overs who wear black socks and brown sandals to bed, which makes them think they can go attract the latest piece of beef jerky walking around Gold’s Gym in a tank top who is old enough to have their grandkids?  Are they psychologically depressed because they feel the side effects of a poor marriage weighing on them to the point that they are justified into having a subconscious affair?  Are they escaped convicts from some mental institution that only houses middle-aged ladies?

You’ve got me.  All I know is that there are fake-baked, wrinkled women with wedding rings in their forties who are on the prowl, thrashing at the bit, out to get what they can’t have; a man half their age.