Five Guys In A Minivan

There’s a story behind me feeding Keith a bite of my frozen banana.

But that story doesn’t really mean much to you. 

Nor does the story about grown men reliving their childhood by singing “The Thong Song” word-for-word just outside Baker, California.  Or when a liberal-themed food kitchen fed us a Cobb salad that Michael Moore had probably just finished washing in his own bidet.  Or when we all peed a little bit, laughing about the time we were going to Kansas and all of the creepy truckers left us abandoned at the pit stop on I-15. 

Those stories don’t mean much to you because you weren’t on the 39-hour road trip to Newport Beach and back.  You weren’t in the back seat covered in fiber gas clouds and Sun Chips.  Nor were you ordering Strawberry Daiquiris in nothing but spandex shorts after a long morning workout with wrinkled women trying to catch a peek of your hot body.  None of those stories mean a thing to you. 

And that’s ok.  Because I’m sure you have stories about what happened in the last 39 hours of your own lives.  They may not be as entertaining as what happened to five guys in a minivan, but they’re your stories, and only you and a handful of others get the inside jokes associated with them.

In the meantime however, just sit back, laugh a little bit at the third-grade looking picture of me feeding a grown man a frozen banana, and slightly envy the non-Instagrammed life that I have.

T-T-Today, Junior!

It’s a God-given gift to be able to tell someone a story and keep them entertained from start to finish.  How people like Adam Sandler get away with telling absolute moronic tales for millions of dollars every other year, well that’s a just a blatant abuse on mankind’s lack of intelligence.   

For full effect, download “The Night Chicago Died” by Paperlace, and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post.

I’m a damn good storyteller.  Along with my overinflated ego, this may be one of the many traits I inherited from my nongenetically-linked Father.  I know I can make you laugh, make you cry, and keep you on the edge of your seat while the clock ticks on well after midnight.  Why else would you click on this link anyway?  You read this blog to hear my stories.  It doesn’t matter if they are imagined, exaggerated, or complete loads of bull crap, you want to hear me tell my tales, and hope to high heaven there is a moral message tagged somewhere in the last few sentences. 

Don’t worry, I’m willing to bet a small smile will crawl past your dimples somewhere near the end of this post.   

There are millions, nay BILLIONS of stories that are happening every single day.  And a small scratch of them get recounted to others, whether in person, over the phone, or even on the Web.  Why do you think Blogs were invented in the first place?  To give English majors a dash of hope that all of their single-serving friends will actually care about that one time when they went to Hawaii and ate grilled pineapple at a local luau.  When honestly, you really don’t care one bit about their vacation, do you?  Really, their storytelling skills are as bad as Arabian donkey tuna, and they should be banned from getting their own personal URL in the first place. 

I know a guy like this.  We’ll call him John Doe for sake of offending him.  Listening to this putz try and recount any event in his life makes me want to give birth to triplets without using an epidural.  By the way, analogies like that are another key to getting your point across, especially if it’s detailed and relatable enough to make a woman wince in pain, remembering that moment when she was dilated to a five. 

John Doe: “So I got up at like 7 or so, which is unusually early because my alarm goes off at like 8:15, 8:20, depending on the morning.  But um, after I showered, ate my oatmeal, brushed my teeth, put gel in my hair, I get a knock on my door.  I walk outside, and my landlady was standing there, and she’s like, ‘Hey, your car lights are on.’ So I was like, ‘K, thanks’, and I walk out there and turn them off and then I come back in and start ironing my pants, you know with like those steam irons, that really press the pleats in the pants, and I’m standing there in my underwear, watching reruns of "Days of our Lives", when out of nowhere, my phone goes off.  I walk over to it, and I read a text message that was sent to me this morning, and I’m all, ‘I don’t get texts this early, and so I pick up my phone, you know, the one that has the Ford logo on the back of it, with the little sparkles on the side, and I read the text message, and it says…”

Me: “SPIT IT OUT MAN!!! SERIOUSLY, JUST GET TO THE POINT!!! HONESTLY, YOU’RE KILLING ME!!!”

This is the part where I throw a handful of cinnamon in his face, pinch his nipples with a stapler, and then smack him upside the head a few times with my cricket bat, which won’t be nearly as painful as the agony he just put me through with all of the ridiculous details he added on to a story that has no ending whatsoever.  What am I supposed to care about, his landlady, his text message, plot-lines of daytime TV dramas? ? For the L-word of humanity, WHAT IS THE POINT OF YOUR ENTIRE CHRONICLE?!?!  

Whew! That felt good.  Almost like I just confessed my sins to Father Morgan, and got a whole burden of ranting off my chest.  Is this what AA feels like?

I guess the moral is that if you’re going to tell me a story, get to the Mother Curse-Wording point.  No one cares about you steaming your undies, the flavor of your oatmeal, or when you actually started this story, pulling the eye boogers out while your alarm was going off.  If you want people to care about any story you wind up to tell them, cut the crap, toss an analogy/metaphor here or there, and get to the point. 

Otherwise, you’re as worthless of a storyteller as Adam Sandler is, post-“Big Daddy”. 

WE'VE GOT A BLEEDER!

For some reason the bubble I live in thinks that not having a wife at the age of 28 means you're on the verge of dying.  Either that, or all you Utahns wonder if I'm now batting for the other team, I have no idea.  And if you didn't understand that last sports reference to homosexuality, well shame on you.

For full effect, download "No Scrubs" by TLC and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post.

I L-word my friends. Seriously I do. All of you reading this I would most likely consider to be a part of my circle of trust.  You really are that awesome.  But for some reason every time we have a conversation longer than 15 seconds why must you ask about my relationship status being single?  And why do you then begin frantically rummaging through your stockpiled list of socially awkward projects in hopes of saving my soul from the mortal damnation of being alone? It makes no sense!

Me: "Yeah, things have been goin' great for me. I've got no complaints."

You: "That's wonderful.  Well are you dating anyone these days?"

Me: "Not really, I date quite a bit but nothing really serious or anything."

Cue shocked/confused/WTF look flashing across your face.

You: "MEDIC! WE'VE GOT A BLEEDER HERE! GET THIS MAN A WIFE, STAT!"

That's the closest description I can come up with to explain how freaked out you come off when I tell you I haven't sent out any wedding invites yet. You piss your pants in panic and grab the nearest stick figure with a skirt and offer her to me like some biblical sacrificial lamb.

Crazy You: "Here Brock, take this maiden. Yes she's $40k in debt, has a full goatee, and was on the most recent episode of "Hoarders", but she is clean, and also in need of a mate. Take her, wed her, and go procreate.  She is yours."

Or there is the psychic premonition that some of you loonies get, convinced that a spiritual prophecy or some dream-like revelation has shown you whom I must be with, when in reality you probably just huffed a little too much Potpourri last night while watching “The Notebook”.

Crazy You: "I just want to tell you that I have had a very strong feeling that this girl, this 41-year old woman with nine cats and three kids, who has no college degree and thinks it's OK to go on blind dates in her pajamas, I just have a feeling that the two of you were meant to be together, and really are soulmates."

This is the part of the conversation where I whack your tear-filled eyes with a lamppost and tell you that I had a spiritual prophecy to give you a concussion.  For the record, the above conversations are not fiction, they have actually happened in my life.  Yes, I may be combining a few of them for comedic effect, but these nutcases are the ones you’re trying to pawn off to me using your lack of matchmaking skills.   

These types of conversations are also what make me lie straight to your face about being in a serious, committed relationship with a girl that does not exist whatsoever.  Oh yes, I’ve created those ladies before, and I have them stashed away for whenever I feel your prodding relationship questions are going to lead to yet another below-mediocre blind date.  Either that or I just tell you I’m gay.  One way or another, I avoid at all costs your last-ditch, hail-Mary efforts to save my soul from a life of miserable celibacy, because I’d much rather be happy by myself, than be depressed with some project.

So please, shut your yappers about my dating life the next time we catch up.  And don’t try and force-feed me your boss’s, second cousin’s BFF with ADD who just got divorced, and someone who you think I’d be a perfect fit for, and if we’re not engaged by June 1^st you’ll be on your knees every night pleading with the good Lord to not smite my unwed soul with a bolt of lightning.  Because conversations like those are what make me want to shove a nine-iron down your throat. 

Me: “MEDIC! WE’VE GOT A BLEEDER HERE! GET THIS BUMBLING JERK SOME COMMON COURTESY, STAT!”     

The Best Four Minutes

No, YOU'RE A Mid-Life Crisis!

Today was a world only big kids live in. 

For full effect, download “A Hazy Shade of Winter” by Simon & Garfunkel and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. 

Days like these can be described as tedious. 

Or repetitive.

Or lackluster. 

Or think of some other synonym for “old and boring” and insert it into the above sentence. 

You know what kinds of days I’m talking about don’t you?  The days when the majority of your attention is focused on filing the correct 1040-D form to recognize your business as an LLC with the IRS and make it so you’re tax exempt, or when you have a staring contest with your computer monitor trying to figure out if the retention data from Fall 2011 to Fall 2012 is comparable with the same retention data pulled from Fall 2012 to Spring 2013. Today was a day when dress slacks and cornflower blue ties replaced cutoff jeans and a Weezer T-shirt. 

That last paragraph was major boring crap, I know.  I’m surprised you’re actually still reading this blog after suffering through that.  If you’re still with me this far, well then I applaud your dedication dear reader, and hopefully these next 500 words won’t bore you out of your stinking mind.  I’ll spice it up and talk about things like Root Beer floats and closet make out sessions. 

Those are things the youngsters inside us all appreciate, right?

Seriously, today was a day where I think a few gray hairs were conceived beneath my own scalp.  It wasn’t a stressful day or a day of pure boring agony, it was just a day where the big kid on campus took a cricket bat to the face of the little kid inside me and told him not to come out to play, and if he did, oh, he knew what was coming to him.  Today was a day where plaid button-ups with wrinkles gave up their Mazda Miata and settled down for the old Chrysler Town & Country. 

50-year old waste of time: “Yeah, so I think I’m gonna go ahead and sell my mid-life crisis, just so I can get something more manageable, more established.  It’s time to really grow up now and accept my adult responsibility.”

Wild Bear: “screw you mid-life crisis! I’m gonna drive a Rogue and stay up Until 1 am drinking Mt. Dew until the day I die! REBELS FOREVER!”

Those “big kids” were only some kind of mythical creature when we were younger, but today was one of those days that proved they exist.  A day where fart noises and “That’s what she said” jokes weren’t appropriate.  Today was an episode of the Congressional Hearings on Offshore Tax Practices live on C-SPAN when you really just wanted to get wasted on Tosh.0 for nine hours.  Yes, today was that kind of a day. 

Where did all of the fun go?  The Friday night sleepovers, the Jell-O eating contests, the whoopee cushion jokes, the fort-making contests in our basements? All of that is showing up less and less the older we all get.  Rather than enjoy the sun on our faces and go set up our homemade sprinkler systems, which would then invoke a water balloon war with our neighbors, we just stare out the window of a government-owned cubicle and calculate the percentage of students that would fall in an underprivileged demographic.

The scary part is that days like these are starting to appear more and more with every passing year.  They’re starting to completely overtake our entire conscious thought process.  With every passing cake day, there will be a fewer percentage of days per year that are spent watching marathons of “Space Jam”, or playing Call of Duty for 13 hours.  Instead, we’ll just find excitement by DVR-ing “60 Minutes” and adding a cover sheet to our TPS reports. 

Are days like these what we are all hoping to attain in life?  Are they our end goal? Our supreme feat? Our final, grown-up, crowning achievement? Because it seems the older we all get, the faster maturity is forced upon us; and sadly, there is nothing we can do about it except stand there like adults and just take our force-fed colonoscopies.  

I think I'm a big kid now.  And that scares the crap out of me.  

Chicks Dig Guys With Kids

“Using a little kid as bait is the easiest way to get chicks.  It’s like taking candy from a baby.”      

-Barney Stinson

You would trust me to watch your kids, wouldn't you?

For full effect, start singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, and hum at naptime volume throughout the duration of this post. After which, go download "Adventures in Babysitting" and enjoy one of the best films to be birthed in the 80's.

The above child seated next to the dog cage is Parker, and he is the son of my BFF Niels.  And yes, I did just use the acronym BFF in this blog, so what, I don’t care.  If you don’t like it just go ahead and STFU.  Parker and I buddied up a few days ago when I was asked to be his personal caretaker for a few hours. Yes kids that is correct, I was asked to be a babysitter.  Please don’t call 911 in a panic.  

This is the part where you remember the YouTube video where Antoine Dodson yells out to the reporter, "Hide yo kids, hide yo wife, cause they be rapin’ errbody round here." 

No, I'm not a rapist. Who do you think I am, Tobias Funke? And if you don't get that last joke, go watch Arrested Development. Trust me. Totally worth your time.

Now you may say, Brock, what do you know about watching kids? You can’t even find a girl to L-word let alone look after your own offspring. But the thing is, I'm a good babysitter, a curse word good one to boot. I know how to make bottles, change diapers, wrap them up in a blanky and lull them off to sleep, yeah, I am that amazing. I grew up in a house full of women who taught me the skills on how to raise a child, so when Niels called me to take care of Parker, I jumped all over that kid.

We sure buddied up for the few hours we were together.  We went on an exploration of the laundry room and I let him sit in the washing machine, I took him to the bathroom so he could stand on the counter and stare at his identical twin in the mirror for abut twenty minutes, we even played on the floor and had a growling contest with each other.  I’m telling you it was an entertaining couple of hours, none of which might I add were laced with any stinky diapers. 

The only frustrating part of the day came when the little guy got tuckered out and rolled into naptime.  He kind of messed up my master plan of complete and total domination of single women.

Me: "Parker! Hey Parker! You wanna get in a stroller and go for a walk in the park so Uncle Brockie can monopolize on your cuteness so single women will want to go out with him? Hey! Parker!"

Parker: Rolling his eyes and sucking back on his binky.

Ladies, tell me that's not the best dating tactic you have ever heard of. Your heart melts into warm butter whenever you see a grown man walking a stroller around the park; a stroller that's holding a little guy inside who has a face that makes the mother inside you want to passionately jump on top of the man taking care of him. I'm telling you, an infant is of equal or more value than Ryan Gosling with his shirt off.

It was a great couple of hours I must say, and I will admit I was a little disheartened when Parker’s parents came home and relieved me of my babysitting duties.  Maybe the Dad inside me was a bit anxious to come out to play, who knows?  Whatever it was, I think I did a heck of a job watching over that little stinker.  In fact, I did so well I think I’ll start taking reservations if any of you out there need me to keep an eye on your own little ones.

As long as you’re cool with me using your kid as date bait, I think things will be just fine.  

I Need More Happy Gas!

Ivan: “I’m going to give you just a little stinger, and then your whole mouth will be completely numb.  How about that?”

I give him the thumbs up sign from underneath the bib I’m wearing, which at this point is the only possible way of communicating with him, due to the fact that there are three different metal objects being inserted into my mouth. Why this man replaces “shot of Novocain” with “little stinger” is beyond me.  Maybe the Ninja Turtle wallet I pulled out last time I was here made him think I haven’t graduated to “big kid” terms yet.

For full effect, go ahead and download any soft rock and roll, 90’s-themed, cornflower blue background music that fills the airwaves of any dentist’s waiting room.  By the way if you really want to pee a little bit laughing, go ahead and picture the giant that I am lying on my back in a dentist’s chair with my mouth wide open and a mask full of happy gas keeping me calm. Meanwhile Ivan the Great suits up with his plastic gloves and mouth tools, ready to dissect my upper right molars. 

Ivan: “Alright, so in a few minutes we’re gonna go ahead and replace that onlay on number 2.  How does that sound?”

I try and smile.  But do you have any idea how hard it is to raise the corners of your mouth when it’s open wide enough to handle 37 hotdogs? Plus, the wrinkled buttercup hygienist just slurped away the last drops of saliva from my throat to make sure I won’t drown in my own spit.  Sure Ivan, that sounds great.   

Ivan: “So, how’s things goin’ these days? How’s work been treatin' you?”

Me: “A aoawa eeh aw a ew ehs.  I uh eer ouw ehhas oouh.”

Conversations with dentists usually only include words made up of all vowels.  Why Ivan thinks I can answer in structured sentences doesn’t make much sense. 

Ivan: “That’s great.  So we’re gonna go golfing this weekend, you care to join us?”

Me: “I ou uhh ooo. Uouaee, I ahh io ehaehs.” Giving this man a yes or no answer would be much simpler of course, however I’m afraid by jiggling my head around in a certain direction would only knock out the metal contraption hanging out of my mouth.

Ivan: “So how’s the love life going? You datin’ anyone these days?”

Why is everyone and their dentist obsessed with my relations with the opposite sex? It’s like they live vicariously through me to satisfy the single creatures living underneath their own skin, every one of them having a secret solution for finding my soul mate.

Me: “Ell, I I ah I eh iws aah I aeh. I uhh aoee ah eioo uhh.  Ah ooh?

Ending that last vowel with my voice going up is hopefully a strong enough indication that I asked Ivan a question. 

Ivan: “Yeah, well she’s out there somewhere.  You just have to keep looking.”

Me: “Oh, o ih ah-owe.’

He pauses and gives me a strange look, his four enhanced eyeballs having a staring contest with the little dangly thing that’s not really dangling in the back of my throat. Part of me wonders if he caught my response as the all-vowel curse word I was intending. The other part of me wants to braid his nosehairs I’ve been staring at for over an hour. 

Ivan: “Well, I sure know some sweet ladies to line you up with if you’d like, one in particular actually. Can you see yourself with a 40-year old?”

If I were Barney Stinson, forty would be my thirty.  And who do you think you’re going to line me up with, a widow from Mesquite with 13 cats? I want to get to know a woman for who she is right now in her life, not help her son log all of the hours for his driving permit.  

Me: “O A, O EH!”

Great! I’ll get you her number once we’re done here. I’m sure you two will hit it off and really fit each other.”

I wince in agony and my eyes start watering.

Me: “I aw aeh. I o aw eh ueh!”

Ivan: “Oh, sorry about that, let me give you another little stinger to numb that up again.”

He doesn’t know it, but my broken tooth isn’t the reason I’m in pain right now.    

How We Met Ted's Wife

After eight seasons of pushing our patience to the absolute limits, fans of one of the greatest primetime TV shows, and one of the greatest stories ever told, were given the privilege of finally seeing her face; giving all of the Ted Mosby's in the world a new dash of hope that somewhere out there she does exist.  

Who's Your Mommy?

Most kids on Mother’s Day buy a heart-shaped box of chocolates to go with the poorly wrapped plastic flowers for $8.99 from Wal-Mart to show how much they care about the woman who raised them. Or of course there is the classic, "I-burnt-this-serving-of-eggs-and-bacon-but-I'm-still-giving-it-to-you-in-bed-with-these-hand-made-oven-mitts" a patented Mother’s Day formula we have all concocted at least once in our life.

On the opposite side, most Moms fit into the typecast mold of women who teach their kids how to tie their own shoes, show them how to iron a pair of slacks, instruct them on how to budget their checking account, or coach them through the popping of their first zit. There are hundreds and thousands of things that "most Moms" do for their children from the ages 0-18, and for many years beyond.

But my Mom isn't like most Moms. My Mom is awesome. And I'm willing to bet she can beat your Mom in a leg-wrestling contest.

For full effect, download "Don't Take Your Guns to Town" by Johnny Cash and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post.

If being a Mother means you get handed a plateful of unorganized chaos, with a side dish of “WTF-is-going-on?, meanwhile Karma pulls your chair out from underneath you and makes balancing everything that much harder, with you handling it with a smile on your face like nobody’s business, then that’s my Mom.  Who by the way is the bomb.com.  How many Moms do you know have to raise a little hellion like me for five years all by themselves?  Come on now, we all know calling me a little hellion is an understatement.  And after that, how many Moms do you know marry a widower and are thrust into the spotlight trying to raise five girls who just lost their own Mother in a car accident four months prior? Or how about giving birth to five more daughters after that, adding the total number of women she takes care of (not including my Dad) to 10?

How many Moms do you know bury a daughter and a husband within the same year?

Yeah, not too many.  But my Mom, she handled it like Job.  This woman gets served a bowl full of trials and frustrations and spits them back out like nobody's business.  She's that incredible.

When I say she's incredible, I also mean that my Mom is brilliantly smart.  My Mom taught me just about everything I know in life. Now I know that sounds like a motivational poster you'll read while sitting in a Doctor’s office, but she really did.  She taught me how to read, how to ski, how to dress, how to poo, how to make spaghetti, how to read music, how to wrap Christmas presents, how to open the door for a girl, how to wash my own dishes after dinner, how to change diapers, even how to make my own bed believe it or not.  Heck, last week over the phone this lady taught me how to cross-stitch. Yes, true story, a big man like me cross-stitches.  So what?  My Mom taught me how to do it. 

Most of you can toss out the cliché phrase, "My mother has always been with me." Of course she was. She was at your soccer games, at your third grade Christmas plays, and at your high school graduation.  But did your Mom give you a hug on behalf of two parents the day she dropped you off by herself to be a missionary? Did your Mom spend every single night with you in the hospital when some guy was digging out your brain? Did your Mom drive 300 miles last week to greet you at the finish line of the Ironman triathlon just to be your personal cheerleader?  Because mine sure did, and she was great.

This is the part of my blog where you look up at the ceiling, turn your head slightly to the left, and think about the relationship you have with your own Mother, kind of like I'm coaching you to do right now. This will then be followed by the obligatory phone call serving out the spoon-fed compliments to the woman who raised you, who changed your diapers, who gave you a hug after your first break-up.  This might also be followed by a 15-minute reminiscing period once the phone call is over, being grateful for having such a noble woman grace your life.  This of course is an annual ritual we all do every second Sunday in May.  

But whatever it is you do, be thankful for those sweet ladies today.  Go ahead and hand out your cookie-cutter box of chocolates. Gift-wrap that bouquet of store-fed flowers she'll forget about by the end of the week.  Burn a package of bacon you'll feed to her in bed, only to leave a sink full of dishes for her to clean up.  Do whatever you think is the best way to show your Mom that you love her.  Because ultimately we are all ridiculously lucky to have these dear women in our lives, these women who have raised us to be the people we are today, the women who we should ever be grateful for.

I know I am.

The Times Of Your Life

A wise 24-year old former Dixie State Ambassador once posted on Facebook:

“The difference between friends and bestest friends.  When you see your bestest friends that you never see, and you feel like you see them daily and never missed a beat. 

Those are the bestest friends.  And I miss those friends daily!”

This woman is a sage I tell you.  Statuses like those put her in the same category as Morgan Freeman, or a Native American Grandmother, or someone else who has wrinkles coming from the corners of her eyelids, signifying many years of experience and motivational sayings.  Those words are 100% true.  No questions asked. 

Those words are true because we all have friends like that.  We all have those bestest of bestest of BFF’s that we don’t have to speak to for over a decade, but the instant we make eye contact with them we can laugh at inside jokes and remember the time when we peed our pants in the middle of the aisle at Harmon’s.  Yes, those are the bestest of BFF’s we all have in our lives somewhere. 

Whether they’re your little sisters who show up after three years for lunch and want to laugh about the time you broke your glasses walking into a locked door, or whether they’re the grandmother Ambassador from above who gets a stomachache full of giggles remembering when she chewed you out because she was having a panic attack about moving to Provo.  Those are the laughs that we all want to have.  That we all need to have.  Those are the laughs that make our lives worth living every single day. 

Pulling a red-eye road trip with my office last night we got to talking about all of the times we have shared together.  Yes, believe it or not, men sometimes get a little sentimental when they’re awake after midnight driving blindly through the desert.  For three hours we talked.  A little bit was about where we are now in life.  A little bit was about where we are going in life.  And a whole chunk of it was about where we have all been together, reminiscing the high highs and the low lows of the sacred brotherhood of higher education admissions.  Looking out the window I almost expected Green Day to start playing “The Time Of Your Life” from the backseat as my eyes moistened up a little bit.  But that’s a little too poetic for me. 

Road trips like those are the tales that will be rehearsed to my Grandkids around campfires in years to come.  They will be the stories I fall back on when I’m a balding white-collar mid-life crisis staring at a TPS report on a Thursday afternoon.  When my life turns into a monstrous redundancy with highlights showing up every other leap year, those are the memories I’ll have stocked in my storage bin, the ones that will add a silver lining to the smorgasbord of mediocrity which is what life is in general.

And when I turn into a hunched over wrinkle with gray hairs coming out of my ears, I will still be able to walk up to the characters that make up all these memories, and wrap my arms around them knowing that we are still the bestest of friends.    

Here Comes The Turkey!

Does your office have a bowling tournament in the middle of the day in between registration sessions for college freshmen?

I don't think so.  

Is your office as badass awesome as mine?

You wish.  

Between Heaven And Hell

I’m sitting in bed at 10:30 in the morning eating my third bowl of Dryer’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip ice cream.  And do you know why?

Because I can do whatever the curse word I want after yesterday. 

For full effect, download “Iron Man” by Ozzy Osbourne and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post. 

Honestly if decent shape present self were to travel back to June of 2006 and say to overly plump past self that he would be competing in the ultimatum of a triathlon, overly plump past self would have slapped present self upside the head and stuffed another deep fried Twinkie down his throat.  Yes kids, past self was not in shape.  I know this by the three pairs of pants he ripped within two weeks.  But that’s another story. 

Your average cocky jerk would normally be using this blog to brag about his times, showcase his pictures, or simply flaunt the fact that he completed an athletic achievement that most Muffintops would never dream about.  But that’s not me, and hopefully after reading the few hundred posts I’ve tossed your way you may know this by now.  Instead, I’ll make you laugh, make you cry, and maybe toss a moral lesson to you near the end of this page.   

If at some point in your life you get the chance to do an Ironman triathlon, take it!  Jump on that! By all means leap at the opportunity to turn into a gym junkie, live off of protein shakes and spinach salads, and give up the sacred nectar of Dr. Pepper for five months, because it will change your life.  And you will be a better person for it. 

It’s not really about being in prime physical shape, or that you can brag about that physical shape to your friends on Facebook, it’s the concept that you can have a group peeing session in the water with 120 other guys wearing purple swim caps waiting for the starting gun to go off.  Or when a volunteer hands you a few strips of tape to make sure your nipples won’t bleed out from chafing.  I’m telling you, doing an Ironman is like being in a sacred college fraternity, minus the alcohol and C-average gpa’s.    

On paper the race looks like pure Hell.  Think about it, swim 1.2 miles, bike 56, and then run 13.1. And that’s just a half Ironman! You have to think some lunatic in a straitjacket came up with figures like those for an athletic competition.  Either that or someone with very low self-esteem was looking to come up with a cold turkey cure for bulimia.

But once you’re in the race surrounded by a couple thousand people blowing snot rockets left and right, you’re in Heaven.  And those people are what make the race sublime.  There was the kid with balls of steel from Chicago I biked miles 20-24 with who had never done any type of triathlon before.  Or the Redditor who gave me a salt tablet at mile 3 of the run so leg cramps wouldn’t ruin my race.  The best was the Canadian who shared a Popsicle with me at mile 11 of the run, who told me stories about his beautiful family up north, and then challenged me to a duel on the last 500 yards.  I think in a past life somewhere I was BFF’s with that Canuck.    

In fact, those last 500 yards were the best part of the entire race.  Surrounded by hundreds of people screaming their guts out, volunteers patting you on the back, an announcer broadcasting your name to the triathlon world while you’re in a dead sprint to the finish line, tell me that doesn’t bring tears to your eyes.  Because it sure did to mine. 

Yesterday was Hell.  And yesterday was Heaven.  It was a joyride of pain, pleasure and every other emotion in between.  It’s the one time in my life where I’ve laughed, cried, and peed on someone all within six hours.  An experience I can’t duplicate, nor can I describe in full detail in a blog post.  And something that is complete justification for eating a three-course breakfast of Peanut Butter chocolate chip ice cream. 

Am I Ironman?

I have swam over 25 miles.

I have ran over 240 miles.

I have biked over 750 miles.

All so tomorrow morning I can piss my pants in a wetsuit, wipe boogers on my sleeves, and run around in tights for a few hours with a couple thousand people watching.

Call me crazy, I know.