Just Kidding (Not Really)

Introduction

It’s a pretty surreal feeling to be writing an introduction to a book. My book. Not mine because I bought it. But because I wrote it. That’s just crazy. And if you’re reading this introduction then it must mean you bought the book that I can’t believe I wrote.

Thank you! I mean it.

This ebook is a collection of essays, columns and blog posts I’ve written over the past few years. In the beginning I had plans to meticulously organize them chronologically, topically, astronomically, politically and any other word that ends in ally.

Sadly, I have no natural ability for organizing anything. Trying to put these writings in some type of logical order made me feel overwhelmed and want to start drinking. So I gave up.

In one story, I’ll be 38, writing about working for a hospice company. While 60 pages later, I’m 34 and regretfully unemployed. Maybe this is a little thing and you don’t really care. But I know that someone (related to me) will point it out with great emotion as if this book’s lack of chronology is the root cause of all global disasters, past and present.

Also, you may have noticed that little black dot to the left of the introduction heading. Looks like a speck on your screen, right? Well, it’s not. Somehow I’ve accidentally and inexplicably formatted a black dot to accompany every heading in this ebook. How it happened and how to get rid of them is one of the universe’s great mysteries. After spending a dozen unrefundable hours, helplessly searching through formatting commands and cursing Microsoft under my breath, I surrendered to the dots. It was either that or not publish the darn book. And if I didn’t, then how would I explain to people that I was going to publish an ebook, but had to abandon the project because of black dots that mysteriously appeared like crop circles in my manuscript.

So here it is, complete with a free black dot next to each heading. I hope you enjoy it.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Nudity Speaks Louder than Words

Another Awkward Story about Naked People

Nicotine, White Spots and Weakness

Soda Addiction’s Long Road to Recovery

A Tragic Tale of Culinary Dementia

I Went to the Gym Today

Ironies and Exercise

20-Year High School Reunions and Tree Frogs (Yes, They’re Related.)

Sharp Abdominal Pains Just Outside of Hell

Getting Schooled at CVS

And Now a Word About Woodpeckers and Owls and Wilt Chamberlain

They Said it Would be Cold

Saved by the Neti Pot

The Cruelty of Crossfit

Fear Takes Flight

The Sinister and Desperate Act of Remote Control Theft

Could You Please Pass the Kidney Stones?

Eating Wire and Old Clothes at El Amigo

I’ll Call You from the Toilet

I Ain’t Gonna Lie to Ya

The Fine Art of Embalming and Other Food for Thought

Backdoor Bargains and Bactrian Camels

Foodservice Workers Who Can Help You Lose Weight

Playing BINGO with Thuggish Old People

Johnny James Doesn’t Live Here Anymore!

A Complaint Letter You Can Bank On

The Cicadas are Back

Why Are We Arguing About This?

Mockingbirds, Diamond Rings and Other Insane Things

It’s a Dangerous World Out There...Especially for Morons

Strange, Outlandish and Frankly Bazaar Methods for Inducing Labor

95-Year-Old Man in Hooters Shorts. The Question is...WHY?

A Random Question from my Pedicurist

Balloon Dresses Popping Up Everywhere

The Rules of Purse Shopping

Go Kart Full of Fun

A Vacuum that Sucks

A Marriage Just Isn’t a Marriage Without the Tangy Zip of Miracle Whip

A Chip Off the Old Munk

Rebelling Against Goodie Bags

Does Your Dog Have This Problem?

An Arts and Crafts Disaster

Valentine’s Gift Buying Advice for Men

A Free and Gentle What?

Just Use Whatever’s Available

The Moral Parent’s Analysis of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

First Day of School for a Socially Awkward Mom

Dear Teacher...

Let Home Depot Put the Spark Back in Your Marriage

15 Christmas Traditions to Start with Your Family

Caching in on Laurens County’s Treasures

Mom Unfit to Play Easter Bunny

How to Get that Annoying Song Out of your Head

How to Have Fun in Orlando. Vol. I, Issue I

Gay Day at the Happiest Place on Earth

Gay, Buddhist Viking Day at Disney

And Speaking of Dr. Oz’s Colon

My Family is at Disney World Without Me. Time to (Pity) Party!

How to Set Your Kid’s Magic Elf on Fire

Softly and Tenderly Jesus Called Susi Weight Home

About the Author

Nudity Speaks Louder than Words

My friend Jessica just called, jarring me out of my writer’s block, to tell me that she’d once again been optically assaulted in the gym locker room by Carlie Crenshaw’s naked breasts. I knew exactly what Jessica had experienced because it happened to me last week… and the week before.

Carlie is one of those overly proud of her body age 40-something gym goers who would much rather spend an hour prancing around the locker room stark naked, than actually doing any kind of exercise. It’s as if she’s trying out for the part of a middle-aged Crystal on Girls Next Door. And we, her not so body-confident audience members, should be honored to admire her firm, cellulite free, silicone free body. I wouldn’t be surprised if she soon has a dancing pole installed next to the towel racks.

It’s pretty unnerving trying to lace my athletic shoes, and have Carlie asking me questions like a reporter for Nude TV News.(It actually exists.)

Angela, are you playing Mah Jong at the Heart Association benefit this coming Tuesday? Angela, whose football team is Andrew on this season? Angela, have you tried the new Zumba class yet?

Carlie, I’ll answer you when you get dressed.

Call it a character flaw, but I just can’t carry on everyday conversations with naked people. It’s like I can’t hear what she’s saying because her nudity shouts louder than any words coming from her mouth.

I’m naked! I’m naked! Look at me! NAKED!

I’m sure a nudist or someone less puritanical would get a kick out of mine and Jessica’s horror of casual public nakedness. It’s not just us, though. Most of the women at our gym are very modest, taking advantage of private changing stalls, or trying to hold up a towel with one hand while negotiating undergarments with the other. During this awkward procedure, the rest of us are doing our own modesty dances, trying to act as natural as possible.

Conversation is kept to a minimum. The only time I’d purposely speak is to alert someone that she has just caught fire or about to be bitten by a venomous snake (neither of which has ever happened, but I wouldn’t hesitate to speak up if it did). Normally, I just stare at the floor or count electrical outlets. There are nine, by the way. I think that’s probably how it is in most Middle Georgia women’s locker rooms, not that I’m doing research or installing hidden cameras. Women around here tend to be more modest than those in say….California.

California…Another Locker Room Altogether

I spent ten years living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where women’s locker rooms are live dioramas of National Geographic tribal photo shoots and new age nudity rallies. The YMCA, where I worked out, was the chosen fitness facility of an entire population of retired porn stars who still enjoyed letting it all hang out, or down, or both. There were rules (probably buried in the yearly contract) stipulating that every person, upon entering the locker room, must shed every article of clothing and spend the next two hours leisurely visiting with every other naked person in there. Everyone sat around in their birthday suits trading work-out tips, sipping wheat grass smoothies, applying make-up, sometimes even playing an impromptu game of charades.

The upside to it all was that I never had to wait for a changing stall, since they weren’t used, except by me and Anna Leigh, the Y’s other token Southerner. Too bad she was eventually frightened away by a 400 pound, nearsighted swimmer named Janice, who one day entered the locker room, peeled off her Coleman tent swimsuit and accidentally sat down right on top of Anna Leigh, leaving a titanic set of posterior prints across the front of her Service League t-shirt. The dripping and somewhat flatter Anna Leigh fled from the Y screaming, never to be seen (clothed or naked) again.

While 99-percent of the time, I averted my eyes from anyone wearing less than a choir robe at the Y, I was nonetheless fascinated with a seven-inch tattoo of a buffalo that Janice had across her colossal midsection. As she sauntered around, the buffalo, jarred by jiggling fat, seemed to spring into action, as if doing a slow motion gallop across the rolling terrain of Janice-land (which is probably a lot like Montana). It was like one of those moving cartoon drawings, where a figure is sketched slightly differently on each page of a 100 sheet notebook. If you flip through the pages really fast, it looks like the figure is running. That’s what Janice’s buffalo looked like.

As a child, I was taught that physical modesty is a virtue up there with making good cornbread and writing thank you notes. My mother and sister even showered fully dressed. Until age six, I’d never seen a grown woman naked and assumed that they looked like my Barbie dolls… all hard and plastic the color of terra cotta. Come to think of it, that’s pretty appropriate considering today’s woman’s penchant for plastic surgery, hair removal and tanning products.

It wasn’t until I ran across my dad’s Playboy collection that I learned the truth. Just as I was pulling out the centerfold, with mouth agape at Miss August’s breasts which were the size of beauty salon hair dryer hoods, my mom stormed in. I nearly ripped the magazine apart trying to hide my discovery.

From the look on her face, I could tell she was shocked that I’d found these publications of skin sin in the master bedroom closet, nestled next to my dad’s shoe shining kit.

Put that trash down, young lady!

Sorry, Mom, I said, a precocious smart aleck, even then. I was just looking for a copy of Highlights.

My first experience in a real gym locker room came in fifth grade, the beginning of a pathetic P.E. career for this uncoordinated, underdeveloped, asthmatic middle schooler. On the first day of school, our gym teacher, an eight foot tall, paddle wielding, silver-haired drill sergeant pointed to the girls’ changing room with a two foot index finger and a shrill coach’s whistle blow that accompanied his every gesture.

Each morning when second period rolled around, my classmates and I headed down narrow concrete steps into a long, dank, freezing dungeon with one light bulb dangling over a crude bench built in the 1400’s. Since the 15 watt bulb didn’t put out much in the way of illumination, the far end of the room was pitch black. A perpetual dripping and a noise like a rhinoceros having digestive problems came from the dark end. I wondered if some bestial, horned creature was chained up just beyond our visibility, like the three-headed dog in Harry Potter.

We all learned to dress out silently, in under four seconds in the dim cave that more closely resembled a medieval holding cell than Bally Total Fitness.

In high school, I tried to avoid the locker room as much as possible. Cruel, big bosomed girls enjoyed taunting their less developed, lower pecking order classmates by shoving them out the door just as they were in mid-clothes change, often wearing only their undies. This was especially humiliating since the outside door locked automatically and was right next to the weight room.

It never happened to me because I had the foresight to ask for an internship with the lunchroom ladies during P.E. time. While other sad A-minus cupped girls were being brutalized, I was learning the delicate culinary arts of tater-tottery and chicken strip battering. It’s a decision that has served me well in so many areas of life.

Perhaps next time Carlie begins her post workout strip tease, Jessica and I should shove her out into the weight area. Dang it! Wouldn’t work! Men would be dropping their bars and bells all over the place and she’d just get more motivation for becoming a burlesque dancer. I think for now, I’ll just continue to count electrical outlets. Maybe I’ve missed one somewhere.

Another Awkward Story about Naked People

Thinking about Carlie reminds me of my college roommate Samantha, who wasn’t normally a nudist. 95-percent of the time, Samantha was the perfect roommate. It was only when she was around certain males that her clothes disappeared.

They just seemed to vaporize. Like one minute she’d be sitting there in jeans and a sweater, working on a bulletin board for her education class. The doorbell would ring. It was Ryan from downstairs. Next thing I knew, she was completely naked, still cutting out felt hearts and flowers. Two seconds had passed. Samantha hadn’t even had time to throw her hair into a ponytail, much less remove an entire outfit and undergarments. Her discarded clothes weren’t crumpled up in a ball on the floor either. They were completely gone. I swear. It was like an episode of Star Trek. Samantha could nonchalantly beam herself naked. Disconcerting to say the least and not a trait you’d look for in a roommate.

Over a few drinks one night, Samantha casually explained her reasoning.

I get tired of guys always looking me up and down like they’re trying to see through my clothes. So I like to show ‘em what’s under there when they’re least expecting it. It doesn’t bother me. I’ve never been modest. But their reactions are priceless. And don’t worry. I only do it to guys who think they can get away with treating girls like objects.

Well, that’s reassuring… yet troubling on so many levels, I thought.

I was once completely smitten, in very deep smit, actually…with a guy named Ben from my math for liberal arts majors class. He was clean cut and genuinely nice. Not my usual. I was over the moon and back when he asked me to go out with him the following Thursday. Said he’d pick me up at 7:30.

Digression

Math For Liberal Arts Majors was an unoffensive title for a class that should’ve been called Math for Numerical Retards. Or Math for People Who Should Marry Someone Who will Take Care of Them Financially or Math for People Who Can Write a Beautiful Essay, but Wouldn’t Know a Fraction if it Came up and Cut them in Half. But, the most applicable name of all would’ve been "Math for People who HAVE to Major in Liberal Arts Because They Don’t Have a Prayer of Passing College Algebra, Which is Required for All Other Majors. Of course, most of these alternate names were too long to list in the school catalog.

In this class, we strung beads onto pipe cleaners and counted the dots on dice and dominoes. On Fridays,