Holy
crap in a Bundt pan...
Due to the
recent well-publicized shortage of
amateur websites produced by assholes who consider themselves to be
clever, I
have been called into action. My name is Jeff Kay, and I’m an
Ugly American living
on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, near Scranton, PA. And I’m here to
serve, baby.
The
State of My Fat Ass A journal of
sorts, updated every once in a while.
--Not to be overly dramatic, but it feels like my lungs are packed
with wadded-up paper towels that have been soaked in sea water.I coughed all night, real deep and painful coughs that required
great effort, each letting loose a thousand flying needles inside my
torso.
Toney says I have a chest cold, the same thing she had last week, but I’m not so sure about that.I’m fairly certain I have tuberculosis.
It’s been nice knowing you folks.
--I took the youngest Secret to
school this morning and there’s a strange fog out there.It’s extra-thick, and smells like toast.I don’t know the significance of this weirdness, but it can’t
be good.It sounds very much like
one of those things Old Indians warn you about: beware the toast fog.Ya know?
--One of the original Rules of
Thumb is “nobody cares about the weird dream you had last night.”But I’m going to break my own Rule here and tell you about a
dream I had on Saturday night….
We were camping, I think we were at a place in Milton, PA, and it was full of punk
rockers.Well, not full of them,
really.But it was about half
regular camping folk, and half punks.For
reasons unknown.
In the dream I was sitting in a Coleman chair outside our rolling box
o’ beds, drinking cans of Yuengling lager.And every once in a while a punk rock girl would go by, all
freaked-up and wearing combat boots, etc.
Each would walk past our camper, then stop and turn, and say to me,
“What the fuck you looking at?”
The end.That was the whole dream,
and it seemed to last for hours.There were at least a dozen such encounters.Must be the TB….
--Saturday felt almost like
spring here, and we went to the park for a little sun and fresh air.Here’s a pic I snapped of myself in some sort of crazy
stainless steel “mirror.”I
don’t know the buzzcut child peaking over the top.
--The oldest Secret told me a story over the weekend about a kid in
his class who sneezed and sent a ball of snot rocketing
across the room.This triggered
my own set of stories, and I will share them with you now.
When I was in grade school and beyond, there was a kid in my class named
William P.He had one Mr. Spock
ear, and that’s not a joke.
Supposedly he loved Star Trek
and wanted to have pointed ears like Spock.So, for an entire summer he tugged at the top of one of them
every day, sometimes for hours on end, and it eventually started growing
that way.I’m unclear on why he
only did one ear, but that’s
the way it was.
One day in fourth grade (I think), ol’ Pointy suddenly sneezed and a
great rope of snot ejected from his nose.It remained attached at the top, and almost reached the floor.The thing was swinging back and forth, and everybody in the room was howling in protest.
Then, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, he reeled it
back in!With one great snort the
snot rope shot straight back up his nose, as if it was never there.
Kids were practically knocking over desks to get away from that shit,
and it was instant pandemonium.And
here I am thirty-some years later writing about it.
Good times.
--Speaking of grade school… I
have a question today.Was there
ever an item that became all the
rage during your elementary years, which the teachers finally banned
and began confiscating on sight?
I can think of three, right off the top of my head:Super Balls, yo-yo’s, and Clackers.
We’d buy the Super Balls from vending machines at the local Kroger
store, for a dime each.And they’d get flung around during class, and bounced from
floor to ceiling, even in the “multi-purpose room” where the rafters
were seemingly a hundred feet in the air.A splendid time was had by all.
Each classroom at our school had its own tiny bathroom as well, and kids
would go in there, close the door, fling a Super Ball and duck for
cover.Everybody
else could hear it ricocheting around in there, and we thought that was
just about the height of comedy.Most
of us walked around with Super Ball-sized welts on our faces and necks,
but it was worth the pain for the laughter.
Teachers, of course, promptly put an end to our fun.
You can read about Clackers here, in case you’re not familiar.
Supposedly people were getting hurt around the country with these
things, when the hard plastic balls would explode and shards of flying
shrapnel would blind everyone in the room, or rip open throats all
willy-nilly.Or somesuch.
Plus, there were kids at our school who threatened to use their Clackers
not in the accepted manner, but as some sort of makeshift Kung Fu
weaponry.They’d spin them high
above their heads, with a maniacal look in their eye, and the
administration was having none of that.
So a drawer in every teacher’s desk began filling with Clackers.
Yo-yo’s were nothing more than Clackers Lite, really.Kids would claim to be attempting an “around the world” and
repeatedly strike their classmates in the small of the back with a
fast-moving hunk of plastic on the end of a rope.As I remember it, that particular fad barely got off the ground
before we were met with The Clampdown.
What about you?What did teachers
confiscate at your grade school?Tell
us about it, won’t you?Use the
comments link below.
And that’s going to do it for today, children.I’m not at the top of my game this morning, but I hope it
wasn’t too horrible.The Braves
are playing the Phillies this afternoon, and I think I’m going to take
it easy, climb inside my iron lung and watch a little baseball.
