Return to the Sea

Years ago I received some advice from a wise old Native American. I had just moved back to Gainesville after spending a year in Atlanta delivering food and felt that I had basically wasted a year of my life. I didn't like Atlanta, but in truth, I didn't really give it much of a chance.

"Remember," he said, in a voice resonating with ancient wisdom, "Never live somewhere that isn't within a half hour of water."

Technically, that ancient Native American was really just one of my friends, and there was a very good chance that one or both of us were drunk on King Kobra malt liquor at the time, but I've remembered his advice ever since.

I'm no "Salt Life" guy, but I can't deny that the ocean has a pull on me, a calming effect, probably from growing up near it. Again, if I grew up in Nebraska, I'd probably be waxing philosophical about the meditative effects of wheatfields, so take my psychological musings with a grain of salt. It's one of my homemade therapeutic tools, along with punk rock and the healing power of a good drunk. 

The past few months, hell, past the year or so has been full of death and a strange, nagging feeling similar to waking up from a bad dream - you can't really remember what happened, you just know enough to realize you should feel bad or upset somehow. Then you wake up more and the feeling fades away.

A friend's dad had recently passed away. He was one of the few adults in my teenage years who treated me with respect and interest, even when that respect wasn't actually earned or deserved. Coming closely on the heels of losing another friend, this sort of seemed like a psychic last straw.

Since I am an unattached grown man who can take time off from work, I decided to take a trip. I didn't really have an idea as to where I was going, I just felt the urge to go somewhere.

I ended up in Bradenton. I didn't tell anyone, mostly because it wasn't planned, and partly because once I ended up there, I felt like being anonymous. Sure, I can be anonymous just as easily in Jacksonville, but it wasn't the same somehow.

I didn't shop around. I got a room at the first place I saw close to the beach. I bought some trunks and walked into the Gulf of Mexico. It was warm, and I could see little transparent fish swimming near the shore. It felt right. I felt like the kid at the end of The 400 Blows when he finally makes it to the ocean. Except of course, I knew all about the Gulf and that kid had never seen the ocean. Thinking about it, maybe I wasn't anything like that kid at all, and the only thing close to the French new wave were the European tourists gazing in disbelief at my pale, almost translucent skin.

The song "Drowned" off the Who's Quadrophenia kept running though my head in a loop as I swam and floated around for about an hour. 

Let me flow into the ocean. Let me get back to the sea.

I didn't think I was stressed, but floating out there in the Gulf I could feel the anxiety leaving my body and floating away in the water, probably out to Mexico.

I got out to get some food. Driving around the island (which is what we called the beach), I was struck by how many ghosts inhabited it now. That's where my first girlfriend and I used to go to watch the sunset and mess around. That's the channel where my dad and I would fish in. Both of them are dead. I was playing Quadrophenia and thinking how I had probably listened to this album on the same beach probably 25 years ago.

I ate middling fish tacos and listened to poor renditions of Bob Marley, Jimmy Buffet*, and Van Morrison while I drank a fruity drink and watched an angry sunset. I listened to the tourists and thought of ways to butt into their conversations just so I could insert some lie about being a tourist from the Midwest finally getting to see the Gulf.

See, I told you it was angry.

I came back hours later after the sun had set. The night was cloudy. The water was cold but I needed to get back in. I acclimated and started swimming.

I wanted to feel something. Something more than just the absence of stress from earlier. I wanted to feel my muscles burning, my lungs aching for breath, and hopefully avoid any Jaws or Kraken beneath me.

I swam out as far and as fast as I could, then stopped and treaded water. I panted in the cold water for a while, then dove as far down as I could before my sinuses threatened to implode or a Loch Ness Monster noticed me, then flew back up. I could still see the white sand of the beach, so I knew I was OK, even if I was starting to realize that maybe this wasn't one of my smarter ideas, what with the sea monsters probably starting to wake up.

In The Postman Always Rings Twice the protagonist wants to swim as far as he can in the ocean until he can't muster any more energy and just sort of let nature take its course in a sort of passive suicide. I didn't have anything that drastic in mind, and plus, I hadn't helped murder a diner owner to get with his wife, so my conscience was clear.

I swam back, walked to my motel and spent the rest of the night watching cable in bed, feeling worn out, both psychically and physically.

The next morning I got up early and drove home after a great night's sleep. Once again, I had stumbled on to a perfect homemade therapy - something to do with salt water, anonymity, and shark avoidance. Someday the American Psychiatric Association will recognize me for my services. I'm not sure where exactly my statue should be erected, but I have several majestic poses already picked out.



* Trick question! As a native Floridian, there are no good versions of Jimmy Buffet.

Better Homes and Gardens

I spent a lot of time dreaming about my future house. Before falling asleep, or during long rides in the car, I'd fantasize about all the different rooms and passageways the adult me was going to enjoy.

This was in the old days before smartphones and back-seat DVD players, so I had a lot of time to design my future digs. Come to think of it, even if that stuff had been invented back then, most parents would probably have banned them on the theory of, "Why should I be bored driving when the kid gets to watch his Space Wars foolishness?"

While I admired the all-around design of the Addams Family house, or Disney World's Haunted Mansion, I felt my house should be more normal looking on the outside, only to BLOW VISITORS' MINDS once they got inside. Plus, a big creepy, Psycho-looking house might give people the wrong idea. I didn't want to be a villain or a creep, just a dude with an awesome house.

Exposure to kid mystery shows and books made me realize I needed hidden chambers behind bookcases and hidden passages to different rooms. Ideally, the house would also be over a secret cave I could firepole down to and ... I dunno, plot and stuff.

I didn't really see the need for those oil portraits with the eyes cut out where you could watch people, but figured I had to have them as part of the overall decor. Plus, I'd probably get a deal on them if I installed a firepole.

I definitely wanted a secret laboratory, even though I didn't really know that much about science. I would have to keep a gorilla down there, since based on old movies and comics, gorilla brain transference operations were pretty routine in secret laboratories.

I'd probably want a Tor down there as well.

But while secret chambers and labs were cool, what I really wanted was an outdoor room.

I have no idea how I came up with this plan, but I really wanted a bedroom that was full of grass with a pond in the middle. Maybe some boulders scattered around, also. To make myself fall asleep at night, I would concentrate on the carpentry and stuff I'd have to do to accomplish this.

I'd have to saw the door about a foot from the floor, then make some sort of liner to accommodate all the dirt. I was also going to stock the pond with fish, so I could catch some every once in a while, or maybe just look at them while relaxing in my outdoor room. I think I might have actually written some blueprints for this room at some point.

While the outside room was going to be my home's shining architectural achievement, I had a second act - an upside-down room, where all the furniture, outlets and everything would be up near the ceiling. While the outside room would have been functional (sort of), this would have been just for weirdness' sake. When friends came over I could casually say, "Oh yeah, you can stay in the room down the hall," and watch as they caught a debilitating case of vertigo.

I thought about this stuff for years. When I got older I didn't think as seriously about having an outdoor room or an upside-down room, since that stuff seemed sort of outlandish, but I did fantasize about having a living room that was a huge half-pipe, as that was much more grown up.

I think a lot of this came from hearing about the Winchester House, with its stairways leading to nowhere and false doors and ghost traps and whatnot. Plus, a lot of TV shows at the time, like Real People and That's Incredible celebrated weirdos who lived in crazy houses or drove cars covered with lightbulbs or whatever. So I was really sort of in tune with '70s culture.

I never got a chance to design my cool house, but there are places in my hillbilly shack where you'll probably go through the floor if you stomp, and my ancient windows let in about as much heat or cold as standing outside, so you could say I'm fairly close.

White Christmas

When I was a kid, Christmas Day was mostly a relief after the ordeal of Christmas Eve. I was so excited to see my presents the next morning, but terrified that I hadn't been good enough to deserve any that I would end up throwing up out of anxiety by early evening.

As I grew older, I didn't get as excited about Christmas, possibly in an effort to save my stomach lining. But I would still get flashes of Christmas Spirit, even when I was a teenaged punk rocker and opposed to everything that normal people might like or take comfort in.

Christmas Eve 1989 was cold. Around midnight I was with my friends Curt and Jennifer at her mom's house. I remember driving down Riverside Avenue earlier to pick up Curt and getting caught in a slow-moving trail of cars looking at luminaria and Christmas lights. I was 19 at the time, so this boring old person wagon train was a personal affront to my mission that night, which was to speed as fast as possible down Riverside's twists and turns to pick up my friend. Now, of course, I'll watch the hell out of some luminaria and Christmas lights.

Curt and Jennifer were both home on Christmas break. I was still in Bradenton, making my way through community college. It was a strange time. My friends had moved away and I was working part time and making awesome grades, the first time since about elementary school, probably because I was actually trying for once. But I felt like my friends were out there growing and experiencing stuff while I was spinning my wheels back in my home town.

In those primitive days, contact was pretty much limited to letters, occasional phone calls, and the reliable passenger pigeon, so the few times a year we could get together meant a lot. They would tell me about Gainesville and Tallahassee and how I needed to get up there, fast. That's what we ended up talking about that night. I remember Jennifer had given me a copy of the No Idea zine, with the Mutley Chix/Crimprshine split 7", and like all punk rockers at the time, we were talking about Fugazi.* Jennifer had an advance copy of what would be "Repeater" and we played it over and over again.

"There's a whole world out there where people are creating and doing stuff," I thought. "And I've got to be a part of it."

But I was also genuinely happy to be with my friends. A little later I was driving home through the deserted streets after dropping Curt off. I was thinking how grateful I was to have such good friends and was pondering the future and sort of wondering what and where my place was.

My thoughts were interrupted by waves of pollen from the palm trees falling on my windshield. "Stupid pollen," I thought. "I'm probably going to be all stopped up tomorrow."

Wait a minute, that wasn't pollen at all. It was...it was snow!

I hadn't seen snow in years, not since I was a kid in Mississippi. And it was snowing on Christmas Eve! I stopped the car and let the snow (really little more than frozen rain) fall on my face and hands.

Driving the rest of the way home, I finally got it. The Christmas spirit. Like the best Christmas songs and entertainment, I was feeling happy and excited, but just a little melancholy and thankful at the same time. I hadn't felt that way in a while.

And then I realized why I hadn't really felt Christmasy the last few years. I was waiting for that pure rush of excitement I got opening presents as a kid. But adult Christmas wasn't just about excitement and happiness, it was the whole mixture, with a little bit of sadness and hope and thankfulness.

Christmas is Charlie Brown loving a crappy Christmas tree. It's Jimmy Stewart hugging the shit out of his family. It's the insanely sad lyrics to "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" or Shane McGowan slurring, "I could have been someone." It's Scrooge getting the miserliness scared out of him.

And it's also Dean Martin slurring though "Silver Bells" and dogs at a bandstand happily barking their way through "Jingle Bells," but that's a whole other story.

In the following years, there would always be a time, sometimes only a  brief moment when I could catch that feeling again. Joy, contentment, chemical compounds rushing out to fight seasonal depression, who knows what it actually was. But each year there would come a time when I'd be alone, feeling an incredible mix of contentment and happiness, mixed with just a tinge of sadness to make it all the more sweet.

Whatever your holiday traditions are, I hope you get to experience some of that, at least for a little while this year.











* In the late '80s/early '90s, every conversation between punk rockers would eventually come around to Ian MacKaye and/or GG Allin.

I'll House You

For a couple weeks in high school, my friend and I had our own house.
We didn't actually pay rent or live there or anything. We would just sort of hang out there every once in a while.

We were walking home one day after cross country practice and a celebratory bonus meal at 7-11 (that was when you'd buy a Big Gulp and stash a microwave burrito in the cup. The plastic wrapper kept it from getting wet) and got caught in one of Florida's summer downpours.

We sat under the carport of a house for sale waiting for the storm to stop. While discussing the dangers of misdiagnosed mental illness expressed in Suicidal Tendencies' "Institutionalized," we noticed the door to the house had Jalousie windows.

If you grew up in Florida, you know what Jalousie windows are, even if you don't know the name. They were those horizontal glass Venetian blind looking windows. Here, like in this picture I stole off the internet while searching for "old Florida horizontal glass venetian blind windows."

While they offered several  benefits to Florida homeowners, including brightness, an ability to catch breezes and a cool mid-century design, they had a few drawbacks, the main one being the fact that a couple of high school delinquents using no tools can take out enough of the glass panes to slip in the house in about 7 minutes.

It was strange once we were in the empty house. We were quiet and probably a little scared. Still, we figured if we got caught, we'd just say the door was open so we came in out of the rain.

We noticed the previous owners had left some stuff behind in their move. Nothing too interesting, some glasses and silverware, some food and supplies and a Penthouse magazine I let my friend keep, a move I instantly regretted.

We remained fairly respectful and quiet in the house that first day, and left soon after splitting our feast. Of course we were going to go back.

We couldn't wait to get out of practice the next day to break back into our new clubhouse. Again, we just sort of hung around inside, ate some shoplifted 7-11 treats and poked around to see what the owners had left behind that we missed the first day. It was a weird feeling; we knew we shouldn't be in there, and we still remained fairly quiet in the house. That would change soon.

We had been visiting our house fairly frequently when in a rare case of quitting a bad idea while we were ahead, we decided we should probably stop hanging out there. So we decided to go back one last time, but this time instead of exploring, we would dedicate our last day in the house to science and the arts.

Specifically, I had a science project that had vexed me for years while looking at my parent's sliding glass doors. If a scientist were to throw a glass at such a door, would the glass shatter on impact or would the momentum be enough to leave a cartoon-like hole in the door? While I had made many advanced mathematical equations, I still needed real-world testing, testing  my science hating parents would probably try to actively discourage.

So we tried it out. As a teenager, it is insanely liberating to break something. It is even more liberating to do so inside a house you aren't supposed to be in. The sound of the breaking glass was magnified through the empty house, and while we were dedicated scientists, we weren't robots - it was exhiliratingly funny.

The arts portion of the trip involved us squirting some left behind Elmer's glue on the floor and coating the design with a box of cereal we found in one of the cabinets. I can't recall exactly what we made, but I can almost guarantee there was at least one anarchy sign.

We threw all the abandonded food (including a bag of flour) we could find through the house, a glorious food fight against ... the house? Squares? Homeowners? The Man? Probably all of the above. We had brought along a can of spray paint and decorated the rest of the house with punk rock slogans and band logos, along with what I considered the crowning touch -  "LEAVE THIS EVIL HOUSE" in all caps above the mantle, as if a ghost got a hold of some haunted spray paint, leaving a terrifying warning to the human residents.

We left the house, carefully taking our spray paint can so it couldn't be dusted for prints, and walked away, never to return. And I can only speak for myself, but I remember feeling a bit depressed. Not only because we were walking away from so much  potential science and art, but because we had found a place where we were guaranteed not be hassled or oppressed, a place where we were free to create however much mess and trouble we wanted without facing any consequences of our actions.

Its sort of a sick joke that as a teenager you have all this extra energy built up and only a handful of acceptable ways to let it out. Once I become President, I will take all the nation's foreclosed homes and open them up to teenagers to vandalize and destroy. This would not only help the kids blow off steam, it would help the economy by employing workers and cleaners round the clock.

And in our case we actually did  help the economy, sort of. Years later we were telling the story of our house on the track team when an older runner got sort of quiet.

"My sister tried to buy that house," he said.

Oh shit. Was this guy gonna kick our ass for messing up his sister's house?

"Yeah, because it was so trashed, her and her husband got it for like, next to nothing."

So remember kids, vandalism is a win-win. Not only is it fun and stress-relieving, you also have a great chance of helping out some struggling homeowners.

The Mall Has It All

I have about a 20 minute window for shopping. Too much longer than that and I get sort of dizzy and bored and holy crap, why didn't I just order pants on the internet like a normal person instead of driving all the way out here on my day off.

This, of course, does not apply to the countless hours of my life I wasted digging through record and DVD stores, looking for that elusive catch that would make me a more well-rounded individual and, more importantly, the envy of my fellow nerds.

I didn't used to be this way. In fact, when I was in middle school I loved going to the mall. Loved it. In fact, the summer before high school a friend and I would spend almost all day there, even though we didn't have any money. I'd give the guy's name, but I haven't heard from him in years, and I don't want to sell him out in case he's running for office or something, you know? Me, I've got no prospects, so I don't mind implicating myself.

We would walk or ride our bikes there, which from what I remember was quite a trek. We almost always had less than five bucks between us, so we'd have to plot the best way to stretch it to last all day.

That was hard because we were addicted to video games. We'd usually start out in the arcade, which would take a couple bucks out of the pot right from the start, but what were we gonna do, not play Gauntlet?

We could usually go to a couple of the stores in the mall with single games and say the machine took our quarters and get a refund. The managers didn't really believe us, but we'd usually be able to get 50 cents out of that which was enough to keep the video game shakes from returning. If that didn't work, or we felt we had gone to that well a little too much, we could always play the video game systems in Sears, but that was a desperation move, sort of like alcoholics drinking vanilla extract.

Far away from Bradenton, in a wonderful land called California, the Summer Olympics were taking place. The commie countries had boycotted the games, giving America a huge advantage. Why did this matter to two kids in Florida? Well, McDonalds had a scratch off game where you'd win free food whenever America won an event. We'd buy a drink or small fries and almost always end up winning something else - thanks Carl Lewis! When people talk about missing the Cold War, I know exactly how they feel.

After our meal, it was time to hit the movies. We would hang around the outside of the theater until we found two ticket stubs on the ground, which was fairly easy, as nobody cared about littering back in those unenlightened days. We'd show them to the guy at the front, telling him we left to play video games if he ever asked, which hardly ever happened.

Once we got inside, it was relatively easy work to get into whatever R rated movie promised gore or nudity.

And the mid '80s were a glorious time for teen boys at the movies - Porky's rip offs, slasher movies, barbarian movies - you pretty much couldn't lose.

Like all good things, our Celebrated Summer at the mall had to end. One day the theater changed ticket colors,  so when we walked through, the ticket taker called the manager.

We were told to sit in a chair and wait for the manager. Naturally, as soon as ticket guy's back was turned we split up and took off running. I thought I had it made until I felt a tightness around my neck. Ticket guy had some good hustle and caught up to me, grabbing me by the back of my collar and throwing me to the floor.

I was hustled off to the security office and my parents were called. I was banned from the mall for a year. I'd like to think I didn't rat out my friend, but I don't really remember, so who knows. I probably told my parents it was all his idea.

I'd also like to think that this scare taught me that you can't get something for nothing, and scamming free food and movies was no way for a man to live, but that wasn't true at all.  In fact, in just another three or four years, my mom would get a call from the cops telling her that I had been arrested for stealing a pizza with another friend. But that's a story for another time.

Man, was I a shitty kid.

Hate the Police

As a skater and punk rocker I had to hate cops. It just sort of went with the territory.

Honestly I didn't really have too much against them, other than just generally disliking them in principle as yet another set of authority figures keeping me from doing what I wanted. Usually they'd half-heartedly yell at me and my friends for skating somewhere, we'd leave, wait for them to drive away, then come back. They probably didn't care.

Besides, this was Bradenton, it's not like I was getting beaten by the LAPD. And I'd like to think that I was smart enough to realize that many of my problems with them (and most authority figures) had more to do with me wanting to bad stuff and them having to put a stop to it than anything they were actively doing to keep me down.

Every once in a while, though, you'd run into some real dicks.

I was about 17 and parked at the beach with my girlfriend around 10 or 11 PM. This was a regular thing for us since we desired privacy and didn't have an apartment, and I drove a 1977 Lincoln Continental whose backseat was about the size of one of those Japanese love hotels.

I was probably playing something romantic, like that live Bauhaus album "Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape." Man, I wish I still had that - "Rose Garden Funeral of Sores" was all kinds of awesome. And you know, for a band that was pegged as gothic and depressing, Bauhaus had some kick ass songs  - "In the Flat Field?" "Dark Entries?" Those songs kick ass. And while we're at it, while that first Joy Division album is supposed to be all depressing, there's some rock jams on that, too. Is "Novelty" on that one? You know, "When people listen to you.."

Wait, what was I talking about?

Oh yeah. So the music was working and we were in the backseat. We weren't actually having actual sex sex yet, but second base had definitely been rounded.Things were going pretty well.

Then there was a metallic tap, tap, tap on the backseat window.

"Shit! This is just like those stories where the hook-hand guy comes back from the dead to kill the teenagers having sex on the Indian burial ground," I thought, reasonably enough.

Within seconds of the tap, as I was trying to remember how the kids outwitted the hook-hand killer, the entire back seat was illuminated by a high powered flashlight being held by an angry looking policeman. Actually the beam was mostly focused on my girlfriend's chest.
"Step out of the car," a voice commanded. "Now."

The cop continued to shine his light on us. Well, mostly on her, as she scrambled to put on her shirt.
I got out of the car wearing only a pair of shorts.

"What are you two doing here," the cop asked. "Do you know I could arrest you right now for public nudity and lewd and lascivious activity?"

"No sir, I...No. I mean, I didn't. No."

"Do you want to go to jail tonight?

"No, sir."

"How much money do you have on you?"

"What?"

"How much money do you have?"

"About three dollars."

That was true. I pulled out my pocket to show him. For some reason I never carried a wallet in those days, preferring my bills all wadded up in my pocket Spicoli style.

"Get out of here and don't let me catch you here again," he said, as he glanced back towards the backseat, I guess in hopes that my girlfriend had decided to keep her shirt off during this conversation.

My hands were shaking as I got back in the car. "I think that cop just tried to get a bribe from me," I said to my girlfriend, more astonished than angry. After the initial shock wore off, I had lots of plans of reporting him and getting him fired, or writing a stirring letter to the paper, letting the people know just what the police force was up to on Anna Maria Island. Of course, I'd have to change some minor details. Like, maybe we were having a fully clothed picnic on the beach. In the daytime.

"They can't do that to me," I ranted. "I'm an American. What is this, the Gestapo? The KGB? Luckily, I got his badge number. Yeah, he didn't count on that. Let's see...there was a 45 in there...Was there an R?"
Naturally, I didn't end up doing anything, and we ended up finding another place to park at night.

One of my friends would relate this story to his friends in college later, employing the "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend" maxim from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In his version, the cop made me do push-ups and recite the Pledge of Allegiance before letting me go. I sort of wish that happened, as it makes a much better story than me driving off shaking and dreaming up revenge fantasies for a couple weeks until I moved on to other distractions.

How I Caught Crabs

Every teacher had a side hustle, whether it was selling real estate, subbing or peddling cosmetics. They also had all sorts of ways to save money throughout the year.  My parents were no different. They preserved and canned food, bought stuff at yard sales and all sorts of other things that make people think that we grew up in the 1930s or in some Little House on the Prairie frontier instead of the 'burbs like everyone else when I talk about my childhood.

Actually, with their vegetable gardens, second-hand buying, reliance on DIY home maintenance and yardwork (DIY meaning me and my sister), and love of the homemade over the mass-produced, you might stretch things a bit and call my parents early hipsters.

My sister and I just thought they were cheap.

My dad helped stretch the food budget by providing us with fish and crabs from the Manatee River, which was a short walk down from our house.

That makes it sound a lot more dramatic than it really was, like dad was some Deadliest Catch guy out there braving the elements every weekend to put food on the table for his family. Basically, he liked to fish, and he liked eating fish, so it all worked out.

We'd go out with him fairly regularly. Dad had a one-man boat that would fit him and one kid. Early in the morning we'd go out and catch trout or jack, which were awesome. A five-pound jack will put up enough fight that you feel like Ernest Hemingway reeling in a marlin, especially if you're a kid. People say you can't eat them, but people are stupid. Fried up they tasted just fine. Of course, I would probably eat a shoe or a bar of soap if you fried it up, so maybe you shouldn't trust my tastes.

The author in middle school. Ladies, I'm wearing those shorts right now.

Dad also had about 6 crab traps that he'd check once a week or so. You'd pull up the trap while barnacles squirted water on you, bring it on to the boat and take the angry crabs out with a pair of tongs. Dad usually handled the crab wrangling part. After that I'd have to clean the guts out of the crabs on the front yard with a hose, then bring all the fish and crab guts down to the river for disposal. I also remember having to carry the car battery from the boat up to the house, which  weighed like a thousand pounds when you're 13. You'd think that doing that every weekend would give me arms of iron, sort of like Conan turning that big wheel every day, but I never saw any results.

Before he made the traps, and before we had regular access to the river, Dad went poor people crabbing, which is pretty awesome in its simplicity. You tie a chicken wing to a string, then throw it out in the water and wait for a scavenging crab to bite it. Then you reel him in. I'm hoping that knowing this sort of stuff will help me after the apocalypse hits.

I was a shitty kid. I was constantly in trouble with one or both of my parents or school, which would lead to trouble with my parents. I was once grounded for an entire school year due to failing Spanish each quarter. That sort of stuff was pretty much forgotten when I was out on the river.

It's not like Dad was imparting big life lessons on me or giving me advice while we were out there, it was more like putting our fights and disagreements on pause for a couple hours. Occasionally he'd say something along the lines of "You know you're messing up," or, "You know you need to apologize to your mother" or whatever, but it was a nice oasis in my life of constant trouble, all of which, admittedly, I brought on myself.

After a while my sister and I got sick of crabs. We had blue crabs regularly - made into crab cakes, boiled, or made into a crab boil when my dad was experimenting with Cajun seasoning. Why couldn't we be like normal people and go to McDonald's instead? Why did we always have to eat crabs or fish?

Now of course, I'd kill for some blue crabs (that I don't have to prepare or clean or anything, of course), and haven't even considered going to McDonald's in forever. I can't say I miss the feeling of wondering the next time my laziness or one of my lies was going to get me in trouble, though. I manage to go fishing with my dad once or twice a year, and, like men, we don't really talk about anything important, just sort of sit there next to each other and let the time pass while we catch fish. It's still nice.

Man, do I wish someone would bring me some crabs.

I'm the Night Headhunter Searching for Some Head

I've never had sympathy for the bored. Maybe because I grew up knowing that uttering the words, "We're bored" would sentence me and my sister to never ending yardwork or cleaning, I learned to amuse myself, or at least not let my parents know how dull things really were around the house.

This attitude carried over through high school. While other kids were complaining that the lack of teen dance clubs made our city as boring as a doctor's waiting room, I was amusing myself by skating, fishing, hanging out in the woods, driving to Tampa, and all sorts of other stuff. And who really wants to hang out at a teen dance club anyway?

Once we got older, my friends and I still managed to amuse ourselves, even in the old folk's home that is Bradenton. As punk rockers, we knew that nobody was going to provide a teen club we'd be comfortable in; it was up to us to create, to entertain ourselves, to make the most out of our surroundings. Plus, we just really liked playing pranks.

One Christmas break my friend Curt brought down a styrofoam head he found somewhere in Tallahassee. We took it to my parent's garage and went to work - my dad had this spray that advertised how it would eat through a styrofoam cup (that's how you knew it was working). We used that to make realistic looking eye sockets and a nose hole. We sprayed the head a couple different shades of whatever spray paint we could find, giving it a somewhat realistic decayed flesh tone. For the final touch, Curt had saved some hair from a recent haircut which we glued on the head in different places.

The final result looked better than we anticipated. Hell, it creeped me out, and I helped make the thing. We hid it in the garage and forgot about it until my sister went out to get some ice cream, saw it, and let out a scream that shattered glass throughout the neighborhood. If we could pass the crucial 15 year old girl test, we had it made.

Now that we had this grotesque head, the only problem was what to do with it. Where would our artwork get the attention it so richly deserved?

Why not Wal Mart?

The next morning we mixed up a gallon of fake blood. We also found some weird plaster and chicken wire cylinder in the garage which we decided to hide under a tarp as a fake leg, sort of a bonus horror. The plaster "leg" was about 4 feet long, so it didn't really work, unless you thought Manute Bol got dismembered in a Bradenton parking lot, but hey, this was an extra, so it was good enough.

We drove to Wal-Mart and set up the leg behind the store, pouring fake blood liberally around our crime scene. Since the leg was our lesser artwork, we gave it a less prominent billing, figuring the head would be found first.

The head went into a plastic bag soaked with fake blood which was placed into a shopping cart. Then like cops on a stakeout, we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Hey, how long was it gonna take for someone to notice a blood-dripping plastic bag in a parking lot, anyway? These unobservant people were totally messing up our opening.

After a while we figured we should make our own publicity and call the cops on ourselves.

In the days of payphones this was easy. I called the non-emergency number and tried to disguise my voice.

"Uh...yes, officer? I'm here at the Wal-Mart on Cortez and there's this...this thing. It looks like it's bleeding."

"Bleeding?"

"Yeah, it's in a shopping cart and it looks like there's a lot of blood around it. I mean, it's probably nothing and all, butmaybeyoushouldtakealookatitOKbye."

Then we settled back to wait.

We didn't have to wait too long. Actually, let me quote the Bradenton Herald from the article titled "Prankster Hits Bradenton Store:"

...When an officer opened the bag, Watkins said, "He turned his head and said, "I think it's real."

It wasn't. The head, it turned out, was made of plastic foam.

"They did a pretty good job as far as making it look like a decapitated head," Watkins said.

The practical joker apparently took a mannequin head, painted and molded it so that it would appear to be decomposed and put a wig on it, Watkins said.

So there you have it, our first review. The leg was found later, and just as we expected it was sort of anticlimactic.

Who says artists aren't appreciated in their own hometown? As a bonus, since Curt was in art school at FSU, he could count our juvenile prank as actual school work, so it was a win-win for everyone involved.

Sneaky Treats

We didn't have a lot of junk food in our house growing up. I don't remember if this was an actual rule or if my parents had some reason behind it or they didn't want us to grow up fat or if I'm just remembering the whole thing 100 percent wrong.

Our next door neighbors always had tons of junk food. Always. Man, did we love hanging out over there. Not only could we watch "Love Boat" and "Three's Company" reruns during the day which was forbidden at home, but we could eat Pringles and Twinkies while doing it. And their parents didn't mind at all!

Not to say that our parents didn't ever have treats, you just had to know where and when to look. Usually around payday you could find candy bars hidden under the vegetables in the refrigerator. If you got up on a chair and looked way, way in the back of the highest cabinet, you might find a bag of Tootsie Rolls. Sort of a last resort, candy-wise, but hey, it was chocolate.

This is how my sister and I learned how to bake. We started with Rice Krispie Treats, which were pretty easy. This brought up a new problem. We knew that if our dad found them, he'd eat most of our hard work (hey, maybe that's why there wasn't a lot of junk food in the house). So we'd clean everything up and hide the pan in my closet. For the next couple days we'd eat like kings. We'd also store pizza in there once we got older. It's a wonder we never caught salmonella.

We graduated into actual cakes soon after. We'd be up early on a Saturday waiting for cartoons to come on and end up baking a cake. Since we couldn't actually hide that in my closet, we had to begrudgingly share it with the parents who provided us with shelter, clothes, and the stuff to make the cake in the first place.

But sometimes we were either too lazy or didn't have the necessary ingredients to bake.

This led to my sister and I becoming very resourceful. On teacher work days when we were bored and hungry, we'd ransack the house looking for anything sweet. Cough drops would work in a pinch. We ate chocolate chips, boring old vanilla wafers, anything with sugar in it was fair game.

Then we stumbled upon a delicacy. Frozen chocolate frosting. My mom would buy containers of frosting and store them in the freezer until she needed them, unless we got to them first. We'd eat it straight from the freezer with a spoon - bending many spoons this way. After being frozen the frosting was chewy - sort of a cross between ice cream and candy. It was so awesome. We would finish up a frosting container in about a half hour (you'd have to eat it quickly because you didn't want it to unfreeze), watching TV and putting off our chore list until minutes before our parents would pull into the driveway.

Years later I heard a rumor that Prince was rushed to the hospital because he only ate containers of frosting for like six months. I do not know if this was true, but if so, Prince has quite a refined palate.

Looking back, I'm astonished that we didn't get up to 500 pounds in our reaction to our parent's no TV and no junk food rules. I mean, the second our parents left the house we were busting out the frozen frosting and turning on the TV. Maybe we had good genes or something.

Caribbean Scream

My parents took a trip to Jamaica when I was a little kid and dragged me along. Like a lot of things they provided, the experience was completely wasted on me.

I don't know how old I was; I'm not even sure if my sister was born yet since all I was focusing on was myself. I do know this would have been the early '70s, so the opportunity was there for all sorts of awesomeness.

Maybe Mom and Dad checked out Lee Perry mixing some dub plates at the Black Ark:



Perhaps they listened to this guy's bad-ass mobile sound system:


Maybe they ate some curried goat or jerk chicken. Actually, knowing my dad, I'm sure he ate some goat and chicken.

I don't remember that much about the trip. I remember eating ice cream and watching Tom and Jerry. I remember swimming with my dad and walking on a deserted beach early in the morning. I remember seeing women balancing stuff on their heads at some market. And I remember being in a state of sheer terror for the entire trip.

It was my first plane ride and I was pretty excited. While we were up in the air (we were up in the air!) I took out an in-flight magazine about this place my parents were taking me. There was a black and white photo of some strange ladies dancing around. I read the caption: "Witchcraft and Voodoo Abound in Jamaica."

Holy crap.

I loved reading about ghosts, monsters, witches, anything creepy. I never really got too scared, because I knew all that stuff was made up. But this was an actual photograph. In a magazine. For adults.

My parents were taking me to a place where witches roamed the streets, secure enough in their evil that they didn't even mind being photographed.

That's when I started to think that my parents were actively trying to kill me.

At some point we went to some caves. Here's a picture I stole off the internet:


I remember my parents telling me about these caves. Those things sounded awesome! I was gonna go into a cave! There was probably treasure and pirates and stuff down there. And bats! There were totally gonna be bats in that cave! Man, was I gonna explore the hell out of that cave. I wonder how long my parents would let me hang out down there? Couple days ought to give me enough time to fully explore the place and get my fill of treasure.

Once we got to the caves I refused to take a step inside.

I don't know what sort of cave I was expecting, but this was clearly not it. This wasn't a cool pirate cave, this was a home for witches and mummies, just waiting to put me in some Jamaican stew or ... whatever it was mummies did to little kids.

There's also a picture at my parent's house somewhere of me grasping a waterslide for dear life, my face red and contorted, because I saw a ton of spiky sea urchins waiting to impale and poison me under the water.

This was probably the beginning of my shaky history with vacations. It was probably also the beginning of my parents considering leaving their fraidy-cat kids at home while they went on vacation.

Dance Fever

I had been hanging around the record player with my friends for most of the seventh grade dance. After discussing the finer points of Rush and Eye of the Tiger, and wondering why the girls kept requesting Michael Jackson when we had plenty of perfectly fine Van Halen albums to play, I decided the time was right. We only had the room for another half hour or so, and I had been dragging my heels long enough. I was finally going to ask my crush to dance. I had never really danced before, actually, I don’t think I’d ever even really touched a girl before, but it looked pretty easy – just sort of hug her lightly and sway back and forth. I could do this.

And this was a true awkward middle school crush. I rode my bike in front of her house constantly (which was like 3 miles or so from my house) on the off chance she’d walk out and …I don’t really know, actually. See me and decide we needed to make out on her driveway, I guess.

Joan Jett’s “Crimson and Clover” was playing as I approached her. The lights were low (as low as Catholic middle school would allow) and the dust from the art room filtered through the light from the windows.

“I’ve got to do this,” I thought.

I had been working on my approach at home for quite some time. In rehearsals I was pretty suave, giving off a mixture of both smoldering seventh grade bad-boy sexuality, with a hint of sensitive, artistic guy along with a studied air of indifference, just to seem hard to get. She was going to melt.

She was standing with her friends. Joan Jett was wrapping things up as I got closer. “Shit,” I thought. “What if she shoots me down in front of everyone? I’ll have to pretend to be sick Monday. And I’ll have to find a way to get my desk moved away from her. No more secretly staring at her neck (and sometimes getting a glimpse of bra strap, which was pretty exciting.) God, she smells so nice, and I’m going to have to give all that up after this public humiliation. I’ll have to find a new girl’s house to ride my bike in front of. I wonder if my parents will let me transfer schools. Maybe I could say I’m getting bullied.”

Should I look at her? Yeah, I mean, I had to look at her, right? But I don’t want to look at her too much, that would be weird. God, haven’t they heard of air conditioning in this place?

Well, I’m here. I have to do it now.

“HeyumCatherineyouthinkyoumightwanttodancetothenextdance? Um…With me?”

“Sure, I’ll dance with you.”

Man, this was easy! I could have been asking girls this whole time, dancing like a … I don’t know…dancing MTV guy!

Joan Jett finished and the next song came on. Journey. Don’t Stop Believin’ Hell yeah.

I put my arms stiffly around my dancing partner’s waist (I had a dancing partner!). Her arms were around my neck. We were swaying to Journey’s tale of lonely small town girls and city boys. I could feel her breathing under my hands. I couldn't really look her in the eye, but I could smell her hair. It smelled sort of like fruit. Beautiful, beautiful fruit.

It would make a much better story if I wet myself or freaked out when the song picked up, but I did pretty good, even if my arms were sticking straight out in a stiff 90 degree angle and I was swaying back and forth like a retarded robot. Of course, I never really talked to her that much afterwards, since she still made me nervous, and it was much easier to fantasize about being cool around her than actually, you know, having a conversation.

Years later my wife would express amazement that my first slow dance was to Don’t Stop Believin'.

“But you can’t slow dance to that song,” she’d say.

“You can if you’re a superstud,” I’d reply.

Cunning Stunts

For nerdy kids, there were few greater feelings than successfully pulling a prank over on someone. Not only did it get you laughs, strengthening your sense of theatricality, but it reinforced a vague sense that you were smarter than the adults.

Of course, looking back, the adults were probably just playing along to not crush your self-esteem. I mean, kids aren't really known for their self-control or patience, so when you suddenly started spouting,
"Hey mom, why don't you sit down? Like, right here? On this cushion? Aren't you tired, huh? Why don't you sit down," they probably knew what was up.

At least my parents played along with my practical jokes, my friends were once chased around the table by their murderous dad after he found a fake fly ice cube in his drink.

The company S.S. Adams (sadly, no relation) made it easy for kids with cheap practical jokes in just about every supermarket. This one-stop shopping area could get you joy buzzers, fake soap, snapping gum, whatever your heart desired.

While the packaging was amazing, the actual mechanics of the toys usually left something to be desired. That joy buzzer looked awesome, with that 1950s businessman jumping out of his shoes with lighting bolts all around him. When you actually used it on someone, it made a pathetic little 'bzzzz' sound as your victim just sort of stared at you. Of course, the joke was pretty much over when a ten year old you offered to shake hands with someone. What kid shakes people's hands? It also didn't help that it looked like you were a little kid wearing a wedding band.

S.S. Adams inspired a brand loyalty that would rival that of the guy at work that's always yapping about the newest Apple whatever, mostly because they were cheap and readily available. They also seemed a bit more realistic than the stuff advertised in comic books.



Although I really, really wanted my own personal 7 foot Frankenstein, my dad explained that it was just a cardboard picture and he couldn't really be used to settle neighborhood scores. Besides, all that stuff had to be mailed away for, which seemed a long, confusing and boring process, possibly involving checks.

Also, who had the patience to wait 4-6 weeks to wait for your X-Ray Specs or Sea Monkeys or...holy crap! The guy who invented X-Ray Specs and Sea Monkeys was a member of the Klan and the Aryan Nations? Shit, I'm glad I didn't unknowingly finance Hitler by buying those X-Ray Specs I really wanted.
Jesus, I wonder where the money for that 7 foot Frankenstein would have gone? NAMBLA?

Anyway, S.S. Adams is still going strong, and not affiliated with any creepy causes that I could find. Next time you're at the store you should pick up a can of those jumping snake mixed nuts. Looking at the packaging, they haven't changed since like 1962, but that's not the point. Everyone knows that you have to play along with that sort of stuff.

Late Night Bonding

Nobody thought their parents understood them growing up. I was sure mine didn't. I'm still pretty sure of it. I often wonder what my parents thought of me, now that I'm probably the age they were when I was a teenager.

In return for free food and a place to stay (and a rather large assortment of Star Wars paraphernalia), I would act like doing yardwork was the equivalent of getting shipped to the Gulag, and the stuff I thought was cool (rock and roll, monsters, videogames, skateboarding, dirty movies on cable) must have seemed ridiculous at best, and at worst, a path to a life of laziness and loserdom.*

On my side, my parent's square habits like waking up early and doing yardwork and their extreme thriftiness was just as alien to me. I mean, who would want to do that crap when HBO is showing Emannuelle at 3:30 in the morning?

Naturally, I am now obsessed with yardwork, cheaper than Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve and generally wake up around 7 in the morning.

Things got better once I was in community college and still living at home. I was making close to straight As (with the exception of my math classes, which I had to retake like 30 times), had steady employment, and was generally fairly responsible.

I was on the newspaper staff, which was a pretty sweet gig. There were about 8 of us, and our advisor would stop in maybe three times a semester. We would hang out for hours in the newspaper office, eating food from the cafeteria, listening to the Pixies and Descendents, and bonding the way you do over old-school wax and X-Acto layout.

A friend on the staff had a crush on me which I was oblivious to, as I had the social skills of a circus bear and was fairly ugly, so the thought of someone of the opposite sex actually liking liking me after the end of my lengthy high school romance seemed about as likely as my flapping my arms and flying to the moon.

At one point, the two of us were driving around Siesta Key after blowing off our night biology class, something we did fairly often. We parked and walked on the beach in the dark. The water was glowing yellow-green with phosphorescence. Every crashed wave would leave a glowing, otherworldly hue. Naturally, we had to get out in there.

I can't remember what time of year it was, I just remember we were freezing, making out while hundreds of thousands of glowing algae turned the ocean around us into our personal light show.

Well, with nature turning on the romance like that, we had to go back to her house. After messing around for a while, I figured I needed to get home, as it was approaching 4 in the morning. I didn't actually have a curfew at the time, but this would probably be pushing it, and I still had a 20 minute drive home.

My clothes were wet, so I borrowed a pink sweatshirt with a beaver on it and wrapped up in a towel. I figured everyone would be long asleep at home, so who cared what I looked like?

I turn the key in the door and see my dad sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by a pile of bills, probably trying to figure out how he was going to manage to pay for all the food I was consuming.

"Where the hell have you been? Do you know what time it is?

"I ..."

Dad was taking in my getup. No shoes, feet and legs still glowing green from the ocean, and a yellow towel topped off with a pink beaver sweatshirt.

"Just...just go to bed," he said, laughing.

Strangely enough, "To Everything, Turn Turn" by the Byrds came on. My voice got whinier and I said, "And at that moment, I realized my dad and I weren't that different after all."


And that was the best episode of The Wonder Years ever.





* Guess I showed them, huh?

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dumb

I had quite a few unofficial jobs before actually getting real employment bagging groceries. I'd do yardwork, clean gutters, paint, whatever the old folks in my neighborhood needed and were willing to pay for.

Lots of people hate that stuff, but I found it relaxing. I could be out there alone with nobody bothering me and I didn't have to talk to anyone, two things I've looked for in jobs and relationships ever since. Plus, I'd have to do the same stuff at home anyway, but I was getting actual money for my work, as opposed to the free room and board and love or whatever my parents paid me with. I also noticed that working for other people had an actual stopping time, which I found a welcome change from my parent's managerial style.

At some point my neighbors across the street recruited me for a babysitting gig which I snatched right up. I wouldn't be sweating in the sun, I'd get to watch cable and eat junk food for a few hours, and as a bonus I knew that these neighbors had a stack of vintage Playboys in the garage.

I show up, having memorized the night's pay channel's lineup, paying special attention to the words "strong sexual content," "nudity," "violence" or the wild card, "adult situations."

I should mention that the kid I was going to babysit was sort of weird. He grew up to be a weird teenager. He's probably a weird man right now.

At some point we're playing a Sesame Street board game. I let the kid win.

"Yay! I win!"

"Yep, you won."

"Now we have to play until you win."

This round I make short work of the kid, since he's like 4 and I was in a gifted class. I'm actually fairly distracted, thinking of that pizza in the kitchen I heated up that the kid only ate like three bites of which is calling my name. Those Playboys in the garage are also calling to me. Vintage or not, they still had naked ladies in them, and I figured I could check those out as an appetizer before exploring the night's cable offerings.

As I navigate Oscar into Gumdrop Mountain, the kid realizes I won and starts bawling. Like, turning red and getting that hyperventilating thing when kids are really going off.

"Hey, look," I say. "I was supposed to lose a turn! Looks like you won after all!"

"Jesus," I'm thinking. "Did his parents never allow him to lose? This kid's gonna be all sorts of screwed up. I don't remember pissing my pants when my dad won at Monopoly."

"Uh uh uh uh O O O OK. N..N..Now we have to play until you win."

I beat the kid again and he starts crying. I discover another loophole in the rules which meant he actually won, then we have to play until I win. This goes on for a while, all while I'm thinking about cold pizza, Playboys and all the nudity on cable TV that is going on without me.

After about 14 hours of this, the kid finally gets sleepy and is ready for bed. Awesome! As I'm stuffing cold pizza in my mouth, he comes into the kitchen and picks out a mop from the closet.

"My mom said I could sleep with this."

I didn't really think that was true, but screw it, the kid wants to sleep with a mop, who was I to judge? I'd wait til he fell asleep and return it to the closet with nobody being the wiser. The important thing is that the kid is finally heading for bed, meaning I could check out some Playboys and prime '80s pay cable in the hour or so I had before the parents came back.

I'm sitting on the couch eating warmed up pizza watching a particularly exciting Cinemax offering (I had given up on going out to the Playboy garage) when the kid wanders in dragging his mop.

"I can't sleep. Are my parents home yet?"

"No, they're not back yet. Hey, let's go back to bed, huh? Wouldn't that be fun?"

This goes on for the rest of the night, throwing me off my Cinemax viewing, and impeding my mop return.

The parents finally show up, and although they thought the mop thing was pretty funny, I was never called to babysit again, which was fine by me. Mowing was much less stressful.

I'm Your Garbageman

My trash can was left rolling around out in the street this morning. I am at the age where this results in letters to the editor and decade-long speeches on how nobody takes pride in their work anymore.

Truthfully, I can't say anything. Back in high school my friends and I came up with a game. I drove a huge '77 Lincoln Continental. Think of a tank, only faster and a bit more maneuverable, piloted by a 16 year old blaring out Bad Brains and the Clash.

Every Thursday was trash day. Every Thursday morning I'd pick up my friends to drive to school, and we'd cruise the neighborhoods looking for trash cans. After spotting one, I'd floor it, sending the trash can either into outer space, or frequently being dragged under my transmission for a half mile or so.

Naturally, this was hilarious to us.

There was one house that constantly put their three garbage cans out in a sort of pyramid shape, which was pretty much asking for us to drive through it. Looking back now, considering it was Bradenton, the owner could have been a WW2 veteran, a guy who served his country honorably and whose only solace now came from arranging his garbage cans once a week.

Being teenagers, we didn't think about any of that or even consider what pains in the ass we were. We just liked seeing all the trash cans fly away when being hit by a huge chunk of Detroit steel.

Man, was I a shitty kid.

So today when I have to lug my empty trash can from the street in the rain, or I have to stop the car in the street because the can has blown into the driveway, I figure it could be a lot worse.

Boredom, Boredom

Kids today never have to be bored. What a strange feeling. From what I remember, boredom was an essential part of growing up and taught so much. It taught you to look around you for something to do, to make up lies or invent things to annoy siblings or parents to pass the time. Sort of what I do here, only utlizing the internet. Boredom also taught you how to shut down, to be in a space physically while taking a little nap mentally. This tactic would save my life many times, from soul-deadening jobs to death treks through bead stores.

As a kid I couldn't imagine being able to watch a movie in the back seat of the car while on vacation. Or being able to play a videogame while trudging through the grocery store. Smarter people would insert a sentence here about how these kids are using someone else's imagination and ideas instead developing their own, but I mentally checked out of that last paragraph like two sentences ago.

My parents were like the Wonder Twins of boredom. On their own they frequented some pretty dull places, but together they could form an unstoppable force - the antique store. The thing that killed me about antique stores is there was always a chance of seeing something cool there - swords or old stuffed bear heads or Nazi helmets or ancient artifacts looted from cursed tombs - but it always ended up being me walking through rickety hallways full of glassware and furniture.

Still, antique stores at least gave the illuson of adventure. This was not the case in fabric stores. I have no idea why a big chunk of my childhood seemed to be spent in these horrible places. I don't remember my mom making her own clothes or anything, but man, were they terrible. About the only way to amuse yourself was to look through the big books of Halloween costumes.

"Hmmm...that kid's a tiger. That looks cool."

"That girl looks pretty happy running around dressed like a witch. I think we've actually passed like 3 Halloweens since we got in here."

Since growing up and having to spend more time in fabric stores (I got married) I've noticed something. They always put them in strip malls far, far away from anything remotely cool. There's no saying, "OK Honey, I'll drop you off. Come get me at the fireworks and puppy store next door when you're ready." Nope, they're always next to a discounted bread warehouse or a Food Lion or something.

Sometimes when my Mom got tired of making me walk through fabric stores, it would be my dad's turn. My dad's tactic was a little better, only because his stop had the promise of adventure. Have you ever had to go to a car show as a kid?

"Oh boy! Car show! That sounds awesome! How many cars can we race?"

"You can't drive them. In fact, you can't even touch them. Don't even breathe on them."

"Well, is there anything cool there, like the Batmobile? A car that shoots missles?"

"Nope. There's gonna be nothing like that at all."

Then I'd end up walking around a field for hours, watching the car guys (always guys with white mustaches and baseball caps) glare at me for even thinking of doing anything fun with their cars.

I'd like to say that being bored taught me something, that I gained a rich inner fantasy life, but most of that inner fantasy life I stole from TV. It did teach me the shutdown technique, which has been handy for decades, but if I could go back in time, I would pack a smartphone or portable DVD player in a second. I mean, amusing yourself looking at Halloween costumes kind of loses its charm after hour 3 in the fabric store.

Lies My Parents Told Me

I think my parents were pretty honest with me. Like all parents they lied about lots of stuff; Santa Claus, secret trips to the doctor's office, and anything involving 'building character,' but they always seemed to come clean when asked. So I'm inclined to believe them more often than not.

Every few years they will tell me about how the bassinet (sort of like a crib, but...different somehow) that my sister and I used growing up and subsequently passed around the family was owned previously by country superstars George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Apparently the Jones family lived in Lakeland for a while, where my sister and I were born and somehow the bassinet made its way to my parents.

Like I said, I'm inclined to believe them, and it doesn't really seem like something they'd make up, but a couple things don't seem to add up. First of all, how the hell did the bassinet get to my parents? I'd like to imagine George Jones loaded out of his mind running across my dad in a parking lot or something and saying, "Hell, I gotta bastardette you can have, hold on a second." Or maybe my dad won it from him playing poker. I'd like to think Jones and my dad compared sideburns afterwards.

On a side note, George Jones getting a DUI on a riding mower on his way to get a drink is funny and somewhat charming in an old school Otis the Drunk manner. When my neighbors get drunk, I just get to hear a lot of cussing and Kid Rock. As a society, we really need to bring back the comical drunk. C'mon people, put some style in that drinking!

I can pull off a mean "She Thinks I Still Care" in the shower, and there was that time my sister found a hidden stash of cocaine and whiskey in the bassinet, so there just might be something to the story.

George Jones is playing here next month. It's fifty bucks, which means I won't go. I'm thinking of seeing if I can locate that bassinet and emailing his management. Reuniting him with his long-lost baby...bed or whatever the hell a bassinet is would surely warrant free tickets, right? He would be overcome with emotion, remembering the times he and Tammy rocked their kid together and have to get me front row tickets.

WDUV, The Dove

My mom drove me and my sister to school up 'til middle school. Although the radio had the usual number of buttons, the only station she ever played was WDUV, "The Dove." It sounds like a Christian rock station, but they played what they called "Beautiful Music." I've found out that "Beautiful Music" is an actual genre, or at least Jones College Radio in Jacksonville uses the same phrase.

If you were lucky, WDUV would play stuff like instrumental versions of Beatle songs, or string-heavy versions of "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" along with your Sinatras, Streisands and lesser crooners.

WDUV still exists, so I took a look at today's playlist. Lou Rawls, Barry Manilow, Perry Como, sure. Wait, Billy Joel? Elton John? Those guys would have sounded like Black Flag at the WDUV I grew up with. They also seem to have retired a lot of their '50s and '60s instrumentals, branching out to more contemporary (i.e. late '80s) artists. Sellouts.

When I took driver's ed in high school, our instructor had a game. He'd put the radio station on and you couldn't change it until you correctly guessed the song. I could ruin the game in seconds flat.

"Oh, it's my turn? Well, that's "This Magic Moment." Jay and the Americans. Before that it was "Secondhand Rose" by Barbara Streisand. "Little Spanish Flea" by Herb Alpert started it, and we heard the very end of "There's a Kind of Hush" by Herman's Hermits."

"OK, you win. You get the radio for the rest of the class. So am I turning it to 98 Rock or Y95?"

"Nah, I'm cool. I think there's gonna be a Lennon Sisters marathon coming up. Don't want to miss that."