Caught in between

Ever notice that we always seem to be caught in between? It's never as easy as it used to be, and it's never as awesome as it'll be in a while. Conventional wisdom seems to be "appreciate the moment" but I'm not entirely convinced it isn't "stop taking on so much fucking complication."

Minty Fresh

I told this story to fett the other day. Hadn't thought of it in years, and now I can't resist sharing it with the rest of you [poor sumbitches].

I'd guess this all took place around the time I was sixteen. I was seeing this girl Courtney, and for the first time, "seeing this girl" actually meant going out on dates instead of that lame "going together" thing kids do at lunch before they can drive.

It was not going well, due largely to my being painfully fucking shy (not to mention a complete dork).

(And I am so fucking not Sheldon, no matter what Blue and my wife say.)

One of my best friends decided to have a little fun with me, so for my birthday, he got me a box of mint-scented condoms. Partly, I guess at that age, it's just exciting to buy condoms. You're barely past the stage where you giggle every time they're mentioned. Mostly, I think, it was to make fun of me, since, being the giant lump of low self esteem you see before you e'en unto this day... they couldn't have been more useless to me.

Now, far be it from me to look a gift horse in the mouth. I decided to get some mileage out of the present anyway. We had another friend, Amy. Amy was smart and funny and crass and vulgar... and basically awesome. I decided it was time to get her involved in the caper.

The three of us were all marching band nerds, so I snuck into the instrument room and opened Amy's trumpet case looking for her flip book... basically, a little flip folder that could be attached to a musical instrument, and which contained all the music we played in the stands during the football games, plus the national anthem and the school's alma mater, which we had to play at the beginning of every home football game.

I popped the flip folder out, flipped through until I found what I was looking for, and booyah... opened up one of the condoms and stretched it across the Star Spangled Banner. Then I packed the folder back up nice and neat to hide my handiwork and went about my business.

That Friday was a home game, so we had to go do all the pregame stuff. We all played trumpet, so it was gong to be easy to see the results. And of course I'd told all my friends what I'd done, so there was a nice big crowd of trumpet players gathered around Amy, jockeying for prime hilarity-viewing real estate, snickering, and generally failing to hide the fact that something was up.

I... haven't really matured much over the years.

We played the school's alma mater.

Then we all flipped to the Star Spangled Banner... and SPLUT. There's the condom across Amy's.

Right there in the end zone, she fishes the condom out of her folder, inflates it, and goes, "Mmm... mint flavored, too!"

The entire trumpet line pretty much dissolved into laughter at that point. Hell, we all damn near fell down right there on the field. So there was no melody at all for the national anthem.

Now, I grew up in a football town. The whole town shuts down at 4pm on football Fridays. So everyone was there.

The band director was livid.

I don't remember what the punishment was, but it was totally worth it.

Wakin' up is hard to do.

I fucked my wrist up big time this weekend. No clue what I did. I just woke up Saturday morning with a stiff, painful wrist, and by Sunday, the damn thing was too painful to use at all. Yeah, yeah. Guess my wrists just aren't as supple as they used to be since I got married.

Anyway, I wrapped the damn thing up with an ace bandage, and that seemed to help. I tied some frozen peas to it at night, and that seemed to help, too. The pain's tolerable today.

I worry a lot about carpal tunnel. I type for a living, and play guitar to punish people within earshot. I have a set of Baoding Balls that I use regularly to try to keep my wrists in decent shape. They are disappointingly less prurient in nature than they sound at first. Sorry, Coyote.

So fearing that the rest of my career would involve searing agony, I made an appointment with the doctor. He checked me out, asked me a few questions, and declared that it was a bad sprain. In his opinion, I probably managed to sprain my wrist in my sleep. I'm such a deep sleeper it never woke me up.

Lucky me. I can kill myself in my sleep and never know it.

Bonus points: the lump on my tricep that's been causing my wife no end of worry is just "fibrous tissue" and nothing to worry about. If it gets larger, they may take it out to preserve my vanity, but there's no reason it would ever be threatening to my health.

While I was in there, they praised me for losing some weight, then admonished me that they wanted me to lose ten more pounds. The doctor yelled at me to lose weight. There's another milestone passed. Getting older every year.

I'd flip the world off except, you know, gimp hand.

Highly Inappropriate

So when you're sharing a grown up hug, and you reach The Moment, never, never, NEVER yell out, "WHEEEEEEEEE!"

They don't think it's funny.

At all.

Learn from my mistakes, children. It's too late for me, but there's still hope for you.