Why May?

Well, I'm back from the dead...again.

May has been an incredibly shitty month for me. Let's go through the timeline.

End of April- Dentist tells me that going two years without a visit has left me with six cavities.

1st Week of May- Dentist plays Steve Martin from Little Shop of Horrors and leaves me with a category 5 headache and jaw-ache that lasts for four days. He schedules an appointment for the following week to fill the teeth on the other side of my mouth.

2nd Week of May- Even though everything in me is telling me that it'd be less painful to just pull my own teeth with a pair of tongs and that thing you use to pick the meat out of crab legs, I go back for round two. The dentist tries FOUR times to numb me and finally decides to "just go for it." He then has a mild nervous breakdown when his equipment malfunctions mid-procedure and starts cursing at the dental tech while wielding a drill in my mouth. For not trembling in fear, the gods reward me with balls of steel that will become a thing of legend to be talked about in song around a campfire.

3rd Week of May--The pain of the dental appointment wears off the night before I wake up with semi-paralysis. That morning my arms and legs won't move for an hour and once I'm finally able to move enough to get out of bed, I find that I don't have enough strength to open my bedroom door. My wife touches my arm to help me walk and I scream in pain as if I'm being stabbed. Apparently "whatever this is" not only causes the previously mentioned symptoms but also causes extreme sensitivity to touch.

4th Week of May-- I'm admitted to the hospital with an unknown condition that the doctors assume is an auto-immune disease but is later diagnosed as--wait for it--a "simple" viral infection. The doctor casually explains (while I grimace in pain) that "some people catch viruses similar to the flu and they exhibit cold-like symptoms in addition to mild muscle pain. You, on the other hand, have no cold symptoms, instead the virus is targeting your entire musculoskeletal system. The slightest touch feels like you're being stabbed and you have very little strength in your limbs. It'll go away in a few weeks."

5th Week of May--I'm out of the hospital, I can walk and move again and it doesn't feel like I'm being stabbed to death. I decide to write a blog post explaining to my three readers why I've been MIA.

...And Enjoy Your Ride!

When I was a kid I used to love going to amusement parks. I'd get on any and every ride regardless of how scary it looked. These were ghetto "throw em up overnight in a parking lot" carnivals so the risk of death was actually pretty understandable. Being adventurous, the more likely a ride could kill me, the more I wanted to get on it. Then one day I grew up.

I found a website in college that focused on ride accidents. An hour later, I was terrified of every ride. As with most things, I forgot about the website and a year or so later went to Six Flags in New Jersey. I got on the Superman ride. It was a suspended roller coaster where they rotate the seats so that you're in a plank position as if you're flying underneath the track. Suddenly, every memory from that website came rushing back and I was terrified. I went through the entire ride with my eyes closed clutching the restraints. It wasn't the ride itself. That was actually pretty lame. It was the fear that the restraints would pop open due to hydraulic failure and I'd fall 50 feet to the concrete and die like someone I read about. It was the longest minute of my life.

I didn't get on anything else there and I felt stupid the whole way home. It'd be different if I hadn't already stood in line for an hour and a half or if I had gotten off before they locked the restraints, but I was already on the ride. I had already made it up the hill. Whatever was gonna happen was out of my control, but I had this illogical feeling that closing my eyes and holding on tight would make a difference. Maybe it was my subconscious trying to give me the allusion that I had some power. I don't know.

What I do know is that life is a lot like that. Someone close to me was just given an opportunity to take a job overseas. She's considering turning it down out of fear of what could go wrong. Maybe the job will suck, she'll miss her friends, it's unfamiliar and what if she falls flat on her ass? Moving all the way back to the States jobless and a failure is more than she feels she could take. The way I see it, she's already gotten on the ride. She stood in that long ass line by studying for classes that would have no use in the real world, she put up with shitty jobs and bosses to get to this point in her career and she's had to sacrifice things she wanted to do for "business need" all in the name of work-life balance. Now that she's reached the top of the hill and sees how high she's come, she's afraid she'll fall so she's closing her eyes and trying to hold on to what's secure.

The truth is, life is very very short. You don't have as much control as you think and sometimes you need to realize that and just relax and go with it. So keep your head back, arms inside the vehicle and, as always, enjoy your ride.

Bullseye!

Today at Target I realized that I really need to donate money to the public school system. The woman in front of me had to be about thirty and the clerk was probably in her mid twenties. After ringing up the woman's stuff, the clerk gives her the total, $107.00. The woman whips out her checkbook and asks, "How do you write out $107?" The clerk instructs her to, "Write the words 'one hundred' then beside it write the number 100 and a slash mark, then put a seven underneath it."

For those of you playing at home that's "100 and 100/7 dollars."

So the clerk puts the check in the machine and then tells the woman that it was declined. The two then brainstorm on why the check didn't go through. Now my first thought is that the woman probably bounced checks here before and they flagged her account number, but I could be wrong. It seems most likely because I don't think they run balance checks through that machine. It's not a credit card after all, but hey, what do I know?

The lady tells the clerk, "Maybe it's because I got that game!" So the girl voids the video game. I'm thinking, "Is this like an food stamp check?" I know that with food stamps you can't buy alcohol, but I'm certain that they don't issue food stamp checks. So they try again and it doesn't work. Then they have a stroke of brilliance... "You think that maybe the machine can't read my handwriting?"

At this point I'm dying laughing inside, but I maintain my composure. The customer says, "Usually when my checks don't go through, a little thing prints out telling me why." BINGO! You have a history of writing bad checks, that's why the thing isn't going through. They eventually call over the manager, who tells the woman to call the 800 number on the back of her check. The lady says that she doesn't have a cell phone and that her phone at home is cut off and asks to use their phone. They shut down the line as the clerk walks with her to the customer service area to use the phone. I ask her if she's coming back and she says, "You might want to go to another register."

Pissed off, I just walked out the store and left everything there. The moral of the story is... A mind is a terrible thing to waste.

To the Right, To the Right

And now a word on irony...

When I was five, a sixth grader tried to beat my ass. While he was yapping away about what he was about to do...I was Chun-Li'ing his ass. I won. A few years later an eighth grader beat me up the fourth grade version of myself. Unfair fight, but oddly enough he hit like a girl. He threw enough punches for them to add up, but still it didn't really hurt. Even when I got jumped in the seventh grade by four grown ass men at the bus stop for my Polo coat, I felt very little pain.

It started with a "Come up out that coat, cuz." I kept walking. They ran up on me, hit me from behind and it was on. Sad part of this story is that I was walking with three other guys. They took off running. One of them actually stuck with me like he was gonna fight too just until the bus pulled up and he hopped on and wished me well from the window. I stood there, took the blows and did the best I could. In the end, they fucked up my coat, ripped the sleeves but I didn't run. I guess they got tired of hitting me cuz they just said, "Fuck this little nigga" and let me go. Even then, I walked away rather than run.

I'm not trying to sound like a bad ass. I'm no Black Dynamite. Like I said at the beginning...let's talk about irony.

All of those semi ass whoopings and I truly felt zero pain. Maybe I went to my "special place" or something like Fight Club but there was one fight that hurt like hell. Her name was Renee and she was like twelve or something. I was about nine or ten. We got into an argument outside of my church (of all places) and I don't remember what sparked it but her little 4 foot six, 90 lb frame was the perfect hiding place for the spirit of Iron Fist Joe Louis.

I said something like, "What you gonna do?" and all I remember seeing was this redbone fist coming my direction and connecting with my jaw. Then I heard a pop. Laila Ali hit me so damn hard that something in my neck snapped and my whole head was locked facing right. Do you have any idea how fucking embarrassing it is to go into Children's Choir rehearsal with the "stroke" look? It took three days and couple tubes of Ben Gay for the muscles to loosen in my neck so that I could face forward again.

I dropped outta the choir and skipped church for a few weeks. lol It's funny that you can get jumped by three grown men and not feel a damn thing, but one little girl can kick your ass.

Pick Nic?

Dear Other Black People,

Every Spring that old underground railroad email starts circulating again about how we as Black people should never use the word "picnic" because it's racist. According to the email, White people used to have potlucks outside while buying slaves. "Picnic" is supposedly the abbreviated way of saying, "Pick a nigger." Even though common sense told me that this was the dumbest fucking thing I'd ever heard, I still had to do some investigating to be sure.

I went undercover as a White man. After several months I finally gained their trust and was given access to their secret lair where they keep their "real" dictionary. Inside, I found the answer. Apparently "picnic" dates back to 18th century France. "Piquenique" basically meant "potluck." People would come together and bring food to eat. By the 19th century, the word had made it's way to England where it took the connotation of an outdoor eating event. America stole the word from the Europeans, marketed it on baskets and constructed giant grassy enclosures where people would perform the art of picnicking for generations.

Please stop forwarding that email. It just makes us sound stupid.

Freedom Taxes

Well, I just mailed off my taxes and I feel $400 lighter. I know I'm in the minority here but I have no issue with paying taxes. I consider taxes to be my Freedom Payment...kinda like an electric bill or something. Every year something happens to make me happy to pay taxes again. This year it was Egypt and Libya. They shoot people over there. Yeah I know, they shoot people here too, but it's so much different. If you get caught up in a drive by or the police unload a clip on you, then more than likely the bullet that does you in will be a 9mm. Over there though...AK-47s, grenades, missles, roadside bombs, etc. Who the hell wants to live in a place where preschoolers are playing Call of Duty in real life?

Let's say you don't get shot over there. It's a fucking desert! What the hell do you do for fun--play let's not die from dehydration? People fight for the craziest shit over there, like food. The last time I fought for a meal was at McDonald's when the lady swore to me that the 99 cent Filet-o-Fish special had ended even though the commercial clearly said it was extended. That's the kinda fight I want in my life. I want to be on the verge of divorce because my wife didn't put enough sugar in my Kool-Aid. I don't want a civil rights debate. I'm sorry, but we have America exactly the way we want it now. It took a few wars, some marches and such but now it's just right. It's not totally negro friendly, but lynching is technically illegal. There's still poverty but the average person just has to contend with the projects (a tall shelter with running water, electricity and the occasional bullet coming through a window), racial profiling (cops harassing you versus trampling you while riding through the a middle eastern city that looks a lot like Aladdin's Agraba on horseback a la the dark haired dude from The Mummy) and drugs (things that cause the people who sell and use them to die unlike the car bombs that just kill everyone walking by).

So I paid my Freedom Payment this year and I'll be damn glad to do it next year.

Moment of Silence

It's 11:26 at night and I have a few moments of peace while the baby pretends to go to sleep. Here's something that you won't read in the brochure:

Your house becomes DisneyWorld.

Now I'm not just talking about the random toys strewn around the apartment or the chorus of laughter mixed with crying and tantrums. I'm referring to the Disney motto of "we are always open." It's a little realized fact but Disney never actually shuts down. It's open to the public for only a few hours but after the last broke tourist leaves the park, they kick into high gear.

My apartment, like Disney World, needs someone to keep the place clean. All of the DVDs three feet from the ground need to be put back on the shelf in their proper order. The walls have to be magically erased by Mr. Clean, the baby bottles have to be powerwashed and if I'm lucky...I get to eat dinner.

This is the happiest place on Earth. Then the baby wakes back up. All of the toys will find themselves out of the box and onto the floor, food will go either in her mouth or behind the television and the chorus of her laughter will fill the room over the faint sound of my tears.