Well once when I was in sixth grade I was on this JV football squad. I don't know why because I never really liked or even understood most sports, but anyway there I was, even though I didn't even like it very much although I will have to say that playing the game was marginally better than sitting around watching it all day. And so this guy named Washek hits me really hard and I have to go on the sidelines, which is really embarrassing because everyone hates this guy Washek and he's a total dork who eats paste, but he was built pretty solid and could hit real hard. Either that or I was just a wuss. Anyway, there I was sitting on the sidelines feeling really embarrassed and just knowing in the pit of my stomach that all the JV Cheerleaders were giggling at me.

 

So anyway I'm on the bench and I have to pee really bad but I don't feel like waiting for the coach to notice me so I go back into the woods on the side of the playing field. There was this creepy old lady who lived back there with this really big barking dog that looked like he liked to eat sixth graders, and her whole property was surrounded by this really high electric fence. Or anyway there were signs all over saying that it was electric, even though none of us knew for sure if it really was, and if it really was just how electric it was, and of course as sixth grade guys we were all afraid to test it and even more afraid that all the other guys would know how afraid we really were. And having just been knocked down by Washek and really wanting to prove how cool I was, I decide for some reason that it would be a really good idea to pee right there on the fence.

 

It turns out the fence was really electric. Really electric, like at first it was really cool watching all the sparks and the smoke, but then this huge arc of white-blue lightning struck right at my little sixth-grade weewee and knocked me back against this pine tree, which is the last thing I actually remember til twenty minutes later, having come staggering out of the woods with my pants to my ankles and smoke pouring out of my underpants, to collapse right there in the middle of the field while God and the entire JV squad and their parents and the cheerleaders and their parents, plus the opposing squad and their parents and the other team's coaches all stopped what they were doing and ran over to me (while someone, I presume, ran back to the office to call 911).

 

And so I woke up being lifted into the ambulance while everyone giggled and laughed uncontrollably (except the adults, well, most of them). But what really caught my eye was this one cheerleader named Colleen, who was like the one token ugly cheerleader that always seemed to make the squad every year for whatever reason, even though she was way too skinny and dorky and no one really liked her, and I mean I was used to every one else laughing at me but for some reason I guess I felt like if even Colleen was laughing at me, I really had to suck.

 

So I followed her around for the rest of sixth grade and almost all of seventh, just torturing her and making her life a living hell, until she developed an eating disorder and sometime after Christmas that year she had to be taken away in an ambulance and had to go to a special school. Anyway, while she was there, she blossomed, and when she got out we started talking and we dated most of Freshman year, even though her parents totally hated my guts. And so that was really my first girlfriend. Or anyway my first girlfriend with boobs.

 

Note: When someone starts talking all sentimental and reminiscing about their youth, this is a good story to tell. It gets a laugh and usually shuts them up. 

 

OK, so once me and my friend Tom went to see his sister Julie at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. Julie was a total babe, which has nothing to do with the rest of the story but since I am a guy I have to make note of the fact. Anyway, me and Tom and Julie's boyfriend Rob started drinking. Rob's dad was an Admiral in the Navy, and he was best friends with this high-up Navy guy whose last name was Morrison, and this Morrison guy had a famous son name JIM MORRISON who was, yes, that same guy from THE FREAKIN' DOORS, MAN!!! Anyway, again, that has nothing to do with the rest of the story, but it's so cool that I am like four-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon away from FREAKIN' JIM MORRISON that I had to make note of the fact.

 

So anyway, the three of us start drinking and we drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink and drink!!! Until we are so shit-faced that, somewhere along the way, we get into one of these weird-ass conversations that ends with Rob betting me fifty bucks that I won't eat a whole stick of butter.

 

So I put it on a hot dog bun and ate it in three bites, but after about a gallon of Jack Daniels, it didn't sit too well. So I vomited butter and hot dog bun all over Rob's carpet. So Rob said that since I vomited, it didn't count, and he was going to have to pay more than fifty bucks to have the carpet cleaned, and we got in this big shoving match, and he slipped in the big puddle of butter-vomit and hit his head on a coffee table.

 

So, now Tom and me are really starting to freak out, here is this guy probably dying in a puddle of butter-vomit , when we suddenly both remember that Julie's roommate works at a medical clinic next door to the dorm. What we fail to remember is that she works at a veterinary clinic and that she went next door to a barn to deliver a calf; all we do remember is that something medical is going on 50 feet away, and so we carry him over there and drop him on the doorstep and climb over the split-rail fence to see Julie's roommate sticking her whole arm up inside the cow to pull out this disgusting bloody mess that we assume is a calf, and then Tom starts throwing up and I hear this bull start to charge the rail where I'm standing, and I'm just guessing that he's the dad and that he objects to my watching, but anyway I run as fast I can (read that: drunkenly stagger) and flip back over the fence with my legs flying up in the air and my face buried in the grass.

 

There really is no point to this story, no lessons to learn. But if you are ever in a group of people whom you don't know well, but they all know each other, like say you go to your spouse's high school reunion, tell this story and watch how they all shut up, because suddenly they realize how boring all the rest of the crap they have to say is.

 

 

 

During all the commotion, my little cousin Dennis (who had just lost a goldfish) somehow got it into his head that he was supposed to flush the cat, which overflowed the toilet in the next room and when the lights came back on, the short in the lamp and the water on the floor electrocuted my Uncle Ned. He didn't die or anything, but they had to take him away in an ambulance and everything, and after that his hair never grew in right again, it came straight up off his head in these weird tufts, and one leg always ran faster than the other one so that when he ran, he always went in circles after that.

 

I had this friend named Andy and we were always in trouble. I mean, always, from the time we met in sixth grade until college. Once in seventh grade we both had to stay after school in the library for detention, and all the teachers and librarians knew us so they made us sit at separate tables.

 

As we sat there, Andy started gesturing to me with his hands like he knew sign language. I don't know why: We hadn't discussed it or planned it out, and we'd never done it before, but Andy was really good at faking it. He looked like he was really signing. I knew enough about it to know that you didn't just sign, you also spoke the words as you went, so I started "signing" back to him, but my signs were slower, at least, because I hoped it wouldn't look like I was uncoordinated (which I am) but that I didn't know sign as well and had to think about what I was saying.

 

Anyway, as we sat there and fake-signed to each other, we kept looking up at the librarian, like we were talking about her (when really we were just trying to make sure she was watching us). And then, we started laughing. And then, she got really pissed, and made us face opposite walls so we couldn't see each other.

 

It was a very minor incident and wouldn't have made much of an impression on anyone, except that like three weeks later one of the kids had a cousin come visit the school for a few days (Catholics schools did that; they'd have kids "visit" and attend classes, like the one time a Mexican kid came and someone taught him to say "fuck" really loud). Anyway, it just so happened that this girl was deaf.

 

And everyone thought that Andy and I knew sign language.

 

Well, we agreed to hang out with her and "interpret" but, well, remember how I said Andy was really good at faking it? He wasn't that good. Someone would ask her where she was from and she would sign something, and Andy would say "Milwaukee" or whatever, which would have been ok if he took two seconds to find out where she was actually from, or remembered what he'd said the next time someone asked her, and he said "San Diego". We weren't halfway through math class, and we both got sent to the Principals.

 

And did you know that everything we did or said reflected on the school, and that God and Mary and all the Saints were watching us, and that it's not funny to make fun of deaf girls? Andy and I knew all that. We heard about it for about an hour in that office, seems like every week or two.

 

They made us go to detention again, only this time we had to help clean all the restrooms and help with general cleaning, every day for a week. On Monday, we hid the janitor's ladder while he was up on  the roof, and on Tuesday we filled the soap dispensers in the teacher's lounge with liquid Comet (we mixed in some hand soap, so that it didn't smell as bad).