2008-01-10 - 3:56 p.m.
HAPPY 2008
Hi, hi, hi, hello! I certainly hope you had the most merry of Christmases and that you're having the hap hap happiest of New Years. My Christmas was kinda different this year. Or last year, I guess it would be, since this is now 2000 and 8.
It was about 11:30 in the PM on Christmas Eve and I was laying there on the couch with my sweetums, watching some holiday fare on the ol' television. You know how that is. And I had just started to think to myself that she was probably going up to bed soon, 'cause it was starting to get late and all.
I wasn't really tired, though, so I didn't feel like sleeping. But did I want to miss out on cuddling and snuggling in our nice, warm bed on Christmas Eve, the very night where five years earlier I asked her if she'd marry me? Did I ever tell you that story? I don't think I have. But anyway, no, I surely did not want to miss that!
So that's the issue I was contemplating when, right out of the clear blue sky, Charity says to me, she says, "I'm kinda hungry." To which I replied "Hungry for what?" Because I am nothing if not inquisitive. And she said "I don't know. I feel like... going out to eat somewhere."
Well! This was certainly an unusual thing to hear at 11:30 at night. Especially on Christmas Eve of all nights. Since, you know, nothing is open on Christmas Eve. We'd been out earlier around 8:00 and I'd noticed that a McDonalds was already closed. McDonalds! Closed! In the United States of America! What has it all come to?
I relayed this to my sweetums, who was surprisingly undeterred. "Something must be open," she insisted. "What about Russell's?"
Russell's, you probably don't know, is this buffet-style place about a half hour from our house. It's right near the interstate next to all these truck stops, and they stay open late on account of the truckers coming in. The food is really good, too. Oddly, though, I've probably only eaten there like 5 times in the past 10 years. Maybe 'cause it's always so crowded.
And they're open holidays, even Christmas and Thanksgiving, and they make these HUGE feasts. My sister and I went there once on Thanksgiving when I was like 15, because my dad had to go out of town and we weren't having Thanksgiving dinner until he got back. And the place was packed. Packed! Filled with people who like eating turkey and stuffing, but who don't like to cook.
Anyway, I knew from previous experience that Russell's is open until midnight. But that's under normal circumstances. On Christmas Eve one would assume they close earlier. And since it was 11:30 and Russell's is a half hour from our house, it wasn't likely we'd get there on time. And that's if we ran right out the door that very moment. Neither of us were primed to leave the house, though, as we still needed to get dressed and comb our hair and whatnot.
I relayed this to my sweetums as well, but she was not at all phased. "Well," she said, pausing to collect her thoughts. "What about IHOP?"
IHOP? Really? Hmm. It's not exactly my favorite place to eat, but at that moment the idea of a big stack of pancakes did not sound so bad. I remember when the IHOP first opened here, we were in high school and it was right around the time a famous pro wrestler who I like to refer to as "The Rock" had this line where he'd go "Do you like... PANCAKES?".
I don't really remember what he was implying with that question, but I like to think it was dirty. Charity and I ate there the first week it opened, and between the day it opened and the day we went, I must have asked her if she likes pancakes like 30 times. She totally does, by the way. The tramp.
What was I talking about? Ah yes. IHOP. There's an IHOP that's also like 30 minutes from us, and it's open 24 hours a day. But is it open on Christmas Eve and Christmas? That I did not know.
So I agreed to drive out there and see if she wanted to. I like going out late at night and driving around. We'd just done it a few weeks earlier, when we had this big ice storm sweep through the area. Trees and telephone polls and such were falling down, power lines were falling because the wires were weighed down with ice. They even cancelled school 4 straight days, which is unheard of around here. When Charity and I were in school, I don't think we ever got 4 snow days in an entire year, let alone 4 right in a row.
The superintendent back then was a real butt. He never cancelled school for anything. As bad as this sounds, I used to hope for some horrible accident on the icy roads where a kid on his way to school would be killed, just so the superintendent would have to start canceling school for all inclement weather to avoid more tragic losses of life. But that never happened, sadly. I mean thankfully!
Anyway, during the week of the ice storm, the Y closed down and so Charity didn't have any classes to teach. And the roads were bad, so being that we live kinda out in the middle of nowhere, I didn't go anywhere for a few days. Actually, even people who live right in town weren't going anywhere. The first morning after the storm, a guy I work with called to see if I'd be able to come in, since others weren't showing up and he knew it would be even harder for me. I didn't know how bad things had gotten, so I was like "Yeah, I guess I'll be there".
Then I went downstairs and was getting ready, and Charity's like "Where are you going?" and I told her I was going to work and told her about the phone call. And she got this look on her face and just growled at me going "YOU. BETTER. JUST. CALL. THEM. BACK." It was so adorable.
Both of us stayed home together all that week, which, I do not mind admitting, was pretty nice. We stayed huddled in at home, snuggling under warm blankets and drinking hot chocolate and all of those things.
And like at 1:30 on Thursday morning, the third day we stayed home, we were both still wide awake. So we went driving all around to see how her new car handles in the ice and the snow without having to worry about other traffic on the roads. And it did quite well. It's a good car.
Then while we were out driving, probably around 2:00 AM, I pulled into a mall parking lot that was all icy and started doing donuts. Donuts, in case it's not a term everyone is familiar with, is where you keep spinning the car around in a circle. Not to be confused, of course, with the delicious fried dough treat of the same name.
I mention this because Charity hates donuts. Oh man, HATES 'em. She's not very fond of the fattening fried dough treats either, but the ones in the car she really hates. And I just don't get it. She'll go on roller coasters with loops and all that. I've never been on a roller-coaster with a loop and I probably never will be. But she enjoys that stuff, yet spinning in a circle in the car in a wide-open parking lot is too dangerous an activity for her. Can you explain it? I can't. She's such a wiener. One day I'll have to do donuts in the car while eating a donut at the exact same time just to see what shade of red her face will turn.
ANYWAY. Boy, did I get off on a tangent there. Going driving at night is fun is my point. So I did not object to cruising to IHOP and seeing what was going down over there. So we got dressed and neatened up and freshened our breath and got in the car, and by this time it was after midnight, and thus it was now Christmas. And wouldn't you know it, IHOP was actually open. On Christmas morning! Who'd have thunk it? Charity was just tickled.
So we went in and the place was empty, and we sat down and got to some eatin'. I had strawberry banana pancakes, two eggs (over easy!), hash browns, sausage, some OJ (that's short for orange juice). Charity had stuffed French toast, I think, all covered in whipped cream and fruit and whatnot. It was quite tasty.
Then we left and as we're driving home, we see that Wal-Mart... yes, Wal-Mart... is also open. On Christmas! And there are only like 10 cars in the giant parking lot. They have a whole grocery store there, I mention that as I'm not sure how many Wal-Marts do, and Charity was like "You know, we do need to get a few things.".
So at 1:00 in the morning on Christmas, I was walking around the aisles of a giant empty Wal-Mart. And since it was empty, and since we didn't have a grocery list or anything, we went up and down EVERY single aisle so that the sight of certain products would jog Charity's memory and make her remember that we needed them. Then around 2:00 we finally got home and went to bed.
It was certainly different. Our New Year's was pretty normal, though. By which I mean Charity drank a lot, broke some things, and flirted with members of her own family. I kid! She's not really an alcoholic. She does tend to drink more than normal during the holidays, but she hardly drinks at all the rest of the year, so I guess any drinking at all would be drinking more than normal. That's probably why it doesn't take a lot to get her tipsy.
Let me tell you what, I like to chug down some booze-spiked eggnog as much as the next fellow, but it is great fun to be sober when Charity's drinking so that I can observe her behavior when she's had a little too much. Oh, it is so great.
The best part is that it's not really noticeable to anyone but me, because I know all the signs and everything. It's not like she's staggering around drunk and embarrassing herself or anything like that. If you didn't know what to look for, you'd never know that she had anything to drink at all. There's just little ways I can tell.
TO WIT: when she's had a few too many, she starts to laugh at pretty much anything. Not loud obnoxious laughing, it's just that everything seems funnier to her. A relative will tell her some dumb story at her family Christmas party, and she'll laugh it up like it was the greatest tale she's ever heard.
She also, I have no idea why, tends to wring her hands as she stands there. It's like she starts to think "What should I be doing with my hands?" and she rubs one with the other, and then switches, and then switches back. And the more she's had to drink, the more she wrings them. If you ever see her going to town like she's Dean Malenko rubbing his wrist tape, you'll know she's snookered.
Really, though, the easiest way for me to tell is that, with me, she tends to get a little... I can't think of the right word. I don't want to say "abusive", 'cause that makes me sound like a wimp. Aggressive, I guess. Yeah, that's a good word. She gets aggressive.
Still using her family party as an example, she'll come find me and grab me by the shirt and drag me over to some little corner. And she'll go "Kiss me!" Demanding one, not asking for one. I, of course, have no problem kissing my lovely wife. But first I must scan the room and make sure nobody's watching, because I know what's about to happen.
But she grows annoyed by the delay and then she’ll shove me into the wall before repeating her demand. Naturally, I don't want to get beaten up, so I lean in to give her a nice little kiss.
But when she's a little tipsy, the whole notion of kissing completely falls apart with her. I don't even know how to describe what actually takes place. It's more like... mouth... licking. Like if you were kissing a dog, except with slightly less slobber.
You know, this would probably be a good time to change topics. Say, last time I think I said I'd tell you about my trip to WWE SMACKDOWN (and ECW!), so I will go ahead and do that right now. The biggest part of the story from my perspective was that my wrestling-attending buds and I had an extra ticket, which, being the gentleman I am, I offered it to my wonderful, sainted wife to see if she'd like to come along with me.
Charity doesn't actually like wrestling, but she has always tolerated it to varying degrees. She'll sit down and watch certain things, like the Royal Rumble, which is where 30 guys come out every minute or two, and I end up having to tell her who each guy is and all that. Out of everything that happens in wrestling in a given year, I think she likes that match the best.
And she likes leaving the house and going out and doing things, which probably goes without saying. When we were in high school, WCW came here like 4-5 times in the span of 2 years, and Charity went with me to every show except for one, I think. And she always had a good time when we went. But those shows were much closer to us, whereas WWE SMACKDOWN (and ECW!) always comes to Wichita, which is like a 2 hour drive. So while she has a good time attending the shows, she doesn't really care enough to want to drive 4 total hours to be able to go. You know what I mean?
So I asked if she wanted to come, and for whatever reason she seems to be under the impression that she's a buzzkiller, like I can't have any fun if she comes along with me to something like this. Which is not at all true. It's totally wrong, actually, anything I do is more fun if she's there. I try to play it cool like I can take her or leave her, but to be honest, I kinda like having her around. (Shhh, don't tell her!)
And on the other side of the coin, I tend to think I'm a buzzkiller for her. But not a buzzkill for that momentary event, more like a buzzkill for her life. Because when I go to wrestling or to a football game or whatever the case may be, I'm a loud cheering idiot just like all the other loud cheering idiots. Whether or not Charity goes doesn't effect my behavior, it just effects whether or not she witnesses the behavior. So if she doesn't come, she's sitting at home blissfully unaware that I'm acting like a complete moron. But if she does come, she sees it for herself and realizes she's married to me, and then a little part of her dies inside. Or so I worry. She insists it's not true, but we'll see.
So there I am asking her if she wants to go, and she's like "Do you WANT me to go?", and I insist that I do. But she's still not that wild about driving for 4 hours both ways. Then she offers a compromise. She says she'll go to WWE SMACKDOWN (and ECW!) if I go with her to Wichita a month later, which would have been a few weeks ago, to see a Christmas concert by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
That probably sounds nice enough and all, but I am not a big concert-going kind of guy. There are probably two reasons for this. First is because of my ears and my hearing. I have weird hearing. I'm not sure how they test little kids' hearing elsewhere in the world, but around here they sent this little house-on-wheels type thing around to the schools. And kids would go inside and there would be a little soundproof room we'd sit in with headphones on.
The person running the test would hit these buttons to make a series of beeps go through the headphones, with the beeps starting at a loud volume and eventually getting soft. And we'd have a button in our hand and we'd push the button every time we heard the beep. If you heard the beeps, they knew you could hear. Pretty simple.
Well! I got tested in first grade or so, and the people running the test sent a note home with me asking that my mom bring me to their actual testing office so that I could be re-tested. But not because my hearing was bad.
What happened was that I was the first kid to get tested after lunch... my mom has told this story a million times, which is why I can recall it with such detail. And halfway through my test they realized that they'd forgot to turn the volume on for the beeps, as they had shut it all down for lunch. So they were sending out beeps that had no sound to them, but I was still clicking my button at all the right times, which is why they didn't notice until halfway through that there was a problem.
In other words, I was still hearing the beeps even though the only things coming through the headphones were the faintest, nearly-silent little noises possible. And the hearing testers had never seen that before, so they wanted me re-tested. And my mom took me to get re-tested and they did the entire test without sound and I scored 100% on it. So I have freakishly good hearing.
Sadly, though, it has never really helped me in any way throughout my life, except to hear the TV better while people are talking and that kind of thing. But big whoop. If I was going to have a super power, how about x-ray vision or something? That would have come in handy a few times.
Anyway, because of this, I am overly sensitive to loud noises. And concerts are usually loud. So to sum up, I'm not much of a concert guy because it hurts my ears. I remember my sister taking me to see the first Batman movie, the one with Michael Keaton, and the theater had the volume up so loud that we had to leave 'cause it gave me an awful headache. So ever since then, I've been wary of such things.
Also, I'm not much of a concert guy because it's rare that anyone comes near me that I really get up for seeing. When I was little I had this Fisher Price record player that I played stupid kids music on and stuff. And when I was like 3 or 4, someone gave me my first records made by actual musicians -- Blondie and Weird Al. And if you asked me today who my favorite bands are, I would tell you "Blondie" and "Weird Al". I'm very loyal.
If either of them did concerts near me, I'd be the first in line. But they don't. And while I like lots of other bands and everything, it's rare that any show jazzes me up like an Al/Blondie concert would. So any time there's a concert nearby, I think "yeah, that sounds okay". And as a result of always being that way instead of being "YEAH YEAH LET'S GO", I could either be the kind of guy who goes to every concert, or the kind that hardly goes to any. And probably due in large part to the aforementioned hearing issue, I hardly go to any. BB King is coming near here in a month, though, I might go to that.
ANYWAY. I just keep veering off, don't I? I agreed to Charity's wrestling-for-concert deal and we were off to the rasslin' show. There was already a big line when we got there, so we stayed in the car until things got moving along. Then we finally got in line behind these two kids and this skinny, greasy-haired guy with them who stunk -- STUNK -- like cigarette smoke. The smell was so awful. But after a few minutes, the guy turned around I realized it was not the kids' dad... it was their MOM. The greasy-haired cig stinker was a woman. Oh, it was so gross.
The kids, a boy and a girl, were probably between 7 and 10. And as we got closer to the building, the boy pulled out his ticket, said they were in Row F, and then proceeded to speak as if they had front row seats for the show. Row F, though, is actually the 6th row. Did they think F stood for "front"? It's the only thing I can think of.
And the kids kept going on and on about their front row seats and how they were going to be able to touch the wrestlers and all that. It got to the point that I started feeling bad, knowing the disappointment these poor kids would be in for when they got inside. I told Charity this later, thinking she'd be moved by my sensitivity for these children, but she wasn't paying attention to them and didn't notice.
I also heard the mother say something really weird to the kids while we were in line, something to the effect of "Don't be surprised if you're disappointed, this isn't like watching it on TV". Um. Uh. Er. What? Yes, it's not like watching on TV, it's like being there live. Which is generally a preferred method of witnessing something, or why else would people attend shows and concerts and games and such? How odd.
We finally got inside and they did a new thing this year where ushers were blocking the floor area, which is where our tickets were. And they wouldn't let anyone down on the floor who didn't have floor tickets. What good thinking! So you had to show your tickets to the usher and then another usher would lead you to your seats.
Charity and I went to ours and I saw the gross mom and her kids being led to theirs. They, of course, were in the 6th row, and when they realized this the little girl looked like someone had just run over her dog. She was like "but... but... but... Mama, you said... but, Mama, you said..." and I had to turn away. I couldn't take seeing those poor kids' misery. Row F. COME ON. Row F! That's not the front. Oh man. You're killing me, Smalls.
Then the wrestling took place, but you probably don't care much about that. It was a fun show. New tag team champions were crowned! The Undertaker was there! Oh, it was a grand old time. Then we left and went home.
And, true to my word, a month later I indeed went with Charity to the TSO concert. Which was a little cheesy, I thought. Oooh, lasers! What is this, 1987? But it was still kinda cool. It was most definitely loud, but I toughed it out. They played that song, the one from the beer commercials, you know. I was like “Hey, I know that one!” Then we left.
Boy, this ended up being pretty long, huh? I can’t really think of anything else to talk about at the moment, so we’ll go ahead and wrap things up. See you next time! Come back soon! Don’t be a stranger!
BYE
