Health

Like those four moptops said – Help, I need somebody

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Help on the toilet

No people, I ‘m not looking for bail money but yes I really do need help! I am undertaking a new project and need your suggestions to make it work. The full details are HERE but basically in order to beat out my mid-life crisis in a foot race, I am meeting the dreaded 4-0 head on!

In just under forty weeks, I’ll be forty years old and some say I have never looked hotter than I do right now. OK, no one actually says that besides me, but as I sit typing this I am sweating profusely over my keyboard – is this really a time to worry about semantics? I’m going to take on forty challenges of suggestions from you, my faithful brethren. It’s as if we were in a reverse cult and all of a sudden you told me to drink the Kool Aid or sniff the gas…

Who am I to argue with the Cube?

Who am I to argue with the Cube?

I need official, actual, specific, and more than most likely clinical, help from all of my Immodium Abusers. I am looking to you, my friends, my family, and my other random peeps that just like to laugh at me, for assistance. I’ve started compiling a preliminary list, but need more suggestions of things you’d like me to accomplish. Between now and the forty week mark, I will post about these challenges, big and small.

Here’s where you come in. Head over to 40donebefore40.com right now and leave suggestions for my 40 challenges. I’ll be updating the list and keeping you updated on my progress and of course posting about it.  This is going to be a Choose-your-own-Adventure with an Immodium twist! A Choose-Your-Own-Immodium-Adventure if you will!

choose your own adventure

This will in no way be replacing or taking over your beloved Immodiumabuser.com; this is just a side project in addition to combat the forces of aging – sort of like Oil of Olay on steroids.

THOUGHTS?

THOUGHTS?

You down with OCD, yeah you know me…my Toiletries regiminent revisited

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Anyone who knows me can tell you that I am under absolute duress to be ready for anything in any reasonable amount of time. Even more than that, I can’t even get ready in an unreasonable amount of time. Celebrities don’t take this long to prep for the Oscars – but for me to run to the supermarket is a production. I have tried things to quicken the pace, but sort of like a gentle soufflé, you cannot rush certain things.

My wife always argues with me about how long it takes me to get ready, but while she looks absolutely perfect and requires very little touch-ups from the moment she rises out of bed, when I wake up I look like one of the zombies marching in back of the float in the Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance video.

My toiletry regimen alone is a great big process in and of itself: I set my Ipod for one song and then get in the shower. It should not take longer to shower than one random song. That’s not the time-consuming part. The exception to this one-song rule is if you have fallen into the cesspool (Lance) or had a plumbing pipe full of shit (literally, full of shit) explode into your mouth and onto your chest (Hal) – At that point, take as long as you feel necessary in there and no one will say a word.

Back to the routine; I like to start at the top and then work my way down. The opening act, or my first facial scrub, is just a tingly little wake-up call and then we head straight for the follow-up nourishing face wash and immediately into the Bliss face wash after that. I then grab my two thickening shampoos (it’s sort of the same philosophy that I have with Pumpkin muffins, where if one is good – two will be much better) and wash my hair. Obviously, the shampoo is dripping down my body and I would need to scrub again after it – so it just makes sense to use the body bar after the hair is done. Moving on to my Oil of Olay Age Defying soap for certain parts of the body – though never on this gentle face with a bar soap! I actually don’t understand why anyone would choose to use a bar of soap to wash their body and then use that SAME bar to wash their face. Any bar of soap that touches my feet or cleans my balls surely isn’t going anywhere near my face!

Blue Body wash is next for the rest of my body that the soap doesn’t cover. I don’t mind scents, but I feel like it needs to be blue or it won’t fully clean me. I don’t know why blue body wash strikes me as more thorough – but I just can’t use another color. Then I dry off and get my robe and waist towel (what my wife lovingly refers to as a skirt) and put on my Birkenstocks so my clean feet won’t touch the ground. Did I forget to mention that I HATE to be barefoot and just cannot do it? Nothing gets me worked up more than that. OK, the beach does – I mean you’re sitting in dirt – It doesn’t make any sense!!!

(I actually had a mini panic attack at the airport last summer when I rushed out of the house in flip-flops not thinking and then had to go through security when I got to the airport. I almost scrapped the whole trade show that I was going to for work when they told me I had to take the flip-flops off. I asked for some napkins or paper towels so I wouldn’t have to walk on the floor – but they looked at me like I was the crazy one. Needless to say the sight of me scrubbing my feet in the men’s bathroom sink immediately after going through security didn’t go over well. Two people looked at me like I just escaped from the mental hospital and another told me that I was crazy. Screw them – people can shave in the sink and hair is everywhere, but one foot on the counter sets them off? I was balancing like Nadia Comaneci because if one of my barefoot little toes had touched that disgusting airport bathroom floor – they would have taken me out on a stretcher right into the ambulance.)

For my next act, I move straight into oral hygiene and start with my Listerine pre-rinse and floss and Q-Tips to check for wax or and then grab my Radius toothbrush to start on the choppers with my Tom’s of Maine fennel toothpaste. Don’t let them fool you, if it’s not fennel – it’s not fine. I will not use a toothbrush that isn’t Radius – it just gets the job done! If you haven’t tried it – get one right now. Your brushing will shoot right up to the next level and you’ll be thanking me for it for years to come. The zesty tingle after a good brushing just starts me on the right path and keeps me going all day.

If you were just thinking that I was finished and ready to leave the bathroom, you would be mistaken. The next stop on the OCD Express is my eye serum for the bags under my eyes (regular face creams are just not gentle enough for this area) then we move on to the T-Zone cream (for the nose and forehead) which tends to be an oilier area so you have to use a product of a different consistency and then I finish up with my gentle SPF Facial cream for the chin, cheeks, and neck area.

I hit the Styling Paste to spruce up this thin crow’s nest I’m calling my hair these days, and then an extra healthy spot of Rogaine Foam. Rogaine is the only one of my toiletries I have a heavy hand with – you never know. I now head for the brush to get my hair under control and give it a “look.” With my hair, I try to go for the “messy, cover-up” look to make it look thicker, but it usually just comes across as the “desperate, comb-over” look.

We haven’t even gotten to the deodorant (Spray? No way!) and cologne yet. Lately, I have been going back and forth between Tiffany for Men and Diesel. I’m actually a little scared of using the Diesel at full force with more than one squirt – so I go very sparingly. It says right there on the bottle in big letters to “Use with Caution” and I take that warning very seriously. Seriously, the last thing I need is to go waltzing into work after one too many squirts of Diesel and set that little minx in Accounting off into a Diesel infused stupor. Instead of her flirting with the Subway guy at lunch like she usually does, she’ll be trying to steal the pickle off my McRib sandwich! That’s the power of Diesel!

I grab the tweezers for a quick little maintenance check and to make sure there is no hair trying to escape out of my nostrils or ears. There is absolutely nothing more offensive or careless than nose hair. There’s just no excuse for it. Why don’t we use this as the general rule of thumb for nose hair from now on: If you can grab it and twirl it or if small children can jump rope with it – there’s a problem. If your nose hair is long enough to floss your teeth with – stay the hell home and trim it!

If this is you – by all means trim that!

One last check in the mirror for the once over and then I am ready to leave the bathroom and pick out clothes to wear. I did leave out one minor detail which doesn’t help my time spent in the bathroom: I have to do all of these things a certain number of times and simply cannot veer off of that. If I don’t brush my teeth forty-five times – I need to start over. If I don’t rub the Rogaine on my head into a circle seventy-five times – I need to start over. Also, if I go out of order in my routine in any way, I need to start over. That’s not a joke either – I don’t think of it as compulsive, I think of it as thorough. I will literally get back in the shower and start over.

If this sounds excessive or crazy, just imagine that I shower multiple (3 – 5) times a day. When I wake up (obviously), every time I take a shit, if it’s summer and I’m sweaty – add at least two more showers that day, before I got to the gym, when I get back from the gym…It’s actually a good thing that I’m overweight and have decided to cut out my time at the gym so I don’t risk a heart attack or I would have to get up even earlier than I already do to take another shower.

This doesn’t even take into consideration me wearing gloves to sleep in after I apply the hand cream. Since I wash my hands so much, I constantly have really dry hands. They’re so dry that when I shake hands with someone, they wince in pain because my paws feel like sandpaper. Add my blinders that I can’t sleep without and you can imagine how much my wife enjoys co-habitating with me.

If you didn’t feel bad for my wife before this – I’m sure you have now joined the growing crowd that does. I actually used to feel really bad for her too because she is so patient, but then one day I stopped. The day that I stopped feeling bad was the day that her and her crazy sister actually jumped me in their mother’s basement to try to “Cure me” of my OCD. They had seen a documentary where this lady got a vacuum cleaner dumped on her head while she was duct taped to a chair and they got inspired. She sat there crying her eyes out and the light bulb went off above their heads.

When I say that they jumped me, I actually mean that they jumped on top of me and threw me to the ground while the two of them tried to remove their shoes and put their bare feet on my face. Their fucking bare feet on my face! Who they thought that would help, I certainly don’t know, but I went all Wu Tang on them like I was back on the streets. OK, I was never actually on the streets and there are grade School kids tougher than me, but at that moment – I imagined myself a gang member or as the epitome of strength and courage: Chuck Norris.

At this point in the game when two crazy bitches get all up in your grill like that – the “don’t hit a girl” rules fail to apply. I was all Chris Brown throwing punches left and right at those girls. Luckily for them I have as much coordination as a newborn kitten and I punch like a five-year old girl, so I was mostly hitting myself. I was screaming for help to old lady Ann that lived next door but to no avail. I was bobbing and weaving like Muhammad Ali and was finally able to get away and run up the stairs to freedom (and another shower.) Yep – they knocked me to that basement floor and there was no way that I wasn’t going to need a shower.

I grew up in a house with a crazy kamikaze sister who would turn into the flying Whoozini and attack out of nowhere and now here I was married to another ninja attacker and her crazy wombat sidekick. Needless to say, it’s been years since that happened, but I still never turn my back on either sister at family functions for fear of a repeat performance. Sometimes life just isn’t fair!

For a smart guy, I’m actually pretty dumb at times…or why I never believe anything

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I’m not sure what the major glitch in my twisted skull is, but I always think people are kidding with me. My team of therapists think that it’s obviously a result of my being part of an insane family, but should I blame everything on them? My being fat and my balding scalp – it’s because of my family genes. My being short – you guessed it. But crazy is something I never thought I could attribute to them until recently. I didn’t actually inherit the insanity – it was instilled in me. In any given situation, my go-to response is to assume that people are just kidding around with me. I get that not everyone is asinine like me and jokes around all the time, but I really say and do some dumb things in response to seemingly normal situations. I know, I know, that isn’t a shock to anyone that regularly reads my stuff, but in hindsight – I’m kind of like 92.2% asshole….

When I was younger, I was very gullible and would take everything at face value and believe it 100% only to be fooled time and again which has now twisted my adult mind. My mother would take us out to eat and then pretend she didn’t have any money to pay the check. A reasonable response to a situation is not a big deal, but me at 10 years old was not reasonable. I would sweat profusely and freak out which left me traumatized. She liked to get me and my sister riled up and then laugh at how we would get. She’d literally leave the table and pretend to call someone on a payphone because it would make me so anxious. She’d would come back and tell us to leave the restaurant quickly so they didn’t notice (even though she had already paid the bill) looking over her shoulder to play it up the whole time. My sister fell for it the first time, but got smart to the game quick. One would think after the tenth time of it happening, I might have caught on or stopped going out to eat with her, but no – I wasn’t that quick on the uptake. I didn’t realize that we hadn’t skipped out without paying until we were almost home…This bulb was never shining at 100 watts if you know what I mean.

 

Leading up to my sixth grade graduation ceremony also was a stressful time for me. In reality, all I had to do was stand there while they called my name, but in my little bubble of the world, it felt like I was playing a major role in the orchestration of this event. I had tried for a solo first and would have been happy to just have been in the chorus as they sang We are the World but the music teacher (dream crusher) and I had differing visions for what talent was and he opted out of having me perform in public…You know it’s bad when the hearing-impaired kid gets a solo and I was shut out of even a chorus role but I didn’t let it get me down.

As if that wasn’t enough drama, my mother toyed with me over the weeks leading up to the ceremony by telling me that she was going to wear a hat made entirely out of fruit. I would have looked back now and thought that it was hysterical, but to an anxious little boy that had just been told dead cats had more rhythm and harmony than him – that was the last thing that I needed. It was another event and another opportunity for me to sweat profusely through my little boy tee and dress shirts – a habit I somehow never outgrew as I got older, although now when I sweat through my shirts it looks like saran wrap around chopped meat. I fidgeted uncomfortably for that whole ceremony and ran out the door to avoid any pictures or chance of seeing my sister sitting with my mother looking like Carmen Miranda. Of course, she didn’t wear that hat and I should have caught on when she wasn’t wearing it on the car ride over, but I was picturing her opening the trunk as we arrived and me passing out right there. I’m not sure if I was just really gullible or just really stupid…

 

As a result of all these (and more) times I was fooled, I developed a knee-jerk response to never believe things that normal people do. I don’t have the sense or sensory response to tell when I should believe anyone, so now I just don’t believe anything. Here are a couple of examples:

 

I went to see my spiritual advisors one Sunday morning to seek out the guidance I so obviously need when I realized that Barbara wasn’t there and that Susan was really jammed up and busy. I don’t usually do this, but I decided to see someone other than my regulars. You might think it strange to have not one, but two spiritual advisors – but a twisted mind like this needs more than one. These aren’t your run of the mill psychics like the one on the street who said I had a spiritual parasite and I went back and paid her another $90.00 for research on the off chance that it was true. These are professionals and they’ve been on-point with me many times; if they say jump – I say how high. I never stray from them, but I went against my better judgment and thought maybe a change could be good and tried someone new. I’d never met her before and had no knowledge of her skills so I saw down and thought it would be as comforting as it regularly was.

I wasn’t even seated with her for more than a minute as she shuffled and laid out the tarot cards when she looked at me with a quizzical gaze. The first words out of her mouth were “You think they’re something medically wrong with you, but it’s nothing serious – are you in pain?” I replied “Well, it’s probably just a brain tumor, but I get headaches all the time…” She looked at me like I had two heads and said “That’s not funny to joke about – I have a brain tumor!” Knee-jerk response anyone? I replied as if it was an instinct “You’re such a liar…who has a brain tumor?”

 

She laid down the deck of cards from her hands, placed each palm slowly on the table, and said calmly “What kind of sick person would joke around about having a brain tumor if they didn’t really have one?” “I would” I said and then leaned over to the psychic seated at the table next to her and inquired “Does this lady really have a brain tumor or is she just messing with me?” Another look of puzzlement mixed with disgust as the other psychic said “Of course she does, who would make that up?” “I would” I repeated to another strange look from her. Needless to say, it was kind of hard to get a good reading after that and apparently it’s rude to fact-check an “alleged” ailment from one’s peers. We started on the wrong foot and I was terrified to say anything else to her so there was no turning back. Maybe she really did have a brain tumor but come on – I may be old-fashioned, but it’s not really considered “nice” to act like that.

 

When I was in college, I never knew anyone’s last name. Hell, I was lucky to know some of my friends’ first names. I won’t blow her spot by saying who it is, but one of my good friends used to hook up with a fraternity guy named Shit Stain. Take that in for a second. I’m not one to judge, but how exactly does a girl have sex with a guy named Shit Stain? “Give it to me Shit Stain…Me Love you long time Shit Stain…” it just doesn’t flow and imagine what those neighbors think. That’s not the point of this though – the point is that I didn’t know his real name until almost two years after Graduation when I randomly saw him and his mother at the mall by the Fat Camp. I was walking and saw them so I said “Hey Shit Stain” when I realized that I didn’t know his real name and probably shouldn’t have call him Shit Stain in front of his mother. She was like “What did you call my son? His name is John.” “It is? I had no idea” I told her. He was obviously embarrassed and then his mother was like “Why did he call you Shit Stain?” They walked away and I’m sure that car ride home was really fun. When I asked my friend if she knew that Shit Stain’s real name was John, she tried to act like she knew it all along. I’m still not convinced she knew before I told her, but like I said no judgments; some girls will let a guy named Shit Stain hit it and quit it….

So, as you can tell, not knowing people’s names was always a problem with me in college. One day I was on my way to audition for the show that the Theatre Department was putting on when I saw the Dean of the college sitting in the waiting area. “What’s that Fat Fuck Dean Marine doing here?” I said to a bunch of my friends who had shocked looks on their faces when I entered the auditorium. No one said a word; they just kept looking at each other like a deer in headlights. I asked again “No one knows what that Fat Fuck Dean Marine is doing here? Is she auditioning too” Another round of stares until Katie opened her mouth to speak. She looked kind of mad and with a nasty tone infused through her response, said “that’s my mother you’re talking about.” Of course I didn’t believe her. “That Fat Fuck is your mother? She shook her head in response, but I just couldn’t process it. “What are you talking about? That Fat Fuck is your mother? You’re such a liar!” “She is” she replied and I turned towards another friend John and said “Is that Fat Fuck Dean Marine her mother?” When he shook his head yes, not quite sure what to say “I turned back to her “That Fat Fuck is really your mother? I can’t believe it” She was pissed by this point and said “Stop saying that!” “I’m sorry I just cannot believe that Fat Fuck is your mother.” She walked away shaking her head and disgusted as the other people in the circle attacked me “What is wrong with you? You just called her mother a Fat Fuck like six times. She’s never going to forgive you – Why did you keep saying it after she said it was true?” Is that really her mother? I don’t believe it…I thought she was kidding. And she is a Fat Fuck – I can’t stand her…” Needless to say Katie and I weren’t buddies anymore after that – it’s kind of hard to get past calling someone’s mother a Fat Fuck…that cuts deep. And really, how was I supposed to know that Fat Fuck was her mother?

 

One would think I’d learn my lesson after all these years, but I am constantly opening my mouth while my foot is being strategically placed into it. Stupid is as stupid does, and I’m not that bright…

One of my many Ah-Shit Moments (Literally!) – Part One

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In case you've ever wondered about my office - this is where I write all my posts.

Whenever people tell me “You know what made me think of you the other day…” I always interrupt them because I know where it’s going. I say “I bet you were in the bathroom or it has to do with poop, right?” and you know what, it almost always (like 99.99% of the time) is one of those two scenarios.  Some people might think that’s weird, but I take it as a huge compliment. In the same way that Oprah taught us to understand and share our Aha! moments – I want to give the world a forum for their “Ah-Shit” moments. I’ll start with one of mine.

I’m sure that if you were brave enough to delve deep through the cavernous pile of nonsense in my noggin – this incident might have been one of the driving forces of my Imodium AD addiction.  As I’ve mentioned before, when I was in Elementary School I used to incite the girls that I liked so that they’d chase me around and then beat me up when they caught me. There was a girl in second grade named Jennifer who could run faster than any of the other girls (and most of the boys) in our class. When she eventually caught up to me – and she always did – she would tackle me, take hold of my hand and ankle and then swing me around so fast like a carnival ride…Granted, she would eventually let me go and I’d usually go flying face-first into a chain link fence or a brick wall, but she did hold my hand for those few brief moments…She was crazy but I never minded being the Tina to her Ike.

One day, after a particularly rowdy dose of ass-kicking, Mrs. D (the aide on the playground that afternoon) called me over and made me stand against the Gym wall as punishment for letting the girls beat me up again. “It’s OK though, I like it” I tried to explain to her, but apparently that was the wrong thing to say. Far be it from me to argue, but isn’t it odd to punish the victim? Wasn’t I the one who was tossed into the air like a Frisbee? I wasn’t one to question authority back then so I went and took my place of shame against the dreaded wall. I tried to ask how long I had to stand there, but it was no use – I was shut down with every syllable.
As I stood there thinking about my next flight into orbit courtesy of Jennifer’s private airline, I started to get really bad stomach pains. As an adult, I know those pains oh so well and recognize the significance of them, but as a young lad – I couldn’t begin to understand the tell-tale warning alarms that were going off right then.  It was a Quick-Hitter and time was of the essence.

“Mrs. D, I don’t feel so well…” I muttered. “Don’t pretend to be sick – you’re staying against that wall!” she said as she walked away tooting her whistle at another kid acting up.

My stomach was making some crazy noises and gurgling something fierce and I just knew something was wrong; it was like a wave of warmth came over my body and it just didn’t feel right. It subsided for a second and I thought that I might be OK when I realized (a little too late) that I need to get off that playground and head into higher ground (i.e. get to a bathroom). I took a few gentle steps in the direction of the gym door but after the first step I realized it was a big mistake to rock the applecart. I tried to quicken my pace, but after about five steps, I had to grab onto the wall to steady myself because there was an explosion. It felt like a bullet had pierced my stomach because there was intense pain and then it was as if a flash of lightning shot right through my body. “Oh God” I cried out and braced for impact.

Clenching was futile as this was a force that was just too powerful for my nine year old buttocks – it was like a tornado tearing through a fence. This may sound strange, but as soon as the warmth shot through me (along with everything that I had eaten for lunch) there was a moment of relief that the pain had stopped. Granted, it was a quick moment immediately followed by the realization that I was on a playground full of people covered in shit.

I made a full-on sprint towards the door as fast as I could, but I’m not sure if you realize how difficult it actually is to try and run with a full pair of tightie whities immediately after a gastric explosion. By the time I got to the door, I was covered head to toe and there was shit everywhere. It was running up my body, down my legs, across my back (because my shirt had been tucked in) and falling out my pant legs. I was leaving a trail that Hansel and Gretel couldn’t miss, but I just couldn’t stop running.

I headed straight in the door and right towards the one place that always offered me solace: the nurse’s office. As I was running, I was hoping upon everything holy that there wasn’t a line of kids for lice checks in there. By the time I made it to Ms. O’Donnell’s office I thanked God that it was empty. She took one look at me, jumped up from her desk, and sprung into action. I tried to say “You’re not going to believe what happened to me” but before I could even get half the words out of my mouth, she was at my side. In hindsight, I’m not sure that really I needed to explain it to her as it was fairly obvious what had occurred. It might have been the stench I was trailing through the hallway or the fact that I actually looked like I had been dipped in something, but she could tell immediately what was wrong. “Let’s get you out of these clothes” she said gently as she guided me behind the curtain for privacy.

I stood there limp as she started by peeling my T-shirt off of me. It was now soaked through and stuck to me like everything else that I was wearing. She was so nice and calming, and I started to feel a tiny bit better until she tried to take my sneaker off. “Oh my God, it’s everywhere!” she gasped, as one sneaker slipped off, spilling me all over the floor and she realized that my socks were soaked through as well. She peeled my clothes off one layer at a time and immediately placed them into a giant black garbage bag on the floor next to me. I don’t know why she thought there was any chance in hell that bag was getting on the school bus with me, but she soon changed topics and asked me for the phone number to call my mother to come and bring me some new clothes to put on. I started hysterical crying and had to tell her that my mother started a new job and I didn’t know the number. She offered to call my brother out of his class to see if he knew the number, but that was the absolute last thing I wanted her to do. I was still under the deluded impression that no one would ever find out what just happened to me.

Don't drink that coffee!!!

Since we couldn’t call my mother, she said for me to sit tight and she would go look through the lost and found for something I could change into.You think it’s embarrassing when the school nurse has to wipe your ass? Imagine the embarrassment level when she has to hose you off because you’re covered head to toe with shit! And those paper towels might as well have been sandpaper because they most certainly were not Scott tissue. By this time, she had used about fifty four wet paper towels to clean me off and still hadn’t gotten all the shit removed. I stood there while she went into the back closet to find me something to wear. As if I hadn’t been through enough, I heard the office door open and someone come in. All of a sudden, the curtain swung open and there was Mary, a girl that lived up the street from me, staring with an equal mix of curiosity and disgust in her beady little eyes.

I tried to cover myself as best I could, but it was no use; there was shit all over my body, the room smelled like a cesspool, and my soiled clothes were in a heap on the floor next to me – who was I trying to fool?  All I could do was cry while the nurse shuffled her out of the office and locked the door. As she was escorted out, I could hear Mary asking “Oh My God! What did he eat? Oh My God – Is he OK?” (Years later I actually went to one of my proms with Mary, and I wore a white tuxedo. Believe it or not, I sat down on the seat in the limo directly onto a peppermint patty she had dropped and the chocolate got all over the back of my pants. What are the odds that I would soil the seat of my pants twice in front of the same girl? That must be a record of some sorts!)

I would like to tell you that the story ends there, that Mary was the only one who ever found out about what happened to me, and that I eventually lived that horror down – but it didn’t end there. When the nurse came back from the closet she laid out the clothes for me to put on and I started hysterically crying again. It was a pair of red and white checkered girl’s pants, a tight green V- neck tee shirt with a butterfly on it (also a girls) and a pair of girl’s white sneakers that were a half size too small on me. I had no other choice since I couldn’t call my mother to bring me something to change into and there was nothing else in the lost and found. I was content to wait in her office until the bus came at the end of the day, but she wasn’t having it. I looked at myself in the mirror and the pants ended up being too short for me. The pants legs stopped mid calf and capri pants might be “in” now, but back then a little boy in short pants tended to stand out from the crowd. If the butterfly wasn’t so prominent on the green shirt, it might not have been as obvious that it was a girl’s shirt.

As I went back to class people were asking me where I had been and why I changed. I tried to play dumb, but one girl recognized the shirt and told me she had a very similar shirt and I wanted to tell her that since it was in the lost and found it might actually be her shirt, but I was afraid she would try and take it from me. The only other shirt left in lost and found after this one was pink, so I kept quiet. It’s actually very hard to keep quiet and pretend nothing is up when twenty kids are making fun of you and asking why you’re now wearing girl’s clothing, but I did. Needless to say I was devastated and was out of school for over a week because I got myself so worked up from what had happened I just couldn’t go. It’s funny to think of it now, but that was the longest day of my life and has most definitely played into my neurosis and obsession with Imodium, cleanliness, and butterflies.

The Saddest Thing I Ever Saw!!!

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You think your day sucks? I went to CVS and low & behold I got hit with a ton of bricks:

And you thought you were having a bad day?

They better raise the terror alert to orange because this is some scary stuff right here. People are gonna freak out and start panicking and it could get messy… OK, I’m probably the only one panicking, but something is definitely up here and if I’m not able to get my Imodium it might actually get messy! This is the third CVS I went to over the past few days that didn’t have Imodium AD. One store might be a stocking issue, and two might be a coincidence, but three stores not having it? I’m not trying to get anyone nervous but if you ask me, this seems like the cruel and hurtful things that would be the work of a vast terror network that rhymes with Hal Shmyda.

I know this sounds nutty, but my immediate reaction was that I might be using too much Imodium and they can’t keep up with me…then I came to my senses and got the manager. I asked what was going on and he looked at me like I was crazy, then pointed at the sign and told me to buy the store brand, as if that was the solution. I leaned in close and whispered “Is something else going on here? You can tell me, don’t worry I won’t tell anyone else” and that’s when he really looked at me like I was crazy and walked away. As if other people aren’t getting the manager and asking the same thing – come on.

Before you even suggest that I use the store brand; you wouldn’t use wrapping paper if toilet paper wasn’t available would you? Would you put Crisco into your gas tank instead of going to Shell to fill up? No and you better not! I am not gonna try an untested substitute when I know very well that Imodium is what works andwhat I need. If it’s not the AD – it’s not for me!  As a side note since you mentioned Crisco, I have a friend that actually used to be called Crisco by her family. I was at her house for dinner and asked why her father had just said “Crisco get the ketchup” and she said “You know – fat in the can” and pointed at her backside. You gotta love families,  building self-esteem day by day.   

Speaking of families and gas stations, did I ever tell you about how my brother Angelo got run over by the same guy twice? He was at the gas station walking back to his car after prepaying with the cashier when an old man ran him down the first time. Realizing he had hit something, the old guy immediately backed his car up (once again driving over my brother). All the while, my brother was on the ground screaming for the attendant to give him his money back because he had prepaid for the gas. An ambulance finally showed up and they immediately started attending to the old guy instead of my brother – who was still on the ground writhing in pain. Apparently, the old guy had suffered a stroke a few months back and shouldn’t have been driving anyway. Sure, he really did get hurt and the old guy tore up his leg real bad, but I still can’t think about it without busting out laughing…on the plus side, it gave me a great anecdote for his wedding toast “Marriage is like getting run over twice by the same guy in a Merit Gas Station – sometimes it hurts.”     

I’ll check in with the media outlets and update the progress on my Imodium investigation as I find out more. Before you roll your eyes at me, they say if you see something say something and they don’t just mean that for the people I work with who got suspicious when our Fedex guy’s truck broke down in the parking lot. The poor guy was out there transferring his packages into a rented U-Haul truck so he could finish his deliveries when my two coworkers got nervous and called the Popo. When the police showed up imagine how funny the Fedex guy did not find the situation. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t our regular guy, but he’s here almost every day and now it’s a little bit awkward…some people hold a grudge, I tell ya…

Hypochondriac or just a High Maniac?

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I have been a hypochondriac for as long as I can remember and that behavior never changed as I have gotten older. True story: When I was born, I actually burst out of the womb in a tiny yellow rain slicker and I immediately started questioning whether the birthmark on my right arm wasn’t actually a malignant melanoma? In grade school I wasn’t allowed in the nurse’s office because I would read the symptom posters on the walls and get convinced I had diabetes or whatever poster was up at the time. High School was worse because I had been gifted with a medical dictionary on my birthday, so my maladies weren’t just limited to the common diseases anymore. When I was in college, it was only a matter of time before I wasn’t allowed in the Health Services Office – but not for the usual reasons…This time it was different. 

In college, I refused to take classes on Mondays or Fridays so that I could have a more flexible schedule and so all of my classes were on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I didn’t really need a flexible schedule for a job or really any specific reason other than laziness, but it was the principle of the matter. During my second sophomore year, my 11:3o class on Tuesdays and Thursdays was Geography of something. Throughout the first two months, I only made it there on time twice which I thought was a pretty good start. The professor was from Africa with a very thick accent and she would constantly hold me after class to tell me that in her country they take education very seriously and would think it was disrespectful to show up late. I would say it was not going to happen again, and then continue with my pattern. She didn’t seem to be a big fan of mine and one day she actually attacked me in front of the whole class about the lateness. Granted, I was waltzing into the room over forty-five minutes after the class had started, so she might have had a point; what can I say, when I’m late – I’m late. My theory was that as long as you showed up before the class was over you weren’t really late, right? She apparently didn’t feel the same way.

In her super thick accent she started yelling at me “What are you doing? You cannot keep doing this!” At first, I didn’t realize she was talking to me and then when I did, I tried to ignore her and pretend as if she wasn’t, but that’s really hard to do when twenty other people are smirking and hanging on her every word. Also, she was yelling at me and no one else was talking so it was really awkward…”You think you’re mad – How do you think my 10 o’ clock teacher feels– I never make it to that one…” Before she could even respond to my sarcastic stupidity, I muttered “I’m sorry, it couldn’t be helped” I figured that would be the end of it and tried to take my seat when she came marching over to me. “This is disruptive and you come late to every single class – Why do you bother showing up at all?”

At this point, a normal person would have thrown themselves to the wolves, admitted they were wrong and apologized – but not me. Very softly I muttered “Listen, I’m really sorry – it couldn’t be helped because I’m sick. I’m sure you’ve never heard of it before because you’re from Africa and all, but I have a little something called Mono and that’s really serious. I feel lucky that I can make it out of bed and get here at all.” In my mind, I was celebrating how quickly that I had thought of that and how smart I was, figuring that she would apologize and see the error in her ways.  Of course, I was delusional and should have realized that she, and everyone else in the class for that matter, could see right through me and tell that I was lying. That’s when she really let me have it and for a second I felt like her strong accent fell right to the wayside so she could yell at me in perfectly clear English.

“Are you kidding me? I’ve been teaching for a long time and do you really think that you’re the first person to try and tell me that they have Mono? Of course I know what Mono is, I’m not an idiot – where’s your Doctor’s note?”

Once again, a normal person would have admitted defeat and let it go at that, but not me. “How dare you! What kind of a person do you think I am? I am so insulted, who would make that kind of thing up? I’m a sick person (ironically, this was the only true statement that I had made all morning) Do you think I’m crazy? Go to Health Services and ask them in there! How dare you question me?” Now as a side note, I was as positive as one of Maury‘s paternity tests that I didn’t have Mono and that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me except for laziness, but if I didn’t at least get defensive she would have immediately known that I was lying.

Sure as can be, she was disgusted with me and dropped it and I got the stink eye from half the class. The other half could have cared less about the scene I was making. The girl who sat next to me was just staring with that look of disgust that usually takes people getting to know me for a few months before it develops and I looked at her and then rubbed my stomach to motion to her that I was sick. She rolled her eyes to motion to me that I was an idiot. 

I got the hell out of there after class and ran down to the Health Services Office. I had actually never been down there before because they don’t prescribe anything besides aspirin and I had learned to self-medicate with my prescription for any malady: Imodium AD and beer.  (It worked every time and if it didn’t work I’d add a joint to the mix and be at 100% in no time.) Actually, that’s still my go-to remedy and you know what? It still works. Your stomach hurts? You take Imodium and you’re OK. You have a headache? Take Imodium, you’re OK. You break your ankle? Yep, you guessed it. Works like a charm.

I didn’t have faith in any of the people working in that Health Services office, but I needed to make sure that if my professor ever did check up on my stupid Mono story, there would be a record of me going there. I went in and really milked it for all I was worth. I was leaning on the counter, moaning, and generally trying to look as sick as I could (that was the only time my naturally albino-pale complexion has been a positive thing in my life) so they would think I had Mono.

The numbskull there had me lie down on the cot and tell her my symptoms so of course I laid it on really thick:

ME: I feel like it’s just too much. I have no energy to go to class and it’s just every day…It’s Mono, I just know it

HER: Are you taking any medications? Drugs? Alcohol?

ME: Not me. No way that I would ever do that. I’m here to study and I just wish that I could get out of bed and make it to class. Can you give me something? I just know it’s Mono

HER: We can’t be sure what’s going on until we run some blood and urine samples, but it’s probably not Mono…

ME: (interrupting) Of course it’s Mono. I know my body.

HER: OK, let’s run the blood and urine and see what’s going on and you can come back in a day or two for the results. It’s too soon to say what it could be or if there’s anything wrong with you at all.

ME: Oh, I know there’s something wrong with me (The only other true statement I uttered that day!)

After the urine sample, she tried to take blood and I got light-headed and had to lie down to recover while she got me a cookie and soda. That was the only real symptom I had the whole time I was in that office and it had nothing to do with Mono – it was because I am a major pussy and I pass out from needles! I left there feeling mighty victorious and went home to celebrate how smart I was.

I went back a couple of days later and as I was waiting for her to go over the results with me, I was laying it on thick again and had her go and fetch me some water just to make it look good. I knew that there was a better chance of her telling me that I was going to be Valedictorian than there was of her telling me that I had Mono, but I had to make it look real. She came in with her associate, shut the door, and pulled their chairs right next to where I was laying on the cot. They didn’t say anything and looked at each other and then finally:

HER: “It’s not Mono…” before she could get any further, I grabbed my chest and said “Oh my God, its Hepatitis isn’t it?” knowing full well that there was no way it was.

HER: “Why would you think you have Hepatitis? Have you been in contact with someone who has it?”

ME: “You never know…”

HER: We know what’s going on here and you know that you don’t have Mono. I think you’re a very depressed person and it’s very serious. We’ve seen it before and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about.

ME: (Hysterical laughing) Whoa sister, I’m not depressed. I may not have Mono, but I’m not depressed.

HER: Really, then how do you explain the tiredness, achiness, not going to class, the excessive sleeping, we ran your blood and urine remember? Your triglyceride count was through the roof which means you are drinking so excessively that it’s triple the count of what it should be. And the imaginary symptoms and thinking you have major illnesses is another sign. How do you explain the drugs in your system? This is depression, plain and simple. I know it when I see it.

ME: OK, seriously…I knew that I didn’t have Mono and joking around about Hepatitis is not funny.  I get that, but here’s what happened: I always come late and so I lied to my Geography Professor and told her that I had Mono so I needed a record of me coming here to be treated for it in case she checked because she didn’t believe me. I didn’t think she even knew what Mono was; she’s from Africa for God’s sake. There’s nothing wrong with me – I’m just lazy. I realize just how stupid this sounds as I hear myself say it out loud, but it’s really true.

HER: Really? Do you think we believe that? That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. What kind of person would do something like that? You’re depressed and you need to talk to someone. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I already called your father and…

ME: WHAT!!!! YOU DID WHAT??? ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? My father is a lunatic and that is the last thing you should have done. What about my privacy? I’m not fucking depressed, I’m pissed off. You’re nuts lady – I’m outta here!!!

Of course she called my father and he is a fucking crazy person to put it mildly: I have already expressed my wishes that he never be near me in a medical crisis and that is especially true when it is a fake medical crisis that I have just made up!!! This is how the call went after she asked for him and introduced herself:

HER: Sir, I’m calling about your son. I think he’s depressed. He came to the Health Services Office pretending to have Mono and we…

HIM: Lady, we’re all depressed, what do you want from me? The Mets are on – and then he hung up on her! Yep, that’s my Father! Good thing I wasn’t on a ledge somewhere…

I tried to go on my merry way and forget any of this had happened, but then I got a call from the Dean’s secretary a few days later to come to her office immediately. I had run-ins with the Dean on numerous occasions and had accidentally told her daughter that I thought she (the Dean, not her daughter) was a Fat Fuck just a few days earlier so I wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted from me.  (I didn’t realize it was her mother until I said “What is that Fat Fuck doing here?” and she said “What Fat Fuck?” And I said “What Fat Fuck? The Dean, who else” and she said “That Fat Fuck happens to be my mother!” and I said “That Fat Fuck is your mother?” and she said “Yes” and I repeated “That Fat Fuck is your mother?” which just made it worse. I don’t know why I thought she would be kidding, but I didn’t believe her. Needless to say, she did not think any part of it was funny. Also, it was in front of about ten people in the lounge, so she really didn’t think it was funny but it wasn’t like I could take it back at that point.
Needless to say, I had to explain the whole situation to the Dean because the hookers from the Health Services Office had gone running to her after my father hung up on her. Those bitches actually tried to block me from being able to register for classes until I went and saw a counselor so she wanted to talk to me and hear my side of the story. Talk about eating humble pie – thank God she knew I was an idiot. She knew that I was telling her the truth and she did threaten to make me go to the counselor out of spite, but did chuckle a little bit at the situation and said “Only you, anyone else and I would never have believed that kind of stupidity…and then we both laughed.

I ended up sweet talking that little African princess and she passed me but it was close. I had to lay on my charm and actually had to show up on time a few times…The lesson we learn here: The problem with health care is not the idiots faking illnesses to get out of something, but the crazy bitches that need to learn how to keep their traps shut!!!

As a postscript to this, a few months later they thought my aunt had Tuberculosis (seriously this time) and I needed a TB test immediately. Obviously I couldn’t go back into that Health Services Office after faking Mono and Hepatitis and tell those nitwits that I needed a TB test so I had to go to the local hospital for it. If you’re thinking of writing in the comments below about the boy who cried wolf – don’t! No one like a smart ass!

I Hate Birds Part Three – Are Chickens Birds? If not, then I hate them too!

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After we graduated from college, my wife and I went on an amazing bus tour through Europe to celebrate. There were two different tour options: A Superior Tour which went through Europe for almost two weeks and you stayed in amazing Four Star properties or the second option (the one that we chose) was almost 6 weeks long and you stayed in “economy” facilities.

We really tried not to mind since it enabled us to go away for much longer, but in some cities – my OCD was really put to the test. I will circle back and reminisce about some of the other acts of chaos that ensued at another time, but this is about another instance of fowl fouls attacking me yet again.

When we got to Rome, it was nighttime and pitch black. You couldn’t tell exactly where we were staying as the bus pulled up, but we were met with the unmistakable aroma of shit circling in the air upon arrival. As we were unloaded from the bus, we quickly found out that the place we were about to sleep at was in the middle of a combination campground/animal sanctuary. When I say that we quickly found out, it was because there were loose peacocks strutting around offering people directions and refreshments as we received our rooming assignments. I was freaked out big time and it was like being at The Bronx Zoo, but I was really trying to be a good sport and not make it miserable for my girlfriend.

This is the Welcome Ambasador?

 

As I was trying to get over the sight of the stray peacock and hoping that it wouldn’t charge at me like in one of those When Animals Attack videos, my wife told me to turn around quickly. As I turned, I came face to face with a wire fence and a GIGANTIC ostrich-like bird poking through the fence and making eyes at me literally inches from my face. It gave me a wink and then it whispered at me “the pigeons in London tipped me off that you were coming.” Of course, I freaked out and it started making these guttural, obscene noises at me: UGHHHHHH MUGHHHHHH UGHHHHH and decided that I would sleep on the bus and I was quickly told to grow up (by my girlfriend, not the emu!) I ran away like I had just stolen a television and my heart was racing.

As we were shown to our space, I froze in my tracks and started to have another panic attack. We were, literally, going to be sleeping in a wooden shed. A fucking wooden shed! It wasn’t even like it was a nicely appointed wooden shed either – it was an eight by eight bare room with a door, two single cots, and a window. I knew going into the tour that I would have to suck it up, but this was too much. I may be high-maintenance, but it was all the more shocking because the livestock actually had better appointed accommodations than we did!

That shed was hot as balls so I opened the shutters immediately upon entering and it didn’t help. I started complaining as soon as the first bead of sweat started trickling down my forehead, but my wife hung out the window to look around and said that we made out better than some of the others did. She was trying to see the bright side and noticed that our shed had trees surrounding it thinking that would offer some shade to make it cooler.

As I hung out the window (there were no screens on the windows) to look, I noticed that there were trees along the path to our shed and in those trees were chickens. Lots of chickens! Those crazy birds were hanging out as if they were in a downtown Barber Shop just chillin’ with their Homies. That was an immediate red alert for me, but it was getting late, and they refused to let me sleep on the bus so I really had no choice in the matter and solved it the only way I knew how – I got wasted and collapsed into bed.

I'm more scared of these guys than most street gangs

 

I actually came to find out later that chickens are able to lift themselves off the ground and can get over fences and up into trees, thus the peanut gallery glaring down at me from their branches. The next morning, we were scheduled to go on a walking tour at the crack of dawn, but I knew that unless I was drunk and passed out, there was no way that I was going to be able to sleep there. The ruckus from those animals moaning and doing God only knows what to each other or the stray people that wandered close to their gate was unnerving. I was huddled under my sheet like that little kid in The Sixth Sense that saw dead people. The only thing was that I didn’t have Bruce Willis to protect me. If you are ever outnumbered by chickens twenty to one, you want Bruno on your side in case it gets ugly. Yippee Ki-Yay Mother Clucker!!!   

The next morning rolled around and I was spent! We had gone to bed less than four hours earlier, we were two weeks into the tour, drank every night and most of the every day and I was just exhausted. I had been to Rome multiple times before this trip and although I LOVE Rome to pieces, I had to skip out of the walking-tour for fear that my body would just collapse if I attempted it. My girlfriend left with group to go on the tour and I slipped back into my coma.

If I can, let me try to illustrate the next series of events that unfolded: I was still partially drunk, slipping in and out of consciousness while I was recovering, and just all around minding my business. There I was trying to get over the fact that they mail coffee beans in more elaborate shipping crates than the one that I was currently sleeping in, when I remember dozing off for the last time. When I’m asleep, I don’t move at all – I’m like a dead body after rigamortis has set in. I look like a corpse with my arms crossed across my chest and I absolutely cannot sleep without my blue tempur blinders.

These blinders are so soft it's like sticking your head up a sheep's ass!!! Now that's Soft!

 

I cannot pinpoint the exact cause, but something woke me up abruptly. My face and forehead really hurt and my blinders were off my head completely and strewn across the shed on the floor, which had never happened to me before. Assuming I had been tossing and turning in my drunken slumber, I chalked it up to a hangover and got out of bed. As I grabbed my robe and headed over to the bathroom area, people were staring at me as I walked by and for a split-second I thought I might be accidentally streaking another one of the tour rest stops.

In Nice, I was heading from the showers back towards our room (coincidentally we were once again staying in a shed, but that one was a much nicer shed– it was French after all) and people were whistling, calling to me in foreign tongues and chatting up a storm. I felt like a celebrity for a second and didn’t realize until one of the tour buses actually honked at me and all the passengers were pointing down what they were seeing. I was walking around and my bathrobe was open and trailing behind me like a cape leaving the whole front of my body exposed and showing off my bits and bobs to everyone. The tie for the bathrobe was still in place knotted around my waist, but because it was made of thin red silk, it blew open as I was walking and I didn’t realize it. Needless to say I was pretty popular that night at the bar.

Although I wasn’t streaking this time, a lot of people were staring at me again and I didn’t realize why until I got into the bathroom. I looked into the mirror and almost shit my pants because my whole face was covered in red marks. My forehead, cheeks, nose and chin all had crazy scratches and I thought for sure that I was still drunk or hallucinating so I walked back to the shed to wait for my girlfriend to come back from the tour. I have OCD and my finger and toe nails never even reach the tip of my skin, so there was no way it was me scratching myself. My wife has even shorter finger nails than I do, and then I checked her toe nails just to make sure it wasn’t her. Due to the sheer amount of scratches on my face, it was baffling and then it hit like a tornado as I came back up the path to the shed and saw a chicken on the end of the branch about a foot away from the shutter window to my shed: It was a fucking chicken that scratched my face! No wonder my blinders were off my head and on the floor – I never move when I sleep and they have never come off my head before. And I am such a heavy sleeper that I didn’t even feel it as the chicken was most-likely tea bagging me in my sleep!

As my wife returned she looked at me with shock and a little twinge of disgust mixed in as if to say “what did you do now?” I am clumsy and uncoordinated and consistently hurt myself but even she couldn’t have blamed me for a chicken would have gone all Siegfried and Roy on my face while I was sleeping. Who saw that coming? The lesson I learned that day: Don’t skip the walking tour or a chicken will kick the shed out of you!

More on our European adventures at another time when I revisit our tour and explain about how my wife tried to drug our tour guide while we were in Amsterdam…

The Greatest Love of All

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I bet that if you were to ask my wife, she would say it was her – but let’s be honest here: My soulmate and the great love of my adult life has been Imodium AD. I love my wife to death, but this is a no-brainer and pretty obvious. Imodium  AD has touched me in an obscene, all-consuming way that no woman could ever truly understand. It’s done more to support me and has just always been there for me – it’s ‘had my back’ as we used to say on the street. I would never stray, but lately I’ve been having these overwhelming feelings and I’m torn – Don’t tell Imodium, but my Rogaine is fighting to get control of my heart!    

In case you don’t know what I look like, I’ll give you a visual. Picture a younger George Costanza with contact lenses instead of the glasses and that’s me. I’m short, overweight, balding, and unemployed, and those are just the highlights! I have actually come to accept these quirks and try not to harp on them anymore. I mean, I can’t do anything about the shortness (especially since I fell the last time that I wore platform boots), I’m actually eating more to bulk up for the eventual stomach band surgery I’ll get, but baldness is where I draw the line.

I say balding, because I have been fighting an uphill battle to keep those baldness dogs at bay for a few years now. I don’t have the luscious mane that I had in high school or the bleached blond (just like Slim Shady) full head of hair from college, but I’ve still got a bit up there. If you go through my family tree, no man in my family has hair past twenty years old. It starts thinning and thinning, until the only thing left is a memory. My brother Arthur finally shaved his head, but until he did, the front of his head looked like a yoyo – all surface and one little string in the center.

I’ve actually considered (and still might) converting to become a Jew so I can have the yarmulke cover my bald spot.

Funny little side story: At my brother Anthony’s wedding I was an usher and we were waiting in the bridal room for the DJ to announce the wedding party. We were drinking for a while and I had already soaked the flower girl with a pitcher of water because she touched my food (don’t you dare say that’s a mean thing to do – that little bitch deserved it!) I found a yarmulke with Daniel’s Bar Mitzvah emblazoned across it in rhinestone in a drawer so I put it on my head figuring that it would cover my bald spot for the photos, but my brother Arthur saw it and asked what the hell I was doing. “Get that off your head, are you an asshole? Why are you wearing that?” I didn’t miss a beat and said, “Are you kidding, you were at my wedding! You know my wife is Jewish and I converted. I’m Jewish!” (which was a crock of shit that I made up just then and really, what self-respecting Jew is wearing their Daniel’s Bar Mitzvah Rhinestone-covered yarmulke at a wedding?) He apologized immediately said “I’m sorry, I forgot that you did.” I replied as gingerly as a drunk fool could “Are you an idiot? -You don’t even know if I’m Jewish or not? I made it up – I’m not Jewish!”  “Come on” he replied “Are you Jewish or not?” My own brother didn’t even know if I was Jewish and it wasn’t like I got married years before – it was only a few months before this wedding – I love it.

I know that some people might be offended by that, but I am more of a shallow man than I am a religious man, so converting religions to cover a bald spot isn’t a lot to do. I know people think it’s not a big deal and I am acting crazy with this fascination with my hair, but on this one I will defer to Babs from Making the Band 2 when she fought with Chopper: “I TOLD YOU CHOPPER, YOU DON’T GO MESSING WITH MY HAIR” when he didn’t give her a phone message from the stylist and she was trying to get her weave done. Sing it Sister – I hear ya!

When I was younger, I swore that I would never be bald because I was still holding out hope that I was adopted or switched at birth or left on the doorstep and that I would have wonderful thick hair, but fate and my lineage turned on me like a cold-hearted bitch…so I ran to the open arms of the Rogaine. I was actually afraid of the Rogaine at first. You had to touch it to apply it and I’m OCD so I got rubber gloves. It was also messy and would drip down the back of my neck or my forehead when I applied it. I was terrified that I would end up with a thick mane of hair running down the back of my neck like a giraffe. Also, what if I started growing hair on the tips of my fingers? If Rogaine will make hair grow on my head, why not on my fingertips? Forget about shaking someone’s hand, how the hell would I ever wipe my ass while holding a ball of yarn in my hand? That isn’t sterile.

As if hearing my concerns/prayers, they worked out a compromise and came out with Rogaine Foam which has changed my life. Gone is the eye dropper to apply it and then dabbing the tissues to stop it from dripping off my scalp. It now looks like shaving cream and dissolves when you rub it in. You obviously still need the rubber gloves, but that’s not so bad. Just like the institution of marriage – this has been a blessed union. And just like the first time I had a strawberry flavored Charleston Chew (Bemish’s favorite) – I was hooked.

Although I would love it one day, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to have dreadlocks and I have accepted that. I won’t be able to have a ponytail and I have accepted that. I’m still holding out hope for the cornrows, but I will get over that too eventually. For the chance at a full-fledged mullet, I might even consider trading a kidney…I know that I would look ridiculous with each and every one of those hairstyles, but I would at least like to have the option…Rogaine is making a play for my affections and I am torn. At the end of the day – there’s enough room in my heart for both of them, but my Imodium AD will always get the top shelf.