Some day I'm sure that my kids will write something just like this about me. He'll write about all the stupid things that I do. My goal is to put this column out before he can write so that I can say that I have already done it about his grandparents and to write about me would just be copying. So with that in mind, here is just a sampling of the cornucopia of stories that I have (I promised myself that I would use cornucopia at least twice in this column and I have officially succeeded).


Television

My parents have what I would call an illicit affair with television. A good majority of the time that I go to their house or call them on the phone they are watching tv in some form or another (sometimes they are watching a movie, but a good portion of the time it's just some show on tv).

If I walk into the house they are usually really quick to turn the tv off and if I ask them what is playing they usually answer with something like, "Oh, I don't know, I wasn't really paying that much attention to it."

They have this massive tv with the flat display that's supposed to make the picture look clearer. They have a surround sound system and they bought the directv receiver that they have specifically because it supports surround sound. You can kind of tell that they had the volume up a little higher than normal because when you turn it on it's pretty loud but they always rush to turn it down. It's a really odd situation.

The other day we were all sitting around and they told us that they were discontinuing their directv service. When I asked them why they said, "Well, we don't really watch enough tv to make it worth the money." I sort of think that they don't want their kids to know that they like television after so many years of telling us to quit watching that damn thing and go outside and play. I may be exaggerating with the "damn" but the spirit was the same.


Pack Rat

I think that families should have slogans. I'm sure that if you think of most of the families that you know that you could think of a pretty good slogan for them. Like you may think your neighbor's slogan should be, "Looking to get laid? Look no further". I think that if my family had a slogan it would be, "Don't throw it away, you might need it some day."

My parents used to live in a fairly large four bedroom house by themselves. They lived there for a few years and then finally my dad had had enough. He needed to have some space of his own. Instead of cleaning out a room and moving the stuff that he wanted in his space into it they put their house up on the market and moved to a bigger house. You might wonder how this could happen.

My dad was self employed as a consultant some nine years ago. He had a pretty decent client base and then decided that he wanted to work for a company and get some more stability. Nine years later he still has the paperwork from that business on the off chance that he might need it some day. In fact, that is his exact reasoning for keeping it, he never knows when he might need it.

This is not contributing to the mess, but it does have a lot to do with the theme. Several months after Kristen and I got married, my mom and dad drove down to our house, without any forewarning of what they were bringing, with a U-Haul of my stuff from when I lived there in high school. There were pieces of paper with a number but no name on it, broken toys, basically everything that was left in my room when I moved out. We threw out over three quarters of it when we got it.


The Innuendos Have It

This was some time ago. Harmony, my girlfriend at the time (who could probably have a whole column dedicated to her), and I were at my parent's for dinner. It was already starting out to be a little bit of a wierd dinner because some out of town family was there, so in addition to meeting my parents for the first time, she was also meeting my grandma, grandpa, uncle, and some friends of my grandparents. It was already a setup for disaster.

It started out quite innocently, my mom was talking about how she could never find a hammer when she wanted one and so she got her own toolbox. She continued to tell us how dad kept on storing his tools in her tool box. Well, actually she said, "He's always putting his tool in my box!"

It was all that I could do to not spit my drink across the table and burst into laughter. When we left, I asked Harmony if I was crazy and before I got to finish the question she started laughing uncontrollably saying, "Tool in my box!" I will never look at my parents the same.


There's so much more to write and maybe someday I will, but I don't want to make this a novel for a column. If you have some funny stories about your parents, I would love to hear them, feel free to e-mail them to me by clicking contact on the left.

It's been a long time coming for me to write this column. You see, Stuart was my roommate for two years and my next door neighbor for a year before that, so there is a lot of stuff to write about in that compressed space. I have written little pieces about him in other columns I have done, but this for the first time is a column dedicated just to him. Congratulations Stuart, you've made it to the big time.


Bass Machine

I met Stuart my first year of college, and he was one of the few people who had a car that didn't mind me catching a ride with him somewhere. The other people just drove until I couldn't hold onto the tail pipe any longer. Stuart had a Toyota FX-16 and while that sounds like it could be some offshoot of a military jet program, nothing could be further from the truth. The best way to describe this car is by taking a medium sized moving box and then putting some wheels on it.

The actual car is not really the point of this story though, but more what was in the car. Stuart's car had no trunk because in his moving box he had placed a rather large speaker cabinet. I'm actually surprised that the car would move from the weight of the speakers.

So he had these speakers in the back of his econobox and he went to the Grand theatre. A place that I like to call adventures in gangland. Somehow some thief had the notion that this little car would have something worth something in it so they broke into the car and stole the speakers. Stuart never got the speakers replaced but I still think there was some sort of conspiracy tipoff that got them stolen.


Yer Pretty

There was this porn, I'm sorry, adult video store a little ways north of Denton when we lived there. Occasionally some of our friends would head up there just to kind of see what sort of stuff was offered there. To my knowledge no one actually ever bought anything there simply because we were too poor. I'm not above saying that I probably would have bought something if I had the money.

So apparently Stuart went up to the adult video store one weekend by himself. I can only assume that he had come into some money and was looking to spend it. He's looking around the store and this guy comes up to him and says, "Hey, do you want a blow job?" When I think of this situation I hear a thick southern accent a la deliverance. Sometimes I follow it up with a whole imaginary conversation about squealing like a pig. I'm getting off the point though.

Taken aback, Stuart replied, "Uh, no." (or at least this is how it was relayed to me, not that I doubt the authenticity of the story.)

The guy paused for a second as if he had never had someone turn him down for a blow job. Then he asked, "Well, do you want to give me a blow job?" I can only imagine the rejection that the guy felt when Stuart turned him down.

Here's kind of what I am thinking this situation was. It has to be one of two things. The first thing is that the guy was an undercover cop and was going to try and get Stuart to pay for sexual favors and then arrest him (after the sexual favors were performed, hey he's human after all). The second is that it's just a really lonely guy that prowls the adult superstore looking for other people that he thinks looks lonely.


Hot Wings

This story is courtesy of Levi and my brother-in-law Chris who I have written extensively about. Levi and Chris were sitting at Hooters. If there is anyone out there who has not yet been a part of the Hooters atmosphere it can be simply described as this: Take one part beer, one part bad food, and one part scantily clad good looking waitresses, mix all together and you have Hooters. Really the only reason that you go to Hooters is to look at the waitresses and drink beer.

Levi and Chris were sitting there doing just that when Stuart's live-in girlfriend came in. They hollared over to her and she came up and told him that she had come to pick up take out for Stuart. This is sort of a legend between Levi, Chris and I of the guy who sent his girlfriend to look at the hot women while he stayed at home. I don't know, maybe it was a fantasy of his.


Stuart and I

My first year of college I lived in the dorms and Stuart was my next door neighbor. We shared a bathroom, how gay does that sound. I had a really hard time getting up for classes in the morning due in part to my really hard time of going to bed at a reasonable hour.

I had a really important class one day and asked stuart if he would come in and wake me up before he went to his class. He said sure and predictably I wouldn't wake up when he came to get me up. In fact, I took a swing at him. He told me to fuck off and I missed the class.

For some reason, he still thought that it was a good idea that we live together in an apartment even after the missed punch. I still wonder if I had landed that punch if we would have ended up as roommates.