A Close Shave

This short entry comes hot off the presses of my life. More specifically it occurred sometime between the hours of 12:00AM and 7:00AM Saturday morning. I know what you're thinking, "This must have been some crazy party Jeremy went to…" and you'd be wrong. No partying, I didn't have a single drop to drink and even more bizarre, I was asleep for the entire thing. Confused yet?

Really this story is at least two months in the making. Back in December I observed the male winter solstice ritual of laziness by not shaving. Not only would I have more time in the mornings but it would also aid in adapting to the colder climate which can be quite harsh for runners. By mid February I was sporting a nice, warm, protective winter running beard. Life was good, living the dream.

Then the dream ended…

I woke up Saturday morning feeling quite tired. I stumbled to my bathroom and caught a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror. The glance turned into a confused stare and slowly the reality started to sink in.

"You have got to be kidding me."

Those were my exact words as I pieced together what must have happened. Staring back at me was someone who looked quite familiar except for the three large stripes right through the heart of my beard. There in the sink was the weapon, laying in a shallow pool of hair.

I had apparently slept walked into my bathroom in the middle of the night and decided I could use a little trim. It wouldn't have been the first time sleep walking but it had been a while since my last nocturnal excursion, that I'm aware of. Unfortunately the damage was unsalvageable and I was forced to put it out of it's misery. Bye Bye Beardie.

It was later that day when I was trying to explain my new younger look to someone else did I realize how fortunate I was. It would have been so easy for dream Jeremy to have gotten carried away and continue styling the rest of my head. Normally I try to wrap things up and take something deeper away from my experiences, but this time the wounds are too fresh to take it lightly. So instead I have a warning for my dream self: Fear the Beard!!

Lost: Have you seen me?

When Coffee is More Than Coffee

For those who know me it comes as no surprise that I am a frequent visitor of coffee shops. I love coffee, the smell of it, the taste, the moments of clarity and focus that comes along with it. In my mind it's nearly perfect. Although I love coffee I have to admit that I often go to coffee shops that serve sub-par coffee even though I am capable of making an often tastier cup at home. The reason being that I often go to coffee shops for other, more entertaining reasons. I love to people watch. Every time the door open my head swings in that direction to glance at who's walking in. "Oh look, another character has entered this enormous skit I call my life." I admit it, I eaves drop on conversations and have even caught myself getting involved and putting my two cents in. This story isn't my own but belongs to one of these characters who continues to pop up at these open casting calls.

The stage has been set, I'm at the Starbucks in East Grand Rapids. The setting is a weeknight evening a couple of months ago. This particular Starbucks is located in an area called Gas Light Village where gas street lights continue to glow through the night harking back to an older era but built in the middle of a predominantly white upper middle class residential neighborhood. I'm sitting at a small table built for maybe two and there isn't an empty chair in the building. Sunken low in a leather chair along the wall in front of me is the star of tonights performance. He's a balding, disheveled, old Japanese man who's perfectly content staring at the opposite wall with his hands crossed. For the ease of this writing his character's name is Mr. Miyagi.

Everyone is busy buried in their laptops when Mr. Miyagi springs from his position and walks over to a young woman sitting at another small table and in a loud broken English voice half asks to see her computer while already reaching out for it. Taken by surprise the young woman appeases the man and he soon resumes his position as if nothing had happened. I knew exactly how she felt for he had done the same thing to me a couple of weeks previously. It was because of my previous experiences that I had a hunch as to what was going to happen next. I glanced around and saw a couple other patrons shoot each other questioning glances. Five to ten minutes pass and again Mr. Miyagi walk over to the young woman and begins to use her computer. This time it's evident that the young woman is a little peeved by his continual disturbance. A few members of the audience now start snickering. This happens yet a third time but this time the young woman, keeping her cool, turns Mr. Miyagi down by using some fake excuse that I couldn't make out. It doesn't faze him and the denial just rolls off of him.

This time as Mr. Miyagi sat down he stayed leaning forward in his chair. He reached into his coat pockets and pulled out a few things. Everyone payed no attention to him because they thought the show was all over and they all returned to their own self interests and buried themselves in their work once again. A couple minutes later Mr. Miyagi got up once again. Immediately all eyes were on him. He walked towards the door but rather than going through it he stopped two feet from it and stared out. He brought the contents from his pocket to his mouth and lit it. I few puffs of thick smoke later he reached for the door, opened it and strolled out.

Everyone in Starbucks sat there with their jaws preyed open shocked as they realized that he had just lit up a joint right in front of them, in the middle of Starbucks, in Gaslight Village of all places. I have heard stories of Mr. Miyagi before and his questionable "occupation" or perhaps hobby so I wasn't too surprised when I saw this happen. What shocked me was what came next. Immediately everyone in Starbucks were best friends talking to strangers about what they had just saw. Laughing at the absurdity of it, questioning each other as to what they should do next. Should they call the cops? Follow him to make sure he's okay? Evangelize to him? They started joking about it, "I didn't see that on the menu!" "So this is what it's like to visit Amsterdam." For me it was fantastic, people who would have been perfectly happy with keeping to themselves were now have a blast conversing and laughing with perfect strangers. This beautiful moment would have been missed if it hadn't been for Mr. Miyagi leaving on a "high" note.

The Tale of Old Rusty and the Bag of Peanuts

Here it is folks, the moment you've been waiting for. I realize that others may have some unique / embarrassing / funny stories of their own so I thought I would start opening up things up a bit to let others have the opportunity to share their story to the masses that follow this blog. Today marks the first one of those submitted stories. If you have a story or know of a story that needs to be shared with the world don't hesitate to let me know. We now return you to your full length featured blog story.

The story I have for you today was not initiated as a result of something I said or a specific action I took. Though there are many such stories to be told I’m sure. But no, this story was a result of a decision I had made in my youth. That decision: To drive “ole rusty”, an ’86 Chevy Caprice Classic.

It was a late winter night, and my friend and I were on our way home after an amazing day of snowboarding. We had just pulled out of a gas station where we had gotten all of the essentials needed for the long icy trek home: MntDew, chips, jerky, those personal bag/sleeve things of peanuts, etc. Little did I know when we pulled out, someone had started following us.

So there we were, driving along in ole rusty, rock’n out to some jams, eating our snacks when all of sudden I see those dreadful flashing lights behind me. We were being pulled over. I start to get that panicked-“Oh crap, I’m in trouble”-feeling. So assuming that I had been speeding I shamefully look down at my speed-oh-meter to find that I was only going 54 in a 55 zone. The feeling of panic starts to subside and is replaced with confusion. I pull over.

After waiting for few minutes, the officer comes to my window, shines his flashlight in my face, and asks for the usual license and registration. While gathering my things, I make nervous small talk and ask, “What seems to be problem officer”. He replies, “You boys been drinking?” I think to myself, WHAT? Drinking? Really? At that point in my life I hadn’t even had more than a sip of an alcoholic beverage. So the idea that I was getting pulled over for suspected drunk driving was quite amusing. I chuckle under my breath and reply “No officer, we have not.” Now starts the interrogation.

The officer asks several more times to both me and my friend, “You sure neither of you have been drinking”. Again and again we reply no. He then asks “Then why are your eyes so blood shot and face discolored.” I explain that we had just come from the ski resort down the road, which was not even 5 min behind us, and that I had been snowboarding all day without goggles or a mask. While all of this is happening, another officer gets out of the cop car, comes up on the passenger side of my car, and starts snooping around, shining his light into the backseat and onto my friend. The situation seemed to be escalating, except I wasn’t freaking out. It was actually quite amusing since I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong.

The officer did not believe me, so he asks me to get out of the car. I walk behind my car and one of the officers proceeds to pat me down, checking for weapons I assume. I then get administered a series of drunk tests: walk the line, follow the pen with my eye while a freakishly bright light is shinned in my face, etc. While all of this is going down, the other officer is by my car asking my friend who is still in the car a bunch of questions.

Finally I’m allowed to go back to my car, and they tell us that we are free to go. Somewhat shocked that I hadn’t gotten any kind of apology or explanation as to why they had just pulled me over I was bold enough to ask. The response I got back was simply that I was riding and sometimes crossing the center line. I wanted to tell the officer that of course I was riding the center line. It was a two lane highway and there were large mounds of snow on the side of this poorly plowed road. I highly doubt that was the real reason I got pulled over. But I said no such thing. I just thanked the officer and drove away.

I’m still not sure why all of that went down? I’ll admit we had lots of circumstances working against us that night: My friend and I were young. My eyes being blood shot from snowboarding. The suspiciously messy backseat of my car due to the piles of snowboard gear in the back. The fact I found the whole thing amusing and probably showed it every time the officer asked me a question. Or even the fact that while I was driving, I was eating straight from that sleeve thing of peanuts, which I suspect could maybe be mistaken for a beer bottle when viewed from a car several meters behind us..

But one thing I do know: good ole rusty didn’t help. For you see, this is not the only crazy pulled-over story I have. No, I have many more. And maybe at some point I will share another one. But the common theme among all of them: My ’86 Caprice Classic.

So what can we all pull away from this story? Simply this: If you decide to drive a crappy old rusty car like my old car, you will get pulled over… A LOT! It doesn’t matter what you do or if you’ve actually broken any serious laws. The police will find a reason to pull you over because the car you are driving is considered highly suspicious. So if you would like to avoid getting pulled over on a regular basis, it definitely won’t hurt if you avoid driving said type of car. But if you want to have a lot of fun stories to tell your friends about getting pulled over, then by all means go find yourself your own “ole rusty”, and have fun.

Cheers

The Devil is in the Details

Good news dedicated readers! There's going to be a guest writer for an upcoming post. Unfortunately it's not quite ready, so in the meantime I thought I would share another brief glimpse into my laughable life. This one is especially fresh, having occurred only two weeks ago. But first, a little back ground.

This year I decided to observe Lent and give something up for the weeks leading up to Easter. On a whim I decided that I would take up the challenge of the Daniel Fast. For the Lenten season I would restrict my diet to only fruits, vegetables, grains and water. Nothing with added sugars, nothing made with yeast, and no meat.

After the coffee withdrawal symptoms subsided and my head stopped pounding things were actually going quite well. Then one afternoon, about three weeks into the fast, I was sitting in a meeting at work. Someone there had brought in a bag of Twizzlers and was passing it around the room. What a nice gesture. Little did I know that the devil was in attendance at that meeting. Without thinking about it I grabbed a Twizzler and took a big bite off the end. While chewing it dawned on me that Twizzlers were neither a vegetable, nor a grain and despite their bright colored facade they weren't even a fruit. What to do! The devil tricked me! Not wanting to make a scene during the middle of the meeting by spitting out the Twizzlers into the nearest garbage can I had to go back to the drawing board. Unfortunately I'm not sure my Plan B was any better. I played the fake cough card. **Cough** Then while I was covering my mouth with my hand I did a little slight-of-hand and slipped the red confetti contents of my mouth into my hand and slyly slipped the evidence into my pocket. No one would ever be the wiser.

That should have been the end of it, but nope. Throughout the course of the meeting I had completely forgotten about the bits and pieces in my pocket. It wasn't until I got home that night when I stuck my hand into the red waxy ball of candy that I was reminded of the events of the day. The moral of the story? Don't take candy from strangers, especially ones that have pointy tails and are dressed all in red. Also,despite popular belief the Devil's weapon of choice isn't a pitchfork, it's a licorice whip.

Aint No Mountain High Enough

I'm not sure how to classify this next story. It was definitely scary and a little unnerving while it was happening but in retrospect, it's not particularly humorous. That doesn't mean you can stop reading this now though, it's still a rather good story. I give no guarantees though.

It all begins with a little vacation a friend and I took to Spain. For one of our activities we had planned to hike up to the top of the mountain just outside of the city we were staying in. After talking to a few people they had recommended planning for it to take at least 8 hours to complete. Obviously they had no idea of what kind of peak physical condition my friend and I were in so I convinced myself that it would only take about 6 hours.

Well, the morning of the big hike finally came and my friend was feeling absolutely horrid. I decided to take a stroll around the city center and check back with my friend in an hour to see if he was feeling any better. An hour came and went and he was still in no shape to climb a mountain that day so I set out by my lonesome towards the foot of the mountain.

After walking to the base of the mountain outside of town, which alone took nearly an hour, I was still disillusioned in thinking that it would take six hours tops before I found myself back at that spot. Off I went, making good time, staying hydrated, marching along until...I reached a fork in the path. Seeing how I don't speak Spanish the sign was useless. After picking a path and sticking with it for nearly 1.5 hours now I was feeling fairly confident. That confidence was crushed when my winding path slowly disappeared and I was face to face with a sheer vertical wall of rock. It left me with no other option but to back track the 1.5 hours back to the original fork. There goes three wasted hours. Back on track now I began ascending the mountain once again. A couple of hours later I reached into my bag and pulled out my water only to find that I had less than a quarter of my nalgene left. It seems that my confidence in my progress down the wrong path led me to overzealously drink my water supply.

The summit is now coming into view and probably only an hour away, but the sun is beginning to set at this point. I remembered back to some people warning me to make sure that I don't get stuck on the mountain once the sun goes down. The top of the mountain is steep, topped with loose stones and worse yet extremely windy. After a moment of deliberation I decided to continue what I set out to do and reach the summit.

The rest of the climb up was uneventful and once I reached the top I only took a few minutes rest before I began to race the sun down. On the decent I was sliding down a loose gravel path when I saw something colorful behind a jagged boulder. I wandered over cautiously while more of it came into view. I peaked over top the rock and was shocked by what I saw on the other side. It was a skeleton wrapped in some rough clothing or blanket. I was frantic for moment. What do I do! If I don't hurry up down the mountain that could be me! But if I hurry too much I could make a careless step and find myself tumbling down and hitting my head on a rock. I snapped a few quick pictures with my camera I had packed and hurried as fast as I could while trying to control my sliding on the gravely, windy, rocky mountain.

A couple hours later I met up with my friend who had finally found his way out of the hostel and up the side of the mountain. Together we finished the track back to our room in the dark. I of coursed shared my story of finding the body on the top of the mountain with my friend. Once we reached our room I took my camera out to help corroborate my story before we went to report to the authorities. While reviewing the photo something in it caught my eye which I hadn't noticed in person. I zoomed in, again, and again. Those weren't regular teeth; they were too long and sharp. And that wasn't hair, it was too course and patchy. This wasn't the body of a human but instead I had stumbled across that of a dog. A strange sense of relief passed through me. I was glad that I hadn't stumbled upon human remains but it somehow seemed to invalidate my fear that I had felt while descending the mountain. In the end you have to let sleeping dogs lie.

Places to Be and Things To Do

Time for a change of pace. Instead of me telling you an awkward story from my life I’m going to tell you one that more pertains to someone else but I was present when it happened. It’s a story of quick thinking when being caught off balance and playing it cool.

It was a summer night in Grand Rapids and my friend and I found ourselves walking down some side streets near down town after parking the car. We were walking along, joking around, probably talking about ideas for tattoos, real important stuff. We were coming up to a street corner when we were approached. It was a homeless man asking for a moment of our time.

“S’cuse me, could you…”

If you’ve ever visited a larger city you know the situation I’m talking about. It’s not that you’re afraid of homeless people or don’t want to help them. In fact, most of the time I end up feeling terrible about myself after such run-ins which is I why I often avoid those situations as much as possible.

Anyway, this story isn’t about me this time. My friend, whom I was with, decided to take the lead and respond to the homeless man. See, where I often am so flustered, my friend excels and carries himself with such poise, such confidence and with such fluidity. He interjected the pleas of the less fortunate with:

“Sorry, we…have…to..uh..be over there….now.”

Well, we certainly couldn't stay there after that embarrassing display so we began to cross the street. We made it only a couple of steps when my friend turned to me, “Man, I’m terrible with excuses.” He wasn't lying, that was an awful display of stammering. But the fact that he said it to me quite loudly and only a few feet, well within earshot of the man really accentuated the event.

Moral of the story: Be prepared. Make note cards, even crib sheets if you have to. And if all else fails and you find yourself halfway through an awkward sentence with nowhere to go, try turning it around. Stop, take a breath, wait a few seconds and say, “…you were saying?” or “…well, go on.” It can’t make things worse than it already is and if it works it will be one of your new crowning achievements.

This Is Nuts

In case there are those who might be inclined to think that my embarrassing moments are all behind me this next story comes from a more recent encounter that occurred this past summer. I have to preface it by saying that it's not nearly as painful as the previous but much more comical. Think of it more as a reincarnation of a cartoon caper.

I was sitting on my couch watching some television while I was mixing up some gelato, and before you all get distracted, no, the gelato did not turn out well. Then I heard a sound which sounded to be coming from the kitchen. I didn't think it was too strange and that it was probably just one of my friends letting themselves into my home. I called out only half expecting any response and wasn't surprised when I got none. A minute later I heard a much louder cacophony of sound. Someone was definitely there. I walked to the kitchen, mixing bowl in hand only to discover that the entry door in the kitchen was still tightly closed. Very Strange. Then it happened again, only this time it came from behind me, from near the sink. I spun in place only to see two small black eyes staring back at me. It was a squirrel! A squirrel had chewed through the screen window above my sink and had climbed in and was now sitting on its haunches staring back at me. I didn't know what to do so I thought the best thing to do was to throw the fork I had been using for mixing at him. I missed but my fuzzy tailed friend took off running down the counter. I had him on the run so I did the first thing that came to mind and chased after him. Once he had reached the end of the counter and nowhere to go he turned around and once again we were face to furry face. Then the tables turned and he began running right at me and my instincts kicked in and I started running in the opposite direction. Soon it was me who was cornered in my small kitchen and I spun around. Utensil-less I found myself with no ammunition so I did the next best thing and started yelling at him. "Ahhhhh!!!" Over and over again I launched my verbal assault hoping my words would direct him towards the hole in the screen window from where he had come. After a minute of running back and forth, yelling and squeaking I finally managed to corral the squirrel back outside.

It was finally over. The intruder had left and as I looked around my kitchen at the chaos that had taken place in the preceding minutes I saw my cat staring quizzically from the door frame wondering what all the commotion was about and why I had to interrupt her from her afternoon nap. I guess the saying is true:
I scream,
Squirrels squeak,
We all scream,
When I make Italian ice cream.