“Uncle Mike?” My six-year-old nephew looked up at me from his racing car drawing. He lay belly-down on our thick white living room carpet.

“Yeah, Troy?” I set the book I was reading on my lap.

“Where do people go when they die?” he asked, his mouth shrinking and his eyebrows furrowing into an arch.

“Disneyland.”

“Really?” His eyes grew round.

“Yup.” I took a long drink of the root beer I had set on the nearby coffee table.

“What do they do there?” Troy got up from his sprawled-out position and sat cross-legged. His attention was fixed.

“Well, what do you do at Disneyland?”

He paused to consider. “I ride all the rides. Mr. Toad is my favorite.”

Troy was beaming. I could tell from his smile that he was thinking about Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at that very moment. I took another long sip of root beer, picked up the book from my lap, and returned to my reading. A few long minutes crawled by.

“Uncle Mike?”

I lowered my book but did not set it down. “Yes?”

“Is that what they do?”

“Huh?”

“Is that what the people do too, after they die?” Troy asked. “Ride the rides?” He twirled the pointy portion of his pencil somewhere within the mass of brown ringlets covering his head.

“Nope.”

“Why not?” He stopped twirling.

“They can’t.” I raised my book back up.

“Why?” Troy set down his pencil, put both hands on the carpet, and leaned his whole upper body in towards me. His eyes were wide with anticipation and his mouth agape. He was tilting so far forward that it looked as though he might fall over.

Each tick of the nearby grandfather clock became pronounced in the absence of competing sound.

I flipped to the next page of my novel.

“Because they’re dead.”

The zombies were almost into the living room and it was only a matter of time before they would break through our shoddy barricade at the kitchen doorway.

“Matt, I just want you to know…” The fingers on my left hand trembled as I loaded the explosive rounds into my shotgun. “…That I value our friendship, and you were a great roommate.” I snapped it shut. The moaning grew louder behind our paper-thin walls.

“They’re in the living room now,” Matt said as he wiped away sweat from his brow. “And thanks, man. I feel the same.” He picked up our two largest kitchen knives and began sharpening them against one another.

“There are more of them now.”

“I can hear them pouring in through the garage. We’re dead.”

“So are they.”

Matt stopped sharpening his knives and looked over at me. We stared at each other in silence for a few seconds. And then long, hard, exhausting, nervous laughter.

“I’m gonna miss you man,” I said, catching my breath.

“You too, bro. You too.”
(more…)

“Mike, can you come in here for a second?”

I walked into Mary’s office. The fluorescent light was crackling just enough for it to be annoying. I sat down.

“Mike, I think you’re doing a great job here. I just want you to know that first.”

“First?” My washcloths were balled up beneath my ass. I tried my best to inconspicuously re-adjust while pretending to tighten my apron.

She leaned forward. “Yeah, well, the thing is…”

“Excuse me, Mary?” Fernando appeared at the entrance to her office. The room was small and the door was now pushing against my shoulder.

“Yes, Fernando?”

“There’s a problem with the grill. It no working right. Umberto is going like, he going crazy.”

Mary’s eyelids were now at half-mast. She pursed her lips.

“Fernando.”

“Yes, Mary?”

“Handle it.”

Fernando’s eyes grew quite round, like our world-famous bacon-loaded! potato skins.

“Yes, yes, yes Mary. Yes.” He backpedaled out and shut the door behind him.

She waited for the door to *click*. She turned to me.

“You need to smile more.”

I let it soak in.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Mike, you’re a great employee. We love the work you do here. You’re up-selling our sizzling shrimp fajitas! like nobody’s business and your pre-bussing is second to none. But some customers have complained that you’re simply not smiling enough.”
(more…)

Back in college while I was working at the Campus Computer Shop, a chronically cute girl wearing a navy blue down-filled vest wandered in and asked me some questions about iPods. Her vest intrigued me, as I had not really seen anyone wear one outside of a Back to the Future movie. It was also nearly springtime, which made her clothing choice even more interesting. Yet strangely alluring. She browsed for a bit while I gazed longingly from a distance, and then she made with the vamoosing. Never to be seen again.

Well, until about a month later. She was still adorned in that same blue down vest. It was now mid-April and it was starting to get pretty warm, so The Vest caught me off guard. She still looked acutely adorable though, so I let it slide.

I saw her again two weeks later on my way to class. It was 80 degrees out.

But hey! look! a vest!

ATTENTION:

If you wear something “peculiar” every so often, like an Irish Tweed Hat or a Marmot Down Vest, it’s considered funny, or cute. If you wear it more often than you do your own freckles, and at particularly “peculiar” times… well you’ve ventured over into Eccentric Village. Population you.

And Howard Hughes.

And Tom Cruise.

I’ll admit, I’ve asked myself from time to time: Could I date a quirky girl?

The girl with the down-filled vest was cute, plucky, and dammit, precious as all hell. And her stubborn insistence to wear The Vest at all times was strangely endearing. Besides - women with quirks are always portrayed so generously in the movies! I developed a major crush on Meg Ryan after watching When Harry Met Sally, and Sally is the penultimate example of the quirk-filled girl-next-door. Heck, Meg Ryan has built her entire career on portraying heroines brimming with quirky traits. And Vest Girl kinda looked like an Asian Meg Ryan. So, bonus.

My initial infatuation with Vest Girl began to fade, and I started to wonder what our relationship would be like if we had actually dated. Would she insist on wearing the vest to fancy restaurants? Would it stay on in the jacuzzi? Funerals?

Vest Girl: “What exactly do you want from me, Mike?”

“I want you to take The Vest off.”

Vest Girl: “Don’t ask me to do something you know I can’t do.”

“But don’t you think it’s a tad ridiculous?”

Vest Girl: “Why?”

“It’s July.”

Vest Girl: “So I’m ridiculous now? Is that it?”

“No honey, that’s not it at all… You can wear The Vest as much as you’d like. But I have to be honest – it’s putting a bit of a damper on cuddle time.”

Vest Girl: “You don’t enjoy our cuddling?”

“It’s nice, but… it’s like I’m hugging the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters.”

Vest Girl: “Excuse me?”

“Or the Michelin Man.”

Vest Girl: “This is unbelievable. Remember how you used to tell me -

“Take off the damn vest!”

Excessively quirky girls are great to watch on the silver screen and they make wonderful daydream fodder, but they just don’t work in the real world. But such is life. Or as the French say, “Nous aimons le vin et fromage et nous combattons très mal.”

I can only wish you the best in life, Vest Girl, wherever you may be. May your every dream come true and your torso be perpetually warm.

I was a precocious three-years-old. My mom, my dad, my newborn sister and I were doing something in a gift shop. What we were doing there and what kind of gift shop it was I’m not entirely sure. It’s not really important. You’ll find out why.

Growing up, I loved the Transformers. Optimus Prime was a complete and total badass, and Megatron - let it be known to all - was a world-class douchebag. That was my world. I watched the cartoons, I played with the toys and – to my parents’ frustration - I constantly sang/whistled/hummed the theme song. To say I was a fan of the show is an understatement of grand proportions. I was obsessed.

So there I was, kicking it in Ye Olde Gift Shop, admiring with curiosity everything that was within my two-foot-high line of sight, when I saw something glimmering in my peripheral vision. Turning to investigate, what I then witnessed completely destroyed my three-year-old grasp of the world. Sitting right in front of my very eyes was what appeared to be a man fused to a machine. He possessed an entire human body, but seemed to move around on a large pair of metallic wheels.

It was somehow equal parts man and machine. It was…a man-machine. No…it was a machine disguised as a man. It was a Transformer! Never in my wildest toddler fantasies did I think I might one day see a Transformer in the synthesized flesh. My rambling, inarticulate, tangent-filled prayers must’ve finally been heard, for the Lord had delivered upon me my very own cyborg.

My eyes grew wide with wonder. My bottom lip trembled with exhilaration. My right hand raised slowly with index finger extended like an accusing Puritan on a Salem witness stand.

Much later my mom said that she and my dad watched helplessly as the entire scene seemed to play out in slow motion.

”Mommy, Daddy – look at the robot!”

Suddenly my father scooped me up and both of my parents went over to apologize to the cyborg for any embarrassment or emotional stress I may have caused by outing him. We left the gift shop posthaste, leaving me unable to ask the robot for a transformation demonstration or where I could get my very own pair of wheel legs.

My mom and dad tried to instill good eating habits in me from a very young age. Since I, like any other hyperactive three-year-old who instinctively craves sugar, preferred candy and sweets to broccoli and cucumbers, they did so by lying to my face.

If questioned (in a court of law, if I had any say), my folks would no doubt try and soften the charge. “We told a fib or two for the benefit of our young child’s health,” they’d probably claim. But who are you going to trust? The traumatized victim or the proven liars?

Their most infamous dupe of all time was convincing a young, so-gullible little Me that Ritz crackers were actually cookies. They would refer to them as such whenever I was within earshot, and whenever I’d ask for a cookie they’d simply hand me a Ritz cracker and send me on my way. This wasn’t too bad of a deal because I’ll be the first to admit - Ritz crackers are kind of The Shit. But who’s to say I wouldn’t have been just as addicted to chocolate chip cookies if I had only been exposed to them instead?

Do you see what they stole from me?

This despicable charade continued until I was about three years of age, when my mom made the fatal mistake of quickly stopping by the bakery of our local grocery store while I was in her shopping cart. The kindly old woman behind the counter spotted me and asked if I would like a free cookie. My mom must have cringed and no doubt muffled a few select curses when she heard that, fully realizing that her carefully fabricated illusion was about to come crashing down like the World Trade Center 1929 stock market.

(Yep, still too soon for 9/11 humor. Trying again in five years.)

I said I would absolutely LOVE a cookie, fully expecting a delicious, salty Ritz cracker. Imagine my surprise, confusion and complete disorientation when the woman instead handed me a sweet, perfectly warm chocolate chip cookie. I glanced down at said “cookie”, utterly perplexed. I then looked at the rows of similar-looking items atop the display counter, then up at the smiling old bakery lady and finally over at my now crimson-faced matriarch. It was like the final scene from The Usual Suspects and I was Officer Dave Kujan.

In the end I made a bit of a fuss, but really - how angry can a three-year-old be when he’s holding a freshly-baked cookie that’s absolutely bursting at the seams with semi-melted chocolate chip morsels?

Answer: Not very.

I had an enormous crush on a girl in my kindergarten class. She was beautiful and had laughter like sunshine and made me feel all mushy. I wanted to express my affection with a grand romantic gesture.

But before I continue, there’s something I need to get out of the way:

I never, ever believed in Cooties. From the start I knew they were a complete and total sham. There was absolutely no way such wonderful creatures could play host to such a horrific disease. If Cooties did exist, I reasoned it was something worth catching.

One more thing:

On the way to my very first day of elementary school, a woman stood out front greeting the incoming students. I saw her from across the parking lot - a picture of beauty with long golden locks – and was immediately enamored. My mom told me this woman was my new kindergarten teacher. As I approached, she crouched down so we were eye to eye.

“Well hello there! What’s your name?”

“Michael ______ ________.” I had a habit of introducing myself by my full name.

“Nice to meet you, Michael. My name is Ms. Williams.” She shook my hand.

At the tender age of five I had not yet become insecure and nervous around attractive members of the opposite sex. (Years of awkward pubescence and mandatory social rituals would see to that.) I blurted out the first thing that coalesced inside my swirling, spinning mind.

“I think you’re as pretty as a rose.”

So now we’ve established two important facts:

Fact 1: Although I played along and received a vaccination (“Circle circle, dot dot, now you’ve got a Cootie shot!”), I did not for one moment think that Cooties was a real, or at least very deadly, disease.

Fact 2: I was a hopeless romantic upon exiting the womb.

Our playground was a 40/60 combination of tanbark and blacktop. The two tanbark sections were connected by a very old-looking wooden bridge. You could get from one area to the other without using the bridge, but that’s not very fun.

The playground was also adjacent to a residential neighborhood, and as such there were two fences - a wooden one surrounding the respective backyards and a chain link fence encompassing our campus. Some of the yards had trees, and a couple of them leaned over into school territory. One such tree was adorned with flowers which happened to suit one six-year-old boy’s discerning romantic tastes perfectly.

After assessing the situation I decided that my best route to the flowers was via the bridge. It was a fool-proof plan: I would climb atop the bridge’s four-foot-high railing, lean towards the fence, stretch out my arm and snatch the nearest flower to give to my dream girl.

Ah, the logic of a smitten six-year-old. I never once thought what might happen if I were to fall.

And oh, did I fall.

My fingertips were barely touching flower petals when I lost my balance and toppled downward. I didn’t feel my arm get caught on the chain link fence.

I remember sitting on the blacktop looking down at my arm and seeing a sizeable, fleshy rip down the middle. Without words or tears I walked over to the yard duty to let her survey the damage.

She stared at it aghast for a moment before calling over a fellow student to escort me to the health office. He and I talked casually as we walked down the hallway.

The school nurse bandaged me up and sent me on my way. I put my sweatshirt back on and hid the injury from my mom until the following day. I thought she’d be angry with me. When she eventually found out, she was angry. At the health office. If they would’ve called her she could have taken me to get stitches.

Instead I have this five-inch scar slinking down my arm to remind me of a fact that’s held true ever since that fateful day in kindergarten:

So often have I risked for women I’ve loved, and as many times have I gotten hurt.

Bonus: Chicks seem to dig the scar.

Irony: It’s kind of like a soldier appreciating the bullet wound left by a comrade in arms.

I was leaving campus late one night my junior year after doing some work at the college radio station. As I pulled out of the school’s central parking structure, I came across the same three students I had seen only minutes ago wandering aimlessly in the opposite direction. I rolled down my window.

“Hey, where are you guys trying to get to?”

“The Segundo dorms,” said one of the two girls.

“Oh, OK. You guys just need to cut through campus by following that main road,” -I pointed- “all the way down about half a mile until you see a cluster of four large dorm halls. That’s Segundo.”

“Oh, ok, thank you!”

“Would you guys like a ride? It’s awfully cold out.”

The two girls smiled and their eyebrows spiked with enthusiasm. “Yes, please!”

The guy hesitated. “No, that’s ok. Thank you.” He held his arms out to block the girls from moving forward.

Only then did I realize it was 2 am in the morning and I hadn’t shaven in over a month. I half smiled, amused.

“Are you guys sure? It’s really no problem. It’s half a mile away.”

“No. We’re fine. Thanks,” he replied. The girls looked disappointed.

For the first and hopefully only time in my life I was on the opposite end of a P.S.A. commercial. I was playing the role of the dirty, shady potential kidnapper, and that freshman dude was the hero who did the ‘right thing.’

I thought about pulling out my school ID and proving myself a student. Then I considered bribing them with candy.

I drove off, feeling dirty and dejected, and all I did was innocently offer a group of cold, disoriented freshmen a ride.

Remember Kids!

Beards can keep your face warm in the wintertime, and they’re great for Grizzly Adams Look-Alike Contests, but every so often you will be mistaken for a rapist.

I’m sitting in my Children’s Literature class senior year when a student asks a question about the upcoming essay.

“Professor, is it OK to use personal pronouns?”

“That’s a very good question,” Professor Stenzel replies. “I’ve been having you write journal entries throughout the quarter to teach you to use personal pronouns in your essays. I want you to tell me what you think, not what some academic in a journal thinks. So yes, you may use ‘I’ in your essays.”

One of the TAs fidgets in her chair and mumbles loudly.

“Yes?” The professor looks in her direction.

“Well,” she says, “I just think you should make clear that there is a right and wrong way to use personal pronouns. I just don’t want the students using them too much.”

“Very good point,” he replies. “There is definitely a right and wrong way to use the ‘I’ pronoun.” He moves to the board and begins making columns of ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’ ways to use ‘I.’

After finishing, the professor turns around and asks, “Does anybody have any questions?” A few people pose their own, and afterwards, just as the professor is about to move on to the next topic, I raise my hand.

“Yes, Mike?”

“Well, professor, I’m assuming it’s ok to use ‘I’ sentences in pairs?”

“What makes you say that, Mike?” The professor raises an eyebrow.

“Well, I figured we’re following the rule, ‘An I for an I’?”

In a lecture hall of 150 students you could hear a pin drop. No laughter. No giggling. Not even an asthmatic cough. Nothing but 5 seconds of horrible, awkward silence.

I clear my throat. “Wow, that went really badly.” More silence. “I definitely need some better material.” And silence.

“I thought it was pretty funny,” says the professor, attempting a save.
I fidget uneasily in my chair. “Well, *cough* I’ll be here until Saturday. Remember to tip your waitress.” This gets a few laughs, but they were most likely out of pity.

The professor picks up his thermos and takes a long sip.

“Mmmmm…” He pauses. “This is full of gin.”

Glorious laughter. The mood of the room I had so brutally killed is finally restored and the class can move on.
Class ends, and I walk over to where the professor is standing admist a group of concerned, questioning students. I had planned on apologizing for the horrible pun I made, but after waiting for 5 minutes, I decide to call it a day and leave the classroom.

I arrive home around 6:30, sit down at my computer and check my e-mail. A letter from Professor Stenzel is waiting in my inbox, entitled ‘Pun-ishment.’ It reads:

Dear Callahanmeister:

An I for an I…. Jeez, I thought my puns were lame! I almost said (when your row-mate talked about Tom Sawyer’s marble finding magic) that it was not so marble-ous.

–John