Pig in a Poke

One of my favorite things to do growing up was run around with my dad on a Saturday afternoon when he visited his friends who were farmers. They would shoot guns or go out for a couple beers, and I would get to tag along; so it was a special treat yesterday when his friends called and said he should come out because they were cooking a suckling pig. Of course mom was upset because she remembers the days where, like all men, dad would go out for "a couple of beers," and now that I'm thirty-three and look more and more like my father, I guess she didn't believe either of us, but we went for two hours, had a "few beers," got free American Dairy Farmers hats (cow print), and ate some pig.

cOrnHlOe (I tried)

Yesterday I made the ten-hour drive from Jersey to Ohio stopping at my friend's house for the night, and it was eerily similar, and by that I mean exactly the same, as last year: I drove ten hours stopping only for McDonald's breakfast and later on for a soda; I got a trucker tan on my left arm; Brian had a birthday party for his two-year-old son, Lucas; I ate a lot of fried chicken, his siblings and 2,ooo toe-headed nieces and nephews were screaming and yelling; after everyone left, we drank beer, played the most intense game of cornhole ever in the twilight, and had a camp fire listening to my ipod on computer speakers; we ate some more chicken and drank some more beer, I fell asleep on his couch, ate a piece of chicken for breakfast, and drove back to my parents' house. There were some discrepencies, but not signifcant enough to count, and if I can do this every summer for my homecoming, that will be alright with me.

My First Fish

I actually wrote this as a comment of "Daily Sentence of Dave," but I thought I would double dip and post it here too:

I can actually remember when I caught my first fish at Camp Wakonda in Piqua, Ohio. It was a bluegill(sunfish) and when my grandpa and I brought it back to the camper, my dad pulled it out of the bucket and threw it right on the grill. I screamed my head off, so he put it back in the bucket, but it floated on its side with the grill marks facing up.

Channel FORE!

"Sometimes I like to think about the people I hate.
I take my room at the Hate Hotel, and I sit and flip

through the heavy pages of the photographs,

the rogue's gallery of the faces I loathe...

...like a general running his hands over a military map—

and my bombers have been sent outover the dwellings of my foes,

and are releasing their cargo of ill will"

Hate Hotel by Tony Hoagland

I gave the poem this comes from to my students for the exam today, and as I was reading it, I could only think of the guy who interrupted me yesterday as I was trying to order a roast pork sandwich from the Cuban deli* for lunch. I was in the middle of placing an order for the sandwich when this guy** comes in and says in a booming voice, "Channel four, do you get channel four? Turn on channel four!" I was shocked at first, and thought something might be wrong, and even the man who runs the deli looked at him in disbelief and asked if a plane had crashed or something. The man, who hadn't stopped talking says, "The Open! The Open is on channel four, can you change it to channel four?"

.......GOLF!!!!? This only solidifies my general opinion of golfers, which is not based on the game of golf, but the opinion that most golfers have of themselves because they are golfers. I should have said something, but that is usually decided in a fraction of a second, and he must not have crossed that line that irrevocably sets me off, but I realized today after seeing this poem that I hate him. I know, "hate" is a strong word. How is this possible? Simple: I can forgive anyone just about anything, and I hate no group of people*** because there is always something good about people or circumstances that drive them to be difficult or unlikeable; however, nothing horrible was going to happen to this guy if he didn't get to see some stuffy white guy tap a ball into a hole with a $400 dollar piece of slag at the end of a stick. I know nothing of this man outside of those few minutes in the deli, but he interupted me mid-order when I was hungry, and I can find nothing redeeming**** in him.

* http://esoderica.blogspot.com/2009/05/call-me-jack.html

**a-hole.

*** Golfers are not people.

**** Not What JWD

Something is Afoot...

I have really had some great runs lately. Last week I ran 3.6 miles in 27 minutes, which puts me at about the seven and a half minute mile time. Of course when I went two days later, I was a bit slower, but my legs were a bit tired from my previous performance because I'm not in the best shape. So today, after a three days of rest and a fried chicken dinner at eight o'clock last night, I thought I would be charged and ready for a record-breaking run. I was actually a little excited about getting out and running, and I decided to take my phone just so I could time myself. The run sucked. The humidity was visible, which made it hard to breathe, plus I was wearing an uncomfortable, thick t-shirt that I ironically got from running a 5mile race, and it was chafing my nipples. I was determined to not look at the timer until I got back in hopes that maybe I was running a good time, but around the three mile marker, I rolled my ankle, felt a pop, and heard a snap (or I heard a phantom snap from feeling the pop). I was hot, sweaty and pissed, and I had to call Lib to pick me up. Then I realized that I had not looked at the clock when I rolled my ankle, so I checked when I called Lib, which put me at about 25 minutes for 3miles, so at least I wasn't breaking my record, but I guess I won't be for a while. Normally I would say this was a bad day, but Lib took care of me; she bought a "Vitamin Water: Balance" and some ice, and when I awoke from a brief nap on the couch, she had warmed up my leftovers from the fried chicken dinner, so I could stay on the couch in case I needed to play guitar or video games while she went to tutor--keeper!

Adult Listeracy

Sometimes when Lib makes a shopping list for me, she just draws the items on the list for fun and because it's cute; I like when she does it because, like a five-year-old, I think it's cool, and a seemingly mundane chore becomes more like an exciting scavenger hunt; however, when I pulled out the list to double check it in the checkout line, I realized the person behind me was also looking at my list, and I felt stupid for being a thirty-three year old man with a picture-based grocerly list; moreover, I realized that the woman probably thought I must be illiterate if someone had to draw my grocery list, so I texted Lib a rather lenghty text explaining all of this just so the woman knew that I could read and write, making sure she couldn't see what I was texting, but so that she would know I was texting.

How I Didn't Save a Bird

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.

A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough

Without ever having felt sorry for itself.
-- D.H. Lawrence

Unlike the time I made a hummingbird feeder with a styrofoam cup, labelling stickers, a red marker and Gatorade laced with sugar to save a hummingbird; unlike the time I caught a bird out of mid air with a garbage bag, and unlike the time I caught a parakeet barehanded and took it to a pet store in Brooklyn, this weekend, I did not save a bird. I went to Lib's cousin's graduation party, and not long after we arrived, her aunt, a mother of four young girls, came inside because they had all witnessed a bird fly into the window. The girls were concerned, and the bird, seemingly less concerned, was walking around the patio in a daze. It's wing was broken, but it looked fine, unless it tried to fly. Her aunt asked me if what was going to happen, and I said, "One of two things: either it's not as bad as it seems, or..." and then I saw four little pairs of hopeful, concerned eyes staring up at me, and Lib's mother interjected, "It will fly back to it's mother, right?" I went with it, but her aunt kept pushing me for the truth, and I kept saying it would probably fly away because the girls were right there, but as hard as Lib's mom and I gave her the look that adults give each other when they are trying to lie to children, she just kept pushing me until finally, I had to walk over and say in her ear, "It's going to die" without the girls hearing me. So I decided to "release" the bird by throwing it over a privacy fence into the woods. The girls followed me out, and I told them they should name the bird before we "released" it into the wild; in a tributary gesture for my efforts, the eldest said we should name it Eric. So I dubbed it Eric and perched it on top of the fence where it quickly rolled off the other side into the forest. And as grateful as everyone was, I had the privilege of knowing that my namesake would be dead before sunrise the next day, and I felt sorry for myself.