Never buy hair color at Dollar Tree. The box clearly indicated it was supposed to be sort of purple. No, I’m not in the habit of coloring my hair. I don’t have enough to warrant such foolishness. I literally applied the coloring as indicated. It struck me immediately that it was about the opposite of purple. But of course I left it in for 30 minutes. When I got out of the shower, I saw an adult male version of a ginger ferret looking back at me. Since I’m more tan than I’ve been in 10 years, the color looks even more striking. The only thing missing is even a hint of purple.
Fireworks. I love them. I still love setting them off up close and personal but I haven’t done it in a while. As I got older, it’s sunk in how much they affect some animals and some people. If you’ve ever known anybody with PTSD, it’s hard to enjoy them knowing that there are people out there that are terrified. And that some people have to take extraordinary pains and caution to minimize the effects on themselves on their animals.
On a local board, someone caught hell for asking people to respect the lawful parameters of using fireworks. Obviously, fireworks are a good example of an occasion when people are going to ignore the law. And that’s okay.
I have a couple of skills. And one of those skills is finding people. It’s very tempting to make a list of those belittling other people for asking their neighbors to be reasonable.
It would be hilarious and educational to go buy a huge quantity of discounted fireworks. And bide my time. Wait until Sunday night at midnight and light an apocalyptic amount outside their window. A 10,000 string of firecrackers, for example. How could they complain?
It’s no more illegal to set them off on Sunday night than it was last night at 2:00 a.m.
I have this weird feeling that such people who previously belittled others for asking for reasonableness would suddenly start arguing the other side of the consequences if they were awakened at midnight with 6 minutes of firecrackers.
In my younger days, I would have taken great delight in doing this sort of thing. To see if people would recognize their hypocrisy, even as they shouted in anger at the audacity of someone setting off fireworks outside their house.
WD-40 is versatile. It even protects idiots. I should know. My next door neighbor wrote me last night to tell me there was a wasp nest outside my apartment. Since I moved in here, I’ve been the de facto wasp warrior for everyone. It turns out there was a nest directly above where I usually sit and stand outside my door on the landing. It turned out that they looked more like yellow jackets to me. It had to have been built quickly but I wonder how many times I had stood out there with them working right above my head without me knowing. I was going to eradicate the nest later today. But you know me. I decided to go to war at 3:15 in the morning in the dark. I opened the door with my can of WD-40 in hand. My cat Güino took advantage and ran out the door to the right. He is familiar with my idiocy and probably wanted to stand somewhere out of the way and enjoy the morning. Even if screaming ensued. I covered myself to be more protected. Just kidding. I went out there shirtless and in shorts without shoes. Peering upward at the nest directly above my head, I calmly sprayed the burgeoning nest with a barrage of WD-40. Luckily for me, the yellow jackets didn’t know what hit them. The WD-40 saturated them before they had time to move. Not that I cared. I knew that once I started spraying that running probably wouldn’t be much help. Especially in the dark. I would like to thank my neighbor for the early morning adventure. I’m not quite sure how I would have reacted had I been standing out there later today only to be to have been bombed by multiple yellow jackets. I’m pretty certain that the result would have been a lot of cardio for me.
I wanted to share a goofy anecdote from someone I used to work with. He came from California. No, he did not have a banjo on his knee. I asked him what the craziest thing he saw was. I’m paraphrasing:
I lived in a rougher part of Los Angeles. I was standing outside talking to an old man who was my neighbor. A dark Oldsmobile Cutlass pulled up about 30 ft away. The windows were down. We both looked up because the engine was really loud. The man in the car calmly lifted a gun from his lap and aimed it. He shot once. I was already scrambling to hit the pavement. My old neighbor didn’t flinch. The bullet went between us. Or would have had I not been laying face first on the asphalt. The Cutlass roared away.
“What the hell was that? Why didn’t you duck?
The old man laughed and said, “Boy, you can’t dodge bullets. And whoever that was is afraid right now. What are we going to do, call the police? So they can ask us a bunch of questions that we don’t know the answer to?”
I had a lot of questions. My coworker didn’t have the answer to any of them. He couldn’t figure out if the old man was the bravest person he ever knew, or the wisest.
I wasn’t going to write this anecdote. It rose from an extemporaneous encounter that both tickled me and irritated me.
I went to our local large warehouse superstore after work. In part due to the desire to buy some chicken and in part to engage in some frivolity. I parked near the end of the lot as I often do. For no reason, I sprinted up the parking lot. Behind me, I heard an engine revving. Assuming it was a testosterone-deficient display of horsepower, I kept running. After all, someone has to keep OPEC funded, so such blasphemous displays of tacky overkill are important to both the economy and to aftermarket parts stores catering to those who think the epilogue is something people say at a funeral. As I slowed to traverse the crosswalk, a horn blared at me. It was as loud as an angry housewife at 7:30 p.m. on bowling night.
Turning to wave, I saw that the horn emanated from a large pickup truck. The man driving had put his window down. He shouted at me. “Hey, watch where you’re going!”
Confused, I looked down at the crosswalk and then pointed at it. “I always do,” and laughed.
I could see that my humor and my short truthful quip was not pleasing to him. I was still confused. He drove up behind me as I ran and there were no other vehicles crossing the perpendicular plane of the lot adjacent to the store. My a$$hole detector sent off a warning bell in my head.
Time to play.
“You heard me. Are you being smart with me?” His voice rose in intensity.
“I wouldn’t dare. Your wife wouldn’t recognize such an attempt.” I laughed even harder and stood looking directly at him.
“You wouldn’t be laughing if I got out of this truck!”
I wanted to say, “I’m not sure you could, absent the use of a crowbar and can of Crisco,” but I didn’t.
Instead, I said, “I am NOT going back to prison for this!”
His face froze as the words I’d said sank in. “Just be careful of where you’re going!”
“We’ve established this already. Any new business you’d like to discuss?” I definitely laughed my ass off with this remark. I knew I could outrun him. It was doubly obvious I could outsmart him by challenging him to a one-syllable spelling bee. A part of me wanted to take off running to the end of the lot just to see if he’d attempt a chase.
I am pretty sure his wife had told him, “Let’s go” at this point. As y’all know, this is an infinitely ineffective strategy with this sort of esteemed citizen. It’s right up there with “Calm down!”
He gave me the middle finger. Not to keep, of course. He limited himself to showing it to me with considerable enthusiasm.
I did what any red-blooded American guy should do in this situation: I bowed formally. When I raised up, I gave him a big thumbs-down with my right hand.
An hour earlier, I passed the apartment buildings. One of the maintenance people was painting the large outside panel on the end of one of the buildings. I noted his sign, which indicated, “Wet Paint.”
An hour later, I came back with a gallon of water. I threw it across the recently painted panel. As the paint began to drip and run, the maintenance man screamed at me.
By the time I drove past, the property was engulfed in flames. There were at least 30 firefighters there, using hoses and every available method to extinguish it. I pulled over safely and parked. I said, “Wait here I’ll be right back” to the passenger.
I ran toward the building and shouted over and over. I then ran back to my car and got inside.
My passenger asked, “What were you doing?”
“I always wanted to shout ‘THEATER!’ In a crowded fire.”
I watched the older black man in front of me at the convenience store. He left his BC powder at the counter and shouted something funny out the door to an unseen partner. I waited, knowing he’d return after the volley of words. Shaking his head and laughing, he came back in and piled out the change he had in his pocket to pay for it. He told the clerk he would leave the extra change for the next person to pay it forward. I told him to leave a 20 and really make someone’s day.
“I’m here to feed them, not fatten them,” he said with a wink and a grin.
I hadn’t heard that one in decades.
I love that old saying. It conveys a lot more philosophy than it seems. X
Erika was finishing in the other bathroom. I decided to shower too. Ever since the baby shark incident, she won’t let me shower with her. Often, I shower in the dark but left the light on this time – not that it helped to have it on this time. No soap. Okay, I will use body wash. None. Shampoo basically empty, But used what little I could get out, just enough to get my head and face soapy. No problem. I grabbed the dark bottle on top to finish. Squirted too much on me. Rubbed it all over me. Something seemed off. I rinsed my eyes as best I could. I was shocked to see I was covered in blue or black… something. Not only that, but I could see it apparently staining the tub and the shower curtain. One part of me wanted to holler for a Erika to come see the incredulous mess. The other part of me, my lizard brain, desperately tried to get whatever it was off of me and off of the shower and tub. This is a Airbnb after all. I’m not sure blackening the shower tub is covered under the deposit. My showers are routinely very fast. Not this time. I felt like I emptied Lake Michigan attempting to get the dark stain off of me and everything else. While I was still rinsing, Erika stepped in and I decided to tell her what I had done now that it looked like all the damage had been erased. Someone had left a bottle of Redken blue color enhancer on the top shelf of the shower. And a miraculous series of coincidences resulted in me using it as body wash. X
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 