Dumb Things I've Done (11 in an unnumbered series)

As a budding 6-year-old comedian, I was always studying what people thought was funny. While over at my parents' friends' house, we caught Every Which Way But Loose on HBO. While not an out-and-out comedy, I noticed there were a few laughs from the grown-ups very now and then.

The biggest laugh was after Clint Eastwood beats the crap out of the Black Widows, a biker gang. As our hero makes his getaway, Clyde the orangutan pops out of the back of the truck and flips them off.

I didn't know why it was funny, but I couldn't ignore the laughs it got. I made a mental note to try it out on my friends.

A few days later at lunch, I saw my friend Jimmy waiting in the hot-lunch line. Now was the time.

"Jimmy!" I yelled across the cafeteria. He whipped his head around, saw it was me, and waved.

I held down my ring and index fingers down with my thumb (as novice bird-flippers often do), and let the bird fly. Jimmy practically exploded with laughter, and I glowed, proud that I had performed the gag satisfactorily.

I saw a shadowy figure swoop in from my left; it was one of the other first-grade teachers, and did she look pissed.

"I don't ever want to see you do that again!" she yelled at me. "Do you understand me?"

I was so shocked--I had no idea I'd done something wrong--that I could only nod numbly. Jimmy came to the table a few minutes later, and I was still so shaken that my eyes were welling up with tears. Yes, I was a wuss.

"Hey, what's wrong?"

I held up the half-eaten sweet pickle from my lunch and explained that while eating it, I bit the inside of my cheek. Somehow it was OK to almost be in tears for that rather than being shrieked at by a teacher.

Now here's the clip that lead me down the path of unbridled evil. DO NOT copy what Clyde the orangutan does if grown-ups around. Learn from my mistakes, people.

Signs that I'm online way too much

When I spied the bag of Stacey's Pita Chips on the counter, I read the cholesterol listing on the bag as "Oh my God! Cholesterol" instead of zero milligrams.

And when I realized my error, I wanted to hit Ctrl-Z.

Hopeless, I tell you.

Dumb Things I've Done (10 in an occasional series)

In junior high school, I was doing dishes (under duress, as usual), and since the batteries to my Walkman had run out again, I was humming to pass the time while my fingers got progressively prunier. After zoning out, I found myself humming a tune that, upon reflection, I couldn't quite place. Where the hell had I heard it? Finally, it came to me. It was from this commercial:



Why that stuck in my head, I can't tell you.

Dumb Things I've Done (9 in an occasional series)

I'm taking advantage of the public library system to read books I used to check out all the time when I was a kid or books that I never got a chance to find. It's pretty sweet. I'm picking up some today, in fact.

My wife, angel that she is, has bought me a number of prized books from my childhood as gifts, even managing to secure a copy of How to Draw Super Heroes. This is in addition to Superman From the 30s to the 70s, the follow-up that expanded to include the 80s, and The Great Superman Book (which, I hear, is being rereleased soon) among others.

It's relatively easy (if you know where to look) to find such things these days; my wife is an expert at it. But when I was younger, in the days before eBay and online shopping, it wasn't as easy.

Thus, I feel I must relate my tale of shame.

In junior high school, I was big Trekkie geek. I got started in earnest around the time Star Trek IV came out. I had seen The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock in the theaters (one at a birthday party), but despite my dad telling me that I'd like the reruns of the old show, I wasn't really interested in it then.

I made up for it.

Every trip to a book store yielded another paperback or two, and I watched the reruns every chance I got, which at the time, was pretty often, as it was on multiple times on multiple channels.

One of my favorite books was the Star Fleet Technical Manual. It was reissued during the big Star Trek hoopla in 1986, which, in addition to being the year Star Trek IV was released, was also the 20th anniversary of the show's debut.

I pored over the drawings of the various ships, phasers, uniforms, etc. I busted out my tablet of graph paper and did my best at replicating the Enterprise.

Later, when Star Trek IV was released on video, I begged my parents to buy it. This was before you could just go on down to Wal-Mart or Target (or Gemco, for that matter) and pick up a movie for 10 bucks or less. That said, The Voyage Home was a steal at a MSRP of $29.99 (I think).

I somehow managed to nab the promotional inflatable Enterprise that hung from the ceiling at my local Waldenbooks, but the sweetest thing was that James Doohan was coming to my hometown to promote the release. It was a sign. I had to go. I've got some pictures from that here.

I graduated from eighth grade, and one of the things my parents got me as a graduation present was the classic Trek episode, "Spectre of the Gun."

It wasn't too long before I decided to beg my parents to take me to a Star Trek convention. I think it was the summer of 1988, just before I started high school. There was one in Sacramento, and while I didn't win tickets from a radio contest (God help me, I tried. The contest required you to make up words to the Star Trek theme--and sing them), we still managed to go.

I was excited to see the guests (I think they were Marina Sirtis, Majel Barrett and Walter Koenig, but the few cons I went to have all blended together in my head), but when I saw the dealers' tables, I went nuts.

There was Star Trek stuff that I'd never heard of or imagined existed. And on one table was the original Star Fleet Technical Manual, in its hard black plastic slipcover. It was selling for $100, so naturally, I just had to be content with looking at it. Even with all my powers of persuasion, it would have been nigh impossible to convince my parents to help me buy a book that, aside from the cover, I essentially already had.

My usual refrain when pestering my parents to buy some odd pop-culture item was "But it'll be worth money someday." While I'd like to think I was envisioning an online auction site where, indeed, people could cash in on all the lame crap they have lying around the house, in reality, I was a kid trying to get what I wanted.

Surely, my great brain would figure something out.

A while later at the library, I saw the book on a shelf. It was missing its black cover, so it was just a red-covered softback. That got me thinking, though. Maybe there was another copy in the system. Sure enough, there was. And after a trip to the main branch of the library system, I was able to at least hold in my hands an original copy of the Star Fleet Technical Manual.

As I showed it to my friend, Ken, I lamented that this was as close as I'd come to an original copy of the book.

"Too bad they don't let you buy books from the library," he said.

"Yeah, the only time you do that is when you lose them," I replied. Midway through that sentence, my great brain came up with the perfect plan.

If I told the library that I lost the book, I reasoned, I'd have to pay to replace it. They'd get a copy of the reprinted version, and no one would be missing anything. Especially given that there were two other copies in the system already.

It made sense to a 13-year-old.

On my next trip to the library, I gathered up my courage (I somehow thought they'd see through my cunning attempt to trick them) and went to the circulation desk.

"I have to pay for a book I lost," I said, looking disappointed.

"I can make a notation on your record so you can have a little more time to try to find it. They usually turn up after a while. That way you won't have to pay for the book."

"No," I said, trying not to sound too eager. "I've looked everywhere it could possibly be. I can't find it anywhere. I'll just pay for it."

"Okay," she said, "let me look it up in the system to see how much the replacement fee is."

I was prepared to pay the 20 bucks or whatever the current version was going for. That still put me 80 bucks ahead. That was the beauty of my plan. I tried to maintain my doleful expression despite being proud of my own cleverness.

"That'll be $7.95," she said apologetically.

"Huh?"

"Seven dollars and ninety-five cents. I'm sorry."

As I forked over a ten, I realized that $7.95 was the cover price of the book when it came out in 1975 (I've also seen one that was $6.95, but mine says that it's a first edition, so who knows?). I tried my hardest to look disappointed. I at least managed to hold out until I was out of the librarian's line of sight.

For just less than $8, I had the book I wanted.

Still, it didn't take too long for guilt to set in, so I vowed not to do it again. And even if I wanted to, a few years later, most of the libraries around me instituted a flat book-replacement fee.

The book is still on my shelf, and I feel a little guilty every time I crack it open. I have, however, given lots of money to libraries since then, so I think I've made up for my $7.95.

To dissuade anyone out there from embarking on a life of crime, I should point out that I just looked for the book on eBay, and it goes for as low as $6.99 (not including shipping) for a Buy It Now auction and starts at 99 cents for a regular auction.

Remember, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few (or the one). Most of the time, anyhow.

Dumb Things I've Done (8 in an occasional series)

I thought that I had a snowball's chance in hell of writing 50,000 words in one month. Alas, it was not to be. I punked out at 10,069 words, which is better than I did last year, and I wasn't even sick last time.

Maybe next time I'll make it. The trick will be to have a story idea I'm really keen on. I figured out how my first story ended, and once I knew how it ended, I didn't really care how everyone got there. The second story isn't too bad; I'm still not wild about it, but it might end up finished someday.

Some of the content on this blog aside, I have a hard time writing things without obsessing over them and rewriting endlessly.

Dumb Things I've Done (7 in an occasional series)

Today, we have a guest sharing their dumb moment. He doesn't know he's doing it, but that's the beauty of the Internet, right?

This time, I'm on the other end of the dumbness in question. My friend and I were in yearbook class discussing some pressing issue (having absolutely nothing to do with the yearbook), and a carrot-topped classmate joined in the conversation.

I said something he thought was stupid, which prompted the following comment:

"Dude, you're such a Polack!"

My friend and I looked at each other, mystified, not because a classmate used a disparaging term for one of Polish descent, but because both of us were plainly aware that I was not, in the strictest terms, Polish.

"What?" I asked.

"You're such a Polack."

"How do you figure?" I asked.

"You just, uh, you just are," he said, his face getting perilously close to the same color as his hair.

"I'm not even Polish, moron."

"So? You're still a Polack."

My friend decided to spell it out for him, explaining that one generally had to be Polish to be called a Polack. I don't think he actually believed us or understood the distinction.

Sheesh. Redheads...

Dumb Things I've Done (6 in an occasional series)

When I was a little kid, I had somehow convinced myself that "La Bamba" was the Spanish version of "Twist and Shout." Why I thought this, I have no idea. No one told me this, and I hadn't read it anywhere. Apparently, this what the best my little brain could come up with.

This is the same brain that didn't make the connection between TP-ing someone's house and toilet paper until many years after what would be considered normal.

I knew toilet paper was involved, and it had nothing to do with Native American tents, but somehow it just never occurred to me.

Dumb things I've done (5 in an occasional series)

Freshman year German class...

It was time for a gingerbread house competition, and my friend Ken and I decided to enter. Neither of us (as far as I remember) had any experience building a gingerbread house, but it didn't look that hard.

In fact, it looked too easy. I mean, jeez, anyone could build a gingerbread house. We had to come up with something different.

Before I tell you what we picked to make a gingerbread replica of, I should point out that both of us are married.

Not to each other.

In the infinite wisdom that only dorky 14-year-olds can muster, we decided that the way to win the competition was not to build a house, but a replica of everyone's favorite starship, the USS Enterprise.

Well, it had the virtue of never having been tried before.

We employed our mad engineering skillz and figured out the dimensions of all the pieces we needed and mixed up our sugary mortar.

But despite our forethought (at least 3 or 4 minutes), it wasn't until we were well into the assembly phase that we found our problem.

Here's our model. Pay special attention to the warp nacelles (those funky tube things in the back).


Okay, well, in space, that works great. Or if you are working with a substance that is strong enough to support its own weight.

Unlike, say, gingerbread.

Our nacelles -- made of giants candy cane sticks -- refused to stay put no matter how much glue we used. They'd just flop over like wilting flowers.

Well, that just wouldn't work.

After a few minutes, we went from "What would Scotty do?" to "What would Willy Wonka do?" to "Oh, crap, it's due tomorrow."

We propped up the nacelles with smaller candy cane pillars. A little inelegant, yes, but those things stayed up.

Did I mention we had to frost the whole thing, too?

We put the hull registry (NCC-1701-A) on the saucer section with little licorice bits.

Once it was done, it looked pretty sweet.

So to speak.

Project Babe Magnet was finally finished and ready to be gawked at by our impressed classmates.

Alas, we didn't get first prize. That went to someone who had -- unoriginally -- made an actual gingerbread house.

Feh.

We got third place, which was still cool. We each got a Toblerone for our troubles, so it wasn't a total loss.

Hey, free Toblerone, right?

Of course, mine had nuts in it (I hate nuts).

Our edible Enterprise also made it into the yearbook. Ken scanned this in for me. That's ours on the left. The thing cropped out so you can get a better view of the regular gingerbread house.


Oh well. At least the girls thought we were cool after that.

Oh, wait...

Dumb things I've done (4 in an occasional series)

By the time I was a sophomore in high school, I'd been shaving regularly for a while. But one day, just as my ride approached school grounds, I happened to notice that in my haste to get out of the house on time, I had neglected to shave half of my mustache.

Everything else, no problem. But I had to hang out all day with one half-peach-fuzzed lip and hope no one noticed.

That lasted until all of first period.

Dumb things I've done (3 in an occasional series)

While riding in the car, I was goofing around with my newly purchased school supplies. I took two pencil-top erasers and pinch-suctioned them on both sides of my neck, a la the Frankenstein monster.

Why stop at pink rubber neckbolts? I emptied the whole package of erasers and stuck them on various parts of my face.

The flush of pride I felt at my cleverness soon faded when my mom made me take them off and I found that each one had left a miniature (but totally noticeable) hickey.

And then we arrived at the mall.

Dumb things I've done (2 in an occasional series)

Sophomore year, high school:

While discussing the elastic properties of the human body, I volunteer the information that I can stick my legs behind my head (a talent I have since lost). I demonstrate and manage to slide down in my chair, lodging me between it and the desk.

Hilarity ensues.

Dumb things I’ve done (1 in an occasional series)

When I was about 9, I realized that if I slouched a little, I could pull my jacket up and zip it up over my head, thus creating the illusion that I was a headless kid.

This discovery would have played out cooler had I not:

A) Come up with it while waiting in the drive-through at Jack in the Box
B) Gotten my hair stuck in the zipper, rendering me unable to unzip the jacket before we got to the window.

As it is, I had to just sit there and hope that the person giving us our food didn’t notice the headless kid in the passenger’s seat.