Oh, Deer Forest.

When I was a young tot, my family took a yearly vacation to South Haven, Michigan. While there was little to do there besides visit the beach, fortunately a shady little amusement park lay close by in Coloma, Michigan. It was called Deer Forest.

The trick with kids is to learn that their perception of tackiness and displeasure is usually based entirely off of your reaction. My parents were exceptionally good at faking enthusiasm, and so my brother and I were often excited about the most mundane things. Deer Park is a prime example. So was going to the Dentist.

The park opened in 1949 and hadn’t undergone much change since. It featured a petting zoo, and I’m sure some of the animals from the original opening were still there. The grounds smelled like an unkempt farm from the 50s. Their slogan was  “More fun than a zoo”- a brilliant lie. The only way that Deer Park was more fun than a zoo was that it featured a few treacherous rides. These scrapped carnival rejects included an unstable Ferris wheel and a dragon themed roller coaster. The coaster, a rickety, 20 foot circular disaster, was closed for safety reasons not long after we stopped visiting the park.

  Whiplash is a privilege

On one occasion my younger brother and I took a ride on the Ferris wheel, unaccompanied. The Ferris wheel ride began slowly, but began to gradually accelerate until we were rotating around the structure at break-neck speeds. The ride was terrifying at first, but after a while Eric and I were loving the sensations of hurdling aimlessly through the air.

It wasn't until we had been spinning for about seven minutes until we felt that something was amiss. We noticed Mom flailing at the bottom of the wheel and assumed that she was enthusiastically waving at her big boys taking their first solo ride. We waved back with equal vigor. After we finally got off we learned that the Ferris wheel had broken and was spinning at top speed. Workmen were using blowtorches and as sparks flew from the underbelly of the Ferris wheel's base my mother had a little bit of a breakdown.

Another classic staple of Deer Forest was the Storybook Lane. This featured fenced in scenes depicting beloved childhood classics including Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs and The Ugly Duckling. Sickly animals were placed appropriately- live pigs for the three little pigs, ducks for the ugly ducking, etc. The sets were poorly constructed and probably was the result of a parent labor union and a lot of paper mache. The paint chipped off of the cheap structures and animals strolled in and out of the scenery as part of the story- and also pooped everywhere. In front of each gated storybook pen there was a voice box that narrated a brief synopsis of the story. It was never easy to hear the narration over the howling and screaming animals and children, which filled the park as an appropriate soundtrack.

The park also featured a fighting cage for children and animals falsely labeled as a petting zoo. I vividly remember being chased by angry goats and deer while trying to hold onto my tiny fistfuls of old corn. There were no rules in this arena. Being butted, tripped and chased by hungry and neglected farm animals was a childhood entertainment dream to my parents, who patently videotaped and took pictures. While I fell into buckets of old food and poop, it occurred to me that this was supposed to be fun, and so I made the most of it. As is life.

Call of the Wild

Before I started my (first) Senior year of college I bought myself a phone. I haven’t been swayed by the whole mac craze yet, although I acknowledge its only a matter of time. Because of my lack of familiarity with apple products I opted out of buying an iphone and instead purchased a virgin mobile touch screen monstrosity that has caused me an incredible amount of stress.





A phone should, naturally, be able to make phone calls to other cell phones. But in addition to the occasional dropped call, my phone has this special feature that allows it to answer and hang up simultaneously.
Usually this situation is only an mild annoyance, but often I am unable to call the person back because they are still waiting for me to answer the phone or in the middle of leaving me a message. So I’ve learned to wait about 30 seconds before calling back. It's an art, really.


The thing is, when I call these people back I hardly ever get an answer. I know you’re there- you just called me. “Phone tag” is too jolly of a name for a socially distressing dance. The only clear explanation that allows me to understand how someone who had just called me and is now missing my calls seconds later is this:

They were so upset that I missed their first call that they threw their phone into the sidewalk. Then they ran away, crying.





Apart from being unable to make actual calls, my phone also has its own time schedule of delivering messages. I have received voice mails without missing a call and I receive texts up to three days after they were sent. Sorry your Grandpa died three days ago… I would have cared and texted back if I had known.

My phone has taught me many things, the most important thing is the art of being patient with technology and with the people who use it. I know that when I’m having a conversation there is only so many times I can ask “what?” before just giving up and pretending I got it. I don’t know the exact number yet, but I do know that it is less than five.

Missing a sentence of someones conversation usually works in storytelling. I can catch fragments of your 18 minute tale about how your dog killed your turtle and put the story together myself, but missing a sentence doesn’t work in small talk.

It’s not that I even have relevant conversations to make up for the insuffering inability to hear.


Mom: Hi
Me: hey
Mom: It’s Elmo’s birthday!
Me: What?
Mom: It’s El-mo’s birthday
Me: What??
Mom: ELMO- It’s his birthday!
Me: Wha- oh… okay.
Mom: Yeah
Me: …
Mom: …

Me: Who’s elbow?
Mom: ELMO!!!
Me: OHhhhh. Elmo.
Mom: Yeesh. Yeah, he was born in 1972.
Me: What? Oh.
Mom: Yeah, he’s 14.
Me: Uh…
Mom: What?
Mom: Wait… that’s not right…
Me: Not even close.
Mom: Don’t put this in your blog.
*end call*

Pet Names

Pet Names

My experience with my first pet came about when my parents decided to introduce me to the subject of responsibility. After asking incessantly for a dog, my parents offered me their next best offer- which was to have some fish.  We went to a supermarket pet section and I picked out two beautiful pets. They were small and transparent fish with neon stripes running down their spines- one pink, one green. 





I named them Timothy and Alex and they lasted for about a week before an accidental overfeeding led to their passing. I think I also convinced myself that they needed to live in salt water to survive… so me adding some table salt may have not helped the situation.

“LIVE!”

I was devastated, and knew that the only way to overcome my sorrow was to fill the emotional void with more fish. The next pair of pets were larger goldfish. I chose a generic gold goldfish, and another creamy white and orange one.





I named them Timothy and Alex. Again. Reoccuring names were something that my brother and I both had problems with. His first fish was a black monstrosity with huge eyes named Herman. After Herman died, there came Herman II, Herman Strikes Back, and finally Herman III. They were all identical.





After a while, my new goldfish were bored and lonely so I got some kind of crustacean crab-like creature that was supposed to help in keeping the tank clean. I figured that adding a new aquatic friend would be the solution for a happy community.  After a week or so I was introduced the horrors of the animal kingdom. As the fish would swim close to the bottom, the crab would reach out a claw and grab the tail of the fish. The fish would then panic and drag the crab around like an amusement park ride until ultimately the crab would just rip out a chunk of tail for dinner.





The fish were damaged both on the surface on a very deep emotional level.





All three of them died of what was assumed was an abundance of stress not too long afterward.
After Eric and I had seen the lifespan of one too many fish, we asked our parents to stop the emotional pain of aquatic slaughter and for an upgrade to rodents. After seeing how well we handled fish, I can see now where their apprehension may have come from.


So when we asked “CAN WE GET GERBILS??”
They said:





But Eric and I heard:





Never say “maybe” to a kid. All they’ll hear is “I swear on everything, including my love for you, that this will definitely happen. I promise.”


And so after we had convinced our parents that we would die of heartbreak if we didn’t get gerbils, our wishes came true. We were elated, we knew having a gerbil was as close as we were ever going to get to having a dog. We chose our pets carefully and brought them home in cardboard  boxes. Eric and I named the gerbils Timothy and Resseafurd. I think you can guess who named who.




And so began years of friendship with our rodent friends. We would make obstacle courses, mazes, and costumes. We developed identities for the gerbils over time. Timothy was given the perceived personality of a neurotic, effeminate librarian while Reeseafurd was a tactless, obese American aristocrat, very much like William Taft.


Eric had a favorite game in which he would take a large down pillow and punch a crater into the center of it. He would then put Reeseafurd into the crater and hit the sides of the pillow as to make a catapult that would send the poor guy flying vertically into the air and then straight back down onto the pillow. Eric was convinced that his gerbil loved this game.






Near the end of their lives they began to show signs of serious rodent senility. Timothy began to eat Reeseafurd alive starting with the ears. We weren’t sure how long they were going to go without killing each other, however Reeseafurd won out in the end outliving Timothy nearly a year.  


If there is a moral to any of this, it would be that giving your child a pet usually means that you are going to have to take care of that pet for them in order to maintain their emotional stability.

The Itchiest VD

Unlike everyone else who claims to hate Valentine’s day because it’s a corporate holiday based in card and candy sales, I just find it unpleasant it because I’m single. I am not ashamed to say that I will most likely spend this Valentine’s planning out where to shop for clearance chocolate and will inevitably end up watching The Notebook on my computer. Okay, I’m a little ashamed. But as ashamed as I may be, I have plenty of Netflix movies in my queue to lighten the emotional burden. No worries. 


 

   “Do you think our love is strong enough to take us away together?”

I’m getting to an age where holidays are exciting again. This is bad news. Now I know that I have officially left behind the days of my life where I had enough general fun that I didn’t need a specified day to tell me that life was exciting.


The harsh nature of Valentine’s Day is not new to me. We all felt the sting of childhood when we would hand out our small pop culture infused valentines cards in elementary school. It was proof of the hierarchy we were all too familiar with. We tried to impress our friends and the popular kids with the best of the valentines cards while shunning those we hated with the worst. It was the difference between getting a valentines day wish from the Red Power Ranger and getting one from the Putties. You knew where you stood with someone based on the Valentine they gave you. It was an unspoken and a universal rule, and it was FUN. 

I was never this popular. But hey, it’s my blog.

There was also that bittersweet resentment for the people who had candy attached to their Valentines. This was no Halloween. It was candy based on love, not merit. They really knew how to break kids down at Oak Knoll.


On an unrelated note, I have striven not to forget the true heart of this blessed holiday. Take a moment and think of Anna Howard Shaw and her contributions to this country.





What a woman. Well I’m a bust man, so I’ve got to get back to reading all of your facebook statuses so I can revel in your proclamations of happy relationships!

Fun Times in Skokie

As a kid we would often go to visit my Mom’s parents in Skokie. It was about an hour drive and my brother and I would entertain ourselves in the backseat. In these days before televisions were in cars, we spent most of the ride hitting each other, singing, reading and sleeping- usually all within the hour.

My Mom’s parents (Nana and Papa) lived in a small ranch house that wasn’t exactly equipped to entertain the average kid. Among many of our favorite games to play at Nana and Papa’s house was to crawl through a giant, jersey knit tube of fabric and play “caterpillar”.





Another classic game was to take the baby powder near the pool table in the basement and squeeze the bottle so that the “genie” would come out. One particular day we got carried away with the genie game and ended up covering the entire basement in baby powder.





Another game was to take out a folding play-pen and sit in it while we watched TV. My brother and I justified this as playing RugRats.





Playing in Nana and Papa’s house was at times a dangerous game. Whenever we would enter the front room (Pronounced frunchroom) we had to be especially careful of the Lladros- an invaluable collection of ceramic statuettes waiting to be broken.

Other than that, the house was always a warm and pleasant environment.
On summer days we would go to the tiny backyard and fill up an industrial giant brown garbage can with water to create a makeshift pool.





We did this for a few years until someone finally invested in a kiddie pool. That was a real treat.
In the colder months we spent much of our time at Nana and Papa’s in the basement. Near the pool table there was a support beam that Eric and I would grab onto and spin around until the point of exhaustion. There is a memorable Christmas video where we had taped cotton balls to our faces as makeshift Santa Claus beards and spent a good four minutes spinning around the pole in our Santa costumes. In reality it was probably longer, but there are about four minutes at least on film.






There are no Christmas trees in Skokie, so we spent that Christmas decorating one of those fake, plastic birch trees in the front room.


There was a bar in the basement as well, and we would play “Drunk” which usually ended up with us spinning ourselves around the support beam. A shopping cart was used to catch laundry out of the chute, and when we weren’t spinning around a pole I was busy pushing Eric at lightening speed in the cart around the basement.


In the basement there was also fun to be had playing in the “Cedar Closet”. One holiday my brother, cousin Ryan and I dressed up in Nana’s finest minks and heels, then paraded them in front of the family. Needless to say, an old house with no toys is an ideal place to fuel the imagination. We had fun.

Grow Up

When I was in Kindergarten our teacher had the class fill out a worksheet in which we were to draw and title our future careers. I misunderstood that I was supposed to choose a career, and instead focused my thoughts not on work, but on “What I Wanted to be when I Grew Up”, which was more or less the title of the assignment. So as the other kids around me were busy scribbling out pictures of firemen, nurses, policemen, doctors, teachers and veterinarians I was busy illustrating what I wanted to be when I grew up…more than anything.

Wheel of Misfortune

I love wheel of fortune. When I was a toddler I was obsessed with the show. I used to run up to the TV and stand wavering in front of the screen in order to fill my peripheral vision with spinning color. I imagine it’s similar to a meth trip.


.


When the wheel would come up and fill the screen I would place my hands on the glass and “spin the wheel” along with the contestants. I knew my letters somewhat, and hearing middle aged women scream their letter requests and then watch it magically appear on the board was like a second episode of Sesame Street that day.

One fateful day, as my parents were watching me watch wheel of fortune, an accident occurred. As I reached up for my turn to grab the wheel I somehow pulled the TV onto my face.





I laid there for a while, in shock. Presumably horrified, my parents pulled me out from under the TV and once they had established I had not died they put the TV back up on the stand. As soon as the commercial break was over, I continued to watch the Wheel of Fortune as if nothing had happened.





I betcha the media would be elated if all television viewers were as dedicated to viewing programs as I was. Having a television fall on my face as a child is one of many life excuses I use to justify the way I am.

Snow Day like Today

Today is the first snow day I’ve had since my Sophomore year of college! It started out with me staying up way too late Monday night, as usual. After watching a few documentaries on Netflix I found myself chatting with my friend Joey on Facebook. That makes two corporate plugs in this blog post so far.






Joey and I chatted about how tired we both were and how nice it would be to have oatmeal. Then, as a spontaneous gesture I clicked over to the Illinois State homepage and saw the two most magical words in the English language.





No, not any of those two words… I’m talking “SNOW DAY”! As I reveled in the good news with Joey, we knew that there was only one thing to do at 5:40am on a snow day, and that was go to McDonald’s. We met up outside of my apartment and to our shock and confusion we found that there really wasn’t that much snow… at all.  In the cold, night air we saw what was at most 3 inches of snow on the ground. All the roads were clear. Also, it wasn’t snowing. It was truly a Black History Month miracle- a snow day with no falling snow! We were ecstatic, none-the-less, and we began our walk through the bitter cold to our destination.





As we neared the entrance to the best fast food in town we panicked for a moment fearing that McDonald’s might be closed. Alas, it was open further proving that McDonald’s has never let anyone down!

Except maybe this girl.

We arrived and ordered our McOatmeal and then basked in its warmth. As we sipped our McCoffee we realized we were among the few McBrave enough to face the McMorning.
 




The other customers were senior citizens who were getting their breakfast for a discount. I guess that’s the birthday to look forward to after 21. One man in particular struck our attention. He wore his beanie hat perched high on his head where it could not possibly be keeping the cold out. As he sat and read his paper we realized how much he looked like a forgotten villain from a Where’s Waldo? book.

Old Gus and his Tuesday morning McCoffee.

So a very Happy Snow Day to all! I’m off to further ruin my already botched sleep schedule.

Extinguishing a Burning Fear.

If someone were to ask me what I’m afraid of today I would have a bit of a struggle answering. Apart from flying insects and how much the next episode of gLee is going to disappoint me, I fear very few things in my life.




This has not always been the case. I have not always been a fearless man. As a child I suffered from night terrors. I give a lot of credit to my parents for putting up with that. If I had to look my child in its half awake eyes and watch them scream at me thinking I was some Hell-beast from Wichita it would be up for adoption pretty quickly.




As my infant night terrors faded I grew into some upper level toddler night terrors. These basically revolved around a certain obsessive fear that I would pick up somewhere through the media or school. The fear would not allow me to go to sleep at night. As a solution my parents bought a red, soft plastic water bottle that was to contain air that made everything bad go away for the night.




Each night before I went to bed I would wish positive thoughts and energy and blow them into my bottle of hope. Then my mom would squeeze the positive energy throughout the room. Initially this was a monster spray used to ward off not monsters, but robbers, in-home invaders and murderers. Later, it just became a symbol of overcoming fear. In retrospect this is a pretty new age concept, although I’m sure my Mom was just thrilled that she finally had a solution to my obsessive fears.


 


One day at school I was introduced to a concept so horrifying, and so scary that not even bottled toddler breath could ward it away. The school was giving kids a seminar on fire safety and a real fireman came in to talk to us about the hazards and dangers of flames. It started out innocent enough, but someone must have forgotten to inform Fireman Jack that he was speaking to a group of toddlers. After describing in detail the various degrees of burns, he whipped out a little prop that scarred me deeply.

 

He presented an ordinary house phone that had been destroyed in a fire. It’s edges were bulbous and black. The receiver drooped like a Dali painting. This was what fire did. I pictured every one of my prized childhood possessions on fire. I vividly saw Beanie Babies aflame, Power Rangers dripping. It was too much to handle. The seed of fear was planted. The seminar continued with a pamphlet and a video demonstrating stop, drop, and roll.



The pamphlets were of little consolation, and as I watched the video of kids stopping, dropping, and rolling I felt increasingly helpless. I kept looking at that melted phone and shuddered at the thought of what fire could do to a person.



The other kids seemed completely aloof. I had just assumed up until the “Question and Answer” segment that everyone was as petrified of fire as I was. Then they began to ask questions about the “Cool” melted phone.
The phone was being described as cool? COOL? Leave it to my idiot peers to find this abhorrent exhibition “Cool”. It was as backwards and as inappropriate as calling a post-taxidermy animal cute.



All I knew was that the phone was horrifying. And then someone asked a question that opened the gateway to childhood-insomnia.




Can people melt too? What an idiotic question. For a second I began to feel better about the whole situation. I knew that people couldn’t melt. And then Fireman Jack replied “Yes, people can melt”.

Now, I’m sure he went on to describe in greater detail the metaphorical aspects of melting, but as soon as I heard the words “Yes, people can melt” I could no longer hear. I shut off all reasoning abilities and I glanced down at my pamphlet. No longer was it a picture of children stopping, dropping and rolling. No, it was children melting.



Fireman Jack ended his seminar on mortifying children and I went home to my family with good, old fashioned American terror deeply instilled in my young mind.

As a side note, notice the backpack I was given in preschool. My mother thought that an 80’s vinyl, black and white checkered purse with reflector clasps and a red strap would make a cute messenger bag. I still have it.



The time finally came for me to go to sleep that night. I couldn’t possibly verbalize my fear. After my mother had sprayed the room with my breath I still felt a binding fear. I stopped my mom and tried to explain what I was so afraid of. My mother sat down and talked to me about fire safety and how I had nothing to worry about. My reaction to everything she said was something like

                                          “BUT PEOPLE DIE IN FIRES!”.



And my mother kissed me goodnight. After about a week me arguing that I would never be safe again because “People die in fires”, my mom talked me through what would happen if there was a fire. We discussed fire safety and she continued to assure me that everything would be fine.





After a few more nights, my obsessive fear with fire had not gotten any better. As my mother repeated every ounce of conversation we had uttered throughout the week I still felt scared. I wondered how long my fear would last, and as my mom finished her monologue about how everything was going to be fine I paused. I really hadn’t been paying attention and before I knew it I had said the wrong thing.




And that was it. My mother had had enough, and she snapped. She began to scream:


“Yes, you can die in a fire. You know what else? You can die by drowning too, but you still go swimming, don’t you??”



And then, in another instant she smiled at me and said “You’ll be fine, Sweet Dreams.”



And she left the room. I sat in a stunned silence for a few minutes and began to think of everything you could possibly die from. Just as I felt the physical manifestation of fear riding in my chest I made a choice not to be afraid. Sure, I could die in a fire- but until I was choking on smoke I wasn’t going to let fear consume me. I knew what to do in case of a fire. Hell, I was probably more well equipped than anyone my age. I closed my eyes and went to sleep. And my mom was right. I made it through childhood without dying in a fire.