Ready, Set, Dough OR Bringing up baby

Just when I think I have been in enough awkward situations for one lifetime, life goes and puts me into a totally new, totally awkward situation.

It wasn’t even the most awkward thing that has ever happened to me. It probably wasn’t any more awkward than, say, meeting your girlfriend’s parents or sharing a seat on the city bus with someone wearing a tin foil hat who talks to you about his attempts to contact “The Mothership.” It was just totally new genre of awkwardness. Awkwardness has genres, you know, like movies.

I’m in training for my job as a social worker, and many social workers are touchy feely people who like to talk about feelings. They also love anything new age or organic. Anyway, at the beginning of class our instructor gave my classmates and I little containers of Play Doh and asked us each to make a “baby.” Then we had to name it. Then we had to mingle with each other and tell each other about our “babies.”

If someone had walked by and asked, “What are you guys doing in there?” we would’ve had to reply, “Making babies.”

I can’t even remember the point of the activity. All I remember was that some people will overacheive at everything they do. These people were super proud of their Play Doh babies and had obviously put a lot of work into them. Some were talking about their babies like they were real. One woman actually said to me, “Look at my clay baby! His name is Rupert. Isn’t he cute?” What do you say to that? “Yeah, he looks like you”? It was so surreal.

Having to look at someone’s Play Doh baby and fake compliment it was a lot like looking at someone’s real baby and have to fake compliment it. Awkward.

The fact of the matter is that I’ve seen some weird looking babies in my day. But don’t worry, if you have a weird looking baby, you won’t know it because you have parent eyes. Everyone thinks their baby is the cutest. Evolution made it happen that way so that people are motivated to protect their young. If parents were capable of realizing their baby was ugly, they may be less apt to protect them from predators.

Even animals that are ugly in their adult form can be cute when they are babies. A person’s best chance at being “cute” is when they are a baby, so an ugly baby is kind of out of luck.

I’ve seen weird looking kids with OK looking parents and I’m not sure how it happens. I guess the baby got all of the weirdest parts from each parent.

But don’t worry. If you want to show me your baby I won’t lie to you. If it’s a cute baby I will say, “What a cute baby!” If it’s an ugly baby I will say, “What a… baby.”

Or maybe I won’t say anything.


PS - Speaking of babies, my sister is having her baby boy next month and she and her husband aren't coming up with any good names. Please feel free to leave a name suggestion in a comment.

You'll never take me alive! OR Do not go gentle into that good night

I’ve talked about growing up one million times before, but my youth is not going quietly. This means I am getting older, but not without a fight. They’re not taking Young Jacob alive!

Who are “they”? I’ll tell you.

This past Wednesday I sat in my “grown-up” office and worked while all of my siblings and friends went to Warped Tour, which, for the uninitiated, is a giant all-day outdoor summer music festival that features, like, 100 bands. At least! And you can generally meet your favorite bands, get them to sign your shirt and give them high fives.

It’s not that important what Warped Tour is, really. The important thing is I missed it! All because I have stupid adult responsibilities like work. Booooooooooo!

So I tried to get some sympathy from my friends. “Isn’t it a tragedy?” I complained. “Isn’t it frightfully unjust?” I cried. “Why me?” I wailed.

Anyone younger than me was very sympathetic. “I’m so sorry!” they would say.

But anyone older than me had no sympathy for me. Zero. “You just need to grow up,” they said. “You’re being immature,” they sneered. “Aren’t you too old for that?” they asked reproachfully.

Basically what they were saying was “Just be old like us. Stop having fun, because that is NOT what being old is about. ‘No Fun Whatsoever’ is what being old is about.”

Old people are a lot like zombies because zombies are infected and want to infect everyone else. As soon as a zombie bites you, you die and then come back as a zombie. That is common knowledge.

Real life zombies have a real life virus. They just wander around, not thinking much. Their two main goals are:

1. bite people
2. eat brains

They do other zombie deeds, but usually whatever they do can be classified into one of these two categories.

Old people zombies don’t have a virus or anything, but they do have spouses, jobs, kids, bills and wrinkles, and for whatever reason that makes them also wander around, not thinking very much. They also have two main goals, which are as follows:

1. tell younger people to “grow up”
2. be cranky

I’m not entirely sure why this is, but I think it all boils down to “misery loves company.” But they aren’t going to pass their broken dreams on to me.

In college we had a copy of The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks in our bathroom for educational bathroom reading, so I know a thing or two about surviving a zombie attack. You’re supposed to get to the second story of a building and destroy the stairs so the zombies can’t reach you. And then you take a rifle and shoot them all in the head. Piece of cake.

That’s all pretty straightforward, but I’m not sure how it applies in the aforementioned metaphorical sense of warding off fun-sucking old people zombies. I need to figure it out quick because – as recent events have shown – they’re coming for me!

This is not to say that every person who is older than me automatically qualifies as a “zombie.” I know a few adults who still seem to be having fun and are not ridiculously jaded or hostile. The question then is, “How do they do it?”

I don’t know, but when I find out I will be sure to tell you.

Brennan vs. my sandwich OR Sandwiches aren't just for eating anymore

We were having sandwiches for lunch the other day. I had taken a few bites and was as happy as a man can be. Until my brother Brennan started trying to punch my sandwich.

That’s right. He starts punching my sandwich like he is Rocky Balboa and my cold cut combo is Apollo Creed.

My initial response to this was: “What the heck is wrong with you?”

“No, man,” he said calmly. “It’s The Sandwich Punch Game.”

“OH! ‘The Sandwich Punching Game.’ I must have forgotten. You’re adopted. Or I am. One way or another I refuse to admit that we share genes.”

“It’s ‘The Sandwich Punch Game,’ and seriously, there are rules. And a website. You should know about this type of stuff.”

“You’re right. Lunch violence is what’s hot right now, isn’t it? I really ought to keep up.”

Brennan is unemployed and is trying to make the best of our nation’s current economic crisis by using his free time to conduct research on how many ridiculous things can be found on the internet. His recent “discoveries” include a headbanging cockatiel, Taylor Swift rapping and, of course, a game about punching sandwiches.


But it’s all true. He showed me the sandwich punching site and, sure enough, there is a ridiculously detailed and complete set of rules, official Sandwich Punch Game seal and a Sandwich Punching Hall of Fame. There’s even a Power Point presentation on how sandwich punching should be done, a "Sandwich Punching for Dummies", if you will.

It boils down to this: once you bite into a sandwich it becomes “punchable,” and as soon as you set it down you have to cover it with something (napkin, bottle cap) or else people can punch it. There are a bunch of other stipulations and clauses (they even have a provision for “Acts of God”) but that is basically the gist of it.

When Brennan introduced “The Sandwich Punch Game” into our family it was freaking havoc. It started riots instantly and sandwiches weren’t the only things getting punched. Suddenly, my brother Quinn (age 9) was yelling, “Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom! Trevor punched my sandwich!”

And my other brother, Trevor (age 12), was yelling back, “He took a bite and left it uncovered. What was I supposed to do? I had to punch it. You would have done the same thing if you were in my position.”

While Trevor was complaining my mom punched his sandwich.

I think it would be awesome to let Brennan loose at a huge picnic or a Subway restaurant just to watch him lay waste to everyone’s sandwiches. That is the funniest thing I can imagine.

I picture him running through some park like a sandwich punching warrior, leaving a trail of eviscerated sandwiches in his wake and yelling, “Ha ha! SPG, sucka! You better cover that sandwich next time! SPG, baby!”

But he tells me that you can’t punch a person’s sandwich who is not aware of The Sandwich Punch Game rules. Apparently there is also a Sandwich Punching Code of Ethics, too.

That's good, because there is nothing worse than an unethical sandwich puncher.

Shopping for meat? OR Shopping cart sanitation is no laughing matter

I went grocery shopping earlier and had some serious problems with my shopping cart. In my mind I started relating my crappy cart to crappy relationships, which I’m sure a lot of shoppers do.

Relationships and grocery carts. It makes total sense.

I got a cart (or “buggy,” for those of you from the south) and started loading it up with groceries. For whatever reason, after I had loaded it with a bunch of groceries it started making a horrible thumping noise that got progressively louder. Upon closer inspection I realized that one of the wheels was all mangled and that it would never roll properly again. I would either have to take it back and get a different cart or limp noisily along with the one I had.

The trouble was I had already loaded a bunch of groceries into my current cart, and if I wanted another cart I’d have to go all the way back to the front of the store and find a better one. And then I would have to unload all of my stuff from the old cart and put it into the new one.

So I clattered loudly down the grocery aisles. People gave me annoyed and amused looks as I banged and rattled past. I just didn’t have the mental energy to search for a better cart, unload all my groceries and load them back into a new cart.

Before all of this happened, I had read a scientific shopping cart study (because I have nothing better to do) and apparently two-thirds of shopping carts are contaminated with fecal bacteria (that’s poop) and have more bacteria than the average public restroom. Fantastic.


Basically a good shopping cart is hard to find, and the obvious relationship comparison is a good girlfriend or boyfriend is also very hard to find.

So you grab what you can. Sometimes you just plod along with somebody, but you’re not really feeling it and you half wish they would give you an excuse to break up with them, like cheat on you or call your mom an awful name or something. Maybe he/she will break up with me, you think. What a relief that would be.

But you stick it out because you’ve already put a bunch of effort into it and you don’t feel like starting all over again and putting a bunch more effort into something else. So you squeak and grind along. Or maybe I’m the only one that has done that.

Love and grocery stores often go together. In his younger days, my brother Brennan was at the grocery store in the meat department when he saw quite possibly the hottest girl he had ever laid eyes on at that point in his life. Since he’s not one to let an opportunity pass, Brennan quickly tried to strike up a conversation with her, but all he could come up with was, “Are you shopping for meat?” which is pretty smooth.


Sometimes dating feels exactly like shopping for meat. You’ve got to look at something and decide if it’s worth investing in and ask yourself a bunch of questions. Is it expired? How fatty is it? Can I afford it? Will I get diseases from it if I don’t handle it properly? And when people are looking at you they are asking themselves the very same questions.

Incidentally, Brennan became a vegetarian a few years after the “shopping for meat” incident, and I can’t say I blame him.

The Summer of '09 OR My new office is quite possibly a grave for my younger self and all of his accompanying good times

I just started my first “real job” outside of college. On my first day I was cool and collected. I was keeping it all together until the secretary showed me to my office.

I have an office!

I looked around the office at my desk, my computer, my stapler, and promptly began to freak out because of what it all symbolized.

This is it, I thought. This office is the mausoleum where my young self has come to die. The good times are officially over.

I hope all that is not true, but I fear it is. I’m gonna spend the Summer of 2009 working like a dog.

I thought back to the Summer of 2007, arguably one of the best summers I have ever had. That summer I lived in Idaho with my two friends Shane and Kyle and we didn’t have a care in the world, or at least I didn’t.

We watched all five seasons of Alias. Jennifer Garner in a bunch of weird costumes = AWESOME SUMMER.

We also went hiking and to tons of shows. We played a grip of Mario Kart and ate approximately one metric ton of Oreos. We did everything.

The crowning event happened at the end of the summer. We were all sitting in our living room at one in the morning. Somebody decided that we should go camping, I don’t remember who anymore. I was hesitant at first, but I knew that Kyle was getting married in a week and I knew our time to do fun things was limited so I agreed.

We knew it was too late to go to a real campsite, so we loaded our “camping gear” into somebody’s car and drove all over town looking for a park to sleep in. Unfortunately, the sprinklers were on in every single park we went to, making them soggy, unsuitable camping grounds. Somebody spotted a little church with a perfectly dry, usable lawn and we settled down there for the night.

About one minute before 6 a.m., while we were all sleeping peacefully, the sprinklers came on. There was much shouting and much swearing and the three of us were up and trying to escape. Kyle and Shane were in blankets and easily jumped up and found refuge on the sidewalk.

I, on the other hand, was zipped up in a sleeping bag. I was so frantic and half asleep that I pretty much exploded out of the sleeping bag like some alien parasite bursting out of its human host, ripping out the zipper and losing the basketball shorts I had been sleeping in in the process. I quickly picked up what was left of my sleeping bag and shorts and tried to run off the lawn in my underwear, only the grass was super wet and I slipped and fell flat on my face and got covered in grass.

Kyle and Shane were doubled over and laughing hysterically, and once I was safely off the grass I started laughing too. We laughed the whole way home.

There are a million stories like that, but now all of my friends are married and live in different states and I've just started out on a burn-your-life-out career path. I'm still clinging for dear life to the hope that I still have a few more good times coming, though.

Anyone feel like camping? I have better basketball shorts now and I know a couple of real campsites.