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78

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#78. I always believed that people were essentially good. Until kindergarten, that is.

Now, you might interpret that in one of two ways. You might think that I believed that people were good until I attended kindergarten. Or, you might believe that I’m saying that people are essentially good, until they reach the age where they’re eligible for kindergarten themselves. And frankly, I think I mean a little bit of both. But I’ll let you be the judge; I’ll tell you the story of how my faith in humankind was first shaken. And you can decide what I mean, and just how right I am.

So, the story begins, of course, in my kindergarten class. I’d been in school maybe a month or two. I’m an only child, and hadn’t been around kids too much before attending school, so I was a tad shy. Where ‘a tad’ means ‘horrendously, morbidly, clinically’. So. I made friends pretty slowly, but I was getting along. I had a couple of kids that I would talk to every day, and hang out with at recess, and life was pretty cool overall.

That’s when the ‘Carrie Wallace Incident‘ occurred.

Like I mentioned, I was pretty shy. So, I didn’t start many conversations with people I didn’t know — and certainly not with a girl — but I secretly wished that people would talk to me and be my friend. Yes, folks, neurotic and conflicted at the age of five. I like to think I was an early bloomer, getting a really early start on teenage awkwardness. As opposed to just being a friggin’ jackass, which is the alternative explanation. But I digress.

Anyway, I was pretty jazzed when this Carrie girl came over to talk to me one day. Now, we’d probably spoken before. It wasn’t like we were complete strangers or anything. We’d been finger-painting and duck-duck-goose-ing together for a few weeks, after all. And nothing brings people closer together than running around in circles together like a gaggle of idiots at a joggers’ convention. But we hadn’t really talked too much. So, I thought it was pretty cool that she came over to chat, and — even better — to tell me about this way cool magical drawer over by the paint supplies. Here’s pretty much how it went:

Carrie: Hey there.

Me: Um, hi.

Carrie: Wanna know something cool?

Me: Sure, I guess so.

Carrie: Okay, come over here. Bring that pencil you’ve got there.

Me: Uh, okay.

Carrie: Okay, see this empty drawer?

Me: Yeah.

Carrie: Well, guess what? This is a magic drawer. It copies stuff.

Me: Copies?

Carrie: Yeah, it copies stuff. You should try it. Like, with that pencil.

Me: What do you mean?

Carrie: Well, you like that pencil, right?

Me: Yeah.

Carrie: Well, if you leave that pencil in this drawer overnight, then when you come in tomorrow, there’ll be two pencils in there. It’ll get copied.

Me: Really?

Carrie: Yeah, sure. Here, just put it in.

Me: Are you sure about this?

Carrie: Hey, have I ever lied to you before?

Me: Um, well, no. I guess not.

Carrie: Right. Just trust me.

Me: Well, okay. This is gonna be so cool.

Carrie: Uh, yeah. Cool. Remember, just don’t look in there until tomorrow morning, okay?

Me: Okay. Hey, and thanks! Cool beans!

So, of course, I go in there the next morning, and there aren’t two goddamned pencils in the drawer. You knew that already. There isn’t even one fuckin’ pencil in there. Bitch played me! Played me, at the tender young age of five. I ask you, how the fuck does someone get that devious at so young an age? (Or more to the point, how could I still be so naive after five years on the planet? I’m not sure which question is more mystifying, frankly.)

Needless to say, my new ‘friend’ was no friend at all, and I decided I didn’t want anything to do with her for a while. Which turned into, um, about twelve years, actually. (Yeah, you might get one over on me, but I will kick your ass in the grudge department, buddy. Step off!) Our social circles overlapped again around our junior year of high school, and I finally told her why I never liked her all those years. Not that I was sabotaging her the whole time or anything; nothing so crazy and over-reactionary as all that. I just didn’t speak to her for a dozen years because she tricked me out of a pencil. (See? Very normal.)

Anyway, we eventually made up, and even hung around a little bit. We were never ‘best buds’ or anything, but she ended up being all right. By that time, I knew loads of other people more deserving of my venom than her. She was just a precocious little fuck, I guess, back in kindergarten, who could spot an easy mark and con him out of his goods. Or maybe I just had that deer-in-headlights look back then, and I was lucky she taught me a lesson before I got taken for something really valuable. Like my spaceship-shaped eraser, or my Speed Racer lunchbox. So really, I guess she did me a favor. She opened my eyes to the cruel, manipulating realities of the world, and taught me that people are basically just mean little pricks, at least by the time they make it to school age. So thanks, Carrie; you probably helped me avoid lots of costly disasters over the years, with one simple lesson in human nature. All is forgiven, after all these years.

Of course, we’re not exactly square yet, there, honey. You still owe me the pencil I gave you, plus the one you promised. And interest, to be paid in wood shavings, or the current monetary equivalent. So pay up, and make it snappy. Bitch.

77

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#77. My nickname in high school and college was ‘Foz’.

Yes, that’s right. As in ‘Fozzy Bear’. Go ahead and laugh. I’ll just wait until you’re done.

Finished yet? No? Okay, I’ll wait.

All right, get it all out. Done? Still more? All right. Just tell me when.

Now? Well, shit. Look, man, I’ve got other things I’ve gotta do soon. Let’s wrap this up. Geez, people don’t lauch this hard when they accidentally say, ‘Sorry, Charlie‘ to me. (And that can just never get old. Right.)

Okay, all done? Good. Then we can get on with this.

So, I’m not sure exactly why I got the nickname in the first place. I like to think that it had something to do with either looking like a fuzzy muppet or my fractured sense of humor. But not both. (Though unfortunately, I think that’s really probably the case.)

In any event, I thought I might be done with the name after high school. After all, no one else in my class was foolish enough to venture to central Kentucky for college. (Or as the locals called it, ‘hagh’r edumacation‘.) But somehow or another, the name glommed onto me again, and stuck just as steadfastly as before. Steadfastlier, even, if that’s possible. (Or a word, which I’m pretty sure it isn’t.) I’d put money on several folks from college remembering me — if only vaguely — but only knowing me by ‘Foz’. My real name would probably get lots of blank stares. (And drooling, and possibly even a ‘dur-hur?‘ This was Kentucky, after all.)

But really, I didn’t mind. Maybe I was just mature for my age, and willing to let the others have their fun. Maybe I was just that good-natured, to take the ribbing in stride. And maybe — just maybe — I’d been called enough worse things at that point to make me think that comparisons to a puppet bear telling hackneyed jokes wasn’t such a bad thing, after all. In any case, I answered to ‘Foz’ for just about seven years.

But the name finally wore off. For one thing, I probably look too old to be Fozzy any more. Soon, I’ll look more like Gonzo than any of them, or maybe those old farts sitting up in the balcony. Humph. My old roommate from college still calls me ‘Foz’, but that’s about it. I really don’t see anyone from school these days (with my wife being a notable exception), so I don’t have a lot of people around calling me names any more (um, just ditto the last parenthetical remark here).

Still, I think the name was meant in fun. By most people, anyway. And it was kind of an interesting standard to try to live up to — could I really consistenently tell jokes that were that bad? I mean, the real Fozzy Bear had some doozies. Real groaners. Could I live up to the legend? Well… yeah. I think I did a pretty good job. Certainly, no one ever came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you need to be more corny if you’re gonna carry that name around, you know.‘ Nope. Not once. So I’d say I gave it a pretty good run. But I’ve hung up the ‘Wokka wokka‘s now — all you’ll find here on this site is subtle humor, witty commentary, and expertly applied sarcastic cynicism. Never a cheap joke, and no silliness whatsoever.

Right. And if you believe that, I’ve got a dolled-up karate-choppin’ pig I’d like you to meet. She’s a sweet little Piggy, but she tends to be a bit of a ham. ‘Wokka wokka wokka.‘ (Ah, just like old times.)

76

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#76. I chew my nails when I have to do something that I’d rather avoid.

Not the nicest habit in the world to have, I admit, but somewhere along the way, I got stuck with it. It started back in high school or before, and at the time, I didn’t realize why or when I was doing it. Apparently, it’s a nervous reaction of some kind, a way to distract myself from whatever unpleasant thing is going on around me.

But it’s not particularly sanitary, from what I understand. (Though I don’t quite get that. Look, I know where my fingers have been. And they’re usually — oh. Yeah. Just got it. Never mind.)

It’s also not very tasty. I’ve considered soaking my nails overnight in chocolate sauce, or a nice brown mustard, but that just seems like giving in to the madness. Plus, what compliments fingernail, anyway? Is it dessert, or an appetizer? What condiment goes best with it? And more importantly, what wine would you choose?

Anyway, I’ve tried several things to try and stop. (And while I was still living at home, my mother tried hundreds. Poor thing.) But none of them worked. The only thing that seems to help is to not do things that I wish I weren’t doing. During my honeymoon, for instance, it wasn’t a problem. I went the whole week without a moment of anxiety, or any activity that made me groan and frown and nibble.

But the rest of life isn’t all wine and roses and free booze. No, sir. There have been all sorts of meetings and projects and seminars and assignments and gatherings — sometimes even parties — that I desperately wish hadn’t been required of me. And so, during many of them, I distracted myself with a little bit of ‘manual’ nail trimming. And yes, in case you’re curious, I restricted it to my fingernails. I do have my limits.

But now I know what a lot of the triggers are, and I’m getting better at nipping the nibbling in the bud, as it were. It still crops up occasionally, but I’ve got it pretty much under control. Which is cool — it’s nice to have nails. I can scratch things with them, and peel stickers off of stuff, and now I can finally scratch at eyes when I’m in a catfight. Rrrraaawwwwrr!

So hopefully, my nail biting days are over. Until one of my favorite teams makes a playoff, that is, or plays a really close, really important game. I’ll probably revert to my old ways if that happens. That’s just too much pressure and anxiety and nervousness there. Nobody can resist a little nailbiting during… well, a nailbiter. C’mon, folks — they call it that for a reason. Who am I to rock the boat?

75

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#75. I obsess over certain tasks, and sometimes make things harder than they should be.

And if you need more convincing, I humbly submit Exhibit A. Namely, this freakin’ post and the other hundred that I wrote in this space. A normal blogger would just write the damned 100 things, and get on with their life. A sane person would quit altogether, and decide that there are better ways to spend several hours a day. Like staring out the window, or sitting on the couch, scratching various body parts with the remote control. But do I do these things? No. (Well, all right, I do the scratching thing sometimes. But only on parts that I don’t want to touch myself. So it’s okay.)

No, friends, I decide that ‘100 Things’ must instead become ‘100 Posts‘, and set out to write thousands upon thousands of words to make it happen. Words that precious few will read, and even fewer understand. (Mainly because many of the words aren’t used correctly, or spelled correctly, or put in meaningful sentences. They’re often lumped together, like aging strippers on a trash heap.) Did I have to write all these posts? No, certainly not. Did I want to write all these posts? Um, no. Not really. But I had the idea to write all these posts, and sometimes in my demented, scary little world, that’s all it takes. Please — please won’t you help me? Rescue me from this nightmare of mine.

Anyway, this little experiment isn’t the only monkey I’ve glommed onto my own back. Oh, no, the list goes on and on. Anything that’s worth dedicating just a few minutes of attention to is worth dedicating several dozen freakin’ hours of attention to, I always say. Or I will now, anyway, now that I’ve thought of it. Good thing I’m writing this shit down.

You see, when it gets right down to it, I’m a perfectionist. I know, I know — you can look around this site and find enough errors to disprove that statement. But hear me out. I do believe that anything worth doing is worth doing with minute, almost psychotic attention to minute detail, and with arbitrary rules and restrictions that make it nearly impossible to complete. In other words, I like a challenge.

And very few things in life are challenging enough when they’re first presented. Most situations need a little ‘spicing up’. And so, I up the ante. As in ‘100 Posts’. Or take crossword puzzles. I work a lot of crosswords. Most of them are in Games magazine, which labels each puzzle as ‘easy’, ‘medium’, or ‘hard’. Fine. So just work the damned puzzles, right? Wrong. Oh, sure, I can ‘just work’ the hard puzzles. Those are tough enough. But if I’m working on a ‘medium’ puzzle, I can only fill in entries that cross words that I’ve already entered. (Well, except the first word I write in, of course. I said I make things challenging, not downright metaphysical.) So I’ll sometimes sit and stare at one of these puzzles for an hour or more, solving pieces of it in my head until I decide which clue to answer first. The ‘seed word’ is very important, you see. If I box myself in a corner with a bunch of hard words, I can never finish the puzzle, no matter how many other clues I can answer. It’s gutwrenching, not to mention a real noodle-scratcher.

And, of course, completely, totally fucking unnecessary. Who cares how I work the goddamned puzzle? Well, me, apparently. There’s some part of my brain that gets its rocks off by setting them up and knocking them down, even if no one else will ever know of the triumph. (And I don’t want to hear any snickery comments about parts of my brain having rocks, all right? Be good, people.) Anyway, the bigger the challenge, the better this sadistic little dirtbag of a brain segment feels when it wins. So the setups get more and more complicated, and convoluted, and consternating. The success rate goes down the shitter, of course, but the successes mean more, in whatever unholy scoring system this brain bit is employing. It’s a hellish bit of self-worth accounting, and it plays out over and over and over without pause.

I’ve tried a couple of tricks to slow the tide of ridiculous challenges, with limited success.

(I know, I know — therapy’s probably the way to go. Let a professional get his ass in there and root around. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. But that’s just another challenge, now, isn’t it? If I can fix it myself, then that’s the ultimate win. And penultimate win, as well; since I’ll be cured, I won’t be going around torturing myself with this crazy crap any more. So how cool would that be?)

Anyway, one trick that’s helped a bit is to just not get overly interested in anything in the first place. You know, play it cool. Feign disinterest, and see if I fool myself. As long as I’m not jazzed about anything, I can’t make up ways to make it the bane of my existence. Instead, I can just happily tool around, living my life and doing my trademark half-ass job. What could be better?

So, this works for a while. But eventually, that little pest part of my brain wises up, and sees the game being played. And so, it plays along, too. Suddenly, I can immerse myself in anything, and turn it into an unhealthy obsession. Got a stack of change? I’ll make sure they’re all ‘heads up’. Same for that stack of dollar bills. Oh, and that rack of CDs over there? I’ll alphabetize those. You want ’em subgrouped by genre or date? I can do either, you know. Just let me at ’em.

Clearly, I’m not well. Not well at all. I’ll give you another example.

Recently, I spent a good two weeks obsessing over a video game on my PC. It’s a baseball game, maybe my favorite of all time. In this two-week period, I probably spent ten hours or more a day with this game. Probably more on some days. So how many games did I play in that time? None. That’s right. Zero. So what the hell was I doing? Well, the game lets you draft a team of players, and then trade with the computer-controlled teams if you like. You can control not only your major league roster, but also the minor leagues, as well, all the way down to rookie ball. So in the first week, I designed the team I wanted to build. I studied stats, and player skill values. I crunched numbers, compensated for age, and projected performances. I tinkered and compared and evaluated until I was blue in the face. And then purple, and green, and then an unhealthy shade of gray. And then I did it some more. Finally, I came up with the team that I wanted. The perfect team. Nirvana.

So then I spent the next week trying to draft and trade to put that team together. Never mind that I could have temporarily taken over all the teams and just made my team. No, that wasn’t the point. Somewhere along the way, as I sat exhausted and drooling over the keyboard, I forgot what the point was, but I knew that definitely wasn’t it. So I played by the rules I made up. Get the guys I wanted, without ‘cheating’. And then clean up the minor league rosters, so that everyone had a certain minimum set of stats. Why? Goddammit, I wish I knew. I could have been watching the Simpsons all that time, or learning how to make wicker baskets, or frolicking naked through my back yard. But no. I had a challenge — even if it was one pulled together from thin air — and I could not — would not — let it go until I beat that bastard.

Which I eventually did, thank the gods above. (And below; I suspect they had more to do with it, actually.) Two weeks and umpteen hours of my life that I’ll never have back, but that ‘dream team’ of mine is ready, and sitting on my hard drive. Just, um… waiting. See, I played a couple of games after that, but my heart really wasn’t in them. The hard part was over with. And I was sick to hell of looking at that damned game screen. So, I’ve lost interest. And now these posts are the cause du jour. And soon, I’ll be done with them, and another hellish nightmare of struggle will take their place. And so on, until the end of time.

Well, the end of me, anyway. Obviously. Unless I find a way to shake this stranglehold. Hey, it could happen. You never know. But until then, I’m stuck with my affliction. At least I’ve become aware of it in recent years. I don’t have the ammo to stop it yet, but I’m learning its habits and patterns. I’m building data, to better fight the big fight when the time finally comes. I just hope I can finally lick it, once and for all. It’s strong and cunning, but I’ve got the rest of the brain on my side, and one day we’re gonna take this fucker out. I’ve got no intentions of sitting around the nursing home, sorting other people’s money by serial number for fun. It’s either him or me, and I’m not goin’ out like this, folks. I’ve got too much naked frolicking to get done.

74

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#74. My college mascot was the ‘Praying Colonel’.

Seriously, who’s in charge of this shit? What the hell kind of a mascot is that? Who’s gonna be afraid of a ‘Praying Colonel’?

We were a Presbyterian school, which I guess had something to do with the choice, but it still sucked ass. Even if you’re gonna cop out and go the ‘God route’, it’s still possible to come up with something with more balls. Look at Wake Forest. The Demon Deacons. Pretty fuckin’ cool. Penn’s got the Quakers, which isn’t all that awe-inspiring, but at least they didn’t get cute about it. The school’s in Pennsylvania, the Quakers were in Pennsylvania — they just named the mascot and got it over with. I can respect that, I suppose.

But the ‘Praying Colonel’? Pfffftt. What’s your mental image of such a thing? Being that the school’s in Kentucky — and I had to hear that ‘South will rise again’ crap for four years while I was there — I think of a Confederate soldier huddled on his knees in a ditch, with hands clasped and muttering, ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God… please, please don’t make me go out there. Oh please, oh please, oh please…‘ But maybe that’s just me. I’ve been called bitter in the past.

It didn’t help, frankly, that the stupid mascot costume looked an awful lot like Colonel Sanders in uniform. I suppose that’s no coincidence, but was it really fucking necessary? Isn’t the name embarrassing enough, without giving people just one more reason to laugh and point?

And we never got picked in pools. (Well, okay, we were Division III, so there really weren’t any pools, because no one really gave a damn… but humor me here.) See, a lot of people pick teams to win based on which mascot would kick the other’s ass in a fight. Who the hell was our dude gonna beat? The Genuflecting Generals? No, he’s outranked. The Pissing-Their-Pants Privates? Maybe, but they don’t exist. So, no. How ahout the real teams we had to play? Eagles and Wildcats and Bears and Yeomen… well, okay, maybe he’d have a shot against the Yeomen. Anything can happen when you’ve got a musket in your hand, I suppose.

Actually, while I was there, the most successful team was womens’ hoops. So what was their name? The Lady Colonels. They didn’t pray, apparently, but it was important to let people know that these weren’t real military colonels; they were women. You see the problem here? Colonel’s just a rank; men can have it, women can have it, horses can probably have it if they suck their chests in and can shoot straight enough. There’s no need for the ‘Lady Colonels’. But it was just that kind of backwards-ass place, and that’s what they got. Colonel Sanders in drag. Fucking morons.