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68

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#68. I once had the perfect phone number.

Okay, you’re gonna think I’m a schmuck for this one. No, really, even more than you already do. I know, I know, it doesn’t seem possible. Well, keep reading — you’ll see.

So, I always have a hard time remembering phone numbers and PIN numbers and things like that. (And names, and birthdays, and just about everything else that I can’t fit in writing on the tag on my underwear or the palm of my hand. It’s an interesting life; it really is.)

Anyway, to combat this debilitating lack of remembery, I have to try to find relationships or mnemonics that I can use to help me keep those numbers in my head. This is a constant battle I fight, but I’m getting better at it. I still remember an old friend’s extension where we worked eleven years ago, for instance. But that was an easy one — his number was x6976. Or ’69’ and ’76’. A sexual position and America’s birthday. So I came up with ‘Sexual Revolution’ to help me remember, and I haven’t forgotten it since. I probably never will. I couldn’t even tell you what my friend’s friggin’ name is at this point, but I can still call up the desk where he worked a decade ago. This, for me, is a major accomplishment. Useless, perhaps, but major. Right up there with stuffing three tennis balls in my mouth at once.

So, while I was living in Pittsburgh — that same eleven years ago, as a matter of fact — I got a phone number, purely by accident, that spelled out a bad joke. And not by converting the numbers to letters, either. I mean, just as numbers. It wasn’t a very good joke, of course, but it was a hell of a handy way to remember my phone number. Here’s the joke:

What’s a sixty-eight with two people?

That’s when the guy says to the girl, ‘Hey, let’s do sixty-nine, except I’ll owe you one.‘

Har de friggin’ har, right? Not exactly Richard Pryor, is it? Hell, it’s barely Carrot Top. But, here it is again, with significant highlighting:

What’s a sixty-eight with two people?

That’s when the guy says to the girl, ‘Hey, let’s do sixty-nine, except I’ll owe you one.‘

See? Sixty-eight, two, sixty-nine, owe (oh), one. 682-6901. How fucking cool is that? Sure, people (like, oh, my mother) looked at me a little funny when I told them the whole story. But not one soul ever forgot my phone number. I’m still tryin’ to get it for my cell phone, so I can have it forever and ever. So far, no luck. Though I do have a cell number that spells out something to do with beer when you convert the numbers to letters. So it’s not all bad. My alky friends don’t forget the number, at least. And for now, it’ll have to do. Until I can wrangle Sprint into changing it to my old number. Why oh why did I ever give it away?!

67

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#67. The first wedding I ever attended was my own.

This was actually quite an accomplishment, apparently. My wife had been to several weddings before ours, and most of my friends had attended a few, too. I suppose it was a combination of not really keeping up with high school chums, and then moving away after college, when most graduates stayed close to campus. (Of course, when you consider that the college was in Kentucky, who do you think made the better choice, hmmm?) So I was poor and far away during the first few years after graduating — a combination that really wasn’t conducive to attending a lot of weddings. Or any, for that matter.

And actually, I didn’t do a great job of keeping up with college chums, either. I think I’ve attended exactly one wedding where an old classmate was getting hitched. Ditto for high school, and come to think of it, grad school, too. I think I’ve only been to three weddings (not counting my own) where I was invited because I was ‘somebody’. As opposed to ‘spouse of somebody’. Sure, I’ve been interested in some of the weddings my wife’s dragged me to — we’ve got a lot of mutual friends, for whom I wish much happiness — but would I have been invited if I weren’t married to her? Um, no. I wouldn’t even be asked to valet park the cars.

And that’s okay. I once knew a guy who decided that he was successful because he had been asked to be in more weddings than he’d had groomsmen at his own. (I didn’t argue with him that while that might make him ‘popular‘, it didn’t really make him ‘successful‘. Chevy Chevettes were popular cars back in the day, but who would want to be a Chevette?) But I don’t prescribe to his theory; in my book, that bear won’t shit. (Or ‘that dog won’t hunt’. But everybody says that. Why not be a little different, eh?)

Anyway, I do wish that I did a better job of keeping up with certain friends I’ve had. I even wonder where a couple of them are, and how they’re doing. But it’s my wife who’s the social one of the couple. Oh, I schedule a lot of the things with current friends, and try to entertain, and generally get along pretty well with most people. But she’s the ‘tracker’. Once we move, or our friends move, I have a hard time breaking out of my day-to-day workaday maelstrom to check up on them. Which is a bit sad sometimes.

For instance, I had five groomsmen at my wedding — one friend from high school, one from college, and three from my current life-at-the-time. I’m pretty sure that I know where four of them are living now, citywise, but I’ve only spoken to one in the past year or more. And he called me, I have to admit. I’ve traded emails with three of the others, but not in the last couple of months, at least. And the fifth? I have no idea where he is, or what he’s doing. I should really find out somehow.

So, maybe it’s no surprise after all that my wedding was my first. I guess I’m sort of a loner sometimes. And that’s cool — I did get married, so I’m not really alone. And I do have some pretty good friends right now. (Who, yes, I’ll probably lose touch with eventually. You don’t have to remind me, jackass.) Plus, if I had all those crazy guys I used to know coming by for the weekend, or to party, I’d probably get in trouble with the missus. Some of those guys sure knew how to party. On the other hand, two of them have kids now, and last I heard, a third was well on his way. So maybe they’ve settled down. But now if I asked them over or visited, I’d have to have contact with children. Which I’ve sworn off, insofar as it’s possible to control that sort of thing. I suppose I don’t have to tell you that I don’t get invited to many baby showers, either.

And even with my late start, I feel like I’ve seen my share of weddings now. We had a couple years there when our bachelor and bachelorette friends were dropping like flies. ‘I do‘, ‘I do‘, ‘I do‘ — is there a frickin’ echo in here? So we were constantly traipsing this way and that, getting all dolled up and hearing that damned ‘Electric Slide‘ travesty of a fuckin’ song.

(Who did that to weddings, anyway? Who decided that and the goddamned ‘Hokey Pokey‘ were gonna be ‘the shit’ at every wedding reception in the country? Can you think of anything cheesier, goofier, or less appropriate for a solemn confirmation of two people’s love than Aunt Maggie flappin’ her arms and slidin’ around on the floor like a drunken idiot? And don’t even get me started on the ‘Macarena‘. Damned DJs, anyway.)

So, I think I’ve had enough. And I thought we had just about all of our friends married off by now. (Some of ’em twice!) But no. My wife’s dredged up an old high school friend who’s getting married later this month. So it’s off to New York for some nuptials, Manhattan-style. And for me, a roomful of strangers. Eh. Whatever. As long as there’s an open bar. For you see, while I’m ambivalent about how many weddings I go to, I can never be invited to too many receptions. That’s where the fun is. Now if they’d just stop playing that damned group-dancing crap…

66

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#66. I make a mean tuna casserole.

And pretty much nothing else. I’m really not a very good cook, for a couple of reasons.

First, I’m not into all this measuring bullshit. If I wanted to worry about what a cup looks like, versus a tablespoon, as opposed to a ‘splash’, I’d have paid attention in Home Economics class, okay? I like to ‘wing it’ when I’m cooking. And if you know anything about the culinary arts, you know that ‘winging it’ when you have no idea what the hell you’re doing works just about as well as it does when you’re cutting someone’s hair. Or defusing a bomb, or transplanting organs. Not pretty.

Secondly, I have a policy about food. I’m a busy, on-the-go, important sort of dude. (Okay, fine, so I just have a teensy short attention span. Eight of one, half dozen of the other, okay?) So a long time ago, I made the following rule concerning my meals:

If I’m going to fix something myself, it cannot take longer to prepare than it does to eat. And if it does, it had better be goddamned good.

I should mention at this point that I’m also a very fast eater. Blink, and that potato is gone. Look away, and the veggies are history. Bend over to get your napkin, and my whole damned steak is just a beefy memory. I’m just that fast. (With the eating, folks, the eating. Get your minds out of the gutter.)

So, given my propensity to cook inedible crap, and the giddying number of restaurants close by that are more than happy to deliver yummy food to my door, I very rarely cook for myself. The tuna casserole is an exception, of course, because it’s so damned good. And easy. It does take a while to make, I’ll admit, but it’s worth it. Here, I’m in a giving mood. I’ll let you in on the secret of my success.

Charlie’s Mean Tuna Casserole (aka Death By Cheese)

First, throw a bunch — I don’t know how much, dammit, just a bunch — of water in a pot, and fire that bitch up on the stovetop. On high, of course. We don’t have time to fuck around, here.

Next, open a box of Deluxe Kraft macaroni and cheese. Take the sauce packet out and pour the macaroni into the water. Don’t wait for that shit to boil, or heat, or whatever. The mac’s gonna sit in the box, or in the pan, until things get going. You stick it in the pan, and you just might shave a few seconds off your cooking time. Do it.

While that’s heating, prepare whatever microwave veggies that you’re going to have with your casserole. Nuke-baked potatoes, canned corn, asparagus, whatever. Just get it in a bowl or whatever, and frazzle that shit while the noodles are going. Don’t let the time go to waste.

Once the noodle water starts boiling, stir the pot occasionally. Turn the heat down, just a bit, if it starts foaming over the top. (After years of practice, you’ll instinctively find just the right amount of water to cook the macaroni without bubbling over, even with the heat cranked up to ’11’ the whole time. It’s an art form, really.) Between stirs, knead the cheese packet that came in the mac ‘n’ cheese box to soften it up. Oh, and open a can of tuna, and squish the lid into the fish so you can drain it over the sink. Throw the lid, the Kraft box, and the veggie can (if applicable) into the trash, and put away the can opener. That’s less damned time you’ll have to spend cleaning up later.

Grab a noodle from the pot of boiling water. (With a spoon, dildo. Geez!) Let it cool, and taste it. If it doesn’t crunch between your teeth, you’re good. Otherwise, repeat this step until al dente becomes el softe. Get out a casserole dish and a strainer.

Dump the macaroni into the strainer, preferably over the sink. (Or over the cat, if you’re into that sick sadistic shit.) Wiggle the noodles around vigorously. (The noodles in the pan, ya perv. Focus!) Don’t lose any noodles into the sink. It takes a very steady hand! Dump them back into the now-dry pan. Scoop the tuna on top, and squeeze every ever-lovin’ last drop of cheddary goodness out of the softened packet of cheese-like substance. Mix noodles, fish, and cheese goo thoroughly.

You’ll now have a yellow, sticky mess. (Well, what did you expect, after wiggling your noodles around so vigorously?) Transfer every bit of it — don’t miss a single macaroni! — to the casserole dish. Spread it smooth, and apply generous (read: heaping) amounts of grated cheese to the top. (Personally, I use the pre-grated shit in refrigerated packets, ’cause I don’t have time to go through that nonsense myself.) Replace the veggies with the casserole in the microwave, and nuke on high for… hell, I don’t know. I always punch in an hour or two, and stop the thing when I’m done spooning the veggies onto the plates. How the hell should I know how long that takes?

Anyway, that’s about it. Grab the pan from the microwave, and you’re ready to enjoy! The key is to make sure you’re always doing something throughout the entire process, so it doesn’t feel like you’re cooking. And, of course, to use enough cheese to choke a camel, so the end result is worth the effort. In any case, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Cooking With Charlie. Tune in next time, when I show you how the leftover refrigerated casserole can make a tasty cold snack the next day. Or an industrial adhesive! Fun with food, with your host, Salmonella Charlie! Do join us, won’t you?

65

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#65. I once peed on the exact geographical center of the state of Kentucky.

Okay, I should probably explain a few of the words in that sentence, because I’m using some of them in ways that you might not be used to.

For instance, when I say ‘I‘, what I really mean is ‘several of us‘. It was a group thing, and there were maybe three or four of us guys involved. We didn’t go at exactly the same time, though. That’s crazy talk. We each took our turn, while the others stood guard. We watched Ghostbusters, after all. You can’t risk crossing the streams.

Also, when I say ‘peed‘, I mean really peed. There was alcohol involved, and walking, and I really, really, really had to go. And so I went, and went, and went. I must’ve dropped three pounds of recycled beer on that spot. I can still remember the ‘Ahhhhhh‘ that followed. Priceless.

Oh, and when I say ‘exact geographical center‘, I mean that, too. Our college campus was built on the officially-surveyed precise center of the state, and there was a small marker, maybe two inches square, to mark the exact location. Now, I’m not gonna sit here and claim that every single drop coming out of me landed on the marker. But I got pretty good coverage, and I pissed more on it than I pissed around it. Before you allow for splashage, at least.

Further, when I say ‘once‘, what I really mean is ‘several dozen times‘. Like I said, it was right on campus, and on the way from the boys’ dorms to the girls’ dorms. There were a lot of moonless or cloudy nights when several of us guys, beery and bleary, made the stumble in one direction or the other. And when you gotta go, you gotta go. Besides, pissing on an official marker of anything could never get old. That’s pure entertainment, in any language.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. When I say ‘state‘, what I’m really saying is ‘flea-ridden hellbag‘. Though the locals would prefer I meant ‘Commonwealth‘, instead. That is all. Anything left that you don’t understand is now officially your own damned problem.

64

Charlie’s “100 Things Posts About Me”

#64. I do not have children, and cannot fathom ever, ever wanting that to change.

Now, this isn’t meant as a knock on those of you with children. I respect what you’re doing out there, really. And thank goodness somebody is willing to put up with all the crap that caring for kids entails, or we wouldn’t have any adults, now, would we? And better you than me, if you’re one of those parent types of people. Believe me, you’re doing a much better job than I’d be able to muster. One thousand percent, at least.

You see, I’m all about simplicity in life. Comfort’s good, too, as is convenience. I don’t think of myself as selfish, because, frankly — I don’t have to. My wife is fun, easygoing, and knows how to have a good time. Neither of us likes to make the other’s life difficult, or make convoluted plans, or start (or deal with) ‘drama‘ in any of its various forms. We’re simple city folk, just trying to get by, enjoy our time together, and relax with a beer every now and then. You know, the ‘American Dream‘ and all that.

So why, I ask myself, would I want, under any circumstances, to bring a small, needy person with no skills and a million demands into the equation? Or, God forbid, two or three of the little critters? What exactly would that get me, besides poorer, snippier (if that’s possible), and gray of hair? And frankly, I don’t have a good answer for that question. Neither have the many friends and relatives who’ve tried to answer it for me. Unsolicitedly, I might add. Harumph.

Look, I don’t want to appear to be uncooperative or insensitive to others. Certainly, I like to help friends with their problems. I’m a good listener. I like to think I’m generous, and helpful, and generally kind. (Unless you’re a pushy telemarketer, or some asshole who cuts me off on the highway. In that case, yours is a set of parents who shouldn’t have had kids. Suck on that, pork chop!) But there are a few differences between these gestures of good will and the slavery into which parents find themselves manacled.

For one thing, my friends (generally) know how to feed themselves. What’s more, they know exactly where to make their ‘tinkles’ and ‘number two’, and (again, generally) always perform the procedures involved correctly. And neatly. And with no need of assistance from anyone, most especially me. Look, I like my friends. Some of them — the really close ones, the ones I go way back with — I suppose I could say I love. But if they hit the point where they both need diapers and can’t change them, and I’m the only one available? Well, I’m gonna become unavailable before you can say ‘Depends‘ three times fast. No, dude, it doesn’t depend — you soil ’em, you boil ’em. I’m not coming anywhere near you without a hazmat suit and a gas mask full of Lysol. You get yourself freshened up, and we’ll talk, but until then, just count me out.

Ditto that for feeding these people. Mind you, I’m not above making with the ‘choo-choo train‘ and ‘here comes the airplane‘ talk and shoving food in someone’s mouth. But if that’s what I’m doing, it had better be a girl, she’d better be hot, and I’d damned well better be on my way to getting laid. So, at this point in my life, it had best be my wife. And she doesn’t ask for the old ‘choo-choo‘ routine very often, let me tell you. (Though she is a bit more amenable to having the airplane fly into the ol’ hangar, but that’s probably a story for another day.) Anyway, under no circumstances am I going to be stuffing creamed corn or applesauce into anyone’s gob for laughs, so why set myself up for that with some little ragamuffin who’s as likely to puke it back up on me as shit it into Mr. Pampers? Again, what’s in it for me?

Okay, perhaps that’s a little harsh. But then again, no, it isn’t. See, right now it can be all about me, and my wife, and sometimes, the dog. Because that’s all I really have to worry about on a day-to-day basis. My friends are great, but they do a dandy job of washing themselves, and dressing themselves, and behaving themselves in public, all on their own. Okay, so some of them do a dandier job than others, I’ll admit. And some have significant others to help keep them in line, as I do. But still, I don’t see any of them running around naked on their lawn, or showing up at work with their pants on their head, or yelling and screaming like tiny banshees as soon as they get in their damned seat on the plane. And those are not behaviors that I personally want to be responsible for discouraging in others. Really, it’s all I can do some days not to strip down and frolic naked in the backyard myself.

In the end, I take a very logical stance when looking at this question. That’s just who I am, and it’s who I’d still be if some little hellion accidentally ended up in my life. Sure, I might be tender and weepy for a while — oh, I’d damned well be weepy — but eventually, I’d get back to the cold, calculating levelheadedness that got me this far in life. Thirty-plus years of nature and nurture aren’t going to go away, you see. And so, I can’t say that I’d make a very patient father, or a very understanding father, and I don’t think I’d enjoy the process all that much.

Which, probably not coincidentally, is a bit the way my father seems, when I look back at my early years. Oh, he tried — bless his heart, he made one hell of an effort — but he’s also pretty logical, and tends to frown upon activities that don’t make any damned sense whatsoever. Like most of what I did for the first twenty years or so of my life, and still occasionally do today. He did his best, and we have a pretty good relationship, I think. He loves me, and I love him, and we can talk about sports, and sometimes work. But I’m not sure we really know each other — we’re just not the kind of person who are going to roll up our sleeves and get in there and feel a lot of things, when we really don’t have to.

It’s different with my wife, of course, and that’s the card a lot of the yea-sayers play when talking about children. ‘It’s like a little version of your wife.‘ ‘If you love your wife, you’ll love your kids, probably even more.‘ ‘Oh, just do it — I’ve got kids, and misery loves company, dammit.‘ (Okay, maybe they don’t say that last one. But I can see it in their eyes. Trust me.)

Anyway, I don’t buy it. Look, all those things I said I wouldn’t do for my friends? I’d do them for my wife in a heartbeat. All those things, and many, many shuddery keep-you-awake-at-night-just-thinking-about-them more. And I think she’d do the same for me, unless I’d pissed her off that day, maybe. But our relationship is different. We chose each other. We have compatible personalities, similar interests, and complimentary talents. We like many of the same shows, and bands, and toppings on our pizza. A kid would be a crapshoot! There’s a very good chance the thing would be petulant, or high-maintenance, or whiny. The damned thing might even develop a taste for anchovies, for crying out loud! We could never order pizza again!

So I say, ‘no way.’ Why ruin a good thing when our best years are ahead of us? We’ve got a house, and a few car payments left. Certainly, we don’t have the money to be supporting some little layabout mooch. And when we do, why throw it into school supplies and Garanimals and Fisher-Price toys? We can travel, and see the world, and relax on a beach, and shush down a mountain somewhere. (As opposed to shushing some little brat who doesn’t want to eat his strained peas.) I just don’t see the advantage.

Sure, I hear about how ‘rewarding‘ and ‘magical‘ having a child is, but really — when you’ve cleaned one pile of barf off the floor, haven’t you more or less cleaned them all? I think our dog keeps us plenty on our toes in that department as it is, thank you very much. She’s just enough of a handful for us to manage, and even then, we need the odd evening away for sanity’s sake. Which is another huge difference when you have a kid, of course. We can leave for a nice dinner and leave the dog at home with a scoop of peanut butter and a doggie door to the back yard. Try that with a kid, and they’ll throw you in jail. Now you tell me, who’s having a rewarding time, eh?