Relive and Relieve 2

Again, I return to reliving some of the more stressful moments of my life here in this blog in the hopes I can return to a more normal-functioning lifestyle. With a child on the way, I'm confronted with new concerns about how I will protect and provide for my growing family. Luckily I've rarely found myself or loved-ones in harm's way. But I always thought I would be able to act bravely and calmly in the face of adversity. That belief would be tested in one particular instance about a year ago.

Heading North on I-95 through New Jersey, with my wife in the car, I decided to stop and grab a coke to keep me alert for the rest of the drive. It was about 12:30 am, so I thought caffeine would be a smart choice. As it turns out, my decision to pull into this particular road-side rest along I-95 would be my first mistake.

The rest area was the kind centered between the northbound and southbound side of the highway. Pulling in, I saw a rare open space right in front of the building, next to a handicapped space and directly facing a shiny, illuminated Coke machine. I scraped $1.50 in change from the coin holder in my car (sparing the state quarters I don't already have in my collection), and quickly hopped out of the car toward the Coke machine. After feeding the machine my less-desirable specie and retrieving my 16-ounce beverage from the dispenser, I jumped back into my car. Without thinking, I quickly twisted the cap off the bottle. That was my second mistake. The rapid hissing and bubbling from the bottle immediately reminded me of some simple laws of physics. Seconds later, my steering wheel, dashboard and imitation wood paneling are drenched in syrupy high-fructose corn syrup.

My wife valiantly jumps out of the car and ran inside to get some wet paper towels. I, in the meantime, grabbed some extra napkins I have in the car and started tidying up. With the driver’s door open, one leg dangling out of the car, I attempted to reach the deep recesses of the dashboard that only an exploding carbonated beverage could reach. As I busily wiped away, I was approached by the kind of character you’d only expect to see roaming a highway rest stop at 12:30 am.

“Hey, man, can you give me money for gas?” he asked. “I’ve been here for hours and really need money.”

“No, I’m sorry.” I responded curtly. Was I wrong not to give him a dollar? With the price of gas these days, it wouldn’t have gotten him very far. None-the-less, mistake number three.

He came back a minute later.

“Look man, I just want some money for gas to get out of here.” He implored in a slightly more psychotic tone.

“No. Sorry,” I said as I swung my leg back in the car and closed the door. The guy slinked back into the shadows of the parking lot.

A few minutes later, my wife returned to the car with the damp paper towels. Lord knows what took her so long. We spent a few more minutes wiping down the car. Before we left, I quickly ran inside to wash the diluted Coke and Armor-All off my hands. My wife stayed behind to continue cleaning up. Mistake number four.

I rushed into the restroom, toke care of all the necessary business and hustled back out the door to the car. As I stepped outside, I am shocked to see that my parking space, the one next to the handicap spot, in front of the soda machine, is now empty. The car is gone. Only an oily stain remains.

“Okay, she moved the car, right?” I thought rapidly to myself. I looked across the aisle, down the row, but I didn’t see her. I spun 360 degrees. After 15 or 20 seconds, a mild panic began to brew.

“Maybe she moved the car to get away from that creepy guy,” I mulled in my head. “Or worse yet, maybe he forced her into the car and is taking her god knows where.”

Now the worst possible scenarios are racing through my mind as a rush of adrenaline washes my body. “Fuck, why didn’t I warn her about the creepy guy before I left her alone?” (Please refer to mistakes four and five.)

I now realized that my wallet, cell phone and keys were all in the car. I can’t even call her to find out what the hell is going on. Another mistake.

A half minute has passed by now. It’s felt like an hour. My heart was pumping and my vision focused down to a tunnel. I looked around to see who might have witnessed anything. I looked again at the empty parking space, the handicap space and the Coke machine. Complete panic consumed me.

I whirled around and headed inside for help. As I charged back into the rest stop, the first thing I notice is a large sign hanging above the doors across the lobby. The sign reads “SOUTHBOUND.” I spun around and look at the wording above the door I just entered: “NORTHBOUND.” The ultimate blunder!

I ran across the lobby and blasted through the doors to the northbound side of the building. As I stepped outside, I realized I’d been roaming a parallel universe. Here, next to an identical handicapped parking space and Coke machine clone is my car, with my wife sitting inside, still wiping the Coke from every crevasse of the dashboard that only a carbonated beverage could find.

Opening the door, I slinked back into my seat. I grabbed my wife’s hand and breathe a sigh of relief. My wife gave me a confused look. Reaching out to close the door behind me, a voice called out.

“Hey, man, can you help me with some gas money?!”

Relive and Relieve 1

My therapist says I have "a lot garbage in the basement." I hope he wasn't referring to the size of my ass.

This probably comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me well, but this "garbage" has seemingly accumulated over the years and is adding to my daily "baseline of stress." This baseline, according to him, grows and grows until I become the human equivalent of an M-80. He contends the only way to eliminate some of this garbage is to haul it out of the basement and spread it across the dining room table during Thanksgiving dinner. It sounds pretty convincing coming from a professional, even though this "therapist" is actually my "hair stylist." But he's as close to my head as anyone else, so I think I'll go with it.

Anyway, I thought I would heed his advice and take space in this blog to "relive and relieve" some of the more stressful things I've had to endure in my short and uneventful life -- hopefully putting them in front of me once and for all. Call them rants. Call them unforgiving negative attacks. Call them poor writing. But please don't call them petty. Here goes...

Relive and Relieve 1: My Freshman Roommate
Daniel weighed 98 pounds after a large, heavy meal. He had an affinity for Magic cards and sorted through them incessantly. Daniel had odd hygiene habits. No, strike that. Daniel had a surprising lack of hygiene habits altogether. Daniel showered but once a week, every Sunday morning before church. I guess he wanted to be sure he was clean for god.

Daniel read his bible every night. He often took to reading his bible atop the heating register, after turning the heat up full blast. I would walk into the room to find Daniel perched on the radiator which would be cranking out heat at a toasty 87 degrees, spreading his stink all over the room. I'd ask him to turn it down. He'd flip open the door on the heater and pretend to turn it down, then continue reading his bible.

Daniel slept in a sleeping bag every night. He would lay the sleeping bag out on his bare mattress and sleep in it. In the entire first semester, he never washed that sleeping bag. After a couple weeks I was afraid to be alone in the room with it. Come to mention it, Daniel never did any laundry that I knew of. He wore the same clothes every day: a white BugleBoy sweatshirt and white jeans. If you don't do laundry often (read: ever) white is color you should probably avoid.

We originally had our beds bunked, his on top. He would always dismount from his top bunk by jumping straight down onto the floor with a loud thump. This would of course wake me up every morning by scaring the living bejeezers out of me. Then, every single night the bed would shake in a way that left little to my imagination. Eventually I decided (unilaterally) that we had to de-bunk the beds. I should have asked him first. Instead, my friends came in and hoisted around the furniture while Daniel was out. Daniel came home later that night to find his bed relocated to the other side of the room. He asked me why I had done this. I said it was for religious reasons. He didn't find it very convincing or funny.

With his bed now on the floor, the sleeping bag was much more visible and eminently more aromatic -- a consequence I had foolishly not foreseen. But l deserved it, given what I had just done. What I also now noticed, was a piece of paper, folded in half, that Daniel had taped to the cinder block wall above where his pillow now lay. I asked him what it was. Daniel said it was the program from the funeral of his best friend from high school who had died the year before. Okay then... I asked if he had a picture of his friend that might serve as a better reminder of their friendship. He said he didn't have any pictures of him. It was clear Daniel found much more comfort in the wrinkled funereal program.

From this point on, instead of sitting on the heater, he would now sit on his bed facing that program while he read his bible. Was I wrong to be totally creeped out? Either way, I was completely and utterly weirded out by this. Not to mention he continued to turn the heater on full-blast. And there's nothing worse than being creeped out AND hot in your own room. To boot, I was now left with someone who probably came to hate my guts even more than I hated his. But at least I had clean sheets on my bed.

We Are Sick, Sick, Sick

So what am I doing during my summer vacation? Not much really. Catching a few rays. Catching some Zs. Catching fireflies. And catching up on my blog, of course.

One activity I'm ashamed to fess up to, is that I'm also catching up on recent episodes of MTV's Real World Austin. I watched every episode of the original Real World in New York, which first aired like 15 years ago. This was before reality television and Richard Hatch had really hit it big. I've only caught a few episodes of other "Real Worlds" over the years -- Real World San Deigo, Real World Philly, Real World Boise -- but not of them seemed to have the energy of the original.

The most-recent cast based in Austin, TX doesn't seem to be any different. The whole concept is basically the same -- pitting differing cultures and values against each other in an over-modulated and artificial microcosom. There's always the innocent country girl who's never left her home town and the slutty sexpot. There's a "playa" and an angry blackman. And of course a gay or lesbian or both. Except this cast is surprisingly lacking the token homosexual. (The last group of seven, living in Philadelphia, had two!) Perhaps by the end of the season, someone will come out of the closet for some added "reality."

The show has gotten into some pretty heavy issues before. There was once a cast member living with AIDS. And probably more than half of the Real Worlders have had to struggle with some sort of alcohol-related addiction. But this past week, MTV presented what I think is the most powerful moment of "reality" TV I'd ever seen.

MTV had been using this moment of drama as a teaser in ads for months. One of the roommates is seen crying on the phone. He's gotten some bad news. Had he gotten a call from an ex-girlfriend? Was his dog hit by a car? Did he learn the spoiler of the new Harry Potter book by accident?

No.

One of the roommates, a dude named Danny, got a call from his father. Danny's mother had died.

The camera drew in close. Danny sat in stunned silence. Fade to commercial.

After 4 minutes of commercials for acne wash, diet vanilla cherry Dr. Pepper (Mahna Mahna) and Tampax, we return to "the worst moment in Danny's life already in progress."

The power of this scene was truly moving. Watching a young man receive word that his mother had died was unbearable to watch. He sobbed. He spoke of regret and guilt. (And of course had a cute blonde's shoulder to cry on.)

In the midst of all this powerful drama -- a young man mourning the news of his mother's sudden death -- MTV actually ran a pop-up ad in the corner of the screen. It was a flashing ad for another of their hit reality shows. It was an ad for "Date My Mom." This is no joke. While a character on The Real World was mourning the death of his mother, MTV is simultaneously showing an ad for "Date My Mom." This is sick, sick, sick.

It's not just the poor timing of the ad that is sick. It's the whole thing. When Danny signed his release waiver, little did he know the worst moment of his life was going to be captured and replayed over and over and over again. Worse yet, it will be replayed over and over again in teaser ads and among commercials for The Dukes of Hazzard.

The producers of the show surely knew this news was coming. Danny's father had been trying to reach him all day. So when he came back to the house the shots were all lined up, ready to catch the big moment. And after watching it myself, I just feel sick. I feel sick and sad. And by watching it, I'm no better than the network execs who thought it would be appropriate to put this on the air.

I thought I reached my limit with reality TV when I saw the Osmonds on Celebrity Fear Factor. But this is a new low. It really makes me want to...

Wait.

Hang on, I got distracted. The newest episode of Surreal Life 7 is on and Omarosa looks pissed! Gotta run!!