I was listening to our local morning radio show 93X on the way to work the other morning, and they were having a ‘Jerk-Off’ contest for tickets to some concert. They were having people call in on the air live and tell their story of a time where they pulled a jerk-move or did something that made them come off as a complete jerk. I tried to call in and tell them a story of my own, but I could not get through as I just kept getting a busy signal. I have been on the air before with those guys (see my 9/7/12 blog entry ‘STD’) and I thought they would enjoy the following ‘jerk’ story.
It was February of 2007. My then girlfriend at the time Nadia and I had driven from Minneapolis down to New Orleans for a wedding of the daughter of a friend of mine. Nadia and I were in the French Quarter at a gift shop and I noticed in the postcard section a huge ‘Mammy’ postcard with the typical heavy-set black cartoon woman on the cover. My friend Penny McCartney is not a racist or anything, but I knew she was into the history and collected that stuff. So I bought the card and a stamp so I could mail it to her right away and have it postmarked from New Orleans. I wrote something short and quick like: “Hi Penny, I know you like this Mammy stuff so I thought of you when I saw this.” I dropped it into the nearest mailbox and that was that. Cool, right?
No. Not only is Penny not a racist, she is a lawyer managing the State of Colorado’s Civil Rights Division. As the state counterpart to the federal civil rights law she is responsible for enforcing Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act. And without thinking about what I was doing, I mailed the postcard to her work! It was the only address I had, and I had been mailing her cd’s and other correspondence to that address for years. So like always I just used the one address I had for Penny and off went the mammy postcard to the office of the State of Colorado’s Civil Rights Division.
A couple weeks later I got an email from Penny. “Do you have any idea what you have done to me?!” Uh oh. My mind raced. What?? What did I do?! “The postcard!” she screamed online. She then proceeded to tell me how the large black female receptionist in her office had eventually, wordlessly handed over the mammy postcard to her with an evil glare. But only after she had passed it around to all of the other people in the clerical department for a few days before finally giving it up to Penny. The entire angered department then proceeded to f*ck her life up for years afterwards with delayed deliveries, dropped phone calls and lost mailings. It was so bad that a couple of years later this large black female receptionist was the catalyst for a phone call that Penny received from a psych ward. The receptionist had been admitted as an inpatient to the facility and they were obligated to call Penny and warn her that the woman had made direct threats to her therapist that she wanted to “kick Penny’s ass”. Wow. My simple two-minute goodwill gesture of sending a postcard to a friend totally screwed her over at work for years.
That particular jerk-move was not on purpose and I felt really bad, but a couple others were definitely on purpose and I enjoyed them immensely. In the fall of 1985 my best friend from high school Mark Smith moved into my dorm room with me at the University of Minnesota. We had a suite, each with our own bedrooms and a living room in between. He fancied himself a clever jokester, so one night I thought I would show him a neat trick by waiting till he went to bed in his room and then I rigged up the ol’ water-bucket-on-the-door trick. It worked to perfection the next morning at about 5am when the dog we were keeping in our room started whining to go out and pee. Mark opened his door and “Blammo!”, the large bucket of water perched atop his door and attached by an elaborate system of strings and a pulley completely soaked him from head to foot. So awesome.
Another time in the early 1990’s I was at a house-party with a bunch of people from my first wife Lona’s work. I did not really know any of them and I was bored and not enjoying myself much. At one point I got up to use the bathroom. I was pointed down a hallway but was not sure which door was for the bathroom. The first door I tried turned out to be a bedroom. I started to back out and close the door but then I noticed a camera sitting on the dresser. Nobody was looking so I went in, turned on the lights, closed the door and I took a picture of my naked butt. I had gotten the idea from a new show that was sweeping the nation, 'The Simpsons'. I put the camera back and went to find the bathroom. I forgot all about it until a couple of months later when Lona asked me if I had taken a picture of my ass with the owner of the house’s camera. This was back when there was not digital cameras…we all used actual 35mm film. The couple had brought the film in to be developed and were quite dismayed when they got their photos back from the Fotomat and one of them was a picture of a butt. The pictures were date-stamped so they figured out that it happened at their party, and by process of elimination eventually figured out it was me. Good clean fun.
Probably the worst jerk-move I ever pulled though was on Memorial Day weekend in 1991. I was living at Lona’s parent’s house in Waukesha, WI. Like any good blue-collared Wisconsin folks they liked to drink a lot and threw a lot of parties. I loved living there. Her parents Kenny and Nancy treated me like one of their own, and Kenny was basically my best friend. So that Memorial Day her parents threw a big bbq party complete with a keg, tons of food, and dozens of family and friends. I had a beer bong with me from my college days and eventually brought that out. We were out in the back yard and I was showing people how to down a beer in seconds with the apparatus. Pretty soon everybody was trying it and loving it. Kenny tried it…Nancy tried it…even Grandma tried it. It was a huge hit.
We were all having a great time and then suddenly Lona’s little brother Corey showed up with all of his big-shot high school football buddies. They strolled in wearing their letter jackets, noticed the beer bong on the table near the keg and scoffed. The guys bragged that nobody could down a beer as fast as them and Corey claimed that he was the fastest. I peered at him and formulated a quick plan. Earlier that day when Kenny and I were at the liquor store buying the keg I noticed a 6-pack of ‘Pepper Beer’ on the shelf. It was from Mexico and each bottle had a jalapeno pepper floating in it. I liked hot spicy stuff so I thought I would give it a try and bought a 6-pack. It was god-awful hot and not very enjoyable. With each flaming-hot sip your body would crave cool liquid relief, so you would instinctively take another sip and just compound your misery. It was a novelty item at best and nothing I would ever buy again.
So after listening to Corey brag about how fast he could down a beer-bong, I challenged him to a dual. We would take turns, somebody would time us, and we would just see who was really the fastest. He nodded, smiled and all his football buddies clapped him on the back and assured him that he would kick my ass. So Kenny got out a stop-watch and I grabbed the beer-bong and went in to the kitchen to fill it up with beer. But instead of filling it with Miller High Life from the keg, I of course popped open a pepper beer and filled it with that. I brought the apparatus outside and while everyone at the party was gathered around us in a circle to watch, I tipped my head back and put the tube to my lips.
At the last second though I lowered it back down and said: “You think you’re the big-shot, you go first. Show me how it’s done.” So I handed it over to Corey. He smiled confidently, tipped his head back and downed the entire pepper beer in about 2 seconds. Damn, he was fast. He looked up and started to smile but his look of triumph instantly turned to pain and fear. He dropped to his knees and liquids started pouring out of mouth, nose, eyes and pores. He was puking up beer and snot was hanging out of his nose while tears and sweat were running down his face. He had no idea what had happened to him and he was freaking out as his body was desperately trying to rid itself of the offending liquid intruder.
Everyone’s laughter quickly turned to concern and I felt terrible. I grabbed some paper towels and tried to help clean him off after he stopped hacking and drowning in his own puke and snot. Corey was a great guy and I felt bad about reducing him to a puddle. It was the ultimate jerk-move and one that I always felt bad about. I am sure everyone has pulled few jerk-moves out there…it happens…just be careful.
No comments:
Post a Comment