It’s a Beautiful Morning

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Thestrugglershandbook

Plink! Plank! Plunk! My wife adds a small amount of dry cat food to three bowls that sit on the floor in a row; the deposits play three distinct notes in descending order.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.  The morning feast begins. In my stupor I dream of rats gnawing on the bones of a long – forgotten prisoner within the hull of a pirate’s ship. I scan the ship’s bowels for  any aid in my escape, lest I suffer the same horrible ending. The fate of all mankind, I am assuming, is contingent upon my success.

Scritch. Scritch. Scritch. I become vaguely aware of my true surroundings as Rosie, having excorcised some intestinal demon, now attempts to cover the offense.

“Ohhhhhh…” I pull covers over my head and desperately resort to mouth breathing, through both sheet and blanket, as the fog of stench descends upon me. No good. An eight pound cat has managed the transformation of sustenance into a weapon of mass destruction. If somehow engineered into a practical delivery system, entire legions of Taliban fighters could be routed from their caves( “Save us, Allah, the infidels assail us with the poo of kitties!” ).

“Unnnhhhh!..What the…” Rosie, seemingly overjoyed at having dispensed with twenty percent of her body weight, races across the bed and, employing the apparent( and heretofore unbeknownst ) catapultive properties of my scrotum, launches herself onto the dresser.

“Mrrowrr! Pffft!” The other two furrballs, Roy and Rufus, tussle over control of the windowsill; an avalance of books and papers from the table below it crash to the floor. I call to them, hand extended, as an offer of mediation via petting. Both regard me impassively, as though if sufficient litter were available, they would do well to cover such an offending turd.

Rufus

“Aaarrgghh! Son of a…” Rosie, only too happy to accept the offer of pets, leaps from the dresser, this time testing the reliability of my umbilical hernia as a landing pad.

It is morning at the Peddy home. My alarm clock is distinctly my own, unfailingly reliable, and clearly that of a man whose life is not his own. Time to get up; it’s going to be a beautiful day.

Posted in Humor | Tagged | 1 Comment

Timothy The Turtle

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Thestrugglershandbook

Yesterday morning my son came bursting into my room, threw open the closet door, and started rifling through the clothes hanging inside. This, of course, while I was still trying to sleep.

“Where are all my stinkin’ dress shirts?” He asked, somewhat accusingly.

“Have you tried the floor in your room?” I admit that, in retrospect, this response may have sounded somewhat snotty.

“Look, dude, I keep my dress shirts in your closet so they don’t get wrecked, and I haven’t worn one in like eight months.”

“In that case, have you tried the bottom of the floor in your room?”

If you look at my son’s room from his doorway( the last safe vantage point ), you will be shocked. The closest way to describe it is like a video from the aftermath of a tornado, except that his walls and roof are still intact. I half expect a few splintered two by fours to be sticking up at odd angles, and the anguished cries of some old lady(“Help me, I’m under the fridge.”) to waft up out of the piles of clothing on the floor. The last time I dared venture in, I cracked my ankle on a ten pound barbel disguised as a pair of basketball shorts. His room is a source of both horror and consternation for my wife; she likes a clean house, and resents that a good portion of it is considered off-limits to visitors. I , however, see it for what it is: a genetic predisposition…

I grew up in the same bedroom my son has now( can’t get anything past you – we live in my childhood home ). I arranged my room back then with the same sense of decor as my son. Only the walls were visible, adorned schizophrenically with band posters and framed pictures hung at odd angles. The floor was a nightmare of clothing, shoes, school papers and discarded remnants of meals( I once found a sandwich bag that had held a bologna and mustard sandwich; it was pureed, greenish-black, pungent and unrecognizable). My closet door bulged outward from the pressure of the contents within. The door was Hoover Dam, and inside a veritable Lake Mead of debris waited for a chance at freedom. To open it was to release a torrent that would wipe out anything downstream( in this case, my room, a bathroom, the hallway and finally, the living room). Whenever I couldn’t find something of critical importance, it always became a family crisis( “It’s not in my room; I already looked.” ). It never occurred to me that some sense of order would eliminate the issue; my son is the same way today.

One particular incident underscored the severity of the problem. I had a pet water turtle, a Red-Eared Slider. He( she? ) had a lovely plastic terrarium, complete with a small island and green palm tree. I named it Timothy, and this turtle was most pleasing to me; it ate, voraciously, virtually anything I put in there, from flies to bits of hamburger. It always swam over whenever I approached, with head extended. At the time, I took this as a sign of affection and not a conditioned response to the prospect of being fed.

One day, Timothy was gone. I regarded his absence with a reaction typical of a child of twelve: I thought huh…interesting. My mom’s poodle had eaten my last turtle( Timothy I ), so that was a likely scenario, or perhaps he had climbed out. A cursory search of the room revealed nothing, however, and after a brief period of mourning( minutes ), I moved on with my life. I left the terrarium, in case Timothy decided to return by shimmying up a table leg,  traversing the underside of the desktop to its edge, then pulling himself up and over.

Some weeks later, my mother had somehow won the war of wills and I was forced to clean my room. Behind my door, under a bunch of clothes and assorted debris, lay my forgotten friend. Timothy was still alive, but only barely; he was a shriveled shadow of his former self. He looked at me as if to say, “Thank God you found me. I knew you’d never stop looking for me. I’m so glad to be alive; I am saved.” As I picked him up, I noticed a small mushroom growing in the carpet beneath him. I took this to mean he might have been in that particular spot for some time, but didn’t find it especially odd or disgusting that fungus was growing in my room.

I surmised, brilliantly, that a shriveled turtle was in obvious need of water and food, so I plopped him into the terrarium and threw in some chunks of hamburger. Yay, my buddy’s back, I thought as I went back to “cleaning” my room( lots of room under the bed and mom’s bad back were a convenient combination ), then left to do whatever it is twelve-year-old boys do.

The next time I checked on him, Timothy was dead. As I reflect back on what happened, I think it likely that he drowned. In his weakened condition, he needed water, but at a depth that might allow him to breathe. I had filled his terrarium to the top, because he needed a lot of water,  and he was probably too weak to swim up to the surface. How misguided his excitement at having been found and rescued by me.

The experience did nothing to improve my habits. It took marriage and the threat of bodily injury to get me to the level of cleanliness( better, but still substandard) I maintain today. I am, predictably, more understanding and lenient towards my son with respect to how he keeps his room than is my wife. He can’t help it; it’s in his blood. I do draw the line, however, at allowing him to keep turtles( or old ladies )in his room.

Posted in Humor | Tagged | 2 Comments

Rich Peddy, Professional Gambler

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Thestrugglershandbook

Note: If it seems like I’m horribly mean in my depiction of the people in this story, it’s only because over the years they’ve become, through no fault of their own, larger than life representatives of one of my life’s great tragedies. This should make you feel better: if they were to read this(unlikely; no one else does), they wouldn’t even recognize themselves. I’m normally a nice guy. Really… I am, you stupid jerk! Also, this isn’t how I usually talk about people behind their backs.  As far as you know.

Back when I was in high school, I was introduced to the fascinating world of Greyhound racing by my father. What a guy. “Here, son. Here’s an entertaining way to lose everything you have, to squash all your hopes and dreams, and squander away any chance at maintaining even the lowest level of subsistence. And best of all, we can do it together.” He didn’t say that, of course, but he might as well have. He wouldn’t have done much worse had he  introduced me to heroin, organized crime or prostitution(actually, that’s stupid: I would have been an extremely ugly and unsuccessful prostitute).  I honestly think he didn’t see anything wrong with it. I know I’ve made mistakes with my own kids(don’t talk to them), but I hope I never do anything that foolish.

Greyhound racing was very popular back then; apparently, animal advocacy hadn’t been invented yet. No one gave a thought as to how those dogs had been duped into thinking that a revolving white blob on a stick was a rabbit, or what happened to the dogs themselves after their usefulness as racers had passed. Tucson Greyhound Park was always crowded, with a fascinating mixture of sad, rent-money gamblers, college age kids looking for excitement and high roller-types. These were the guys who sat in the upstairs clubhouse(it cost an extra couple bucks to weed out the losers) with girls who were way too hot for them, and actually spent money on things other than wagers. There was food, booze and smoke all around. The races themselves were a thirty-second explosion of blinding speed and effortless grace. Add to this the obvious allure of winning money and you had the hottest ticket in town.

By the time I was a freshman in college, I was there almost every night it was open. I had some moderate success, enough to suggest I could have a career in the making: Rich Peddy, Professional Gambler. I certainly liked the sound of it. I started charting all the dogs, noting their preferences, whether they liked to go out fast or come from behind, liked to run inside, midtrack or outside, etc. Now, it might appear foolish to some to have mapped out a winning formula predicated upon the notion that a dog knowingly employs a consistent strategy to win a race against seven other dogs. In retrospect, I would have to agree. One might also consider it downright stupid to think betting on dogs running in a circle a viable career at all. Well, now you’re just being mean.

Then, in one amazing night, my career choice was laid out before me, all paved in gold brick and lined with fruit trees nested with happy, chirping birds.  I won almost $1500, which was a lot of money in 1980, especially for a starving college student. I’m sort of a cocky winner(it pisses people off, because they’re losers, which sort of makes winning more fun, doesn’t it?), so I’m sure anyone within fifty yards knew I had won big. A big, fat, red-haired  woman came and sat next to me and started bleating in an Irish accent. I usually find said accent most endearing, but this time it sounded , well, stupid. You gotta be kidding, I thought. I’m a high roller now; where’s my chick who’s way too hot for me?  It turned out she wanted to show me pictures of her daughter, who was available and might like a nice, enterprising young man like myself. Now we’re talking. Come to Papa…yamma hamma, fright night! Her daughter had Irish features as well; she looked like a distended leprechaun(who ate Lucky Charms by the box), though her beard was slightly less kempt. And for the cherry on top, she showed me pictures of her three grandchildren, as though that might finally tip the scales in her daughter’s favor. They were hideous, each more engorged than the other; the trifecta of gluttony, as though they alone were responsible for the Irish potato famine.

The following day, my future assured, I went to work and quit my job. I had worked for three years at Tucson Country Club, starting as a dishwasher and working my way up to prep cook. The chefs had begun training me on the line; soon I would be a full cook and on my way to a career as a chef. I don’t know that I would have wanted it, because other than going to college forever, I didn’t know what I wanted.  Given my lack of direction at the time, however,  it was a “bird in hand”, and would have been as good a path as any. That is, of course, until Rich Peddy, Professional Gambler became my destiny.

Things began to unravel soon after. I might be winning money, but it was never enough. A rational person might think “Whoa. I’m up a hundred and fifty bucks. I’m outta here.” Curious thing, gambling addiction. If I stayed for all fifteen races and won $150, I’d be really happy. But if I was up that much after three or four races, it never occurred to me to leave. I had to go for the kill, to turn that $150 profit into $1500. It never did happen again, and within a few months I had lost pretty much everything I had, including my college fund.

My very last night at the tracks played out true to form. I was way up early, but went for the big score, and by the last race I was down to my last fifty bucks. I bet it all, of course, and the dog I had keyed on all my bets led the entire race. At the end, however, he began to fade and two other dogs came up alongside him at the wire. There was a photo finish, meaning the race was too close to call, and judges would determine the order of finish by examining a photo taken at the line. We all crowded around the t.v. screens hanging from the ceilings inside for a glimpse of the photo.  I let out an anguished wail as the photo revealed my mutt had lost by a nose; literally less than an inch. I collected myself by yelling a particular exclamation(dang it) at the top of my lungs and flicking my cigarette at the television screen. I had lost everything; my fledgling career was already a complete bust.

At this particular moment, a very large and overly made-up girl walked beneath the television set. I can see her as clear as if she were standing in front of me now, as she instantly became the poster child for this particular failure of mine. She wore a blue denim jacket, with beads on the back that spelled out “Fat, Gaudy Slut”(I don’t actually know what it said)in cursive, and dark jeans that were so tight it looked like an entire school of tuna had been caught in a black denim net and were fighting to get out. Her face was spackled with some brand of makeup grout that was two or three shades lighter than the skin on her neck, and she embroidered her face handsomely with eyebrows and lashes done with black crayola and lips painted brown like mud. The perpetual scowl she wore  finished the look perfectly; she looked like a prostituting Grouper fish at Halloween.

Leticia had managed to get her hair to stand a good foot above her scalp; it was a tribute to engineering, teased and stretched to its very limits. Her black hair glistened with a chemical sheen; if she stood in a hurricane, it would not move, but if you hit her hair with a rock, it looked as though it might shatter into a thousand pieces, like glass. Of course, no rock was forthcoming. Her hair instead caught the aforementioned cigarette, and combustion was instantaneous. Curiously, though, it was fairly contained at first, like a small campfire amidst a stand of trees. As I stood transfixed and somehow content to do nothing, however, it quickly began to grow; it was clear that soon all  lives would be at stake, and so I sprang to action. As I pummeled her about the head with both hands, her boyfriend( for whom I still occasionally pray – either for his escape or merciful death)became understandably upset. I explained that someone threw a cigarette in Leticia’s hair(no lie). After the fire was out, he thanked me for my help. I think she opened her mouth and a clown fish swam in and started cleaning her gums.

Consider this lessons one and two in The Struggler’s Handbook. First, gambling is stupid, unless you have more money than you know what to do with, in which case the term isn’t applicable. Second, please extinguish all smoking materials in a sensible manner; while fire is fun to watch, the life you save could be your own.

Posted in Humor | Tagged | 1 Comment

Welcome!

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Thestrugglershandbook

I want to thank everyone who has visited so far; I really appreciate the interest, and I hope you’ll continue to read. Those of you who know me are probably acutely aware that I love to hear myself talk and now, within the constraints of a blog, read myself write.

It’s doubtful that this blog will ever be credited with changing anyone’s life, and if it does yours, what a sad, pathetic loser you are! I do hope, however, that from time to time I am able to share some epiphany that will somehow improve our collective lot in life. So far, nothing earth-shattering has popped up, and don’t hold your breath. Also, if you’re looking to be kept abreast of anything newsworthy, this blog’s probably going to disappoint you. I like breasts as much as anyone, but I usually do not keep them, as they do not belong to me. I am, for the most part, unaware of the events of the day and much happier that way. I like to tell stories, and I love to make people laugh. The cool thing about writing is I can’t tell if you think I’m funny(unless you comment, so if you don’t, don’t), whereas when we’re talking face to face, I can see the “Someone please get this guy away from me” look in your eyes, behind that “I stopped listening to you” smile. My wife, bless her heart, sees those eyes and that smile always, when often I don’t. She loves me, and my failures cause her pain; her threshold is enormously high…

I must give credit for the term “Struggler” where it is due. My children’s youth pastor, let’s call him “Micah”(that’s his name), was the first I’d heard use it. It appealed to me instantly, because unlike “failure”, or “loser”, the implication is that the person so named is still trying, and so there’s still a sense of optimism there. I coach girls basketball(more on that another time), and all my players are used to being called that. Heck, they even made t-shirts once. Everyone is a struggler. I’m a struggler; so are you. Anyone who isn’t struggling with life is dead.

Struggler is also a great word to describe my walk with God. I am a Christian. If you aren’t, I hope that doesn’t prevent you from reading. I’m not the preachy type; that would be  hypocritical, but I will make mention of my faith from time to time, because it’s part of who I am. I struggle every day to live the way He would want me to; every day I fall short. But, as the word struggler implies, I am trying. Some days harder than others.

Finally, I’d like to thank a very nice couple – let’s call them Mr. and Mrs. Smith(snicker) – for suggesting I could do this. In retrospect, they were probably just being kind and I ran with it; thank God they didn’t suggest genital piercings or cross dressing.

Posted in Humor | Tagged | 5 Comments

Well, Judas Priest, You’re Old!

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Thestrugglershandbook

Last week I went to a concert here in Tucson. The headline act was Judas Priest, one of my favorite bands from my younger days. I saw them in Tucson thirty plus years earlier, but remember little in the way of detail, with one glaring exception( more on that later ). Because a sizeable chunk of those formative years was largely spent in a chemically induced fog, I thought it would be cool to see if the band held the same allure for me as a live act, now that I’m old and boring (i.e. drug free ). Drugs have a way of wrapping crap in a big red bow, and it isn’t until your body has permanently flushed them away that you see things for what they really are: all steamy crap, no bow. Small wonder virtually all my seemingly amazing friends and captivating interests from 1976-1983( the forgotten years; more on that another time ) have been  dumped and flushed, as it were.

I still enjoy the music. Yeah, the lyrics may be inane, about invaders, domination and little else, but man those guys shred. I was all about lead guitar and screaming vocals growing up, and no one did it better. You have to appreciate the time and effort that goes into becoming masters of a particular genre in music. I don’t begrudge you your Luciano Pavarotti( shoot me in the face if I have to listen more than two minutes ); I think he sucks, but I appreciate that he’s good at what he does, and that there’s a great deal of skill involved in his performances( mostly of tailors and structural engineers ).  He’s sooo boring, but I don’t project that on you because you listen to it( loser ), so please don’t call me stupid because I like Priest.

I arrived at the show with my brother-in-law and his brother( does that make him my brother-in-law, too?), two fellow long-standing Priest fans. I was especially curious to see how a band that drapes itself in tight leather and studs would look after all these years. I mean, these guys have to be in their sixties – how much time does it take to put that stuff on at that age? What if you have to poop after your roadies pull on those pants for you? Can you wear Depends under leather, or is the absorbance compromised by the ultra tight fit? And how pathetic will you look with a spiked dog collar and open leather vest? These are the important questions that most wouldn’t think to ask, and I went looking for answers.

The first thing that struck me was that the years had, indeed, not been kind – to the audience. The band members actually looked pretty good, considering their ages and the corrosive effects of band life. But again, the crowd…everyone (but me) looked so old; some had tried to put on a bold face, but that face was old, wrinkly and warted. All those hot metal chicks who wore tight pants and halter tops in 1978 looked sadly different. They still wore tight pants, but only because the amount of fabric necessary to cover that much square footage comfortably simply isn’t available in fashionable form. The halters, thankfully, had been replaced with band t-shirts, the names and faces of which were distorted by bulging fat and sagging breasts. The guys were no better. The seat in front of them that had been an unwelcome barrier to getting closer to the stage back in the seventies was now a convenient belly support whenever they stood. Those who retained the long hair of their youth now had a bald spot up top; they looked like Franciscan Monks gone bad. And the joints in hand that had been a crowd staple way back when had been replaced with plastic bottles of Bud Light( why do people drink that crap? Anyone who has had a decent beer can’t possibly like it. My father called it “kidney-filtered”).

Anyone who’s been to a rock concert knows the distinctive smell of pot. The scent was largely absent this night. This could be partially explained by the near full-body cavity search at the entrance by security( I told the monster who fondled me that I usually expect a drink or two before letting someone get to third base. He didn’t laugh, either because he’d heard it before, or was too stupid to get it. I vote the latter). A more plausible explanation, though, is that everyone there was too old to get high anymore. With age comes responsibility, and the burdens of work, mortgages and raising grandchildren are not improved by smoking dope. Whatever the reasons, the pungent aroma of  marijuana had been replaced, at least where I was standing, by a new organic smell: farts. At this age, apparently, it’s comfort over manners and besides, there’s safety in numbers( “Oh, yeah?Prove it was me.” ). More than one person was giving their sphincter the night off, and the 130 decibel music provided ample cover for even the most explosive emanation.

I mentioned I was fuzzy about the details of the first time I saw Judas Priest, but the end of that concert I will never forget. I was sitting( or my seat, I should say, was located ) 8th row center. After the last note was struck, the drummer stood and chucked his drumsticks into the crowd. I can still see, in my mind’s eye, one of these sticks turning end over end in slow motion straight towards me. As any rocker knows, snatching a piece of band paraphernalia at a live concert is like catching a foul ball bare handed at a baseball game; you are instant athlete, revered and cheered for by an adoring, envious crowd. I don’t know what I was thinking at that moment, or, given the likely state of my brain that night( fried ), whether I was thinking at all. No matter; at the critical moment, when a lightning-quick jab of either hand would have procured for me the coveted prize, I instead managed only a meager twitch of my right hand that wouldn’t shake a fly. The result was predictable. The sound as the stick struck me square in the forehead was like that of bat on ball; it may have been the single loudest percussion note of the entire evening. After a teeter and a couple of blinks, I looked down at my feet and there lay the wooden treasure, still mine for the taking. Still I could not manage to relay message from brain to appendage, and before I could react, five or six people were engaged in a wild scrum at my feet. As the lights came up, I had only two untied shoes and a growing walnut on my forehead to show for my brush with destiny. In a life filled with innumerable failure, I still regard the lost drumstick as one of my greatest personal blunders.

I was ready this time, then, for a chance at atonement. I told no one, lest I fail again; but if things were to be offered to the crowd, I was determined to get something. By the end of the second encore, I had made it to within a few feet of the stage. Sure enough, the drummer came up to the front of the stage with a whole handful of sticks. Yes! Sweet redemption was at hand. It became evident very quickly, however, that no throwing was forthcoming. No doubt the drummer, at his advanced age, feared a torn rotator cuff  or loss of credibility for throwing like a girl. Instead he handed sticks to the crowd, looking for hot girls to give them to( it took forever ). I turned my attention instead to the guitarist, who was flicking picks into the crowd. Almost immediately I reached out with cat-like reflex and with my right hand, snatched a pick in midair. The fat guy standing next to me said “Dude, did you get it?”, and before I could show him, another pick bounced off his bulbous nose and I snagged it with my left. I saw in his eyes the envy and adoration that had been denied me those thirty-some years before. Sadly, the failure was now his, and given his age, obesity, lack of athleticism and of opportunity in the future, he would likely carry that failure to his grave. I have felt his pain, and he has my sympathy. Had I given him the second pick, he likely would be spared the emotional scars. I hereby resolve, should I ever see him again( unlikely )and happen to be carrying said pick if I do( please ), to give it to him and end his suffering.

In closing, I have to say that I really enjoyed the show. The music was great, and Judas Priest was still a great live act. This is their farewell tour, so it was great to have had one last chance to see them. Clearly, there is something to be said for sobriety; I’m sure I’ll remember this show much better than the first, and the reflexes, even at my advanced age, were markedly improved.

Posted in Concerts, Humor, Music, Rock and Roll | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments