One True Statement About Helicopters and A Bunch About Eating

Helicopters are wicked cool.

Eating is gross. I'm completely disgusted by seeing a person eat about once a day. I'm not sure exactly what needs to happen for me to be grossed out by eating; it certainly doesn't happen every time I witness the phenomenon. 

I've been grossed out by skinny people eating, average sized people eating, pleasantly plump people eating and huge greasy people eating. I've even been grossed out by myself eating. (Cottage Cheese is gross) So, it's not like the reason I'm grossed out really has anything to do with the person who's doing the a fore mentioned consumption of food.

One thing that does remain consistent every time I find my self so entirely disgusted with the unrelenting face stuffing of the people in this world is when the food you eat must be held. Pizza. I'm often grossed out by the consumption of pizza. Not because I think pizza is gross, I love pizza, but because of anything I can even name. Just sometimes seeing the act of pizza eating really makes me want to yak! Not every time, or exclusively pizza. I was grossed out today at Five Guys Burgers and Fries, when I saw a regular looking guy eating a burger. I ate a similar burger five minutes later, but something about that guy and that burger made me want to puke.

Like I said, this happens a lot and there's no real rhyme or reason to it. I'm not against food you hold, I'm not against holding food, but sometimes the planets go completely out of orbit and I want to puke at you eating. It's just the way it is.

Frontrunner

I’m not a person who uses public transportation daily or even monthly. I’m the type that drives my car and burns gas and puts just a little bit of greenhouse gases in the air. The term “greenhouse gases” has always seemed like a weird way to put it to me. I understand the reason for it, trapping in heat, global warming, and another scientific term. The problem in my head with greenhouse gases is obviously the greenhouse part. 

When I think of greenhouses, I think roses and elementary school field trips. I think they should call them something that brings terrible things to mind. 9/11 gases! Or if that’s too soon, Pearl Harbor gases! Not the event, the movie.

Anyhow, I didn’t start writing about Pearl Harbor gases just to abolish the term “Greenhouse Gases”, in fact, I’m not exactly sure how I got on that subject in the first place. I’m writing about something much more important.

I’m currently riding Utah’s Frontrunner. It’s a commuter Train that runs north to south connecting the string of cities on either side of SLC. It’s not peak hours but there are still enough people to give a person plenty of chances to drop all the eaves possible. There’s also nearly every demographic of white people who would ever be on public transportation. Boy students, very Mormon girl students, an older guy who’s strangely balding and a punk looking at baby pictures of some girl, pictures of a guy named Tom, and like his favorite band, The Bouncing Souls.

This Punk guy is my kind of people. He has a black stocking cap with patches for Subhumans and the Distillers that used to be t-shirts sewed onto it with green thread. He’s pretty kick ass. He’s sharing music from his phone with his riding mate who I can’t see without being obvious. Okay, I was obvious. He’s a nerd punk for sure. I’m cool with that.

This is what I like about taking advantage of public transportation alone, the people watching. When you’re with a person and talking to them, you become part of the show and I feel like it’s a little obnoxious at times. I try to talk softly and it’s stupid.

There’s a guy who walks up and down the aisle to make sure we’re all safe. The thing is, he doesn’t look like he could save anyone. I want Patrick Swayze on Roadhouse. Oh no crazy guy with a gun and a knife. In comes Swayze to rip his throat out! With bare hands! 

Crying at Wal-Mart

I wrote an essay once for my first published book entitled “You’re Actually Reading That!?” about how much it would suck to be a baby at a beach. It’s a true classic, although there is definitely a great amount of bias to that statement. I’m writing now because I thought about our lives as very young people again today.

I was enjoying some time at my local Wal-Mart in search of things to get me through a terrible cold that I’m experiencing. I’m happy to announce that I’ll be able to keep my fluids up thanks to the large amount of Gatorade, Orange Juice, Chicken Broth, Milk, and flavor packets for my water. (Water is disgusting on its own) Everyone knows that the establishment I visited is full of all kinds of people who are fun to look at, but what I’m here to write about is only a small group of those people; crying kids.

I made direct eye contact with a boy child who was sitting in the perch that they make in shopping carts for kids. His parents were standing at a Redbox which I’ve always thought of as the movie rental answer to Netflix for people who feel bad about the destruction of the video store.  That’s a whole other topic that I will leave for another time… or maybe not.

Back to the man child.  (fragment.) I looked at this boy who was definitely old enough to be self-aware and so I thought, “Are you embarrassed to be crying loudly in public?”

I can understand. He was crammed into a seat with a wire metal frame and only a thin plastic flap as a cushion. Then you get hauled around Wal-Mart for an hour while your parents buy brussel sprouts. (Nothing against brussel sprouts, but no 3 years old boy likes them) Then when you’ve had enough of that, they pay, which takes forever, then they stop right at the entrance with its door opening and closing to the winter and look for movies to watch after you go to bed.

Yeah, I’d cry too! BUT I’d be embarrassed when some scruffy-faced messy-haired sick guy makes eye contact with me.

Me Man, Live Danger

I'm an adult. I have an Adulty Marriage Certificate, an Adulty car payment, an Adulty career, and I eat candy in the morning... if I want. (Usually I don't want) (It makes me feel groggy later)

My point is this:

Now that I'm a real adult (adulthood starts at 18, that was about 11 years ago. I digress) I have to take things into my own hands. Last Saturday, I found myself desperately wanting to watch the TV. I have Satellite TV and it wasn't getting a signal, of course. So, seeing as I am in fact an adult man, I took it upon myself to fix the TV. My particular dish, as many others in the world, is on my roof. I don't have a ladder, and so I improvised. Retrieving a chair from my kitchen, I marched with a grand resolve out the back door and dropped the chair beside the lowest and only flat portion of my roof. I carefully  removed the cover that my sister in law made for the chairs and threw it on the floor just inside my apartment.

What happened next, I'm sure you already guessed was dangerous. I developed a talent of climbing up counters when I was a very young man, and although I haven't quite kept it up, the talent still lives in my blood, coursing through my body like a thing that travels through tiny tubes. (Oooo Like Red Blood Cells!) I climbed to the top of the chair and grabbed a particularly thick icicle. It broke, sending shards of ice into my face. I tried again and again until all of the icicles were gone. The blood born pathogen of a talent found its way to the courageous or stupid (you decide) part of my body causing me to "git-er-done" (yeah that happened). I jumped with all my might achieving my goal of getting the entire upper half of my body onto the roof and shimmying my way to safety. Oh yeah also there's a lot of snow and ice up there.

then I had to walk up the snowy and icy roof to the satellite dish. It was completely clean, but still I rubbed it. Good luck? Maybe? then I rubbed all the other dishes on the roof of my apartment. Again... good luck? I almost fell three times and each time the movie "The Santa Clause" popped into my head.

Getting down was dilemma all its own. The chair seemed scary so the plan I devised was much safer... or something.

There are some old cable ... cables hanging from the roof on the other side of the low portion I climbed up. Yeah you know where this is going. I grabbed the end of one of them and just like Indiana Jones (also your 10 year old neighbor with a broken arm (I'm just guessing) I swung to my certain doom. I'm more like Indiana Jones than that stupid kid and my plan worked perfectly. So here I am, completely unscathed and happy to tell the tale.

I'm sure you're wondering about the TV and if the good luck rubbing worked. Hell no! But the TV came back on a few hours later so all's well that ends well!