My First Real Spring Break

For as long as I can remember, a Spring Break in the Reed household has meant a week of sitting inside, trying to keep warm because of the three feet of snow and the 60-mile-an-hour winds, and complaining about how we never do anything for Spring Break. Not so this year, my friends. We're going on a cruise. I'm headed down to Galveston, Texas and boarding a ship bound for three different cities in Mexico and one in Belize. I'm so stoked about this trip, I actually punched a baby in the face on my way home today. Why would I do that? Because that's how stoked people act, jackass.

I plan on spending the entire time eating. If I don't gain at least eight pounds on this trip, I have failed. Seeing as how it's taken me just under six years to gain fifteen pounds, I'd say I've got my work cut out for me. I'm going to start with the lobster, but if that doesn't work, I'm going to cheat a little and stack up on carbs. This may also mean that I'll actually have to get up before 11 every day and eat breakfast. Ah, the sacrifices we make for our goals...

I have a paper due on the Tuesday we get back from Spring Break. I am not happy about this. It's supposed to be on a creative figure. Like a sort of biography. I don't care about creative figures. I don't care about papers. I don't care about class. Hell, I don't even care about YOU for the next week. I've been far too stressed lately, what with the three days of classes and waking up at the crack of noon. It really takes a lot out of a guy. Well, that, and the constantly watching TV and movies. I need a break. I need to get away from it all. I need to clear my head. I need to just relax for a week on a floating mansion and eat to my heart's content. And that's exactly what I'm going to do.

We're not going alone. It's not just my immediate family. We're headed down with my cousins and my aunt and uncle and their family friends as well. All in all, we're driving fourteen people down to Texas in a motorhome built for... not fourteen people. It'll be quite an experience. I suggested drugging some of the little ones and stacking them in the back until we get to Galveston. This suggestion was met with laughter from the parents and more than a few scowls from my brother and youngest cousin. I still think it's a pretty damn good idea. I'm hoping to be able to sleep for most of the drive, but I doubt that will be the case. More than likely, I'll end up staying up all night, completely wired with a combination of caffeine and excitement about the cruise. I get excited easily.

Most of all, I'm hoping to practice being a barfly. I want to hang around one of the bars and meet an old man who is so impressed with my youthful vigor and sharp wit that we become instant friends and he offers me a job after I graduate from college and tells me that he has a beautiful granddaughter about my age. That could totally happen. If you don't believe me, then you're not invited to our wedding.

My Family Thinks I'm A Lush

I went out to this awesome Irish pub, Jack Quinn's, for my birthday. I went with my parents, my siblings, and my grandparents. The food was incredible, but let's face it, I wasn't there for the stew, no matter how good it was. I wanted to drink. I didn't get a beer, since beer is boring. I ended up ordering a mixed drink. Apparently, I "ordered it like a pro," which drew my grandpa's interest. He asked me repeatedly if I'd ever had that drink before. I hadn't. He obviously didn't believe me. He finally asked, "Are you lying to me?" Of course I wasn't. I really had no reason to. After talking about that with several other family members, I discovered that most of my family thinks I'm a frickin' alcoholic. Actually, that could prove to be entertaining in the future...

The Home Stretch

In less than nine hours, I'm officially 21. I think I've been more excited about this particular birthday than any three previous birthdays combined. There's just something about having your first legal drink and being officially allowed to gamble in America. Sure, I became an "adult" on my 18th birthday, but I wasn't exactly thrilled by having to sign up with Selective Service ("I can now be drafted! Score!"). This is the big one. This is what pushes you past being a kid into being a true young adult in a lot of people's eyes. Of course, for the newly-turned 21-year-old, it mainly just means you can drink without worrying about the cops busting up the party. I jotted down a few thoughts, feelings, and concerns that have been percolating for the past week or so:

1. Is it wrong that I wish I could bring in some Bailey's Irish Cream to put into my coffee at church?

2. What do you mean there's no alcohol in rum cake? You mean I could have had some of that damn stuff this whole time?

3. This is one fun TV show, but you know what would make it better? A beer.

4. I once saw a video of a guy chugging an entire bottle of Jack in ten seconds. Note to self: learn how to do that.

5. I'm gonna eat all my ice cream from now on with Kahlua in it.

6. I wonder how long I could get away with filling my Nalgene with gin.

7. I really hope I get a flask for my birthday.

8. When I used to watch Food Network, it made me hungry. Now, it just makes me want to drink.

9. Vodka and cranberry juice go with anything, don't they?

10. Does Jello make pre-made Jello shots? They should get on that...

11. Hmmm... This grapefruit juice is good, but where's the inflated self-confidence and the warm sense of well-being?

12. Of course, with my luck, I find out that underage drinking is legal in the state of Colorado if it takes place on the property of the guardians and said guardians have given verbal permission for the child to drink. I learned this two weeks before my 21st birthday.

13. Cooking chicken or brats and they're a little dry? Dude, just throw some beer on it.

14. Alcoholic oranges? Oh, I'd love one. Thank you. Oh? You say I just made that up? Well I prefer my fantasy to this reality...

15. I sure like this ginger ale, but it would be that much better with a belt of whiskey.

16. Peach Schnapps and tea mix, don't they?

Ironically, I actually wrote and organized this entire post in the sermon notes section of a church bulletin. The guy next to me thought I was having a great time taking notes on our message concerning fiscal responsibility and giving. Not so much.

Who Wears Short Shorts

I don't have enough material for a long post, because, well, I don't get out of the house much. Here are a couple shorts I wrote over the last few days:

I was at King Soopers earlier tonight, and I thought I saw someone I recognized. You know when you see someone you haven't seen in a couple years, and you make eye contact with them for just a split second longer than you normally would, so you can make sure you actually recognize them? Yeah, I totally did that, and it turned out not being who I thought it was. She probably thought I was some crazy guy who was stalking her or something. I'm sorry, Girl at King Soopers.

A guy left three messages on our machine that were all two-minute-long audio recordings of him not knowing what an answering machine is. He kept saying "Hello?" as if someone had actually answered, even though all he'd heard from our end is my sister's voice telling him that this is the Reeds', and that we can't come to the phone, and that we're sorry about that. He just kept on plugging away, clearly assuming that we were playing some elaborate prank on him. Wherever this man is from, the answering machine has not yet been introduced in his local general store. AT&T, you'd better get on that.

I recently figured out that I'm generally a pretty negative person. OK, I'll be honest, I'm a cynic, through and through. Here's an example of how cynical I am. I was half asleep having a sort of quasi-lucid dream in which I was watching a movie. Unfortunately, I was seated behind a seven-foot-tall woman in the theater, and I couldn't change seats. Talk about an inferiority complex...

My laptop thinks I'm hispanic. Every time I hook my iBook up to the internet, it takes me to my hompage, msn.com. Unfortunately, it redirects me to latino.msn.com every time. I don't know what I did to make my computer think I'm latino, but it's really starting to piss me off. What if I wanted to get the daily news? I took two years of Spanish early in high school, but I don't remember a thing from it. I'd be cut off from the world if I didn't have the ol' family pc to use. Stupid msn latino.

The Same Haircut

I was playing Hearts with my family two days ago with my official "Wedding Crashers" playing cards, and I realized that Owen Wilson has had the same hair style in every single one of his movies since "Bottle Rocket." It's the same exact hair style. And people say that the great method actors are gone. Owen Wilson had the same hair style at the Academy Awards as he did in "Shanghai Noon," "Shanghai Knights," "Zoolander," "Wedding Crashers," "The Life Aquatic," "Meet the Parents," "Meet the Fockers," "Starsky and Hutch," "The Big Bounce," "I Spy," "The Royal Tenenbaums," "Anaconda," and "Armageddon." Coincidence? I think not. The guy needs to fire his current hair stylist. Or maybe he's just bald, and that's actually a weave. If that's the case, he needs to get made fun of a whole lot more.

Somehow, I Don't Believe You

My parents employed several different tricks to get us to eat certain parts of food when we were kids. We were told to eat our potato skins "because that's where the vitamins are." That's the same reason we were given to eat our bread crusts and shrimp tails. "It's good for you," my mom would say. "It's roughage." To this day, I'm pretty sure my mom doesn't know what roughage is. If it's hard and tastes bad and is practically inedible, then it's roughage. Apparently, all the vitamins in an orange are really in the peel. Since I always base everything I eat on whether or not it has vitamins in it, I guess I've really been missing out by eating the juicy, sweet, flavorful part of an orange instead. Same with broccoli stalks, peanut shells, plum pits, pizza crusts, apple cores, Chipotle tortillas, and cereal boxes. We're missing out, people! We're not getting the nutrition, not to mention the roughage, that we so desperately need.

To My Neighbors

To all you people who think I don't notice when you look at me with those disdainful eyes when I walk out to my car at 3 in the afternoon in my pajamas, to all you jerks who drive down the middle of the street and then honk at ME when I play chicken with you, to all you morons who set up motion-sensing floodlights all around your house because we live in such a "sketchy" and dangerous whitebread neighborhood, to all you whiney parents who put up those signs that say "slow: children at play" because your children are too stupid or blind or crippled to get out of the way of a car driving 45 mph, to all you idiots who put up basketball hoops on wheels with no anchor whatsoever and then get all confused when a 70-mile-an-hour gust of wind knocks it over and bends the hoop, to all you girl-scout-cookie-selling mothers who do the work for your daughters who are just sitting in the car yelling "Mom, can we GO NOW?", to all you people who park on the street and then are shocked to wake up one morning to find a huge dent in your car from when it go hit by a guy who apparently thought streets were for driving and not parking, to the lady who won't shut her damn dogs up, to the families with kids who think the whole neighborhood is their own private driveway, to that jackass a few houses down from us who drives his little remote-controlled car in the middle of the street: I just wanted to let you all know that when I have enough money to hire fancy lawyers who'll get me off the hook by playing the race card, I'm going to personally hunt each one of you down and tear your bodies to pieces with a pair of needle-nose pliers. Then I'm going to burn down the homes of every single one of your family members and bankrupt the businesses where all your friends work. Have a nice day.

Xtra

I was stuck behind a big ol' piece of crap Chevy truck today, and I noticed that the owner had taken the time to actually make a hand-drawn "For Sale" sign. Clearly, this was a weathly, wealthy truckowner. He'd written that the truck he was selling had "tons of xtras." I can't beieve how lazy people have gotten. I'd bet my bottom dollar that the guy who wrote that didn't even know he was spelling anything wrong. He honestly believed that when your car has something that not all comparable models have, then it's called an "xtra." So sad. So very, very sad. He probably thinks you're supposed to spell other words like that. You know, like, xtreme or x-citing or xample or x-ema or bacon and x. I laughed out loud when I read it, but then it made me feel bad. I live in a country filled with retards. And not the cute, mumbling, easy-to-feel-sorry-for, drooling ones, either. I'm talking about the dangerous ones. The high-functioning ones. The ones who are allowed to walk around freely after dark. Those people scare the bejesus out of me. And I drive near and around them every day. They're allowed to teach classes at UCCS, they're allowed to handle my food with no gloves, they're allowed to make eye contact with me, they're allowed to come really close to me (and even brush up against my clothes *shudder*), and they're allowed to sit in a movie theater around all us normal people and yell at the screen and talk on their cell phones and laugh when there's nothing to laugh at. I must be having a bad day.

Oh, Let The Poor People Speak

I was so angry with the director and orchestra conductor continually interrupting all those poor millionaire actors and actresses during their acceptance speeches at the Academy Awards earlier tonight. They don't get enough time in the spotlight nowadays with such unimportant events as the war in Iraq selfishly hogging newstime. Why can't our actors and actresses finally be heard? I'd really like to know what they have to say on issues of foreign policy and national security. Some of them have gone through weeks and weeks of intense acting training, something Condoleeza Rice only WISHES she could boast. They deserve my undivided attention while they're up there on stage, receiving their masturbatory award that they themselves voted on. Why else would it be on TV? It's not like TV producers are selective about what gets broadcast. They're fair and balanced, because that's the way the world works and that's the way the government should force it to be. I can't get enough of George Clooney's self-aggrandizing speeches, nor would I ever say no to hearing more from the 90-year-old man who wrote Brokeback Mountain. These people are national treasures, and should be treated as such.

A Life Worth Memoir

I was taking a shower today and thinking to myself, "Why don't you have more adventure in your life?" I couldn't find an answer. All these people churning out memoirs at such a steady pace kinda makes me wonder how they got lucky with all the hardship and tough times the world has to offer. I, on the other hand, have the ability and the inclination to write my experiences down. I just don't have the kind of experiences that warrant an entire book. Or do I? I once watched my dad nearly fall thirty feet into the white water section of a river. He barely saved himself, and as a result, broke a couple ribs. That was pretty exciting, but only because I saw it with own eyes. On paper, it doesn't sound nearly as intense.

I want to be able to tell a story about that one time when my friends convinced me to rob a convenience store. Naked. Now THAT would make a good story. Why don't I have that? Everybody else has stories about when they were drinking in the woods and accidentally started a fire that burned nearly a quarter of the state of Colorado. OK, so maybe I made that up. I bet someone has a story like that. I don't even have any great stories about being beaten by an alcoholic father or sent to my room with no dinner by a bipolar mother. That's the kind of thing people want to read about. If I wrote stories about the time when my cousin and I danced in the street for money and ended up in jail by that evening, people would be asleep before I was finished. Or if I tried to write about the time when I ripped off the top of my big toe while riding a bike barefoot, most readers wouldn't be back.

I feel the need to impress. To shock. To regale you with crazy stories about my wild youth and how my mouth has nearly gotten me beat up about a dozen times. Unfortunately, all I have are stories about the guy I saw at the grocery store who looked just like Tucker Max, or yet another time when someone in on of my classes said something stupid. Personally, I blame the media. It's not my fault; it's MTV's.

I might as well just start making stuff up and become a fiction writer. That's all anyone will believe now, as we all learned from James Frey. Even the stuff that's real, like a man's battle with drug addiction, won't get noticed unless the author spices it up with a minor stint in prison, an impatient girlfriend, and a less-than-supportive family. Clearly, overcoming a heroine addiction is just not that impressive.

Maybe I should start my own cult. It worked out well enough for L Ron Hubbard. I'd just make up a story about how all humanity is just the manifestation of various facets of a sleeping wizard's personality, and we're currently living in his dream. If you simply donate enough money to my religious organization, meditate 22 hours a day, and eat enough lead-based paint products, then your essence will be heavy enough and substantial enough to pass through into the actual physical world and live forever in the mind of the wizard. If you meditate even more often and donate even more money, then you may stand a chance at getting removed from the wizard's mind in a controversial ego-ectomy and living for eternity in the glorious comfort of some hospital trash can. If not, then you simply cease to exist when the wizard wakes up. I'll make millions. There are plenty more stupid celebrities out there looking for "meaning." I'm sure one of them will be willing to donate $10 million to me to start this important breakthrough in self-help and the path to inner peace, or whatever.

I Think Blood Started Trickling Out Of My Ear

A couple days ago, I was sitting in class, in Male/Female Comm to be precise, and we were talking about attachment styles. They're just the styles we all have when we're involved in a romantic relationship. Anyway, the question, "Are we destined to stay in our particular style patterns?" came up. We decided that the answer was yes, to a certain degree, but that small changes can be forcibly made at the will of the individual. That's when it happened. A question so stupid, I think it made me go back in time a couple seconds. It was so moronic, it gave me physical pain. It was so retarded, my eye started to twitch and I began getting tunnel vision. This idiot in the back of the class (who never shuts up when the prof is talking anyway; I'm surprised she even knew what we were talking about) said, with all the confidence and seriousness she could muster in that lemon-sized brain of hers, "OK, so maybe we're destined, but DO WE HAVE TO?" I can only assume that her near-eighth-grade level education (thanks to our glorious public school system) so far had taught her that a question like that is severely deep and meaningful, even abstruse. I think she made that pithy little "Ooohh" sound under her breath to try and get the ball rolling, hoping we'd all follow suit and forget that she's practically a mongoloid and agree with her that her question was any better than a big, flaming pile of camel diarrhea. I was so blown away by the sheer stupidity of that question, I think my own IQ dropped fifteen points.

Dinner At Fargo's

I haven't eaten dinner at Fargo's in a long time. But that's because I haven't been 11 years old in a long time. It was actually pretty fun when we went last night, though. Some memebers of the Scribe staff went out to dinner last night to celebrate our editor-in-chief's birthday.

When we first got there, I saw the coolest guy I think I've ever seen. Ever. He was about 600 years old, and he was out on the town with his wife and friend. As they walked out of the restaurant, they seemed to be intensely engaged in a debate of some kind. As they walked by us, the subject of their conversation became clear: eyebrows. The friend kept insisting that if you trim eyebrows down, they'll grow back exactly the way they were before you trimmed them. "No no no," insisted the man, "I tried that once, and they DIDN'T GROW BACK THE SAME." "Aw, hogwash," came the reply. "They'll grow back just fine. YOU did it wrong." Then he proceeded to explain that when you wash your face, you're actually rubbing off precious eyebrow hairs. "Seriously, if you rub too hard, they'll just all fall off." I love old people. (Apparently, by the time they were outside the restaurant, they'd already changed subjects. By then, they were discussing the composition of belly button lint.)

The rest of the dinner was fun, though uneventful. Sometimes I wish I worked with some crazy pathological liar who told moronic stories about his youth as an advisor to Lincoln. Or that one time when he saw Lee Harvey Oswald eating a sandwich at the VERY TIME HE SUPPOSEDLY SHOT KENNEDY. Or when he once made over $100,000 in a single day of trading in the stock market, and then lost it all the next day by buying 40,000 items of Tupperware...

It was cool to celebrate a birthday party with friends. I don't do that too often. I think it has something to do with my "abrasive" demeanor. Or possibly my "sarcastic" sense of humor. Or it just might be my "complete lack of tact." Then again, maybe it's just my "tendency to insult people to the point of either being called an 'asshole' or just being disinvited to most parties." Oh, that reminds me, I finally got called an asshole by someone who reads my column at UCCS. For those of you keeping score at home, that's about 20 columns before being called an asshole. Honestly, that's a bit longer than I expected. It was inspired by a column that I didn't expect to generate any sort of negative feelings toward me: why the Winter Olympics suck. Interesting...