I can make my entries this week if I make sure I write at night, y’allz. All I gots to do is get my discipline on and come up with something funny and/or interesting each night around midnight, write it down, find a semi-related picture to accompany it, and post that junk. All for what, again? Oh right? because I have this website where I try to write something every day, I forgot for a minute.
I interviewed a guy for work the other day, and was surprised to find myself ultimately confident sitting on the other side of what I know to be a fairly daunting situation. The guy did great, knew what he should know and made good efforts at the stuff he didn’t. While I was talking to him, he asked me how long I’d been working at my current job. Man guys, you know I’ve been working here for four years? Despite a close brush with the FBI, it’s been pretty much smooth sailing. No, really? the FBI.
My brother and I had a good time this weekend reminiscing about stuff from the old days. We were watching something on TV when the channel did whatever it is channels do when they all of the sudden trump programming audio with a series of what sound like telephone key presses. Have you ever heard this? You’ll be watching TV, or, it used to happen a lot at the very beginning of VHS tapes – and out of nowhere it sounds like someone hit speed-dial on a phone. Beep-boop-beep-beep-beep-boop-boop. Anyway, he asked me if I remembered what I used to tell him about those beeps – and I had to laugh. I told him that it was the president’s phone number, and if you slowed it down enough you could make it out and dial up the president himself. He also remembered being scared to death whenever we had to take an “offramp” when on the freeway, because I’d apparently told him they were real “ramps” like from the Dukes of Hazard – and we’d have to launch into the air if we took one. Oh man, where did I get this stuff?
You know we actually skipped the last period of school one day so we could beat my brother home by a half hour or so. Just enough time to get a length of PVC pipe, some D-size model rocket engines, and the ignition switch for those engines. We took the aforementioned supplies, climbed on the roof, and fashioned a makeshift rocket-engine bazooka. We then lay in wait for Frank to come home from school, having removed the front door key from it’s regular hiding place under a log in the flower bed. As he walked up, we let loose – shooting engines as fast as we could load them into the pipe. Nevermind that they went every which way but straight after coming out of the pipe, it was the look on his face that made it worth it. No wonder he hated me.
The crown jewel of brotherly abuse though, would have to be 1994’s “Frank Day.” I was a senior in high school, and Frank was a freshman. My friends and I had been planning what Frank’s “freshman day” would be like for nigh on three years. For those who don’t know, “freshman day” is that day in high school where all the upperclassmen pick on and beat up the new blood. This particular year, freshman day fell on a Friday which also happened to be a football game Friday. Usually on football game Fridays, the “pep squad” would get together after school and make up a bunch of huge “Go Team!”-ish banners to hang around campus (y’know, to inspire the athletes and all). Some of my buddies and I got the great idea to sneak into this pep squad banner-making party and use their materials for our benefit. The result? We created a huge banner which read “Frank Day,” instead of “frehsman day.” I think there was some extra text at the bottom, but basically we wanted to hang it up so my brother would have the fear of God in him for what was coming.
Imagine Frank coming to school Friday morning and, amidst the “Rock ’em Raiders” fanfare, seeing his name plastered across a 20ft banner hanging from one of the 2nd story walkways for all to see. The banner did way more than we had intended, for it stirred the interest of a lot of kids in the senior class. Word got out that we planned to inflict Frank’s punishment on him as he walked home from the bus after school. The banner helped to whip everyone into a frenzy, and things got a little out of hand. I knew this when me and four buddies turned the corner onto my street after school let out? and saw what must have been fifteen cars, lining the streets near my house. There were people there I hardly knew, who had just come along for the festivities. As I saw the massive motorcade, I got a small idea of the fear my brother would feel as he would turn that same corner minutes later. The shaving cream and egg toting crowd erupted into cheers as little bro Frank and his bespectacled friend Isaac turned that corner – and as any sane persons would have, they both immediately turned tail and ran the opposite direction.
Yeah, we eventually caught up with ’em, egged ’em, creamed ’em, and even attempted to hogtie ’em before I, ever the sympathetic big brother, intervened and sounded the “he’s had enough” clarion. It was good, even if it only did serve to deepen the resentment Frank harbored towards me. As one senior put it in our “last will and testaments,”: “To Frank, I leave Frank Day of 1994, you could run, but you could not hide.”
Speaking of senior year “Last Will and Testament” stuff, reading these is cracking me up, we must have had some conspiracy to rip on my brother until the very end. Seems that quite a few of the seniors bequeathed strange items to one Frank. An orchestrated plan?, judge for yourself:
“To Frank a dozen jelly donuts.” -Mike K.
“To Frank: 44 gallon jug of chili, and meat too!” -Andy W.
“To FRANK, a life-long membership to Jenny Kraig (sic)” -Tracy R.
“To Frank a girdle.” -Dan R.
“To Frank: Keg of butter.” – Shawn O.
“To Frank, I leave Frank Day of 1994, you could run, but you could not hide.” – Jeremy D.
“To Frank, my legacy and my school.” -Dave
Man, we were awful. That’s all the guilt I can stand for one night guys, and it is nearly 1:30 in the AM for crap’s sake. What the heck am I doing? G’nite all, Dave out.
Also written on this day...
- west is the rest - 2019
- every breath & blink - 2010
- weekget endaway - 2009
- you see the balls on that thing? - 2007
- of music: 2006.5 - 2006
- treading water - 2005