Tag: story time

That Time I Embarrassed the Whole Human Race

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Here’s an embarrassing story,

So this one night, Dan and I were getting ready for bed and both boys were asleep. It was… maybe around midnight? I don’t remember the exact time, but I remember it was late because Dan and I were binging Hoarders and we both agreed that she shouldn’t have watched the last episode and were about to be exhausted the next day.

Anyway, it was late.

So I’m doing the nightly routine, I’m brushing my teeth, taking out my contacts, etc. etc. And I heard a familiar sound coming from the hallway outside of my bedroom. The sound that parents most dread in the middle of the night. The pitter patter of little feet. I was trying to make Dan go check instead of me. But he had ALSO taken his contacts out and is conveniently more blind than me, so it was my turn to do the dirty deed. I crossed my fingers and hoped that no one was sick and that this would be the only waking instance for the night.

I went into the hallway and it was kind of dim… but I could make out the outline of one of the kids. But they look so dang similar I wasn’t sure which one. Plus I had my contacts out, so I had to squint really hard as I inched closer.

And then I realized… this was not actually one of my kids in green pajamas… this was a teeny tiny green man.

I was like Okay… what in the actual H-E-double-hockey-sticks am I looking at here?? I blinked a couple of times. As if that would help. Eyes not working? Have you tried turning them off and on? That wouldn’t have worked for blind-as-a-bat Dan, he would’ve picked up whatever it was and put it in one of our kid’s beds.

So I’m face to face with this… whatever it is. I’m guessing a toy. But I had heard the footsteps. Distinctly childlike footsteps. So I get closer to the green thing, trying to see if my child is hiding behind it or something.

AND THE GREEN THING TALKS.

I jumped so freaking high it’s a wonder why I wasn’t immediately drafted into the WMBA.

“Hello?” Don’t know why I said that, I mean clearly it was a toy.

“Take me to your leader,” it responded.

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy so obviously this was a weird ate-cheese-before-bed kind of dream.

“Take me to your leader.”

So after a a failed attempt at slowing my heart rate I was like, “Okay… so that’s gonna be hard to do…”

“Why?” it asked.

“Because, well, first off… there’s not exactly a ‘leader of Earth’. There are hundreds of leaders of different parts of the world.”

The little green man rubbed it’s chin and went, “So it’s compartmentalized? Like a mini-mall?”

“Wut?”

“Take me to the leader of this room.”

I blinked rapidly because OKAY WHAT EXACTLY WAS HAPPENING HERE. Finally I shook my head and was like, “Uh… okay… sorry, I was not prepared to have an encounter with an extra-terrestrial today.”

His jaw dropped and he slapped his hand on his chest. “You can’t say that! That’s an extremely offensive term to my people!”

“Oh sorry, sorry, sorry!! I’m not accustomed with Martian culture.”

“We’re not even FROM Mars! Wow. WOW.”

And then I watched him teleport onto my front lawn where he started recording a rant video about me on his smart phone.

Sooooo… if an intergalactic war starts… That was my bad guys.

That Time at Pandemic Panda Express

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Here’s an embarrassing story I just remembered:

Sometimes (and what I really mean is everytime) I will get so flustered that I’m going to do something awkward and embarrassing that I END UP ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING AWKWARD AND EMBARRASSING. And this story was one of those times…

Once upon a pandemic we wanted Chinese food. So okay what’s the safest thing to do here? We have one Panda Express x miles away with a drive thru… but everyone and their convertible uses the Morris Farms Panda drive thru. So Dan put in a take out order for a different have-to-come-inside Panda establishment.

So we load up THE ENTIRE FAMILY in the minivan because THERE’S LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE TO GO AND DO. So family trip to the Panda Express it is. We drive up and park and then Dan hands me a mask and tells me to run in and get it.

I start PANIC SWEATING.

Not because I’m afraid of catching coronavirus.

But because I’m a giant woman-child who can’t do anything by herself.

“Wha-what? You want me to get it? But you usually get it! I don’t even know where to go! So where do you pick it up? Do you pay for it or… okay it’s prepaid… so it’s like just picking up the food and walking out!? Do I need my ID? How are they gonna know I’m your wife?? What if I do it wrong somehow? What if I get in trouble should I call you??”

Dan is getting seriously irritated at me because it’s not like I’m a navy seal securing the area, I’m literally JUST PICKING UP ORANGE CHICKEN AND WALKING OUT. 

So I go inside the Panda with my mask on… okay, I don’t know if you’ve been inside a Panda Express in the past year, but they have this military set up. They use their own tables and chairs to BLOCK YOU into the line. And then they very clearly have where you’re supposed to stand marked out on the floor. So as soon as you walk in through the door you’re ushered into the line.

But… okay… I just want to get my take out.

I can literally see the white plastic bag all tied up on a rack WAY at the other end of the line. Like a cheese at the end of the maze. But how am I supposed to get there? Am I really supposed to CUT THE LINE to pick up the food that’s already been ordered. Get my germs into everyone’s personal bubble as I push past them? The idea of cutting the line is basically spiking my blood pressure. I can’t even ask for extra napkins at most places because I do not want to bother anyone. I mean just the very idea that I could be SLIGHTLY inconveniencing someone. Or NOT OBEYING THESE PANDA SAFETY RULES.

So I wait in line.

I can see the food over there getting cold… Dan’s texting me like “R U SERIOUS WHAT’S TAKING YOU SO LONG YOU JUST HAVE TO PICK IT UP.” So now I’m having double anxiety about slightly inconveniencing the Panda Express patrons or slightly inconveniencing my husband by making him wait five minutes.

ALRIGHT FINE. I slide past people in line with about a thousand apologies, get the take out bag, run out of there as if I’m a Pink Panther robber with a briefcase full of jewelry. And I’m dying in the most dramatic way you can think of. And if you’re super annoyed and confused reading this… what’s it like to not have anxiety? Is it nice? Is it peaceful? Can you just walk into stores and pick up Orange Chicken at your leisure? How is that kind of power? I bet you sleep great.

I’m so flustered that I’m just power walking through the parking lot, having a pre-argument with my husband inside my mind. “Yeah, well, you shoulda SEEN IT. The tables and chairs were BLOCKING US ALL INTO THIS ONE LITTLE LINE.”

I get to the car and pull on the handle. Locked. I’m flustered and irritated by my pretend argument so I tap ferociously on the window and point down at the car lock. THEN HE STARTED TO DRIVE AWAY! And I chased him down so angrily. Tapping harder on the window. HELLO! DON’T BE A BUTTHOLE JUST BECAUSE IT TOOK ME A SOLID MINUTE TO WORK UP THE COURAGE TO CUT THE LINE.

And then a stranger rolled down her window. BOISTERIOUSLY laughing.

“I’VE DONE THAT!” she yelled at me.

I really just tried to get into the wrong car. Um. It didn’t even look like my car. Hardly even in the same color palette. So not only did I just spend X amount of minutes FREAKING OUT over the Panda Express rules. (As if the Seinfeld Soup Nazi works at Panda Express.) BUT I ALSO TRIED TO GET INTO A STRANGER’S CAR AND GOT IRRITATED AT HER AS SHE PULLED AWAY.

I slunk back to my ACTUAL car with my tail in between my legs. Dan is laughing and probably also like… k… I’m married to this hot mess wtf.

And yeah.

So, that’s it. I could hardly function before the pandemic. And now it’s just one weird social distance freak out at a time.

The Parking Meter Dork as told by Alex Ness

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What happens when you meet a poet on the internet and he tells you some random guy’s embarrassing story? YOU POST IT ON YOUR BLOG OF COURSE!

 

parking meters

 

THE BIGGEST DORK a Twitter DM composed by Alex Ness

“The biggest dork ever was a guy who refused to believe he was a dork.

He would go to lectures (this was back in college) and after a guest lecturer would discuss a famous epic movie, he’d get in line to ask questions and he’d drop the “Where do you get your ideas from” bomb. People would groan any time his hand would go up, and tell him, “You dork”.

So, despite his being called a dork he didn’t see it.

We were walking downtown on a Sunday night in late summer (before the new semester was to begin.) The roads are nearly empty and he starts asking why he was a dork. He perceived dork to mean clumsy, which of course, fits but is by no means the complete example. So he looks at the three others of us, and says “Could a dork do this?”

And he starts leapfrogging road parking meters.

Every five feet he’d leap and do it well. He had a rhythm. It didn’t look dorky at all. Until he leaped before he looked and on his way down to his normal landing position he saw a former parking meter shaft, cut off, at about 4 feet tall, and about 2 inches from his crotch. He screams in a child’s most high pitch fear voice, he can only slightly adjust his descent, and he gets hit straight in his family jewels. And for the next two hours his voice was high pitch, and he was crying.

I didn’t laugh, much, because I thought he ruptured his scrotum or individual nuts.

I offered to take him to ER. He cried for two days almost and told everyone how he was so great leaping the meters. Well, he neglected to tell the whole story, and while I avoided laughing at him and others finished the story, he couldn’t see how he slam-dunked the last chance to not be seen as a dork.

He was not only a dork, he was the Dork King.”

 

Alex Ness is a writer of prose, poetry, and sequential fiction (comics). From the state of Minnesota he shivers and writes in the basement of his home, covered in cats, and drinking Diet Mountain Dew. He loves myth, legends, and the power of words to tell epic and universal truths. His work can be found here https://www.amazon.com/Alex-Ness/e/B00TYW7724