Tag: story

The Time I Tried to Teach Myself How to Yodel

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I can’t get enough of the video of the yodeling Walmart kid. Buuuut at the same time, it’s been kind of bringing up a lot of repressed memories…

Mostly this one.

I just randomly ‘get into things’. Like when I tried to memorize Hamlet. Or when I tried to teach myself how to dance to house music. Or when I spent like two months watching Cleopatra documentaries every day. I just get really excited about niche stuff.

So one day I was like, yo, I’m going to learn how to yodel.

I hadn’t really imagined the Hank Williams covers at Walmart. Mostly, I wanted to do like an Appalachia mountain kinda thing that I could use to call my kids to dinner with.

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Anyways, so in case you didn’t know… yodeling is switching back and forth in between your lower register and falsetto voice. Your voice makes a “break” and that’s where the yodeling sound comes from.

So basically, the way to practice yodeling is to do these weird freaking scales and strain your voice like Scooby Doo after he’s had some bad Taco Bell.

eeeeh EEEH! eeeh EEEH! eeeh EEEH! And you can’t do it quietly either or your voice won’t break as well. Okay… yeah…

Well, around this time I was asked to help clean my local church building. It was like eight in the morning on a Saturday and the other people they asked were young single adults with lives. So obviously, it was just me that showed up.

Just kidding. It was me and the guy who asked me.

So I got to work cleaning my half of the church building. The classrooms. All by myself. But hey! That wasn’t such bad news. I mean, golly gee, what a PERFECT time to practice my yodeling scales.

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I straight up practiced yodeling for an hour. THAT – IS – NOT – A – JOKE. I started to lose my voice before I finally finished up.

I wound the cord up around the vacuum and hauled it out into the hall… when I saw this other GUY. This effing latecomer that had UNBEKNOWNST TO ME been helping me clean my side of the church building. The whole time. The. Whole. Hour.

Oh my gosh, can you imagine this poor dude waking up early to clean a church and having to listen to this girl go “Eeeeeeeeeeuugughghh! Eeeeeeeeeuuughghghg!” for an entire hour. OH MY GOSHHHHHHH.

I think I honestly could have just buried down into the ground like a mole. I DIED.

Stopped yodeling after that traumatic experience I assure you.

Accidentally Feeling Up a Football Player

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Hi, welcome to last week’s blog this week. Does anyone even notice stuff like that? Oh well, here’s your embarrassing story…

I never really had crushes on jocks growing up. I think probably because they weren’t geeky enough for my taste. But I guess that’s some typical girl thing? I mean I only see it in EVERY SINGLE TEEN ROMCOM EVER.

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Well anyways I guess after seeing the personality-less jock trope for the 500th time, it got me really thinking… Like, have I ever had that kind of crush though? I had to push through a lot of band geek / theater boy memories but then I REMEMBERED THIS THING THAT HAPPENED.

I can safely say that no, I’ve never really been that interested in a sportsy guy. But there was this one football player that I recognized to be quite a pretty man.

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For the sake of this story we’ll call him… ‘Stallion’ haha. (I never had enough of a crush on him to make up a proper codename at the time.)

So Stallion and I always had the same gym class. It was weird. Like no matter what grade, semester, A day B day, we always got put into the same gym class… maybe the school had to make up for my lack of physical skill by putting in an athlete like iono.

Anyways, we’re playing flag football. Woo hoo *sarcasm*. As soon as I left my high school theater room I was pretty much out of my elemenet for any other skill/interest. So just like any other boring gym day I casually stayed the furthest away from the game, while still trying to look like I was actually doing something.

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I was having a great time daydreaming UNTIL Stallion intercepts the ball and starts running in my direction for a touchdown. He had red tags and I had yellow tags. Which meant that NOW instead of avoiding the game it was my responsibility to pull the flag off this guy that played for the school team.

I made the most half butt attempt to stop him. I reached out and ran like four steps. See, coach? Go sports! Don’t fail me okay? He made the touchdown. (Big shockeroo there)

He walks towards me and he says something like, “Hey you almost got me.” Yeaaaah *shifty eyes*. But this is like the first time I’ve ever even heard Stallion’s VOICE so I’m intrigued enough to engage in this conversation.

As I took a step towards him, I stepped into a freaking hole. My toe caught the side and my knees just buckled from under me.

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Honestly, if I had just fallen on my face that would’ve been okay. I would have gladly taken that over what happened instead. Instead, Stallion reached out and tried to stop me from falling.

It wasn’t a good catch at all. He just kinda limply held me in his arms as my knees continued to buckle. AND the thing is that when you feel yourself fall you put your arms out in front of you right? Yeah. So I put my arms out in front of me as he stepped forward and ‘caught’ me.

My palms slid all the way down his freaking torso. Slowly too. Creepily slowly as I fell. Like if I had been in a cartoon it would have made a very loud squeegee sound.

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The game is just halted as everyone watches me seductively slide down this poor boy.

My friends even asked later if I had tripped on purpose to be able to feel down his rippling abs. It was all horrible. I spent the rest of the semester pretending to forget my gym shoes and hiding in the supply closet.

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Trapped by a Parade of 2,000 Naked Bicyclists (No Joke)

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My parents had this fun incentive that every time one of their children graduated from high school, that graduate got to pick where we went for our summer vacation. And while the limit of my imagination was California, my little brother chose to go to Europe.

June 2014, we were in London: me, my immediate family, a couple of my brother’s friends and my then fiancee Daniel.

We were scheduled to tour the River Thames, which I was particularly excited for because we were going to float past the recreation of the Globe Theater. And, hey, Shakespeare is sorta my thing. I was even IN an award winning Shakespearean play that summer so *sniffs and tosses hair over both shoulders like a snob*.

I was in the hotel getting ready to leave. When Dan calls me from outside.

DAN: Hey… There’s something really weird going on out here.

VAL: Oh, yeah?

DAN: There’s a big crowd of people… I think it might be a protest or something…

DAN: … … You should come down here.

When my family and I stepped out of our hotel we were greeted by a huge crowd of butt naked people standing around with bikes.

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So I guess the World Naked Bicycle Ride is a thing. (Don’t click on that unless you want to see nudies. NSFW. You’ve been warned.)

Us kids had a pretty good laugh at it, as my conservative parents were trying to herd our wandering eyes down to our river boat tour. We were only one crosswalk away from the dock before we found out that the streets were completely closed off.

So here we were caught watching the craziest parade ever. Thousands of naked dangling bodies zipping by us. Some were on rental bikes, which was… not something I wanted to think about too hard.

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(You know. In a weird way it was a confidence booster. In our society we never really see any ‘average-looking’ naked people. If you feel like you don’t look that great naked. Hey. Neither does anyone else. And I’ve seen a small towns worth of naked people to know. Everyone’s got rolls and flab. Guys are pretty much the same size… well okay, there was one guy that was “particularly brave”.)

Anyways, my mom is SUPER pissed off that we can’t cross the street. We’re about to miss our river boat tour because we can’t get around this moving wall of butt-cracks on bicycles. She WIGS THE FREAK OUT and just FLIPPING steps out INTO the middle of the parade.

tuc3g

The guy has to squeeze his hand break and like skidded on his bare feet to stop from hitting my mom. Four to five people behind him are swerving and stopping and almost falling over. I thought for sure I was about to see my mother buried by an avalanche of a$$. She’s like waving us all to cross the street after she had just created the most awkward pile up in history.

That was embarrassing AF, but we made the river tour.

I feel like I can count that as one of the craziest things that has ever happened to me. I mean seeing a thousand lil’ Johnsons in one day is up there. I post crazy stories every month now, so if you haven’t subscribed yet, you may want to consider it.