THE STINKER

It’s rush hour and I’m running to catch a subway.  I dodge the usual mopes without being overly rude and get down to the platform.  I’m dreading this ride because I know all of the cars will be completely packed and I’m going to need to put on my ugly face and muscle my way on. 

When I first started this routine, subway cars would come into the station and the people inside would always be packed in like sardines.  They’d all be jammed up against the doors with their faces plastered on the glass.  They look like they’re going to explode out onto the platform when the doors open.

But they don’t.  They just stare at you with incredulous eyes; and without saying a word, they’re screaming at you, “Are you crazy, where do you think you’re going to FIT!?!”

So this went on for a couple of days until I realized that I couldn’t afford to keep missing trains.  Hence the “Ugly Face” was born. Make that: ugly face, coupled with the “I don’t give a crap” attitude.

One day, I’m waiting for a train and to my complete amazement; a car pulls up in front of me and it’s practically empty.  This is a great feeling…it’s almost like winning the lottery.  No battles getting on, I even see open seats…this is going to be great.  The door opens up and I jump on as quickly as possible (pre-conditioned, it’s wonderful always being on edge).  The door closes behind me, and instantaneously I realize why the car is empty. 

A vile odor hits me in the face like a sledgehammer.  I turn and see the source.  It’s a “Stinker.”  One of New York’s finest homeless.  He’s camped out on the subway car seats.  This guy looks like he’s been outdoors fermenting for a couple of eternities.  I look at each end of the subway car and there are people jammed up against the doors trying to escape, but there’s no place to go.  I’m trapped too.  I’m now wondering how long I can hold my breath.  I’m sure if I inhale that’ll be it.  I’ll probably get light headed and pass out.  I’ll wake up wearing the bagman’s clothes and he’ll have my suit on. 

I now have a keen appreciation for what the soldiers in WWI went through when they were exposed to mustard gas.  Time is basically at a stand still now as the subway creeps along.  I’m thinking to myself, this stench is so terrible, it’s got to be permeating through my clothes, into my hair (what’s left of it).  It’s probably even seeping into  the pores of my skin.  I’ll probably need one of those body scrubs with a metal brush, the kind they give you once you’ve been exposed to radioactive material. 

And nobody says a word, they just stare at you.  It’s kind of like some Roman Spectacle, “There he is people, thrown into the subway car with a live Stink Bomb.  I wonder how long he’ll last?”

The subway finally makes it to another stop; I stagger out onto the platform followed by an invisible death cloud.  I realize it’s time to go home and change when I get into my office elevator and everyone in the car looks at me like I just pooped myself.  I didn’t like that suit anyway.

The Stalker is "IN" the House

One morning my wife had a couple of her girlfriends over for breakfast.  A minute or two after they left our house the phone rings.  My wife looks at the number on caller ID and its her own cell phone calling.  So she figured that one of the girls mistakenly picked up her phone and was calling to say she’d be returning it. 

When she picks up the phone there’s heavy breathing and a rustling noise on the other end.  So she hangs up.  But it calls back again, this time more of the same heavy breathing.  (Oh and before you decide to jump ahead, it’s not me)

My wife is starting to get a little freaked out, so she hangs up the phone again.  But Lord only knows why, she decides to call her cell phone back.  I guess she wanted to give the “perv” a piece of her mind.  (My wife will on occasion, make it her job to try to catch up with the raving lunatic on the road that has just cut her off and let him know how she feels…During these situations I’ve always found it works best if you just calmly turn to your spouse and ask a very simple question, “What do you think you’re doing?”)

As it turns out, her cell phone is ringing, and the ringing is “IN” the house…like coming from a room right off the front door. 

It only gets better.  (As I hear this story in my mind I’m banging my head against a wall thinking, “Just Run From the House, Run as Fast as You Can!”)  Instead of running from the house like a mad woman, she decides to walk towards the front door to “investigate.”

Phone is still ringing, she turns the corner into our den and there…is the Hairy Beast (our dog Murphy).  He’s got his smelly snout in my wife’s coat pocket scrounging for left over treats.  As my wife enters the room, he quickly pulls his head out of her coat pocket… with the cell phone in his mouth. 

At this point Murphy’s probably thinking, “Crap, if I only knew how to dial 911...because I think I’m going to need it in a couple of seconds.”

Flying Skis

After a long cold day of skiing my son and I were at the mini van hastily preparing for our two and a half hour ride home.  It was freezing out and we were in a hurry…big surprise huh?  I put the skis up on top of the roof rack and my cell phone rings.   I reach into my ski jacket, work through a number of layers and get to the cell phone before it stops ringing.  It’s my bride and she wants to know how things are coming and when she could expect us.  I’m my usual charming self and rush her off the phone.  I race to the back of the van, get my ski boots off and take the rest of my ski clothing off so that I have a comfortable ride home.  We jump back into the van throw on the heat and head out.

I get about a ¼ mile out of the parking lot and question myself…”Did I close down the latches on the ski roof rack?”  I think to myself, “I must have, what kind of a Block Head wouldn’t close the latches down?”  And to reinforce my belief, I’m thinking I probably would have heard the skis rumbling around up there.

I’ve now been driving for about 20 minutes and I’m getting on a significant highway…and its still bugging me.  Did I close the latches?  Now I see a service turn off from the highway.  For a split second I think maybe I should just pull over and check it out to be sure.  Nope, I’lI have none of that.  I’m making good time, its toasty warm in the van now, who needs to stop?  At this point I’m thinking to myself, I’m going over 65 miles an hour, if the skis weren’t locked down, there’s no way they’d be staying on top of the van.  I’m also thinking if they weren’t locked down, I’d be getting the “High-Sign” from other drivers letting me know I had an issue up top.  Kind of like in the movie “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” when John Candy gets onto the highway with Steve Martin going in the wrong direction...and people are trying to warn him by screaming at him, “You’re going the Wrong Way!”  Candy or “Dell Griffith’s” classic return line, “Oh how do they know where we’re going, they’re drunk.”   Seconds later he gets squished between two 18 Wheelers.

We’ve now been driving for 40 minutes.  We’re merging onto a stretch of highway and its six lanes wide now.  If you want to keep up with the 18 Wheelers you need to be going at least 80 miles per hour.  I finally think to myself, “They must be locked down because there’s no way….”

With that last thought I heard “Lift-off”.  I look in the rearview mirror and see four skis bouncing down the highway behind me.  At that point I felt like if I had put myself in the same category with block heads, I’d be insulting the block heads.  The absolutely only saving grace was that I didn’t impale anyone; otherwise this blog would probably have been written from Cell Block C at one of the charm schools in PA.

I pull over to the left hand median.  I tell my son to stay put and I get out of the van and go search for slightly used skis.  I come across my son’s rental skis.  They’re actually still locked together and look pretty good.  Then upon further inspection I notice the back end of the skis are shattered…And that my friends is why we opt for the rental insurance.

My skis were another story.  I run further down the highway and find them.  They’re separated and a couple of lanes deep.  (First, you have to understand I really liked these skis…a lot.  I got them the season after the disintegrating ski boot incident, and they had been bery bery good to me.)   It’s dark, freezing cold, and cars and trucks are whizzing by at mach speeds.  I’m trying to time my run out into traffic to retrieve my property.  What it reminded me of was a Movie from 1999 that starred Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy call, “Bowfinger.”  There is a scene in the movie where Steve Martin is directing a “C” movie. He has Eddie Murphy’s mentally challenged character run back and forth across the LA Freeway, almost giving him a heart attack.  Just as I’m about to make my move, two large Tandem Tractor Trailers run over my skis.  They ran over them so hard, they crushed and ripped the bindings right off the skis.  (So, like the ski boots from a couple of years before, this is a lost cause.) Then naturally I wake up and think, “Oh yeah, I have a wife and two kids; and one of them is a couple of hundred feet up the highway.”  I get back to the van and have a most enjoyable ride home.  (When my son is grown and in therapy, this trip will be talked about in great detail.)

The first guy I went to for new skis lost the sale because he couldn’t  keep the smirk off his face.

Of Mice and Men

So ‘just” a few years ago I was home visiting my Mom.  It was winter and my Mom had a practice of using the unheated garage as a second refrigerator.  The left over Christmas Turkey was sitting out there.  I came out into the garage a day later and noticed bite marks on the Turkey carcass…large bite marks.

I get out my ruler, check the radius of the bite marks, do some less than scientific calculations and come to the grim realization that we have a rat that’s about two and a half feet long feasting in our garage.  I quickly go to the hardware store and ask how large are the very largest traps they carry…I need something that can handle an animal with nuclear proportions.

I get the traps home and bait them up with hunks of cheese.  Naturally one of the traps snaps on my hand practically crippling me.  This actually turned out to be a good thing because the anger helped me overcome my extreme fear of having to deal with the King Kong of Rats. 

I check the traps the next day.  Nothing.  Even worse, practically all of the cheese is gone.  So not only am I dealing with a large predator, but he’s also got a high IQ.  I suggest to my Mom that maybe she wants to sell the house.  She asks me knowingly if I’ve solved our problem out in the garage.  I wince and tell her its time for Plan B.  The only problem was I didn’t have a Pan B.  I walk back out to the garage, open the door and there he is staring me in the face.  He’s brown and white and very large, I could have easily put a saddle on him.  Think Ben on Steroids.  I close the door quickly and give a good friend a call for some help.  My friend Mike has a high-powered pellet gun, actually a pistol.  Cranked up this pistol can put a metal pellet through a 3/8” piece of plywood.  Mike will be right over…I’m feeling better.

One major issue was our one car garage had about 20 years of crap jammed in the back where Ben Sr. has been living.  So its not like he’s going to come out and give us a clear shot.   The plan was that I’d start pulling things out of the garage with Mike standing ready, pistol cocked.  At one point Mike is looking behind himself, towards the garage door opening.  I ask him what he’s doing.  He says, “I just want to make sure I have a clear path out in case he tries to flank me.”

We’ve been at this now for over 20 minutes pulling things out.  I’ve discovered his bachelor pad.  He’s got food from the last three major holidays stashed away, some comfortable bedding, and I think he might have also figured out how to get my old 8-Track player to work.  It’s very tense now as there are only four car tires left up against the back of the concrete garage wall.  I pull two tires away and still nothing.  I get to the second to the last tire and he appears…and he is PISSED.

What happens next probably occurred in less than 5 seconds, although it seemed like an eternity.  (Does anyone remember the Monty Python movie where the Knights are given the order to dispense with the rabbit; but shortly afterwards one of the most famous Monty Python lines is spoken by the head of the Knights, “RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!!!)

There is a frenzy of metal pellets being sprayed along the concrete wall of the garage as Ben runs back and forth at a very scary speed.  To make matters worse we hadn’t exactly thought through what would happen once we started firing the metal pellets against concrete at close range.             Plan B has gone horribly wrong.  We're now standing in a shower of “friendly fire“ as the metal pellets are ricocheting all over the garage.  In between all of the screaming and hands covering faces, Ben Sr. escapes out of the garage unharmed.

After checking body parts and making sure we could still see with both eyes, we retire for some well deserved beverages.  I know though in the back of my mind that he’ll be back.  And I was right.  The next day the only things left in the garage were the four traps, and one of them was closed on X-Ben Sr.  Victory was mine.