McDonald's and Darwin

Geez, blog writing is a bitch. Now I am getting dinged because I don't post pictures and my prose is too dense. Sigh.

So this is for Christine...













So it is 2003 and I've been out of work for a VERY long time and quite broke and unhappy. I have a few dollars cash that is all I have that is not tied up some which way and I decide go to McDonald's to buy the cheapest hamburger for lunch I can.

I am standing in line and miserable and whilst in line I become aware of these noxious yard monsters and their intensely awful house frau mother. What draws my attention is the puling of all three...

"Mommy, I want..." in a hellish chorus from the midget snot machines and a nasal whine from ol' ma as she confronts our order taker.

"Well I need a minute to decide..."

WTF?

"What have you been doing the last ten minutes of this grueling exercise of people herding?", I think to myself. But before I can answer the voice in my head, Hagatha starts in on the poor cashier.

"You know the shakes are a rip off? If you buy a large shake, the price per ounce is less than a small shake. What if I want a small shake? The price should be the same." Not content with our cashier's weak "if you insist" smile, Haggy presses her point.

"Don't you think?" A high pitched nasal assault that certainly has the local dog's ears bleeding.

"It's a total rip off. I can't believe it. I think that your company thinks we are all stupid. Don't you agree?"

Having stood in this line for at least ten minutes and being hungry and tired and broke, I step forward.

"Pardon me, but if you think you are being ripped off, perhaps you should order something else?" I say somewhat evenly despite my desire to bludgeon her with a "Happy Meal".

She turns slowly to me and sizes me up.

"Well, EXCUSE me, but if I want your opinion, I'll ask for it."

Shazam! She told me. My god, the internal bleeding!

"Well, EXCUSE me," I acidly replied, "if I was to give you my opinion. I would have to say, judging from you and your spawn, Charles Darwin was wrong."

She was taken off kilter, noticeably shocked by my obnoxious, but clearly educated insult. She then huffed, puffed and dragged her awful, loud and whiny children out of line. As I watched, I noticed the rest of the line did not disapprove.

I stepped up to place my measly burger order. The cashier looked at me smiling and she kind of mouthed the words "it's on the house."

I ate like a king that lunch. Or at lease like Mayor McCheese.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

A truly worthy blog for Joel.

So this is the twentieth anniversary of one of the best cautionary tales I have. Sometimes in the retelling, I break it into smaller portions, but for you, I give you the entirety. Some I remember, some of it I was told (you'll see why in a bit).

Setting The Stage

It is 1989 and I am 23 years old. I have been working as a computer lab assistant for a few years at Seattle Central Community College and have been a teacher's assistant for a woman who would be my friend for many years after, Pam.

Pam taught a desktop publishing course for the graphic designers and I was her flunky. I thought it was a grand way to meet hot graphic designers and I had a lot of fun. But there was this one weekend where things got a bit out of control.

Now those who know me today probably don't imagine me as a young, slender man, but I was. At 23, I would be in the best shape I ever was in, clocking in at a whopping 155 and wearing my 30x30 jeans. However, I was a bit of a lightweight in the drinking department (a skill I grew into as I grew). So this one weekend in May, there was a college function where my division was celebrating something or other. This was a Friday night and Saturday morning, Pam and I were giving a presentation in Tacoma to local printers and design houses on using our students as apprentices.

The College Event

So Friday night we are at this function, Pam, myself and this little Japanese woman named Jeanette.

There was boxed wine.

I had not eaten.

I awoke at 5:30am Saturday morning in my clothes at my mother's house.

This is what I am told happened. I even still have the scars, so I am sure it went down as I am told.

So apparently I had more than one glass of wine (I remember the one) and decided that after an hour or so of drunken mingling, I needed to liven up the joint a bit. This manifested itself in my declaring my undying school spirit to all in the room and crawling into the college president's lap as he sat in some chair, to give the stately African-American gentleman a kiss on the forehead and to try to enlist everyone in a round of "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow". Pam at this point, decides to extricate me from this spectacle, apologizing profusely for my lack of sobriety.

Apparently I resist leaving, not having spread as much cheer as I wanted, so Jeanette, a martial arts girl puts the hurt on my wrist to coax me along. Somewhere along the line we meet Jack, Pam's other teaching assistant who is roped into stuffing me into Pam's brand new Thunderbird. Somewhere along the way I inform Pam that I am going to barf in her car and she whips it over to the side and commands me out of the car. So out I go, but unfortunatly for me, Pam has pulled alongside a rather steep embankment and not knowing any better, I step off into space and proceed to roll down the embankment full tilt only to stop having become wedged underneath a sports car that was parked at the base. I guess I was wedged pretty good, because I still wear the scars where I was drug out from under the car by my arms.

Not knowing what to do with me, they took me to my mom's house. My mom is cool. She doesn't freak or anything, but does get a little miffed when I crawl into her downstairs bathroom to pray to the porcelain gods and get myself wedged between the toilet and the wall and somehow rip the toilet out of place in my attempt to get free.

I have a dim memory my mom's voice telling me to just go to sleep.

The Next Day

So at 5:30 am I awake up myself again and feeling like death warmed over. Strangely I am so hung over that I am beyond hung over. I put myself together because I am supposed to be in Tacoma. I collect my car at the college and go to Tacoma to set up Pam's presentation for her with the A/V and computer equipment.

The look on Pam's face when she saw I was actually, not only alive, but functional was one I'll not forget. Absolute disbelief. But I got her stuff done. I don't stay but head back home to crash. I tell her that when she gets back to town, I'll collect the equipment.

She calls me on breaks to tell me how horrible it is going and how she is going nuts, because she has enlisted this student to help her and the student is a bit of a whack job. Being Seattle Central, student whack jobs are a dime a dozen, but this one, Skye is a major leaguer. She is what I'd call now O.C.D. meets A.D.D. A totally goofy, twitchy woman about 40 who you know is destined to turn into the little old lady with 87 cats. And she's a talker. A real motor mouth.

Well, late in the afternoon, Pam calls me and says we need to hookup down at McCormick's (her favorite bar) and I need to cheer her up. I say sure and head down. Well, what I didn't know was that on my way down, Pam would start chatting up this guy, Dr. Dave and was quite happy to go off with him. She just had one loose end: Skye. Now, Pam is no idiot, she was going to pawn Skye off on me to entertain.

So I walk in and am greeted to the sight of Pam chatting up this dude with her back literally to Skye and Skye tormenting the bartender, Fred (the coolest barkeep ever). Pam ignores me for the most part as Skye locks onto the fresh meat.

Yak, yak, yak... I am trying to get Pam's attention, but Skye won't stop. Fred senses my dismay and pours me a pint. I am just about to enjoy my pint when another nasty Skye-ism starts. Not only does she talk a lot, she sprays while doing it. My beer falls victim almost instantly. I am just staring at my beer in shock, when Fred smoothly takes it away and has a fresh one waiting. I move my beer further away, but in a really animated moment Skye is able to nail it again. Again Fred saves the day. This time I insert myself between the Spray Queen and my beer. After a few moments, Fred hands me a napkin. I tipped Fred big ever after.

Finally after being ignored by Pam and spit on by Skye, I demand Pam's keys so I can load my car with the school equipment and get the hell out of Dodge. I should note at this point, if you had not guessed, Skye was a bit bombed.

So Pam tells Skye to give me a hand. Skye trundles out after me and helps me load the car. As I close the trunk, Skye launches into some weird lecture on Seattle architecture, pointing out the various downtown buildings. I nod politely and she has me look up at one of the nearby buildings. As I am doing so, she spins me around, puts me in this anaconda hug and proceeds to literally suck my face. It was like French-kissing a squid. I managed to squirm free and say something to the effect of "I am not that kind of boy!" meaning I still had a will to live.

I quickly escaped, Pam went off with Dr. Dave and who the hell knows what happened to Skye. But she turned up later so it could not have been too bad.

Pam and I had many more adventures, but I was always able to get her to beg forgiveness by growling in a low tone "Dr. Dave".