Halloween

I always hated the dentist who lived behind me growing up, if for no other reason than for the crap he'd give out at Halloween - an orange, a toothbrush and toothpaste. I don't know why I even bothered stopping there except that the orange provided a nice projectile to hurl at his house.

Now there's this news story.

This dentist needs to be kicked in the balls. Then the parents who force their kid to sell this mustachioed creep their candy need a swift kick to their genital region as well.

Among the obvious problems I have with this story:

• A "dollar per pound" of candy? A g--d d--mn hershey bar cost $1.69, and this asshole is giving some oppressed little bastard a five dollar bill for what must have taken hours of work to obtain?


• Read the last line: "Candy must be unopened." Why? SO YOU CAN EAT IT, YOU PIECE OF SH--???!!

/end of rant.

How to Tame a Cougar

It was a Friday afternoon and I stopped at the local Ace Hardware to pick up some woodchips for my planned weekend BBQ.  As I hopped out of my truck I noticed that quite a lovely “Cougar” was giving me the eye…and on this day, I couldn’t really blame her because I was suited up from an all day corporate meeting and looking good.

As I got to the entrance of the store, said Cougar was right behind me so I politely held the door open for her so she could enter the store – And to allow me give her an eye pat-down of my own.

I made my way to the outdoor section to grab a bag of woodchips and I noticed that my lady friend was still staring at me.  Now, I’m a married man, but it is nice to be stalked every once in a while just to confirm that you still got it.

She looked as if she was working up the courage to approach me for a conversation as we both made our way to the cashier.  Me, being the gentleman that I am, allowed her in front of me so that she could check out first.  Once she received her receipt she finally was revved up enough to strike up a conversation with me.

“Excuse me, but how can you live with yourself when you are polluting our environment everyday by driving that massive truck.”

Now this caught me completely off guard.  I was somewhat expecting a “Desperate Housewives” moment in my mind and all I got was my ego completely slashed and attacked for driving an anti-environment vehicle.

My feelings where hurt and the only rebuttal that I could think of was, “How would you feel about picking woodchips out of your ass for the rest of the weekend?”

She did an immediate about-face and strut her tree hugging stuff right out the door with no reply.

The cashier could barely contain his laughter as he completed my order.

At least his day was made.

Walk of Shame

This past Easter, my wife and I went to visit my parents in North Alabama.  It was an ordinary visit with no spectacular events to speak of - until Saturday morning.

My wife and I attempted to sleep in due to the fact that we were on vacation, but with our internal clocks set on Eastern Standard Time, we only made it until 7:30.  Instead of attempting to extend my slumber, I decided to go for a quick run.

Not knowing my parent’s neighborhood all that well, I decided just to go 1.5 miles down the main drag and return on the same path – this decision ended quite poorly for me.

I had worked up a decent sweat about halfway through my run and had begun to make my way back towards my starting point, and there it hit me.  I was going to be sick, and not vomit sick…the other end.

Being a mile and a half away from home, in a newer subdivision where the trees were so young they could barely shelter a squirrel, I began to panic.  There was NO place to hide.  I thought to myself, “Surely someone will let me use their bathroom.”

I started to knock on doors.

A man in his mid fifties answered his door, gazes at me, a young man less than 30 years old, BEGGING him to allow me inside to use his facilities.

“No”

I explain to him that I will be forced to use his bushes as I will not be able to make it home.

“Try it, and I’ll call the cops.”

At that point, I knew I was done for. 

I ventured to 3 more homes, with “Mr. No-Entry” following my every move, and received similar answers… “No”.

By this time I was about a mile from home and decided that an all-out sprint was my last resort.  This, when you are seconds away from exploding, is about as fast as a human can waddle.   The whole time I was looking for ANY place I could hide and relieve myself.

I was on an island, and there was no escape.

With my parents house no more than 100 yards away, there was a breach in my defenses…and then at 50 yards – I surrendered.

I have never been so humiliated and relieved in my entire life.  As I slowly trod the final paces to my house, I look up and of course, my father was in the drive way.

In the Aston family, there are no secrets.  Therefore, my wife barged into the bathroom while I was filled to the brim with humiliation…among other things, and added insult to injury.

“If you wouldn’t have knocked on all those doors, you would have made it back home.”

Rocky Mountain Oysters

To piggyback on my brother-in-laws trouble on the mountains out west, I’d like to share another chronicle that occurred during that same trip.

My father-in-law enjoyed the finer things in life and could be heard frequently saying, “It only costs a little bit more to go first class.”

We all agreed whole-heartedly with this saying as he was footing the bill. 

From high-end lodging, top of the line ski goggles, gloves, boots, coats, etc, it could be said that he spared no expense – Except when purchasing thermal under garments.

As always, our wives father was the last one to return from skiing, as well as the first one out the door in the morning.  I’m still convinced that he was camped out at the bar the majority of the day, but he took joy in bragging about logging the most hours on the slopes, so we remained quiet.

When he returned from the slopes, the rest of the family had already showered, changed and downed the evening’s first cocktail.  We all were gathered around the kitchen table playing cards when he finally struts into the room.

Instead of heading upstairs to his bedroom to change, he decided that the family room was a sufficient disrobing area. There he stood, a man in his early 60’s, actually taking his pants off in front of his 3 adult daughters and 3 son-in-laws.

We did our best to ignore the impending disaster until he eliminated any chance of avoidance. He was all but naked when he propped his leg up on the kitchen table bench that my wife was sitting on.

“What ya‘ll playing?”

My wife turned beet red before shielding her eyes behind her playing cards.

Nobody answered.

There he stood, elbow on bent knee, wearing white thermal underwear that he may have used when he was a boy scout. They were so worn out, they might classify better as fishnet stockings.

My wife, still sitting in terror and disbelief, as her father, a 6’5, 300lb bear, had his meat hammock displayed proudly for all of us to see.

As it turns out, our father-in-law could brag on more than just hours spent on the slopes.

Rocky Mountain Low

My father-in-law was a man born of the mountains, in a small burg up West Virginia way, though his true passion lay west in the Rockies.

He was passionate about fishing, hunting, etc., and would often travel to the western part of our great country in order to do so. As a way of attempting to transfer his passion to become our passion, on several occassions he would take all of us skiing in Colorado.

I'm not sure there was a single one of us who necessarily looked forward to the actual "skiing" portion of the trip, nor did it make sense that a man of his age and hobbled knees desire to perform such an activity, but one thing I learned in my years married to his daughter, whatever he said, goes.

Being that all of us were primarily born and raised in the South, none of us were particularly adept skiers, myself especially. I never could figure why anyone would choose to voluntarily hoist themselves to the peak of a 2 mile-high mountain only to try not to die on the way back down. So in my case, making it from top to bottom was always dicey, at best.

It was during these dicey ventures that I began to understand my place in the heirarchy of my relatively new family.

On one particular spot on the mountain we reached a flat part of the slope with a wide swath of snow that allowed you to ski in several different directions to reach the same point. I opted, unwisely, to travel a different way from the rest of the family.

Casually coasting, I reached an upward grade and noticed myself slowing to a stop as I reached about midway up the slope. This is one of those "oh sh*t" moments where you realize there are no brakes on skis, nor a steering wheel. As I began to gradually slide in the opposite (read: wrong) direction, I found myself headed towards a cluster of pine trees. The speed was not of concern - it was the approximately 6 foot drop between the surface and the loose powdered snow surrounding the trees.

As it was described to me (from my own family who stood nearby to watch), it was as if I was there...and then suddenly....*poof*....I was gone.

So at this point I am down in a hole with skis pointed skyward, I figured about 3 to 4 feet in. It was at that point I heard "Don't help him!".

It was my father-in-law, instructing my wife and her siblings not to assist me "or you'll just fall in with him." I'm not sure how they heard this over their own laughter, but the message was clearly received as I had to figure my own way out of my snowy grave (which I did, eventually).

It was several years later when he invited us to go back. Have you ever heard the saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?

Myself, my wife, and my father-in-law are riding the ski lift up to the mountain top. For some reason I am in the middle and he is on the right side. As he was the size of the mountain itself (about 6'5, 300 lbs.) our chair tilted precariously to his side, threatening to snap the cable.

As we reached the top, my wife stands easily and skis off toward the rest of our family already waiting. Mr. Senstitive to my right, bad knees and 300 lbs, opts to use me as his personal walker in order to stand up off the lift. With nothing for me to balance myself, I suddenly find myself trying to stand up on skis with the gravity of Jupiter pressing on my shoulders. Naturally, I fall face first underneath the revolving chair lift as he skis merrily off to the rest of the family.

Instead of a snow-crevasse, I am now faced with dodging ski lift chairs whipping around at my head and no way to stand up (or move out of the way, since I am still wearing those g** d**** skis).

A kindly stranger finally ran up and hit the emergency stop for me. Certainly not my father-in-law, nor any of the rest of my family who not surprisingly were standing there laughing at my misfortune (once again).

The stories of my misadventures would be recounted at virtually every dinner thereafter when we'd get together. Never once did my father-in-law accept any blame for pushing me off the chair lift, or saying "you know, we probably should have at least offered a ski pole to help you out of that hole you so hilariously fell into." At least, not until years later at the 2,143rd telling of the story, when he finally admitted, "you know, I might have pushed you a little on the lift".