Entries Tagged 'being a grownup' ↓

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that, in addition to being the World’s Greatest Dad (and I’ve got the mug to prove it), I also qualify for the role of World’s Funnest Uncle**.  But as one comedian put it, there is a very thin line between “fun uncle” and “creepy uncle”… or words to that effect.  And few things define that line quite like a little game I played last night called, “Flapdoodle.”

Flapdoodle, according to its Amazon production description, is “a totally silly game for kids and families. Use your creativity and imagination to answer crazy questions and do silly stunts.” For each of these questions and stunts, you get to move forward a certain number of spaces.  List three things from the ocean that you would NEVER want on your sandwich (seaweed, algae and, let’s face it, oil) and you move ahead one space.  Use the back of a chair like a steering wheel and pretend you’re a motorcycle for 60 seconds, and congratulations, you just bumped up three spaces.

Now I’d say 95% of these questions and stunts would place any adult male safely into the category of “fun uncle.”  For instance, “In a rockstar voice, repeat the words WET RAIN and DRY LEAVES until the timer runs out.”  Perfect opportunity to elicit some giggles from my ten- and six-year-old nieces with my AC/DC and Metallica impressions.  Or how about pretending your two big toes are named Gus and Earl and you need to make them have a conversation about potato chips.  Fun Uncle GOLD.  But wait, then we get this card: “Close your eyes and have all the players line up in front of you.  Identify each player using only your sense of smell.”

(AGH! AGH! AGH!)

(WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!)

I’m sorry, but if my female niece, who stands perched precisely on the threshold of puberty and adolescence, goes home and tells her mom that “Uncle Brian was smelling me,” I’m guessing there won’t be any more sleepovers at the Hodges house.

Still, barring a couple cards that, while most definitely cute and harmless when played exclusively amongst 6- to 12-year-old girls, but which are borderline we-may-have-to-send-Dateline-to-check-out-this-guy’s-computer-history once you get a 30-year-old involved, it really is a fun game.

Especially for kids with the world’s funnest uncle.

**Excluding, of course, any and all uncles under the age of thirty who drive a convertible and are still in the amusing early stages of full blown alcoholism.

For several years, I thought Obi Wan Kenobi was describing the destruction of Alderaan as “millions of OYSTERS crying out in terror and suddenly silenced.”  For those three of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the real word is supposed to be “voices.”

Now, what’s weirder to me, weirder than the fact that I actually misheard this line for, near on 20 years, is that for all those 20 years, I never questioned the sanity of that line.  I guess i just pictured kind of an Alice in Wonderland scene with the Walrus and the Carpenter.  Either way, I never really found this line weird.  I guess I simply trusted implicitly in the genius of George Lucas.  I think the first time I realized what the real line in that scene, was somewhere around the second prequel.  I suddenly realized that George Lucas was, in fact, fallible.  And suddenly that line hit me with the full insanity that it rightfully deserved all those years.

So, thanks, I guess, Jar-Jar.

It’s amazing how your kids will just randomly give you new and completely amazing reasons to love them.  And new and amazing examples what unique individuals they are.  The girl received the movie Dumbo for Christmas and has watched it several times since.  But when she asks to watch it, she doesn’t ask to watch Dumbo.  She says, “Can I watch Jumbo Junior.”  Because if you remember the movie, “Jumbo Junior” is what the elephant’s mom originally names him.  It’s only after everyone sees his giant ears that they start calling him “Dumbo.”  It’s meant as a derogatory nickname.  And yet even his best friend, Timothy Mouse calls him that.   That’s like making friends with that fat pie eating kid from Stand By Me and still referring to him as “Lard Ass.”   Okay so you made friends with him, but you’re still killing him a little every time you don’t call him by his real name.  Apparently this never struck anyone in the Dumbo audience as weird.

Well it struck the girl that way.  She understands that even an elephant has feelings and recognizes how blatantly wrong it was to keep referring to Dumbo as Dumbo.  So she has decided to do the right thing and call him by his real name.  And not only that, if one of us forgets and says, “the D word” she will actually correct us.  “Jumbo Junior, dad.”

I seriously love that kid.  She’s only four, but she gets it.  Sometimes I forget how much.

Indy, why does the red background move?

Continuing with the theme of video games from yesterday, the very first eBay purchase I ever made was a used Atari 2600. The year was 1999 and I was twenty-one. And yes, I realize in my previous blog I made it pretty clear just how much of a colossal loser you had to be to play video games post-drivers age. But you don’t understand. I had to buy that Atari. I had to. For one very important reason. I had never beaten Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Before I continue you should realize, if you don’t already know, that video games in the mid-80’s weren’t like the video games of today… or even the video games of the early 90’s for that matter. Most of those games couldn’t actually be beaten. You just kept moving up levels of increasing difficulty until you returned to the first board and began the process all over again. In the world of Atari and Coleco, you pretty much just played until you died… or until the console got sick of you and overheated. It was a lot like life in that respect. So the idea that you could finish Raiders of the Lost Ark in a somewhat positive way inspired you to keep at it. But between me, several of my friends and every one of their older brothers, we were never EVER successful.

That haunted me.

The Nazis' vertical line is too long... they're digging in the wrong dots.

Over the next thirteen years my mind often drifted back to that two-dimensional world of pixilated snakes and dot matrix whips. I had clearly missed something. Something to do with the Map Room screen. I knew that you had to bring a key and a medallion into that screen, just like in the movie, to reveal where the ark lay in a vast mesa field. Selecting the medallion supposedly revealed the ark’s location, but selecting the key was the only way to reveal the map itself. How could you possibly select both items at the same time? Especially when one false step without the proper item could and would make you fall off a cliff and die… and by “die” I mean your “body” would disappear pixel by giant pixel, starting with your rectangular “feet” and ending with your upside-down-T “fedora”. But the more and more I went back, the closer I came to five or six plausible strategies. Unfortunately, I’d gotten rid of my Atari in fifth grade, so I had no way of testing those theories.

God bless the age of the internet. I went onto eBay for the first time in the fall of 1999 and placed a bid on an Atari 2600 with a largish handful of games—including, of course, the much anticipated, and much antagonistic, Raiders of the Lost Ark. I checked back frequently, almost schizophrenically, in the auction’s final moments, then waited two long weeks for my check to clear and my destiny to arrive. The day it did, I could barely focus on work. I ate cereal for dinner, hooked up the Atari, jammed the Raiders cartridge into its slot and said a mini prayer of thanks when it fired up on the first try.

Cue the John Williams in 4-bit sound.

I’m here to tell you right now, folks; the American Dream is a reality. I beat the game in less than thirty minutes. The “victory screen” was minimal—a five-second animation of Indy rising on a spring toward the ark—but few moments, before or since, have ever been so satisfying. I sighed contentedly as I thought, “Okay, now what?”

That was nine years ago and I’ve yet to come up with an adequate answer.

See how it’s done:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uKI7J0pdr4

At what point did video games suddenly become cool? When I was a kid you played video games until (and ONLY until) you or one of your friends got a drivers license, at which point you said, “Screw Mario Brothers, I’ve got better things to do.” Personally I always looked forward to the day when I would be deemed officially too old for video games. I never knew which turtle shell to stomp on to get to the secret level, or which bricks you could smash to get ten bazillion lives. I don’t even know how anyone managed to figure that stuff out in those days before the internet. Actually yes I do know how they figured it out. They were geeks! And they had no life! So I was very much looking forward to sixteen, and turning in my paddles for the chance at maybe touching a girl’s boob. Of course that particular dream wouldn’t become a reality until the age of 25 or so, but at least nobody was calling me a “Gamorian” every time I got killed.

But then the language changed. Suddenly anyone who spent twenty bleary-eyed hours a day pushing buttons in their parents’ basement weren’t complete video game nerds. They were… “gamers.” I’m sorry, gamers? Slap an enigmatic title on it and suddenly it’s cool to be lame? Why couldn’t they have done that for the geeky things I was into? Rather than assembling plastic X-wing models in the secrecy of my own room, I could have been… a cementer. Nah, too easy to draw out the “C” and make it sound gay. A gluer? A builder? Exactoist! Crap, some geekery just doesn’t lend itself to badass verbage.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like playing the occasional bout of Mario Kart on my sister-in-law’s Wii as much as the next guy (and I’m sorry, but the fact that the end of this sentence doesn’t make anyone’s eyebrows go up is just plain wrong). But you used to be able to get that kind of fix with five dollars worth of quarters at the local video arcade. And since it was kind of a social situation, indulging that latent geekery provided at least some small probability that you might meet a girl who might let you touch her boob. But unless something goes horribly wrong, there’s no way that is going to happen on my sister-in-law’s Wii (seriously how does that not bug the crap out of everybody???).

Am I wrong? I can’t imagine I’m the only thirty-year-old in America who thinks the ubiquitousness of video games is a bad thing… the only thirty-year-old who looked forward to buying a car for no other reason than he could finally stop memorizing some stupid UP-UP-DOWN-DOWN-LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT combination.

The first time I saw Grease, the summer after third grade, I wanted to walk like Danny Zuko. He just had this… swagger, with all this up-and-down arm motion, as though the bones from his heel to his shoulder were fused together. So, I practiced. Yes, I actually practiced walking. Swing the leg up, lift the shoulder, and bring them back down… It was an exhausting routine. John Travolta must have trained for months for that role! I tried to get my friends to join me, but they hadn’t seen the movie and didn’t realize just how cool I was trying to make them. Wiped out, I too gave up after a week.

By fifth grade—right around the time we all started thinking girls were pretty rad—I had become obsessed with how I looked while walking. I’d be playing outfield in kickball (nobody would let me near a base), then have to come in when it was our turn to kick. I’d start running then quickly realize that it made me look too excited. So I’d downshift, walking casually as if to say, “Hey I’m walking, but I don’t care.” Suddenly I’d be critiquing how my feet and legs were moving in conjunction with the rest of my body. Bend your knees more. Should my arms be swinging? No, keep them still. But then I’ll look too stiff. This can’t look right can it? I decided that maybe running was, in fact, the lesser of two evils.

It got worse as I got older. By seventh grade, for whatever reason, my heels stopped touching the ground when I walked. The middle of my foot would hit, then I’d roll up onto the ball and keep on going. No big deal really, except that it caused my head to bob up and down enough that others began to imitate. I couldn’t even blame it on some really cool sports injury or terminal illness. The closest I’d ever come to a bona fide limp was the time I stubbed my toe on a teammate’s foot during a pee-wee basketball game.

I was already short and skinny with bad skin. I couldn’t let this be yet another trigger for adolescent ridicule. By eighth grade, I was once again practicing how I walked. It was a conscious effort, keeping my eyes on my feet and watching their progress as I talked myself through. Heel to toe. Bend the knee and swing it forward. And again, heel to toe… Some people think that walking with the head down indicates a lack of self-confidence. Well, sometimes it just indicates an inspection of motor skills.

With determination, I eventually broke myself of that toe-walking stigma, gliding gracefully through the halls, my head showcasing only the smallest, most natural hint of bounce. Of course, there were times when I was concentrating so much on my heel-to-toeing that I didn’t actually watch where I was walking and ended up bumping into open lockers.

These days, I can walk with my eyes forward and my head held high. The heel-to-toe concept is second nature. Of course, lingering pubescent trauma doesn’t go away that easily. Every time—and I do mean every time—I’m walking near a pretty girl, I become maniacally aware of the movement of my feet, legs, ankles and knees. If it’s just her, me and a whole lot of ground to cover—like that long walk to and from the reception desk—my eyes instantly drop to my feet, positive I’m tip-toeing, my head bobbing like a buoy with each step. So, I readjust. Now I’m certain I’ve overcorrected and am probably walking like Donnie Hubbard, that goofy, special-ed kid from high school whose head never broke the X-plane even while he was running. I double- and triple-check, perfecting each step until I veer into and trip over the magazine rack. My only recourse at that point is to tuck my chin into my chest, walk faster, and get away before she calls the cops.

So ladies, if we ever cross paths on the street or in the lobby, please don’t mind me. I’m not avoiding eye contact. I just think I walk like a dork.

In second grade, we were asked to draw a picture and write a paragraph describing what we wanted to be when we grew up. There were your standards: teachers, doctors, firemen. A couple ambitious kids drew a robotics engineer and President of the United States. I freaked my teacher mildly out when I said I wanted to be a “Spy.” I drew myself in army fatigues and war paint with guns and ammo strapped to every inch of my body. I had a bow and arrow slung over my shoulder and throwing stars tucked into the cuffs of my pants (because I was also, apparently, part Ninja).

According to my paragraph, I wanted to be a spy because “you get to sneak into enemy forts and shoot people with guns and blow up buildings with bombs and exploding arrows.” It’s probably not surprising that I had recently seen Rambo for the first time. A kid pulling a stunt like this today would probably get a three-day suspension. I didn’t even get a talking-to, just my mom asking me why I didn’t want to be an astronaut anymore.

I used to make my Star Wars figures spar on the sides of cliffs (a.k.a.: arm of the couch) in an effort to throw each other into the lava (a.k.a.: carpet) below. My Masters of the Universe and Transformers play-sessions always involved mass brawls to the death with plenty of clashing swords and laser fire. My sister and I invented a game appropriately named Spies, which was basically hide-and-seek with guns. While we had toy guns in the house, my weapon of choice was always the vacuum cleaner hose extension. Tucked into my armpit, make a loud TTFF-TTFF-TTFF-TTFF noise and I had myself a powerful little machine gun.

I’ve never seriously thought about killing anybody for real, never owned a real gun, never even gotten into a fist-fight. Pretend violence always stayed pretend for me, though my parents were wise to not buy me the BB gun I wanted for Christmas. Better that I stuck to squirt guns and sawed off broomsticks because I managed to get out of childhood without harming myself or others. Though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still occasionally draw down with my .357 remote control making rapid PAUGH-PAUGH-PAUGH sounds as I execute imaginary opponents… or perhaps rouge communist agents.

Ever had somebody walk in on you while you were sitting on the toilet? Isn’t that embarrassing? Doesn’t your face just turn bright red? I’ll bet you get really mad at the person don’t you? Well guess what. I got no sympathy for you, bub. You have obviously never taken the time to learn proper toilet privacy defenses. It’s your own fault that somebody saw you doing number two.

I grew up in a house where the only doors that locked were the main entrances. The bedrooms didn’t lock. Neither did the bathroom. In fact, the bathroom door didn’t even shut tight. All it took was a cat’s paw to push the thing open. I had a father and a younger sister who were not prone to knocking before entering a room. But in spite of all these perils working against me, not one person in almost thirty years of potty training has caught me making pee pees or poo poos.

The key to bathroom privacy is to develop bat-like radar senses. A keen ear allows one to assess threats and formulate a defense. I’ve never taken an official poll, but I daresay that in ninety-five percent of all toilet-walk-in-ons, the victim never even knew the violator was there. I always listened for footsteps as they came down the hallway, trying to judge by their speed and intensity if this was a parent rushing to relieve a full bladder or merely a sibling pretending to be a pony.

As soon as human sounds came within a certain perimeter (I used ten feet as my safe distance), the next phase, subterfuge, began. I had to let anybody within earshot know that I was in there without actually shouting, “I’m taking a crap!” I was trying to avoid embarrassment after all. Sniffling, clearing my throat, rattling the pages on my magazine were all valid diversionary tactics.

Still many came close to crossing the fence-line. But I never allowed them one foot across the threshold before turning them back. Those who ignored my more subtle warnings were routed by a direct and forceful “Hey!” as they opened the door.

These days I’m like a man who grew up in a bathroom on the Gaza Strip—always aware of my environment, anticipating attacks and cutting them off before they occur. No latch on a men’s room stall? No problem. As soon as somebody enters the room, I augment my magazine rattling by sticking out my right leg as a doorstop. An army with a battering ram couldn’t invade my private time.

My bathroom motto is, “If you’re not prepared, then you deserve to be invaded.” At the same time, I’m sensitive to the fact that we live in a relatively soft and danger-free society where people don’t generally have to worry about protecting themselves. That’s why when I walk into a men’s room, I always check for feet under the stall. Even if I don’t see any, I gingerly tap on the door as I slowly slowly slowly push it open. I’m like the British Army during the Revolution, wearing bright red and pounding on the drums as I march toward a secret fort.

And yet there have been times when the gate has opened, and I find myself looking some middle-aged guy right in the face. And he’s just looking back at me, surprised! I guess maybe he thought it was God on the other side of the door. Why else wouldn’t he have at least said, “Somebody in here”?

I of course instinctively say, “Oh, I’m sorry,” and shut the door. But then I get mad at myself. After all, why should I be sorry? That’s like one of the bulls in Madrid apologizing to the dope in the red hat. Did he not think the bull would run directly at him?

It’s a dangerous world out there, people and the sanctuary of your bathroom won’t shield you from it. So take it from me, be prepared, protect yourself, and for God’s sake, wash your hands.

I haven’t done real library research since high school. Has anybody? Of course, even in high school, a pubescent boy’s idea of research was pulling out the “B” volume from the medical texts and ogling the pictures of naked ladies with your friends. I feel lost just walking into a library now. Did you know that they don’t use card catalogues anymore? There are a lot of books in there. How does anybody get anything done?

Two factors contributed to my loss of library skills. First, my graduation from high school coincided perfectly with the great internet explosion. Second, I was a Film/Television major at a college for “Communications and the Performing Arts.” My final exam was “go make a movie.” Typical homework consisted of, “Watch Independence Day and write a critique.” Any research I ever needed was found on countless web pages from the comfort of my dorm room. Some of them were even nice enough to list book references so I didn’t need to open them. I’d make up a bibliography, turn in my “Comparison of A Weekend at Bernie’s and Hamlet” then go watch X-Files.

I suppose I’m being a bit facetious. I used real books for research too. My roommate had like seven editions of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader, a wellspring of information about everything from the Big Bang Theory to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. It was the perfect source for… well, another source.

Of course, I wasn’t studying law or medicine or anything like that. I look at these gigantic, lead-heavy medical texts that my poor wife had to lug around in grad school, and think, “Better her than me.” I mean you can’t even type search phrases in!

Even though I rarely use them for any practical purposes anymore, libraries still fascinate me in the way steam trains or ghost towns fascinate others. Especially older libraries like in New York or Boston where the architecture is just a little bit mystifying, with at least a dozen stairwells, all leading to different places. All over the building you find little nooks and hallways that don’t go anywhere, and rooms that, apparently, nobody has entered for several years.

These rooms are always the places where people seem to discover original manuscripts and sketches from really famous historical people, then selling them on E-bay for a million dollars. I always imagine opening up some really old dusty book and having the second Mona Lisa fall into my lap.

That’s what I’m going to do. After I become a famous writer, I’m going to stick a bunch of short stories and humor columns inside an old book for somebody to find a hundred years later. A really boring book that nobody would ever pull off the shelf like, “The Economic and Social Effects of 16^th Century Prussian Rocking Chairs on the 17^th Century English Middle Class.” Anybody who’s forced to write a term paper about that, deserves a laugh and a million bucks.

I’m sure historians from NYU will hotly debate the stories’ authenticity. They’ll carefully examine each line, analyzing the subtle Hewlett Packard printer strokes, circa 2007. Noting the misuses of, commas, the lack of grammar, incomplete sentences. “Yes!” they will declare to the world, “We have found the lost Hodges anthology, including such inspired works as, Why Do I Get Hangnails; The Funny Thing About Spoons; and Making Friends with Boogersnot Johnson.”

One day, maybe students will avoid the library while researching me from the comfort of the internet.

The next person who tells me to “Ignore the bee,” is getting punched in the mouth. “Just sit still. If you leave it alone, it’ll go away. Swatting only makes it angry. Running, shrieking and whimpering will only get you stung.” I don’t care what any of you say. When a bee comes within a reasonable distance (read: when I can see or hear it), I am going to do everything in my power to keep it as far away from me as possible. I don’t care how ridiculous I look. I’ve done the sitting still thing. Believe me, I’ve done the sitting still thing.

I was probably no more than four at the time. My parents had taken us out for ice cream. Riding home in the back, contentedly licking my bubble-gum scoop and picking out the little pieces of gum for later, my perfect enjoyment was suddenly put on hold when I noticed a bee on my arm. Whether it had been attracted by the sugary smell or it just wanted to look tough by picking on a small child, I’ll never know. I could already feel the tears of horror welling up inside as I squeaked out, “Mom, there’s a bee on me.” Mom assured me to just sit still and it would fly away. So I did. I trusted her as only a child can. I trusted her as I watched the bee crawl up my arm. I trusted her as I watched the bee crawl inside my shirt. I trusted her as I felt the bee crawl around on my chest. I trusted her right up until the instant when the bee got stuck, freaked out and then stung me.

The ice cream melted down my hand and into my lap because I was too busy crying. So no, I will not sit still.

My in-laws make fun of how I deal with bugs these days. We’ll be sitting around having a nice quiet conversation when I suddenly sense that a mosquito is biting my-WHAM! Poor little bugger never saw it coming. Neither did my in-laws who are now nursing mild heart attacks in response to the gunshot sound of flesh striking flesh.

You know that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones realizes he has spiders all over his back, so he calmly brushes them off with his whip? Yeah, I don’t do that. The nanosecond the nerves in my back register anything smaller than a chair, my whole body contorts into a corkscrew, my hands raining down blows like shock and awe on the compromised area. WHAPWHAPWHAPWHAPWHAP… This tripwire response, while effective, does generate a lot of false alarms. I have leaned back from the kitchen table only to fight off perceived attacks from grocery bags on the counter. After receiving numerous bruises to her fingers, my wife makes sure to caress my neck with her left hand, forcing me to draw blood on her diamond.

“Why do you have to be so spastic?” she and her family ask every time I defend myself against shoelaces, cats tails and curtain cords. But I know I’m right. My instincts may prove wrong ninety percent of the time, but I’m convinced that when a black widow spider finally perches itself on my neck, I’m going to be ready for him. Before his second leg even touches down-BAM! The in-laws, who used to poke fun, will, I’m sure, deal with their poisonous spiders calmly, reaching back, saying, “Hey what’s-” but too late, they’re already dead. It’s Us versus Them and you’re either quick or you’re dead.

I’m not afraid of bugs. Really I’m not. I dutifully perform my husbandly role of killing small things in our house. And I don’t do the wussy thing with the can of Raid either. I take the crunch under my shoe or between my fingers like a man. As long as I can see them, and they’re behaving rationally or dead, I’m just fine with bugs. It’s when they want to land on a living being ten-thousand times their size that I start to get suspicious. So don’t bother me with old wives tales. Don’t tell me to sit still and ignore them. A bee betrayed my trust once before and I will not be fooled again. And if I want to run, swat and scream like a little girl, I will.