Category: FRIENDS

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New Year’s Eve – Guest Writer

Written by the Site Editor 

It is always bizarre to be a teenager and celebrate New Year’s with family. There is the sense that some massive party is being missed – when usually, my friends and I were far too disorganised to organise anything. So I created a system; one year with family, one year with friends. My family have never celebrated New Year’s to much extravagance in my memory – although apparently there was a good ‘end-of-the-world’ party at the turn of the century. One year, we were skiing in Austria and my parents, my sister and I were far too tired to make it to midnight, and decided to celebrate ‘Ugandan New Year’s Eve’, as it was several hours ahead and allowed for a 10pm bedtime.

For the winter of 2015, this was not the case. The plan was to celebrate up in Gruyeres, the small medieval town in Switzerland that bizarrely hosts a horror art museum attributed to the designer of Alien, H. R. Giger. We even invited some friends we had known in Uganda to join us.

We expected there to be some fanfare. But at 8 o’clock when we had gone to dinner, nothing had yet been made evident. It turned out that one of our friends, the father of the family we had invited along with us, is not an evening person. As we tried to coax him into playing games, he grew evermore disinterested. To the extent that winning and losing were met with the same ‘Oh, that’s interesting’ comment. We were far too amused by his reluctant attempt to stay up until midnight to realise that nothing had happened in the village. My sister was head down on the table feeling ill with a condition that we later diagnosed as chickenpox at the age of 14 (I contracted it 2 weeks later at 17). Perhaps it was epitomising Swiss-ness, and a rowdy party was not an option for such a sleepy, usually tourist-filled village.

However, at 11.50pm, something happened. A group of about 10 or 15 people bundled into the central square with a massive speaker. They started pouring drinks, chatting and laughing. The speaker blared out ABBA, Queen and various classic songs that everyone can sing to, be they English, French or German speaking. And for 15 minutes, we laughed and drank together to welcome the new year.

By 00.10, they had cleared out. Obviously, it would not do to have a rowdy event in the town square endure for too long and upset the neighbours. They cleared themselves away, took the speaker and all the plastic cups from their champagne, and bid us good night. We were stunned, as they erased any sign of having been there at all. We walked up to the top of the village to spot fireworks being set off in far away villages and mountain chalet towns. We welcomed 2016 in the tranquillity of a Swiss village – the year that followed was anything but tranquil.

We wish you all the best for the New Year’s, and thank you as ever for your support. Please forward Words for the Weary to anyone who you feel needs a story every week! 

 

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Jumper 4

We were young. We were stupid. And no doubt alcohol factored into our collective decision to try parachuting.

Without further reflection, my college roommates and I found ourselves in the dead of a Canadian winter at a training centre for first-time jumpers. There we learned how to arch our backs as we fell from the rafters on to the hay below. We learned how to keep our knees and feet together as we landed. We learned how to hit the ground and roll. Most important – and this was drilled into us – we were instructed never to look downward as we landed.

Then we suited up: jumpsuits, helmets, goggles. We hoisted the packed parachutes on to our backs and strapped in. A one-way radio was clipped to the reserve chute on our chest so we could hear instructions from the ground crew.

We headed outside to the waiting airplane. It was at this precise moment that I got scared. Only then did it occur to me this might be a potentially fatal thing to do. But no turning back now, not with all my roommates there. Young. Stupid.

They stacked us in order inside the tiny airplane. I was Jumper 4. They clipped the top of our chutes to the static line and rolled down the runway. The plane lumbered into the air. The jump master yelled to each of us above the noise and the wind – remember: knees together, feet together, don’t look down when we land. We reached altitude and the plane began to circle over the landing zone.

The jump master positioned one jumper at a time at the open door. They sat on the edge with legs dangling outside. Then she yelled, “One, Two, Three…Go!” At which point the jumper would propel themselves from the plane care of clenched butt cheeks. As they exited, a wing-tip camera took their photo. The chutes pulled open as the jumpers fell away from the plane. Then it was my turn.

I remember this moment with utter clarity. It is perhaps the most frightened I have ever been in my life. But before I knew it I was clenching my butt cheeks, then falling through space while screaming bloody murder. The wingtip camera shows me white as a ghost.

Then….poof. The chute opened. It was glorious. Floating above the wintry Ontario countryside, it looked like a toy train landscape with snow on the tiny buildings and fence posts. Complete silence except for the gentle wind. Peace. Relief. After a few minutes my radio crackled.

“Jumper 4 prepare to land. Remember: knees together, feet together, don’t look down”. What were they talking about? I was still miles from the ground. So I looked down.

BLAM. I hit the ground like a sack of concrete. Because I was looking down, my body folded in half so hard that my teeth sliced the knees of my flight suit open. I crumpled to the ground, barely able to breathe. Then my chute filled with a gust of wind. My helmeted head clattered along the ground as the full chute propelled me across the frozen farm field on my back. Finally I stopped care of a fence.

“Jumper 4”, crackled my radio. “That looked really painful. Give us a thumbs up if you are still alive”.

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Little Miss Sunshine

One day at work I received a hysterical call from our nanny. She is Guatemalan and her English is limited, especially when upset, so I couldn’t make out precisely what was wrong. I ascertained that nobody was hurt, and assured her I would sort it out when I got home.

Later as I pulled up our driveway she flew out the door to meet me, tears in her eyes. She held aloft the video case for “Little Miss Sunshine”. For those of you who do not know the film, Little Miss Sunshine is pure cinematic gold. The film also includes A LOT of profanity. Everyone would agree this is not an age-appropriate film for a 4-year old.

Enter our 4-year old son. He and his best friend had been bored. They innocently approached the nanny with the video in hand asking if they could watch it. The cover features a cute little girl standing in front of a camper van. What could possibly be wrong with that? The nanny put in the film and went off to do something.  Later when she came to check on the boys, she walked in to hear the grandfather character ask “Is that chicken?… what’s with the godd@#$%, f-ing chicken?!”

The actual film footage of this moment can be found here. Don’t play this clip at the office. Did I mention there is A LOT of profanity in the film and that it is NOT suitable for a 4-year old?

The nanny instantly turned off the movie. The boys had no idea what the words meant. But they knew without doubt they were not supposed to hear or use such words. Which of course they proceeded to do for the rest of the day.  At lunch they asked each other “what’s with the godd@#$%, f-ing chicken?!” They biked down the hill and called to one another “what’s with the godd@#$%, f-ing  chickennnnnnn?” The nanny was beside herself, sure that she had scarred them for life and that I would be horrified.

On the contrary. I could not stop laughing. I assured her that everything was fine and not to worry. I would speak about it with our boy. But first I had to go tell the other boy’s dad about what happened. The other dad is a Christian youth pastor, but also one of the most relaxed dudes I know. He often uses the phrase “Far out”.

I walked across the street and said, “Hey neighbor, do you know the film “Little Miss Sunshine?”

“Sure Chuck”, he said. “Far out”.

“Well”, I replied, “You will probably hear more about it in the coming days…” I then explained what had happened. He too could not stop laughing. He assured me it was no problem and that he would have a talk about it with his son.

The next morning I dropped my little guy off at daycare. We entered the crowded room. He spied his best friend at the other end of the classroom with his youth pastor dad. “Hey Buddy!” my son yelled in his loudest voice, “Is that chicken?… what’s with the godd@#$%, f-ing chicken?!” In the deafening silence that followed there came a faint “Far out” from the other end of the room.

 

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.] 

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The Mechanical Bull

It was my friend’s stag night. We stood in the middle of a parking lot. At one end of the lot there was a strip club. At the other end, a country and western bar. The choice was obvious.

We strode into the country and western bar and were blown away. It was packed. There were ladies dressed like Daisy Duke, and dudes sporting belt buckles the size of a frisbee. The music was in full swing. We grabbed some beers and joined in the dancing.

At one point in the evening the lights went down. A siren began to wail and a spotlight shone over a paddock off to one side of the bar. The paddock was filled with sawdust and, in its center, the beam of light glistened on a mechanical bull. The crowd went wild.

People lined up to take turns riding the bull. The riders had to wear a ridiculous 10 gallon hat, like Hoss from Ponderosa. Everyone stood around the paddock and cheered the riders on.

We lined up. When I got to the front the operator said “Sorry, can’t let you ride”. When I asked why not he said “You are too heavy. This thing is so old we can’t get replacement parts for it any more. We have a 175 pound weight limit”. Needless to say I was disappointed.

My friend, whose stag night this was, produced a $20 bill. He gave it to the operator and said “Does this make my friend look a little slimmer?” The operator smiled and said, “Giddyup, Hoss”.

So I donned the ridiculous hat and mounted the mechanical bull. The crowd cheered. The operator really was worried about the fate of the bull, so he set it to “super slow-mo” speed. Honestly, I was moving around with the vigor of a granny in a rocking chair. The crowd roared for more. I made eye contact with the operator, urging him to dial it up.

So he did. What I did not appreciate was that, in addition to rotational and translational motion, the mechanical bull also has the ability for vertical motion. The seat of the bull dropped away from me, only to rush back up with the force of a battering ram on my testicles. This happened twice in quick succession. Boom. Boom.

There was a collective gasp from the crowd that sounded something like “ohhhhowwwww”. Then a searing pain in my nether regions as I slid off the bull into the sawdust without the full use of my extremities. I distinctly remember the grin on the operators face as I lay in the sawdust, twitching.

I spent the rest of the evening walking like a wounded gunslinger.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Summer Victory

I coached a little league baseball team that was Bad News Bears bad. But we won a classic victory over the forces of evil during the final game of the summer season.

I really did have a special team. Kids who had no running shoes. Kids who had never once before worn a baseball glove. Brothers with physical and mental challenges, plus my son and a couple of other regular kids. Our team had not won a game all season. I would say to the other coaches before each game, “I am teaching these guys the very basics, so would you be OK if we keep it all slow and simple?”

Every other coach in the league had responded to this request as you would expect. They happily worked around us. Not this coach. His team had not lost a game all season and this was the end of their year. “OK.” He grunted resentfully. “But if you guys start to win we’re gonna steal bases. It’s the league rules and we’re going to abide by them.” Yay! Little league spirit!

One of my special needs kids always played first base, a position that does not demand a lot of running.  I coached him: foot on base, turn to the field, raise glove, catch ball. Each time he would go through this mental checklist. Except he never got past “foot on base”. By the time he got that far he usually had gotten a ball in the face. He never used his glove. He was Ball-in-Face. And he insisted on playing first.

So the game began. And my boys just rained baseball. They were slugging the ball, fielding well. Ball-in-Face was making out after painful out. It was magic to see the delight on the faces of the boys. The other team came up to bat. Their first hit and they stole a base. My boys went crazy. So I called time out and explained how it worked. I told them not to worry about it. Lets just get the outs and have fun.

The next time we got up to bat, up to plate walks Ball-in-Face. He was our worst hitter and he ran like Forest Gump in leg braces. In came the pitch. He hit a little dribble up the third base line.

After admiring his little hit for a moment, he remembered to run and began to lumber towards first. He would never beat the throw. But the other team was so surprised he had hit the ball that they were late with the throw, which sailed over the first baseman’s head. Ball-in-Face thundered around first and headed to second. I screamed at him not to do so. He was s sitting duck out there.  But the same thing happened at every base:  the other team would overthrow, coaches would yell for him to stop, Ball-in-Face would keep running. And damned if he didn’t score.

Every parent and every team mate leapt from the stands to meet him as he crossed home. This was the first time he had ever scored, perhaps in any game, in any sport, anywhere. I also knew it would be his last: he was already playing down two years because of his disabilities. The league would not let him play again next year. But he had gotten his run!

As we regained our composure I did a quick mental consolidation. “Ump”, I said. “Can I confirm that we are past minimum time, both teams have had equal at bats, I am the home team, and that I have the right to call the game if I want, correct?”

“Correct.” Said the Ump.

“Then may I ask you please: what is the score?” He checked. We were up by one run. I called the game.

Pandemonium. In that moment my team of beautiful losers had won the Superbowl, the Stanley Cup, The World Cup, and every other combined cup, all at the same time. They were leaping, hugging, screaming.

The other coach stormed over to where I was thanking the ump for the game. “You can’t do that!”, he said. “There’s plenty of time to play ball and my guys want more at bats”.  I looked at him and said, “It’s the league rules and we’re going to abide by them”. Victory complete.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

This story is dedicated to our hosts from Arkansas, the best baseball family we know.

 

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The Wedding

My most memorable wedding experience (other than my own) included the following epic ingredients: a beautiful lakeside terrace battered by gale force winds; the groom’s hippy friends smoking pre-nuptial weed in the corner;  a cultural disconnect between the bride’s estranged East Indian and Jewish family members; and strafing helicopters.

The Jewish grandmother kicked things off with a rendition of “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof. She was accompanied by an East Indian teenager on electric guitar. But with the wind absolutely ripping off the lake they could not actually hear one another. So she sang mournfully while he played unrelated minor chords, completely out of time with her. They finished the song about 20 seconds apart.

The Jewish family members nodded in cultural solidarity. The East Indian contingent was respectful, but wary. The hippies gazed into space, fully baked and lost in the deep meaning of the song.

Then came the wedding vows. The bride first shared some thoughtful verses, barely audible above the wind. Then the groom produced a piece of paper and read the following:

“Wherever I am, there’s always Pooh,
There’s always Pooh and Me.
Whatever I do, he wants to do,
“Where are you going today?” says Pooh:
“Well, that’s very odd ‘cos I was too.
Let’s go together,” says Pooh, says he.
“Let’s go together,” says Pooh.”

The Jewish contingent sat in shocked disbelief. The baffled East Indians mouthed the words “Pooh?” to one another in a futile attempt to understand what was being said. Several hippies wept, moved by the timeless wisdom of Winnie the Pooh and by the effect of narcotics.

Several helicopters from the nearby festival grounds then began to buzz the terrace like a scene from Apocalypse Now. Chairs were scattered. The wedding officiant had to yell above the roar as they passed overhead. The men holding the corner poles of the Jewish wedding canopy hung on for dear life.  Finally, the rings were exchanged and love won the day.

It was later discovered that the young ring bearer had head lice, which he passed on to the entire wedding party.

This story is dedicated to Glen and Mark, whom we met last week at a lovely family wedding.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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The Boxer

The most awkward dinner party scenario ever. There is no other way to describe it.

My colleague’s husband had just received a promotion. His new boss invited my friend and her husband for dinner. He asked them to bring their new Boxer puppy.

My friend panicked. Like all puppies, the Boxer was cute, rambunctious, and totally untrained. She could see this going badly at the home of her husband’s new boss, who had a young child of two. But the boss insisted they bring the dog. So they did.

The dinner was going fine. The adults hung out as the young child and the puppy played happily. The child and the dog eventually wandered upstairs as the adults lost track of them. Then the child screamed.

My friend thought the worst. She was sure the puppy had bitten the child. She raced upstairs, only to find the child and the puppy happily playing tug of war over a sock. Relieved, my colleague turned to go back downstairs. Then she tripped at the top of the stairs.

She describes it as going “ass over teakettle” down the stairs, hitting the landing with a thunderous crash, then rolling down the final stairs. She lay there, winded and embarrassed (but thankfully unhurt) in the dining room. The boss, her husband, and the other dinner party guests stared at her in horror.

As she lay there looking at the ceiling, my colleague heard the carefree “click-clicking” of the puppy claws coming down the stairs. The puppy’s face leaned over and looked happily down into her own face.

Then the puppy spit out a mouthful of tampons that he had taken from the bathroom cupboard.

My colleague and her husband have yet to be invited back to dinner.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Ça-va?

“I don’t know”, he said, “This looks like one prolonged groin injury to me”. Neither of us were good cross-country skiers. We stood atop a steep hill in Switzerland and weighed our options.

As we did, a senior citizen glided past us. Like most Swiss seniors she was impressively, even annoyingly, fit. As she sailed down the hill, she called back in a singsong voice, “Ça-va?” (saw-va).

Loosely translated “Ça-va?” means, “Is everything OK?” In reality she was saying, “You guys look like you really stink at cross country skiing. Otherwise you would be down the hill by now. And if I really cared I probably would have stopped instead of shaming you with my skiing prowess. Lay off the cheeseburgers.”

Ça-va: comprehensive condemnation in just two small words.

I went first. It was ugly. My feet slid in every direction, as if I were wearing two greased spatulas on my feet. I soon broke the sound barrier and decided to abort the mission before I hurt myself. I careened around a corner and headed straight for a welcoming snowbank into which I cratered at top speed.

As I lay there, another elderly couple glided by. “Ça-va?” they sang out. I nodded meekly. Perfectly ça-va, I thought. Couldn’t be more ça-va. Why else would I be lying here crumpled in the snow?

My friend eventually came screaming around the corner. The whites of his eyes told the story. Since I already occupied the preferred snowbank, he was forced to veer wildly. His arms pinwheeled as he slammed into the snowbank on the other side of the trail. We lay there laughing, happy to be alive.

Yet another elderly couple skied up to us and stopped. They were British. They proceeded to point out the many faults in our skiing, all wrapped in the thin veneer of encouraging self-improvement. Their pep talk was wasted on us. Why not just cut to the chase with an efficient “Ça-va?”

They finally skied away. We lumbered back to our feet and skied out the final hill. By now the wax was gone from my skis. So I had to push frantically with my poles, my arms moving like two hampsters on a treadmill, just to get down the hill.

[photo credit: my wife on a similar, not ça-va, ski outing]

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Inseparable – 05/02/2018

“What is the most reckless thing we can do today?” said my son to his best friend as they sat together in a red wagon atop a large hill. You know what happened next.

They emerged from the wreckage looking like they had been dragged across a cheese grater. In their wisdom, they were wearing helmets. In their minds, this was another glorious adventure.

My son and his best friend are inseparable. And not just in matters of self-destruction. Both are creative, kind-hearted, appropriately irreverent, tender. They love to laugh. They seldom shower. For years they lived across the street from one another. They were equally at home in both houses.

Three elements define their boyhood together: creativity, risk, and something physical like fighting, biking, sweat, or food. They often rigged lawn chairs in the upper reaches of a tree with ropes. They sat up there only two feet apart, talking on walkie-talkies. They dressed in armor with spears and shields and jousted on their scooters. They converted the back deck of an abandoned house into a pirate ship, replete with plank, gun portals, and a long section of sloping eaves trough into which they would pee. We could not sit on our sofa for years, because the cushions were perpetually used as a fort.

If you care to download it, I once received the 30 second video at the end of this post whilst at my workplace. The boys had taken our dog crate and taped it to a couple of skateboards.  Then they built a barrier out of garbage cans in our driveway. One would climb into the dog crate while the other pushed it at top speed to crash through the barrier. Who needs virtual reality when your life is this real?

One of the hardest parts about moving to Switzerland was tearing the two boys apart. As we drove away, our son’s best friend ran alongside the car all the way to the end of the block. Many months later our son broke his arm. As we sat in the waiting room of the Swiss hospital his eyes welled with tears. I asked him if the pain was too much. He shook his head. Then in reference to his best friend he said quietly, “This is my first broken arm where he isn’t here with me”.

Video:  https://wordsfortheweary.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/IMG_7314.mov