Eblo

Another Breakdown

It hit me again today. There are a lot of reasons.

His 30th birthday should be next Tuesday. I've been working with some others on a secret project to try to mark that event, but it's slow, frustrating going, and I have literally been losing sleep over it. Lots of it, so that doesn't help, obviously.

In working on this 'thing,' I've maintained a cool distance from the emotional significance of what I've been doing and why - like a surgeon operating on his or her own child, perhaps. You know it's going to hit you like hell later, but for now, you get through what has to be done. Well it hit me today.

On my drive in to work, I was feeling pretty nostalgic in general. A B-52's song reminded me of an old girlfriend. A reuniting outing several years back was thwarted by a big snowstorm. Who knows, maybe we'd have gotten back together. Maybe not, but perhaps a meeting would have had some kind of negative impact on my relationship with A. My life changed, at least in a small way by a big snowstorm. A big snowstorm. A big snowstorm.

Yeah, we're supposed to have a big snowstorm today, in fact it was already coming down on my drive in, while I was thinking. And the thoughts lead to Mike. He was killed in a big snowstorm. The last time I saw him - that many of us saw him - was for his birthday dinner. That day, there was a big snowstorm.

While sitting around the tables shoved together upstairs at The Firehouse in Evanston, I looked at Mikey for one of the last times and jokingly said, "I hope you appreciate we all risked our lives to get here tonight!" He assured me, in his flip but genuine way, that yes, he most certainly appreciated it. A week later, he risked his life to visit a friend for a Monday Night Movie Night in yet another big snowstorm. We all fared much better on his birthday - 2 hour drive to Evanston and all.

But it wasn't the snow, or the idea of lives changed/altered/shattered by weather, nor reflecting on the project that did me in. Again, it was a song. This time, R.E.M. One little line from "Leaving New York,"

Well doesn't that just sum it up. And with that, I wept. And sung. And drove through the beginnings of a big snowstorm.

A few addenda:

1. Two songs after "Leaving New York," as I was parking my car at work, "The Outsiders" started up :
   You took me to the restaurant where we first met
   
   You knocked a future shock crowbar upside my head

   First met. Last met. Crowbar. Lead pipe. Now I'm supposed to work?

2. A coworker of mine, on days like this, often brings up the episode of The Simpsons in which a newscaster declares, "The Weather Service has upgraded Springfield's blizzard from 'Winter Wonderland' to a 'Class III Killstorm'." He likes to describe the graphic of a snowman wielding an icicle. Typically, I can shrug it off. Today I wanted to shove an icicle in his eye.
   

Tellin' Stories

So, this one summer evening several years back, a few neighbors on our block were hanging out around a firepit in the driveway nextdoor to my parents'. You know, one of those Webber firepits, not like a rusted out 55 gallon drum or anything. Anyway, a few adult beverages might have been consumed. Just another suburban Saturday night. Jokes were made, stories were told, and a few more beverages, perhaps, were consumed.

At one point in the evening, one of the couples had to run an errand - pick up their kids, get dinner, something that wasn't going to take up the whole evening. We'll call them Ken and Annette. 'Ken' and 'Annete' lived on the other side of my parents. They had lived in the house a couple years and mixed well with the rest of the Moore Street loonies. They were good people.

Ken had a small problem, though. He was a very busy man who ran his own HVAC company, played some softball, and had kids who were getting involved in sports. He didn't have a lot of time for honey-do projects. In fact, I made a few bucks off of him cutting his lawn. The house wasn't an eye-sore or anything. Let's just put it this way - the Christmas lights were still up. In July.

So we were all sitting aroung the fire, sans Ken and Annette, when my dad, who was facing their house, started giggling to himself like he does when he's up to no good. My mom asked him what was so funny, but he just grinned big, set down his soda pop, and said, "Hold on a sec." Uh-oh.

He disappeared into our garage, knocked a few things over, and eventually came out triumphantly holding up an orange outdoor extension chord. By this point, he was having a hard time containing his laughter. Amid queries of "What are you doing!?!?" he threw the chord out on the lawn to uncoil it, plugged it into the outlet by our garage, and walked the other end to Ken and Annette's house. After a short bit of fumbling in the bushes, we beheld Christmas in July!!!

For the next hour or so, we could hardly stop laughing. We checked every car rounding the corner to see if the prank's victims were returning home. Eventually a pair of headlights came down the street and around them we could make out the form of Annette's minivan.

They pulled up in their driveway and I think they were too busy trying to figure out why the hell their Christmas lights were on to hear us roaring with laughter. Eventually they caught on and called us all a few choice names. Good fun.

Anyway, that's just part one of this story. I tell that tale every once in a while. It amuses me. I told it to a cow orker once. This fellow, we'll call him 'Shelly,' happens to be a licensed Realtor (r), so he was very handy while Amy and I were house hunting. While out stalking some potential quarry one afternoon, we drove by what eventually became our house, and Shelly observed that the clips for the Christmas lights were still up on the gutters. Not the lights themselves, just the clips. But it being May, this was enough to touch off one of Shelly's somewhat comical Seinfeld-esque rants. This one happened to be about people too lazy to take down their holiday lights. Apparently this is a pet peeve of his.

After he finished his rant, I thought it was a good time to pull out the ol' 'Ken and Annette.' I figured he would appreciated it. And did he ever.

He appreciated it so much, in fact, that he told it back to me six months later as if it were his own!!!

Now, we've all been on both sides of similar situations before - either we've heard a good story and we've retold it, perhaps as if it happened to our cousin or something, and perhaps embellishing a fact or two. Otherwise, we'd have no urban legends, right? Or, we've heard someone tell a story that supposedly happened to them, but we KNOW we've heard before, perhaps with a few facts changed.

But I have never EVER had someone tell my own tale back to me and claim it as his/her own. It was very impressive.

More impressive, however, is the fact that he has now done it twice. The first time he did it, I really felt kind of bad for him. With the other guys in the car with us, I didn't want to just call the guy a liar - or even a schtick-thief. So I let him have it. I let him go. Partially out of kindness. Partially out of shock and disbelief.

Well that was a few months ago. Just yesterday, he struck again. I've got to say though, the story must be quite popular because it's received some obvious polish. He's given the victim of the prank a name I've heard him use before - perhaps a REAL neighbor - to lend realism. This time he also went into the fact that usually, this guy Dean or whatever, is a very orderly organized guy. He said, "In fact, if you go into his garage, all of his tools are in exaclty the right place and everything's labeled. But just this one tiem he didn't take his lights donw until like June, or July - I think it was June." I mean really, it's impressive what he's done with the thing.

And I sat there, again, looking him in the face as I heard the story of my dad unfold thinking, "You HACK! You material-lifting weasel!" And I didn't bust him. I'm not sure why. I was close. I felt my pulse quicken as I thought of dropping the bomb. But I held off. Part of me thinks it's because it's just so pathetic that he doesn't realize what he's doing. Another part of me thinks it's just too much fun to watch it happen. Like watching Cops.

Next time, I'm going to bust him. I have to. But I'll be nice about it. I'll tell him I really like what he's done with it. I won't even ask him to stop telling it. Just stop telling it to me.