I Used To Sneak Out

Let me start this post by noting that my mother reads my blog. She occasionally leaves me little messages on my personal Facebook page putting me in my place after reading posts like the one about her chasing my brother and me around the house with wooden spoons.

I’m a bit lucky that so far she hasn’t sent me a gift from this website www.BoxOfShit.com.

But, I think after this post my luck will run out. So, mom…get up and just walk away from the computer. Go on….leave woman!!

Is she gone? OK, let’s do this.

So, I used to sneak out of my house with such regularity as a kid you’d think I was practicing for an Olympic gold medal in it.

I knew my parents nightly routine like the back of my hand.

9:10 – 10:36 p.m. – Fight like cats & dogs

10:36 – 11:21 p.m. – Father takes his drunk ass upstairs to watch HBO late night softcore porn

11:22 – 11:48 p.m. – Father passes out, mother follows suit.

12 p.m. – The house falls silent and the countdown is on till the coast is clear.

Waiting till the coast is clear for sneaking out is the hardest and longest time of your lives. I can’t tell you how many times I’d wake up to my alarm going off at 6 a.m. and screaming, “SHIT!!!!”

But one day I was digging through an old dresser in our guest bedroom and found this old-school clock that had an alarm only a mouse could appreciate. I set the alarm, put all my faith in it, and at 1:01 a.m. it went off.

I quickly snapped the alarm off and sat straight-up in bed listening.

My father was in his regular deep deep slumber which sounds like a mix between a 1920s broke-ass sawmill and two constipated virgin elephants trying to make sweet love.

My mother, she always slept like a rock. I can’t tell you how many times as a kid I’d run into her room frantically trying to wake her up  to impart upon her the very exciting news that I was about to throw-up all over this lovely house of ours. By the time she woke up to my childish nudging and whispering, “mommy… I think I’m going to...” I would inevitably puke all over the floor and bed beside her.

A smile crept across my face as I knew I had found a way to get in sleep while also being able to escape for a while in the middle of the night.

The next piece was huge. Putting together the elaborate mental puzzle I’d created that when put together, revealed the exact locations to step when walking down the carpeted L-shaped stairs to freedom.

The key to it all…banisters. After three steps I could place my hands on both banisters and swing my anti-gymnastic-skilled-ass passed five steps and a half-landing.

The last three steps always squeaked the loudest so I had to turn around and take those them backwards so I could steady myself with my hands.  

At that point…it’s game-on and I was out of there.

I never really had a purpose to sneak out at night. Very rarely would I meet-up with a friend. When I did it usually ended with them saying, “why in the hell are we doing this? I’m tired dude!!!”

My brother used to make the journey from time to time with me. But again, why? We get to hang out all day every day. Why waste sleep and risk getting caught to do it under moonlight?

So, I’d just walk or ride my bike. I’d go to the lake nearby and throw rocks from an old decrepit concrete pier. I’d occasionally leave a tennis ball in my girlfriend’s mailbox so she’d find it and think I was a badass rebel.

I experimented with smoking and alcohol.

But most importantly I was living that very moment of my life exactly how I wanted to live it. There were no rules. No parents. No one was watching.

Parents weren’t fighting. My father wasn’t asking me to make him drinks.

The escape I’d created in my room with music, my piano, writing poems, and reading lyrics had gotten so much larger. It was now filled with fresh air, endless roads and no boundaries.

But despite all the freedom and time alone with my brain, there was a tiny little piece of me that found motivation to sneak out of the house from the idea that I might get caught.

I figured, if I was caught, it would show my father that I was in control of me and capable of leaving his tiny kingdom whenever I wanted. I could defy him. I could break the chains whenever I felt like it.

And like that the night would be over. It was time to head home.

There was always this one corner that was six houses away. As soon as I turned that corner I’d have a clear shot of my parents’ bedroom windows.

Light on – I’m screwed.

Light off – Home free. Just make it through the front door and the rest can be explained by sleep walking.

In all the times I ventured into the night, I never came home to find a light on.

I never came home to find my mother and father sitting downstairs holding the letter I left on my pillow every time I snuck out that read:

Dear Mom:

I am OK. Nothing bad has happened to me. I snuck out of the house to just go for a walk and be alone. I know it’s very dangerous for me to do and I’m sorry.

I love you and will be home very shortly. I hope you will not be too mad and if you found this before dad woke up all I ask is that you don’t wake him or tell him until we talk.

Love,

Justin

A few times a year when I can’t sleep in the middle of the night I’ll get up, toss on the running gear and go out for a short three-miler. As my feet pound pavement I look at all the rows of houses dark and filled with slumber and I feel free again.

Free like a 14-year-old boy gliding through the streets of his neighborhood at 1:30 a.m. without a care in the world and nothing to lose.



The Bumpit, The Snuggies & A Crazy Little Thing Called Love

So a few weeks ago a kick-ass friend of mine @nuckingfutsmama and I had an idea. She’s a hilarious blogger, I’m a hack blogger…what if we collaborated? Then the idea morphed to, I write a sentence, then she adds to that sentence, and we keep going back and forth till we have a story. Immediately our idiotic minds said, “hell yeah let’s do that shit,” and it was off to the races.

A week-and-a-half later…here’s the story. My sentences are the blue ones, hers…the pink. But before we get to the story…here’s a bit about my co-author:

@nuckingfutsmama

And here's her bloggy blog: http://mama2point0.wordpress.com/

Mother of twins, co-Chicagoan, stay-at-home-mom, marathoner, ninja yoga-master, hilarious blogger, noticer of dudes working out at the gym near her with massive bulges in their pants, super mom, wine lover, protective of her daughter who’s being stalked by a 1^st grader that’s obsessed with her wearing pony-tails, former patient of a chiropractor that prolonged physical exams so he could check out her ass in her green thong, and just an all around funny-ass, hot, kick-ass lady.

And now…the story!!

The Bumpit, The Snuggies & A Crazy Little Thing Called Love

Every time I smell the scent of butter frying in a pan, I can't help but think of the scent of her neck, the way hair grew on only the knuckles of her feet, and how she could beat me in thumb-wrestling with her pinky.

I always found solitude in the unibrow that framed her over-sized googly eyes, and her summer-toothed smile (some were here, some were there) that just melted my heart into a thousand tiny pieces.

Those were the thoughts twirling in my head as I finished shaving the hair off the back of my last customer of the day where I work at Max's Back & Bikini Wax.

As I swept up the last of Big Bertha's pubes and Captain Carl's back fuzz, I knew that I needed to get in touch with the woman who showed me what love was all about. 

Slowly I slid my pants back on, being careful not to catch them on the 12-inch knife cut she gave me just a month ago....the last time I saw her.

She had been raging mad because I'd accidentally thrown away her most prized possession, her Bumpit.

I mean, how the hell was I supposed to know it was her girl toupee when it looked like Uncle Ned had come by our trailer again and left behind one of his fetish dolls?

That fight was the last I saw of her, and word on the street was that she was dancing for dollars at the Pink Puttycat Parlor down in the back woods of Alabama.

But "word on the street" wasn't gonna stop me from giving it one last shot - so I called her number, 1-900-HOTT-ASS.

When she answered the phone, I could tell she was reading a script as she robotically told me just what she'd do to me and a vat of Velveeta cheese, and I got so excited at hearing that burly voice once again that I nearly pissed myself.

I quickly took a deep breath, checked to make sure I hadn't made a wet spot on myself, and said, "Hey sugar-britches it's your little waddly boodly boo."

After about three minutes of dead silence, she laid into me for all the things I'd done to drive her away, like calling her brother a man-whore, using her wart cream as toothpaste, taking all the Beeno without asking, and throwing away her precious Bumpit.

Those words pushed me to my breaking point, so I angrily reminded her of the time she made me wear her Bumpit backwards while we had sex so she could comb it, and how she made me "wear" a tampon all day so I could “empathize,” and how my father had to get a restraining order against her so she'd stop breaking in his house to smell his dirty underwear.

I knew I'd gone too far when all I heard was silence on the other end, but then she blurted out my worst nightmare—she'd married that son-of-a-bitch neighbor of theirs who sold imitation Snuggies out of his trailer.

Slamming the phone down I knew I was finally going to have to pay a little visit to my safety-deposit box to retrieve and begin swift implementation of my diabolical master plan to rid trailer Snuggie sellers from the county once.......and for all!!

Gathering up my lighter fluid and matches from my highly protected treasure box, I headed on over to the White T Timbers Trailer Park to pay a visit to old Mike Hunt and his Snuggie wannabe piles of shit.

Hopping off my fire-engine red Schwinn bicycle with flesh colored truck nutz hanging off the back, I reached in my backpack for my matches and lighter fluid while hawking a loogie on the ground so that anyone watching knew that I meant business!!

With my purple pleather shit kickers, I knocked down Mike's shower curtain front door, grabbed as many fake Snuggies as I could from his king-sized brass waterbed and lit the biggest damn bonfire that trailer park had ever seen.

Then I tossed the remainder of the Snuggies on the front basket of my Schwinn, looked around to see if anyone was watching, checked my kick-ass pleathers I nicknamed "my shit kickers," lifted a leg to let off some "steam," and peddled off towards Tammie's house where I knew I could finish the deed.

Tammie was waiting for me on a lawn chair in her front yard, and after punching me smack dab in the teeth, she grabbed me by the neck and pressed her big red lips, crusty cold sore and all, right up to mine.

"That better be a shit-ton of snuggies in your pansy-ass bike basket idiot boy or else I'm gonna make you clean Rufus' anal glands again while me and the neighbor twins drink beer and watch ya," she said in her super seductive smoker's voice while stopping every 5th word to hack up a lung.

In between grabbing and groping each other's cottage cheese asses, we managed to gather up the shit-ton of burned Snuggie bits and erect a commemorative statue of them in the side yard of Tammie's trailer, attracting thousands of supporters of the anti-Snuggie movement to come and pay their respects.

We were partying, drinking 40s, shooting guns in the air, stripping, taking turns with the neighbor's goat, and that's when I noticed the most horrifying, disgustingly sexiest, fuck-o-licious part of Tammie I'd never seen before.....she had a third nipple!

The fact that Tammie had one overgrown testicle just like me, combined with this latest revelation of a third nipple just like mine confirmed to me that stealing her from that one-legged pimp all those years ago down by the river was the smartest decision I ever made.

To this day I still don't understand why that fur-wearing bastard only had one gold leg made instead of two, but I'm chalking it up to the thought that maybe he's just a big fan of hopping?

At any rate, I finally had my honey schnuckimcakes back, and I figured that if I could swipe her from a no good son-of-a-bitch gimp bastard, then surely I could snitch her from Mike Hunt and his lair of fake blanket robes.

And I had just the thing, buried deep in the crotch of my pants, that was guaranteed to seal the deal and bring her to her knees begging for me to be hers for the rest of our unnaturally born, inbred lives.

I lifted my one oversized very sweaty ball and pulled out a brand new Bumpit to replace the one I'd thrown away, complete with the biggest rock of a Ring Pop I could find at the arcade.

With a Marlboro Red cigarette hanging from her lower lip and eyes popping out of her weathered face she stood there dumbfounded and expressionless before suddenly reaching deep down into the crotch of her pants.

She, too, pulled out a Bumpit and even a comb and told me that I could do the styling during sex next time.

This was the moment I'd waited for my entire life and was the reason I'd worn tear-off pants and a condom every day since I was 13.

So I ripped off my pants to expose my leopard print thong that was emblazoned with the words, "For fuck's sakes, will you marry me or what?"

A smile crept across Tammie's face as she ripped off her shirt to reveal a custom-made bra with three cups for her boobs and extra nipple with "You Damn Skippy" also emblazoned across it.

A we embraced in a sloppy, tonsil-hockey kiss, the whole trailer park came out to cheer us on, even Mike Hunt & the golden-legged pimp, and the two of us lived happily ever after in a van down by the river.

Super Dad!!....Redux

Today begins round two of being a stay at home dad. The wifey took off to N.C. to be with her family and help them put her cousin to rest. Until Tuesday night, it’ll be me, the two precious bastards, a cat, two fish, and the house.

Last week when I went through this we had a pretty good time. This week…I’m gonna blow the roof of this joint. I plan on planting serious fucking memories in these kids heads—even if it kills me. I mean, the way I look at it, that’s the only real selfish benefit I get out of it.

“What do you mean you gap-toothed, big-eared freak?” you might be asking yourself.

Well, in most circumstances I’d be banking the living hell out of the days I’ve spent as a single dad. I’d be keeping a pretty little row of binge drinking cards, sex cards, oh hell no you’re cooking tonight cards, and why don’t you wipe her ass this time cards. But wifey’s dealing with a death in the family, which just shits all over my capability to get any benefit from being Mr. Mom.

I can’t whip-out my kick-ass cards to ask her to spend the week rubbing my feet, clipping my fingernails, shaving my back, taking care of the kids, feeding me dinner, and watching football. I can’t make plans to hit the Irish pub with the dudes. And I certainly can’t plop down next to her on the couch wearing my crotchless SpongeBob thong and leather mask holding a picture of PeeWee Herman and say “let’s do this.”

So instead, I’m gonna funnel all that energy towards the two midgets in the house. We’re gonna hit a birthday party, ride some bikes, maybe put a dent in Kiddieland, eat lots of ice cream, play kickball, roast marshmallows in the fire pit, and maybe even chase the cat around the house and shave our names in him.

And when the wife comes home I’ll help her move past this tragedy in her life and then over time we’ll all fall back into our routine. Oh sure, I’ll have the urge to ask her to shave my toes…. and even to wear the SpongeBob thong (I may wear them under my pants..just in case.), but I won’t.

Instead, hopefully she’ll look through all the shitty photos I take of the kids and feel relaxed that even though she married a sex-crazed douche – I can still support her in a time of need.  

Picking A Good One

We drove North West of the Chicagoland area today in search of some killer apples. I've never been apple picking before.... Funny enough, I was the only one in the car, my kids included, that could say that.

I pulled a chapter from the Obama presidency and gave a historic speech to the kids before they put their first ass-cheek in their seat. I was all: "If you love your country...if you love your fellow man...you'll stay buckeled...you'll respect your parents.....when daddy needs to hit the ABC store on the way, you'll offer him an extra quarter to help pay the liquor tax.....thow shalt not beat your sister!!!

Whatever mojo that speech created, sat well with kick-ass Macy:

And when we arrived...it was like a playground for my talented wifey to break out the camera and do her typical, but amazingly talented magic. Enjoy...I know I do. And I have to add...we will always love that midwestern sky...  :

Time on the Bike

My six-year-old is turning into a biking fanatic—which I’m absolutely loving. After my long commute every day, I walk in the door, usually sweating, dying for a beer, and hoping to smell a waft of freshly cooked dinner filling the air. Instead I usually see my daughter watching SpongeBob, no beer in the fridge, the smell of cat, and my son screaming “can we go for a bike-ride dad?!!! Can we pleeeeeease??!!”

                  

The longest ride I’ve taken the little bastard on is about 18 miles. Now keep in mind he’s on a little kids dirt-bike. Nothing fancy, no bike shorts to protect his precious hiny, no gloves for better grip, no bike shoes to help provide efficient pedaling…..just a helmet and a bike. And he loves it—begging for more when we’re done.

Along the rides I have the best fucking talks and the shit that comes out of his mouth is so cool and unexpected sometimes.

Along the Salt Creek trail he’ll say – “OOOHHH! This is my favorite part – look at the cool trees and how green everything is. Over here is where we usually see deer. I love the woods.”

And I’m all, “Yeah – it’s pretty awesome Grayson,” while I’m choking back tears and trying to keep a manly appearance.

On a ride the other day I said – “Hey, you could be Lance Armstrong for Halloween.”

He said – “Or, I could be that blonde headed woman who dropped my favorite toy the other day and busted it all over the floor.” He was talking about my wife dropping his favorite toy, breaking it and all his hopes and dreams along with it. Totally fucking random, out of the blue, and cool as shit. I love minds that work randomly and even more when he can work it into shit.

So I’m going to keep taking the bike rides. My struggle is giving him choices that allow him to take it up a notch without seeming like I’m pushing him. I’m trying to be the opposite of how my dad was. If it was my dad – he’d buy him a 10-speed with all the gear then yell at him to train harder, do better, and if I didn’t, he’s stop coming to my races cause it’s “a waste of his time.”

Regardless if he takes it to the next step or not, I’ll continue to soak in every damn word that random kid says and keep riding his back wheel through the woods.