Archive for the 'Other People's Stories' Category

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15
Dec
06

Toilet Humor

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Other People's Stories and Toilet Humor
Tags: , , ,
 
He’s a real stand-up guy! [www.bippity
boppitybaby.com]

A friend of mine once confessed that he uses odd words intentionally in emails so he can see what keyword-triggered ads Google calls up in the Gmail sidebar. I don’t know what words I was using earlier today, but I couldn’t escape noticing the words “Peter Potty” and a link to this site.

Apparently this is truly a remarkable device. The Web site declares that Peter Potty is “the world’s only flushable urinal.” I don’t know about that, but it does provide some excellent bonding opportunities, I suppose. “Little girls need to sit, but with the Peter Potty, little boys can stand like daddy,” boasts the site. Look at this kid. He sure is happy to pee standing up. He’s nearly hugging that thing.

I guess I’d be excited too. I do remember thinkning about this sitting/standing dichotomy when I was little.

Amused, I typed up an email to send the link to some friends of mine. And as I was doing so, I noticed another hilarious site, P-mate, advertised with something like: “Ladies, pee standing up!”

“Why ‘hold it in’ until you get home?” the site asks.

Visitors are invited to “discreetly enjoy hygienic freedom” by using the P-Mate™ “portable urinating device.” Finally women are allowed to “urinate standing up wherever and whenever they need to, without losing their dignity or risking unhygienic and unpleasant public restrooms.”

A professor in college once told my class a story about the surprise and intense pride he felt for his daughter when she won a pissing contest against a bunch of boys. She was four, five, something like that. And these little boys were all taking turns peeing to see who could shoot furthest. The little girl, not to be outdone, did something with her index and middle fingers, forming a sort of curved V and holding it against her vagina — the professor demonstrated the gesture for us — which apparently allowed her to shape the organ into a something that squirted outward. We are told she also had considerable control of the direction of the stream, too. She beat the boys soundly. You go, gurl! (You go standing up, girl!)

She’s much older now. I wonder if she wins bets at bars with that trick.

I can see a need for something like the P-Mate. A guy can whip it out and pee nearly anywhere. For a woman, things are slightly more difficult. Unless you’re my professor’s daughter. I’m not sure how exactly a pissed-upon plastic chute can be used to promote good hygiene, but I’m comfortable with that level of ignorance.

You want to see something funny, look at the pictures on the P-Mate site. (You have to. How does one use this thing?) It looks like the perfect size for a Christmas stocking. I think I know what I’m getting my sister now!

23
Jul
06

Kenny Rogers: Promethean Giver of Truth

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Music, Nostalgia, Other People's Stories and Words
Tags: ,

There was a time in my life when the songs that influenced me most were the hymns we sang at Catholic Mass.

I am the bread of life,
Those who come to me shall not hunger,
Those who believe in me shall not thirst
No one can come to me
Unless the Father beckons.

Refrain:
And I will raise him up
And I will raise him up
And I will raise him up
On the last day

Those days are all but over, but I miss it sometimes. I loved the music at church, especially when they’d haul out the choir every once in a while. The music was always the best part of Mass for me. I used to copy the notes out of the hymn book to pass the time, measure by measure, into a little notebook my mom kept in her purse. I didn’t know what they meant exactly, but it felt like a productive task at the age of 5. But the lyrics… These songs were so abstract. Bread? It was good for Communion, good for Easter, but a man cannot live on the Bread of Life alone, right?

There was also, of course, Schoolhouse Rock.

Interplanet Janet, she’s a galaxy girl,
A solar system Ms. from a future world,
She travels like a rocket with her comet team
And there’s never been a planet Janet hasn’t seen,

A bit weird, maybe. How about:

I’m just a bill.
Yes, I’m only a bill.
And I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill.
Well, it’s a long, long journey
To the capital city.
It’s a long, long wait
While I’m sitting in committee,
But I know I’ll be a law some day
At least I hope and pray that I will
But today I am still just a bill.

But there was a golden great I’ve been reminded of recently that taught me so much more.

On a warm summer’s evenin’ on a train bound for nowhere,
I met up with the gambler. We were both too tired to sleep.
So we took turns a starin’ out the window at the darkness
‘Til boredom overtook us, and he began to speak.

He said, “Son, I’ve made a life out of readin’ people’s faces,
And knowin’ what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.
And if you don’t mind my sayin’, I can see you’re out of aces.
For a taste of your whiskey I’ll give you some advice.”

So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow.
Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light.
And the night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression.
Said, “If you’re gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

Ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.
‘Cause ev’ry hand’s a winner and ev’ry hand’s a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”

And when he’d finished speakin’, he turned back towards the window,
Crushed out his cigarette and faded off to sleep.
And somewhere in the darkness the gambler, he broke even.
But in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.

You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

The Gambler by Kenny Rogers. This is one of my all-time favorites. This was the stuff of real life. Metaphors that gave me some insight into the grown-up world — even if I didn’t know exactly what he was singing about at the time. I used to imagine a satanic, horned man dealing cards to a table of cowboys whenever I heard Kenny sing: “There’ll be time enough for counting when the demon’s done.”

(I must have had a little too much of the Bread of Life.)

Still, I was astute enough to gather valuable lessons about:

• Cross-country railroad etiquette
• The joys of traveling without a destination
• How to share a smoke
• The value of a sip of whiskey
• Winning gracefully (you never count your money…)
• Knowing what to throw away (and what to keep)
• The unpredictability of life
• The inevitablilty of death, and the ability to look at it without sentimentality
• And most importantly, how to tell a story

There’s another famous attempt at a similar theme:

I’m a gambler, and I will take you by surprise
Gambler, I’ll aim this straight between your eyes
Gambler, yeah I know all the words to say
‘Cause I’m a gambler, I only play the game my way, yeah

Not nearly as informative, I think. But it’s a lot of fun, and you can dance to it.

06
Feb
06

With His Tail Between His Legs

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Other People's Stories
Tags: ,

Getting home after a quick outing to move Jeff’s Jeep to the Tuesday side of the street, I ran into a situation. Immediately after opening the door from the elevator, I saw my across-the-hall neighbor with her door wide open (where’s her cat? I thought) and a man standing in the hallway, leaning with his hand on the door jamb.

“And why are you sorry?” she asked, every bit the mother, leading her little boy through an apology to the neighbor whose goldfish pond he had just peed in.

“Because I called you a bitch,” he said.

Oh, my. I walked past as quickly as I could, trying to be invisible. I fumbled for the keys. Open the door fast, I thought.

“And why else?” she said, defiant, triumphant.

“Uh… I dunno. What else do you want me to say?”

It’s always best, I think, to conduct your private business on the inside of your doorway rather than the outside — or actually in — your doorway.

Unless, that is, you want to embarrass someone.

I spun through my doorway, avoiding eye contact with my neighbor and closing the door in a flash, shutting out the dirty laundry.

18
Oct
05

Advice from a Grown-Up

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: New York and Other People's Stories
Tags: , , ,

In order to fight falling asleep at my desk after lunch today, I walked to the corner store (Do we call them delis in New York? Bodegas?) to get a caffeinated beverage and a bit of chocolate. The scorched coffee from the kitchen downstairs doesn’t do anything for me but make me sweaty and fidgety. These days, I’m on to Coke Zero, which is discernably better, in my opinion, than Diet Coke.

On the way to the store, I walked behind a little boy, maybe 9 or 10 years old, walking home from school, accompanied by a man and a woman. He was dressed nicely in a red sweatshirt and clean but trendy blue jeans. And he had some kind of funky (probably basketball) shoes on, like every kid in this pocket of the Lower East Side. What caught my attention was the way he walked. He rose up on the balls of his feet before lifting them every time he took a step. And his heels were turned inward just slightly. It was a distinctive gait, and it struck me as somewhat cocky. I wondered if he’d grow up to be a bruiser or a softie.

He was telling a story about something relatively dramatic that happened at school that day. Some trouble he found himself in. Or some sort of conflict with another kid in his class. I couldn’t make it out.

The woman responded by saying, “Stop that kind of talk. That only gets you locked up and in a lot of touble over nothing.” She had a remarkably hoarse voice. I laughed to myself that this woman should remind me of Harvey Fierstein. She would not appreciate my saying so, I’m sure.

I was instantly curious about what he had done. Had the kid talked back to a teacher and gotten reprimanded? It was good of her to guide him, but I was sort of alarmed at the early-childhood notion of being locked up.

I supposed she was an aunt or a friend of his parents. I couldn’t imagine (or maybe I did not want to imagine) that she was his mother.

The boy said something about another kid kicking him in the back. The woman interrupted and rasped, “So then you turn around and kick him back. That’s what you do!”

Act, don’t talk, basically. And take care of it yourself. It’s different from what I was told in similar situations at that age. I had a git reaction against what she said, and immediately judged her to be a bad influence. I imagined him ruined by his mid-teens. Fighting all the time. In trouble at school. But is it really such bad advice? It might be appropriate for this neighborhood. And who could prepare him for the world any better than this woman, who has evidently seen some of the underbelly of life?

08
Oct
05

A Quarter Pounder and four Chicken McNuggets

By Eric Leave a Comment
Categories: Food, Other People's Stories and Theater
Tags: ,

It’s not every day a ticket to a major award-winning Broadway show — with the original cast — falls into your lap. It’s never happened to me. My husband bought tickets to see Bernadette Peters in Annie Get Your Gun for my birthday a few years ago. By the time our show date came around, Peters had left the cast and been replaced with none other than Cheryl Ladd. It was a fine show, but I feel compelled to point out that anything Bernadette Peters can do, Cheryl Ladd cannot do better.

Last week a friend of mine, who will remain unidentified, bought a front-row seat to Spamalot from a colleague for $30, a considerable bargain for an off-Broadway show, let alone a ticket worth … what was it? … $240 or something? She had a scheduling conflict, apparently, the poor thing. So, hooray for my friend.

The social conventions of tourism being what they are, it’s reasonable to expect that much of the audience of any given show will be wearing t-shirts and blue jeans. There’s a certain casualness about a night out on the town these days. That’s fine. It’s Spamalot, not the La Traviata. But there are certain things I would not recommend doing in the front row at a major Broadway production.

For example: Eating a Quarter Pounder and a four-piece Chicken McNugget during the show!

However, this is precisely what my friend did. He didn’t have time to eat before the show, and apparently, he didn’t want to wait until intermission to eat a cold hamburger.

After being roundly admonished for this, he tried to defend himself.

No one knew! he said.

He described to us how he ripped the burger up into pieces in its package inside his backpack and only extracted one bite-sized morsel at a time. I give him credit for discretion, but the fact remains: He was chowing down on fast food in the front row in plain view of hundreds of people and the actors on stage.

Besides that, didn’t someone smell it? Someone in the front row must have been wondering where the scent of grilled beef and fried chicken was coming from in the first act.

I mean, even Spam is mostly pork, so it couldn’t have been a special effect for the show!

But no one smelled it! he said.

I’m not so sure. McDonald’s has a distinctive odor. It’ll stink up a subway car. I can tell from down the hall if someone has a McDonald’s take-out at lunch time.

He told us that David Hyde Pierce looked at him during the performance. I don’t doubt it. Maybe he was amused by my friend — or maybe he was just hungry. (“Are you finished with that?”)

I can just imagine him on a talk show or in a magazine interview talking in his clipped, erudite way about memorable moments from the run of the show.

“… Yes, and believe it or not, there was a guy one night in the front row who had brought McDonald’s to the show. And he actually ate it during the show …”

Not a bad deal for my friend. Cheap and easy notoriety for less than $5.

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the untallied hours