The Musings of a Giant Idiot

My wife and I are in my hometown of Springfield, Ohio this weekend to visit my Grandparents and my Mom who just had knee replacement surgery. Springfield is a little over 6 hours from Nashville, TN and my wife and I always have fun on these long drives. Our dog Charlie is of course bored but after a long day at Pup Scouts (doggy day care) he just sleeps the entire trip. Sometimes we can snap at each other but that is usually because we are hungry and after stopping at one of the high quality fast food restaurants we are fine. These trips always have moments but one moment seems to always stick out and this trip was no different.

We were driving through Cincinnati and making great time. Springfield is about 75-80 minutes from the ‘Nati and we thought we were going to make it to my Mom’s house before midnight. Then I-75 became a parking lot. Living in Nashville I am used to backups on the interstate, usually it involves gawkers looking at something novel like a guy changing his tire or a cop pulling over a speeder, you know stuff that has never been seen.

I thought this was the same thing until I realized that unlike Tennessee drivers, Ohio drivers know what they are doing. Even though the traffic was moving we were still going slow and then my wife busted out the Blackberry and looked at her map application to see if there was another route. We were outside Cincinnati so it was to late to hit the loop that goes around the city so she was trying to find the quickest way to my Mom’s house and started typing in the address. She was typing in one address and I was telling her another address. One of us was wrong and she bet that it was me.

This should have been my first clue, whenever my wife is willing to bet she is going to win and sure enough she was right. We had another nice laugh at my expense, a very common occurrence in our household and got through the traffic. We made it to Springfield around 12:30 this morning and we are looking forward to a great visit with my family. We are also looking forward to making more memories on our trip back to Nashville.

Last week in the Chronic-(what)-cles I talked about my first car. I racked my brain for appropriate material for this week’s edition and came up with another moment from my youth.

I began playing tennis around 6 years old. It was a sport my parents felt I could play for a long time like golf. For a 6 year old I was not bad, genes helped, my Mom was quite a tennis player and my Dad was an all around athlete who excelled in swimming (he really wanted his boys to give swimming a shot) and football. As I got older and took more lessons my game improved. When we moved to Ohio I started playing in tournaments. Because I had a summer birthday I was always the youngest kid in my division. In the 12 and under I would be the only 11 year old, in the 14 and under the only 13 year old. My first year I would get beat by the older kids but I was always able to hold my own. The next year I would usually win the tournaments because I was older than my competition.

Growing up playing tennis you knew all the kids. You played in leagues on weekends and took group lessons so their was a familiarity. Some kids excelled and really took the game seriously and some, who had talent, were more content to see how far they could hit a tennis ball or if their Boris Becker imitation was spot on (my Becker imitation was perfect).

I fell into the latter group, I never exerted more effort than I needed to and was content with winning on occasion. One such occasion was the district qualifier in Springfield. I was playing a kid that I normally beat with ease. Because I had beat him before I thought it was going to be an easy match and I coasted. It almost cost me the match but it cost me two racquets instead.

When things did not go my way on the court I would get slightly upset and start yelling and slamming my racquet on the ground. A number of times my Mom threatened to yank me off the court if I continued to act like McEnroe. This usually worked and I would stop the theatrics. This time she was a little late in warning me. The first racquet broke after I slammed it into the court.

I did not know it was broken until I tried to serve and then I heard this cracking sound. I looked at my Prince Response and saw it almost folded in half. My Mom did not say anything because she figured I would learn my lesson after breaking a $150 racquet. I didn’t learn because I had another one. Later in the match I got irritated again that I was not blowning my opponent off the court. After another missed shot the replacement racquet got slammed in the ground. This time there was no need to even look at you could hear the crack on all the courts (yeah I made quite the spectacle). My Mom had enough she walked over to the fence and told me if I did not straighten up she would yank me off the court and I would forfeit the match, a match that I was winning quite handily. I got my act together and went on to win the match and the tournament.

After the summer my interest in tennis began to wane. I play on occasion with my wife (she crushes me) and I can still do great imitations of Boris Becker and John McEnroe’s serve but I am sure tennis courts and racquets everywhere breathed a sigh of relief when I hung it up for good my sophomore year in high school.

About a month ago I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone while waiting in the drive thru line at Starbucks. We were talking about something stupid, fantasy football, softball or poker, when I went ahead and placed my usual order of a Venti Mocha. I was still talking when I got to the window to pay and get my drink. I told him I had to go because, “I didn’t want to be that guy”.

We have all been in the store or the fast food chain were the person in front of us is yammering on the phone and paying no attention to the cashier. I personally think it is extremely rude and reeks of arrogance. I also get annoyed when people drive 10 mph below the speed limit. I hate when people keep their turn signals on. Another one is people coming to a complete stop at a 4 way stop when no one else is coming. Bottom line a lot of things irritate me and I have a comment for every single person weather they can hear me or not.

When this happens I try to remember what Jesus said about casting stones in John 8:7. Who am I to be upset at people for inconveniencing me. It is not my job to tell these people what they are doing wrong, when I have a whole list of things I could be gigged for by them. It is a constant struggle for me and some days I do a good job and other days I put together a menagerie of words that would make Bobby Knight blush, not to brag but I am creative with cuss words for some reason.

This was a tough movie to decide on the scene. There were a few choices, Roy Hobbs at his first batting practice, knocking the cover off the ball in his first at bat, smashing the clock at Wrigley or smashing the lights in his final at bat. I went with his slump busting, clock breaking homer in Wrigley Field. I have seen this movie a number of times and this has always been my favorite scene for a couple of reasons, the crack of the bat and no slow motion until after the ball hits the clock. It also has one of the best scores ever.

I would rank The Natural the third best sports movie after Hoosiers and the original Longest Yard (did not need to be remade). In sports movies the actors never look realistic when playing but Robert Redford looks like a baseball player from the ’30s and he may have the best swing of any actor in a baseball movie. Some may say Costner in Bull Durham but I will take the classic left handed swing of Redford’s all the time.

When I was in middle school dodgeball was the game we looked forward to the most in gym class. Most boys loved it and all the girls hated it. Everyone knows how dodgeball is played, 2 teams, 3 balls, if your hit your out, if a thrown ball is caught your out. In our games the best players were always divided so the teams would be somewhat even. All the kids who did not want to play would hang in the back and it would be 4 on 4, but instead of throwing at the good players we always tried to get the weaker kids out first. You would think that the better players would be knocked out first but all the top players had a respect for one another and we wanted to punish the ones who did not play. It helped that the weaker kids could not catch a ball if you lobbed it to them so one of those red rubber balls, thrown as hard as our middle school arms would let us, was almost impossible to catch.

If they did catch one you were extremely embarrassed and had to wait until the next game to take them out because no way were they catching it twice.

Today dodgeball is not played in gym classes, partly because those red rubber balls can hurt someone and partly because people felt the weaker kids were getting picked on and humiliated to much. I am glad that I grew up when it was okay to heave a ball as hard as you could at someone and it was considered a sport. Kids today have know idea what they are missing out on.

Barry Bonds the “home run king” (it will always be Hank Aaron no matter what the numbers say) was indicted on 14 counts of perjury. When I go to the gym tomorrow morning to get back to my size 38 this is going to be all the talk on Sportscenter. There is so much good stuff going on in sports right now that I don’t need this big headed slugger (literally and figuratively) to take away from that. I really wish they would ignore the guy and treat him like the bum he is.

The Coen brothers swept the Oscars this year with No Country, For Old Men and while that was a good movie it is not my favorite of theirs. My favorite of is The Big Lebowski, which was made in 1998. It stars Jeff Bridges in one of the great comedic performances ever. It also has some of the best supporting characters in a movie, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, just to name a few. When I saw Iron Man a couple of weeks ago I still had a hard time picturing Bridges as anyone but Jeff Lebowski. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is also in this scene.

This clip has extremely, extremely strong language but is still hilarious.

I have been on the job hunt for 6 months. What looked like a promising career as a Financial Advisor turned sour when I could not pass the Series 7 exam…twice. Since then I have been temping at various offices in Nashville. All of the resumes, interviews and prayers payed off on May 1st when I was offered a job as a Fraud Investigator. Of course my wife and I were extremely happy when we got this news and went out to celebrate with some friends of ours. With my job starting this Monday my wife asked if I needed clothes, I of course said no and left it that. While putting the clothes away one night she noticed that some of the pants I had been wearing seemed a little ragged. One pair had a rip in the pocket, another had a pin sized hole in the butt and another had some faded ink stains. She felt this was unacceptable and after celebrating Mother’s Day with her parents we were headed to the mall.

Our first stop was Men’s Wearhouse and getting some shirts that did not say Nebraska on them. I had a couple of giftcards my Dad got me and got 4 shirts and it was painless. The only thing that raised any eyebrows was when I got my waist measured and the salesman told me I was a 42, I did not think this was possible since I had always been a 38 even at my heftiest when I came home from college. With the dread that I may have cracked the 40 waist barrier we went to Eddie Bauer were I also had a few giftcards. I picked up pants in size 38 and 40. I did not even try to button the size 38 pants for fear of breaking them, the 40s fit but my wife felt they were to snug. This meant that I had skipped size 40 and went straight to 42. They did have some 42s left but they had an inseam of 30 and that was not going to work for a 6′3 guy like me. I was able to place an order at Eddie Bauer for some pants and then it was on to the next store the Gap. I am happy to say that the Gap had 42 x 34 sized pants and was able to get 2 pair which was good. What was not good was being slapped across the face that I am not as svelte as I thought I was.

Despite finding out my physique is not what I thought it was, I had a great day because I got to spend it with my wife. We spent a majority of the day laughing at my expense and my new found worries about weight. I could not have asked for a better way to spend a Sunday.

A friend of mine suggested that each Friday I share a piece of Giant Idiot history. Since my readers want it I am happy to oblige.

My first car was a 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, it was my Dad’s work car, then my Mom’s car when she commuted to school and then mine after I got my driver’s license in 1993.

By the time I got it had over 100,000 miles and had very few problems. My first weekend driving I hit a parked car in a grocery store parking lot, since the car was built like a tank there was minimal damage. This little accident was a sign of what was to come between the car and me.

The next accident was the best and my family and I get a big laugh about it now. I was home sick from school and was going to eat at my Grandparents’ house. I got in my car and put it in reverse but I forgot to shut my door. Like a shot it started to back out of the garage and I could not get my door closed in time. The end result looked similar to the :55 second mark of this video:

We had to get the tracks of the garage door fixed and I needed to get a new car door. After looking for 6 months we finally found a door to fit on the blue Cutlass, the door was gray. I did not care I was glad to drive again.

My joy lasted 3 months when the car stopped running. In 8 months I had ruined a perfectly good car. It would be another 5 years before I had the chance to drive another car into the ground.

One of my first posts was on the NCAA final between Kansas and Memphis. We have all seen the shot a million times and heard the idiot talking heads (Digger, Dick and Jay) discuss how Memphis should have fouled at the end. I am not going to rehash any of that. I just want to show complete joy by a bunch of college kids:

This is what college sports is all about, going nuts for your school. My favorite part of this video is the guy telling his girlfriend that overtime is 5 minutes long (happens at the 1:15 mark). If it were me and my wife did not know about overtime (she does) I would be giving an extremely inappropriate smart aleck answer. That would probably lead us to not enjoying the rest of the game and being mad at each other for no good reason other than me being a complete jerk. I have been trying to be better about saving my wisecracks for people like this and not my wife. So I want to thank you random guy for teaching me about patience.