2005-02-20
Oh goodness, how cool is this?! My diary's published! In a newspaper! With a circulation three times the size of my hometown! And I even made the cover sidebar! This is another three minutes taken from my subtotal fifteen minutes of fame. Maybe four.I found out that I was to be published a few days before the paper went to press thanks to a long lost friend who's dating the music editor, so I did what any guy would do when he finds himself on the verge of rock-stardom: I called my mom. She got back to me via email:
"it is 6:30 am and i looked at today's email page for the riverfront times and I CAN'T FIND ANY BLOG STUFF. as you can tell, i am not happy. please email the exact address so i can read your trashy stuff, ernest (as in hemingway!!!!) love, mom"
Mr. Mike Riopell's comment on my publication: "I'm not as impressed that you were published as that you were a right-winger published in the alternative media. Good show."
And of course, what's on my main page the day that the issue of the Riverfront Times containing my URL is distributed to hundreds of satellite locations in the greater St. Louis area, available to the consumer free of charge? A story about me shitting my pants my freshman year of college. I've been carrying that story around with me for four years now, and I chose this week of all weeks to finally share it with you all. Only me.
I'd have updated sooner, but Marquette was hosting its annual invitational speech and debate tournament this weekend. Seeing as I'm one of three tournament directors, it had pretty much consumed me up until this point. Now, compared to last year's tourney, this was a game of hopscotch. Everything ran on time, the judging pool was terrific, hospitality was on point, and the competitors were happy. That, in turn, made me happy. It went so well that at the end of the night, the team celebrated by force-feeding me animal crackers and shoving me into the girls bathroom. Ah, just like high school all over again.
Speaking of high school all over again, here's the thing: I'm 22 years old, but still very frequently get mistaken for one of my students. Coaches from other squads don't give me the time of day. Bus drivers laugh at me. Bullies take my money. I suppose I just have one of those faces.
This weekend was especially bad. First off, I was wearing the tournament t-shirt, which all of the students were wearing. Worse, my hair was giving me a lot of insubordination that morning, so I opted to simply part it to the side like I did in, well, high school. But the icing on the cake was my voice, worn ragged from an especially exhilarating karaoke night the evening prior, which was cracking like a fifteen year old suffering from a single undropped ball. To describe it though a method acting paradigm, I BECAME HIGH SCHOOL.
All weekend long, Todd, the team president, made sure never to waste an opportunity to throw me such pearls as, "Who're you taking to prom?" "How's the learners permit going?" "Going out for track this year?" Got any hair on your balls yet?" Todd stands about half a foot taller than I and has a neck like a brontosaurus, so he thought this was all very hilarious. Truth be told, so did I.
The icing on the cake after this excellent weekend was spread when I went into work this morning to find two diverse yet satisfying and well-timed blessings: a paycheck and a power outage in the nonsmoking section. Thanks to the latter, I'm home and relaxing before I get a-house cleanin'. Good days these be.
-Andy