Public Transit

“Get some sun, you’re in Miami!” shouted the drunk girl partying near us on the beach. I looked down at my blaring farmer’s tan and quickly understood the exclamation was directed at me.

But that wouldn’t be the worst of what was to come… I would soon be lost on a bus, lost on a train, food poisoned, bitten by weird insects, sunburned, ripped off by several restaurants, and thrown off my sleep schedule. Yes, as you might have guessed I was on vacation.

Vacations for my wife and me always turn out to be much more stressful, painful, and hectic than our day-to-day life. But as I keep telling her, we should be thankful our vacations are the way they are—they make our regular life seem so relaxing.

Though it’s my fault, not hers, that our vacations are so rough--I like to get out and explore when I’m in new country. I want the REAL experience. I find the best way to do that is to be one with the locals. I want to shop where they shop, eat where they eat, and commit crime where they commit crime.

However, my wife’s idea of a vacation stems from an absurd idea that when you go on a vacation you are supposed to unwind, settle down, and forget the cares of the world.

I think my tactic for forgetting the cares of the world is better than hers, though: it’s impossible to think of the cares of the world when you’re on a bus to who knows where, getting off who knows when, sitting next to who knows who, who is speaking who knows what. That is why I always try to talk my wife into taking the bus to different sites when we’re in our vacation city.

Despite all our terrible bus-experiences from past trips (like the time on our honeymoon I got us stranded in some back-woods village in Mexico), this last time I swayed her into riding the bus by promising our destination would be a very nice beach in a state park.

However, I left out the minor details of the obstacles that stood in our way: we had to go through several questionable areas of downtown Miami, transfer from our bus to the Metromover, then transfer to another bus, which would take us within a couple miles of our final destination, which would be reached by walking through the outskirts of a rain forest.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if that was the way it went—but we got lost at our first transfer and it was all down hill from there. But I still found bright spots in the voyage. I got to listen to music on the first bus—I sat next to an aspiring rapper who wasn’t afraid to practice out loud. I was eager to give him some tips, but for some reason he didn’t fully comprehend my street cred. Now the kid will never make it big.

Me being the problem-solving explorer I am, I guided us through the mess and we reached the beach I promised. My wife really liked it; she looked very relaxed as she lay on the sand. And I’m sure the journey made it seem even more relaxing.

Cover the tomatoes!

Some places have tornado warnings. When they go off, you get in the basement. Where I grew up, we had frost warnings. When they go off, you run outside and cover your tomatoes.

The minute my dad heard "frost warning" in the 10 'o clock news he'd drop everything and get into the backyard. From there he'd stumbling through the dark as he made his way to the tarps in the corner of the yard, which were usually employed as the walls of my and my brother's fort.

Last year was the first year I manned my own garden. It came in a small kit with three little pots and three types of seeds. "Simple to grow and harvest!" and "Enjoy herbs in your own home!" were statements found on the box. I suspected they were hoaxing me into growing pot. Never had a chance to find out.

The seedlings sprouted up rather quickly, filling me with dreams of a lush botanical garden in my very own home. The next day they shriveled up like morals in the US Senate.

Despite my failure, I still wanted to try again. Besides, with all the food recalls lately, I feel a lot safer getting my vegetables from my very own garden. Other than the random times the neighbor's cat mistakes our planting pot for it's litter box, my vegetables get nothing but dirt and water.

The stores will tell you otherwise, hoping you'll keep buying their vegetables. "Rinse your produce with water when you get home," they say, "and they'll be perfectly safe to eat."

My wife tells me I need to use antibacterial soap and complete the ABC's song while I wash my hands, at least if I want them clean enough to eat with. If that's correct, I have a hard time believing that running tap water over a bundle of spinach will rid it of salmonella.

So this year I decided to give gardening another chance. I started by going to the store for gardening supplies. Looking at the tomato plants in the Walmart nursery was like looking at puppies in the pound: they all looked terrible, but I felt it was my moral duty to take one home.

I bought three. They looked scrawny and weak, but inside I knew they had heart. Like Mickey did for Rocky, I figured I'd give them the chance they needed to prove themselves. One month later, after regular watering, Miracle-Gro applications, and unconditional love, they still look like the plants I bought at Walmart.

Maybe the frost got 'em.

Door to Door Sales

What do you do when you can't get people to come buy a product? You go to them.

A few days ago I was home alone and the doorbell rang. I opened it quickly, thinking it might just be the one person I've waited to show up at my door for the last 15 years: the dang kid that stole my Charlotte Hornets windbreaker at Jr. Jazz basketball camp.

I opened our door to find a man holding a large duffel bag. He was overly kind as he started asking me about the condition of our carpet, our bathroom, and the amount of money we're "wasting away" on various cleaning products. I quickly concluded my windbreaker wasn't in his bag.

He pulled out a jug of green liquid and started polishing the brass on on our porch light. "What do you usually use to take the rust spots off this thing, anyway?" he asked. "Oh, just a little spit shine and elbow grease," I replied. Actually, I didn't even know we had a porch light until he pointed it out.

When I was a kid, a man like him showed up at our door. He asked if we had any stains in our house that we couldn't get rid of. I pointed out one on my shirt. He shook his head and asked if we had any spots on our carpet or couch. My eyes lit up as I thought of the stain in my parent's closet where the cat had puked.

I escorted him through our home to my parent's walk-in closet. He crawled under my mom's church dresses and went right to work on the stain. He used every bottle in his bag but couldn't beat the barf with any of them. Eventually he pulled out what I assume was Clorox and bleached the thing.

After he finished he asked if we'd want to buy some of his cleaner. As any good child would do, I told him I was home alone and wasn't sure where my parents kept their money. I then told him I would like to buy some, but couldn't because I was saving up for the new Weird Al album.

Years later, still stupid, I again let the cleaning-solution salesman in the house, even though he didn't really do much for the rust spots on the porch light. He wanted to show me how his cleaner would shine up the bathtub, but when we got to the tub it was apparent my wife had already beaten him to it.

"You're going to have a hard time finding any imperfections in this house, my wife runs a tight ship," I said.

He then proceeded to tell me how his product would make her life so much easier. At that point I just wanted to get him out of our house, so I asked how much the freaking bottle cost. "It comes to $41.89," he said, "and that includes sales tax."

Little did he know he was standing in the home of one of the cheapest persons on earth. I squinted one eye, tilted my head to back, and placed my hand on my chin. "I'll give you six bucks."

"Are you kidding?" he exclaimed. "This stuff is concentrated, man... it will last you for at least a year!"

We both maintained our negotiating stances for a few moments until I broke the silence. "So would a $6 jug of Clorox."

Orphan Rats

It will be at least nine months until my wife and I have a kid... unless she knows something I don't. Actually, I've always thought her sisters would know she was pregnant before I would. Not just because I'm oblivious to mood swings, but because any news about Target coupons, holiday plans, and babies must be circulated through their phone guild before it reaches the public ear.

With baby plans up in the air, my wife still has the desire to love and nurture something cuter than me. In that light, we went shopping for a fish last week.

Keeping up with my cheap reputation, I made us go to the thrift store for a fish bowl. We actually found a real nice one, without any problems a little Windex couldn't correct. With a habitat secured, we started hitting up all the stores that featured critters: Petco, Animal Ark, and Hot Topic.

Once we walked into the first pet shop I was immediately flushed with memories of my childhood. Whenever I had a few bucks in my pocket I'd hop on my bike and ride down to the local pet shop to buy anything I could sneak back into the house. Over the course of my youth I think I purchased 6 hermit crabs, 2 lizards, 2 turtles, 3 frogs, 1 mouse, and 400 crickets from that store. I was lucky if any of them lived to half their normal life expectancy.

While wandering the isles we were approached by an employee. She asked if we were interested in adopting. My wife's eyes lit up, only to be dimmed when the employee stated, "we have two rats that need to go to a good home, and you guys look like a nice couple."

I couldn't help but think, "wouldn't rats prefer a bad home?"

No way in hell did I want two rats, but I also didn't want to tell the puppy-eyed employee "no." Looking for an easy out from the situation, I mumbled something about not being able to pass a criminal background check. Unaffected, she walked us back to the manager's office.

"They're both adult males," she said as she picked up a cage, "this one here is a hairless variety."

"Oh geez, is it supposed to look like that?" I asked.

"Yeah, hairlessness is a recessive trait, so he's very special. Isn't he beautiful?"

My wife and I took her question as rhetorical and remained silent, except for the sound that arose when I cleared my throat. "Do they pee all over when you take them out?"

"Not really--sometimes they trickle a little bit" she replied. "But that's just to mark their territory," she stated, as if she was their attorney.

"What about their, um, droppings?"

"You don't need to worry about those. Sometimes you'll find them in the corner of the room after you've let them run around, but they're really dry so they pick up easily." She then reached in the cage and picked up one of the pieces of crap. "See?"

After looking at a hairless rat and seeing a girl pick up its droppings, I was ready to come out and tell her we were not going to be the adopting parents for her rodents. At that point, nearly all of the employees in the store had gathered around us, thinking we were going to be the ones to finally take the rats home.

After telling them our intentions, the employee and her co-workers looked at us like we were the scum of the earth. "How could you be so cold?" said the look on their faces. We decided to skip the fish and we headed home. Now on our shelf at home sits an empty fish bowl. Maybe I'll just fill it with water and see if some form of life originates.

Stimulus Check

I got a paycheck without doing any work. That hasn't happened since I quit the fast-food job I had in college. Twelve-hundred bucks from Lady Liberty, just for residing between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean (and for not living in Canada or Latin America).

They're calling it a stimulus check. Of course, the money once belonged to me. All the government did was hold it hostage for a while, then give it back. Uncle Sam: "I'll give back the $1200 I took from you if you file your taxes."

They're like hard-core regifters with these stimulus checks. We are the gifter when we pay taxes to the government. They then regift the taxes--not to someone else--but right back to us, the gifter and regiftee.

Actually, the money was probably going to go towards the cost of running the government, just like all taxes. Though that would probably mean the stimulus check was cut via a loan from the social security program. If so, I should probably should just put it towards my retirement fund because that's where it came from.

Since the U.S. is in a quasi-recession, my gut tells me to save the stimulus check for hard times. Yet economists are telling me to blow it on random junk so I can help pull America out of a recession. Which should I satisfy, my gut or the economists?

In my college Economics class I would eat gummy bears while I took notes. Maybe I should buy $1200 worth of gummy bears with my stimulus check to keep my gut and the economists happy.

Or maybe this is a time to be a true patriot. Perhaps I should return my stimulus check to the government. I could send it back with a post-it note that says, "I'd like this to go towards new hand towels at the White House." Maybe I could even request to have my initials embroidered on them.

I'd go down in history! One hundred years from now, kids would be reading in their textbooks about the man who gave his stimulus check back to the government.

"Ask not what money your country can give you--ask what money you can give your country," is a phrase I would coin.

Maybe those future textbooks would have a picture of me striding across the White House lawn, holding an American flag in one hand and a $1200 gift certificate to Bed, Bath & Beyond in the other.

Interior Design

I recently watched a show on Home and Gardens TV where a "genius" interior designer walked into a couple's house for a home makeover. After belittling the homeowners and criticizing everything on their walls, the designer reworked their living room so it looked like Ikea on crack.

I grew up around a lot of farm land, miles and miles from any Ikea store. For housewives married to farmers, a common thread in home decorating involves choosing their favorite farm animal, then plastering their homes with it. Our next-door neighbor had a rooster motif. The house next to their's chose pigs.

I guess the country folk figure that since they make their living from these animals, they might as well have the courtesy to dedicate a wall, or two, or three, to them. Now that I live thick in the suburbs, I've noticed the same courtesy isn't duplicated in the houses around me. Last week I walked into the home of a guy who works as a software engineer. For whatever strange reason, the wife didn't decorate their kitchen with computer-related items. I thought a strip of wallpaper featuring keyboards would have looked good above the cabinets.

One of the latest home-design fads is painting verticle pin-stripes on your walls. Considering myself an able striper, I bought a couple rolls of painter's tape and went to town on the wall in our laundry room. "June Day Yellow" was my background color, and "Deep Sea Blue" was my accent stripe--12 inches on center. I envisioned a morning-breaks type of sensation for all who walked into the room.

After I finished, and after the buzz from the paint fumes faded, I stood back to admire my work. It looked like I was staring at the sun through blue prison bars.

My wife walked in and almost threw up. Out of the goodness of her heart she tried to fabricate some form of a compliment, but I quickly butted in with a promise to erase the prison bars. Luckily it only takes about 13 coats of yellow paint to cover a dark-blue stripe.

Despite my home-improvement failures, I really came through as a hero last weekend. As I was driving along a country road, I noticed a large stash of reeds growing by a farmer's field. Earlier, my wife had expressed interest in a large vase with reeds in it, to put in the living room. Unfortunately, a few decorating reeds in a furniture store cost about as much as their new couches.

We went out and picked the reeds I found. They were transported home, chopped down to size, and stuffed in a big vase we got for only ten bucks. Maybe an HGTV designer would have ripped it to part, but it looked good to me.

And maybe it would have looked even better if I had a job in the reed industry.

MPG

I drive a lot for work. My commute is a good 22 miles, and then I travel around to different sites during my workday. So with gas prices soaring, my car's MPG is a big deal (I know the topic of gas prices is becoming cliche, but please bear with me).

In fact, I calculate my latest gas mileage number every time I fill up. As a kid, I remember my grandpa doing that. He kept a little notebook above the sun visor of his 1970 Chevy and would jot down his mileage when he filled up. I never understood why; I guess I just though it was something all grandparents did. My grandpa loved statistics and figures. He was always rattling off numbers like the inches of rain we got last year, the distance between the rows of corn in his garden, and how many minutes are needed for an effective nap.

Yet here I am in my mid-20s, tracking my gas mileage like it's going out of style. If my MPG is down a little, I start to think up all sorts of reasons for the drop in efficiency. Did I hit an unusually large amount of bugs on the freeway? Did I put a new box of mints in my car? Is there a leaf stuck under my windshield wiper, causing drag?

Yes, these days I'm doing everything I can to keep my car's MPG optimal. The psi in my tires is right on the money, and I'm seeing all sorts of "birds" by driving 5 MPH under the speed limit. I've also stripped my car of any unnecessary weight (e.g., jumper cables, insurance and registration forms, my spare tire).

A few days ago I was reading an article about ways to improve your car's efficiency. One suggestion was to replace the air filter. The article guaranteed it was a do-it-your-selfer, so I stopped by Checker on my way home from work. I walked in the store and started scanning the isles for air filters.

"Can I help you find anything?" the clerk asked. "Yeah, I need to replace the air filter on my '97 Accord." He then proceeded to embarrass me with all sorts of ridiculous questions:

"Is your Accord a DX, LX, or EX?"

"I don't know, it's um, white."

"Is it a 2.2 liter, or a 2.7 liter?"

"Um, probably somewhere in between."

He walked down one of the isles, grabbed something off the shelf, and told me it was what I needed. For all I knew, it could have been a twenty-dollar air freshener.

Installing my new air filter turned out to be the quickest fix I've ever made on my car. I only had to go back in the house once for another otter pop, plus another three times for the correct size of socket wrench. Luckily, there's only three flights of stairs separating my parking space from our third-story condo.

Where I'm from, a man is measured by his ability to look at a bolt and gauge it's size. "Yeah, that's a five-eights incher," I initially thought. But after three trips up and down the stairs, I was loosening the bolt with a three-eights inch socket.

Sometimes just two-eights of an inch separates you from home-town manhood and better gas mileage.

4X4

Many of you know I'm serving hard time as a scout leader. As part of my sentence, I'm required to sleep outside from time to time. We (13-year old boys and some other leaders) have been calling it "camping."

Last weekend, camping meant driving away from society until we found a place where we could burn stuff without other people caring. Our journey took us to the base of some mountains, where we proceeded to baja-race up an antelope migration trail.

Eventually the trail took us to a nightmare of a slope. The other two leaders, in their 4X4 trucks, scooted right up it without a problem. I was in my little Honda CRV, which my wife and I bought last summer. I had only taken it off road once before, when I had to park on some grass.

I made it half-way up the slope on my first try, then my tires spun out and I had to back it down. There were three scouts in my car; the two older boys in the back were calling me a wuss, and the 12-year old in the passenger seat was in a state of shock.

"Let me out, I want out" the 12-year old screamed. "We'll die if we go up that again!"

"Listen soldier, you're gonna man your position," I said, while locking the doors. "You're not getting out until we ascend this hill."

He looked around for an item of comfort, and found nothing. He eventually grabbed the tire-pressure gauge that was laying on the dash, and clung onto it as if it had some life-saving quality.

We proceeded to climb the slope a second time. My engine started making weird noises, the windshield filled up with blue sky, and dust surrounded us. As I reached the point of failure from the first attempt, I looked to my right. The 12-year old was glassy-eyed and tears were streaming down his face. The tire-pressure gauge was still locked in between his hands. The boys in the back were yelling something about the car rolling over.

I looked up to the top of the hill, and saw the other two leaders standing proudly next to their big trucks. They began to yell things like, "just drop to a lower gear and get your RPMs revved up," and "ya gotta crank 'er to the right, or you'll tweak your driveshaft!" Even though I know nothing of auto mechanics, I wanted to counter with something intelligent. I leaned out my window and shouted, "yeah, I'll just pop the clutch a couple times to boost the alternator's intake." They both stopped yelling and looked at each other.

The soldier in the passenger seat held his ground and we made it to the top. The boys in the back got out immediately and jumped into the other leaders' trucks. "I think my manifold distributor is shorting out, so it will best if I have less weight anyway," I said.

The 12-year old was mad; his face was as red as my check engine light. "Dang it, you should have let me out," he exclaimed. I apologized and told him he could join the other boys in the trucks. He consented and quickly hopped out of my car, still clinging to my tire-pressure gauge.

Preserving Manhood

Although I do my best to maintain a measure of charisma for my wife, elements of unfiltered manhood still manage to find their way out.

When we were dating, I was able to restrain my inner-man. Maybe I even primped it up a little: it wasn't uncommon for me to use the soap long enough to work up a lather, or push back a cuticle gone wild. Heck, I even purchased a can of Axe body spray. It had a psychedelic green-flame on the side; below the flame was the word "KILO." The stuff smelled like a Colombian drug lord. Anyway, I did my best to be dapper; I had girl to win over.

But all that sissyness would be offset when a date with my spouse-to-be was over. After I dropped her off and kissed her goodnight, I'd go home to wallow in Taco Bell wrappers with my roommates and watch ESPN until our eyes rolled into the back of our heads.

Now that I'm married, I have to be a little more creative in where and when I find my release--my chance to let it all out and be a man. Thus in everyday circumstances, I find low-key ways to validate my manhood.

When walking through the mall with my wife, I like to size up the other guys I see around. I mentally debate whether I could take them or not, if something were to go down. That's how a man has to live his life, as if something could go down at any time... even at church.

A real man has to look for opportunities to bare his chest. For example, no man should ride in the back of a truck with his shirt on. The great outdoors, or any place you can spit on the ground, beckons men to be free of neck lines and sleeves.

Stadiums and arenas are also good places to remove the shirt, but you must enjoy it while it lasts. From personal experience, I've found that on-hand security can be just as demanding as my wife in making me put it back on.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a male bigot, or the like. But I do feel that the line separating masculism from feminism is being blurred. Men, do you know the feeling you get when you're in Footlocker checking out what you think are some cool shoes, only to find out you're in the women's section? If you're like me, you jump to the ground like a marine under artillery fire and crawl back to the men's section.

Well, that kind of thing is going to happen as long as the dang retailers keep selling pink shirts in the men's clothing department! And it's not just pink shirts, they now sell girl's skinny jeans in the men's section--which apparently is one of the latest waves of fashion to roll through the wardrobes of weak men.

Retailers might as well take down the signs indicating the men's and women's clothing sections, and just throw the whole mess into a big pile in the middle of the store. It's apparent that people these days want to end gender segregation in the world of fashion.

Take a stand, men. What we choose to do now will determine what type of men our sons' sons will be. A few wayward steps, and they could end up right back in the Colonial period.

Nopalitos

Since my wife works and goes to school, we evenly split all our domestic responsibilities: she cleans the bathroom, washes the dishes, cooks the meals, folds the laundry, polishes the silver, mops the floor, and vacuums the carpet--I water the house plants and grocery shop.

As my wife fully understands, I can't hold my own in a clothing store. But gosh, I sure can blaze trails in the grocery store isles. That's right, I thoroughly enjoy shopping for food. I see every trip I take to the market as an opportunity to refine my tastes and broaden my palate.

One of the things I love most about grocery shopping is the thrill of racing home perishable food in perishable conditions. Like an EMT rushing a Coleman cooler full of vital organs to an awaiting hospital, I race home my grocery bag full of ice cream to an awaiting freezer. The longer it sits in the heat, the less good it's going to do the recipient.

On one of my recent shopping trips, I purchased a 5.48 lb container of "Dutch Milk Chocolate Drink." I didn't fully realize how big it was until I opened the can and found not one oxygen-absorbing packet, but TWO.

My first glass of Chocolate Drink gave me a stomach ache. But now that I'm past the break-in period, it goes down smooth as velvet.

You know you're in for a surprise when the noun "drink" follows an adjective like "orange," "cherry," or "chocolate." Orange juice is the liquid from an orange. Orange drink is the liquid from a garden hose, mixed in a large container with a powdery substance composed of sugar, chalk, and artificial flavoring.

During another recent grocery-shopping trip, I was wandering aimlessly through the produce section, my second favorite section of the grocery store (foreign foods is my first). I came across a quaint little basket of cactus leafs, or nopalitos, as my Mexican friends call them. The thought of getting nutritious substance out of such a feisty plant intrigued me.

I carefully placed two of them in a produce sack, finished my shopping, and headed to the check stand. As the cashier was hastily ringing my groceries across the scanner, he carelessly grabbed the bag of napolitos to ring them up.

"What the [edit] was that?!" he said, as he looked at the inside of his hand. Little dots of blood began to sprout up on his palm and fingers. "We sell cactus?"

I ducked behind the credit card machine and mumbled something like, "oh sure, my wife makes them all the time; they're good with, um, bagels and... " I trailed off until a new cashier was called in as an emergency replacement, and I finished my purchase.

I got the epidermis-piercing nopalitos home and asked my wife if we could include them in our next meal. I had to convince her that since they were in the grocery store they must be good for consumption. She finally agreed to make them, and we had cactus leaves in our soup the next day. It was actually really good, if you ate around the cactus chunks.

Bounced

This week I joined the lousiest, lowest, most-worthless folks in society. In other words, I could've sat down to a friendly turkey-dinner with Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinski, and Vanilla Ice (being cautious to keep Lewinski from eating all the turkey), and been in good company.

Sooooo... I bounced a check. Yes, I understand the consequence of admitting that. There's not a snowball's chance in heck you'll ever talk to me again, let alone read one of my articles. If there's one thing I've learned from life, it's this: people that DON'T bounce checks don't hang around people that DO. But before you start to judge me, or before you judge me even more, or before you tear up that check I sent for your birthday, understand that it was the government's fault.

I had just finished filing my taxes through H&R Block Online (which was, by the way, a horrible experience and I'd rather try to file my taxes through my 4-year old niece than use their Online software again). And as a side note, if you didn't get that birthday check I just mentioned, please contact my new accountant.

For the first time in my short history of doing my own taxes, I actually owed money after filing. Apparently I had been stealing money from the government throughout all of 2007, which I did by exaggerating my exemptions on my W-2s. And they wanted the dirty dollars back.

So instead of fleeing the country with my exemption cash, I took a couple more gulps out of my 2-liter Shasta Zazz (to numb the upcoming pain), wrote out a healthy-sized check to the IRS, and dropped it in the mail right-a-way. Turns out the 'ol Postal Service is processing letters a good deal faster than normal. And as soon as the IRS got my check in their hands they made a beeline to the nearest 7-11 and cashed it, well before I had a chance to look on the internets to see if I needed to transfer any more money to my checking account. Anyway, the check bounced around my checking account like a steel marble in a pinball machine--only to be sent down the gap between the two flippers. Game over.

Upon finding out, my self esteem was as low as Death Valley. I had just bounced a check! My word was no good, because that's what a check is. It's your word on the line that says you've got as much money as you wrote out. I figured my family would disown me, our electricity would be turned off, and my credit would be left in ruins. Luckily, the next day my bank stepped in and patted me on the back with a nice, warm $40 insufficient-funds fee.

Yeah, it's one thing to bounce a check, it's another thing to bounce a check to the IRS. So I'll be busy getting my receipts in order... I'm sure there's an audit coming my way.

Mistaken for Something Great

As I watched my three-point shot fall short of the hoop in my latest city-leage game, I felt the regular flare of frustration that comes everytime I play ball. And no, I didn't need just a little more "umf" on the shot; it was also wide left. It was the kind of airball that brings the game to a halt so the ref can jog off the court and get the ball from underneath the bleachers.

You see, I'm one of those guys who thinks he's got this large mass of talent bundled up inside him, but just hasn't had a chance to unleash it... and fails to every time he plays. But in my head, and always in my head: the next game will be the time I go off for 30.

You put me alone on a court, in front of a hoop, and I'll make a good 50% of my shots. But if I take a shot in a game, there's about a 13% chance it'll rattle its way in; 8% if I'm wide open. For some darned reason, every time I'm about to shoot in a game, the rim raises 3 feet, the ceiling lowers 15 feet, and a little green troll scampers across the court, distracting the heck out of me.

So that's why I'll never forget the time I was in Footlocker and something great happened. Well, two great things happened. One, I finally found the wheat-colored pair of FUBU boots I'd been searching up and down the entire Wasatch Front for. Two, the guy behind me in the check-out line asked me if I played basketball for BYU.

Granted, I had just buzzed my hair, was wearing a BYU Basketball shirt, and was about to buy a pair of FUBUs. Plus I was with my wife, who looks like the wife of someone who is successful at something. But still, asking that question is like asking Donny Osmond if he opens for 50 Cent concerts. He could've just asked me to crumple up my reciept and try to arc it into the nearest wastebasket, in order to clear things up. But instead, I told him I wasn't on the team and walked off, dreaming of dropping 30 points in my next game.