November 7, 2011

• The Wonder Years of My Life had Many Happy Days

  
  *cue voice of Daniel Stern*

  I grew up in an average town and in an average family.  Everything about our lives were average.  There was my mom and dad, my sister Lindsay and my brothers Chuck and Dewayne.  I had a few friends growing up.  There was Bill, Neal, Topsie, and John Qwan.  There was also a guy who lived in our neighborhood who everyone idolized.  His name Herbert Fenzilinni but everybody called him The Fenz or Fenzi. 

  As I mentioned, life was average in my town.  Nothing major happened but if something big happened you could bet that my family and friends were involved.  John Qwan and Topsie always seemed to get mixed up in some get rich quick scheme but they always failed and my dad had to bail them out or we had to get The Fenz to fight their battles.  There was the one time when John Qwan saw how one of the gambling legends of our town, Sven the Norwegian, made so much money taking bets.  John figured he could be a bookie just like Sven.  John took all sorts of bets and some especially big bets with a local street gang.  Well they all bet that the Packers would win the Super Bowl and the Pack pulled out the victory and John Qwan was out thousands of dollars.  The only thing that could stop the street gang from hurting John was Fenzie's intervention.  Eventually I talked my dad into helping out John Qwan.  Dad talk to John's dad, Don, and they smoothed things out and everything was OK.  I think the only thing that wasn't average about my friends was my friend Neal.  His dad was the town dentist and he liked to cheat on his wife with his secretaries and nurses.  Poor Neal couldn't see his dad's cheating ways but I exposed it when I saw his dad kissing one of his nurses in the mall.  He claimed he was their to buy Neal a Super Nintendo but I knew better.  I told Neal and eventually he admitted he knew what was going on because he found a garage door opener in his dad's car but it wasn't for his house.  Neal, Bill and I rode our bikes around town looking for which garage door it opened.  Finally, Neal found the garage and inside he saw his dad's car.  Neal ended up taking a bat and smashed out his dad's taillights.  Bill was the oddball of the group he was allergic to everything.  One time a bully at our school put a peanut in Bill's lunch and he ate it.  The next thing we know, Bill swells up and stops breathing.  A teacher, Mr. Bester, had to use an epi-pen on Bill.  He jammed it into Bill's heart and Bill started screaming.  Bill was rushed to the hospital where he went into a coma.  We were all standing outside Bill's hospital room and this actually was awesome because some hot chicks came and hugged us because they knew how close we were with Bill.  I totally felt a boob because Bill is allergic to peanuts.  Fenzie was really sad about Bill's predicament.  He went into the room and Fenzie used his magic fists and punched Bill in the forehead and Bill came out of the coma.  That punch also healed all of Bill's allergies.

  Speaking of allergies, one of my worst days in life revolved around allergies.  I was working that summer at a peach orchard and one day my hands started itching and I noticed a horrible rash on my hands.  I went to the doctor on my mom's insistence.  The doctor told me that I was allergic peaches.  I was devastated because it was such a high paying job.  What was I going to do?  On the way home my car died.  I walked home and was going to eat some Oreos and milk but we only had skim milk and Hydrox cookies.  As I sat there feeling all bad, I got a phone call from Elizabeth Lauren, my high school sweetheart, and she turned me down for a date.  I then went to watch some TV and the tube inside the TV blew out and then my parents entered the room and announced they were getting a divorce.  I went for a walk with my shotgun.  I heard a voice tell me not to do it and then I said, "If you make things better, I'll repay you."  The next day I get a phone call from Topsie saying our band was booked to play at Harold's, the local hangout, and we would be the house band.  Then after that call I got one from Sandy Cinders, the head cheerleader, and she asked me out on a date.  Then Fenzie punched my car and it was fixed and it was actually better than what it was when I first got it.  I was testing out the car and Fenzie had it running so fast.  I could go 0 to 60 in 1 second.  Well this wasn't good because I ended up hitting a kid while driving.  I picked him up and put him in the car and dropped him off at the hospital.  The doctors said he'd be fine.  That day restored my faith and I celebrated by sacrificing a goat to Lord Kromdar.

  My brothers and sisters were something else.  Lindsay was this uptight and so smart.  She was also the town hulahooping champion.  She was on the fast track to be our school's valedictorian but she got messed up with some kids in her class that were total burn-outs and pretty soon Lindsay was doing drugs along with the freaks.  She got in trouble when she was doing drugs with her friends and went out for a drive and ran over the neighbor's dog and then crashed into another car.  Dad was mad at Lindsay and eventually she straightened out but then she was influenced by her friend Kelly Kim.  Things didn't end well for Lindsay.  My brother Chuck was an enigma.  He was the stupidest person I've ever met yet he was the best basketball player to grace the state of Wisconsin.  He led our high school to four consecutive state titles but Chuck couldn't recite the alphabet without stopping and asking for a prompt.  Dewayne was a bully.  He and his friend Herpes lived to torture me.  They always called me Dickhead because of my strange haircut.  He would pound me and punch me but he always stopped when my parents or Fenzie were around because he knew they would set him straight.  Dewayne had a fascination with dating women who had children because as he said, "You know they put out."  I sometimes was jealous of Dewayne's way with the ladies.

  My love life wasn't that average.  I was jealous of Fenzi because he seemed to have all the girls in town swarming over him.  He had a lot of sexual relations and all the guys were jealous but not so much when The Fenz died of complications to AIDS.  There was one time my high school crush named Elizabeth Laurie went on vacation and when she came back she had a bag full of pens and said she brought me something in our first hour class.  She handed me the bag of pens which featured the location of her vacation destination.  I said, "Gee, thanks Elizabeth Laurie for all the pens." 
  She replied, "They're not all for you, idiot.  Take one and pass them to the rest of the class."
  "Oh, OK."  I took my pen and passed them to the person sitting next to me and I spent the rest of the school year feeling stupid and inadequate.  Things haven't changed.

  Speaking of vacations, there was the time I remember when my parents decided to take the family to California.  It was such a great time because my parents also brought all my friends.  There we were soaking up the California sun.  The locals didn't think Fenzie was cool and this didn't set well with Fenzie.  Back in our town he was a God.  I mean he had sex with the two hottest girls in town, Lauren and Shirleen.  Well this local street gang challenged Fenzie to a stunt.  They were big into water-skiing but what they didn't know is that Fenzie worked at the Tommy Bartlett Ski Show and spent many summer water-skiing on the the Wisconsin River.  They set up a jump for Fenzie and to up the ante they said he had to jump over a section of water that contained swimming tigers who had poison on their fangs and claws.  Everyone was tense watching as Fenzie looked at his jump.  Mortals would've run but not Fenzie.  He punched his waterskis, the boat, and me because I was driving the boat.  I pulled out of the dock and hit full speed and then Fenzie launched off the ramp and over the tigers with poison fangs and claws.  Fenzie actually jumped the tigers and he made a perfect landing.  Everyone cheered because we were better than California in something other than dairy production and football.  Suck it, L.A.  You wish you could have a winning team like the Packers.

  Those truly were wonderful days but whatever happened to my friends and family?
  Mom and Dad grew old.  Dad tried to become a priest but they wouldn't allow it because he was married but he still acted like a priest.  He became a licensed private eye and his cover was that of a priest because criminals wouldn't think a priest fought crime.
  Mom was mom and only mom.
  As I mentioned earlier, Fenzie died of an AIDS related illness and before he died his hands were literally useless because of all the arthritis he developed from hairline fractures from punching everything to fix it.
  I don't really know what happened to Chuck because one day he went upstairs and we never saw him again.  Dewayne ended up serving in Desert Storm and he got messed up with Gulf War disease.  He came home and got married to a woman who had 5 kids.  He currently makes wooden chairs on an Amish farm.
  Lindsay was set to go to an academics camp but at the last minute she ditched and took off with her friend Kelly Kim.  They ended up following the band, They Might be Giants.  Lindsay and Kelly developed addictions to nasal sprays and they sold their bodies to buy more sprays.  We lost contact with Lindsay after a few years.  We assume she's dead or in a mental hospital.
  Topsie ended up being a lounge singer and put out a few albums that didn't sell that well.
  John Qwan ended up being a dentist just like his dad.  He was involved in a scandal when he was working on a politician's teeth and Qwan questioned the politician about his oral sex habits because we all know that dentists can tell when you perform oral sex.  Well the politician got upset and bit John's finger.  John successfully sued the politician and won a large amount of money.  He wrote a book about his ordeal and called it "A Million to Qwan". 
  When Bill entered college, he became obsessed with the TV show Dallas.  I guess it shouldn't surprise anyone that he ended up becoming an oil executive.
  Neal had a fucked up life.  He took up ventriloquism as a hobby and he went off the deep end.  For the longest time the only way Neal would communicate was through his dummy, Jeremy.  Eventually Neal showed up to class one day and his dummy was holding a gun.  Neal stood at the front of the classroom and said, "Jeremy would like to speak today."  Jeremy went on a diatribe about how awful the world was and then Jeremy pulled out a gun and shot himself in his dummy head.  Neal was whisked away to a mental hospital where he spent the rest of his days.

  As for me, I never married Elizabeth Lauren or Sandy Cinders.  I married a girl I met in college and we had a couple of kids.  I kept in contact with Elizabeth and Sandy.  We wrote and reminisced about the wonder years and happy days of our lives.  They tried to tell me that I shouldn't write to them or show up outside their houses with flowers at 4AM and that I should enjoy the golden years of my life.  The only thing golden about my golden years is the color of my piss.

  I really wish I could live forever and be forever young.  Growing up happens in a heartbeat. One day you're in diapers, the next day you're gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house, like a lot of houses. A yard like a lot of other yards. On a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back...with wonder....ok that was lame, sorry for the lack of a post. 
  
  I'll end with a quote.  "Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks.  Now take off your pants and sit on my dicks." —Lord Byron

  • 6:02 PM
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