CHEESUS CHRIST! Get Me Out of Here!!!

I hate Chuckie Cheese’s so much I can’t stop thinking about it. Chuckie Cheese’s consumes my every thought days after I’ve experienced it. I have nightmares about Chuckie and his racial stereotype friends: The curly-moustachio’d Italian pizza man, the dumb, redneck, overall-wearing hound dog, the chicken dressed in a whore’s negligee and Munch the retarded ticket chomping monster. What great role models for the children.

Hey, let’s get our kids hopped up on shitty, undercooked pizza and syrupy Coke, stick them in a room of racial stereotypes… and… for good measure, let’s pepper the place with hidden child molesters eating salad bar salads covered in Bleu Cheese dressing.

What a fine place.

And let’s set up a system where you and your child are stamped with matching numbers on the back of your hands by teenagers, who could give two shits past their free pizza and video games, so nobody walks out with your child.

Let’s let this same system give under-gifted adults the false security of not EVER having to watch their kids while eating salad bar salads covered in French dressing. Tiny got a shake-down from one of these kids.

She went to put a Chuckie token in a driving game and was shoved out of the way from this 4 year old scumbag. When she insisted it was her turn (and it was, man), he grunted for her token. Fuck him! Who's he grunting at? He’s 4. If his parents paid any attention to him he wouldn’t be standing here grunting for my daughter’s Chuckie token. He followed us, too, with his little grunting arm outstretched. “Ungh!”

“Where’s his Daddy?” Tiny asked.

“Who knows… RUN!!!”

And he chased us through Chuckie Cheese’s. “Ungh!”

“Run, Tiny! RUN!!!!”

“Coin! Ooh. Ungh! Coin!”

“Tiny. Go! Past the Toddler Zone.”

“I can’t, Daddy! He’s watching me turn.”

“Ungh! Coin!”

“Into the showroom!”

But there were 3 birthday parties going. We were turned away.

“Coooooiiiiinnn!!!”

Where’s this kid’s mother?

“Ungh!”

“But, Daddy, it wasn’t his turn.”

“I know. I know.”

“Coin!”

“Let’s go home, Tiny.”

“Yeah, Daddy, let’s get out of here!”

We got to the exit. The teen with pizza face, literally, he had pizza sauce all over his chin, stopped us.

"Stop. I gotta check your stamps."

We let him. Tiny, then me.

“Unhgh!” Frankenkid was approaching fast.

What I hadn't realized is that I had, inadvertently, washed my child-molester-diversion-stamp off of my hand. Now, me and Tiny don’t match.

“Can’t let you go,” the teen said.

“But this is my daughter.”

“Sorry.”

And we stood. We stood for a minute.

“I have to go at some point.”

“You’re stamps don’t match.”

“Ungh!!!”

“Well, as much as I appreicate the attempt of procedures here at the Chuckie Cheese’s, you guys got a flaw in them.”

“You’re stamps don’t match.”

“Coin!”

“Daddy, he’s getting closer.”

“This my daughter.”

“How am I supposed to know that. You’re stamps don’t match.”

“Like I said I appreciate that, but I have to go home with her at some point. What’s the contingency plan, here?”

“You have to use the contingency? The bathrooms are over there. But I still can’t let you out. Your stamps don’t match.”

“Where’s your manager?”

“Coin!”

“Daddy!”

“He’s not here. He went to get something to eat.”

Curious... Why doesn’t the manager eat here?

“Coin! Ungh!!!!”

“Daddy?!?”

Think fast.

“Babe, who am I?”

“You’re Daddy.”

“I’m Daddy, dude.”

He stares at me, then down to Tiny.

“Can we go, now?”

“Yeah. If you’re Daddy.”

“I’m Daddy.”

“Go ahead.”

He lifted the stanchion hook and we left. But, before we left, I tossed a Chuckie token on the floor, just because I wanted to ensure this parentless freak didn’t follow us home.

God, Chuckie Cheese’s is the Devil’s playground.

Piggyback

I’m on the same pee schedule with a guy at the office. It’s not on purpose. Why would it be?

I don’t know this dude. He ain’t a colleague. He ain’t even a peer. He’s just a dude that works at another company that my company shares an office building with… and a bathroom.

Whenever I go in and take a stand at the urinal, he is either already there or I can hear a, “Fancy meeting you again.” and chuckle from behind me. Yikes.
**Note to pee partner: This is NOT appropriate Men’s Room conversation. This type of thing would dole out a healthy heaping of the willies in the Men’s Room at the Back Bay Commuter Rail Station at Midnight. Yes. That’s how creepy, “Fancy meeting you again.” is.

OCD insists that I acknowledge it. I have to provide him with a tight-lipped, “barely-a-smile” smile and a closed-throat, “Um, yeah.”

And, as every time I’m in here, we take our tandem tinkle.

I wish Pee Partner could control himself. Really. Where’s my respect? We, essentially, as accidental as it is, have a built a relationship here. Why does he have to raise his hip and bloot out a quick little flatchie… a toot... he farts. As teenie as the little bloot is, it’s rotten. THIS SOMMABITCH HAS GOT TO – JUST GOT TO – change his diet. PLEEEEEASE!!! What is this motherfucker eating? Kellogg’s Garlic Crunch? Man, oh, fucking, war! I started walking around with a pocket of Lactobacillus-laced hard candies to offer the poor guy to plant in his colon so he can grow a small garden of intestinal flora. QUITE CONTRARY!

Then, to add it all, the stink don’t go away. It puppydogs him. It bridal gowns him. Yes, my friends, Pee Partner is a Piggybacker. That little bloot follows him to the sink (thank Mr. Christ, he’s, at least, washing), it follows him out the door and it follows him down the hall.

And, unfortunately, so do I. I have to. He finishes before me every time. I’m in his wash/walk wake. No matter what I do to avoid the rancor, I’m trapped. The hallways are thin and he’s a big dude. I can’t get around him or that awful remnant of last night’s nourishment. THIS MAN IS EATING DEAD BABIES.

The stink is stinging my nose. It burns. I can barely see as the cubical walls of the hallway close in on me like the garbage chute scene from the first Star Wars.

This Piggybacker’s rank isn’t a dissipater. It feeds off of the natural moisture in the air. Growing. Stinking. My eyebrows cinging. The smell of burnt hair and toasted almonds permeating my nasal cavity. My right arm goes numb. Please, let this all be a stroke and, for once, I can escape the Piggybacker's freaky wreaky wrath.

OH, GOD!

Last week, I peeked into his office to see what goes in his yam. He wasn’t eating. Not even a travel mug of Dunkins’ regular.

BUT! BUT!!!! AT LEAST HE’S IN HIS OFFICE.

I took the opportunity to piss. Alone. Solo. In a pacific solace.

The Men’s Room was freshly Swishered as a delightful deodorant washed over my loneness. I approached the urinal, de-flied and… ahh! Peace. Oneness. PRAISE BE THE SLOAN ROYAL VALVE COMPANY. PRAY YE! AMEN!

Slight shiver, then –

BLEEEEE-OOOOOO-TTTT!!!! (-bramp-)

“Fancy meeting you again.”

“Um, yeah.”

I'll Be Seeing You

Last Spring in the city, the great city of BOSTON, I saw two blind chicks sword fight with their walking sticks. I DID! I TOTALLY DID! I saw that it was about to happen and I wasn't anywheres near about to stop it. In my ridiculous head I’m like, “What are the chances of seeing something like this play out?” - Zero to RIGHT NOW!

I’ve seen both of these blind broads on the sidewalk at different times of the day on various and sundry days… but never at the same time… and never walking from opposite directions toward one another. I could have warned them. “Could” have. But at the same time, I "couldn't." Know what I'm saying?

My thoughts were in this order:
1) Disabled folk get offended and, sometimes, get downright nasty if you go for the assist. So, can't help you blind people. Sorry. Take it up with your disability community.
2) I have to see if they’ll click each others canes. I HAVE TO! GOT TO!

Closer and closer they approached. Me? I'm standing aside, see, to watch it happen. Goddamn, there’s something soulless about me sometimes.

Closer and closer and – CLICK!

CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. CLINK. CLACK.

GO, GO, GO, SIGHTLESS D’ARTAGNANS!!! EN GUARD!!!

Sword fighting for like a minute. Doesn’t seem like a long duel, but in weirdo shit time, it was like a full on fencing bonanza. Awesome. Neither person mean or viscous, just trying to figure out what the fuck they were clicking. The older broad figured it out first and said, “Sorry.”

The other person, “Yeah. Too.”

And with that, the match was over. On their way they went. I headed toward the Red Line (subway), same as the older, and apparently wiser, broad, then someone recognized her.

“Hey, Debbie!”

“Ralph?”

“Yeah. It’s me Ralph.”

“I know. I could tell by the sound of your ‘Debbie.”

They share a laugh and a discussion. At the end of the discussion, the woman says, “Well, nice seeing you again.”

Ralph, “You, too.”

You, too? What? Ralph, dude, this didn’t blow your mind?

Nice seeing you, again?

Ralphy, not only does this mean she is seeing you now, she’s seen you before; hence the “again.” How long has this charade been going on? As long as she’s known Ralph I would assume. That we know at the very least.

And what about the sword fight. That duel? Can she see? Was she just fucking with the other blind person? And I thought I was soulless for watching.

Nice seeing you again?

She’s probably got a sticker on her car, giving her access to all of those prime, A-1 parking spots. She takes full advantage of it, too, seeing as no one has made the connection, yet. “Let that poor woman park there. She’s blind.” Right! She’s blind, stupid.

Nice seeing you again?

Actually. what should a blind person say at the end of the conversation? What’s appropriate?

“Nice keenly smelling you again.”
“Nice to feel your face again.”
“Nice picking up on the nuance of your speech again.”

It’s not even an issue in this case, because she did say, “Nice to see you again.” Although, I guess, “Nice to see you again” works as good as anything, but this con meant it. She meant it!

I felt so betrayed, swindled as I followed her down into South Station. My mind sending out, “How could you? Shame. Shame. You swindler. Sham!”

Then, she walked into a subway pylon... and the world was right again.

She can keep the parking space.

**... and, yes, I said 'broad'. Relax.

Urgent Care

You gotta know the rules to everything if you don’t want to be inconvenienced. You gotta play by the rules if you don’t want to be inconvenienced. If the rules ain't your bag, you're gonna be belly deep in inconvenience. And if you choose to wade in the pond of inconvenience, please don’t immerse yourself at Urgent Care at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington.

Yesterday, I was a-crampin'. Big time. One of those crampies when you know something inside you just ain’t right. It hurt to walk. It hurt to talk. It, even, hurt to fart… and, man, if farting ain't making it all better, something is wrong in this here world. Like most Healthcare professionals, you ain’t gonna see them if you ain’t made an appointment several, hundred years in advanceast. So, I headed off to the cattle round-up of Urgent Care. HYAW!!! HYAW!!! MOVE ‘EM IN!!!

Welcome to The Urgent Care Ranch. Let me breakdown doagies of the Urgent Care populous for you:
1) The Sicks. HYAW!!!
2) The Think They’re Sicks. HYEE-HYAW!!!
3) The Sort of Sicks. Otherwise known as, the Don’t Feel Goods. GIT' EM UP!!!

The Sort of Sicks are the real pains in the asses. The folk that make you wish the doctor would come out and say to you, “Mr. Crowley. I’m afraid you have Ebola Rapido. You have only 10 more seconds to live.”

“Fantastic. Would you mind if I breathed on that guy? You know, for the benefit of the others.”

“No, sir, go right ahead.”

Fuck that. I never have anything that good.

Urgent Care starts serving it up at 5:00pm. The written rule is sign-up at 4:30pm. The trick is get there at 4:00pm, get your name way up on the list and begin thumbing through issues of Ebony and Good Housekeeping circa 1987 all-the-while listening to the over-dramatic monologues of the Don’t Feel Goods.

My favorite was the latecomer Don’t Feel Good who declared, “I have a cold.”

Why is she telling me? The only thing I can do is catch her fucking cold.

“I have a cold. Why have they left me here for two hours?”

By the Glory of Jesus, go Vapo-rub your chest.

She dials her cell phone. Each poke of the finger is more painful than the last.

“Hello?” Actually, by now she’s kicked up the fakery to her speech. The “Hello” was now a “hewwo…”

She's got an audiences 50 of us awing at her like the "Star Kids All-Star Pop Revue" show at Six Flags. It’s a bit amateur-y and is a line-in-the-sand train wreck, but it's baseline entertaining in its simplicity. She’s certainly better that the Halle Berry article in Jet I was eyeing my way through.

To the person on the phone,”I’m talking on my cell phone,” fake cough, “And I’m sick.”

Then she started to cry when Arm Rubbing Lady popped up from behind her shredded L.L. Bean catalogue, “Would you shut up. Holy Roly! You’ve whining for the entire 2-hours. Show up on time and you’d get in quicker (New England ‘quickah’). They see you in order (‘aw-dah’) of importance. You ain’t got a broken arm (‘ahm’), your stomach ain’t hurting and you don’t have Alzheimer’s like that old lady of there…”

That was bold. Yikes. Ah, she won't remember anyway.

“You got the goddman sniffles. Sit down, stop your crying and shut-up.”

2-seconds later they called her in. 2 minutes later she was back out, covered in tears. Holy shit. Maybe they gave her the cancer news or the beginnings of Alzheimer’s like that old lady over there.

Through the tears and rubbing her throat, “They said… they said… the doctor… the doctor said… The doctor said it’s something they call ‘swollen glands’. They call it swollen glands and I have it.”

Oh, God. Shut-up. You have a cold.

War of the Rubbish

I have problems with my local waste disposal service agents, ah, fuck it, I have an ongoing war with my garbage men! And, oh, boy, are these men garbage. GARBAGE!

In the process of buying our home, during our final walk-thru the night before the closing, the basement was loaded, LEEE-OH-DED, with trash, boxes of shit that I didn’t want to be mine at closing and a gigantic, obsolete oil tank (which, by the fuck, the legs are still embedded in the cement of my basement floor).

Real Estate Agent, “So?”

“So? There’s a ton of garbage in the basement.”

“Would you like it removed?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“I’ll have the seller clean things out tonight.”

“He can do it in the morning as long as it’s gone before we sign.”

And he did. He cleaned it that morning and left everything, EV-REE-THING, in the front yard down by the roadside. A Post-Armageddon heap of somebody else's, 50-year old shit. A rotating party light from 1956. A stool with a 1962 pee stain on it. A collection of 1940ish Hawaiian themed ceramic plates – Oh, wait! Those aren't rubbish. Those are cool. Damn it. What else is in here?!? Bachelor pornie mags from the early-1960’s (one was called “The Dude!”)! A Ballentine Ale can opener! A heavy chain! Red things you drive up to change your own oil. Your own oil? Never did it before, BUT NOW I CAN!!! What else? Bachelor pornie mags from the early-1960’s – Oh, I said that. A Jayne Mansfield Playboy and Bachelor pornie mags from the early-1960’s. And what I didn’t haul back to the basement was left for the waste management company to come and get on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday One: Nothing touched expect my regular garbage.
Tuesday Two: Still there. Regular garbage gone, but remnants of refuse.
Tuesday Three: No garbage gone. All there. BUT a note. A note left by the garbage men. It read: Homeowner, Too much trash. Can’t take. Get rid of some of it and we’ll try to take.

GET RID OF SOME IT?!? Isn’t this the exact method for getting rid of all of it?!?

I had to get creative. The next week I re-bagged it all into tinier, white-ier kitchen bags. Those dumb motherfuckers won’t suspect a thing. Hee-fucking-sinister-hee.

Tuesday Four: Some of it taken. I’m winning.
Tuesday Five: All gone! But an orange citation stuck to a 5-Gallon Oil drum filled with old black gold that read: Homeowner, Can’t take. Biohazard.

Where did THAT come from? 5-Gallon oil drum? That’s not mine and, certainly, not half as cool as my issue of The Dude.

My neighbor, “Yeah, Dickie buried that there where you’re standing in 1978. Garbage men wouldn’t take it. So, he dug around it, buried it, forgot about it. Told him not to.”

“Hi, I’m Rick!”

“You’ll never grow grass there now.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Rick.”

“Rubbish guys didn’t take it then, certainly ain’t taking it now. I’m just tellin’ you.”

“I’m Rick?”

“Take it easy.”

“Yeah. See ya.”

In my heart I understood. A 5-Gallon oil drum of Texas Tea from 1978. I can totally see that being a biohazard. I’m not an enviromental monster. I’m not going to take this on with the waste guys. I had the fire department haul it away.

What I couldn’t fucking believe was the battle with the garbage pricks 8 years later.

We got a new trash can for the kitchen. All shiny and steely. I can see my face in the cover… that is until I step on the little pedal that opens the top. Oh, boy, is it ever nice. We got it at Target, too, so you know it’s quality. So, on that Monday night, garbage night, I proudly walked the old Rubbermaid one down to the roadside. I put a couple of bags of trash in it, as, sort of, a goodbye… and I walked away.

Then, the morning came. Birds chirping. A glisten of sunshine on my window sill. I swear to Christ, Julie Andrews was making me fucking coffee that morning. I had breakfast. I went out to warm up[ the Camry. The garbage cans were empty… even the Rubbermaid one. THE RUBBERMAID ONE!!! What’s that still doing here? The garbage in it is gone. Why didn’t they didn’t take the can? Why...?

The next week I put it out alone. Solo. No garbage in it. It stayed.

The week after that I stuck it in another garbage can. It stayed.

The week after that I stuck on a note. It read: Garbage guys, This garbage can is the garbage.

They didn’t take it. WHAT IN GOD’S GOOD REFUSE IS GOING ON HERE?!? WHY CAN’T I THROW THIS FUCKING GARBAGE CAN AWAY!

The next week I waited. Waited for... them.

“Gentlemen?” Gentlemen? Who the Hell have I become. I used to be a “dude”-guy. Now, I’m in a TJ Maxx-bought Hilfiger tie and naugahide briefcase calling out to garbage men with a “Gentlemen” at the end of my driveway. I’m more 1950’s than that garbage I tried to throw away 8 years ago.

The back-of-the-truck guy pops off the truck and wipes his filthy glove across his nose leaving an oxygen mask of the townfolks’ slime from ear-to-ear (YEE-YUUUUGH-OOOH-YUCK!!!), “'sup, pal?”

“What’s with the, uh, leaving my garbage can? I’ve been trying to throw it away.”

“Can’t take it.”

“You can’t take my garbage can?”

“Nope.”

"Can't take this actual garbage can?"

"Nope."

"But you can take the garbage that was in it?"

"Yup."

“But I don’t want it anymore.”

“Can't take it. It’s a container.”

“A container?”

“Used container. It's a biohazard. Special removal.”

“But you took the fucking trash from inside of it last week.”

“Yeah?”

“Don' they both have the same trashy germs?”

Like I'm reeeee-tarded, “No. One’s trash, the other one is the trash container.”

“You’re fucking serious?”

“No need to get loud, buddy.”

Loud? I wasn’t loud. Why is this guy so sensitive?

I’m trying to be all matter-of-fact, now, “What if I put it in a bag?”

“Buddy, I can’t take a container.”

“Yeah, but it’s in its own bag so, essentially, it’s gone from container to trash.”

“Nope.”

“Okay, then, so, it is my understanding that a garbage can never be considered actual garbage?”
He gave me that tough guy stare which kind of scared me a little… plus he had on those dirty gloves. The left index finger, I swear, had diaper poop on it and the pinky had a tiny piece of cabbage (classic garbage), “Have a good one.”

Defeated, “Yeah, you, too.”

So, in 2005, I dug around it and buried it in the bald patch in my front yard where the grass will never grow. I'M A MONSTER!!! LONG LIVE OIL DRUM DICKIE!!! OLE!