Maybe you bought a dress.
If so, I certainly don't blame you, because when your rust-bucket's clicker-counter snaps into new territory, it's like she's suddenly all growed up. You smile slowly and breathe in fried chicken and gas fumes as your mind rushes back to great times you've shared over the years: the day you first realized you could drive, locking people out of your car and pretending to drive away, and hanging your hand out her window on lazy summer afternoons.
Yes, watching your odometer click over a major milestone is a great feeling.
Congratulations on being there for the big day.
AWESOME!
Mastering the art of the all-you-can-eat buffet
Munch lunch at a Chinese restaurant, brunch at a Holiday Inn, or dinner at a wedding reception, and chances are good you will come face to face with the The All-You-Can-Eat Buffet.
If you're a Buffet Amateur like me, your pupils dilate and your mouth starts watering as soon as you spot the long table full of steam trays and crisscrossed tablecloths. Soon it's game on, and you grab a plate and pile it high with some bread, a few salads, a couple rolled-up salamis, and a bowl of Wonton soup. For plate number two, you tackle the main course, scooping up sticky heaps of Kung Pao chicken, soggy French toast, or paper-thin slices of roast beef soaked in dark mushroom gravy. Then you go back for a third plate, this one featuring a tipsy mountain of desserts--maybe some assorted squares, a gummy slice of cheesecake, or fluorescent pink freezer-burned ice cream sliding around your plate.
Then as you lie bloated on your chair, your buttons bursting, your eyelids drooping, you face a final decision: Do you go back for The Fourth Plate?
The Fourth Plate is almost always a good idea before you do it and a bad idea afterward. It's the helping after the helping after. It's the Greatest Hits Plate, a star-studded collection with the most popular items coming together for the reunion tour, the last hurrah, the final dance at the dinner table.
The Fourth Plate is also a famous mark of a Buffet Amateur , because it can be the sign of someone who realizes that the second plate was the best and they really just want more of the second plate. For years, I scarfed down The Fourth Plate at the Indian buffet near my college. Buttery, pillowy-soft naans piled high, thick and creamy Butter Chicken, and spicy, simmering lamb in a hearty broth. It was just too much. I caved in every time and walked away with a curry-busting gut and a samosa hangover.
Since then I've been tutored on the art of mastering the all-you-can-eat buffet. Everybody's got their own techniques, but here's what I've learned over the years:
1. The Walk-Through. Don't do what I used to do and blindly take a spoonful of everything. No, you've got to do your Walk-Through first. You're a detective popping open steam tray after steam tray, looking for recent fill-ups, traffic around popular items, and sure winners like omelet stations or a guy in a chef's hat slicing big slabs of meat. Now's also time for some Belly Space Analysis, where every item's Tasty Deliciousness is weighed against its Projected Stomach Volume. Bread, soup, and salad rarely pass the Belly Space Analysis test. Skipping those means you just gained an extra plate and are on your way.
2. Drink Later. Sugary drinks fill you up with carbs and cost extra. If you can postpone your Pepsi, you'll save space for the hot goods.
3. The Sampler. My dad is famous for the sampler plate. Within minutes of arriving, he'll dot a big white plate with small portions of every entree and proceed to say, "Hmmm," a lot while scooping up tiny forkfuls of each to see what will make the cut. You have to have willpower to pull off The Sampler, but it can be very rewarding. You know you aced it when your next plate is just piles of your two favorites. Good on you.
4. Staggered Trips. If you're with friends, don't wait until everybody finishes their first plate before uniformly filing up for a second trip together. No, go separately and act as each other's eyes and ears out there--what's new, what's hot, what's fresh, what's not? Your friends are doing their job when you see them running back to the table to scream, "They just brought out more coconut shrimp!" Also, be sure to designate someone at your table as The Lookout. This person should have a clear view of the buffet and raise the alarm whenever they see someone coming from the kitchen with a new steam tray.
5. Big Plates Always. Be watchful of the small salad and dessert plates lurking about. Find your secret stash of full-size dinner plates and use them, know them, love them lots. The big plates will let you spread your meal around and avoid piling things high, which generally results in meat gravy getting all over your Caesar salad.
6. One More Egg Roll. When the check arrives, take your time. Slow it right down and see who still has room. Since you've been so busy scarfing your food and staggering trips, now really is the best chance to catch up with your friends. Then after ten or fifteen minutes, someone will likely cave in and say, "Okay, one more egg roll." This is buffet victory.
With these tips plus your personal experiences, you too can master the art of the all-you-can-eat buffet. After that, there's really no stopping you. So eat all you can, my friend.
Eat all you can.
AWESOME!
Finding money in your old coat pocket
My old roommate was sifting through and tossing out some old birthday cards once when a crisply entombed twenty-dollar bill slid out of a faded card from Grandma. Her eyebrows perked up, her mouth formed a perfect O, and she raised her hand up top for a high five, which I promptly delivered.
Finding ten bucks zipped up in last year's ski jacket, lying wet and crumpled in the washing machine, or folded in the pocket of your booze-smelling blazer is such a great high. There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but this sure comes close.
Finding your own money is a lot like discovering an entirely new currency, one that cannot be used to pay down debts or obligations, but only has value when purchasing things you probably don't need and wouldn't have bought otherwise, like an old-school beanie cap, novelty ten-pound Toblerone bar, or high-octane gasoline. It is disposable income in the truest sense of the phrase.
For the pessimists out there, you may be saying "Barumph! That money has been all chewed up by time and inflation, slowly losing value and unaccumulating interest while prices ramp right on up, making my life less and less affordable. That found money could have purchased more before I lost it than it can today, so why should I celebrate my own stupidity?"
But Pessy, come on, we're talking about found money here--money that hasn't been budgeted for, accounted for, remembered for, promised for, or owed for, anything at all, since you lost it! Surely the few sacrificed cents of interest in the bank are a small price to pay for holding that folded-up bill, right up to the sky in your tightly clenched fist, with no claims to satisfy. Sure, it may smell a bit like mothballs, Tide, or Grandma's skin cream, but that money still works. And it works well.
So let's call found money what it really is then.
AWESOME!
The Laugh Echo
While sitting around the lunch table in tenth grade, my friend Mike accidentally squirted himself in the face with a juice box. He thought it was empty and squeezed the daylights out of the thing, causing streams of apple juice to drench him completely. His hair soaked, his eyebrows dripping, his mouth slowly and painfully dropped into a Perfect O of Shock while everybody around him rolled with laughter.
For years after that, whenever that crystal-clear image of Mike's sticky, juicy, and surprised face suddenly popped into my head, I burst out laughing. I just couldn't help it. I had a Laugh Echo.
Yes, The Laugh Echo is when you laugh out loud after suddenly remembering something funny that happened a while ago. It's a random and hilarious event that can occur with family, with friends, or--for bonus points--when you're by yourself in a crowded public place.
Now laughing really is great for us. Yes, it helps protect our heart, lowers our blood sugar after a meal, helps us sleep, juices up our antibodies and blood flow, and gives us mini cardio workouts throughout the
day. Honestly, have you ever seen babies just laughing uncontrollably for no reason? They know the score and are probably just remembering something funny that happened in the womb. Folks, you know it and I know it: We can learn much from the baby.
So next time you let out a big Laugh Echo in public, just love it lots. Because life's too short, my friends. Let's squeeze in as many laughs as we can get. Then at the end, when we're old and gray, when our bones are brittle and our hair is hay, how will it feel when we look each other straight in the eyes and burst out laughing?
I think we both know the answer to that.
AWESOME!
Crying
A study in Scientific American Mind magazine said that on average men cry X times a month and woman cry Y times a month. Take a guess on the numbers and see how close you are (answers are a-coming).
Now, whether you're above or below average, consider crying a little bit more. When you feel the hot, salty tears coming, don't hold back. Let them flood your eyes and pour down your cheeks, because hear me out:
* Share the tears. Crying brings us closer together. In these anonymous days of gated communities, big-box stores, and rampant Interneting, sometimes people just need the attention and care of a friend. I mean, when you see your pal crying, what happens? Maybe your eyes well up and you throw them a hug. And maybe that's exactly what they need and why the tears poured out in the first place.
* Body buzz. Studies show that emotional crying (versus onion crying or eyelash-in-your-eye crying) actually releases a bunch of wacky hormones that relieve tension by balancing your body's stress levels. If you've ever said, "I'm okay, I had a good cry," then it could be because crying helps straighten out your chemically crooked self right when you need it most. And let's face it--that's a lot better than holding it in and shorting out your inner gearworks.
* I'm trying to tell you something. Babies cry before they talk to let us all know when they're tired, frustrated, scared, in pain, or when they really, really, really want their video back on. The point is that crying is a primal, universal way to communicate and tell us when something's up.
Yes, even though men cry only once a month on average and women let them pour five times or more, there's room for tears plus, people. So don't hold back because you think it's embarrassing or a sign of weakness, no. When memories of lost loved ones flood back, painful experiences hit you hard, or your heart swells up inside you, I say just let those big, wet tears rain down without any guilt or shame.
Because we all need to let go sometimes.
AWESOME!
Driving through your old neighborhood and stopping to see the house you grew up in
When my friends Chris, Ty, and I went on our cross-country road trip in the spring of 2007, we managed to stop in the small hardscrabble dirt town of Paris, Texas.
In addition to visiting the Kimberly-Clark diaper factory, miniature Eiffel Tower, and famous Jesus in Cowboy Boots statue, Ty insisted we drive through his old neighborhood to see his old home.
Pulling down curbless sidestreets on our way out of town, Ty was already in that cloudy nostalgic dream before we even got to the place. "Sure is a lot shadier than I remember it," he commented quietly. "Trees a lot bigger."
We pulled up to Ty's old house and his eyes popped as his brain flash-flooded with piles of distant memories rushing back all at once. He got out of the car and started walking around the yard, slowly taking it all in.
Because even though it was just a nailed-together stack of wood, bricks, and shingles to us, for Ty it was so much more. And, you know, there is something profound about driving through your old neighborhood and visiting an old home.
Depending on the time and place, you might notice some strange things.
Maybe you wonder if the new family discovered that the side fence door made a perfect backstop for pitching practice. Do they know if you hit a chalk square between the outermost boards, the tennis ball almost always bounces back to you?
Maybe you notice somebody trimmed the old jaggedly sharp evergreen with the tiny rock-hard berries on it, which was always the best spot for Hide-and-Seek and the perfect burial ground for He-Man action figures when you moved on to Transformers. You remember the soft needles jabbing your forearms and dirt sticking to your elbows when you were down there at dusk, and you remember it was worth it.
If you're bold enough to ring the doorbell or take a quick peek in the backyard, you might see a new glass door replacing the rusty screen one that always slammed and had that thin sliding metal lock that never lined up properly. Or maybe you notice the same wobbly patio stones that remind you of birthday parties spent eating hot dogs and playing Frozen Tag in bare feet on the dandelions and crabgrass. Photos flash and flip through your brain: sun setting over the fence, everyone licking frosty Popsicles, mosquitoes coming out and buzzing in your ears.
Oil stains from Dad's truck still dot the driveway and the little handprints you made in the corner of the sidewalk still sit there. And you wonder: Does the dog next door still bark when someone jumps in the pool? Do they still leave the Christmas lights on until late January? Do the kids dunk on the basketball net off the hood of the car?
But whatever you wonder, whatever you see, it sure is a sweet head trip driving down those old roads leading to the home you grew up in. You smile and remember summer nights, holidays with your cousins, and couch-cushion forts on Saturday mornings. Maybe you're lucky and your old home is close by or maybe it's torn down or far away, but if you haven't done it in a while and can still pull it off, take that sweet Sunday cruise down memory lane.
AWESOME!
The last day of school
My friend Jason had a tradition.
Every year on the last day of school he'd stop on a bridge over the creek on his walk home, pop open his three-hole binders, and dump all his pen-scrawled notes and sticker-covered tests into the bubbling rapids below. Somehow the sight of the papers soaking up and smearing the ink before drowning and drifting away gave him the therapeutic closure he needed before summer officially began.
Although not all of us celebrated by polluting local waterways, the last day of school always had so much meaning.
I don't know about you, but our school board didn't spring for air conditioning, figuring we could make it through a few hot weeks before the break. So as the cold winter thawed into muggy summer days, the heat and sweat just sank and stank, despite pleading windows propped open with dog-eared textbooks and plastic yellow rulers.
As that last day approached, a certain smell was teased out from all the backpacks, lockers, and gym closets too. It was a musty combination of dodgeball rubber, cheap floor polish, acne medication, and locker mold.
But that heat sure brought some excitement with it too.
Calendar days flipped by and teachers taught with a bit more pep, assignments got a little lighter, and project dead-lines came and went. Tank tops came out as flip-flops clipclopped up and down the hallway, with everybody locking eyes, smiling big smiles, and waiting patiently for that beautiful last day to finally come.
And then one day it did.
And it sure whipped by in a whirlwind.
Maybe your teacher made a batch of homemade brownies, and everybody sliced a square out with plastic knives while passing around yearbooks and watching a movie with no educational value whatsoever.
Maybe your school wrote tests and exams earlier, so half the class skipped while the rest played Battleship, watched Students vs. Teachers baseball, or just collected their report cards.
Maybe you were graduating and spent the afternoon kicking pebbles in the parking lot and chatting about all the moments you were going to miss as you moved on. There was your first cigarette, getting cut from the basketball team, and the hallway drama of prom season.
Making plans for pool parties, summer birthdays, and sleeping in every morning gives you a great rush, and as you walk home with that pen-scratched yearbook you squeeze out a small smile and stare way off
into the distance of July and August, thinking tall thoughts and dreaming big dreams to fill those beautifully wide open spaces.
AWESOME!
When you're right near the end of the book
You've been through so much together.
It seems like ages ago when you first cracked her open, flipped past the small print mumbo jumbo, and read that first sentence. Maybe you knew you'd like it or maybe you judged that first page harshly, playing hard to get, eyeing the others on the shelf, seeing if this puppy was really worth your time.
But then you got sucked in.
Characters grew and a few chapters ended with cliff-hangers that kept you up much too late. You laughed as you flipped and flipped on a long flight, your eyes welled at the cottage, and you cozied up through big scenes under an old blanket on the front porch.
When you're right near the end of the book, you feel the anticipation pulsing. As you sit still in absolute perfect silence, it's amazing how your mind is racing, your heart is pumping, and your ears tune out the world around you. Maybe you put the book down to go to the bathroom or grab a glass of water, trying to guess the ending just before you read it: Will she find her mother, will he admit how he feels, will Gryffindor win the House Cup?
Maybe you savor those last few pages, maybe you race right through them, or maybe anticipation gets the best of you and you flip right to the end. Either way, pretty soon you're closing that book with a satisfying shut and adding it to the freshly read pile on your shelf.