Elephants trumpet, lions roar, and jaws drop as you somersault with a smile way, way up in the darkness. The ringmaster points his cane at you and screams while thundering applause rains down.
So snooze for the moment. Snooze for the memories.
Snooze for your life.
AWESOME!
Eating foods you loved as a kid
The flood of memories that comes shooting back when you eat food you loved as a kid is a giant, neuron-splattering head rush. You’re suddenly transported back to the kitchen you grew up in and can practically see the avocado-green stove, three-hundred-pound microwave, and plastic alphabet magnets covering the fridge.
So come on, let’s all go back:• Squished-up balls of fresh bread. This one involves taking a piece of really soft, really fresh bread, ripping off all the crusts, and then rolling it into a tight, white ball of dense deliciousness. Feel free to hide a wedge of butter in the core there too.
• Whatever you ate for holiday meals. Maybe back at The Kids Table you were loving Grandma’s pumpkin pie, your brother’s lumpy mashed potatoes, or mom’s famous stuffing. Nothing tastes as good when the holidays hit.
• Boxed macaroni with chopped-up hot dogs. Stare into that hot steamy fluorescent orange bowl and get ready to chow down. Optional features include adding massive squirts of ketchup or chopped-up hot dogs. Not optional is eating the whole box.
• Tang. The beautiful thing about Tang is that as you get older, you can just water it down a bit if you can’t handle the sweetness anymore. Or you can do the opposite and have yourself a glass of Super Tang. After that, it’s time to blast off to the moon.
• Melted Cheese. This is one that my sister and I used to love. We would put a piece of bread on a plate, slice up five thin slices of cheese, and then nuke it for thirty seconds. We had it down to an exact science. Once in a while things would get a little crazy and we’d put some tomato sauce on it, but mostly just Melted Cheese. A perfect name for a perfect after-school snack.
• Liquid antibiotics. Okay, it’s not really a food, but how about that sugary amoxicillin you used to get? You can apparently still ask for it as an adult, but you might need to take eight teaspoons fourteen times a day to get your full dosage.
• Those cheese spread cracker kits with the red plastic stick. Who else always ran out of cheese way before they ran out of cracker?
• Your favorite sandwich. Maybe today you’re on a health kick, but remember when your favorite sandwich was bologna and processed cheese on white bread? Or salami and mustard and mayo? Or creamy peanut butter with grape jelly cut into triangles?
• Canned pasta. Whether your fancy is beef ravioli or the tangy sweetness from a soupy bowl of ketchupsoaked O’s, these piles of sodium and meatpaste definitely tickle the memory bone.
• Mom’s Spaghetti Sauce. Was your mom a jar of sauce in a pot kind of gal? Or a slow, all-day simmering type of lady? Did she leave the mushrooms chunky, chop them real fine, or leave them out completely? What was her position on onions, melted cheese on top, or meatballs versus meat sauce? If you grew up with homemade spaghetti sauce, I’m willing to bet it’s still something that tastes amazing today.
• Cold hot dogs straight from the fridge. Oh, don’t worry. The worms all died in the factory.
• Random mishmash desserts. My sister used to put oats and butter in the microwave and top it with a spoon of brown sugar. Maybe you loved Nestlé Quik on a spoon, butter and sugar sandwiches, homemade Coke ice pops, or Nutella smeared on anything.
• Sugar cereals. I ate Corn Pops every day for breakfast for a decade and somehow survived. These days, you can always cut them with an adult cereal if they’re too sweet. Throw some plain Cheerios on those Honey Nut Cheerios or some Corn Flakes on those Frosted Flakes. Just don’t tell anybody, old man.
Now, let’s be honest, sometimes the foods you loved as a kid slowly drift away and disappear. Grandma passes on and her secret meatball recipe is buried with her, you move away from the sibling you used to bake your special Christmas squares with, or the sugar in your sugary cereal suddenly turns into a more profitable fructose chemical spray.
But that’s why it’s doubly important to treasure those adult glimpses into your childhood tastes. That’s why you gotta love those perfect little loves at first bite. That’s why the memory jolts from the sugary treats and salty snacks are such amazing little highs. Because even though your stomach may not always thank you for it, your brain surely will.
AWESOME!
Calling a mulligan on the day
Do you play golf?
Me, I’ve tried a couple times but it’s always the same: I lace up some stained sneakers, borrow rusty clubs from someone’s basement, and then scrounge around the parking lot for some dented balls for my once-a-decade tee shot.
Now, I’ve got absolutely no athletic abilities so you’ll understand why I love that golf rule that lets me call a mulligan. Have you heard of it? Basically, I swing and miss the ball a dozen times before eventually shanking it dead sideways into the dense forest.
But then I just yell MULLIGANNNNN! really loudly and everyone lets me try again.
It’s a great rule and it got me thinking: We should be able to call mulligans anywhere.
Because hear me out.
What if you could call a mulligan on your driving test? Yes, after tire-punching the curb and hitting Grandma’s shopping cart, you just drop the m-word and start again. Or how about calling a mulligan after an awkward goodbye kiss in the airport? Or after accidentally spitting a tiny piece of food on your date’s face?
It’s starting to sound good, am I right?
My old college friend Mike is the absolute master. See, he’s perfected the beautifully indulgent Weekend Mulligan. He often gets up and groggily stumbles around the kitchen, spills coffee grinds on the floor, and accidentally steps on the cat. But then he stares at his dark, hollow eyes in the mirror and realizes he woke up too soon.
That’s when he just calls a mulligan on the day and goes back to bed with a plan to give it another shot a few hours later.
People, life’s too short not to sleep when you feel like it so take a page from our book and when your first couple tries land in the rough, just yell mulligan and start again.
We all deserve a second chance.
AWESOME!
Finally getting the perfect picture
AWESOME!
Fat baseball players
If you ever find yourself playing professional sports and someone from the stands yells out, “Come on, Big Bopper!” you’re probably a fat baseball player. Fat baseball player, thank you for giving us that simplest thing of all.
Hope.
See, because usually when we see those tricep flabs shaking in the wind and those bathroom scales exploding into a mess of springs going in all directions, we figure that our professional sports careers are pretty much over. Ain’t too much room on the hockey bench or the soccer pitch for us husky folks, and so, with our dreams sidelined, we sign up for night school VCR repair courses and start staining furniture in the garage, channeling our energies away from the games we love into our Plan Bs and Cs.
But that’s where you come in. To the chunky outfielders, chubby pinch hitters, and doughy-assed relief pitchers of the world: Thank you for keeping our dreams alive to one day be a platoon Designated Hitter. Thank you for being
AWESOME!
Watching something download really fast
The first website I ever visited was Yahoo.com.
The whole sordid affair went down in the mid-nineties on a school trip to the Science Center. While other kids from our class learned how paper was made or watched 3D films about the Amazon, my friends and I raced to a dim room at the back stuffed with clunky computer monitors sitting in a big circle. See, we had read ads in the paper about a new exhibit showcasing the new Informative Superb Highway and we wanted to experience the straight dope firsthand.
Unfortunately for us, someone tippe
d off all the geeks from other schools too and the room was jam-packed with sweaty nerds in long lines waiting for small ten-minute turns to ride the wave.
Well, we waited and waited and waited and eventually scored a yellow plastic stool in front of a big screen. Giddy as schoolgirls, we decided to begin expanding our minds and broadening our horizons by researching the hit TV show Baywatch. See, we had many questions about the complex plot of this show, which required detailed investigation.
Now remember—this was the mid-nineties here. Cell phones looked like briefcases, encyclopedias filled home libraries, and young kids with dirty faces stood on streetcorner soapboxes hawking evening editions of the local Times-Express on your way home from work.
In these dark times, the only website any of us had heard of was Yahoo.com, so after spending a few minutes finding and opening the browser, we typed in the website, pressed Enter, and began waiting for this new dawn of civilization to pour down on our young and eager heads.
But first ...
...
...
... there was nothing.
Just a blank screen in a dim room filled with nerves, teen sweat, and yellow plastic stools. We waited and prayed until eventually heart-pounding teasers dribbled out at the bottom of the screen. “Contacting server,” it pledged, which sounded promising until it updated itself with only “Connecting to server” a minute later. Then a couple more minutes and “Transferring data” finally began and big red pixels slowly dropped into view.
But it was too late.
Our time was finishing up.
Yes, our big dreams and wild ideas of exploring this magical fantasyland on the other end of the wires dissolved into a page full of text, broken links, and a complete lack of swimsuits.
We walked away that day brokenhearted.
Some of us cried.
But now, way up here in the future, when I look back on that long bus ride home, I smile at how far we’ve come. These days websites load in the blink of an eye and songs zip home in seconds. As those little bar graphs fill up, we rub our palms together and cackle like madmen because now we never have to wait before watching videos of dancing cats and skateboarding accidents.
AWESOME!
A really cold drink on a really hot day
When your eyes sting from big salty beads of dripping sweat, your T-shirt gets wet and melts to your back, and your upper lip forms a splotchy sweatstache, then I say brother, it’s time for a drink.
If you’re feeling this heat then you know nothing says refreshing better than a soaking wet can of soda pulled from the icy depths of a giant picnic cooler, wet frosty mug of cold beer at the back of a dark bar, or tall condensation-covered glass of ice-cold water.
I mean, when you chug that stuff down it feels like swallowing an icicle. You can actually feel that cold river tearing down the chute and coating your insides. You can feel your throat pulsing, your stomach clenching, and your entire body drop a couple of degrees.
Drinking a really cold drink on a really hot day is a refreshing moment of chilly bliss that feels so incredibly
AWESOME!
Seeing old people holding hands
It’s what life’s all about.
Seeing old people holding hands is a symbol of a lifelong companionship full of knowing glances, inside smiles, and warm feelings in waiting hearts. As you watch them mosey down the boardwalk during the sunset you can’t help see the connection of two hands that helped shape the world. Those hands made meals, held babies, mowed lawns, and fixed cars. They held faces, went places, called friends, and touched stars.
They tried and built and grew together. They lived and learned and loved together.
Seeing old people holding hands is a simple expression of long lasting affection that fills our hearts with hope. They show us a future world exists of tied-together hearts and long lives lived with someone we love.
AWESOME!
Seeing a really happy dog out for a walk
I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE!
I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE!
I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE!
I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE!
I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE!
I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE! I’M OUTSIDE!
AWESOME!
Eating the ice cream stuck to the lid of the carton
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.
Yes, in terms of Kitchen Anticipation not much compares with yanking out a steaming, freeze-chilled carton of the cold n’ creamy from the back of the freezer. Bowls hit the table, spoons clink on the countertop, and the carton starts frosting up as you peel back the lid.
Stare deep into the light pink swirls, cookie dough chunks, or vanilla bean dust looking up at you, but just before you plant your spoon deep into the silky smooth layer make sure you scrape off the milky fresh and creamy bit stuck to the bottom of the carton lid.
It’s your ice cream appetizer.
AWESOME!
Getting the armrest at the movie theater
Movie theaters sure are trying.
Let’s see, they made the seats taller, screens bigger, cushions comfier, and gave cup holders permanent status. They want us to sit back, relax, and enjoy a nice, quiet evening in our perfect seats.
There’s just one problem, though: that armrest.
Yes, armrests are the only shared space between you and Hairy-Forearm Frank on your left or Pointy-Elbow Elaine on your right. And you can’t share that space, you can’t go halfsies, you can’t do a time-share. People, there can be no softly rubbing elbows with a stranger during the trailers, are we agreed? I don’t care how friendly the rubbing is, either. It’s just not acceptable.
So we’re only left with one option, folks.
That’s right: Get there early, eye your prize, claim that space, and claim it quick. Plant your sharp, bony elbows on both armrests and get ready for the most comfortable moviewatching experience of your life.
AWESOME!
Glass
Grab a handful of sand, heat it up to a few thousand degrees, and suddenly, presto change-o, whaddaya got? That’s right, friend: a handful of glass and one severely burned paw.
Now, how incredible is the fact that glass is made from sand? I mean, think about it: There aren’t many things you can’t see through that turn into things you can see through. It just doesn’t happen. Water isn’t made from mud, radio waves aren’t evaporated rainbows, and Crystal Pepsi isn’t just a pot of regular Pepsi stirred really fast.
I mean, can you imagine the first time somebody made glass? For a while there’s just an old cauldron hanging over a fire with some sand sizzling in the bottom, and then suddenly it’s clink, clink, clink and marbles are rolling around in there. Now, I wasn’t around then, but I imagine whoever was had a great story at the bars for a few weeks.
Glass is so solid, stoic, and sophisticated too—unlike that annoyingly pliable and chemical-leaching heathen, plastic. I mean, apparently the empty plastic cottage cheese container you reheat your leftovers in can fill your meal with a pile of chemicals that could mess you up. But that’s not so with glass, because glass is a solid fighter and isn’t going to cry and fall apart at the sight of a few measly microwaves.
So have you ever looked through a window or watched TV? Do you wear glasses, do you take pictures, do you pour steaming fluorescent liquids into beakers in chemistry labs? If so, have you peeked into a telescope or microscope when you were in there? If not, have you ever admired the stained glass inside a church, or enjoyed a cold brew in a beer bottle or some bubbly in a champagne flute? Is your house insulated with fiberglass? Do your fish swim in an aquarium? I ask you, friend: Are you sitting under a lightbulb . . . right ... now?
And if so, if
any of these things, then I say smile, flash a thumbs-up, and give some serious props to glass—that durable, industrious, dishwasher-safe friend who’s always there when we need it most.
AWESOME!
When you actually manage to split the group restaurant bill to everyone’s satisfaction
Gut busting with chicken chow mein and nursing a fried rice hangover, your frenzied hour of pillaging steam trays has quickly dissolved into a table full of sticky-smeared plates, bloated bellies, and quiet groaning.
Folks, if you’re like me this scene is called The End of The Buffet, a dimly lit freeze-frame featuring you and your friends lazily sliding in chairs with slack jaws and heavy eyelids.
And it gets worse too.
The chipper waitress drops off the bill and everybody just eyes each other suspiciously. Who owes who money? Who ordered drinks and who didn’t? Is anyone riding a fat paycheck high and feeling generous? Since I am an extremely cheap person, I generally choose this exact moment to skedaddle to the bathroom in the hope that everyone else will overpay and allow me to just drop a fiver on the stack before heading out.
Of course, it never works out that way.
Instead, I return to an untouched bill and generally get pegged as Math Guy, also known as The Job Nobody Wants After Dinner. See, my friends start chatting about what movie to see and I’m suddenly stuck with my head down, brows furrowed, figuring out tips, collecting cash, and trying to follow the paper trails.
If you’re hanging out with me and my friends then Math Guy is a doubly terrible job because we’re always forty bucks short. People shrug, eye contact is avoided, and there are some phantom wallet reaches, until we figure out that two people didn’t add tax and tip and one guy still needs to get cash from the ATM.