You Figure It Out

I overheard someone reminiscing about friends. They said...
"My friends and I..."
Whoa. Stop right there. Friends? And you? Hanging out? Major. So what do you and these friends do? Listen to the latest Top 40 Billboard hits? Dance to these hits? Maybe a little basketball, sports, and when you dribble by them you yank their pants down, because it's funny! And then you'll all go for a dip, a little swim in the local pool, and you'll do the sickest water jumps. The cannonball. The jackknife. The gainer. The incontinent lush. The promiscuous older sister. Ha! I made those last two up! That's how reckless we were as kids, the friends and I. We didn't let stodgy old farts tell us how to do our water jumps. We came up with our own shit, man. We improvised. Sign o' the times. The "geriatric transsexual substitute teacher". Total classic. The "inconvenient truth". You did this one when you had to pee real badly and hadn't been in the pool for a bit. The "precocious onset of puberty". That one was the most popular and got the most attention, although it also stood the best chance of getting you pregnant.

Ah, friends, they were great. Sit around during the summer with your pals, maybe listen to a little Garrison Keillor, then rep it like you hailed from Lake Wobegon. But everyone knew you didn’t. They called us posers. Posers? Please! They were just jealous of that Mini ‘Sota flavor you rocked. And you talked like them, too. Affected a nice accent. And your mom would get all pissed and tight in the pants. Say Garrison was no good and that he objectified women and called them ho’s and how she didn’t trust people from Minnesota, and how they smelled funny. But when she saw one of them she’d be so polite. “Oh, I love lakes! And all the gophers! You must feel so lucky, growing up with all the gophers! And your cheese is splendid!”

Minnesota. Always made me think of baking soda. That was a lie! Baking soda. It was more like baking detergent. Clean my Girbauds in that shit. They probably called it baking pop in Minnesota. What the hell was it for? You would always be making some treat, a delicious batch of muffins or something, and you’d get down towards the end of the ingredients list and see B.S. sitting there, like an unwanted guest. Baking soda? Who invited you! You taste like shit! And it was always so pointless, when you were only allowed to put in like 2/8ths of a teaspoon. What good would that do? But you know that there’s someone out there in the world eating muffins, and they’re like, “ Ah, ack! Where…you can’t even taste the baking soda in this!” Must be diet baking soda; Baking Soda Zero. But at least it didn’t give you diabetes, at least you got to keep your toes. Baking soda had that going for it.

But baking soda was an uninvited guest, like that awkward kid in elementary school who overhead you say in class that you were having a party at Chucky Cheese and then showed up there himself and tried to play it off as a coincidence You didn’t just stop by Chucky Cheese on a lark! It was not the Olive Garden! This was an event. You’re never just “in the neighborhood”, unless you lived under the highway underpass, which, in retrospect, that kid might’ve. Like anybody says “in the neighborhood”, anyway. You were not! You’re a party crasher! You’re worse than baking soda!

Chuck Cheese. In my town it was called Showbiz Pizza. That’s fun. You got to be in The ‘Biz. Funny thing though: I expected more hookers and blow in The ‘Biz. But I know Michael Bay likes a slice of ‘za, and they did that right. And then sometime Chuck moved in on Showbiz’s turf. Kicked the joint to the curb. The show was over. Chuck rolled up in the spot, all loose like he was your chum. But let’s be honest – he was a giant rat. Could you really trust your kid’s birthday party and pizza to this character? And he totally rode the employees. “ Hey, bud, it’s Mr. Cheese to you. Charles Montgomery Cheese. Catch you slippin’ again and I’ll have one of my animatronic, hillbilly bears lodge a skee-ball up your ass.” Chuck was a real ball buster. But he didn’t get to the top of the birthday pizza party game by letting things slide. He was a ruthless businessman; you fucked with the pizza king, bitch, you’d get sliced! That was an industry specific joke. Sliced like a pizza, you know. It’s a joke, and not true. The reality was, if you crossed Chuck, he’d just come after you with a baseball bat with a nail in it, wrapped in barbed wire and dipped in mutagen.