The First Time

All time stops, and you wonder “how did this happen?”
Everything you hear sounds hollow, as if the world is now being spoken through a glass bottle. You notice the architecture hovering above for the first time. Windows that reflect so well, they look like a continuation of the sky. And since looking at the sky never fits into your schedule of things-to-do, this glass is the most beautiful thing you’ve seen since you were six.

****

December weekends with you and Daddy playing in the snow, while it was falling, was a tradition. Mommy stayed inside. “My hands get too cold, sweetie,” she would say. “But you go and have fun with your father.” And after a few minutes of begging her to come, too, you did. Throwing snowballs at daddy was hard with your mittens, but he dove into them and fell down, acting as if they had just come out of a cannon. But he would get you back. Even if you thought you’d run a thousand feet away, his snowballs reached you. Exploding somewhere on your snowsuit.

Most times you would gain enough courage to charge at him with a snowball in each mitten, usually missing with one of them. Then both of you ended up on your backs making snow angels, and Daddy promised that your snow angel would, someday, be as big as his. Laughing and looking up at the sky, you thought about what the clouds looked like. Sometimes, you thought you saw people, and other times you saw shapes or cartoon characters.

Winter afternoon don’t happen that way anymore. There are no 3-step porches to jump from and no century-old trees to hide behind. The only oak you see is the desk in your office and on the dash in your $60,000 sedan. Executive Vice Presidents of national banks live that life. They must. Express elevators and fine print. Conference calls and coffee breaks. It’s what you do best.

Every four years or so, you decide you need a break from that. So you pack your laptop and cell phone, and head toward an island somewhere. You lie on the beach, ignore the translucent ocean water, and type away. Memos that must be sent the instant you get back. Occasionally, even an email to a friend. Whatever it is, you can’t escape where you just left, so you head home early.
“How was your vacation?”
“Great. It felt so good to get a break from this place.”

Liar. This is what you now call home. The cold streets of Manhattan are your playground, and Fifth Avenue is your backyard. And to make up for the couple vacation days you dropped, you decide to do a little shopping on a Sunday. Bergdorf Goodman sounds good, but only because Tiffany’s and Burberry is right across the street.

Holding your head high, and feeling good about the matching cashmere scarf and gloves that were on sale, you don’t notice the patch of ice on the ground.

…The glass never looked so beautiful.

O, That's Classy.

I hear people all the time saying “I’m going to go for a walk.” And I think, “a walk where?” But the reality is that a lot of those people walk just for the sake of walking.

I don’t understand that.

Whenever I walk , I do so with the purpose of getting somewhere. Either it’s to the store, to the mailbox, or to class. Walking isn’t something I like to do, but it’s something I must do. To me, there has to be a definite reason for doing it. I don’t just walk out my door, close my eyes, take a deep breath and say “Ahhhh, where’s the wind going to take me today?” Who does that? Even dogs walk for a reason. They wanna poop, pee, chase squirrels, and smell other dog’s poop and pee. I once knew a dog that barked whenever the wind blew hard enough. Stupid, stupid animals, yet smart enough to know why they’re walking.

When are humans going to reach that intellectual plateau? Have you ever seen a person happy to be walking? It’s quite funny. There they are - not in running clothes- smiling at nothing with their hands in their pockets. And most of the time, it seems those people are walking across the street I need to turn on when I’m driving. That’s the most annoying thing about Walkers, they think cars cannot hit them. I think of all of them with stuffy voices saying, “La-dee-dee, La-dee-dah. I have the right-of-way Mr. Vehicle. You must wait until I have ascended onto the sidewalk. Thank You Very Much.” Meanwhile you become an ostrich, twisting and stretching your neck to see if the light above you is still green.

“Now you may proceed, Mr. Vehicle. Thank You Very Much.”

And I know that’s how they think because I used to be a Walker. I hated cars who tried to make me walk faster when I was crossing the street. Uh-uh. Wouldn’t do it because I didn’t have to worry about something like points being put on my Walker’s License. But car drivers have to worry. “Man, I wanna run over this old lady with the groceries. She’s really taking her sweet time crossing.” Then I think about it. “But, alas, I can’t. One day I will see you again old woman. One day. And on that day I need not worry about points, because I will be riding a bicycle..."

I feel the same way about running. I tried running on a treadmill at the gym the other day and I couldn’t do it. I had never done it before in my life, and it was the most awkward thing for me (asides from the time I sat in the same car for 25 minutes with my girlfriend‘s mute cousin who doesn’t blink). But I was afraid of falling off the treadmill like I’ve seen millions of times on Funniest Home Videos, so I didn’t want to let go of the handle bars. I looked like a baby in a walker…but one with long, hairy legs.

So my feeling of inadequacy prevailed and I decided to get off the treadmill. But how? Should I jump off? Should I stop walking and roll off the back of it? I looked around to make sure no one was watching, and no one was. Everybody on treadmills was either listening to their Ipod, or guzzling down some fitness water. What is fitness water, by the way? How can water be fit? Anyway, I figured there has to be a logical way to get off this machine going 10 mph. Ok. The answer lies in one of these buttons.

Have you ever looked at the panel of an advanced treadmill? It’s like the cockpit of an airplane. Freakin’ barometers, altimeters, and heart gauges all over the place. Buttons are lighting up here and there. All it needs is a glass windshield and Top Gun‘s “Danger Zone” playing from its speakers. C’mon you know that song.

Hiiiighway to the DANGER ZONE
Gonna take you Right in to the DANGER ZONE.

I admit that song would’ve gotten me pumped to jump right off that thing, but all I wanted was a helmet that said “GOOSE.”

But I didn’t need a helmet because I finally figured it out by crouching and reading the fine print instructions on the panel. That may sound easy but try doing it while running 10 mph. And it didn’t help that I’m cursed with extremely long legs and a stubby torso. I stand in front of the mirror naked sometimes and think I look like a giraffe without the long neck.

So after I manage to get off, I head over to the weights. “Now this is what I’m talking about. A real workout.” Then I grunted like Tim The Toolman Taylor.

After lifting weights for 40 minutes, I was spent. I hadn’t done any lifting in a long time and my arms were starting to burn so I decided to stop. Guzzling down a gallon of water during my workout didn’t help my stomach. “Maaan, I got bubble guts in a public place. This sucks.” If I’m in public and I have to use the bathroom, I hold it as long as I can because public restrooms are atrocious. Dirty toilet tissue wads are all over the floor and I don’t even want to mention the smell. But the worst thing is how a public bathroom develops its own evolutionary life cycle. There were pubic hairs walking around in the last bathroom I went into. I could’ve sworn one knocked on my stall and asked for some tissue.

But the gym’s bathroom wasn’t that bad. I covered the toilet seat with an entire roll of Charmin’s and tried to imagine I was at home. It didn’t work, but I finished and I reached over to get tissue. As I moved my arm I realized that I had overworked it, and now they didn’t work. “This isn’t happening.” Digging deep inside myself I mustered the little strength in me to reach back and wipe my butt. Or at least tried to. My right arm was so weak that it was shaking uncontrollably. I wish I had the guy from The Waterboy standing outside my stall screaming, “You Can Do EhhT.” But I couldn’t. The tissue was too heavy. Still can’t picture it? Well imagine Mohammad Ali trying to wipe his butt and that’s how I looked. Sorry for the graphic imagery.

I never thought I would go so low and write toilet humor, but I had to tell this story. I don’t even want to get into how I tried with my left hand (which I must‘ve never done before). I looked crippled. Don’t believe me? Next time try using your non-wiping hand, and you’ll see.

Now that’s a Danger Zone.

Just a Moment

The other day I made breakfast. French Toast, bacon, and eggs. After I’d finished cooking everything, I picked up my plate and walked in my room. I wanted to close my door, but I didn’t feel like walking all the way over to the desk and putting everything down first. So facing away from the door, French toast in hand, I leapt in the air, kicked my left leg back and said, “HI-YAH!” The door thundered shut. No one was around, I didn’t recently watch a Kung-Fu movie, nor was there any gain in my jump kicking my door. I just did it. And I didn’t even realize I’d done it until I noticed everything in my room was shaking. My form felt good. It felt professional.

Sometimes I wish I had a photographer following me around all the time like Mohammad Ali did, waiting to capture me at my best. Because at that moment - for that split second I bound in the air, I felt perfect. Have you ever watched a gazelle walk? If you haven’t, it’s an extraordinary thing. They keep their back perfectly straight while covering ten feet with each stride. All with a tiny twinge of their muscles. During this display of grace, the gazelle’s head and neck remain still like cast iron, while its eyes and ears dart back and forth, relentlessly processing nature’s information. Watching it becomes a humbling experience because you realize just how physically insignificant humans are.

But at that moment, I wasn’t human. I wasn’t bound by our pathetic limitations. At that moment I became the world’s illogical production. All with French Toast in my hand.

Hi-Yah.

"The Albatross"

In Albany, where I live, there are these commercials and billboards all over the place for a place called Best Fitness. It’s a gym that's $20 a month for life. Two months ago, after I picked Kris up from work one day, we headed over to take a look.
“C’mon, it’ll take a second.”
“Ahh man, I wanted to go home and watch MaxEX” (If you haven’t seen it, your missing out on home videos of crazy things like Komodo Dragons attacking 80 year-old women in wheelchairs. It’s great.)
So, I concur. Actually, I have no choice because it’s her car…And if there was no concurrence, I would’ve had to take the bus home. And Andrew no like to take big bus home.

We arrive to Westgate Plaza, and look for Best Fitness. “Where is this place,” we ask each other, then finally we see the storefront. Some guy, watching us from inside is waving for us to come in. Kris saw him, but I could barely make him out because of the saw-dust covered glass he was standing behind. “You gotta be kidding me.” This place was under construction. Now when I say, “under construction,” you probably think I mean the place is being built. No. This place was literally under construction.

Plywood was all over the place. There wasn’t a floor. Yes, there wasn’t a floor, just rubbish and concrete. It was like it was a continuation of the parking lot, but with an open, upside down cardbox on top of it. Don’t get me wrong, it was the most promising pile of rubble I’ve ever seen in my life, but I was starting to understand why it was only $20 a month. And the best part about the gym membership, was that for only $5 more a month, you could actually help with the construction. (No hard hat is provided though. Sad face.)
The gym guy - let’s call him Joe - walks over to us and asks “So, what brought you guys to our gym?”

***Interactive Part of Story***
Pick a response:
A) Home Depot does animal testing so we wanted to buy 2 x 4’s from you guys.
B) Oh, I’m sorry the wind from the saw-dust storm blinded us, and we accidentally wandered in here. We meant to go in Pottery Barn.
C) Instead of going to Vieques to see the results of bomb testing, we decided to come to Best Fitness.
D) I’m sorry, but it sounded like you said this was a gym.
***Thanks For Your Participation***

Well, I kept my mouth shut while (input your answer here) ran though my mind. Kris said she was thinking of signing up. “OK, I’ll show you guys around.” Show us around what I thought, but decided to let him humor me. “Where all those buckets are, yea, that’s gonna be the aerobics room. And to your left, that wheelbarrow is where all the free weights are going to be. And to the right of that is where our state-of-the-art cardiovascular machines like treadmills and ellipticals are gonna be.”

Are treadmills really state-of-the-art? Is anything in a gym state-of-the-art, besides the steroid the really buff dude next to you has injected in his butt cheek?

Joe then took us downstairs to a big, empty space with three doorways. “This is a separate area for women who don’t want to workout in front of everybody. And this room is going to be for boxing.”
For the first time, jokes stopped running around in my head. “Wait, you said boxing? Is it free?”
“Yup, everything is. All our classes are free, and you get your own personal trainer for free as well.”

Now my interest has peaked because I want to try boxing. Sadly, “The Contender,” a boxing reality show on NBC, has got me hooked. It has me so hooked, that I was thinking of getting a pair of custom boxing shorts that stop right below my nipples. And you know how boxers have some cheesy insignia on their waste band. Like it’ll say, “Punisher,” “Sugar,” or have the token, athletic Bible scripture “John 3:16.” Well, I want one too. But I was thinking of something to throw my opponent off, like the name of an animal that’s thought to be weak. I’m torn between “Otter,” and “Albatross.” After a long deliberation, “Alaskan Snow Monkey,” came in a distant third.

Daydream with me, people. I can see it now.

The lights. The crowd. The score-card girls.
And the announcer, Michael Buffer (the “Let’s get ready to rumble” guy) grabbing the microphone. “The challenger, in the blue corner, born and raised in Haaarrlem, New York…but currently living in Albany because his parents decided to move to Orlando out of the blue for no real reason…Standing at a lanky 6’1 and weighing in at a light, but meaty, 169 pounds. Aaaaaandrew ‘The Albatross’ Daaaaavis.”

Now I was officially impressed with this wonderful facility. “OK, where do we sign up?”

Sitting down in the one room that actually had tiles, Joe brought us the paperwork. Kristin, who knew she was going to sign up before walking through the door, signed the papers as quick as a celebrity giving an autograph. I, on the other hand, read through each word because there has to be a catch…and I’m cheap. Ah-HAH. “So if you cancel within 2 years, you have to pay $150?”
“Yea, that’s the severance charge.”
“Ah, man, it sounded good until then. I don’t know if I‘m going to be going for 2 years. I don’t even know what I‘m doing 2 days from now.”
Then Kris chimes in, “C’mon, you’re definitely going to go if you have to pay.”
I pull aside her jacket to see if she’s wearing a Best Fitness name tag on her shirt. She always tries to sell me something. “You just want me spending money again.”
“Oh, no I don’t.”

In supermarkets: “You should buy this ToFu salad mix.”
“What? I don’t even eat ToFu.”

In clothing stores: “Don’t you need more undershirts?”
“Well, thanks for reminding me, Kristin. I am feeling kind of nippy under this goose-down jacket.”

Finally, I’m persuaded to sign up. But only because I can get my money back until 7 days after the gym opens. When is that? By the looks of it, late 2009.

Sorry, I Darted.

(should read previous post (below this one) before reading. it'll make more sense. but if you're confident in your ability to connect dots, just go for it.)

On Sunday I showed this site to Kris, and she read the story about the game of darts we played on Thursday night. She looked at me tight lipped with the corner of her mouth slightly raised - a smirk. I knew what she’s going to say before she did.
“You better put up what happened last night.”
“Yea yea yea. I am.”

So here it is:
I figure I’d start with a quote from my last post about the game of darts me, her, and my roommate played on Thursday night. “So, Kris, if you read this - I’m sorry. I preyed on your inabilities to hold it together after losing. I knew you’d buckle like a stool under a fat lady.”

A lot has changed since then with our dart capabilities. Before going out on Saturday night, the three of us decide to play a game of Cricket. Here’s the rules: Imagine the dart board as a pizza pie, and it has 20 slices. Each slice is numbered 1-20 (bulls eye is 25). You have to hit slices 15-20 three times each. After you hit a number 3 times, you have now ’closed’ it. If you hit that number after you have closed it, you gain that amount of points. You can only gain points until everyone has closed that number. The point of the game is to close everything, including bulls eye - and have the most points when you do. If you close everything, but don’t have the most points, you keep trying for points until you have more than anybody else… then you win.

So we come up with the brilliant idea of wagering on a game of Cricket. “Whoever loses has to buy a round when we go out.” Game 1 starts, and Al hits 20, but misses with his next two darts. Kris, who threw like she had no thumbs on Thursday night, can’t miss a thing.
15.
Bullseye.
20.

I now go, still confident from my victories of two days ago. I don’t throw a dart, and I’m already walking to the line talkin’ smack. “This is like Michael Jordan playing pick-up ball at a school for the blind.”
THWACK!
“I’m a little rusty. I just want to get yal hopes up.”
CLANG!
“Alright, Imma stop playing around with yal.”
DIONG!

The two of them are laughing at me, but I know that it’ll all come together my next turn. Al goes. 20. Miss. 20. “Yea, scrub.” He looks at me.
Kris goes. 17. 20. 15. She doesn’t talk smack, but rather politely removes the darts from the board, slowly walks over, and hands them to me. All while never breaking eye contact. That bugs me more than being called a scrub.

I go, same results. Diong. Clang. 5. Now, remember I get no points for hitting 5. What I do get is a loud, piercing buzzer sound like the one on Family Feud if the answer is wrong. Or if you remember the noise from the game “Operation” when you mess up putting the organs back in the guy.
The whole game goes on that way. Kris - first place. Al - second place. Andrew - last place, PO’d, and out of 9 dollars because I gotta buy a freaking round.
“Another one?” We all agree.

Al wins this time, and Kris comes in second. I’m now out of $18. And the incessant trash talking and quiet, evil stares begin to bug me. “One more.” This time though, before I step to the line, something hits me.
“Since when did you get so good," I ask Kris. "I think you hustled us you - you dart shark.” I’m told by certain people that when I get mad or excited, my voice cracks. (Once, after trying to remember the name of the movie theatre in our mall, I finally screamed, “Hoyts.” But sounded like Alvin from the chipmunks.) I’m pretty sure that happened this time too. So I throw my three darts and a couple hit. But the other two opponents of mine, are playing too well at this point. I lose again.

“Expletive. Bigger expletive. Same expletive as the first.”
“One more game,” I say out of breath from rage. “Same bet.”
They agree, and why not? Free rounds all night for them. And Kris is especially happy because there are no garbage bags involved.
They throw. They hit. I throw. I miss.
I throw again... but it's a chair. Bullseye.

Now I’m practically sobbing. “I don’t believe this. *sniff* What’s going on?” I sound like an uninjured person in a car wreck whose face is all powdery from the airbag deploying.
“OK. Last one.” Both of them now seem to feel sorry for me - at least Kris does. I could see it in her eyes. I’m out $36. “But this time. Double or nothing. If I lose, I buy a round next weekend, or whenever we go out. IF I WIN, I only have to buy 3 rounds, and whoever loses buys one. And if I come in second, I stay the same.”
Al jumps on it like a dog in heat. Kris reluctantly agrees.

They start. They hit again. I go. I hit. (Don’t reread that. I said I hit, gosh darnit.) They go, miss a couple. I go again, and I can’t miss. I’m kicking the crap outta them. So the end of the games draws near. I close out everything, except I need one bullseye. I have 240 points, and the next person, Kris has closed everything, but has 200. The second I hit, she automatically comes in second. Al has about 150. So if I hit a bullseye, I win plus Al is out of $9. Life can’t get any greater at this moment.

All I need is one bullseye. One. Just One freaking bullseye, but I keep missing - barely. Kris goes, she can’t hit the side of a barn now. Al goes, and gets closer. 180. I go again, and barely miss the center 3 times. Kris - well by now she’s a lost cause, but is rooting for me. So that’s pressure. Nevermind the pressure I’m putting on myself.

Al gets closer.
I miss yet again.
Al misses.
I miss.
Al misses again.
I suck.

Al steps to the line. I don’t even look.

Bullseye. Tied with Kris.
Next dart. Bullseye. He needs one more to surpass me and win.
Next dart. A motha-fu ----

Well I don’t need to finish but I will say, the dart board is now broken.
Kris is mad cause I couldn’t finish it out. Just me and her left, and I ending up beating her so now she‘s out $9. Not Al. Not punk, scrub, the luckiest-three-dart-throws-in-the-history-of-Dartopia, Al.

I promised to tell this story and I'm a man of my word. This time, my friends, I buckled like a stool under - well, you know the rest.