The Rake Magazine

Author: Todd J. Smith

  • The Plague of Nerds

    In
    the last couple of years, the Twin Cities has gained a reputation as a
    hipster Mecca; the chic architecture (new Guthrie, Walker, and Central
    Library) has garnished international praise, the rocking music scene is
    hotter than ever with both indie and mainstream bands (Atmosphere on Conan! The
    Hold Steady opens for The Rolling Stones!), and a powerhouse literary
    scene has now become a screenwriting oil well thanks to Diablo Cody and
    the Cohen Bros and their shiny new Oscars. For crying out loud, Esquire Magazine even named Nye’s Bar the Best Bar in America. The
    kudos are great and all, but underneath this sparkly new façade lurks a
    part of the city that is rarely mentioned in the national media: nerds. A
    spastic biblical plague has besieged us and now the Twin Cities is so
    infested with dweebs and smarty pants douche bags that all of Prince’s
    paisley purple funk can’t cover up our dorkiness. Minneapolis-once a city so proud of its seismic punk rock and giant cherry spoon-has now become Nerdapolis.

    Everywhere I go in the Twin Cities, I’m accosted by some freak that brings the coolness down several notches. Just
    yesterday, a cashier at the super hip Calhoun Whole Foods scolded me
    for not knowing the meaning of the different colored light sabers used
    in the Star Wars movies. My four year old son had
    brought his toy light saber to the store and when we got to the
    checkout, the cashier looked down and seriously inspected his stupid
    plastic toy. The dude then gave me an exaggerated expression of relief.

    "Thanks god that light saber is green," grocery clerk Dave scoffed.

    "Excuse me?" I replied, walking straight into the nerd trap. Then
    Dave preceded to give me an in depth analysis about how in the
    legendary Sci-Fi series the evil Darth Sidious’s saber was red and Jedi
    Obi-Wan Kenobi’s was blue and that if my son’s light saber would’ve
    been a color other than green that meant he could’ve been in an alliance with some god damn thing called the "Siths". I
    don’t think grocery Dave understood that I recently bought the toy at
    Walgreens because my kid just successfully went a week without shitting
    his pants and not for some galactic rebellion.

    After
    we loaded our four bags of groceries into the car, we naturally decided
    that there was nothing to eat and went out to eat at Punch Pizza. As
    we stood in the long line waiting to order, two ladies in business
    suits stood at the cashier, where they unmercifully grilled the pizza
    cook.

    "Were the tomatoes in your sauce vine ripened? This buffalo cheese you have on the menu…how long was it aged?"

    Then several other asshole foodies joined in on the tomato inquisition. As
    they held up the entire line (at dinnertime nonetheless), a full blown
    debate broke out on the merits of Roma tomatoes versus sun dried
    tomatoes. I tried my best not to stab these culinary wonks in the eye with my son’s GREEN light saber. I mean come on… food nerds? Aren’t we the city that birthed the Replacements?

    A
    few days later at the local garden center where I work, I meet the
    grand marshal of the nerd parade that is barreling through our fair
    city. This woman came in to the store with an exotic blue parrot perched on her shoulder. She eagerly drew attention from every human within five miles and enthusiastically fielded questions about the pet. Then she approached me and asked if we carried a plant named, "Antirrhinum". Now a normal person (or non-dumbass) would come in and ask if we had any Snapdragons. Oh, but not this super smart plant nerd. She only referred to plants by their proper botanical name. When
    I showed her the table filled with flowering Snapdragons she smiled and
    asked me, "Did you see my parrot?" just in case I missed the giant blue
    jungle bird squawking two feet from my face.

    Just when I was starting to get bitter about the death of cool in Minneapolis, the city turned me on my ear. I recently went to the Southdale Movie Theater to catch a film with my wife and witnessed a massive nerd spawning in the lobby. Since
    the theater was filled with nothing but blockbusters, the nerds had
    ascended in full force to catch the latest comic book turned into film. As
    I paid for the tickets, we witnessed a gaggle of men in various shades
    of trench coats and skinny jeans gawking at all the movie posters and
    mammoth action hero advertisements in the lobby. The nerd
    herd was so stimulated by the new Batman, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones,
    Kung Fu Panda, and Iron Man advertisements that the lobby was basically
    a super hero porn shop. And when they saw the ten foot tall statue of The Hulk by the concession stand it was boner city. I
    walked by them with my wife and got a good chuckle out of these grown
    ass men bowing down before an angry green cartoon monster.

    But they were watching me as well. As Sarah and I turned the corner to go in the theater that was showing Sex and the City
    I heard them loudly snicker at me. Their disdain echoed in my head
    because I had just been called out for being the lame guy going to see
    a total chick flick. And they were completely right on. As our "date movie" began, I couldn’t help but think: If dudes who know the name of the sand pit monster in Return of the Jedi think that I’m a major loser then that makes me the biggest nerd in the whole city.

    Ouch.

  • Chop It Off

    My squat little body houses a record number of physical calamities. If
    you have read my latest published story, "Pharma Chameleon," (in the
    March issue of The Rake) you already know that I’m pretty much a bubble
    boy. My latest impediment is a Pterigium (kind of like a nasty veiny weed) on my right eye. As the weird red growth pushes on my pupil, the formerly blue eye is now always bloodshot and weeping. The Pterigium was caused from my over exposure to sunlight. For
    the last fifteen years, I’ve worked outside in the raw elements of
    Minnesota and my eye has been sun scalded, sand blasted, and singed
    with diesel fumes and rancid blue collar profanity. If you are a stoner college kid named Scroggins perma red eyes are no big deal. But I’m 35, and a dad and shit. It isn’t cool to look "Cheeched" when you take your kid to the neighborhood park. I decided to have the growth cut off my eye and undergo ocular reconstructive surgery.

    On the day of my recent surgery, a chipper surgical nurse hooked me up to all sorts of tubes in the pre-op station. She gave me a quizzical look.

    "Are you from the Caribbean?" She asked me. I found the question dumbfounding because I’m as white as Larry Bird.

    "Ugh, no," I replied. "Why?"

    "Most people who have this thingy on their eye spend a lot of time on the ocean," she told me. "So you aren’t a surfer?"

    I assured the nurse that I was indeed no surfer, and that in fact, when it came to swimming, my body was an anvil in the water. A
    few minutes later, my stone faced surgeon breezed in, flipped through
    my chart, stared down at me, wrote the word "right" on a piece of tape
    and stuck it to my face to make sure he fixed the correct eye.

    Then the horror show started. After I was knocked out with anesthesia, I came out too early and awoke in the surgery room during the surgery! I couldn’t move a muscle, but I could see and feel the doctor poking around in my eye socket. My eye was held open with some sort of clamp and I watched the doctor use tweezers on my eyeball. I laid there limp but completely freaking out, anxiety surging through my limbs. I let out a low grumble. The surgeon heard it and snapped, "He’s up! Put him back down!" A medical team scurried around and soon drugs slowly trickled in and the lights began to fade. As I drifted off, I could actually see the surgeon gluing membranes onto my eyeball to help heal the incision. When I woke up in the recovery room, I had humungous white gauze over the eye that looked like the largest maxi pad in history. It was bad enough that I woke up Alfred Hitchcock style during surgery. But
    now I had a feminine hygiene product stuck to my face that my smartass
    brother Tony kept telling people was for my "vagina eye."

    I was blinded for a few days. As my surgically repaired eye adjusted to the new world, I could only keep my eyes open for short periods. My wife rented the hit movie "Eastern Promises" starring the Oscar nominated actor Viggio Mortensen for me to watch. But I couldn’t even see straight so I laid down at the end of the bed and listened to the movie as she watched it. When
    the famous "naked knife fight" scene (in which the hunky actor goes
    bare assed and fights two dudes in a sauna) came on, Sarah
    enthusiastically called out, "You’ve got to see this!" I
    opened my one good eye only to see Viggio Mortensen’s stubby little
    dick darting around on the screen about two inches from my face. It damn near blinded me for life. I shrieked away from the T.V., the actor’s hairy ball sack burning into my cornea forever.

    A month later, a fleshy growth appeared on the eye. It was so gross my wife wouldn’t even look at me. When we got married, apparently the whole "in sickness and health" part of the ceremony was optional. I went back to the surgeon and he reexamined the eye.

    "The fleshy deposit is due to the eye not healing properly," he told me. "But the good news is that I can CHOP IT OFF right here." Now those are three words no patient ever wants to hear. Chop. It. Off. He tilted me back and casually scraped off the growth as if he was using a deli meat slicer at Cub Foods.

    To protect my eye from any further sun damage, I now wear a white golf bucket hat and dark sunglasses. Sure, the surgery was great and it restored my vision. But
    now I look exactly like one of those perverts you see on that hit NBC
    show "To Catch a Predator" where sleazy incognito middle age men creep
    around suburban houses trolling for teenage girls.

    But at least I don’t have a vagina eye anymore.

  • Toddler Insurgency

    My son’s birthday party began with me looking like a giant dumbass. Big shocker there. We were in the jubilant 11:15 a.m. Backyardigans parade at the newly remodeled Nick Jr. amusement park in the center of the Mall of America. I was holding the foamy oversized hand of a teenage actor who was dressed as a cuddly moose named Tyrone from the hit kid’s cartoon. When the cheery music piped in I couldn’t stop myself and decided to do a little jig. As my wife gave me the "you’re sleeping on the couch" stare I spastically danced like I’d been hit with defibulator paddles. The teenage actor quickly snatched his big cartoon hand from mine and pranced away. We were there because the blitzkrieg marketing campaign from the good folks at Nickelodeon bombarded my toddler son’s brain to the point that even though he had no idea who half the characters were he just had to go. So sue me if I felt like doing a little "Mr. Roboto" with a stuffed moose.

    After the parade, my motormouth son told me it would be a good idea if I bought a bunch of tickets for the rides, which I promptly did seeing as it was his birthday. Immediately after I inserted my money and the tickets spit out of the vending machine, he refused to go on any rides. He vehemently denied ever saying that he ever wanted to go on any rides, even though he just finished telling me he did. I felt like I was talking to a midget Bill Clinton. As the neon glare beat down on me and the demonic bubblegum melody to some cartoon song bore into my skull, I felt like telling my beloved son to "grow a pair of testicles and get in the giant inflatable pineapple and bounce around until you barf." But I didn’t because, well, I’m not that big of an a-hole.

    Truth be told, the food court was far scarier than any ride there. Wild children loaded with sugar and suburban angst burst through the eating area like a toddler insurgency. As I navigated the lanes with my tray of crappy food, kids popped out from behind trash cans and tables, setting off squirts of ketchup and lemonade. Packs of horny teenagers pawed at each other as they loitered around the tables. From every corner I was besieged with tickle fights and grab-ass. My cheeseburger tasted like an old Birkenstock sandle and worst of all, the cheese was wet and cold. How hard is it to melt cheese on a hot burger? In the middle of the nation’s biggest indoor shopping mall, it totally felt like a shitty picnic.

    After trips to four gift stores (strategically located at every corner of the park) and the Disney store, we walked past the "Hawaii Hermit Crab" kiosk. It took about three seconds before my son decided he really really wanted one. But you can’t get just one. Apparently, hermit crabs are social animals and need a companion to share their stupid fake log and plastic coconut shell with. It was chump city from there on out. I bought two crabs, tank, two extra shells, food, extra wood, and bottled water. The genius marketing minds also painted the shells of the hermit crabs to reflect the most popular kid’s programs. My son picked the "Batman" and "Lighting McQueen" crabs. Somehow I don’t think that when Jacque Cousteau was laying the foundation for the preservation of aquatic life it meant tearing crabs away from their natural seaside environment, shipping them to a shopping mall in Minnesota, and airbrushed to death.

    I finally got my kid into the car. There was some gooey resin in his hair from Lord knows what and his eyes were ringed with exhaustion. He was pale and twitchy and after being exposed to the Petri dish that is any kids indoor play area, I assumed he had contacted the bird flu, mad cow disease, and rickets. As I pulled out of the parking lot, he let out a giant yawn and said, "I thought we were going to go on some rides?"

    "Next time," I muttered.

     

  • The Idiots at My Work

    When I’m not at home taking care of my son, I work as a laborer at a Twin Cities garden center. Compared
    to a professional/corporate office job, things work a little
    differently in the manual labor world: at any given moment during my
    shift, I can announce to the entire crew that I have an impending bowel
    movement on deck and they will soundly applaud. Down in the blue collar trenches—where the necks are thick and teeth are optional—the workers can be an unsavory bunch. And sorry to say, but I’m like the king of the "yardies". So let me tell you about the idiots at my work.

    The other day I was teaching a nice 16-year-old high school kid named Daniel how to properly load a cart. It was Daniel’s first day, and he was twitchy with awkwardness. I was doing my best to make him feel comfortable, when up walked my dumbass co-worker Bucko. With
    his wild thicket of hair, sleeveless t-shirt showcasing his hairy
    shoulders, and mouth-gaping stoned expression, Bucko has the general
    appearance and demeanor of a retarded Grizzly Bear. After
    a decade long binge of narcotics and beef jerky, he has fried the link
    between his brain and mouth and says whatever is on his mind. Bucko looked at pipsqueak Daniel and said to him, "I love boning Asian chicks."

    Daniel was so mortified that he practically broke out in a full body rash. I sent him to get some water and, hopefully, avoid a lawsuit. Then I gave Bucko a fiery reprimanded, telling him his comment was highly inappropriate. Bucko just gave me blank stare. He scratched at his nuts and asked, "Why do you hate freedom?"

    I walked away befuddled. When
    I got to the employee lounge, I came across a squirrely looking dude
    named Rafalski hunched over in the refrigerator tearing through
    people’s lunches. He methodically dismantled every lunch bag, Tupperware, and take-out box. But shockingly, he just ate the meat in the lunches. Rafalski peeled back the bread of a sandwich, slid the deli meat in his mouth, and then put the bread, lettuce, and tomato back. He unfolded a tortilla shell, picked through the beans and veggies, and slurped up the chopped pork. When I loudly cleared my throat, he abruptly stood up. Rafalski looked at me with weird googley eyes and wiped his mouth.

    "What?" he shrugged, the carnivorous pile spilling from his cheek. Then he gave me the finger and walked off the job in the middle of his shift.

    Exactly.

     

  • The House Rules

    Inside our marriage, my wife has arranged a division of labor. She’s a (marital) union teamster when it comes to tasks that I can and cannot do. Specifically, there are jobs around the house that are “Daddy Jobs” and others that are “Mommy Jobs.” As the man of the Smith Family House, these are the roles I perform:

    Pooper Scooper: Responsible for removing and cleaning anything in the house (including the yard, garage, and highly treacherous city alley) that is nasty, yucky, funky, stanky, or just plain gross. This often includes kid and animal poop, projectile vomit, dead rodents, and urine splashed across the bathroom like a Jackson Pollack painting.

    Evel Knievel: Participating in daredevil stunts (in the name of the family) that can cause both physical and mental pain. Activities include going to IKEA on a Saturday, hosting a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s, shopping at Ridgedale mall two days before Christmas, and riding a bike harnessed with a child carrier around Lake Harriet on the first day of Spring.

    The Fetcher: Must run out of the house or work to retrieve anything the wife needs. This includes retrieving food cravings (Punch Pizza, Steak salad from The Edina Grill, etc.), DVDs (the episode where Felicity cut off her hair, the original version of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth — NOT the other one — or the entire fifth season of The Wire, etc.), groceries, Holy Water, school supplies for the children, feminine hygiene products, sea salt, a plunger, pharmaceuticals, and Burt B’s blemish sticks.

    Field Trip Coordinator: Includes taking the kid(s) out of the house for a substantial amount of time so that Mommy can get some peace and quiet. According to my wife, the instructions are simple: “I don’t care where you go or what you do. But do not come back home for two hours, or I will cut your balls off.” The Field Trip Coordinator is highly active immediately upon coming home from work and on weekends. Popular trips include the local park (where the Field Tripper conjugates with other Fathers, like buffalo at a watering hole), Target (it’s an oasis of distraction), the grocery store, the zoo, museums, and theme park restaurants where they serve food in fun shapes and fish swim in the walls. In doing his duties, The Field Trip Coordinator earns the dubious credit of being “the fun parent.”

    The Bouncer: Must eject anything or anyone that annoys Mom. This includes tossing out bratty playmates, long haired beatniks going door-to-door for the Sierra Club, Grandpa who squeaks out rancid silent farts in the living room, the pesky rabbit who eats all the plants, and telemarketers. Duty also intales talking to asshole neighbors, such as the alcoholic around the corner who watches porno on a 75-inch projection TV with the blinds open.

    The Reflector: Say these following statements to the wife and the house will run like a well-oiled machine: You have nice coloring. That outfit is very flattering. Your friends are really nice, but you definitely are the hottest. And… would a backrub help?

     

     

  • Chicken Bake Bonanza

    During a recent trip to Costco, a customer walked past me with 25 cases of Diet Coke in their wagon. Even by Costco standards that seemed a wee bit gluttonous. But who was I to judge? I was there to buy a pork loin the size of an anaconda. At the end of my shopping spree, my three year old son was cranky and hungry, and if I didn’t stop at the Costco food court to feed him I would’ve driven home down highway 100 with a god damn badger in the back seat.

    So I ordered up a jumbo hot dog, a jug of frozen yogurt, and something called a chicken bake. The calzone crust of the chicken bake had cheese melted on the outside and then was stuffed full of chicken, cheese, and bacon. It was like the seven deadly sin rolled up into one delectable crime and made edible. I gorged on the baked delight so fast I almost puked on my son. Sitting there at the metal picnic table, wrapped inside that steel cage décor, I’ve never in my life felt sicker or happier.

    How lame is my middle aged life when the highlight of my week is a baked chicken dish?

     

  • The Wi-Fi Doofus

    When it come to computers, I’m a full blown idiot. As a stay-at-home dad, my day usually involves hooting like an orangutan and tending to my son’s poopy pants—not exactly a George Clooney lifestyle. But when my ancient candy colored iMac recently barked and hissed at me when I tried to open a simple email, I realized the gigabytes had passed me by. It was finally time for me to leave the woods of domesticity and upgrade.

    I strolled into the Apple store with my motormouth son on my heals. The in-store rave music was so loud and irritating I felt like punching someone, particularly the young male employee with the sour puss expression who sneered at me when I walked in. I approached the pasty employee and he froze manikin stiff, seriously trying to hide behind his perfectly placed bangs.

    "What kind of iMac do you have?" He asked me as he nonchalantly checked two seperate palm pilots.

    "The blue one," I said. He let out a huge sigh of exhaustion.

    "How much memory does your iMac have?" He asked.

    "Um…lots?" I replied. My son then pulled out a booger and gave it a quizzical look. Then he ate it.

    Next, I talked to a young female worker who had dreadlocks and looked like she sparked revolutions in her spare time. As my spastic three year old lifted up the front of my shirt, showing the entire store my grizzled stomach, she hated him with all of her might.

    "Is it true that Macs are for artists and PCs are for perverts?" I jokingly asked her.

    "You said it not me," She sneered.

    Needless to say, I didn’t buy anything.

  • Pharma Chameleon

    I have it all, from common afflictions (rashes, allergies, Sasquatch-like body hair) to those seldom mentioned in polite company (other types of rashes, irritable bowels, acid reflux, nighttime hog snore) to the just plain gross (dog breath, compacted sinuses). Thanks to modern medicine, I am generally successful in masking or suppressing the worst symptoms of these conditions—from public view, at least.

    That changed last month, however. In a perfect storm of embarrassment, my wide-ranging array of personal hygiene supplies and prescriptions all ran out at the same time. I was forced to go to the pharmacy at the newly remodeled Edina Super Target on a Saturday. It was buzzing with action. I took small comfort in hiding behind my oversized Bono-ish sunglasses, worn partly in an attempt at coolness, but mainly because one eye has a growth that eventually will blind me. (Sweet! I’m bringing back the eye patch!)

    First, I hoisted a keg of Metamucil into my cart, where it sat like a giant orange beacon signaling “middle age.” Next up: Tums (I keep them in a pretty dish and eat them like holiday mints), Imodium Plus (now with Gas-X!), Prilosec (for the heartburn), and Gold Bond Medicated Powder. Then it was time for my “wookie” products: new razors (my wife feels she’s married to Chaka from Land of the Lost), ingrown hair treatment (that’s a don’t ask/don’t tell situation), and smoothing gel for my hair (which otherwise resembles a Chia Pet). Moving on, I went for my dog-breath eliminator, a mouthwash strong enough to double as paint stripper; Secret women’s deodorant (my armpits break out like a hornet’s nest if I wear men’s); a jug of Purell hand sanitizer; Alavert decongestant (otherwise I sound like Snuffleupagus), and eucalyptus mint bathroom spray (a nice gesture for my wife, since I had used so much “gingerbread spice” the previous week; she now hates Christmas).

    Hanging around the pharmacy counter was the usual gathering of wintry ghouls: Minnesotans of all ages burdened with hacking coughs, honking noses, and general snot-encrusted misery. Retrieving my order, a cranky pharmacist noticed that the entire plastic tub for “S” names was filled with my prescriptions. She plunked it down at the cash register, sighed dramatically, and proceeded to loudly name-check each item as she rang it up: “Anti-inflammatory for the colon, anti-fungal powder, allergy nasal spray, asthma inhaler, steroid cream for eczema …”

    When I got home, I set out all my purchases on the kitchen table and wondered, When did I become Beetlejuice?

    My wife walked in, took one look at the bounty, and spotting an opportunity, seized it. “Murphy is constipated and he needs an enema!” she announced, referring to our three-year-old son. “I’m too embarrassed to buy the kit. Can you do it?” It was as if she were summoning some bastard superhero.

    “No problem,” I replied. I have become immune to humiliation. In fact, my myriad ailments have given me great strength. My son’s overfull bowels only filled me with compassion. I drove back to the pharmacy beaming with pride. For the first time in my life, I felt healthy as a horse.

  • Trouble in Slumber Land

    In the looks department, I’ve been compared to the dwarf from The Lord of the Rings with a big afro—not exactly George Clooney. Only adding to these charms is the fact that I have Crohn’s disease and a catalog of allergies. And yet, I am by far the luckiest man alive because I’m married to the most beautiful woman in the world. After five years of matrimony, my wife’s honey red hair and rosy Irish cheeks still have me whipped. If she ever leaves me, the lights will go out; there’s zero chance of my landing someone of her caliber again. Naturally, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to make her happy. And so, earlier this year, when my wife was upset about turning thirty-three (she thought she was getting old), I set out to make her birthday extra special. I promised anything her heart desired.

    “Stop snoring! Stop snoring!” she blurted out like a game-show contestant. This anger over my nocturnal emissions had apparently been building for some time.

    I wasted no time in addressing her concerns. Within days I was sitting on my doctor’s table imploring him to help me cure my snoring. He peered down my throat and up my nostrils. “It’s a mess in there,” he said, snapping off his flashlight scope. “You’re probably suffering from sleep apnea, sinusitis, or allergies. I’m gonna have you spend the night in a sleep clinic.”

    The back parking lot at Methodist Hospital was eerily deserted when I arrived, just weeks later, for my 9:00 p.m. appointment. I rode the elevator to the fourth floor. Stray wheelchairs littered the hallways; a security guard was slumped in a folding chair. I pressed a buzzer and, in so doing, summoned a bookish middle-aged white guy in scrubs who met me at the sleep clinic’s door.

    Ken’s hand was limp and moist; he was creepy in a Jeremy Irons kind of way. I imagined he spent long hours sitting in his one-bedroom apartment, bare-chested in cut-off shorts, typing anti-government manifestos.

    My dubious docent gave me a quick tour: The room in which I was to stay looked as if it had been plucked from a cheap motel. But instead of a stain on the pillow, there was an enormous machine at the headboard with allsorts of blinking lights and buzzing tubes. Next to the bed, there was a dresser with a Bible in it, which I imagined might come in handy later on as I warded off the ghost of Vincent Price.

    Ken attached wires and pads to my scalp and explained how they would measure my eye movements and sleeping depth. Straps were applied to my torso that would monitor breathing, snoring, and heartbeat.

    I told Ken I was at the sleep clinic because I wanted to stop snoring. He spun me around on the swivel stool so that we were nose to nose.
    “The only way you’re going to stop snoring is if they pound it out of your face,” he said threateningly. For a second there, I thought he was going to clock me.

    “Excuse me?”

    “A doctor told me they can cut open your face and pound out the crap that’s clogging your sinuses using a special hammer and chisel. Then they put all the crap in a dish called ‘The Custard Cup.’ ”

    “Yucky,” I replied.

    Ken wished me sweet dreams and turned out the lights.

    I missed my wife.

    The nurses out in the hallway made microwave popcorn and the room filled with the aroma of buttery goodness. Buttons beeped and bells dinged like the arcade at Chuck E. Cheese’s. I tossed around for more than an hour, the wires on my scalp, neck, and face twisting around my throat. Clearly, this was never going to work. I clicked on the Minnesota Wild game. I love my wife, but my mistress is hockey, and she eventually seduced me into a few hours offitful rest.

    The results of my sleep study showed the snoring was caused by a compacted sinus and massively swollen tonsils. I underwent a medieval sinus scraping and tonsillectomy shortly thereafter. The anesthesia from the surgery made me sick, so I was given a pill to control the nausea. Since I couldn’t swallow the thing, the pill had to be inserted up my backside. I asked my wife to do the honors, but she declined. Needless to say, if the tables were turned I would have happily obliged.

    A few weeks after the surgery I was healed and no longer snoring.

    My wife said I was the most romantic man she had ever known; going through the painful surgery showed her I was a person of serious conviction. For the first time in years we fell asleep together. Bliss reigned supreme in the home of Todd J. Smith—until one day, when I came home from work and scattered my muddy clothes all over the basement floor. As my wife walked by, she let out a frustrated sigh and quipped: “Is there a pick-your-shit-up clinic you can go to?”

  • As It Was Meant to Be Played

    I sat in a lawn chair in the middle of frozen Lake Nokomis, nibbling on chicken kabobs and sipping a tequila slushy, thinking, How serious can this pond-hockey thing be?

    A minute after the puck dropped in my first game, I immediately regretted my warm-up smorgasbord. This pond-hockey thing was apparently very serious. We were playing a team named the Whiskey Bandits, an ass-kicking juggernaut of players in handsome red jerseys who were definitely in it to win. My crew, the Arden 6, was there to play and to party. While the Whiskey Bandits were a team of sculpted Adonises in their mid-twenties, the Arden 6—made up of a forklift driver, two office maxes, a stay-at-home dad, and a couple of slackers—looked like a bunch of Chris Farleys on skates.


    The Whiskey Bandits skated with crisp, robotic efficiency. We chased them like slobbering dogs, somehow managing to score a lucky goal before the onslaught began. Within moments of the opening face-off, we were losing 10-3. A Whiskey Bandit made a wicked tic-tac move on me, twisting me right, then left, then right. I almost pooped my pants. The referee called out the score. “27-5.” Slight pause. “28-5.” They scored more than a goal a minute. The final tally, 37-5, represented one of the worst defeats in the two-year history of the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships.

    The beleaguered Arden 6 headed into the massive party tent to regroup over a few beers. We were baffled by the extreme drubbing we had suffered because we thought we had a pretty good squad. All of the players on my team played high school hockey in the Twin Cities. Nick Brown, our ringer, even played at Dartmouth and has fantastic speed and silky moves. As we sat and sulked, the Whiskey Bandits strolled in without a hint of arrogance; they came over to apologize for the slaughter.

    “Sorry ’bout all that,” a fresh-faced Bandit said sheepishly. “I had to get a waiver to come play here this weekend.”
    “A waiver from what?” I asked.

    “I play pro hockey in Oklahoma,” the guy said. He took a giant chug from his plastic keg cup. “Most of my teammates played in the minors, too.”

    My posse spit up their beers.

    “You guys are pros? Big deal,” I said facetiously. “Our right-winger is a thirty-eight-year-old stay-at-home dad who calls himself The House Admiral.”

    I walked outside to the patio that overlooked the entire tournament. Bright sun filled the blueberry sky with blinding light. A horn blew across the frozen lake, signaling the start of another round of play. All at once, on twenty-four rinks, forty-eight teams accounting for 288 players started playing hockey the way it was meant to be played: wide open, four-on-four, with no offsides, no goalies, and no hitting.
    Before our next game, I made my way to a giant board containing the tournament schedule and scores from all of the games. It gave me hope to see that many of the other teams had pathetic names like A Lot Better than Last Year, Fattys, and Footlong Meatball Sub on White with Double Pepperjack Cheese!—indicating they probably wouldn’t be as awesome as the Whiskey Bandits.

    We held a team meeting over doughnuts, hotdogs, and more beers while The Admiral talked to his babysitter on a cell phone. Back on the ice, the junk food in our systems worked like magic. We spanked our opponents, the Campbell Avenue Crawlers, a team that traveled from Connecticut just to get whupped, 20-3, by our sorry asses.
    The day ended with more hockey, more beer swilling, and a funk band named the Prophets of Soul jamming tunes like “Ain’t That a Bitch!” and “Skin Tite!”

    The next morning, cold air burned my lungs like shots of vodka; an orange sunrise painted a few white clouds the color of a dreamsicle. Our game against the Flying Saucer Attack was hard fought with lots of slashing and chipping, but we eventually lost 14-8.

    That afternoon, the beer garden bristled like a busy trading session on the New York Stock Exchange. Hordes of sweaty bastards, grown men still wearing breezers and shin pads long after their games were over, waved dollar bills to pay for beer. I asked an old-school guy in a vintage helmet how his team was doing. “I ain’t playing,” he mumbled. He pointed to the helmet and said, “I just fall down a lot.”

    Later my team stood rink-side and watched the Whiskey Bandits dismantle Kari Takko (a team named after a Minnesota North Stars backup goaltender) to win the championship game 10-2.
    “Next year, I think we should use steroids,” I suggested to my teammates. They chuckled and ambled on sore legs back to the beer garden.