Bad Call Ref

Now Reading: Dave Barry's Greatest Hits. Dave Barry is, in my opinion, the funniest humor writer in the world and is my inspiration when writing this blog. By all means I am no professional, so don't judge him by how funny I am. I really look up to him when I think of any kind of career as a humor writer.

As I am in the car on my way to Jewel about a half-hour ago because I forgot to get flowers to ask a girl to homecoming, I think to myself, what is wrong with this world? I mean sure, AIDs, cancer, ozone depletion, and professional Pokemon card tournaments are all clues that this world is a sick and twisted place. But what really disgusts me is how elaborate you have to be when asking someone to a dance nowadays. I constantly hear girls saying things like "Well John took Lisa to the football game and he rented a blimp, two jet-fighter airplanes, and Neil Diamond and he asked her to homecoming in front of thousands of people. It was soooooo cute! I really hope I'm asked in a cute way!" Screw you John.

While I'm sure you would all love to read about me complain about how awful my high school problems are, I won't do that. I will, however, complain about little league hockey. Actuallyt, I can't complain about little league hockey, because it provided me with some interesting stories. I know you've probably never heard the term little league hockey. For those of you who can't figure it out, it's like little league baseball, but it's hockey. The main differences are that kids in hockey are constantly slipping on the ice, can't pick their noses with their gloves and helmet on, and can't play in the dirt, because the ground is all frozen. I don't mean your little league, we're good, we're going to play on high school and college hockey teams. I mean the I'm an angry fat kid so I signed up for hockey, I hope I don't have any girls or mentally handicapped kids on my team. Oddly enough, I didn't fall under either of those categories, but most of the kids I played with did. I wasn't good at hockey so I don't fall under the first category, but I wasn't angry or fat, so I don't fall under the second category. I was a crappy, scrawny hockey player without a short temper. I did however, have two girls and a retarded kid on my team during the last season of my career in hockey. What a self-esteem booster.

I think the attitude that characterizes little league hockey is anger. Everyone was angry in little league hockey. The kids were angry at other players, the refs were angry for choosing "little league hockey referee" as their career, and the parents were angry because they have to sit in a freezing cold room and watch their kid suck it up on the ice. The best example of anger in little league hockey I can think of is this.:

Davey and Timmy are two average little league hockey players that are playing against each other in a tournament game. Davey gets hit by Timmy, so Davey, as your typical angry, fat little league hockey player decides that the best course of action would be to throw his stick like a javelin at Timmy. Timmy goes after Davey, and with all the skill and the precision of a player of his caliber accidently trips the referee. So the referee, despite being 100 lbs. heavier and 10 years older than Timmy, picks him up and throws him into the boards. Bad call ref. Now Timmy's angry 300 lb. coach is on the ref's case. And sharing their thoughts on the situation from the stands, Timmy's parents are screaming profanities and making jokes about referee's sexual orientation. Good work parents, that'll teach him. A fight is so close I can taste it. Unfortunately that doesn't happen. What can I say, it would've been better than pay-per-view. To make a long story short, the cops are called to escort the referee of the ice and the game is postponed until the next day.

Basically, I am telling you that little league hockey is the way to go. If you have a chance to sign up for it, do it, it's a buttload of entertainment and I personally enjoyed every minute of it. Also, guys, ask for homecoming dates the normal way, this isn' a proposal, it's a stupid high school dance. And if you're already signed up for the aforementioned hockey league, don't worry, you dont' have to tell your friends he's autistic, just say you're really good.

The Legend of Jimmy's Dignity

So turning sixteen was a big deal to me. My mom says that I think I know everything now that I'm driving. Well the joke's on her because it's true. Of course responsibility comes with knowing everything. The responsiblity to pay for gas and car insurance. Which meant I had to get a job. Sorting through my vast job options as a sixteen year old I narrowed the choices down to babysitter, burger-flipper, or caddy. I ruled out babysitting almost immediately, because my love for children is questionable. I received a life-long ban on the block party dino-jump last summer for my tendency to injure the jumping children, so I'm not sure how much work I would've gotten in that field. Well that little girl wouldn't have gotten drop kicked if she didn't call me a booger bad-guy. While I'm sure working hard for minimum wage and then quitting after two weeks would've been fantastic, I turned down the burger-flipper option, too. That left me with being a caddy, so I went over to the local country club and signed up.

Now I can't complain. Caddying isn't a paticularly interesting job, but I make decent money, and I pick my hours. Not a lot happens at this job, but I have one story that I feel compelled to tell to the world. Take a moment to prepare yourself for the immaturity of this story, for it's all about poo.

There is a kid who is also employed as a caddy where I work and to save him the embarassment I'm going to call him Jimmy. Jimmy is a freshman in high school and this is his first year caddying. Now Jimmy is having a fairly normal round, carrying a member's bag. We'll call this member Mr. Smith. Jimmy finds mid-round that he has to go to the bathroom. I know personally that some of the members can be intimidating and rather mean. While I would be embarassed to stop play because I needed to use the facilities, I gotta go when I gotta go. He apparently didn't agree with that logic. Jimmy, a seemingly house-broken young man, decides that the best course of action would be to defecate in his caddy shorts. Yes, he crapped his pants. Now Jimmy is faced with a bigger dilemma than disrupting Mr. Smith's golf game for a couple minutes. He has to find a way to explain to Mr. Smith that he has to stop caddying mid-round because he's now carrying more than a divot repair tool in his pants. Was it the smell that gave Jimmy away or did Jimmy just come out with the truth? It's a mystery to this day. All I know i that Jimmy had to make the walk of shame back to the club house to explain the whole story to the caddymaster so Mr. Smith could get a replacement caddy for the rest of the round.

I wanted to share this story so I could make this world a better place. We should all learn from Jimmy's mistake. If you think it's going to be inconvenient to interrupt an important meeting or event to take a bathroom break, think again. Consider the odds, no matter how small they seem, of you defecating your own pants. Go ahead, tell your boss you need to go to the john, it will be worth it. So I beg that anyone reading this go to the nearest toilet, take a seat, and have a moment of silence for Jimmy's dignity, because it's gone forever.

A Man Among Boys

Going to the dentist is an interesting experience. It's not a particularly exciting or fun one but it's different. This is mainly because, for God knows what reason, I still go to a pediatric dentist that caters mainly to children who are around the age of six.



So I'm sitting in the waiting room, intermittenly doing my physics homework and reading Green Eggs and Ham (which is just one example of the fine literature offered in this waiting room) until I finally hear someone say "Alex? Is there an Alex here?" I could've sworn I heard a little snort as I walked by the lady calling my name, but I decided to save myself the awkwardness and not say anything. So I'm directed to the picture room where I put on the smiley face flack jacket, put the razor sharp plastic band-aid colored thing in my mouth, and get the thing that could be a giant camera or a mounted long range missile launcher pointed at my head. After that the lady leaves the little room, shuts the door, and leaves me by myself. And now the big moment.....click. I feel nothing, see nothing, and think to myself, was that all necessary?



Now the nurse directs me to the "Land Before Time" chair. I go, and lay down and stare up at the Land Before Time poster until the dentist comes.



Sidenote: How many full-length movies can you make about five cartoon, pre-adolescent dinosaur friends singing and dancing their way through dangerous, dinosaur filled lands while still learning valuable lessons about friendship and growing up? Twelve and counting.



So the dentist comes and the check-up goes fairly normally. Except for the 6 year old two chairs away whispering as quiet as 6 year olds can whisper. So naturally I could hear him loud and clear: "Who's the big kid over there?" You should know that the chair that I'm laying in is made for children of his height, so my feet were sticking out about a foot and a half, so I'm fairly noticeable.



The check-up ends and it's time to get the flouride. In an effort to appeal to young children's tastes the only flavors they offer is chocolate chip cookie dough, oreo milkshake, and chocolate fudge sundae. I pick oreo milkshake because I figure a milkshake was closest to the texture of flouride, so it wouldn't be too bad. I wouldn't suggest it.



To finish up the whole experience the same nurse comes up to me and offers me a prize from the treasure box. She asked in a way like she had to ask, but she thought that she kind of knew it was pointless to ask. I took a couple minutes deciding between the Finding Nemo tatoo and the yellow spider ring. The yellow spider ring won out and I put on my sticker and left.

Raising the Bar

I think we should raise the bar a little bit. There's a lot of buzz about America's students being in the back of the international pack when it comes to education, and I pride myself in being in the front lines of the epic battle for above average standardized test scores. Let's face it, our students are proving that it isn't important to have an IQ higher than your average lawn chair. This dilemma occured to me recently when my friend(who's sixteen and has the same education as I do) asked me, serious as cancer, "Isn't 4th of July the celebration of America's freedom from the Mexicans?" After peeing my pants and choking on my own tears of laughter, it took me every ounce of my discipline not to tell her that she was, in fact, an idiot. And that 4th of July is the celebration of America's freedom from the Germans not the Mexicans. I am personally disgusted at our youth's knowledge about their own country's history.

Later, as I was browsing Sears for a replacement pair of pants, I realized that that wasn't the only example of America's educational prowess, or lack thereof. Here's a couple of other examples that might make you question your comfort of the fact that we are your future. I am not making any of these up:

I was in my friend's basement when my other friend(let's call him Timmy) decided it was time for a workout. Timmy decided that nothing was better than a good hard run to work up a sweat, so he decided a treadmill would be a good place to start. Timmy didn't want a slow pace so he turned the treadmill to the highest speed. After the treadmill was goin full speed he decided it would be a good time to get on. Well let's just say Timmy hit the ground running minus the running part. He figured it wouldn't be necessary to move his legs when jumping on a treadmill set at speed 10. Timmy discovered the flaw in this plan midair and hoped that shouting Whoop would alter his fate, and much to my delight he was wrong. The treadmill kept going for 3 or 4 seconds while the rest of us watched in shock at his stupidity. Finally, someone had the sense to push the stop button. I discovered that our health was suffering about as much as our test scores.

Now you may think that Timmy was just an average kid, and that our honors students can easily compete with whatever Japan can throw at us. Well I'm a male and I have a twin sister that's a female. And a girl at my school (this has happened several times, this girl in particular just happens to be one of the top 10 smartest out of 1000 kids in the class) comes up and asks me if we are identical. And when I politely explained to her that it would be anatomically impossible for reasons I didn't want to explain, she actually tried to justify her question. She told me that we could look exactly the same.

So let's face it, we need to raise the educational bar a little bit. When our school's cream of the crop doesn't know that a boy and girl can't physically be identical, isn't sure if you get on a treadmill before or after you set it to the highest speed, and thinks that the Alamo is an important battle in the Revolutionary War, you know you have a problem. You may ask Axle, what's your solution to all of this? Of course I don't have a solution. I'm sixteen. I'm not ready to solve our country's problems yet. But if you ask, I'm definitely willing to point out my peers' shortcomings.

Axle Alex

Hi everyone my name is Alex, but you can call me Axle. I'm sixteen years old and I live in Illinois. I'm a junior in High School. I really enjoy reading humor writing and I thought I might try a hand at writing it. As I am in the middle of generation-Y, I decided to write about some of my experiences and observations. I hope you get a laugh out of my blog and I hope some of you can see yourself in some of my stories or relate to some of my observations. Here's the story about how i got my nickname:

A couple years ago I was blessed with the opportunity to go to Hawaii one time. Maui, specifically. I had the option to go shopping with my sisters, Mom, and my aunt or golfing with my Dad and Uncle. While I'm sure buying little bottles filled with authentic Hawaiin sand, and $16 authentic Hawaiin seashells would've been just riveting, I decided to go golfing. Now you know my Dad wasn't going to pay for a twelve year old to take on Maui's finest if you've ever seen the aftermath of a youth outing at your local golf course (Little Timmy managed to catch eight frogs while turning the 4th hole into Normandy Beach in Saving Private Ryan. His weapon of choice: the seven-iron). So in an effort to make my trip a little more exciting he let me drive the golf cart. A little way into the round, my father decided that almost flipping the cart twice and running over a "Carts This Way" sign wasn't putting us in enough danger to constitute a driver change, so we finished up the first hole the way we were.

We get around to hole 14 and I am convinced that I am the coolest thing that God graced the earth with. After all, I was driving and the tooth fairy was still coming to my house. We finish up hole 14 and we are headed to hole 15 which happens to be down a particularly steep hill. Pssh, no problem. In complete confidence I go whipping down the hill with no thoughts of braking until the very bottom, right behind the cart of the stranger we were golfing with. Much to my surprise, and apparently his, too, because he was sitting in his cart writing down his score, my cart hurtled into the back of his bringing my cart to a complete stop and moving his several feet forward. Sure enough, it broke my cart's axle. After finishing the golf round (remember golf is more important than whiplash treatment) sitting in a cart between my Father and my Uncle, we made up some story and went home. To my Uncle, Axle Alex was about as clever as they get so the name stuck.