The Bread Story…

Filed under Short Stories by on 2012.01.17 at 5:18 pm {no comments}

When I was around eight years old, this is going back to the early 70′s… (Now don’t be doing the math trying to figure out how old I am, let’s just say I am old enough)

My mother (who is Italian – it’s not a good thing or a bad thing, I just thought I’d let you know) was planning a big family get-together (were talking like 50-60 people – I have a big family) and was in desperate need of BREAD. My father was working, my older sister was at a friend’s house and my older brother was out playing hockey. I was upstairs watching TV (on a black/white with two antenna’s like a V on it – now you can stick a TV on the wall…go figure?) when all a sudden I hear my mother calling me (I’m thinking I did something wrong – that’s usually when my mother calls me) and she tells me (not asked me) to go buy bread for her.

Being the good son that I am I said sure no problem. I see my mother getting a piece of paper and a pen and began writing. I am going to buy bread, how hard can that be? (Believe you me, you’ll find out).  I ask my mom… “Ma what are you writing?” She says “I’m making a list of bread that I need” – (in Italian) which I could translate for you but why?  Ok… I’m thinking how long does it take to write BREAD on a piece of paper? I was eight years old; I figured it took awhile.

My Mom finishes and I could see her “folding” the piece of paper (not once, but a couple of times?) Maybe the piece of paper was big and she just wanted to make it smaller so I could carry it better (boy was I wrong). I take the paper and began to unfold it. My mother screams out “What are you doing?”, Ma… I just wanted to see what you wrote. Never you mind (that’s how my mom speaks in broken English) what it says, go buy the bread. You don’t fool around with my mother; you just do as she says. “Ok… I’ll go buy the bread”

So I take the paper and start walking outside heading towards my bike (which was a ten speed, not ideal for carrying bread – you’ll see). I hop on the seat and just before heading off, I figure maybe I should take a peek. I take the paper out of my pocket and began opening it (can you believe it unfolded ten times – It was as long as my arm!) It had every kind of bread known to man on it… buns, biscuits, loafs, bagels, long ones, shorts, round ones, round ones with wholes in the middle, everything! Along with the money to pay for it (must have been $1000 I thought). Here I’m thinking how the hell am I am going to carry all this bread?

Fearing to go back in the house to tell my mom (I was a big boy I could do it) I had to ask her how I was going to carry all that bread. I walk downstairs and there she was making pasta (Italians do not believe in buying pastas – that would be to easy). I say “Ma, how am I going to carry all this bread” “Are you still here she says?” (Nice eh?) My mom thinks about it (Like she actually thought I was going to carry the bread in my hands?) She walks to the pantry, reaches in and pulls out a hand full of shopping bags. “Here she says, now hurry up”.

Like a dummy (hey! I was eight years old, don’t be like that) I take the bags, get on my bike and start peddling off to the bakery. All the way there I’m picturing me on a bike surrounded by bread. I arrive at the bakery, parked my bike outside and walk up to the counter. The lady says “Can I help you?” “Yeah” I said. My mother needs all this bread, I handed the lady the piece of paper. She opens it and had a huge smile on her face (like she just won the lottery, you know she was going to make a big sale). She looks it over and then says “I can’t read this very well” and she points out some words and said “What does this say?” How the hell should I know I said (in my head – I was a nice kid). The writing looked Chinese but the lady said she could figure it out. “Ok… figure it out I said”.
I’m sitting there watching these ladies (yeah that’s right ladies – it took more than one to fill those bags). “Here you go” the lady said to me. “Can I help you put these bags in your car?…. “CAR”!… What car I said? I have my bike. The lady looks at me like I’m from Mars. “How are you going to carry all these bags?” she says. (Ah.. apparently you weren’t there when my mom said “Never you mind, just go” – again in my head) I ask the lady to help me “Load” the bread on my bike. We go outside, I sit on the seat and she begins handing the bags to me. I must have had at least ten bags on each hand. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to ride your bike like that”?. (Umm, I don’t think I have a choice now do I?) I tell her. Yeah no problem (Like I do it all the time).

So there I am sitting on my bike, ten bags of bread on each hand (and if that’s not enough for you) I had to cross a four lane road with no STOP LIGHTS! I ask the lady for a push and she does (Now if you were in her shoes, wouldn’t you have pushed “LIGHTLY”?) Well she decided I needed to break the speed barrier and launches me. I manage to get up to edge of the road (without falling) and see nothing but cars. I tried to brake but my hands were glued to the handle bars (have you forgotten I had 20 pounds of pressure on both hands). What if I had to brake suddenly I’m thinking? I managed to circle the parking lot until the coast was clear. I saw my chance, prayed and went for it. I cross the first lane, the second lane, the third lane and then “Oh my God” (I had your heart pounding there for a second didn’t I?) the last lane… “I MADE IT” I said (Damn I good)

As I’m riding all I could feel was bags hitting me all over (and I’m talking ALL OVER) I kept on riding (thinking everything is going good) and then all of a sudden (this time I’m serious) a car cuts out in front of me as I’m turning onto a side street. I go to reach for my brakes but my hands couldn’t move (Now this is the part you can tell your grand children about) Remember I have about half of a second to react at this point. I manage to free my right hand (still holding the ten bags – can’t let go of the bread) and then the turning point. Do I go for the brakes (If I do, I’m back to where I was) then it hit me (this goes down as the greatest decision ever made – by a eight year old) I decided to grab the bags of bread and throw them into my front tire (that should stop the bike I thought) Well Holy mother of Jesus did the bike STOP. It stopped on a DIME! Next thing I feel, I’m going head over heals over my handle bars (without a helmet mind you) Now what am I going to do? I’m thinking. As I’m going over my handle bars, my left hands become free (Oh great I’m thinking now I can use my left hand as well) still holding the bags of bread (I’m thinking about mama). At this point I had to make a quick decision (like I had a lot of time to make that last decision) Do I take a beating now or take a beating at home? (Believe you me the beating at home is way worse). I opted to take the beating now. I take the bags from my left hand only (the bags from my right hand are stuck in my front tire… remember?) and threw then in front of me (tried to cushion the blow – I had to think about my future to you know) the bags land perfectly for my back to land on (this is a good thing right?… WRONG!) I hit those bags like a stream roller hits tar, I turned every piece of bread into a pan cake (Flat as a board – you could have used it for paper, which I should have to write my will on because I still haven’t had “time” (HA) to think about how I was going to explain this to my mom) What happened to the bread in my front tire your asking? Well those got chopped up into a million little pieces (you should have seen the birds bolt down for them – god forbid they flew down to help me)

The Car (the one who’s to blame for all this or is it my mother?) sees all this happening in his rear view mirror and slams on the brakes. Open’s the door and comes screaming “Oh my God, are you Ok? Me?… Who cares about me I said – LOOK AT THE BREAD!! “Can I take you to the hospital” he says. “Buddy, I gotta be home in five minutes, I have no time for hospitals” “Are you seriously hurt?” he says. Humm…”have you ever flown over your handlebars before? – try it and then let me know if it hurts” I get up and see nothing but bread all over the place. I am running all over the road looking for any piece of bread that was still edible (I had to go a few rounds with some Seagulls, they wouldn’t let go of the bread). I couldn’t go home with NOTHING. I managed to scrap up enough bread to fill one bag. I picked up my bike, not a scratch on it (they don’t make them like that anymore, now there made of this Carbon Fiber stuff – you can snap it with your fingers).

I climb on top, start peddling (slow…very slow) thinking… What am I going say?…What am I going to say?(to my mother)… If I tell her I fell off my bike, she’ll kill me. If I tell her someone stole the bread, she’ll kill me even more (is that even possible?). If I tell her I lost the money (no…no…bad idea). What could I possible say that would give me the least beating? Remember when I said should I take a beating now or take a beating later? Will it’s time to take the beating later. I pull up to the house, park the bike (still in mint condition) and for the first time I take a look at myself. My cloths were ripped, I had a few cuts and scraps and its like – that’s it… once she sees me all busted up, she could never want to hurt me then. I walk down the stairs waiting for my mother to open her arms and embrace me with a huge Kiss. But in stead I hear her saying “Where the hell is he? I’m going to kill him, Wait till he gets home, How long does it take to buy bread?, (you would think at this point she would have run out of things to say… well she didn’t, she was just getting starting) it’s been 5 minutes since he’s left (ah… it’s a 10 minute bike ride, not walk) where the hell is he? (I should tell you that my mom is saying all these “nice” things about me in Italian, which is way funnier but it would take to long to translate everything)
My mom finally sees me coming (please, please, please, huge me and kiss me – I’m thinking) AND SHE… (I’ll leave up to you to guess what happened).

The Funny Guy

The Football Story…

Filed under Short Stories by on 2012.01.17 at 5:16 pm {no comments}

The Football Story…

It was my grade seven elementary flag football championship game. Are you familiar with Flag Football?  No… it’s not a bunch of kids running around with country flags (you know like United States, Canada, Italy, etc) on a stick. How the hell can you catch a football while trying to hang on to one of those flags? It’s impossible… what’s the matter with you?

Flag football is basically a game for wimps (listen I’m not a wimp, I wanted to play tackle football but if we did, then it wouldn’t be called flag football now would it?) So here’s how it’s played. You get a belt that you wrap around your waist (not a real belt) it looks like a karate belt and on either side (meaning your left hip and your right hip – must I explain everything?, get in the game will ya) there is a long narrow piece of plastic that’s suppose to be the flag part. These pieces are fastened to the belt by Velcro. To tackle someone, you simply pull off one flag of the opposing player and the play stops. Sounds easy no? Well try it while wearing pants that are skin tight and ten sizes smaller then you. By tight I mean your legs are stiff as a board, you can’t bend your knees. (Remember the episode of Jerry Seinfeld when Krammer wore those tight jeans and could not walk, well picture that)

I guess you figured out that I experienced this situation. Well believe you me, I did.  It’s the morning of the football game. I woke up all excited and couldn’t wait to get on the field and run (like I was mad at the grass). My mom (yeah the same mom from the Bread Story – if you haven’t read it then I have to explain what my mother is like and will take to long so it’s easier to just read my Bread Story first then come back) Look at me acting like some tough guy Millionaire trying to plug other material I have. Ok if you don’t want to read my Bread Story (but you should), my mom is your typical Italian mother. It’s her way or the highway. You don’t question my mother, you just do as your told.

Anyway my Mom comes into our room (by our I mean my older brother and I slept in the same bed – Hey… times were tuff back then so we had to sleep together, what’s wrong with that?) and gets our cloths ready for us to play.   Sounds easy right? Well here’s the problem. My brother is ten times skinner than me. The guy could hind behind a broom. Yeah I like Italian food (have you had Italian food? – you gain 40 pounds just looking at it), my brother obviously didn’t. When the food was on the table (and I’m talking like ten course meals daily – for Breakfast, lunch, and dinner – you could feed a wedding) I ate – wouldn’t you? Well I guess I ate more than my brother.

My mother gets his cloths ready in seconds but when she went to get my cloths ready we had a major crisis. My normal track pants (that fit) were in the washing machine and I had no other pants to wear. So put my track pants in the dryer you say? What dryer?… my mom doesn’t believe in dryers (to this day she doesn’t have one) – her dryer is the outside line. She has a wire hooked up from the back of her house to a pole stuck in the garden. It’s got to be at least 100 yards long. The pole is the size of a telephone pole. Who needs a pole that high? My mom could put the laundry of the whole block on her line. Let’s see a dryer do that!

She tells me to wear a pair of my brother’s pants. Are you picturing this? My mom hands me a pair of pants that were the size of one of my legs. “Ma, I scream, these pants won’t fit” (now for those of you who read the Bread Story, you know what my mother is going to say… “Never you mind – put them on”!)  Ok.. I’ll put them on. I unbutton the pants thinking they may get bigger but they didn’t. I tell my brother he has to help me put on his pants. I put one leg in and then the other (the pants were at my ankles at this point) and I couldn’t breathe. How the hell was I going to breathe if I got them all the way up? My brother pulls, I pull – the pants are moving a millimeter at a time. I’m pouring sweat and for some reason, God was with me that morning because I managed to get the pants on. The pants were made of some sort of steel, no stretch to them what’s so ever. I took a quick look in the mirror, man did I look Fresh! The pants fit me like the new style women wear, I think their called Capris?. For us guys out there, we call them Floods.

My brother looks at me and says “How are you going to run in those pants?” “Run?… I can’t even walk” I tell him. I suck in my stomach ( I gotta tell ya, I was looking pretty good at that point) and start walking stiff legged (like a soldier) out of my room and as I approached the stairs, reality hits me. There is no way I’m going to make it down these stairs alive. So what do I do?… I figure I’m already stiff as a board, why not go down the stairs like a board. I lied down (on my back) and slid down the stairs (you should try it, it’s pretty cool, just make sure your pants are Tight… really Tight). We get into the car and drive to the football field.

I get out of the car (with no help) and walk over to where our team was. The coach looks at me and says “Why are you wearing those pants?, they don’t fit you and you can hardly walk”. I tell him don’t worry, I’m fine (meanwhile my face was beat red because I have had no circulation going to the brain)  Just so you know my brother and I played wide receiver. That’s the position of the players who runand catch the ball. The ref calls for the teams to come to center field to put on the flags and get ready to kick off. As I’m walking on the field, I notice everyone pointing at me. I felt like Jerry Rice (for you women out their, he’s not a guy named Jerry who loved rice).  Jerry Rice is a legend football receiver, but you know very damn well why they were pointing at me.  I go to bend over to pick up my flags and I almost fainted, I couldn’t breathe. I managed to pick them up (thinking the worst was over… oh yeah right) and start heading towards the sidelines. The coach tells us (my brother and I) to get on the field to receive the ball.

The other team kicks the ball and guess where the ball is headed?… To my brother (yeah I only wish) it came whistling right at me. I catch the ball (that was easy) and try to run. My brain said “Ok legs run” but my legs said “Ok fat boy (I wasn’t fat, it was the pants) let me see you try”. I’m running like Frankenstein. I think I took two steps before my flag got pulled off. I get back to the sidelines and the coach says I can’t play receiver anymore (because I couldn’t run). I begged him to let me play. He knew I was a good player (but those pants sure as hell didn’t make me look it) and he tells me I could play center position (that’s the person who snaps the ball to the quarterback – no running involved) the next time we get the ball.

I’m watching the game and then a bolt of lighting strikes me in the head, relax it’s just a figure of speech (although if I ever wanted a bold of lighting to hit me, that was a good time for it to happen). In other words I just thought of something. If I couldn’t breathe trying to bend over to pick up my flags, how’s it possible to bend over (many times) to snap a football between my legs?. I walked over to my mother and asked her for her rosary beads (you know it’s a religious necklace with beads on them and you start with the top bead and say a prayer for each bead). I said a few prayers… “God, please help me make it through this game” (didn’t have time to do the whole necklace) and went back to the sidelines. Sure enough our turn to go on the field came up. I walked to where the football was on the field thinking “Do I just bend over or try to bend my knees?” I decided to do both. What happened next was reason to have the fire department there. Our team lines up on either side of me and I go to bend over and all you hear is KA-BOOM!! My pants didn’t rip – THEY EXPLODED! It echoed a roar clear across the field and neighbor’s were coming out of there houses trying to figure out what the noise was. It ripped the seam from the front of my pants all the way threw my legs and up my back. If it wasn’t for the waist band holding my pants together, they would have blown right off my legs.

Now here’s the funny thing (if you haven’t found any of this funny so far). I get up and my pants felt great. I thought I lost weight. I was ready to tell my coach I could play wide receiver again. I take my first step and suddenly I felt a breeze up my leg. I look down and I see my skin and a strip of material over my leg. Where’s my pants? I was hoping that nobody saw what happened. I look around and everybody (our team, there team, coaches, parents, refs, water boys, spectators, neighbors, people waking by…) were on the ground roaring like coyotes, laughing there heads off. The field was covered with water (not because of rain but from the water pouring out of everyone’s eye balls).

I try to cover myself up and walk to the sidelines. My mother comes over and gives me shit because my pants were too tight. I tell my mother “One of these days…One of these days – Pow, right in the kisser”.  How stupid do you think I am? I’d be walking (with no pants) and a limp if I said something like that.  Instead I gave my mother a great big kiss (sorry, I just had a memory lapse) I don’t think I did that.

So all in all, I had a good game. Who won? Believe it or not I can’t remember. Hey! can you blame me? I was traumatized over that day. I needed counseling, I went to see a psychiatrist, and I was heavily medicated. I was known from then on at school as the Kid whose pants exploded. Try living with that for the rest of your life.

The Funny Guy
P.S. Maybe I’ll ask my brother and find out who won.

 

What’s so Funny?

Filed under Poetry by on 2010.03.24 at 3:25 am {no comments}

What’s so funny?

It’s a question asked when one doesn’t get the joke.

At least for a man with no sense of the actual world around him, his own personal thoughts drowned him.

So caught up in his own personal love frenzy, bathing in his self indulgence.

Lives life through a screen and every day dives deeper into the things that make him scream, when awake in the day he feels as a raining king.

But when his head hits the pillow all the dreams and aspirations willow, falling deeper down the rabbit hole of what is but humanity dished on a silver platter, is his life just chatter?

I see a man do nothing, yet claims everything. I see a man receive in a time of need, then only ask for more

I’ve seen women give in and cheat over and over again, I’ve seen men break hearts from across countries wide spread apart, I’ve seen men piss on art and praise a life of a subatomic plague of self praise. (more…)

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