Let Me Be Frank With You

Sitting in the gate area across from a thin man of approximately 50 years of age wearing a blazer and sporting that Michael McDonald-esque silvery feather cut. Resting upon his nose, were a pair of plastic black glasses that looked like he may have received in 2009 at the New Years Eve shindig at Times Square (subsequently breaking off the 2 and 9, leaving a very ridiculous looking set of Mr. Potato Head glasses).

I thought to myself that this guy either runs his own business OR (more likely) he has earned himself a town pass for good behavior at the asylum where they issue glasses without sharp edges so the residents are less likely to fashion a shank from their eyewear to attack staff.

You just don’t see many working stiff, middle-management types sporting drastic, edgy eyewear like that. It’s hard for me to comprehend how someone could pull those from the sea of glasses at LensCrafters, put them on, look in the mirror and say, “Yeah, these’ll do.”

Those glasses say that “I own a chain of successful record stores in the Pacific Northwest” OR “I smear my own feces in my hair” – it’s one or the other and nowhere in between.

The mystery was solved when I noticed that he was sipping on a martini by the time I filed past his first-class seat on my way back to my seat near the toilet in the back of the plane. I guess it’s a look that works well for him. Maybe if I start dressing like Harlan Sanders for work, people will start to notice that I’m wicked-smart, eccentric and therefore deserving of some sort of high-level executive gig? I’m going out to buy a white suit and shoes when I get home.

It has been a while since I’ve given Delta Airlines a chance to serve me a cup of coffee. Since that time, they’ve converted to the exclusive use of Starbucks – a coffee that I’m familiar with and tend to enjoy.

Today they wheeled the cart by with some freshly brewed coffee after a snack and some water. It sounded good to me so I asked for one.

Let me tell you, the switch to Starbucks isn’t helping at all. I took one sip and threw it away. As I handed the full cup of to the flight attendant and she gave me a quizzical look, I asked her if she has ever tried the coffee. She said “yeah, it’s Starbucks so it’s kind of strong isn’t it?” I started to tell her that I usually drink cowboy coffee that’s strong enough to stand a spoon up in and leaves coffee grounds in my teeth but I could see in her eyes that she wasn’t ready to hear all of that so I just handed it to her with a smile and a nod.

The best coffee beans in the world will make a cup of coffee that tastes like ass when you use a cup of polluted water to brew it. I hope that I don’t catch the cancer from that little sip that I just took. Never again.

It was a chilly day in the Florida Panhandle, but for some reason, that didn’t stop me from throwing on a sweatshirt and shorts then hopping on my motorcycle for a ride to visit one of my friends and his wife at their house that was off of the military installation where I lived at the time.

About five minutes into my 15 minute ride, the breeze that had been entering the scoop in my shorts that led to my nether regions made me feel as if I were riding with no pants on. Uncomfortably cold and numb from the waist down, I arrived at my friend’s house and went inside.

His wife was sitting on the couch and looked at my shorts and almost screamed what I thought was “Frank! Your nuts!”. I instinctively moved my hands to my lap to cover myself, feeling sure that somehow my bits had exposed themselves and I was hanging brain in front of her in her own living room. A true feeling of dread and embarrassment spread over me.

Soon after she quit laughing, I realized that she meant “Frank! You’re nuts!” because you’d have to be crazy to ride a motorcycle in shorts when it was that cold outside – you know, THAT kind of nuts.

Let this story help to illustrate the practical application of understanding the material difference between the words ‘your’ and ‘you’re’.

Earlier this evening as I sat at a traffic light initially minding my own business, I casually looked over to see what was going on next to me. We were three wide at the light. There was a guy in an SUV in the lane next to me who hadn’t pulled all the way up to the light which left me with a full view of the late model Honda sedan two lanes over from me. In that car sat a lady who appeared to be clean, professional and in her mid-30’s.

Nothing abnormal about that scene so far, right? Well, I held my gaze at her long enough to see that she had one of her booger hooks stuffed in her nose to the second knuckle aggressively scraping her nasal bacon. There was no looking away at that point. She stared straight ahead and relied upon the cloak of invisibility she must have thought her car provided to hide her vile habit from public view.

Ladies and gentlemen, I haven’t even reached the climax of this story yet. After hooking the booger with her long and spindly digit, she withdrew her finger and its harvest from her nostril, did a barely perceptible pinch and roll and ATE THAT BOOGER! (I’m getting the willies just typing this.)

Time seemed to stand still while this was going on so I don’t know how long I was there but she did this three times at that traffic light. Not once did she turn her head to see who might be watching her engage in this deplorable habit.

The light changed and I didn’t know what to do so I laid on my horn as I drove next to her. I’m not sure what I hoped to achieve by doing that but I desperately wanted her to know that I knew of her dark habit so that she might be a little ashamed. It wouldn’t end like that though as her head and eyes were locked in a forward-looking position even as I honked the horn in one of those sustained honks (probably because the horn on a Volvo S80 sedan is not nearly as impressive as you might think it would be). Evidently the guy next to me watched the vile show she put on for us because he looked at me and smiled and shook his head and then started laughing at me as I honked my horn.

I don’t know about you people, but I always thought that talk about people eating their own boogers was just an exaggeration because nobody would really do something like that. That’s something that separates human beings from apes. Well, I can tell you that she walks among us – she, with her booger fingers and booger breath.

If I’m missing something, and it’s a commonly accepted underground habit for adult human beings to pick and eat their own boogers, and you’re one who does that, please, never tell me you do. I can overlook many character/personality flaws to see the good in people but if you pick and eat your own boogers, we simply can no longer be friends.

Sometimes, for no particular reason, random memories about what might seem like insignificant events to others come rushing back to me. The most recent one that just came to me involved a road trip that I was on with several friends.

We were staying in a condo at a mountain resort, and at the time, we were hanging out in the pool area. Several of my friends were playing cards at a table on the pool deck and I had just come out of the pool, dripping wet, and went over to see what they were playing. I stood there for a minute and saw that one of my friends looked at me with an agitated and simultaneously horrified look on his face and screamed “DAMMIT FRANK! YOU’RE DRIPPING YOUR BALL WATER ALL OVER MY SHOES!” I hadn’t noticed that I was straddling the tennis shoes that he had kicked off when we first arrived at the pool and indeed just how much “ball water” my swim trunks had released into his shoes until he said something.

I think the thing that was so funny to me about this was how I had absolutely no idea that I was standing over his shoes, how manic he got about it and how he instinctually declared the water from my swim trunks as being “ball water.”

My bad -as they say.

I’ve been Facebook target marketed again. I think it’s great that the program is now open to 45 year olds, especially since I’m a 45 year old.

It’s great to know that if I pull the trigger on this, within 1 month I’ll be taking steps to put on rain gear and war paint to begin a new career that involves standing in the woods in the rain with a menacing look on my face!

Before I click any buttons, I think I’ll give it a trial run tonight in my neighborhood by dressing up in this outfit and choosing a random house to on my street to stare at for a few hours. How else will I know if I’m really cut out for this?

It’s good to know that whenever I decide to take up vaping as a hobby, there are about 15 vape stores within 2 miles of my house.

The newest, Avail Vapor, must have just opened a week or so ago because I just recently noticed it being there. I believe that the sign is going to cause an accident sooner or later. I say this because I know that every time I have passed it, I have done a double-take because when you’re about 200 yards away from that sign, at night, driving 35mph, you’d swear it says “Anal Vapor” – and each time, a “what the hell did that say?” reaction instinctively comes out of me.

When we drove past it last night, Jason and I talked about it and we both thought that Anal Vapor sounds like the superhero that nobody wants to be around. Like the one who huffs flatulence to gain superhuman strength but he’s sad because people don’t ever call him to help because his behavior is so off-putting.