Birthday parties and Power Rangers piñatas

When I was a little kid, all I ever really wanted was a big birthday party with a piñata. I pictured all of my friends taking a shot at it first, blindly swinging away, but nobody really doing any significant damage. Then it would be my turn, the birthday boy going last. I’d walk right up and take a huge swing, perfectly placed, dead on in its accuracy, and the whole thing would just explode, candy showering down everywhere, everybody cheering, chanting my name, dancing around in the downpour of individually wrapped sweets.

Obviously that’s kind of a difficult fantasy to exactly make happen in real life. There are so many variables out of my control, like all of the other kids. I wasn’t the smallest kid in my class, but I definitely wasn’t the biggest either. And in terms of skill? Of being able to accurately swing a stick, blindfolded, and crack it open on the first try? Yeah, I could think of like five other kids who would’ve had a better chance at that than me.

But my whole plan, to actually set it up, I just had to do the best I could and leave the rest up to chance. Or I could have acted like a spoiled little birthday brat and told everybody to miss it on purpose, watching them carefully as they all went first, having a mini breakdown temper tantrum if any of the kids started swinging too close, you know, starting a little screaming fit, just being totally obnoxious, and then when it’s my turn, I could have had them lower the piñata to my exact specifications, make myself a custom blindfold that only looks like a blindfold, like you’d think I’d be blinded, but I’d actually be able to see everything. And then even if I missed, or if I hit it but it didn’t break apart immediately, I’d start whacking it again and again, until that candy shower that I was talking about before … yeah, I wouldn’t want to do that. That wouldn’t have felt right. It wouldn’t have been that organic moment of pure joy that I was dreaming about. Plus my mom would have definitely yelled at me for acting like such a baby.

My birthday was coming up and my mom let me have a party in the backyard. Maybe I’d have like a birthday party guardian angel watching over the whole fiesta, making sure that my friends couldn’t swing, or that they could swing but they’d miss totally, or they wouldn’t miss totally, but their whacks wouldn’t do anything, wouldn’t even make the piñata move at all, it would be like hitting a tree, or a piece of steel. Maybe that would happen.

I was really into the Power Rangers at the time, and I really wanted a piñata of Tommy, the green Power Ranger. Tommy wasn’t one of the original five. In fact, he wasn’t even really a Power Ranger at all. Not at first. Well, he was a Power Ranger, but he was evil. Get it? Like Tommy the person wasn’t evil, but Rita Repulsa used him as a vessel for the evil inherent in the evil Power Ranger medallion that then turned him into the evil green Ranger. It’s complicated, and very evil; I think you’d have to watch the show.

What I was getting at was that I really wanted a green Ranger piñata, but he wasn’t an original Ranger – even though he wound up overcoming the evil and joining the Power Rangers as the sixth Ranger – so the piñata store didn’t have a green one on hand. Just the classics, red, yellow, blue, black, pink. I picked out the blue one, thinking that I could just customize it, make it green myself. Even though, I thought, it would probably be easier to turn the yellow one green than the blue one, but the yellow one was Trini, a girl, and if my plan didn’t work out, I didn’t want to be stuck at my party with a girl Power Ranger piñata, everybody would have made fun of me.

It came out OK. It didn’t exactly look green. It looked green, kind of, but you could still totally see the blue underneath. I made the special gold green Ranger shield, so, you know, maybe the parents didn’t get what was going on, but all of my friends, they got it, they were like, “Wow! Rob! That’s so cool! Where did you get a green Ranger piñata?”

So far, so good. Everybody lined up. Mark went first, definitely the biggest of my classmates. I figured, universe, or God, I guess I still believed in God when I was a little kid, I was like God, just let Mark miss, and I’ll be golden. My mom tied the blindfold really tight. He stepped up. Whack!

Direct hit. Mark knocked it right in the homemade chest plate. It was like all of the green came off first, so it was this blue-green, mostly blue explosion, and Mark was just standing there, getting showered in candy by himself. And he didn’t even realized it at first, but as soon as he did, he untucked his shirt and held it out underneath the candy shower, just collecting so much candy, the lion’s share, all of the good stuff. Then when it stopped he ran off to some corner, he hadn’t even taken off the blindfold yet, and he sat down and started in on his loot. Everybody else kind of just ran to the grass to see what was left. Then some of the parents started clapping, then everybody had cake, and then everybody went home.

I’m going to climb to the top of the Queensboro Bridge

Whenever I cross the Queensboro Bridge, I always get this urge to get off my bike and climb to the top. It looks so easy. Batman did it in The Dark Knight Rises. He’s just standing on top, staring at the city, planning out that whole part where he makes that line of gasoline that goes all the way from the base of the East River to the top, where it’s shaped like a flaming bat. I want to do it too, minus the flaming bat. It doesn’t even look that tall. Like, if I could just get past my fear of heights, if I could just focus on one step at a time, like a ladder, or not one step at a time, but one rung at a time, I’m sure I could be standing on the top in no time.

A couple of years ago there were like three guys that climbed to the top of the New York Times building. The whole thing is wrapped in these bars, something to do with green energy, I’m not really sure. But it’s also shaped exactly like a ladder. And so first, this guy who’s famous for climbing buildings, he did it. And then some other guy did it, and then another guy, until they had to remove the bars from the bottom floors.

So there’s definitely that urge. Sometimes the urge is barely there. Sometimes it’s all I can do to block it out of my head. When it’s at it’s strongest, I’ll look up from right underneath and picture myself doing it, where I’d start, at what pace I’d have to climb. I look at gaps in between some of the larger expanses of cable and steel and imagine how I’d realistically be able to make it across.

I’m confident that I could make it to the top, no problem. But will I ever get the chance? New York’s a pretty tightly guarded city. There are cameras everywhere. I don’t doubt for a second that if anything ever goes even the slightest bit off on one of the bridges or tunnels, the police must know about it almost instantly. One time I was riding my bike across and there were these weird graffiti tags spaced about every ten feet apart. I got to the middle of the bridge and there were like twenty cops surrounding this guy with cans of spray paint. If that guy couldn’t get away with his stunt, I doubt I’d be able to get away with mine.

Or maybe I’d be able to at least get started. I’d get like a quarter of the way up before someone notices what I’m up to. I’d have to travel light, so as not to give an impression that I’m carrying any sort of bomb or weapon. The crazier part of my imagination is cooking up some scenario where the police commissioner is staring at a TV screen somewhere, barking orders into a walkie-talkie, “Take him down! Now!” and some lieutenant would be like, “But commish, he doesn’t look like he’s up to no good … he’s just climbing.” But nobody wants to take that type of risk, not post-post-9/11, and so maybe they’d off me, cover up the operation, I’d die in obscurity, not ever having made it to the top.

Getting all the way up would be easy. And once I got up there, I’d bask in the view. I’d do a Batman pose and pretend like I’m reenacting the moment right before he took back the city from Bane. And then I’d probably just wait, frozen. Because while going up seems easy, climbing back down, that’s got to be tough. Making sure you have a controlled descent. I don’t know why, I imagine climbing up and I’m fine, but I imagine coming back down, and that kind of gets my palms all sweaty.

I’ll definitely do it someday. Maybe I’ll definitely do it someday. Probably. I always think, what’s stopping me? Fear? Of what? Getting in trouble? What are they going to do, lock me up? For how long? I’ll get out eventually, and I’ll never have to think about what it would be like to climb up, because I’d have already done it. And so I won’t have that nagging sensation in the back of my brain, every time I ride my bike to work, come on Rob, just do it, it looks so easy, you’re going to be an old man someday and you won’t be able to then even if you wanted to. You can totally make it up, come on, don’t be a weenie, just do it.

We’re all wasting too much stuff, too much time

There’s just too much waste, so much unnecessary trash clogging up our lives, the streets. Like cars. Why do they need four wheels? Why not three wheels? I guess traction, right, or safety? I guess a car with three wheels isn’t as safe, like you could tip it over easier. Maybe. What about one wheel? Just one giant wheel, so that way it couldn’t be tipped over. And the car could be on the inside. And instead of brakes, I don’t know, I think you’d need maybe some clamps or something that pop out and help you to stop. Maybe it’s a little impractical, sure, but think of how much money we could save on tires, three tires for every new car, totally saved. Think of the savings.

Or think smaller. Like what about those little plastic pieces that pizza places stick in the middle of the pizza, so that way the top of the box doesn’t cave in, doesn’t smush the pizza? You know, they look like little plastic tables, with three legs, it’s like the size of a half dollar, maybe a little bigger? How many of those are we throwing away every year? I’ll tell you how many: way too many. That’s a lot of plastic, an unnecessary amount of plastic. I think that pizza places should either start like a collection system, maybe a drop-off box where you can return your used plastic mini table things, or, and I think that this is a better idea, just bake a garlic knot right in the middle of the pizza, so there’s a huge lump, so the box can’t get crushed. I mean, I guess it could still get crushed, but it would help, it would be a deterrent. And think of how much less waste there’d be.

Bu what if you don’t like garlic? Just tell the pizza guy, maybe they’ll make like a garlic knot with no garlic. But what are you going to call it, a knot? That’s not descriptive enough. A plain knot? A regular knot? That’s better, sure, but think of all of that waste though, all of those extra words, “plain,” “regular,” all saying the same thing, the same nothing. So much extra time spent saying all of these unnecessary words, syllables, right, it’s not a lot of time, but here and there, those microseconds add up, and so, yeah, I guess just knot, it would be awkward at first, customers saying, “What’s a knot?” and the pizza guy would have to be like, “You know, like a garlic knot with no garlic.” That might seem like a total waste of words, of whole sentences even, but again, I urge pizza guys to think long term, invest in a few extra minutes of instruction now, save all of that time in the future just saying knot instead of regular knot, or plain knot, or garlic knot with no garlic.

And I know I’m trying to cut out the fat, really eliminate waste here, and so I’m kind of reluctant to bring up my next point, one, because I don’t want you to think I’m just getting hung up on garlic knots here, and two, because after what I’m about to say, you might think, hey, he just wasted everybody’s time with that last paragraph. But I’ve got to. A garlic knot? Why bother spending time on a knot? Why not a garlic unknot? How many minutes, hours, weeks are pizza guys just tossing away, knotting all of these unknots into garlic knots? What is it before, a little rope? Right? And then you tie it up into a knot? Just call it a garlic rope. Or just a rope. Production is going to triple.

Or maybe a garlic ball. Right, just ball, because you still need something to prop up that pizza box. Maybe a garlic cube. Or would it be too hard to make one of those plastic tables out of garlic knot dough? Probably. That’s probably not going to save any time at all. I really ought to think about this some more, but I don’t have any more time, I’m too busy, I’ve got to free up some room in my day, to think, to eliminate waste, to free up more time to think about more ways to cut more waste and free up even more time.

Andre and me on a boat

Andre and I, we went on a fishing trip last weekend, just the two of us. We hadn’t spoken since his grandmother’s funeral. I guess he needed time to grieve. Things had just gotten really bad between us, it was like every time we got together we’d start to bicker, things would escalate, slowly, steadily, until one of us lost our cool and, you know, that would be it, we wouldn’t speak again for weeks, months.

It must have gotten weird with our extended group of friends, because my buddy Cliff told me, “Hey Rob, look Andre wants to make amends, but he’s really nervous, with everything that’s gone down. Anyway, he wanted me to invite you upstate, a nice little fishing trip, you guys can like, you know, rekindle your friendship.”

And I thought, wow, that’s pretty deep. But I only thought that for a second. Because then another thought replaced that first thought, and that new thought was this: no way Andre sent Cliff over to invite me upstate. It’s probably the larger group of friends, all of them deciding that they need us to settle things, to make it easier for the whole group to hang out, and so they drew straws and Cliff got picked to come to me, telling me Andre sent the invite, and then he’d go to Andre, and say that I sent the invite.

Everybody’s seen this episode before. We’d be sitting on that little fishing boat, just the two of us in the middle of some big lake. And we’d both be fishing at opposite ends of the boat, not looking at each other, not saying anything, both of us with really grumpy looking expressions on our face. And finally, just as the silence becomes too unbearable, we’d both say simultaneously, “Well aren’t you going to apologize? What? Me? You! Why did you even invite me on this fishing trip? What? Me invite you? You invited me!”

And classic Andre, he always has this way of turning every situation to his advantage. Regardless of how clever I think I am, how I’m usually able to sweet talk my way out of any situation, Andre always manages to get in my head, his verbal jumping jacks. So I figured, I see where this is going, I might as well try to embrace the deception. Andre thinks I’m setting this whole thing up, well, at least one of us will know the truth, one of us will have the upper hand.

I’m talking about me, obviously, with the upper hand. That was my plan anyway. We got on the boat, I let him stew for a little bit, and finally I broke the silence with, “Andre, look, I brought you up here because, well, this is kind of hard for me to say, but I wanted to apologize.” And I really had to stop myself from throwing in my customary, “because I wanted to be the bigger person,” because even though it’s true, even though I was being the bigger person, that’s how these things usually unfold. I figure, this time, actions, not words. Or, not actions exactly, but more subtle words. More clever. Cleverer. I know I’m the bigger person. So I don’t have to go flaunting it.

“What are you talking about,” Andre shot back, “I sent Cliff over to you because you never answer my calls. I set this whole trip up.” Which sounded like a bunch of baloney. I always take Andre’s calls. I always take all of my phone calls. Andre just wanted to get Cliff involved, to get everybody involved, to show off, to show me up, and now I was getting upset, and I wasn’t even thinking this stuff in my head anymore, I was saying it out loud, “You just wanted the rest of the group to think you’re being the bigger person, that you’re the one always making amends. At least I showed up to your grandma’s funeral. You didn’t even call me when my grandma died!”

Which wasn’t true. Andre totally came to my grandma’s funeral. I didn’t even know why I said that, it was because I was so angry I guess. And Andre didn’t say anything either. I guess he knew that, at that point anyway, it was stupid to even try to say anything else. Because who knew what I was capable of saying next?

But the worst part was, the whole me telling him that I wanted to apologize, that was only part one of my plan. After we had made amends, I wanted us to have a little laugh, something funny, funny but natural, like an organic, bonding type of laugh. So I bought this magnetic fishhook. The idea is to use the magnetic fishhook to attract your friend’s fishhook, and then you start reeling it in, slowly. Your friend thinks he has a bite and starts pulling, and you keep fighting it out for a while, until you realize that your hooks are hooked together, and that was supposed to be the organic laugh, we’d have made amends, and then we’d see the hooks, and it was supposed to be like, look, we’re hooked together, and we would have laughed and laughed and realized how silly we were being.

But nothing was happening, it wasn’t attracting. So I kept reeling in and casting out again, really close to the boat, over and over again, getting more and more frustrated. And then I turned to Andre and he was doing the same thing, in and out, over and over again, and I was like, wait a second. I looked at his back pocket, sticking out was the same packaging, the same, “Magnetic Trick Fishhook” wrapper, the hooks must have been repelling each other. And I was thinking, Jesus Andre, you unoriginal jerk, you can’t just let me have one trick fishhook gag? You really just can’t let me have one real, genuine moment, can you?

You can’t fire me; I quit

Whenever I’m having a really bad day at work, waiting tables, a server, a servant, I always have this fantasy of what I’d do if I were to snap, totally lose it, right in the middle of dinner service. For some disgruntled employees, I’m sure nothing would be more satisfying than to tell off the boss and storm out, a big, “I quit!” leaving everybody to try and piece together whatever it was they were in the middle of doing.

But that’s all too pedestrian for me. If I were to ever leave right in the middle of a shift, I’d make such a scene, cause so much chaos and mayhem, that the restaurant wouldn’t have any choice but to close for the rest of the night.

First I’d go right up to the kitchen window. I’d push the expediter out of the way. For those not in the biz, the expediter is the person who makes sure that all of the food is coming out on time, that all orders are leaving the kitchen complete. I’d start picking up food with my hands, whole steaks, fistfuls of potatoes and vegetables, and I’d start taking huge bites, like an animal, some here, a bite over there, making sure to take at least a small piece out of everything, throwing the rest on the ground.

And that would only be the opening act. I’d have to act quickly, because once I get started, it would immediately set off some alarms. At least one or two managers would rush over to see what all the commotion was about. The rest of my plan would have to be executed in such a way as to exact maximum destruction in the limited time before somebody calls the police. I’d rip the phone off the wall, not that it would really do me any good, because everybody has a cell phone, but still, it would be a nice added touch.

Next I’d reach my arms as far as they can extend out to my sides, balling my hands into fists. I’d spin around in a cyclone, picture the Tasmanian Devil, and I’d chart a course through the kitchen. Everything’s in such close quarters that I’m guaranteed to knock over the majority of the kitchenware, all of the dry goods, all of the jars and cans. There’s barely any space when people are just going about their normal routines. Nothing’s going to stand a chance once I turn into the human tornado.

I figure I’ll only have about one and a half minutes left. I’d save the best for last. The liquor room. If I could just make it before anybody with any power to stop me arrives, my final act would be glorious. One by one I’d take each bottle of booze off of the shelves and drop them to the floor. Crash. Shatter. Everywhere. Maybe the head manager would have finally caught up to me, and he’d be standing in the entryway, mouth agape, hands on his cheeks, the definitive expression of shock. And I’d be untouchable. I’d be going so fast, moving with such fury, that nobody would dare risk coming too close, not with all of the annihilation I’ve already unleashed.

And I figure that’s where I’d stay until the cops finally show up to drag me out of there. And it would have to be a full dragging, like one police officer for every limb, me thrashing the whole time, kicking and screaming on my way out to the paddy wagon.

So whenever I’m really in the weeds at work, whenever I feel like I’m just doing a terrible job, like my customers hate me, like my managers hate me, I just kind of stop and run through that little daydream, and it makes things a little better, makes me feel like I maintain at least some control over my present situation. Because while, yes, it’s totally unthinkable that I’d ever actually commit, it’s not impossible. Everything that I’ve spelled out is totally within my abilities to make happen. Just knowing that provides me the tiniest morsel of comfort.

Can you imagine, after I lost that job, what my next interview would be like? “So, tell us why you left your last job?”