Marching Webelos

The best thing about being in the Cub Scouts was getting recognized for being in the Cub Scouts. You flash a badge, you wear a neckerchief, and not only are you in the club, but you're in everyone else's club too. I'd wear that uniform to school for picture day and suddenly transform that "humdrum smile against the paper background" into a proud military portrait in full regalia... a full smile, a missing tooth, and a badass bunch of badges. Two words: aw yeah. 

It was the grade school equivalent of stuffing your crotch in high school to look bigger... all the show off pride, and none of the actual self respect. Well nothing was more stupidly honorary for the average 8-year-old snotty booger pee-pants goof ball boner gas dork (that I was) than marching in the Memorial Day parade. And that we did as Cub Scout Troop [whatever]. In fact, we had more honor than we knew what to do with.

Struggling to
avoid molestation
jokes in this post. 

"Remember, your behavior reflects on the whole troop," they said, as we all sat there on the grass adjusting ourselves beneath our shorts and staring at the Hot Rods. The parents had to preempt our fighting and make sure each of us got a shot at carrying the banner with our troop insignia, which was a matter we took very seriously. Some of us could've died that day and it would have been worth it for a shot at carrying the banner! 

So we stood shoulder to shoulder in one long single-file line holding this thing up and stepping on each other's feet for a mile and a half. We began the journey at the "secret parade people's meeting area" in the field where the Scotsmen were tuning their sheep bladders and the Hot Rods and Harleys were idling and revving up for no reason, and waited there for the eternity it took the thing to get started. We baked, and sweat, and got on each other's nerves under the hot sun, we told "Your Mom" jokes and probably something having to do with the male genitalia a half dozen times amid the chorus of animal noises ans bodily functions, and then finally found ourselves lining up to be smack dab between the fire engine and that high school drum ensemble. Let's just say, the novelty of marching wore off pretty fast... 

That fire engine was a tough act to follow. It tossed out the most candy, and like hell if we listened to the pack leader about staying in formation once there was candy in the area. If the banner almost dropped a few times and caused an embarrassment for the whole council, it was because we were stuffing our pockets before those leeches on the street corners got theirs. Nobody expects a Cub Scout to be a giver and a sharer anyways. 

As far as where we were headed, "who the heck knows... just keep following the fire truck!" So we just kept walking and walking under the hot sun, slowly losing our hearing, slowly losing our shirts, and getting on each other's nerves (that would've happened anywhere). When we finally made it to the end, we sat in the grass at the grave site and ate our candy and rang the sweat out of our neckerchiefs until our parents caught up with us. There was some memorial ceremony going on there, but what did we care? We had three things on our minds: shade, silence, and water!

That's what Cub Scouting is all about, teaching you what's important.

Swimming Lessons

"Why do I have to go to swimming lessons when I can just stay home and play Sonic instead?" That was probably running through my mind in the summer of 1993 or so, on a sunny, hot morning like today. And trust me, the Sonic water levels were FAR more hazardous than being in actual water anyways! Why not swimming lessons to learn how to survive in THOSE? So it was like pulling teeth to get me and my brother up, dressed, and out the door, but once we hit the pool, we were having a grand old time trying not to die. The one we used for our swimming lessons was outdoors, submerged in a bed of scratchy white concrete that was hell on your bare feet, and built up on all sides like Fort Knox with high chain link fences. It was like its own micronation of "Community Pool," complete with it's own laws (No Diving, No Splashing, No Running...etc.).

You could only enter in through the changing rooms, which served as its border crossing. The boys and girls separated. It was like passing into a third world country. Our changing room was nothing but a series of slimy, buggy, weedy showers next to a changing bench, which at the right angle was perfectly visible to the outside. That's okay, I'd gotten used to having no privacy, but I could only imagine the luxuries the girls had. Their side was probably furnished like a Turkish bath by comparison!

The only problem with the pool was the fact that the water was too damn cold, even on the hottest, most humid days. I could feel every limb on my body shrivel right up when I jumped in... and not just the usual suspect. There were occasional warm spots in the water, but they probably weren't the kind I should've been hanging around in, now that I think about it. Other than that, it was a blast! That pool also came with a slide, which I was literally running to get back in line to (which apparently is against the rules or something). In any case, I did not wear "floaties"...you know, those things that make you look like you're a real heavyweight stud whenever you... oh who am I kidding, there's nothing manly about floaties! I didn't need them. I could dog paddle with the best of them!

So did I actually learn to swim that summer? ...Hey! These things looked pretty cool!

Hell to the yea-ah! 

Most of our lessons involved swimming back and forth, launching off the sides, splashing 101 (holding onto the side and kicking), and learning how to "use spoons, not forks" when going overhand. I insisted on inventing my own swimming maneuver though, calling it "knives," but it didn't take me very far. When I was above water, it was about making bubbles, and when below, it was about holding them in. That's all you need to know. I used to spend a lot of time under water holding my breath, keeping my eyes open to see up from underneath the other kids like the shark in Jaws. The only bubbles I didn't like so much were the ones that filled my shorts after jumping in, which would blow up my hips and blurp out the leg holes unexpectedly in one big bubble! Well, no. I take that back, those were the best! Second best, getting up next to another kid in calmer waters and letting the air out of your shorts. Bloop! "Nice."

Girls didn't have those benefits. Their bathing suits were skin tight and always looked like they were giving them wedgies. Not only that but they were required to shout "Marco!" "Polo!" back and forth at each other in the water, which is a "game" I guess? I truly don't know. At the end of the summer, we were given a cheap printout award by the lifeguards in charge of our swimming lessons (usually super hot high school chicks or dudes with sunglasses and more SPF than Ug's nose). All I remember about that achievement was how horribly, horribly wrong they spelled our last name.

In short, it took a shower just to erase the effects of the chlorine. I can still smell it.

Hurricane Felix

It was the summer of 1995, and my dad had me hooked on the Weather Channel. We were tracking the progress of the hurricane due to make a run up the east coast at category 4 strength, and for at least a week or two, it was the topic of conversation between me and my dad. Where is it going to go? Will is swing north? Will it fly out the sea? Will it slam into North Carolina and miss us completely? What the heck is that low pressure system doing? For more on this developing storm system, I take you to my 9-year-old self Weather Channel correspondent...

Back then, watching the Weather Channel was like watching a Sega Genesis game. The bright blue Local on the 8's screen was populated by bold white letters, little blazing suns, and puffy rainclouds stuck to fat lightning bolts, and invariably delivered in the key of cool... and by that I mean laid back, Pure Moods-y, sax-driven adult contempo. Ah... so smooth. Nothing was cooler than watching those big green snot blobs pass over the landscapes of gray puzzle pieces so long as Kenny G was the one heralding their journey. The wind could be ripping the roof off your house, and it'd all be okay so long as it was set to elevator muzak.

The strange nostalgia I have for the weather channel in the 90s is hard to describe, but maybe it has something to do with just how cozy and safe they made you feel watching it while all hell was breaking loose outside! Auntie Em it's a twister!! Shut the windows! Shut the shades! Deadlock the doors! Good... now sit down in your EZ chair, make some hot tea, wrap up in a blanket, and enjoy the feel good mall music cut with a nice sunset fade, orange to dark blue across the screen, and friendly little emoticons of rain drops and gray clouds. Ahh... doesn't seem so bad now, right? Until afterwards of course, when they show the footage of someone's roof getting taken off! 

Anyways, I remember Felix better than Hurricane Bob because I'd grown a few more braincells during those years. Rain was no longer just "cloud pee" and thunder was no longer just "cloud farts" (I know, that revelation hit me pretty hard). And it's funny because Hurricane Bob actually hit us, but all I remember about it is how I "held the furniture down" so nothing would break should the house go up like the Wizard of Oz. Men got to protect the house, after all! By the time of Felix, I was less interested in thwarting disaster, and more interested in watching it! The stock Hurricane Andrew footage that is... of roofs getting thrown off, waves crashing through windows, palm trees bent sideways...etc. And to think, we had one coming our way!  Fire up the camcorders!

I prayed night and day for a "Hurricane Mark." It would be the best hurricane, with mini tornadoes inside of it that would be throwing boats through the air and probably underwater dinosaurs or something, and yeah, the thunder would actually be clouds farting. In any case, there would be massive destruction, whole cities leveled, time portals opening up releasing even more dinosaurs, black holes swallowing people up, and alien spaceships would've been the masterminds behind it all! Oh the humanity! But yea, like nearly all of my 9yo fantasies, it never came true. 

As it turned out, Felix just hovered around North Carolina and did a couple loops before spinning out towards the North Atlantic. Bummer. It didn't flash, it fizzled, which is probably why we didn't stay tuned for Hurricane Luis. What a let down. Not even one roof was torn off! But in any case, you couldn't beat the Weather Channel when it came to inspiring yet another strange excuse for some good ol' father/son bonding (as if there are any normal excuses for it!), because when the storm hits, the men got to be prepared... with the camcorders! The destruction won't tape itself!

Creepy Crawlers

I'm going to echo what others have said about the old Easy Bake Ovens: they were sexist. Against boys! (I know right? But hear me out.) Sure, nothing beats a light bulb when it comes to baking the best brownies, but did those ovens always have to be so rounded, soft, and pink? How come only girls get to do the cooking?? I know many of us would've loved those things (in public no less!) if we didn't feel like we were breaking the law even  just for enjoying their edibles. Make a BOY version of that shit, I thought! ...Which, I can only imagine would've been decked out in sharks, wheels, a revving engine, frosting gun attachments, fart noises from the buttons, blasts of heavy metal to let you know the cookies were done, and it would run on an NES controller. Radical! Ex-cel-lent! Allllll-righty then!

But alas... no such thing existed.

So we got what we got when it came to diahrrea-inducing kids baking equipment, and we still played with it. In fact, many young men are coming forth, like myself, and declaring proudly that, yes, because of the actual Easy Bake machine, baking is cool, even in pink! And it's not that I had anything against the color pink. Heck, in the 90s, pink was unavoidable. It was one of the primary colors of the decade. And I may be an uber dork, but I am also still a dude. I didn't fear pink, it's just I feared the "implication." And the possible allergic reaction. And something about the word "Easy" just wasn't right... perhaps "XTREME!" would've been more tolerable.

But all hope was not lost! The marketers weren't really ignoring those of us with a Y chromosome completely, for another 60's toy was making a comeback in the 90s. And this one they chose to cast in that other hallowed primary color of the 90s: lime green, making it automatically a "boy toy" (the marketing gods have decided!). Easily the boy equivalent to the Easy Bake, it was known as the Creepy Crawler "bug maker (and don't dare call it an oven!)." This thing was one of the coolest gadgets ever because it appealed to two of the things boys love: bugs and goop. You'd pour your goop into the molds, slide them into the "bug maker", wait a while and slide them out, extract them one by one and have yourself... inedible rubber bugs... spiders and centipedes...etc., which you could then stick places to allegedly gross out the girls and annoy stuffy, prim and proper elderly people, which would cause them to get angry for some reason. False advertising! They never looked real enough to actually creep anyone out, and yet the girls still kicked our butts for dropping them in their hair. I'm calling the Better Business Bureau.
 

That prank only worked until even they got into it, because really, who says only boys can be into grody, slimy bugs anyways? And what do boys do whenever girls start invading our turf just like that and start making their own bugs? We say "awesome!" because her spider was huge AND had eight GNARLY legs AND a hundred eyes AND big sharp fangs! You go girl! By then I was already stealing and scarfing down their bulb-leavened cupcakes anyways while they sat waiting to cool, so things evened out in the culinary arena I guess. And I know I can't be the only one to put a few of these in my mouth. Even though they were inedible and they were bugs, they still at least looked like the most delectably chewy candy ever. Of course, whatever was in that "Plasti-Goop" probably couldn't have been healthy, but whatever. It wasn't the worst goop I've tried.

In any case, all it goes to show is that boys like to cook too, and for that there were slimy bugs, but we also like to eat what we cook, and for that, there were pink ovens. In the end, few were grossed out enough to go hungry... until after the cupcakes set in our systems for 30 minutes. THAT was what was scary. 

Spring Cleaning!

Spring is in the air, and that means if you're like me, and by that I mean a 90's kid, then you probably have this song running through your head... and if you don't, allow me to permanently put it there (Update: unfortunately you got to view it on youtube because every year many poor starving Viacoms go hungry).

Rocko was my favorite cartoon as a kid, and easily one of the most perverse, most mind-f@#%ingly awesome shows ever produced that isn't Ren and Stimpy. So without further adieu, the lyrics to Spring Cleaning:

Summers for fishing, and for lounging around...
Fall is for raking all the leaves off the ground...
Winter is for skating like Torville and Dean...
But we all know that spring is the season to clean.

Spring cleaning, spring cleaning!
We deodorize and sanitize and harmonize too!
Spring cleaning, spring cleaning!
We're gonna make this town look all shiny and new!

Spring cleaning! (I'll sweep off this mat!)
Spring cleaning! (I'll vacuum the cat!)
Spring cleaning! (Where'd I get this dead rat?)
You'll find a lot of stuff when your spring cleaning!

We got a lot of junk that we have just been dying to get rid of,
And there's so much garbage in this can that it's about to blow the lid off

Spring cleaning, spring cleaning!
Our disinfecting prowess is second to none! K?
Spring cleaning, spring cleaning!
It's a sick digusting job... sick disgusting job... sick disgusting job...
But it's gotta get done! *fart*