Movin' on up

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been getting all of my ducks of higher education in a row: my mascot scholarship from the Florida Marlins and the Florida State Baseball Association, my application to the University of Florida, my early decision contract to UF, my application for on-campus housing, and my letters of recommendation.

And I’ve decided that even though I really enjoy the rigidity and simplicity of the high school routine, I am really, really looking forward to college.

Identity Crisis

Because Palm Harbor University High School was opened only 10 years ago, it is essentially devoid of any tradition or culture. In an attempt to change that, I approached Dr. Brown yesterday about the possibility of investing in a mascot that could be present at our school’s sporting events and the like. He met the idea with little opposition and said that, pending approval from the football coach and the administrator in charge of athletics, the school would probably be able to drop $4,000.00 towards the creation of a professional mascot outfit.

That was the easy part.

Our school is the home of the Hurricanes. Now tell me, what kind of mascot could one wear to represent a hurricane? The University of Miami has “Sebastian”:http://umsis.miami.edu/~rlangel/Traditions.htm, the Ibis; The Carolina Hurricanes have “Stormy”:http://www.carolinahurricanes.com/canesworld/stormy.asp, the Ice Hog; it seems that to make a costume an actual round hurricane would be impractical and really, really lame.

So, I’ve been asking around and here are some suggestions:
* A pirate (The school’s original mascot was going to be Captain Storm, until the administration nixed the idea.)
* A bird of some sort (UM folklore states that the Ibis is the last bird to leave before a hurricane and the first to return.)
* Poseidon (This fellow, while not the Greek god of storms – that’s Zeus’ domain – is the god of the ocean, which could apply readily to the whole hurricane theme.)
* A palm tree (This was Egle’s contribution, and Doug drew a gnarly schematic during our math class yesterday. I liked it until I got a general reaction from a few students who said it would be stupid.)

I have no more ideas.

So, please, throw out some wisdom, lest you get stuck with Tempest the Tree all season:

!/textpattern_g119/images/114.jpg!

Chance taken

If you talk to anyone who has known me for more than four minutes, they’ll all tell you the same thing: out of general principle, I am diametrically opposed to most (if not all) forms of affectionate interaction. I say this just to give a general idea of how far I actually went out on a limb this morning.

Every morning, I go to the local Krispy Kreme and order a medium bold coffee (with whole milk and three sugars) before I pick up my carpool (which, by the way, is very funny when Angus tries to get into my super-cramped backseat). I’ve gone every weekday since the start of school and have become quite the regular – most of the time, the lady who serves me every day only charges me 50 cents instead of the usual 99.

But for some reason, today I was driven to change my scheme. Instead of pulling up to the speaker box in the always empty drive thru lane and saying the usual line (“Just a medium bold coffee with whole milk and three sugars, please”), I decided to call her by the name that I had noticed on her name tag two days prior.

“Good morning, Debbie – I’ll just have my medium coffee with who-”

She cut me off and said, “Okay, pull up, sweetie pie.”

My friends, it seems that such a personal remark worked in my favor. Instead of a cup of coffee and the newspaper that comes with it, Debbie treated me to a doughnut in addition to my usual order. It was hot and delicious. Probably even more delicious because it was free.

Either way, this could be a lesson: once you’re comfortable with a person, once you’ve gotten to know them, once you’re no longer threatened by their strangeness, feel free to take that extra step and refer to your fellow human by name.

It might get you a free doughnut.

The one that got away

The other night, there was no milk in the house. This does not bode well for a certain pair of parents I know, as they enjoy a few cups of milked-up coffee every morning. So, they sent me out to the store with three dollars to pick up a quick gallon before I went to bed.

I traveled two blocks to the local Walgreen’s, whereupon I was able to find a gallon of whole milk on sale for less than two dollars. I took it from the freezer and made my way to the cashier.

She was a nice looking girl of about twenty two. Not too tall, and certainly not worthy of such a menial position as a cashier at a twenty four hour drugstore. Either way, I gave her my milk and proceeded to pay her. Thus began one of the sadder confrontations of my life.

She asked, “Do you want your milk in a bag?”

“No, it’s already…”

I was stumped. I didn’t want a bag. But I needed to justify my intentions somehow. So I ended my sentence in just about the stupidest way possible, hoping that she would either ignore my musings or be fooled into mistaking them for humor.

“No, it’s already in a carrying… uh… container.”

I knew it was over for me. My cover was blown, and it was obvious that I had been one quip short of success that night. She immediately and quite sarcastically shot back, “That was a really funny joke. No, really.”

Hoping that we could put the past behind us, I attempted to speed up and move on with the transaction, but to no avail. “No, really. That was _really_ good. You’re a funny guy. Really.”

I thanked her and then left, knowing well that there was yet another woman that would never take me seriously, all thanks to an ill-contrived one-liner.

Life with Loopy

The belt is a great invention. It can hold up pants, whip disobedient children, and, if you’re a real handyman in a desperate situation, it can even act as a replacement belt in car engines.

But, as with any seemingly benign thing in the world, with the belt comes a certain degree of risk. The risk is not a particularly catastrophic hazard, but since I’m one of the most socially paranoid people I know (and trust me when I say that I know a lot of people), it can harbor some significant psychological perils.

Of course, I’m talking about the rare happenstance when you miss a belt loop. Sure, if you catch it right away as you’re slipping into your old faded Levis, it’s easily remediable. But if the snafu manages to slip you by and you walk out into public with a pair of inadequately accessorized trousers, you’re bound to be noticed. And when that happens, my friend, what is a boy to do?

Knowing that you missed a belt loop following notification from an outlandishly critical public is just about the most vulnerable feeling in the world. How do you handle it? You could excuse yourself and find a corner in which to reassess your attire, but there’s always that interim period wherein you are completely aware of your shoddy dress, but there’s nothing you can do about it. Then again, you could always just unbuckle then and there and repair the misdoings of earlier in the day, but that has the potential of being ill-received, as the majority of the world does share my standard of etiquette (or lack thereof).

Alas, there is no easy answer. However, if I ever unbuckle my belt near you, please don’t take it the wrong way. I don’t know any better.

Tick/Tock

Before I begin, I would like to make it clear that I love my mother very much. She reads my writing, so I wouldn’t want her to get the wrong idea about anything I post online.

That being said, the woman has the most skewed concept of time in the world. All of the clocks in our house (with the exception of the ones in my bedroom) are set to be approximately five minutes ahead of the actual time. Her reasoning is understandable: she never wants to be late.

Therefore, one would assume that it is easy to be able to know the correct time while looking at any clock in my house. All you would really have to do is subtract five minutes from the time which is upon the clock,. However, like many of life’s false promises, this protocol is full of flaws due to the fact that absolutely none of the clocks in the Peterson household are set to the same time.

Take, for example, a sample reading of a few of the house’s timepieces:
* The clock on the wall in the dining room (that is taped together with scotch tape because I accidentally made it fall one time) reads 10:48.
* There lies a small desktop clock atop the wine rack in the dining room that reads 10:31.
* In the living room, there’s a clock that chimes every 15 minutes. It reads 10:46.
* On the wall in the living room, there is a nifty cuckoo clock that reads 10:47.
* There also sits a cheap grandfather clock in the dining room that my brother got for my mother for her birthday or something a few years ago. It reads 3:50, but I’m pretty sure the reason for that inaccuracy can be attributed to a lack of consistent winding. Anyhow, it still contributes to the point at hand.
* The actual time, according to “The Man”:http://www.time.gov/, is 10:43.

The success of my mother’s goal of punctuality, therefore, is wholly dependent on which room you’re in before you leave. Me? I’ll just sit at my computer and be five minutes late to every place I go.

Coming soon to a country club near you!

We Petersons have a sad and sorry history when it comes to the game of golf. My father brought a new level of amateurism to the sport when he started way back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth and has since passed along the torch of suckiness to his two sons.

Yesterday, in an attempt to feel rich, my brother and I traveled out to a local course. We qualified it as such: he’s soon to be a lawyer, and lawyers need to golf. Anyhow, we teed off on the first hole with positive attitudes and optimistic outlooks. By the 18th green, however, our hopes and dreams were cut at the seams.

Ian and I started this par 53 course with boxes and boxes of shiny new golf balls. We finished the course with (very lenient) scores of 85 and 99, respectively, and one golf ball.

One ball.

By the 18th tee, we had managed to lose upwards of 20 balls and were forced to play the hole separately. I used the remaining ball to finalize my already miserable stroke count and then brought it back to the tee so that my brother could finish up the course. That, my friends, is Peterson golf at its finest.

Perhaps we should just stick to video games.

Since sliced bread

I am fully aware of the fact that there cannot possibly exist more than, say, four people in the entire world that share my opinions on this matter. However, because the Internet is an outlet for my (always correct) thoughts on a variety of subjects, I’m just going to go ahead and say this because it needs to be said.

Up until a week ago, I wouldn’t watch MTV if my life depended on it. I felt that it would make my brain rot into a casserole of knowledge that once was. However, as an ordinary teenager in the United States, I have learned to embrace the inanity of it all and settle for a mediocre intellectual existence.

That said, brace yourself for the opinion that may encourage you to close your browser and never read my ramblings again:

The “Andy Milonakis Show”:http://www.mtv.com/onair/andy_milonakis/ on MTV is the best show on basic cable today.

I know – it’s a radical view. But this guy throws the best random and in-your-face humor fight at you and you are forced to keep up with his outrageous antics or get left behind in the dust of pure genius. Unfortunately, a majority of the world is so closed minded that the art behind the scripting of the Andy Milonakis Show is lost behind immature cries for more mind numbing filth like “Date My Mom”:http://www.mtv.com/onair/dyn/date_my_mom/series.jhtml or “Room Raiders”:http://www.mtv.com/onair/dyn/room_raiders/series.jhtml and is therefore destined to die a pretty quick death.

Those ignorant fools.

It's how you play the game

If you’ve never played The Penis Game, you are either above the age of 20 or a total loser. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the sport, here’s a quick 411:

One person says the word “penis” in a public place. Another person, having accepted Player One’s challenge, then says “penis” at a higher decibel. In variations of the game, another person is generally the unofficial judge and confirms whether or not Player Two’s exclamation was louder. The two players each repeat their turns and the loser is the person who lacks the confidence to continue shouting the sullied word.

Now, my family is a unique bunch. We’ve been playing for years, and my mother is almost always our competition. She never misses a good round of The Penis Game.

Yesterday, the family was in the state capitol, and when we entered the solemn sanctuary known as the Florida Supreme Court, I couldn’t help myself. I nudged my mom and the contest was on.

Though the game was very short lived (as my mother was far too embarrassed to play in such a setting), it was very exciting. Needless to say, after all was said and done, I was the champion. Yes, folks, that’s right – I was the victor in the highest court in the State of Florida.

That’s one down, 49 to go.

Cheesed off

When I was a little kid, I was always wary of eating salad. If it was green and was not covered with melted cheddar cheese, there was never usually a good chance that such an item would come within a foot of my mouth.

In my old age, though, I’ve matured a little bit. If I am eating at a restaurant and my dinner comes with a salad, I can manage to swallow it while washing it down with a nice vinaigrette.

However, I cannot bring myself to eat garden salads. My ideal salad is basically a bowl of lettuce with croûtons and a sufficiently fattening dressing. I have nothing against garden salads in regards to their content except for one item.

When the chef takes those little strips of carrots and showers my salad with them, my basic instinct (or wishful thinking, whichever you prefer) says, “Oooh! Cheese!”

Oh no, my friends. It’s just carrot. Yuck.