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When I wrote my welcome back post, I sort of got myself stuck because I immediately started thinking all philosophic about life and what not. I just didn’t quite know where to begin. Thankfully, my daughter, Bronze, had her 5th birthday party this weekend, so I’m going to ease into this again by starting with that.
This was the first party that Ex and I have planned since the separation. Before, the parties were sort of her element. The highlight of a birthday had always been making some sort of a fancy cake though. We’ve had Dora, Cinderella, Blue, etc. Ex has all sorts of cake decorating supplies. We used to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning the night before each party, her doing the cake, me mixing frosting colors, washing dishes, and hanging decorations. So, since I’ve helped, or rather, witnessed it plenty of times before, I volunteered to make the cake this time.
Ex was glad to let me do it. She planned the party, which was to be an outing at a nearby park, and took care of inviting a couple of friends from Bronze’s preschool class, along with family. I took Bronze to the party store and let her pick out the My Little Pony themed plates, cups, etc. she wanted. We got some My Little Pony pencils, stickers, and bubbles for some of the favors, and I printed out a few coloring pages and word searches to include in the goodie bags as well.
As a kid, my mom would always make really cool cakes for my brother and I. That, combined with the awesome cakes Ex had made, made me feel like I had a lot to live up to. I designed what I thought a My Little Pony cake should look like, how I’d need to cut it, and how to decorate it. I borrowed the decorating supplies from Ex and went at it.
I baked the cake mix, cut it, and got it all laid out on a piece of covered foam board. However, one thing I hadn’t considered was how incredibly difficult it would be to spread frosting onto the side of a cut piece of cake! The frosting just kept grabbing onto the cake and trying to crumble the pieces instead of spreading nicely. I finally came up with the idea to stick the frosting into the microwave so that it’d almost run onto the sides instead of me needing to spread it. Brilliant!
I amazed myself with how well that worked out, so much so that when it came time to do the blue frosting I’d mixed up for the eye and the butterfly, I thought I’d try it again. Except I forgot to consider that instead of having a huge bowl of pink frosting, I was only working with a tiny bowl of blue, so I ended up boiling it. Not sure if anyone realizes what happens to frosting after it’s been boiled, but it sort of crusts into lumps of very hard frosting. And trying to squeeze hard lumps of frosting through a small frosting tip is nearly impossible. I kept having to clear the tip with a toothpick and what should have taken about 5 minutes, took nearly 30! Eventually I managed to get something resembling a butterfly and an eye though. Bronze helped place the licorice hair while I sprinkled on the red sparkles, and it was finished. Bronze said she loved it, which of course made all the effort worth it.
While I cleaned up, Bronze insisted on licking the knives and spoons clean, and I let Azure have a couple too, which they went to town on, getting frosting all over their faces.
After a quick bath for them, we were off to the party store once more for balloons. I had decided to splurge on the giant $10 mylar heart shaped pony one, along with a few pink and red regular ones to go with it. Driving after that was quite difficult, as the balloons took up most of the inside of my car. I’m sure it made for quite a sight, as I was leaned over close to the drivers window, a balloon pushed up against my side, unable to see either kid, only able to get a clear view of the front of the car and my driver’s side mirror. At one point, I even had to ask Bronze if she could see any cars out of her window next to us! I was pretty sure there wasn’t anyone in the next lane, but still, there’s nothing like letting a 5 year old check your blind spot.
We got to the park and the kids took off to play. As I carried the cake to the seating area, the incredibly strong wind was whipping all around me. I went back to the car to get the balloons and just as I got back to the picnic table, a big gust came along and pulled the giant one loose from it’s string. I watched in horror as it swooped down and away, unable to do anything to save it. I couldn’t believe my luck though as the wind carried it directly into the next picnic table over, where it lodged itself safely up against the end of the table, with the seats holding it firmly in place. I ran over and grabbed it, took the entire bunch back inside the car, and retied the string with about 15 knots.
The kids played for a while, then had cake and ice cream sandwiches. Bronze was the last one at the table, as everyone else had finished and went back to playing. Finally she looked up at me and said that she wanted to be done. I said sure. It was then that I noticed that she’d eaten all of her ice cream sandwich and all of her licorice, but only one tiny bite of cake. She said, “Sorry Daddy, but I don’t like the frosting.” I assured her that it was ok, and to just go enjoy herself. I chuckled to myself though, thinking about how just a few hours earlier she’d been licking the frosting off of everything, with a pink nose to boot. Oh well!
The kids had a great time playing, climbing, swinging, and digging while I just enjoyed my time with them. Ex mostly sat at the table with her family, talking etc. while I stayed with the kids. Toward the end, once just the 4 of us were left, she spent 10 or so minutes on the phone with her new boyfriend. I was at the other side of the park, in the sandbox with Azure, while she was pushing Bronze on the tire swing, so I’m not sure who called whom, but either way, it felt odd to me on so many levels, especially watching her tell the kids a couple of times that they needed to wait a minute for her since she was busy on the phone.
Once it was time to go, I went with them back to Ex’s house to play with the kids and try out a couple of the new games she’d got for presents, while Ex’s parents were in the backyard assembling the sand and water table they’d purchased. I didn’t realize it at the time, since I was playing, but they ordered pizza. Once it came, before I even had time to think about it, Ex and her parents started saying goodbye to me. I gave my hugs and kisses to the kids and slinked out the back door while they all sat down to eat together. What a strange feeling. I’m not sure how long until it isn’t so weird, but for now, I just had to chalk it up to another perplexing experience.
It doesn’t matter though, as Bronze had a happy 5th, and we managed to not screw it up with any grown up drama.
The time has come for me to attempt this once again. For too long, I’ve been hiding in the shadows, still reading a few blogs, mostly through my feed reader, only leaving an occasional comment to let you know I’m still here. Yet like the spring flowers, I find myself being drawn out, wanting to put myself out there again. I have so many thoughts, so many fleeting words and ideas that roll around in my head without an escape. I need to put the thoughts down here, if for nothing else than to clear the clutter that is my brain.
I’ve held on to this domain name for a long while, wondering when it might finally be time for me to talk again, finally be time for me to discuss what it is to be living This Perplexing Life. Now is that time.
Just so everyone’s clear, I’m Delton. I’ve got a son, Azure*, 6 1/2 and a daughter, Bronze*, 5, and a soon to be ex, Ex*, formerly referred to as The Wife*.
Welcome back.
* Not their real names.
I started out High School Memories by talking about one of my favorite teachers, Mr. M. This time, I'd like to talk about my least favorite teacher. What's the big deal about that you might ask? Didn't everyone have a teacher that they didn't like? Sure, but did you also have that teacher for a class that you really wanted to like? Did you also have that teacher singling you out to mock you in front of 60 classmates? Did you also have so many run-ins with that teacher that you still have monthly nightmares about him nearly 18 years after graduation? Ha, I knew that last one would get ya! (If you don't watch Law & Order, please skip to the next paragraph.) Gong, gong. This is that story.
I started playing musical instruments when I was 4. Over the years, I learned to play piano, organ, accordion, drums, and trumpet. I liked band, especially marching band. I marched in a Drum & Bugle Corps for 2 summers. I won awards for being the best marcher. I was the drum major of marching band in High School (and again in college) cause I was the best and I knew it. Unfortunately, Tom (Yes, it's his real name, I refuse to cover up who he is since he still haunts my dreams after so many years. And, yes we called him by his first name as a sign of disrespect.) Tom decided to make my life hell.
Each semester, Tom would hold tryouts where you would have to play your instrument in front of the entire class to see who was the best and would therefore get the most challenging parts. No big deal, every band does that. However, not every bandleader chooses to make fun of a student for doing poorly because of nerves when playing in front of the entire class. I could do the parts. He knew I could do the parts. I just couldn't handle the pressure of that situation. His history of making fun of me just made it worse each time tryouts would come up again. I finally started just playing what I could and told him to give me whatever part he wanted.
My junior year, Tom changed his grading scale "to deal with people like me." (What kind of teacher talks this way to his students?) See, it was his view that the reason I couldn't play well when singled out was because I didn't practice at home, and it had nothing at all to do with nerves. While it was true I didn't practice, I didn't need to and could play just fine as part of the band. Anyway, his new scale added weekly times for us to play in front of the class and get graded on. You can imagine the joy I felt over this. So, instead of band being an easy "A", like it's supposed to be, I started getting "B's", which then brought my GPA down and got my parents on my case. Of course, they thought he was a great teacher and that I just wasn't applying myself again, since they too knew I wasn't practicing at home. But this post isn't about my parents, it's about my old buddy Tom.
As I said, I liked being in band and had a ton of friends in there, but it made putting up with Tom all the more difficult. I was also a member of the Pep Band, which was a group of us who'd go to basketball games, etc. to play the fight song and stuff. Each year, the Pep Band got invited to go play at the local minor league hockey team's game, which I went to and enjoyed. However, my senior year the game was on a Friday evening, which was also when the theatre group was going to be working on building the set for a new play that I was the student director for. I've already discussed how much I enjoyed set building.
Since going to this hockey game was a volunteer activity after school, I told Tom I didn't want to go. Unfortunately for me, the only other person who played first part trumpet was on the girl's basketball team and had an away game that night. Tom and I argued at length about whether I should have to go to the hockey game or not. I kept trying to remind him that it was a volunteer organization and he couldn't make me go. He talked to the girl and found out there was a chance she'd be back from her basketball game in time to catch the bus to the hockey game. With that, he got me to agree that if she didn't make it back in time, I'd go to the hockey game.
Well, after school that Friday, I started working on building the set with my theatre friends and before I knew it, it was time to get ready for the hockey game and there was no sign of the girl's basketball team being back. I lost it. All the hate I had generated toward Tom over the years came bubbling up and I decided there was no way he could force me to go. (Try to look past the fact that I game him my word. I absolutely hated this man.) It was a volunteer group and so I knew that there couldn't be any repercussions to my not going. I did the only logical thing one would do when faced with this situation. I hid.
Since I was in the auditorium all the time as part of the theatre group, I knew my way around the passages under our stage. I crawled my way into a dark, remote corner and waited. I could hear various people from the Pep Band coming into the auditorium asking for me. Everyone from theatre gave conflicting stories, but it basically boiled down to yes, I'd been there, but no one had seen me in a while, and maybe I'd left. One slight problem with this excuse was the fact that my car was parked in the very first spot outside the doors near the band room and auditorium, and everyone in both groups knew it was my car.
More time ticked by and Tom finally came in asking for me. He asked Mr. M where I was, and Mr. M gave the same response everyone else had given. I could hear the steam pouring out of Tom's ears before he stomped out. I thought I was golden until one guy from band started crawling around under the stage, thinking maybe I was under there. At this point, I'd been hiding for around a half an hour. My eyes were completely accustomed to the dark and I knew there was no way he could see me from his vantage point. I held my breath and waited. He peered in my general direction for a moment and then looked a different way for a moment before giving up the search.
I heard the commotion die down, gave it about 15 more minutes until I was sure that the bus had left for the hockey game, and then came crawling out of my hiding spot. Everyone from theatre started cracking up. I was filthy! I had dust and dirt all over my clothes and there were spider webs all over in my hair. But, I got to stay and had a fun evening working on the set, just like I'd wanted.
[TO BE CONTINUED...]
P.S. Here's my senior picture, since I mentioned my hair. It deserves it's own post someday, but ever since I started talking about high school, I've been dying to come up with a reason to link it. Crazy, I know, but it was the late 80's, so I would have fit in with the MTV crowd at least.
Quick update. It turns out the violation was simply one of my coworkers who needed a copy of a file I'd emailed her the previous day which she'd accidentally deleted. She went to my machine and decided to just start poking around trying to find it while I was at lunch. For whatever reason though, when she saw how I was reacting yesterday, she panicked and felt the need to lie instead of coming clean. I had a nice long email apology waiting for me this morning and things are fine again. Regardless, my screensaver lock remains on, just in case. It was stupid of me to not have it on in the first place.
Also, I see that it's National Delurking Week. Please leave a comment. I'd love to hear from my millions of readers! Ok, I have yet to break 20 on the site monitor, but still, say hi!
We now return you to the regular programming of High School Memories...
We interrupt the regularly scheduled broadcast of High School Memories for this important announcement. Whoever in my office felt the need to be poking around on my computer today at lunchtime needs to LEAVE MY MACHINE THE HELL ALONE!
When I came back from lunch today, I went to start up MS Word, when I noticed that it was already running. I am 100% certain I hadn't used it before lunch. I looked and saw 2 documents on my recent files list that had been opened on today's date. Both files were things I had on my desktop but hadn't even needed recently. The first was just some notes I had written prior to composing an email over a month ago. The second was a "lessons learned" follow up to a project I finished working on 6 months ago. So, as you can see, not any big deal, except for the fact that SOMEONE WAS USING MY MACHINE WITHOUT MY PERMISSION.
I've tried using screensaver password protection at past jobs, but I always found it annoying when the screensaver would popup and require my password when I was just sitting in front of my machine without interacting with it for 5 minutes. This would happen all the time, such as talking on the phone, having a conversation with a coworker walking by, or even reading some PDFs online.
Since our office requires a keycard anyway, I figured for security reasons, I didn't need to worry about being that secure. I started asking around, but no one saw anyone come into my cube at lunchtime. I immediately turned on my screensaver password protection and setup a hotkey to turn it on anytime I want to. I'm sure I'll get annoyed by having to type my password again and again, but after today, I feel violated.
As we continue this stroll down memory lane, the next story I'll share is about my school spirit, or lack thereof. Each year, my high school would have something called Spirit Week, which consisted of a variety of activities for students to participate in and earn points for their grade, culminating in a pep rally on Friday afternoon.
This pep rally was simply the most idiotic thing ever created. First, the winners of a popularity school spirit vote taken during the week for each grade would be named the spirit squad. These 4 guys and 4 girls in each grade would then get to take part in a bunch of games while the rest of the school was forced to watch and cheer them on. Mind you, there were around 250 people per grade, so there were 1000 students watching these 32 popular people. Each game would also have points awarded to each grade, and the class with the most points from all the week's activities would earn the "spirit jug". This old brown jug would then get handed to the spirit squad and they would run around the gym whooping like assholes.
By my senior year, I'd really had enough with spirit week. I got together with some of my friends in the theatre group and we decided to try to steal the popularity school spirit vote. We all voted for 1 guy and 1 girl from our circle of theatre friends and we spread the word to as many people as we thought we could influence. More on this when I recall what happened at the pep rally.
Another of the activities that took place during the week was called the penny drive. There were 4 collection buckets, 1 for each grade, where money was collected for charity. The trick of the penny drive was that pennies collected in your grade's bucket counted as positive points, while silver coins and dollars in your grade's bucket counted as negative points. So, you'd put your pennies in your own grade's bucket and put everything else in some other bucket. Of course the winning grade was always the one that had the total closest to a positive number.
Each morning during announcements, the principal would give the penny drive totals so far. After the Thursday announcements, it became apparent that the seniors were going to win the penny drive unless something drastic changed, and a scheme began to develop in my mind. I decided that I would collect silver money from seniors and tell them that I was going to put it into the freshman's bucket. I talked to all kinds of people, collecting money. Of course, the people that I normally never talked to and actually liked spirit week thought this was a great idea and contributed heavily. The problem was, I didn't put the money into the freshman's bucket and instead put it into the senior's bucket. Yes, I am a liar and was stealing these people's money, but I figured all the money went to charity anyway, so that eliminated any ethical dilemma I may have been feeling.
There was just one little problem with my plan, which came up the next day at lunch. I was sitting in the cafeteria eating my lunch with my friend Kirt, who knew nothing about what I'd done, when 3 rather large football players approached me. Keep in mind, I was a scrawny 125 pound member of the theatre and band. All thoughts are included in parenthesis for comedic value, including Kirt's, which he told me after lunch.
Jock : "Hey asshole, we saw what you did and we want our money."
Delton : "What are you talking about?" (Shit, how'd they find out?)
Kirt : (Why are these dude's demanding Delton give them money?)
Jock #2 : "Don't mess around, we want our money."
Delton : "I'm not giving you any money." (This doesn't look good.)
Kirt : (This doesn't look good.)
Jock #1 : "Listen jerk, you lied and now you owe us money."
Jock #3 : "Yeah!"
Kirt begins to stand up.
Kirt : (Hmmm, this sucks that they're picking on my little buddy Delton. If this gets out of hand, I'll just punch #1 as hard as I can in the face and hope Delton can keep #3 busy while I work on #2.)
Delton : "Kirt, sit down and let me handle this." (I wonder how much money I'd have to give them to get them to leave?)
Kirt sits down and looks at me like I'm crazy.
Delton : "Here's a dollar, now get out of my face."
Jocks take the dollar and leave.
Kirt : "Why in the world are you giving those guys money?"
Delton tells Kirt the story of the penny drive scam.
Kirt : "You idiot, you mean I almost got into a fight with 3 guys because I was going to defend you after you stole from them???"
Delton : "Yeah, thanks buddy, you're a good friend...Uhhh, sure glad it didn't come to that!"
You'd think that was the end of it, but you'd be wrong. Remember when I said I'd recall the story of the pep rally later? Well, that time has come. The pep rally started and the first thing was for the principal to announce the winners of the vote. Both of my friends from the theatre group were voted onto the spirit squad. What joy I felt at helping to displace a couple of the popular people. They participated in all of the stupid games and finally finished that part. Next, the other week's activities results were announced; with the final thing before the awarding of the spirit jug being the results of the penny drive. "In fourth place, the freshman. In third place, the sophomores. And the winners of the penny drive...the juniors!"
Talk about elation, I couldn't believe I'd done it. I was grinning from ear to ear. A couple of seconds later, a chant started up from the senior's section of the gym. I look around, and see Jock #1 talking with a few of his friends and they're pointing at me, leading the chant of "Delton, Delton, Delton!" Of course, my friends from the theatre group had no idea what was going on, they just thought it'd be fun, so they started chanting my name too. Suddenly, half the gym is chanting my name in the middle of this pep rally. Needless to say, I was a little worried.
After the chanting died down, the principal gave the totals. The seniors had enough points overall and were awarded the spirit jug. So, our spirit squad still got to run around like assholes, and no real harm came from my scheme. However, I snuck out the side door of the gym after the pep rally and walked around half of the school building to get to where I needed to be next, just in case.
Nothing more ever came of this, but it was certainly one of my crowning moments from my senior year. I'm sitting here laughing again just recalling these events.
Updated to add: Got an email from Kirt after I told him to read this post. He said: "The only correction I would make to your blog is that I wasn't counting on any help from you in the fight."
While I cleaned up, Bronze insisted on licking the knives and spoons clean, and I let Azure have a couple too, which they went to town on, getting frosting all over their faces.
