An Alternate Olympics

A little over a year ago, my grandmother died. I know, that's a terrible way to begin a story. I once read a short story where, in the first paragraph, the main characters accidentally kills an infant. I think that tops what I just did, so you should feel lucky.

She had Alzeheimer's, so her passing was positive - it was her time, so to speak. And it was actually a blessing, because we had a week's notice, and everyone who knew her was able to fly in and say goodbye. All the men my dad grew up with came to the house; it was where they all stayed when they were younger. They told many stories, and my favorite is this: there were five boys, all within a year of each other, that lived in her house. Every fall, each boy would invite four friends, and the 25 kids would be split into 5 teams of 5, and my grandfather would run an Olympics, with basketball games and sprinting events and a spades tournament. But the best event was hot wax tolerance. Each team would pick one kid, and the kid would hold out his arm, and hot wax would be poured on it. Whoever didn't wimp out won the gold.

I read a poem I wrote at the funeral. I wrote it when she was unconscious, and people were filing in and our of her room, whispering about hot wax tolerance.

look at me
i have four foot wings
as thin as my skin
and the color of my boys

rising up from my bed
i am floating to a place
where the stars are halfway
between silence and noise

look at me
i am an angel
i am done with changes
i am completely released

i have held on forever
but forever is over
this is me going
away with the east

look at me
yet not while you're crying
with your feet on the ground
and your minds set on mourning

i am a satellite drifting
but i am not drifting
i am not an old woman
on morphine

look at me
i have four foot wings
the skies are all mine
but where are my loved ones

i am a spirit
but they are still bodies
this is me saying
goodbye to my sons

Camp War Eagle Is Recruiting

This week at the University, Camp War Eagle is recruiting. They have booths set up outside of dining halls and the Student Union, and it's supposed to rain all week. But think of it as little tap tap taps of angels, saying, "Way to go!"

To encourage you to apply, I thought I'd tell a story. All counselors at War Eagle who work for more than four weeks are usually required to serve at least two weeks on the maintenance crew, which is called SWAT in a silly attempt at an acronym that I won't talk about. On SWAT, there are fifteen plus counselors who have grown to hate kids and need a break; they take two weeks off, and instead of play with campers, they clean dishes and set up for events. After two weeks, they have been driven so insane by this work, they'll do anything to escape, even work with kids.

This past summer, I was on SWAT for the second and third sessions, which are the third and fourth week of camp. For the previous two weeks, I had ten punk rock sixteen year olds who could only find words that ended in question marks or angst accents. I really hated campers after that, and on SWAT, I was searching for an outlet. I found it in the SWAT Monster.

I worked in the dish pit, taking metal cafeteria trays from kids and stacking them for the dish washer. Putting on a climbing harness and skate park pads, I tied myself to one of the large kitchen appliances in the pit and began acting like an animal. I ate leftover food, drank out of the slop bucket, smeared my face with ketsup. Sometimes, during lulls, my coworkers would take me out on all fours, using the harness and rope as a leash, and let me attack campers.

Kids loved it. They were fascinated, and during picnics, when I'd crouch by the trashcans like a gorilla, they'd feed me out of their hands. And I ate everything they gave me - ice cream, burgers, chips in barbarcue sauce, old apples, grass, raw eggs. As a result, I think I contracted salmonella. And that's why you should work at War Eagle

Best Coke Date Ever

On Thursday, we had scheduled a coke date between our pledge class and the pledge class of Delta Delta Delta. We were supposed to learn how to line dance - a BYX alum named Cy Martin (who may be a fourth year senior - all I know is that he was the only Beta class member attending chapter for two years straight) was lined up to not only teach the dances, but to call them off, too. I'm still not sure what that looks like, but in my mind I see an auctioneer.

As the pledges and I walked towards the back door of the Tri Delt house, sirens began to sound. I never knew we had sirens in Fayetteville. The sounds they produced makes me think they were military surplus from the Cold War. We had no idea what was going on, so we go inside the Tri Delt house and shut the door. In my mind, I truly believed we had seconds to live, and I had to find the love of my life right now.

That wasn't true. It was actually a tornado warning. For a few seconds I debated making my pledges line dance anyway, but considering the ongoing natural disaster, I decided that would labeled hazing. Instead, we forced all my pledges, all Tri Delt pledges, and all Tri Delts in the house at the time into the basement.

The Tri Delt basement is less a series of rooms than it is just a really curvy hallway. There were rooms down there, but we weren't allowed in. In fact, we weren't even allowed to look inside. My pledges, dressed like cowboys, stood shoulder to should lining the walls like human survivors in the Terminator movies. Girls clumped together in corners, ignoring anyone who wasn't a sister. Driven by the idea that we were the last of the human race, and we needed to be fruitful, I improvised: I told all my pledges that by midnight that night, they had to email me a 500 word biography of one Tri Delt. That started conversation.

We after about an hour and a half, when there was no tornado, but when the rain was still falling heavily. By midnight, I had received about fifteen emails - no one really took me seriously. No email was over a hundred words, either, but there were some great ones, including this:

"Tonight I met a girl named Alex Tedford. Now Alex is actually from my hometown which is the city of Little Rock. Surprisingly I don't believe that we had been formally introduced before tonight. She is a very nice girl that I would like to get to know better but here's the deal she has a boyfriend. Now I have actually seen this boyfriend of hers. He is not what you would call clean cut. He is actually the lead singer of a heavy metal band. I guess I have some competition. She is blonde and very pretty her boyfriend is a lucky guy."

To that pledge, I say, if there's not a ring on the finger, fair game.

Is This What Getting High Feels Like?

Austin City Limits was fantastic, but there was this one point that wasn't as cool. That was when a drunk girl burned me with her lit cigarette.

Blanton and I camped out at one of the larger stages, the AMD stage, for a little over five hours. Stages alternate shows, and each stage features an artist who plays a one hour set, then there's a one hour break, then another one hour set. At AMD we saw the Avett Brothers, Phoenix, and John Legend. All were great, but I really wasn't expecting anything out of the Avett Brothers, and they made it rain. At least they brought the cloud cover, which was highly desirable in the Austin heat.

However, in the waiting hour between the Avett Brothers and Phoenix, standing with Blanton at the front of the crowd (that's what you wait five hours for - to be at the front), I felt something that, at the time, I thought to be a mega wasp sting on my elbow.

I once saw a movie on the SyFy channel called Mansquito. I believe what I felt must have been comparable to what Lt. Randall felt fighting that monster.

After crying aloud in pain, I turned and saw a drunk, heavy girl holding a beer and a cigarette in one hand. She apologized - a lot - but really, when was the last time you burned a stranger with a cigarette? That sort of thing doesn't happen. It's like accidentally dropping a baby, or unintentionally selling state secrets to a Soviet Bloc country. Her kind of negligence was what put Nero in power.

As consolation, she showed me a mark on her arm where she had put a cigarette out by snuffing on her skin. How does that make me feel better? All I know now is that not only are you drunk, but you've also shown yourself to be a consistent idiot. To try and make her feel stupid, I took my elbow and put it on her forearm, so that the burn marks touched, and said, "High Five." She didn't get it.

The Unsung Heroes of ACL

I went to Austin City Limits yesterday with Blanton, and yes, it was great, but I can't talk about that right now. My heart is so full for one specific issue that I have to pour it out before it starts to boil and I die. I think that's what happens, from my rudimentary understanding of anatomy.

Sign language translators at music festivals. These women (I didn't see any men) are valiant - they process live lyrics and output them into the sign language format deaf people have come to know and love, all while maintaining some semblance of rhythm and meter. The best part: I have no idea why.

There were translators at every show I saw, and they all behaved differently. At Phoenix, the translators was shuffling her feet like she was in a step train, pumping her knees like pistons while translating the stutters and French accent of the lead singer. During John Legend, another woman focused on communicating the whole sex appeal by slowly swaying her very wide and old body. She may have spoken with her hands, but she was communicating with her hips. And the last show, Kings of Leon, had a spotlight at an odd angle, illuminating only half of the translator, so that her signs became gigantic shadow puppets on the muslin that covered the speakers.

My personal favorite was the woman at Andrew Bird. That lady deserves a medal, or at least a VIP pass. Maybe some time at the autograph tent. She managed to communicate about half of Bird's lyrics while keeping her involuntary laughter at her own incompetence to a minimum. This is not because she was bad - I think that she had ACL's number one hands - but because Bird's lyrics are so weird. There probably aren't signs for words like "formaldehyde" and "anoanimal" and "vestments of translucent alabaster." I'm pretty sure she translated that last one as "gown of see through rock." I really don't see another way to do it.

The best part was watching her try to communicate whistling, violin, and xylophone all at the same time; she had to find some way of expressing the idea of looping, but the best way she came up with was to try and stifle her laughter and point to her puckered lips, as if she was undergoing asphyxiation.

Deaf people can taste the delicious Sweet Leaf Tea, smell the weed smoke, feel the burning cigarette a drunk girl pushes into the flesh of their arm (and when you read deaf people, think Cass Trumbo), but they hear no noise. Really - why are deaf people going to a music festival?

What Is the Word for Eye Doctor?

This morning, I went to the orthinologist to have my contact prescription refilled. It is recommended that each time the supply of contacts runs out, an eye exam be administered. And I say administered, but I really mean inflicted.

Today, I was punched in the eye by air. My face was placed into the helmet from A Clockwork Orange and I was told to look into a pinhole light at the back of a dark cylinder. As I diligently stared, eager to please the fatherly orthopedic, I was punched - not tapped, or prodded, or dabbed, or drummed, or tagged, or even beckoned. The air didn't say, look over here; I'm your friend. I'm air and you breathe me. You need me to live. The air didn't give a high five, or a pound, or a back rub. The air didn't offer words of encouragement. It didn't even instigate an argument or provoke a fight. It punched me in the eye.

I fell out of my chair. You think I'm joking, but I initially sat in this swivel chair backwards, and when the punch came, I was so unprepared that I fell backwards. Then the doctor made me sit up and take one in the other eye.

What is more, the orthodonist put a laser into my eye to examine it, and then searched for something that obviously was not there, because it took him many moons. I think the worst part of a visit to the omnologist is that whatever agonizing procedure you experience, you have to experience it twice. Not only that, but the first time, being unprepared, you can handle the surprising pain, but the second time, you are well aware of what the air will not say before it hits you where the sun directly shines.

Who Was Bill Brasky?

Fayetteville High School held class officer elections last week. My cousin Gabe ran for senior class president. Gabe, I think, is not popular - but that's not to say he isn't cool. He tall and skinny and self depreciating (see photo). He overacts, and would make a perfect techie sidekick to any action hero. But he isn't the action hero that wins the school election; there can only be one Highlander.

I was told by a guy I mentor that on the day of elections, Gabe and his small group of loyal friends dressed in suits, then stood outside the high school and shook the hands of every single student attending class that day. Then he lost. But I thought his campaign strategy was extremely classy, and I would have voted for him, if I had been allowed to.

I'm not allowed to vote in FHS elections anymore, one, because I'm not a student (probably the first issue that would come up if I tried to vote), but more interestingly, two, because I sabotaged those very same elections my senior year.

As a senior, I was far beyond running for class officer - I only wanted to screw up everyone else's attempts to do so. I created a fake person, Bill Brasky, and got the required amount of signatures to insert him into the race for sophomore class president. Then, my friends and I began an aggressive viral marketing campaign, printing hundreds of flyers that only read, "WHO IS BILL BRASKY?" and wallpapering the school with them like ads for Italian political parties. Then I left school, so as to not be present when Bill was unmasked.

Bill won. To this day, I am not sure how. It is possible the sophomores did not care at all. For my part, I got into hot water with the student council president - then we got out, leaped into the pool, then jumped back into hot water, because that's always a rush. But that was the extent of the trouble. The principal actually encouraged me to take the ACT as Bill. I only wish Gabe had put his effort into destroying the system, instead of cooperating with it.