AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, here, here, here, here, and here

I was flipping past a reality show on TV and there was this group of dirty folks in rags stranded on some desert island. They had no food, no showers, and nothing to do except brutally fight each other to avoid getting booted off the show. In the span of a few minutes, I saw them struggle and fail to make a fire, watch their makeshift shelter collapse, and realize that for the next three days they had to survive on a coconut.

Bummer, right?

Well I thought so but the next scene showed them sitting around a cold beach talking about food. “Just think about eating a juicy burger right now,” the tired woman in a yellow bandana began. “With the grease just glistening on it, a square of thick cheddar cheese slowly melting, and crispy bacon on top.”

“Mmmm,” dirty-faced man with neck tattoos continued. “And some hot oily fries beside that. Glistening from the deep fryer… with salt sprinkled all over them … and a crisp dill pickle on the side.”

Everybody started smiling, their eyes were aglow, as their brains sent them soaring somewhere else.

The best fantasies do that.

It’s incredible how our minds can shoot us places we’ve never been before. Fantasies fill us with experiences that feel and seem real… and where anything we want to happen suddenly can. What do you want in your life right now? Who do you want to be with? Where do you dream of going to? Just close your eyes…

… and see it.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker.

No matter what, if you’re working for The Man, there’s a chance you’re getting paid every two weeks. Maybe every other Thursday or every other Friday, maybe dollars dropped into bank accounts or fistfuls of change dropped into sweaty palms.

All I know is if you’re on this schedule, you’re loving the couple months a year when you score three paychecks instead of two. Nobody knows how or why this happens, but let’s hold hands today and agree not to question it. On that third payday, raise your eyebrows, glance left very slowly, glance right very slowly, nod slightly, and carry about your business.

If you’re chiseling away at a mortgage, throwing in for car payments, or dropping coin on a fat phone bill, then you know the bliss that comes with having a tiny bit extra after paying your monthly debts.

So go ahead: Supersize that combo, fill up with high-octane, or just tuck it under your pillow for a rainy day.

AWESOME!

What do you do?

Me, I work in an office but if I try telling people more than that their eyes gloss over. “You lost me at spreadsheets,” my friends say, while yawning and giving the waiter a head nod and ghost pour for another beer.

But I get that — jobs are complicated and it’s hard to understand what anybody does anymore.

When I was a kid I had a big hardcover book showing me all the things I could be when I grew up. “One day,” it said, “you can be a teacher, factory worker, or astronaut! You can be a fireman, doctor, or traffic cop!” The narrator didn’t say anything about strategy consultants, event planning coordinators, or business analysts working on special projects.

Yes, we all started down the same school path but along the way our lives took different turns. Wide roads twisted into off-ramps, off-ramps broke into sidestreets, and sidestreets split into dirty little paths every which way until we all ended up where we are today.

Life gets tricky and sometimes our day jobs feel so far away from everything we learned when we were young. But there’s something so sweet about the things we learned in third grade – about how they shaped our world and got us started on the same page. We started rolling down long lives of learning … but it all started when we all knew the same things:

1. Types of rocks. Wasn’t it mind-blowing to finally learn what we’d been crawling and standing on our whole life? Also, igneous, sedmientary, and metamorphic were fun words to say over and over again. Speaking of fun words, you remember what igneous was made of, right? Magma.

2. How to Brush Your Teeth* (*and other hygiene basics). I miss the days when nurses would come to school and teach everyone how to clean themselves. Anyway, back in third grade my friend Natalie and I were making construction paper crowns in the hallway when a nurse came to visit our class. We completely missed the oversized toothbrush scraping that big set of plastic teeth (obviously stolen from Giant World in Mario 3.) Most kids picked up the basics that day. Me, all I got was gingivitis.

3. Cities and Countries and Planets, Oh My. Did you memorize all the states or provinces? Draw a map of your home country in pencil-crayon? Did you slop papier-mache on a balloon and paint a little globe on it? Or draw a big chart of the planets? These early experiences gave us all a sense of place in the world. Everything was smaller before then.

4. Dinosaurs. No offense to Marco Polo or The Boer War but learning about dinosaurs was the greatest history lesson of all time. “Listen up kids,” your teacher would say with eyes popping wide, sitting cross-legged on the carpet. “Before you got here giant lizards the size of houses stomped around eating things right where we’re sitting today. They all died when a huge meteor crashed into Earth so heads up.” Talk about a bombshell.

5.  Puberty. When it was time for The Talk they shipped in a guest speaker at our school. She put big pink drawings of a boy and a girl on the chalkboard and we had to go sick little brown hair clouds made of construction paper on them. “Here you go Neil,” she said. “Put this hair on any part of the body where you think hair will grow.” There was no Internet so everybody sat quiet the entire time. People took notes.

6. Adding and subtracting. Newsflash: Nobody uses algebra, calculus, and geometry. It was all a ruse! “Hey Hank, can you trigonometry the wall to figure out where the studs are?” Yes, I’m saying getting through life is basic math – adding up tabs at the bar, figuring out if you’ve got enough on your credit card for Christmas, and splitting cable bills with your roomies. We learned it back then and it still comes in handy.

7. Storytelling. When Mrs. Dorsman grabbed her glasses and headed for the rocking chair we scrambled for a good spot on the carpet to hear her spin a tale. We got suspense, funny voices, and cliffhangers. From those early days stories become how we communicate, remember, and share everything.

Yes, the world sure was simpler back in third grade. We started learning hard facts and clear rules that gave our lives hard edges and then colored them in. Names of planets, types of triangles, and the boiling point of water all added certainty in a fuzzy world.

Of course, fuzziness comes back later on, when our baby brains find hidden worlds of complexity and nuance… when we realize we don’t know what’s farther than far, why things are this way, or where we really are. That’s because when the world straightens itself out … it all gets crooked again. When our minds seem settled and still … that’s when the drink swishes and spins. So that’s why it’s nice looking back and feeling all those lessons from yesterday — when everything to know and learn was right inside third grade.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, here, here, and here

It’s the suburban amusement park.

When I was a kid there was nothing as exciting as driving through the car wash with my dad. My sister Nina and I would jump up and down screaming as huge cloth rollers smacked the side of our station wagon like zombies. Jet streams of water splashed and smeared across the windows as we blindly defended our invisible fortress of soapy suds. Yes, everything was attacking us – colorful blobs of soap, flashing lights, and twisting brushes – but even with the radio fuzzed out and daylight dimmed down we just kept fighting through the alien world at one mile an hour until we eventually emerged victorious into the sun.

AWESOME!

Photo from: Michael

It’s always the sweetest.

1. Chicklet style. It’s time to crush that hard outer white shell into a million little pieces. You can do the first bite with your two front teeth (aka The Bugs Bunny) or you can get your back molars in the game from the beginning. Either way, the first bite is your chance to get those superminty shards scraping around your inner cheeks before they quickly dissolve and thousand remaining chews all become the same.

2.Bubble gum cube style. Have you ever had a dentist put that goop on your teeth to make a special imprint? That’s exactly what the Hubba Bubba first bite is like. You can pull it out afterwards and check out your cavities. In a way, you’re like a forest ranger picking up fox tracks in the mud.

3. Juicy Fruit Stick Style. When you have one of these long, flat, and thin pieces of gum you should always curl it onto your tongue like in the commercials. If you did it right the gum sort of swirls together like a snake and you can push it to either side of your mouth for the big bite.

4. Bazooka Joe Style. Those small tiny rectangular pieces of gum are the worst. They are hard as rocks and that first bite might break your teeth. Ideally you get someone else to bite it for you and then take over after that.

Listen up, people: We’ve been chewing gum together for over 100,000 years. So today we stop for a moment to nod back at all our cave-grandparents freshening their breath in The Stone Age and smile at the pure and simple joy that comes from that very first bite.

Chomp it loud and chew it proud.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here

It’s the crack of dawn on Saturday.

You’re up before your parents so it’s time to tiptoe downstairs in your thin Spider-Man pajamas, sneak into the kitchen, and pour three servings of Corn Pops into a heavy ceramic bowl. Next, carefully carry it to the family room, slide onto your stomach on the carpet, and flick on the TV and let your eyes pop as the colorful reds and blues settle warmly on your face.

Yes, it’s time to spend the entire morning watching cartoons:

#15. Inspector Gadget. Who didn’t love bionic policeman Inspector Gadget? Although his own built-in extendable arms and pop-up roller skates often malfunctioned his faithful niece Penny and intelligent superdog Brain got him out of trouble. Go-Go-Gadget

#14. Beetlejuice. This was the eight-year-old equivalent of an acid trip. No parents + two bowls of Count Chocula = brain-swirly visit to the netherworld.

#13. Heathcliff. For years Heathcliff suffered as the poor man’s Garfield. But today we say: No more! Garfield and Friends gave the more popular fat cat a really weird deep voice and had too many skits with that bizarre Egg with Legs Guy. Heathcliff, today we bring you the legions of fans you always deserved. Heathcliff, today we bring you… redemption.

#12. Muppet Babies. We can all learn from Baby Kermit and Baby Miss Piggy in the opening theme song: “When your room looks kind of weird and you wish that you weren’t there… just close your eyes and make believe and you can be anywhere.” True fans will remember Animal screaming “Go bye-bye!” after the end credits while Gonzo gets shot to the moon.

#11 and #10. He-Man and She-Ra The best part about He-Man was that the entire show was about an average guy turning into the most powerful man in the universe and his shy cat turning into a ferocious tiger. Talk about perfect for setting up dramatic family room scenes. You can try getting your kid sister to voice the Castle Grayskull speaker but she’ll probably want to play She-Ra.

#9. Police Academy. I’m not sure if I was the only one watching this Police Academy but it filled a few hundred hours of my childhood. Like Beetlejuice, it was a classic movie turned into a children’s cartoon. I was always hoping the trend would continue but unfortunately both “The Color Purple Adventures” and “A Fish Called Wanda: The Animated Series” were killed in production.

#8. GI Joe. There was always that one kid who’s parents didn’t let them watch GI Joe because it was too violent. Poor kid had to watch Rainbow Brite.

#7. The Raccoons. This was a Canadian cartoon about a feisty group of animals battling aardvark industrialist Cyril Sneer for control of the forest. If you watched The Raccoons I’m guessing you like poutine, free health care, and hockey.

#6. The Real Ghostbusters. If you don’t have the theme song running through your head already you will in a second. Good luck getting it out.

#5. Jem and the Holograms. Jem single-handedly introduced young girls to the smoky club underworld scene. Raging jams against The Misfits and exotic globe-trotting adventures helped Jem protect her identify as Jerrica Benton and take care of the Starlight Girls. Man, I know way too much about this show. But I swear, I never watched it! I was too busy reading The Baby-sitters Club books.

#4. Alvin and the Chipmunks. You could tell a lot about a kid by his favorite chipmunk. If you liked Alvin, you were outgoing with great social skills and lots of friends. If you liked Simon, you were a fun-loving nerd who did well in school and maybe played a musical instrument. If you liked Theodore best, you had poor decision-making skills and things just didn’t end up well for you.

#3. Thundercats. Speaking of violence, my babysitter Jean didn’t let us watch Thundercats because she thought it made us too pepped-up and rowdy. “But Jean,” we pleaded, while balancing Superman-style on a playpen full of babies, “cat-like humanoid aliens fighting off Mumra for total control of space teaches us valuable life lessons.”

#2. Duck Tales. Woo-oo!

#1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I saw someone wearing a TMNT shirt last week and we got into a fifteen minute debate about which turtle was best. (He was a Raphael guy all the way but I said “Donatello’s just got a stick, man. Just a stick. Think about what he does with just a stick.”) My point is that any cartoon that starts furious debates 25 years later is the #1 cartoon of the decade.

Sure, over the years Saturday mornings smeared, our favorite shows got canned, and we grew up and grew into people that didn’t watch cartoons all the time. But those theme songs are still with us, even as our lives roll on, and those memories are in our brains forever, as we dream on and on and on…

AWESOME!

Photo from: Ryan Grayson and here

AWESOME!

Illustration from: Monsieur Cabinet

We’re all bad at names but some faces just stick in our brains.

Yes, when you see Familiar Brown-Haired Man walk by the bus stop or Curly Redhead Lady eating fries in the food court you suddenly do a double-take and think “Wait … I know them from somewhere.”

That’s when you stop chewing your gum, stop talking to your friends, and stop sending blood to non-vital organs. That’s when all the tiny men in your head wake up, put on their boots, and fire pole down to your brain’s dusty archives. Suddenly they’re fishing through files, scanning databases, and booting up old hard drives to comb every nook and neuron you’ve got for trace clue of who you’re looking at.

Photos flash of high school dances, first jobs, and college parties. You try putting facial hair on them in your head. You think about old friend’s girlfriends, people who owe you money, and friend’s friends or cousin’s cousins who you might have met just once.

Maybe you don’t recognize them for a while simply because they’re out of context. Yes, it’s your old grade school teacher squeezing melons at the grocery store, your barber in a jumpsuit jogging in the park, or the secretary from your old job sweating buckets on the treadmill.

Sometimes it seems like they’re looking at you the exact same way too. You sort of wonder if their little brain men are combing through databases or you wonder if they recognize you but just aren’t saying anything.

Yes, you wonder and you wonder, you think and you think, you stare and you stare, until!

It clicks!

And that’s a beautiful moment of sweet relief. Little brain men cheer, smoke comes out your ears, and a slow and satisfied smile curls onto your face as you finally place the mystery person.

Then maybe you say hi or something.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here

Kids make things easy.

Back in third or fourth grade I remember our tiny eight-year-old dating circle well. Basically, if a guy asked you out, and you said yes, then you went on the slides together, you were boyfriend and girlfriend, and life was simple. No flowers, no dating, no stress — just eight-year-old love on the seesaws.

Times have changed.

These days dating is twisted into invisible spider webs of questions: Is this a date? What should I wear? Are we friends or does she like me? Do I tell her I like her? Wait, do I like her? Do we kiss at the end? Should I touch her arm? Wait, that’s weird, why did I just think that? What about a hug? Do people hug? Does he want to kiss? If he wants to kiss, he should kiss me, I’m not kissing him. Should I text her tonight? Should I text her tomorrow? Do I call tomorrow, do I call in two days, does anybody call anymore? How long so I don’t seem desperate … but not uninterested? What should I say? Wait, is this a date, because now I definitely think this is a date.

And on and on and on.

When you think about how tricky dating is it’s a wonder any of us end up together. I suppose once in a while some combo of spinning electrons, random nights, and crackly connections ends up turning flickering questions into interesting reflections. Dates grow into dating, dating grows into more, and just after you think that nothing’s happening… it’s happening now for sure.

Holding hands on wintery walks, big plans on Saturday nights, showing up together at parties, and feeling like everything’s all right. Yes, it’s a beautiful time when your questions turn into confidence, sparks grow into flames, and all those glowing embers in your heart start telling you… it’s time to fall in love again.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here