Author: Neil Pasricha

Cruising through the streets with our music cranked and our cell phones ringing, it’s sometimes hard to communicate with other drivers sharing the roads. When speeds are high and time’s a ticking, we rely on silent gestures flashed through tinted windows to get our points across.

Now, we all know that The Thank You Wave when you let someone merge in front of you is a great move. It’s highway payment for arriving to your destination one car length later anytime you let someone in.

But it doesn’t end there.

Sure, courtesy wave etiquette may have started with The Thank You Wave, but the magic has spread across other places on the pavement. For instance:

1. The Pre-Wave. As in I’m thanking you because the front tip of my Honda Civic is pointed into your traffic-jammed lane and I know you see me so just let me in. Sure, you can try to avoid eye contact but I’m determined to Pre-Wave you to build up some goodwill.

2. The Apology Wave. Don’t be fooled: even though it looks similar to the thank you wave, the apology wave is typically accompanied by a big grimace instead of a thin-lipped eyebrow raise. Next time you sideswipe a van of teenagers and send them skidding off the highway into a roadside ditch, be sure to offer a heartfelt apology wave.

3. The Go Ahead Wave. You roll up to a four-way Stop at the same time as somebody else and you decide to let them turn first. Maybe they’re a sweet old lady peeking over the wheel or maybe you just want to avoid The World’s Slowest Car Accident. Either way you give them the pleasant, open-palmed Go Ahead Wave, which is sort of how the ladies on The Price Is Right unveil a new solid oak armoire.

Yes, proper courtesy wave etiquette keeps two-way talking alive on our streets and prevents chaos from taking over the highways. So when you let someone in, look out for the Thank You Wave. And when someone lets you in, make sure you smile and wave right back.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

What’s a birthday without some loot?

Let’s get this party finished right:

Level 1: The Factory Order. Here’s where mom orders the Barbie, Hot Wheels, or Sesame Street themed birthday kit and it comes with pointy hats, paper plates, and loot bags for all. Now, these bags are usually sealed shut so you must tear them open with your teeth to pull out the pack of stickers, temporary tattoos, and crayons. The Factory Order is a Level 1 loot bag because it lacks love and longevity.

Level 2: The Dollar Store Special. These are tailor made jumbles mixed and matched from that back wall of the dollar store. Plastic hypnotic-eye glasses, rubber bouncy balls, and sparkly pencils are tossed with handfuls of Halloween candy. Now, The Dollar Store Special does get some bonus points for gender tailoring. Girls might score pink headbands or nail polish while boys collect a Whoopee cushion or wrestling action card featuring King Kong Bundy.

Level 3: Homemade Masterpieces. Top of the heap. Homemade masterpieces are beautifully colored paper bags with every kid’s name on them. They have little plastic baggies of homemade oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and maybe a scribbled-up bookmark made by the birthday boy’s sister. Masterpieces might have exciting projects like cut-out Styrofoam airplanes or do-it-yourself kid’s crafts — like popsicle sticks, glue, and a picture showing how to make a snowflake. Homemade masterpieces can also be tailored to each kid so nerds can score 3D glasses and blurry comic books while little princesses harness bounties of colorful hair elastics.

Loot bags add big cheers to the end of those wild birthday parties on Saturday afternoon fun. They make the party continue long after kids go home. But, here’s today’s question: Why stop there? Yes, there’s always room for more loot bags in our lives, even as we get older. I say next time you have friends over for a backyard barbecue do everyone a favor and stuff a crumpled paper bag of brownies in their hands as they’re heading out the door.

AWESOME!

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