Also great if it’s your boss, teacher, or mom.
AWESOME!
Photo from: here
#71 Making a wish
Blowing out candles is pressure.
Lights are off, song is over, and a standing circle of everyone you know crowds around as you sit facing a giant cake covered in a flaming forest of candles. Someone screams for you to make a wish and you’ve suddenly got two seconds to think of something good before blowing spit all over dessert …
Whether it’s seconds before a birthday blowout, the moment you see a shooting star, or that quick wish before whisking an eyelash away, it doesn’t really matter if your dream comes true.
All that matters is that you’re suddenly forced to stop, slow down, and take a step back to think about where you are, how you’re doing, and what you need. For a brief moment you stand still in this spinning world and let your thoughts wash right over you.
So wish for a kiss, wish for a wedding, wish for a bike, or just wish for more
AWESOME!
#72 Finding an old toy from your childhood
AWESOME!
Illustration by: Monsieur Cabinet
#73 Foods that no one can eat gracefully
Welcome to Taco Night.
Personally I’m going to go ahead and say potluck tacos are my favorite meal these days. I convinced my family to have Christmas Tacos a few years back — complete with festive red shells, green guac, and white sour cream — and this year on my birthday we did it again. There’s just something I love about everyone hunched over their messy plates on the couch, rogue lettuce scraps in their hair, salsa streaks on their pants, and meat juice sliding down their forearms that makes me smile.
I guess I love all foods that no one can eat gracefully:
1. Powdered donuts. Does your local town fair sells greasy bags of these deep-fried deliciouses like mine does? After you pop a tiny powdered donut into your mouth make sure you don’t exhale or you’ll get a nice white streak down your fancy shirt.
2. Samosas. Deep-fried triangles stuffed with spicy handfuls of potatoes and peas don’t lend themselves to fine dining. You’re in there with your hands, there’s no starting point, and chances are the greasy innards are going to tumble all over your sari. That’s the way we like it.
3. Corn on the cob. There are two ways to eat your corn on the cob. First, there’s the Typewriter Method, where you cut back and forth along the entire cob, and then there’s The Big Twist, where you do not move down the cob until you’ve done the complete chomping twirl. Either way, if you did it right you should end up with little bits of corn in your teeth and butter-drenched fingers.
4. Sticky Ribs and Chicken Wings. By the end of a plate full of wings you should look like a lion who just dug into a zebra face-first. For bonus points make sure you’re dining with your Perfect Chicken Wing Partner.
5. Melting ice cream sandwiches. Squeeze those foamy black cookies together so the ice cream drips all over the place. Just try eating one without getting a smear of vanilla on your nose and big chunks of cookie sticking to your fingers.
Yes, it’s time to get over yourself.
We’re saying big words, fancy suits, toss ’em out the window, brother. We both know behind those collared shirts, business cards, and trendy haircuts is a straight-up ugly hairy animal. Yes, I’m talking about you, Caveman Carl and Jungle Jane — because the fact is plain: past your scraggly mane we’re all basically the same.
Messy foods bring us closer together. They remind us we started out as messy eaters and we’ll probably end up that way, too. When we fill the middle years with relaxed expectations, big laughs, and fun nights, it means we skip the show, pass the pretenses, and jump all the way into the deep end of
AWESOME!
Wow, thank you! The Globe and Mail has ranked The Book of Awesome the #1 overall non-fiction bestseller of 2010 and 2011!
#74 Feeling your boyfriend or girlfriend smile while kissing you
Smooch, smooch, smooch.
Yes, nothing says love like locking lips. And whether it’s between snoozes on the futon, in the back row at the movies, or swinging from the top of the Ferris wheel, it’s always a beautiful moment when you close your eyes and connect in a soft and tender embrace.
When you feel the person you’re kissing smiling while kissing you too, it’s another little sign they’re enjoying it just as much as you.
AWESOME!
Photo from: here
#75 Pulling a big clump of hair out of the drain
Admit you like it.
We all know slippery soap suds, rogue belly button lint, and assorted leg hair goes down smooth. But our long hippie head hair sure gets the bathtub traffic jamming and our tubs slowly filling up till we’re suddenly walking around a wading pool.
Oh sure, we may try to ignore it — splashing around up to our soap-suds-filmy ankles — but the truth is that clogged drains aren’t going away and we need to face the truth.
It’s time to get down to business.
Yes, it’s time to pathetically bend your soaking wet naked body a full ninety degrees until you’re face to face with the Hairy Eye of Sauron that is your bathtub hole. Don’t just stand there! Squeeze two fingers together and get digging. Slide past the slippery rusted-metal sides, grab onto a few rogue hairs at the top, twist a couple knot tangles around your finger, and then slowly twirl your hand while pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling…
In a way you’re like a clown pulling colorful silk hankies out of a top hat in a magic show. How deep does it go? Does anyone know? You just keep pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling … and more keeps coming out. The only difference is that at the end of the show there isn’t a stage full of colorful hankies.
There’s just a disgusting wet handful of hair that looks like a small boneless rodent.
AWESOME!
Who’s read The Book of Awesome ?
Photo from: here
#76 When everything you own is fully charged
No low bars, no dark screens.
No redlines, no flatlines, no waiting in between.
Locked and loaded in full-bar paradise makes you feel a little bit invincible. “I could last forever,” you think, strapping a charged laptop in your bag, stuffing a juiced up cell phone in your pocket, picturing yourself braving for a cold night in a dense forest, camping in some rocky tundra, or getting lost in dark twisting alleys in foreign slums.
“Worst case, I’ll text my mom in the morning.”
AWESOME!
Photo from: here
#78 Finding the right lid in the Tupperware cupboard immediately
Have you ever seen a plastic factory explosion?
Well let me tell you something, homegirl: It’s not a pretty sight. Toxic burnt-rubber fumes fill the air, black billowing clouds mushroom overhead, and factory guys in singed overalls run screaming in all directions. And scattered across the muddy grass and concrete are bits of plastic everywhere. Rogue yogurt containers, melted casserole lids, and stained floral-pattern butter dishes from the fifties all form big messy piles of assorted plastic scraps littered across the parking lot.
Now if you’re anything like The Rest Of Us then I’m guessing your Tupperware cupboard looks just like that, too. Whether you’ve got greasily stained plastic awkwardly stashed in a big drawer beside the fridge, waterfalling out of a cupboard, or hanging in a bag in the pantry, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a plastic factory explosion that’s never organized.
Oh sure, you might have good days. Perhaps like me you organize your entire Tupperware cupboard in a fit of rage one afternoon — sorting lids into piles, sticking containers together, maybe even throwing a few in the garbage. But slowly the mess creeps back in, inch by inch, day by day, until you’re met once again with black billowing clouds and singed overalls.
Somehow the fact that each Tupperware has two pieces causes the problems to start. Some lids fit on two containers, others look like they do, and nothing seems to add up. You’d think there would be more lids than containers in the cupboard, too — since solo containers are more likely to disappear holding grapes on a car ride or popcorn for a basement movie. But you’d be wrong! Lids disappear into the abyss more often and you’re left standing in the kitchen in high heels at 7am — lidless and late for work, awkwardly switching dishes till you find something, eventually taking your single bran muffin in a giant cake container.
That’s what makes it so great when you find the right lid in the Tupperware cupboard immediately. You breathe a big sigh of relief realizing you just saved a frantic five minutes on your hands and knees digging through explosion scrap heaps in the parking lot, looking for survivors, desperate to find a pulse.
Taking leftover pizza to work in peace?
AWESOME!
#79 Little kids running around going completely insane
When I was growing up we had an extra bedroom in the basement that nobody ever used. It had no windows and was coated in thick purple shag carpet and soft velvety wallpaper. There was nothing inside except an old bed with a bouncy broken mattress, a couple pillows, and piles of thin flimsy sponge sheets the size of dining room tables leaned against the walls. We never knew where those spongy sheets came from and just assumed they were packing material from that time my parents were nuclear arms dealers.
Whenever my cousins Nikki and Adrian came over we’d wait until the adults were busy doing boring things like drinking punch and talking about interest rates and we’d sneak off to The Secret Basement Room Of Fun. That’s where we’d flick the lights off and run around blindly like madmen, bodychecking each other against the walls, squeezing each other into foam sheets, and jumping off the bed into mountainous pillowy landings. The whole time we were laughing hysterically, sweating buckets, and in a world of childhood bliss.
Fun time continued until somebody took a flying headbutt to their nose and started crying … or until an adult came to check on us. We would hear loud creaky footsteps coming down the stairs and would flick the lights on and pretend to be casually hanging out, with mysteriously soaking wet T-shirts, in a foam and pillow disaster zone. Since we were trustworthy kids we generally got away with it and flying headbutts, 360 piledrivers, and suplexes into the closet were never discussed.
My cousins and I still talk about that room today.
Little kids running around going completely insane is a beautiful thing. After all, kids grow up in bedrooms and backyards so when they escape into a head-swirly unknown it’s like they hit Total Infant Actualization. Spinning electrons in a spinning solar system can’t help lead to spinning bodies sometimes.
Yes, little girls in frilly dresses twirling in the middle of the dance floor, boys behind the school playing made up games, or just my cousins and I running around in shag carpeted darkness, are an amazing sight to behold. Let’s look fondly at little kids running around going completely insane and let’s let them remind us how easy it really is to find those secret hidden worlds of
AWESOME!
Today we enter the fourth year of 1000 Awesome Things and the 21st month of The Book of Awesome being at #1 on the bestseller list! Thank you so much for reading.