Friday Love/Hate

I love looking at my reflection in the rims of a donk, especially when I’m wearing my Notre Dame Fighting Irish football jersey, not that I like Notre Dame or anything. But that’s a nice shade of green, and it brings out the dimple behind my hints of grey beard just right, so that when I smile and flash my eyeballs through my scuffed up shitty Wal-Mart Supercenter eyeglasses, I can make a woman feel like a woman, especially on a Friday night after I just cashed a $749 check, always telling the banker girl when she asks how I want that back, “Whatever’s easiest for you,” showing I am both paid and don’t give a fuck, meaning I can get down if need be, and even if need not be. In fact, fuck it, let’s all get down right now.

I hate having to fly for the first time ever next month to go south for a Thanksgiving holiday. I have never flown, not because I’m afraid or nothing, but just because I’m not down with it. Then I made the joke I would never go up in a plane the first time unless I didn’t come down in it, meaning I wanted to do a tandem jump, which you can do like an hour from here. Except too many people died there, so my wife wasn’t cool with me doing that so easily, especially when it cost mad money. Now, we are getting hooked up with plane tickets to go to Florida, during Thanksgiving, and this bothers me on multiple levels. First off, I don’t like flying because it’s like the epidural of travel. Natural childbirth is best for mothers because you can feel the transition of the baby from belly to outside world, and are less susceptible the evil demons of post-partum mind devilry. Same thing with travel. You drive the roads, you see the world pass and know you’ve gone somewhere. But you jump in a flying oblong, sit back, and there you are, in another place, with no idea of the reality of it all. I am not comfortable with that, and my apologies to the greatness that is North Carolina, the almost-as-greatness that is South Carolina, and the pure wacky beauty of Georgia, for skipping your asses entirely to go to Florida. I apologize to your individual convenience store pupusas (in NC), your dangerous Chinese fireworks (what up SC), and your boiled peanuts (fucking Georgia). I also do not like not being at home for Thanksgiving. Fuck other people, at this point in my life Thanksgiving is about me, my wife, and our three kids. I want to have a big ass turkey soaking in salt water brine for two days in a cooler sitting the bathtub with an old weight from my weight bench out by the goat pen sitting on top to keep the turkey, in a big ass plastic bag, submerged. I want to be at my own house, drinking beer at ten in the morning, cooking turkey and hooking up three stuffings, one for inside, one for outside, and a cornbread one in a little dish as well. I want to be home to throw scratch to my chickens with the nip in the air and the Lions about to lose yet again, which is fine, never change that stupid NFL, because it’s the Lions and they belong here. You don’t stop inviting your shitty cousin to Thanksgiving dinner because he went to jail four times for indecent exposure, do you? Maybe you do, and maybe that’s why I can’t get down with the Lions being gone from Thanksgiving. I don’t want to fly south, to be gone for the second year in a row. At least last year we drove to the beach, so we could at least bring the turkey bones back with us to boil up a fine turkey bone broth. I doubt a stupid airplane is gonna let me bring a giant Ziplock bag full of old turkey bones with me on the plane, although to be fair, like I said, I’ve never flown. The whole thing just sucks. At least the family we are visiting is good family of my wife’s, and her sister’s husband will probably make me drink a lot and shoot guns at things, except they’re doing okay moneywise, so I won’t have to be hassled by cops for shooting guns at things while drunk. Still though, I’d rather be home.