Funny Messy Life

It seems like a favorite of my stories for listeners is the one I titled, “The Time I Peed On My Leg”. Apparently people enjoy hearing about embarrassing moments and I'm more than happy to be the guy you turn to when you need someone for a good point and laugh. To my mother and my wife's dismay, I'm a person who enjoys sharing the little things that most people would rather forget. I revel at the thought of seeing the faces of those around me when I tell one of these stories in a crowd and I invent expressions in my mind for those who hear these tales after I record them.      This will be one of those stories. And although I fear I might have spoiled it a little from the start by offering the reveal in the title, there's still a lot of meat in the middle for you.      I've been gone for a while. I'll get to the reasons why after the story because that's what you came here for, isn't it? The story? All I will tell you right now is that I had pretty much given up on Funny Messy Life and I had good reasons for it. But after listening to an audio book about good storytelling, I discovered there was still something left to give. I might just need to adjust a few things to get it right.    So to get things started in the way familiar to regular listeners, I'm Michael Blackston and I invite you now into a painful, and an embarrassing part if you think about it, of my Funny Messy Life. _________________________        I'm about 18 years old and we, my mom and stepdad, have just moved into a new home. We're all trying to acclimate to our surroundings, so I don't think any of us are sleeping well, which may account for the reason my mom was so quick to jump to my aid. Mom's attention to things that go bump in the night aren't the details to be observed at this moment though. Right now it's the extra tall glass of eggnog that I'm pouring for myself right after downing two burgers slathered in cheese, mayo, mustard, and parmesan. Mom's fried burger patties are a favorite of mine and so is eggnog, but I don't think the creators of those two delicacies ever intended them to be smashed together into one meal like a caveman might do.      But I'm 18 and I don't think about things like healthy eating, healthy sleeping, and the very real effects that can happen to a body - both loudly and painfully - when one or the other is ignored.      There's a football game being played and the pictures and sounds coming from it do nothing to help me with my frame of mind. It's all about what's going on between the hedges in Athens, Ga and I'm celebrating a victory for my Dawgs the only way a non-drinker who couldn't get a beer without help anyway because he's underage can. I'm cramming anything and everything that's edible down my gullet.      That's a bit of an exaggeration, actually. I am a human, so two fried burgers with cheese, both american sliced and in graded fake parmesan form, and a sloppy lake comprised of mayo, mustard, and ketchup, coupled with a herculean sized glass of eggnog, is enough to make any referee throw a flag for unnecessary stuffedness.       The 37 to 27 win against Auburn justifies my gluttony and what is waiting for me just a few hours from now holds no weight as far as consequences go. We have triumphed and all that exists to do in the moment is celebrate unabashedly, rewarding the players and coaching staff, and the entirety of BullDawg Nation by injesting grease and fat and sugar. I'm jubilant to say the least. We will lose three games this season, but tonight … tonight the stars blaze with the fire of victory! If God had shown Eve this game before telling her not to eat of the fruit, she may well have gnawed down the whole tree without thinking about it. Rabid jubilance will do that to a person.      We jump ahead now a few hours. Enough time for the ingredients I've partaken in to mingle and find that they have nothing in common. They bicker and insult each other so that before long, there is turmoil. Turmoil I do not see coming.      I'm sound asleep in my bed, dreaming about being naked in high school and late to take an exam for a class I haven't attended.      There is an interesting feeling now in the bottommost area of my intestines. I feel a dull ache beginning to swell there. In my half woke state, I perceive it as a round sort of pain, but it quickly develops into a different shape. Something sharp and pointy, like a knife or one of the daggers that pierced the flesh of Caesar on the Ides Of March.      This is a new pain for me. I'd snapped both of the bones in my arm at once after a fall when I was twelve and endured the pain of them setting the break. That was so painful that through my tears, I begged my mother to allow me to say the “ess word”. She said no, but I let loose a string of them at the apex moment anyway and she never mentioned it. I once fell face forward while carrying a jagged stick between my teeth and nearly sliced off my uvula. I once had the top of my head sliced open by an errant log when the neighbor kid was tossing it over me and didn't get enough air under it. And when I was seven, I got beat up by a six year old girl.      Nothing compares to the pain I'm feeling now as I leap from my bed and plow my way down the hall to the bathroom, heedless of anything in my path.      I could take it easy on you and say that it's nothing much. Just gas. But I'd be lying to you. I'll not go so far as to compare it to what a woman goes through during the throws of labor, although I will eventually come to refer to the feeling as “labor pains”. I will, however, admit that I truly believe it's the closest thing a male will ever get to it. I'm told that passing a kidney stone is far worse, but I've thankfully never had that experience. If you want to debate, I'll cede you the win because I understand a person who has passed a calcified brick through their urethra is pretty passionate about hanging onto the trophy for the worst pain experience.      The knife twists within my lower bowels and it feels as if all I need to do is release a great big gush of gas to feel better, but then the pain subsides. It goes away completely. Alright. Wonderful. Time to go back to sleep.      I stand and take two steps forward toward the door and it's back, doubled and now feeling less like a twisting knife inside me, but more like a flock of drunk elves operating a mining drill down there.      I slam myself back down to the toilet and pray. My skin goes cold and gooseflesh pops up all over my body in response. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I want to call for my mommy, but I can't. I could never look her in the eye if she had to hold my hand while I sat on the porcelain throne through a rough bowel movement.      Then like the first time, it has passed. I'm skeptical. There's no pain now, but nothing else has happened either. I'm reminded of earthquakes and how the aftershocks can be worse than main tremor. I sit in the dark and begin to pray.      Dear God, I know I've done wrong. I see now that there is no room in me for this caliber of gluttony. I have sinned and I beg your forgiveness, so please take this from me. Sober the drunk elves inside me and show them the way to turn off the drill. I'll never try to have a baby, for I see that you have made man incapable not only by physics and also by pain tolerance. And I shall promise to always humble myself in the face of one who has passed a crystallized brick of calcium through the narrow opening of their urethra. Please just take this burden and let me be as far from it as east is to west. In Jesus' name. Amen.      The pain is still gone, so I stand. I wait in place for a while, beginning to see specks of light in the darkness where something is happening to my eyes. Then the pain comes again and I fall to the seat of the toilet. At least the seat isn't cold. It has taken the warm temperature of my body. Which is odd because I feel my skin grow cold again as one last aftershock, the worst of them, wrecks my body. The drunken elves have called their friends and a demolition team has arrived. The specks of light converge in front of me in the darkness so that suddenly I see a white hot flare and then there's darkness again.      Now the surface holding me up is cold and it supports the entire right side of my body. Cold, hard, unforgiving floor tile.      I hear a knock. I didn't realize I locked the door behind me when I came into the bathroom and behind the knocking is the voice of my mother. She has come for me anyway. Good old mom. Always looking out for me. Always there.      I don't feel the pain anymore. Something tells me the worst is over and I sigh, relieved.      “Michael! Michael, are you alright?! I heard a crash. What happened?!”      “I'm alright,” I tell her. “It's just gas.” _________________________        All true. I've only passed out once in my life and it was while I was on the toilet. Later in life I ate something similar and had another episode that resembled the one I just took you through. It was then that I realized I can't have dairy after I've eaten greasy beef. Lesson learned.      Quickly, let me tell you where I've been, what's been happening, and why I'm back. I promise it will have nothing to do with bathrooms, football, or poor eating choices.      Frankly, it boils down to time management. I have to prioritize some things and over the past few months, I've focused on my novel and the subsequent, seemingly endless revisions needed to get it print worthy. There was a long while that I had decided to let Funny Messy Life be over. Fortunately, I kept paying the bill to make it available to new listeners and I kept seeing people drop by for a download or two. Then I was listening to one of my favorite podcasters and podcast coach, Dave Jackson, and heard him mention for the eighteen-hundredth time that there was a book all storytellers should read. It's called Story Worthy by Matthew Dicks. I had a free credit on my Audible account, so I used to get the audio version of Matthew's book.     It changed my thinking about this podcast and blog. I realized I was indeed doing wrong for someone who is telling stories about their life. I learned a lot from the book and have started trying to apply the principles in it whenever I tell a story, whether I'm verbalizing it or writing it down. I decided to regroup when it comes to Funny Messy Life.      So here's how it's got to go if this train is to have more track.      I'm ramping up some things in my life that absolutely have to be at the forefront to find success. While I love Funny Messy Life, hence the reason I just can't seem to let it go, The other irons in my fire have the potential to actually change my life in a positive way.      My novels, my plays, and the production company I hope to start take a lot of time, effort, and concentration. I've decided that to keep Funny Messy Life going, it will be necessary to pare down the amount of content if I'm to keep it consistent.      Therefore from here forward, I plan to make this a once per month podcast/blog. I think I can dedicate enough time to write out episodes once a month.      The other thing is all about style. From here out the format of my storytelling will have a decidedly novelistic feel to it. I intend to do further things with these stories, including making them into a book of short stories, so writing them in that form from the start will be beneficial to me as well as great practice.      As always, there will be ways to contact me for comments or to tell me your own stories, but I'm not going to beg for it. There will be a mention at the end where you can go to reach out, but other than that, I won't put that burden on you. All you need to do is listen and enjoy.      With that being said, I know this first episode back from a long hiatus may have been a lot of literal potty humor, but it won't all be that way. I hope you have a fantastic month and we'll talk again in a few weeks. Until then, I'm Michael Blackston and I thank you for listening to another instance from my Funny Messy Life.

The past few weeks have been extra hard on me, and as I sit here and write this out, I really don't feel like it. See, on top of everything else that's going on in my life, my son is graduating high school, and I never thought about the idea that we would be experiencing so many “lasts”. I'm definitely a proud dad, but there is pain that tags along with it. So I think it's time to vent a little as my oldest child becomes a man. I'm Michael Blackston, and as much as I don't want to have to admit it, these are necessary events along the path of my Funny Messy Life. _________________________       Pomp and Circumstance rings loud and quite obnoxiously in the distance. I used to like that song. It's regal. It tells a story of celebration and accomplishment. And lately it rudely smacks me upside the head with the sour flavor of truth. Now the song doesn't ring as jolly as before, because my son Noah is graduating.     Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for him. Any parent with a strong-willed child who doesn't like to be told what to do can relate to the sigh of relief that comes with the aspect of never again having to make sure projects are done on time and homework is turned in. We've had some epic battles over the years, but that relief is bittersweet. It means we also lose the anticipation and excitement of football season and sitting right next to the band so we can glance to our left for most of the game and watch that handsome boy play his saxophone in his snazzy uniform.     So let's start earlier. Way earlier.     When I was in sixth grade, the band teacher at the middle school came around to test the students and see which ones were suitable to start band the next year. To my recollection, they gave us some sort of ear test and graded us based on how we understood tones, beats, and the essential elements of music. I think the grades were something like, Superior (obviously the best grade), Good, Okay, Good Enough To Play The Triangle, and Just Give Up And Join The Chess Club.     I believe I was the only one in my class to be graded a Superior. I might be wrong, but I've worn that badge this long, and I don't intend on taking it off until someone tells me differently. I do know I actually scored a Superior, and I remember the band director begging me to join the band. I didn't though, because I was already going to be in chorus, and I was terrified of learning an instrument.     My wife's story is similar. I don't know how they were tested, or what she scored, but I know she never joined the band, even though she has always had a gift for music, and eventually earned a degree in Vocal Performance. She tells me to this day how much she regrets never joining the band, and I feel the same way about my decision.     Our son Noah, did join the band, and began as a trombonist. He liked the instrument, and had a knack for it, but it wasn't long before we found he was better suited for something else, and he took up the saxophone. He would sit in his room at night and wail away on that horn, actually making the right note once in a while, and we loved every second of it. Once a friend made the statement that he bet I couldn't wait to find a reason to get out of the house when that started, and I surprised him. I told him it was just the opposite. I often sat in the recliner just outside of Noah's door and soaked in the notes - every single one, good or bad - that came from the lungs of my son, and out of his sax.     And I wasn't lying. Kayla and I both found immense joy in those moments, and soon enough, more and more notes found their marks until songs and rhythms began to fill our house.     In eighth grade, he was asked to join the high school marching band a year early, an honor not everyone gets. Next thing we know, the concerts and recitals, of which there have been so glorious many, were replaced by the grueling business of band camp, practice every day after school, and Friday nights under the lights of one of Georgia's finest, and most notable stadiums, The Granite Bowl.     Year after year, we sat in first sweltering heat, then rain as the season changed, then crisp cold as we watched him play. We sat just to the right of the band and the pride we felt is something I hope I can hold onto until I take my final breath. He would look over in our direction every once in a while, between playing and having the time of his life with his friends, and he would catch us staring at him. I'd give him a goofy smile and look away, letting him know it was okay to be making those memories on his own.     I took so many pictures when he didn't know the camera was on him, and looking back over them, I see him change and grow from a little boy who struggled to carry the weight of the instrument after a long day of rehearsal, to a young, vibrant man full of confidence to take on whatever the world could throw at him. Before our eyes, he has become a person those around him look up to - a leader. He only just missed getting appointed to be Drum Major his senior year. He was upset at first, but seems to have learned from it.     The band experience has developed a deep love for music of all kinds. He has a wide range of appreciation and you never know what's going to come up next on his playlist, but specifically, he has picked up the guitar. That's normal, I know, but my son thinks big, and he showed it in one of the coolest ways just the other night at one of his last concerts with the band. I wasn't surprised to see him step up there and thrill the audience with his sax as he and three others played in an impressive saxophone quartet, but it was the finale that felt liken a scene right out of a movie.     The band teacher introduced EC Pop - the first ever rock band comprised of students from the band who got together and decided it was time to ratchet things up a bit. They performed Daft Punk's Get Lucky, and my boy, shiny red electric guitar in hand, walked to center stage as the lead singer and frontman of the group. It was a dream come true for him, and by the time the song was over, they had the crowd eating out of the palms of their hands. One of the students watching from the band section pulled out their phone, lit the flashlight, and started to wave it back and forth as the band onstage rocked out. Before long, people all over the audience were doing the same thing, and my heart was about to burst. What a night! What an experience! What a boy!     There's only one of those “lasts” that rivals that one, or maybe even beats it, at least in the hearts of the band kids and their parents.     With every marching band, there is, of course, the school fight song. Of all the music that is played, it's the fight song they know the best because they've played it so much. A thousand times, it seems, they blasted out their melodic battle cry to spur on the Blue Devils, and it never occurred to me that there would come a time when they would play it for the final time.     I'll never forget the way my heart felt broken, and at the same time somehow jubilant for them. At the end of the final home game, the underclassmen stepped aside and allowed the seniors a gift. They would play the fight song one last time in that place. I watched with tears in my own eyes as those kids who would soon have to leave childhood behind, proudly proclaimed with horns, and woodwinds, and percussion, their allegiance to not only a school that gave them so many great memories, but also to each other. Because no matter where they went from there, or how far apart they were, there would always be one thing that held them together. Elbert County High School band, Class of 2022.     We're going to his final concert tonight, and I'm already in an emotional place, so I'm not sure how well I'm going to take it, but I'll have to take it. And on May 20, he'll walk across in front of his class in that same football stadium that echoes with music and memory, accepting his diploma, and resolving a melody that it took years to play.     For Noah, he looks to the future, although he'll peek fondly back on those times, all too soon remembering them as “The good old days”, but for me, it'll be a little hard to swallow. I'll always look back to the boy who didn't like to turn in his homework, but never, ever failed to make me proud. 

There's a snarky saying about how women change their minds. It goes something like, A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's because she changes it more often. In my experience, women won't mind you saying that when you're with a group of people and everyone is smiling, laughing, and generally having a by-golly swell time. Experience has also taught me that there is a time and a place for everything. Saying that when it's only you and your wife in the car after you've been arguing about where to eat because at first she wanted a burrito, but now she's decided she's in the mood for baked ravioli, and she's already giving you the stank eye because you said something like, “Make up your mind”, … you probably ought to think about not whipping that nugget out of your grabbag. She ain't in the mood for your shenanigans. I don't really think it's that fair of a quip anyway, because I am A Man, By Thunder, and men can be just as wishy-washy. From Atomic Red Studios, which is being moved again because I keep changing my mind about where to put it, I'm Michael Blackston, and I'm about to highlight some decision making issues from my Funny Messy Life. _________________________   Ladies, don't let your man get away with it. I'm on your beautiful indecisive sides all the way. He's likely to one day say something about how you can never make up your mind, and if I'm right, you'll immediately be able to bring up some of the things he's guilty of in that same arena. For me and a lot of other guys I know, it'll show up in the category of our toys. We'll tidy it up and call it collecting, or upgrading, but in reality, it often comes down to indecision. I know musicians - especially guitarists (Good LORD, guitarists are bad about it) - who are never satisfied with the last instrument they bought. They saw it in the guitar store, played the most impressive riff in their personal catalog, while pretending not to care who's listening, loved how it felt, and just had to have it. Then when they get it home, they decide it doesn't play right. The action isn't as good now as it was in the store when they were hammering out Eddie Van Halen's Eruption as everyone else around them secretly rolled their eyes. There's a funky twang in the pickups they suddenly don't like. And Is it me, or does that sunburst look different in this light? They have changed their minds. Case in point, Atomic Red Studios, and my setup for recording these podcast episodes and other audio. I'm not going to try and remember exactly how many different versions of my studio there have been, or in how many different places I've tried to put it. It doesn't matter, because here's the problem: I keep going to great lengths to make a new, better version, then changing my mind about it. This last place seemed to be perfect. I was allowed to convert a small room at my church, free of charge, into the perfect studio space. My house is small, and there's just no room for a sound studio, so I went to great lengths to set one up at the church. The plan was to record Funny Messy Life, as well as audio books, and do voiceover work. Okay, I counted, and if I'm not leaving anything out, there have been approximately 562 versions of my studio, none of which gave me the great audio I was looking for. The problem with the church site is, any time I want to record, I have to get stuff together and go there. A home studio is more convenient for me because none of the stuff I do so far earns me one red cent.. I have, at last count, ten different microphones. I started with one - a SURE SM58. Old Reliable. The trustworthiest of trustworthy microphones. It's so durable you can glue a hook to it and use it as a fishing lure, and it'll still work when you plug it in. It's been a standard in the professional vocal world since the beginning of time. The SURE SM58 is the microphone God used when He said, “Let there be light.” But I heard about another microphone that would be better for my podcast. It would give me the rawest, most natural sound for my voice, and I could always do adjustments in editing. The guy at Sweetwater swore by it, so I bought it. The new mic cost me $250, and I loved the way it sounded. At least I did for a minute. When I decided my voice sounded richer with the SM58, I said to my wife, “Wife, I hereby change my mind! I shall returneth to my SM58. And henceforth, I shall call it my favorite. So sayeth me.” She didn't believe me, of course. She'd been down that road before, and she was right. It wasn't long before I realized I needed something of good quality that I could take on the road and use to record podcasts in my hotel rooms. It needed to connect directly to my laptop via USB port, and before I knew it, Dave Jackson of The School of Podcasting fame was recommending a dandy little microphone by Audio-Technica. “I must have it!” I decreed.  Luckily my wife was nowhere in sight, and I was near Birmingham, Alabama. There's a music store there that had it in stock.  “I shall journey forth to the store, and there avail myself of the equipment I require. Then, and only then, shall I find contentment.” I bought it, and I loved it. I still do. But I also continue to find myself drawn to my SM58. Then I heard through my research on successful voice overing, that the RODE NT1 was a fantastic microphone for serious voice actors getting started. Michael was moved within his spirit to act, and thus, he sent a message to the owner of the ad. “Is this microphone still available?” The owner replied, “Yes. Yes it is.” ”I must have it!” Michael bade and light shone upon his face. The angels rejoiced, and glory shone upon the face of the earth. In reality, God was probably shaking His head. “He never learns.” I bought it and used it quite a lot, but …. I've recently gone back to using the SM58 mostly.  I feel like this is boring. It probably is, but it serves to show just a hint of my own indecision. Like I said, there are ten microphones altogether, as well as other equipment, each supposedly better than the next. I mentioned the restaurant thing earlier, but I'm worse than my wife about it. I have days when I wasn't something, I'm starving, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what it is I really want. It's not that there's an epic battle going on in my mind between pancakes and pita bread. I don't want any of it. Nothing! I'm about to die to eat something, but I don't want anything. It doesn't make sense. It's like a culinary glitch in The Matrix. It happens to me all the time, and I'm helpless to do anything, but flop around on the ground like a tantruming child, flailing my arms and legs hither and yon, and whining about life worse than an overly woke socialist. By the way, if that last statement offended you, we likely aren't a good match. So where was I? Ah yes, arms thrashing, and legs akimbo. “I wanna eat, but I don't want nuthin', but I'm hungry, but nuthin's good, but I wanna eat!” It should not surprise you that in these moments, my wife has perfected the art of the side-eye. She's never gone as far as to say, Idiot, out loud, but it's there on her face. She doesn't appreciate the highly evolved man-cision system I have in place, and how because I have such a developed and complicated process to navigate regarding the intricacies between one thing and another, there is sometimes a disruption that causes a failure of calculation, resulting in said flailing arms and legs akimbo. When she reads this, she's going to give me the side-eye. I know it. I still don't know whether or not to use this piece for the podcast/blog/swim in Lake Me at all. I'm having a hard time making that decision. It's difficult finding the time to record these episodes lately anyway, but I guess I could get some pvc pipes and blankets and carry a sort of portable studio with me on trips. Seems like a lot of trouble, though. I'm not sure. I could cut the pipes in half and connect them with joiners. That way I could throw the whole thing in a duffle. But what kind of duffle should I get? Plain? Black? Georgia Bulldog red? Something with a logo? Maybe I could make an Atomic Red Studios logo and print it on a plain, Georgia Bulldog red duffel. That would be neat. The Atomic Red Studios duffel could actually carry the Atomic Red Studios. Is that over thinking it? I don't know. I can't decide.

Let's see … how should I describe my back issues? Um …. If there was a further sublevel of hell past anything Dante came up with where the devil himself would say, “Nope, nope, nope!”, then you pushed into a dank corner of the sewer system of that hell where stagnant, rotting remnants of the bowels of the worst demons that have ever existed have gotten caught in a gooey, churning cesspool, it might - and I say might - come close. Because, my friend, your humble host recently slipped a disc in my back, and the subsequent agony was the worst thing I've ever endured. It's part of the reason for another lengthy delay in episodes of this podcast, and I'm about to tell you alllll about it, including the lessons I've learned, both spiritually, and in the area of my own stupidity. From Atomic Red studios, I'm Michael Blackston, and if you thought a whiny man with a cold can be bad, wait till you hear about this latest test of my endurance straight out of my Funny Messy Life. _________________________ I sit and prepare this episode of the show feeling rather comfortable and relatively pain-free. The name of the restaurant I chose rhymes with Hizza Put, and I'm enjoying a simple order of breadsticks with extra seasoning, and a cup of alfredo sauce, instead of marinara to dip them in. (Yes, you can ask for that.) I've sort of gotten addicted to the breadsticks from Hizza Putt because when this whole thing started, it's all I could think of when people insisted I eat something to stay alive. And once I decided it was an sensible enough request, it was just easier, when my wife annoyed me by asking me to make decisions in my state of pain, to scream, “Breadsticks!”  Now, let me be clear. My wife was not actually being annoying. What she was doing was trying her best to take care of a man in his late forties who was floating in a pool of hell's poop water. In reality, my wife, God bless her, was an absolute saint, along with several others who helped me, or prayed fervently for me, or both. In fact, I found out just how amazing my support system really is. So here's what happened. I'm going to go back to before Christmas, because I believe it's the start of the whole thing. I've known for years that I have a weak back, and there are a couple of reasons for that. Since I was a teenager, I've dealt with back trouble because: I have always hated to exercise, so I have a weak core, and … I gots Gamp Back. “Hey, Mike … what in the name of all sewer stankwater pain is Gamp Back?” I'm glad you asked. If you listened a few episodes ago when I talked about my perfect Christmas, you'll hear me emote lovingly about my grandpa and how he would sit quietly watching his family as we lived our lives around him. He called himself The Gamps, obviously a babytalkish way to say Gramps, and it stuck. So while he was watching us, there were likely times he was doing so in agony from a back that gave him trouble, and because genes have this cute way of repeating themselves down a family line, a whole bunch of us ended up with torsos that easily make the decision to test the boundaries of our pain tolerance by taking a spinal version of Rumspringa. That's the period of time where young Amish people are allowed to break from tradition and do shameful things, like chewing gum and moving their feet slightly to a beat. During Spinal Rumspringa, members of our family will develop the aforementioned Gamp Back. Knowing this was a possibility, I should have insisted that my son, who is a young, strapping 17-year-old, change his own tire. It was that last stupid lug that did the trick. Whoever put it on must have summoned the power of Thor, and like the God of Thunder's hammer, the lug did not want to budge. I was apparently not worthy. Yet, I insisted I was still man enough to do it, and I did, but not before I felt a slight twinge in the lower left side of my back. “Haha. That's gonna smart for a few days,” I laughed like a character from Father Knows Best, and finished the job. But it bothered me a little from then on. I mean, it wasn't bad enough that I paid it much attention, but it was constantly there, putting a damper on all of my tide yuling, shelf elfing, and Christmas tree oh-ing. Then right after Christmas, I started noticing some pretty severe sciatic nerve pain that didn't want to go away. I wanted it to, just like you want those shiny strands tinsel to stop showing up on your clothes when you get them out of the dryer, all the way into August.The only thing worse than that is the flake green plastic Easter basket grass. Regardless of how I describe it, the pain was relentless. My wife got tired of hearing me complain about it. It's not that she wasn't sympathetic with my injury, but after a while, it was clear I needed to see a doctor and and get on some kind of medicine that made me loopy to see if I could get some relief. Me being me, though, I thought that was just silly. “You need to go to the doctor about that, and get on some medication that makes you loopy to see if you can get some relief.” “Nah. It'll go away. I've had it before, and it just has to work itself out.” “It's more serious than that. You really need to make an appointment. You need something for the pain.” “Silly woman, I know my body.” “Why would you refuse if they can help you? You're not a young, strapping 17-year-old boy anymore. You're not even strapping.” “The waiting room would be crawling with COVID. I ain't goin'. OW! My Leg!” “WE NEED SOME RELIEF!” I also needed to see my doctor about getting back on a serious plan for my diabetes, so she threw that at me and said, “Oh, and by the way ... You'll be mentioning your leg and back.” Fine. I made the appointment and he gave me some steroids for the pain, along with a good talking to about Cadbury Creme Eggs and the role I've allowed them to play in my life. Spoiler alert: They are not the hero. To my surprise, the steroids made me feel a LOT better, and pretty fast. So fast, in fact, that just before going on a trip to Alabama, I moved a block of granite in my backyard without help because I STILL would not believe that I was neither young, nor strapping. Then I worked a weekend where I set my posture badly and didn't move for about six hours, then turned around and drove home five hours. I think I also found an early stock of Cadbury Creme Eggs and crammed them into my face like a honey badger. I soaked in a bath once I got home, and it felt great after the drive. It was hot, and it was soothing … for a couple of minutes. Then I noticed something. The muscles in the lower left part of my back and my left leg began to tighten in a painful way. I removed the pretend pipe from between my teeth, and stated, “Gee, that doesn't just smart. That's a sure enough, gosh-golly bite from the jaws of a hell hound. And is that sewer water I smell?” At first it was uncomfortable, then worse, then unbearable. Now, as you know from earlier, I'm not one for doctors, but I quickly decided to calmly, make another statement to my wife. I said, “OH GOD! YOU GOTTA TAKE ME TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM! I'M DYING, KAYLA! THIS IS IT! I AIN'T GONNA MAKE IT OUTTA HERE, BUT WE HAVE TO TRY. WE HAVE TO TRY!!!” She rushed to my aid, and we rushed to the hospital. That, itself, is its own story, but not for right now. Actually, the hour ride to the hospital that's NOT run by drunk llamas wasn't bad. Something about the way I could place my legs gave me a decent amount of relief. I was seen by the ER, given drugs that made me loopy, and sent home. The next few days went as follows: MY WIFE - “How are you feeling?” ME - “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! MY WIFE - “Still that bad? Is there anything I can do to help the pain?” ME - “You can … GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! I'M DYING! BRING ME A PEN AND PAPER! I NEED TO WRITE OUT A WILL!!!!!!!!!! MY wife - “Let me at least get some food in you. What would you like?” ME - “AHHHHHHHHHHH …. BREADSTICKS! HIZZA PUTT!!!!!” During the night, I writhed and moaned like a baby because I could get no relief, no matter what positions I tried.  Sitting up, lying down, legs in the air, legs off the side of the bed, Bound Lotus, Congress of a Spider Monkey … all of them. Kayla couldn't sleep, but she did everything she could to care for me. Again, she's been a saint. That was pretty much the long and short of our lives for most of two weeks until we could get in to see a chiropractor. I'd never been to a chiropractor before, and I was skeptical. I hobbled in like Quasimodo, and answered their questions as best as I could. “Where does it hurt?” “GAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!” “How long has it been hurting?” “AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!” “Are you able to eat?” “BREADSTICKS! HIZZA PUTT!!!!” And then, a man entered the room. There was a heavenly glow surrounding his head. At first I thought he was holding a lamb in his arms, but it turned out to be a white towel to put under my head. He gently took my leg into his hands and taught me a motion that moved in concert with him to loosen the nerve. He bent my body in a couple of ways I never would have thought possible, much like I used to twist and contort my sister's dolls when I wanted to practice ancient torture methods, but somehow, this felt amazing. He then leaned in, pressing his body weight into me with the skill of a medical Samurai (please don't come at me with something like, Chiropractice, Chiropracticality? Chiropractation? Chiropractation! … isn't technically medicine, fah fah fah!) I don't care. It was to me. Actually, it felt like a miracle because when I left, I could actually walk. And that night, I could sleep. And the next day, I considered moving around some of the blocks of granite in my backyard.  Actually, I took his advice, and have been doing everything exactly as he instructed. I saw him the next day for another adjustment, and saw him twice a week for the next six weeks. And after that, there will be at least a monthly visit for the rest of my life because I am a staunch believer now. It wasn't just him, though. There was a ton of prayer and promises to act right, pray more, read my bible, and never ever again attempt the congress of anything with the name of an animal in it. In addition, my family doctor advises that I steer clear of as many burgers and creme eggs, and make more of a habit of visiting something that rhymes with Balad Sar. So it's a good news/bad news sort of thing. The good news is that I'm nearly completely recovered now from my back injury, and relatively pain free. The bad news is that to stay that way, I need to engage in a healthy lifestyle. But these breadsticks with extra seasoning are SO GOOD!

Part of a conversation with my friend, Toni King from a previous podcast called, "Cue One Go - The Theatre Show". We're talking about things that happened onstage.

Due to my busy schedule, I'm going to be giving you a look back into the history of my podcasting. In this episode, I'll introduce you to my friend, Toni King, who co-hosted a podcast with me called, Cue One Go - The Theatre show. I really miss C1G and I hope listening to this episode brings you as much joy as it did for me.

The Uncanny Consequences Of Being Me The title of this piece reads like a fancy-pants movie they'd show at a film festival where the people in the audience all eat their popcorn with a fork so they won't get their fingers greasy and spot up their turtle necks and skinny jeans. I'm sorry about that. I don't mean to make you feel like you're one of those people. You might prefer your popcorn the way I do … floating in a bucket of butter oil that resembles a gigantic vat of cereal that'll stuff your arteries like a Thanksgiving turkey. I mention my arteries because they've been on my mind lately. My doctor told me they're as clogged as a man's who eats movie theatre popcorn the way I do. Which got me thinking … I'd love a bag of that Lance Movie Theater Extra butter popcorn I talked about in episode 71, titled Diary of a Rage Monster. Which got me to thinking … I'd probably not be able to find it anyway because that's how things go for me. Which brought to mind … Hey, I wanted to write about that! Well, now that you're supremely confused, let me bring it back around to the title of this piece and tell you about my bad luck. From Atomic Red studios, I'm Michael Blackston and I'm calling this The Uncanny Consequeces Of Being Me because sometimes that's what it feels like to live my Funny Messy Life. _________________________   Have you ever heard of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis? It's composed as a series of correspondence between two demonic forces - Screwtape, and his nephew Wormwood. The nephew is a rookie demon assigned to a poor, unsuspecting human and his job is to bother the man enough that he never comes to know God, or worse, curses Him altogether. Screwtape is a crusty old veteran and is trying to help his nephew in learning the ways of evil and messing with humans. It's a classic book that has helped many understand the powers at play in the realm we can't see, and I have come to believe I have a Wormwood of my own. I understand that not every inconvenient thing that happens to me is the work of evil minions. Just because I crank the side of my finger in the ratchet thingy that tightens the straps when I secure granite to my trailer doesn't mean the devil did it. Just because I drop a piano on my two big toes like I told you about in episode 16 - I think - the part titled, I Can Do It All By Myself, doesn't mean Satan waved his hand and caused the piano to fall. Just because I look like an idiot when I try to bust a move doesn't mean the forces of evil are actively trying to stop the beat. No. Those things simply mean I'm clumsy, stupid, and a terrible dancer. But alas, there is uncanniness afoot, and it happens when I find something I adore. I'll become enamored with the item and start to desire it with the desire an obsessed man will desire a thing and suddenly, even though I've seen it everywhere, it's gone. Nowhere to be found. Vanished into thin air and as unseen as the whisps of a flatulent butterfly.  Okay, most of the time it has to do with food I shouldn't ought to be eating in the first place, so I suppose one could argue that it's actually the forces of good that are directing my path. However, since I get so turned upside down about it, I feel better laying the blame on my own moron of a demon, or maybe he's a genius.  In light of that, I believe I'll borrow from C.S. Lewis and present my own version of correspondence between the teacher and the newbie imp. I'll call him, Sugar Poot. (I'm sorry, Mama - it's the first random nickname that popped into my head and it made me laugh out loud in the restaurant. I spit out my tea and got it all over my shirt. Sigh. Thanks a lot, Sugar Poot.) The master bad guy will be Vernon McDirtbag. Here go the conversations I think might take place between them:   Dear Uncle Vern, I reckon mama'nem told ya I got my first assignment this week, and I been tryin' real good to git him to fly off'n the handle. It ain't workin', though. I was plannin' to hurt him right off by makin' him git a splinter when he was loadin' up some granite, but the idgit beat me to it when he pinched his finger in the ratchet thangy what tightens up the straps. Can ya give me some pointers? I don't know what I'm doin'. Yourn truly, Sugar Poot   Dear ….  I won't call you Sugar Poot. What was your mother thinking? I shall refer to you as S.P. Also, my name is Vernon, not Vern. Anyway, I will attempt to give you a few suggestions as to how to keep your man off of the straight and narrow, but you must realize that from what I understand, you have quite the task ahead of you. He is already a child of God, even if he does sometimes erroneously write things that make his family shake their heads. Being previously saved, your only recourse will be to lay spots upon his testimony. Our Adversary has him in His hand, but that doesn't mean your man is perfect, or unshakeable. He is only human, after all. Think of things that will cause him to stumble. Things that will invite him to sin and to do so publicly. I wish you devil speed in your endeavors, nephew. Yours, Vernon   Dear Uncle Vee, A-Ight, I tried whatcha said. I give him a real bad time last week when I heard him sayin' he wanted some of that Lance Movie Theater Butter popcorn. He was goin' out of town, and it was late, and he was feelin' snacky. He just figured out he likes that stuff and he's got a real addiction to it, so y'know what I did? I made sure every bag of it between his house and Carbon Hill, Alabama was plum out. That's five hours of drivin' without his precious popcorn bag, Uncle Vee! You orta seen him. He was madder'n a Crimson Tide fan the day Nick Saban announces his retirement. I got him good! Only thang is, he didn't do nothin' bad about it. He jest stewed the whole way, fussin' to hisself about how that's always how it goes. The second he finds somethin' he likes, it's gone. I'm gon' try it again, though. Soon as I find somethin' else he's a-cravin'. Yer dedicated ‘prennice, Sugar Poot   Dear Nephew Sugar …. S.P., While I'm impressed with your fervor, I must say that your error is obvious. The answer is in the description you give of your man's reaction to not being able to get his teeth around the scrumptious, buttery kernels of popping perfection. He said it always happens. Nephew, if you are to move him with temptation, you must seize upon the things that catch him off guard. It sounds to me that he is used to this sort of disappointment, and therefore harder to push in a negative direction. Yes he, as you called it, stewed, but in the end he survived, and I dare suspect called upon his Lord to help him with his state of mind. Do not worry, nephew. These are rookie mistakes and to be expected. Think outside the box to get him so frustrated that he makes a scene in front of others. And to add insult to injury, perhaps you may entice him to do so on a day when he is wearing his Jesus shirt like he talked about in episode 67 of his podcast, Funny Messy Life. Here's hoping for a better report next go ‘round. P.S., My name is VERNON, not Uncle VEE! Yours in evil, VERNON!   Dear Daddy McDee, Oh boy, did I git him this time! He was on the road again. I been noticin' that he kept eyeballin' them white chocolate Reecie Cups, but he never bought one. I mean, he likes Reecie Cups, but the rag'lar ones. He'll eat them thangs, and anythang else chocolate fer that matter, like he never knew he was a diabetic. Hard as I tempted him, I couldn't git him to partake in the white chocolate ones. But then he did it. He tried one. You oughtta seen the look what come over him when he took his first taste. I mean, them thangs was everywhere, so I let him git one more pack of ‘em on the way home, then I waited. Next trip he headed out, I put it in his head. MMMMM, BOY! Wouldn' a white chocolate Reecie Cup sit good on yer tongue? Put it on ya head, ya tongue‘ll slap ya face to death tryin' ta git to it! Well, he took the bait and I made every one of them packs of candy between his house and Brookhaven, Mississippi disappear. That's ten stinkin' hours of travel without gettin' the kind of Reecie Cup he wanted and I thought I had him ready to cuss, but he didn't. He took a deep breath, pulled over at an exit that had a theater, and went to a movie. Daddy McDee, my man bought a gigantic tub of popcorn and had ‘em give it five layers of butter oil. It sloshed when he walked to his seat, uncle. It sloshed! I can't compete with that! I don't know how I'm gon' earn my medals of evil if'n I can't even git a man to cuss about a piece of candy. I'm forlornded. I give up, Sugar Poot   Dear S.P., This is our final correspondence. I can't deal with you, so I'll let my sister - your mother - be your mentor. After all, she is the one that named you Sugar Poot. However, I will urge you not to give up entirely. My promise is that your man is currently in the flesh. That means he has weaknesses in the armor he wears, that is if it's armor of his own making. Whenever you notice he has taken up the Armor of God, you have no chance. But stay firm and resolute. He doesn't always put on the Armor of God. He knows our Adversary leads him to, but he doesn't always follow. In those times lay your best shot. You'll be able to spot them. He will whisper something hateful about his fellow man, or look twice in a direction he should not. Perhaps he will drop a piano on his big toes and curse like a sailor. He wears his own armor then, and it is full of vulnerable, open spaces. In the meantime, don't call me Vern, Uncle Vee, or Daddy McDee. As a matter of fact, just don't call me. Lose my address, Vernon   So there you have it. I fully expect that when I find something I really enjoy, in due time, it will become utterly, and uncannily, unavailable. P.S. Eventually I was able to find the popcorn and the Reece's Cups. Swamp Guinea stew is a whole other story, like I mentioned in the last episode. It's just uncanny. Yours in comedy and messy life, Michael

A Christmas interview with my 8 year old daughter, Merida.

My Perfect Christmas I told you so. I suspect a few of my regular listeners didn't believe me when I said I'd be back to Funny Messy Life after a brief hiatus, but here I am. I've been gone for a few weeks because it's hard to find the time to write out full episodes of this podcast when there are other things that I have to do in place of it, like editing the final draft of a novel, which is what has been going on with this last break. But every break has to come to an end at some point, and while I'm not done with editing Mr. Long Said Nothing because my life is too full with obligations, I've been thinking it's time to get back in the podcast saddle. The question was this: Should I jump on back in now, or give myself the rest of the year and jump back in at the beginning of 2022? I mean, it's only about a week now, right? Then something happened. I received a Christmas card from my friends, the ________, in Minnesota and my heart soared. By the way, _________, I wanted to send you an email to thank you, but I got a fancy pants new iPhone and in the data transfer, I lost your info, so drop me your email address if you don't mind. Anyway, I decided that if someone who knows me through this podcast feels strongly enough to send me a card, then maybe others of you do too … just maybe not as much as the __________'s because they put that they were my biggest fans right there on the envelope, so ……     SO! - without further ado, I'm Michael Blackston and Merry Christmas! Here is the first episode back after my hiatus, and now I present to you, for your holiday pleasure, a few words that describe what I think would be the perfect Christmas in my Funny Messy Life. _________________________ Let us start by jingling all the way back to my childhood in the 1970's and 80's to get the family Christmas tree. In. my extended family, we had a tradition. We always met at my grandma's house on Sunday afternoons for lunch and a few hours of fellowship. The grownups gathered around the kitchen table after the meal, while the kids were expected to go outside and frolick merrily around the property, regardless of whether or not it was 20 degrees, or 150. If it was 150, we came back in at the end of the day with sweaty, gritty dirt lines circling the perimeters of our necks. I may have mentioned before that we called these rings of grime and funk, Granny Beads. If it was twenty degrees outside, we'd still have them, but they'd be frozen into magical frozen filth beads. Either way, the adults would inevitably tell us at the end of the day, after being the very ones to banish us to the hours long whimsy of nature, Y'all smell like the outside! But every year a couple of weeks before Christmas, it was the entire family who got to smell like the outside. Why? Because it was our tradition for everybody to march into the woods together and pick out our Christmas trees from the wild cedars that grew behind Grandma's house. The men took up their saws, we kids ran untethered through the forest like we didn't have no good raisin', and the women kept a keen eye out for the perfect tree when they weren't yelling at us kids. “Quit runnin' around like y'all ain't got no good raisin'!” Every once in a while, one of the young ones would find a tree we wanted to take home. “Let's git thissun, Deddie!” But it was never the right one. It usually had a huge bare spot in the middle, or the top looked like the Jolly Green Giant had used it to scrape the granny beads out of the creases on his jolly green neck. Eventually, the angels would descent, shining a holy light on the perfect tree, and the man who claimed it would begin the arduous task of cussing it down. Did I say cussing it down? Ha ha, no. Of course not. I meant cutting it down with interesting, and quite colorful words as a way to encourage the saw to stop getting stuck in the sap midway through. Once we got the tree home and decorated, the house smelled delightfully of cedar and burning cedar needles as back in those days we thought nothing of stringing a dead tree with huge glass bulbs that got hotter than Satan's armpit. In effect, our house smelt like th'outside! And that's number one on my list of things that would make a perfect Christmas - going outback of Grandma's house with the family just one more time to pick out the Christmas tree. Next, I think I would want the family to gather again a couple of weeks before Christmas at an old southern restaurant that no longer exists, except in our fond memories. I'm not sure who first came up with the idea of everybody going to Swamp Guinea (prounounced SWOMP' - ginny), but they are responsible for some wonderful memories. It became another extended family tradition, and I suspect maybe my Grandpa started it all. Swamp Guinea was an wood cabin sort of place that smelled of fried everything and sweet tea. It was an all-you-can-eat family style gorge-fest where our family met to tear into chicken, shrimp, catfish, hush puppies, cole slaw, and stew like we didn't have no good raisin'. The place is closed now, and this year we tried to re-imagine the tradition with a trip to another similar place called Booty's. I didn't care for it, but we were all together and that's what was important. Well, Grandma wasn't with us for the first time, so I guess that might have had something to do with it not being the same. The thing is, the stew I just mentioned would also always make an appearance at our Christmas Eve gathering. Someone would order a pot of Swamp Guinea stew and bring a loaf of bread to the table. Lately the stew was from a different place, and it's good, but it's not Swamp Guinea. At least we were all together at Grandma's. So for number two, I think just one more meal with the family at Swamp Guinea would help make the perfect Christmas. Stepping back to the tree situation, one of my favorite memories of Christmas was always the family decorating the tree in the middle of Grandma and Grandpa's living room. The box with all the ornaments would be brought in and everyone would be invited to find the ball with their name on it. I think my sister might have started this event years ago because she'd seen them doing on Days Of Our Lives, but it stuck and it became ours as well. The kids hung theirs as high up as they could go, while the teens fought for position at the topmost point of the tree. One of my cousins would never be outdone and to this day, the tree's topmost ornament bears the name, Chuck. It's there again this year, except the tree was brought to my aunt's house because the house we've always known as Grandma's has been sold. New places, new traditions. Never quite the same. Grandma and Grandpa would sit back and watch the crowd laughing and being jolly as we decorated the tree, sometimes so loud it seemed we didn't have no good raisin', and they said few words. They just took it all in. And that's number three for me in my ideal description of the perfect Christmas. Then there's Christmas Eve. After the meal that included all the trimmings, including the stew, we would all retire to the living room to open presents. The kids would have been begging to get to this part for a while now, and having digested, the adults would relent. At that point, a couple of people would be appointed to pass them out from the enormous pile under the tree and the fun would start with everyone ripping up paper and throwing bows into the air with reckless abandon, as if they didn't have no good raisin'. Someone always ended up with a bow on their head, showing it off to everyone like it was the first time anyone had ever thought of it. A lot of time that person has been me. There are a couple of gag gifts that have made their rounds over the years: an old coat that no one wants, and two plastic guitar-shaped popcorn … things with Elvis on the label. These gifts must be kept and regifted the next year. Every year, someone dares someone else to eat the popcorn and we laugh. Once again, the Grandparents, ,and for several years, only Grandma, sat and watched and got showered with gifts, but said little. This was their gift - to see the family they created share a wonderful time. I suspect this description matches a lot of others around the world in cultures that celebrate Christmas, but each one will have their special little things that make it unique to that family. Ours will be different this year. Grandma passed this year and like I said, the house was sold. It's funny, I always call it Grandma's house, but there was Grandpa, too, until he passed. That was his way, though. To quietly sit in the background and enjoy watching the rest of us. When I think back on it, I can still see the look on his face, the slightest upward curl the edges of his mouth, and the twinkle in his eye as his family lived their lives in front of him. That's what he always worked toward. It was his greatest mission - to provide those moments for the rest of us. In the end, it became Grandma's mantle to sit back and watch. The older she got, the less she would say as she sat at the side table in Sundays in the kitchen while the rest of us talked and laughed, and on a rare occasions, argued. I felt bad for her sometimes and didn't want her to feel left out, so I'd ask her … “You okay over there, Grandma?” She would smile and say, “I'm just listening to y'all.” Coming in at number four, one more Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa at their house on the Washington Highway. I want to pull in one more time and see the lone tree out front lit with bright, multicolored lights. I want my headlights to shine just one more time on a sign out front by the road that read, Joseph Mills Photograghy. I want to walk inside and immediately hear gales of laughter and smell the stew. And I want my hug. God, I miss my hug. It's all different now, and I'm settled that the only choice we have is to continue to love, laugh, and live. In those moments, we will usher in new traditions and the world will, as it always has, move on. There are a bunch of other things that would help put the perfect season pin to the season, but this year, these feel like they rank at the top for me. Maybe I'll revisit this list and add to it another time, but for now, it's where it ought to be. As for my Christian brothers and sisters who might ask, Where was Christ in all of this? You never mentioned Christ. I didn't have to. He was always there. He was there when Grandpa and Grandma eloped to be married at 16. He was there at the birth of each of their three daughters, and subsequently every grandchild as the family grew. And Christ was at the very center of every celebration, every tradition, and every memory we made. And now, I guess he's with them in Heaven, three of them holding hands together and smiling, watching with maybe few words, as we continue to live our lives in front of them.   

I'm taking a short hiatus. I have to finish editing the final draft of my novel, Mr. Long Said Nothing and I can't create podcast content aty the same time, so I'm taking a little break. Don't worry though, I'll be back soon. Love ya, mean it! -- Mike

   Well, I felt really stupid this morning. And then I felt even more stupid around lunch time. And then I felt supremely stupid at the end of the day. Why? Because I was having a bad day.    Actually, check that. There was nothing particularly bad about the day. I was having one of those days when it seemed like everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - was out to irritate me.    From Atomic Red Studios, located in a secret bunker somewhere in Northeast Georgia, I'm Michael Blackston and sometimes I have days when waking up on the wrong side of the bed is an understatement. The problem is, the stuff that gets under my skin, really shouldn't. By the end of the day, I can find myself in a ridiculous headspace, and I'm not alone. I've seen footage of people just like me. One young man at a gas pump got so angry with a door compartment on his motorcycle that when he'd had enough, he reared back to kick it. Luckily for the bike, his friend intervened and wrestled him back from his maniacal discourse before anything bad could happen. So, with a heart of transparency, let's peek inside the pages of a diary. The diary of a rage monster. _________________________    First, I had gotten up at 4:30 am to get started on a trip to Sumter, SC for work. I've been traveling less recently, and I've been leaving out the evening before when I do travel, so I can get a good night's sleep in my hotel room before getting up to etch my fingers to the bone. It's a nice routine, but Sumter is close enough to where I live that the drive isn't so bad and I often just get up little before the roosters.    I like Sumter. There's plenty to eat, a movie theater should I decide to drop 80 bucks for a single ticket and concessions, an Air Force base that's cool to pass by because I can pretend I'm Maverick from Top Gun, except I'm not in my twenties, driving a cool motorcycle, and about to go make out with Kelly McGillis. Other than that, it's almost identical. And they actually have a Swan Lake in Sumter. They have an actual lake with swans.    All that to say there was no reason for me to already be having a bad day not an hour into my commute.      Dearest Diary,    This morning broke my slumber finding me well in temper. My good wife and the firstborn of my loins, the male child, had been away at concert the previous eve, in the communeship of Buckhead, near the capitol of our fair state of Georgia. I was aware of the late hour they should return and had dressed our second born, a girl child, in her night clothes and bade her pleasant dreams. She went amicably, allowing me the advantage of an early turn-in myself, being that I must wake prior to the crow of the cock.    I feared the tally of hours might not be enough for my sleep, but upon waking, I felt refreshed and eager to turn a key to the day and all the promise that lay waiting beyond that mysterious door.   The initial hour of my drive was without event, and I dare say the next ones might have followed suit, had my hunger not played the beast and my bladder cried out also.    I shall stop, then, I uttered to no one in particular, and led my iron carriage into the next store of convenience. There I found the necessary venue for silencing the cries of my bladder, and though my intent was not to gather food here, for I had seen the golden sign ahead that told me the time was Bo and my mouth lathered at the thought of a buttery biscuit stuffed with Cajun filet, I did, indeed, endeavor to procure a vat of cola from the fountain.    The fountain brought forth a delicious brown syrup and water mixture in a cascade over a mountain of crushed ice inside my cup, and did so at the mere touch of my finger. My spirits were on high with the aspect of such cold refreshment and soon, I should feel my taste buds seizing, then giving in to the salivatory seduction that is the Cajun filet biscuit with two slices of cheese. Could such rapture be met with foe, and at so early an hour? Surely I would have thought Nay! But alas, fine diary, rock would soon strike flint in the form of a thin, plastic lid. A cluster of them to be exact.    The discs that were to be the barrier between the contents of my cup and the possible soaking of my lap had been stacked anew and tucked tightly into a space by what I can only assume were the minuscule hands of a baby midget. I was scarcely able to insert my own fingers well enough into the stack, for they are fattish and resemble the stubby links of sausage one might request at the House of Huddle. My ire became piqued as I contemplated my course, wondering why on God's green earth the attendant would be loathe to leave room for the selection of a singular lid. I settled upon the idea of using a fingernail to lift the corner of the topmost lid, and while I was successful in my endeavor of sliding a nail underneath, the lid would not come forth. Once I tried to lift it, then a second time, now thrice, but to no avail. It was stuck to its brothers like a glue of the most voracious variety, making impossible the prospect of retrieving just one, or any for that matter, for the entirety of the cluster of discs was too large to be withdrawn from its keep. I roasted with enmity toward the lids, marking inwardly how silly I must seem to God, Who created all and gave the discs no soul, nor reasoning. It did not matter.   BLAST THESE CURSED LIDS OF PLASTIC!, I shouted and an employee the size of a thimble next to me became startled.    You! I said indignantly and squeezed mine eyes to slits toward him. You, sir, have brought shame upon this place by so carelessly packing these discs. And now, lest I prevail, I shall risk the appearance of incontinence with a large wet stain upon the front of my pantaloons. A pall upon you sir, and may shadows of woe consume thy house!    Dude, I'm just doing my job, he bade haughtily and I stormed away.    I am sorry, dear diary. I have acted the fool.     Yours,     Michael      Most Honorable Diary,    I am a man unhinged of late. While I was eventually able to rescue a single plastic lid from its dungeon of a hole, thereby keeping my clothes dry during my commute, my day, I fear, has become more hateful still. It would seem I have been visited by an illness that knocks at my door oftener than I care for. I cannot seem to hold anything in my hands today, causing all manner of embarrassment and irritation. Mother calls this condition The Dropsies. I call it hell!    Diary, I am unable to efficiently produce the etchings for which I am called to do if every time I pick up my hand piece, I knock over my glass of tea, or my iPhone, or accidentally poke a customer in the eye. How then, shall I seed my wallet? Surely an artist with clumsy hands does not curry the favor of those seek a master. Therefore what shall I do if this new development persists? I will tell you. To quote a lyric from OLIVER, I shall scream. I shall scream, I shall scream, I shall scream.     The final straw with this fresh bane was when I dipped my hand into the bag of popped corn I have punched earlier, and, intending to grasp a quantity of several at once and shovel them into my mouth, my plan was thwarted once again by my painfully sausage-like fingers. They clasped a goodly amount of the kernels and had no failure removing them from the bag, but alas, the task was too much for such a poor excuse for extremities and the very moment before I was able to cram them into my mouth, the pressure holding them together loosed and the entire lot exploded from my hand like so much buttery shrapnel from war's tastiest grenade. The popped corn flew in every direction except for whence it was meant, and I flew into a rage, cursing their very existence of the snack.     AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!     I clutched another handful from the bag and vaulted it against the wall bedside me, somehow hoping to cause pain to something inanimate, fluffy, and light. I called it names and I rebuked the evil emitting from the bag that lay before me.    Foul treat, I despise you! Whisps of Satan! Your stench both draws and repulses me! Be gone, for thy taste is a billowing siren song where dwells sadness and despair!     Workmen stared in the direction of my outburst, knowing not how to react, until I one of them approached and offered to rid me of this thorn in my side.    You gon' eat that?    I fear for my sanity, diary. Pray for me.     In your debt, Michael      DIARY!    Why do I even bother placing quill to your parchment?! This is the very problem, is it not? Here am I spilling the worst of my personal flaws to a book, as if there were a living, breathing entity within the binding that would benefit me by council. Ha! Perhaps it was the fatalist part of this entire matter that I made the first stroke, lending the idea of consciousness to any object wherein its molecular structure, there be no hint of blood. I have jumped off the cliff. Now, by the end of this day, I see that wayward cup lids and an episode of the dropsies were mere trivialities compared to the fit I have now pitched at yet another item that could not possibly bear a soul, nor ill intent.    ‘Twas merely a water bottle, and nothing more. It made no malevolence against me, spoke no threat, yet by the end of the matter, I had beaten the poor bottle against the pavement of the sidewalk.     I only wished for it remain inside of the plastic bag I had earlier designated as a trash receptacle. I meant good by it, that I should be the good steward and stow my garbage away from the rest of decent society, to contain it properly. I needed it no more, for it promised not another drop of refreshment. But the bottle would not stay in the bag. I placed it there, gently, and having satisfied that I was ready to start my truck, bucked the belt around my waist and ignited the engine. Alas, before I was able to pull the lever into drive, I hear the bag in the passenger seat floorboard settle awkwardly and the bottle rolled out.    This would not do.    I retrieved the bottle and reapplied it to the bag, yet it rolled out again, immediately upon my sitting back.    Once more, I retrieved the bottle and placed it, nay, slammed it violently back into the bag, daring in my heart that it should have the audacity to further escape. There seemed to be a peace by then, that the bottle would relent. I was able to re-buckle, pull the lever into drive and spring the vehicle forward toward home at last. Home, where there awaited a shower and the prospect of an early retirement to my bed.    As soon as I was dedicated to my course, out into the street where stopping to re-trash a delinquent bottle is more difficult, I hear the bag settle again and the bottle roll out, this time completely beneath the passenger seat, as if it would hide from me.    Now, in my head, I knew the right thing to do. It would certainly be folly to give in to the rage I felt at the moment for a plastic bottle. Folly though, appeared to be the order of the day. I felt to be at the mercy of my heart and not my head in any case, I screamed the truck to a halt by the side of the street and charge out, around to the passenger side door. The bottle was nowhere to be seen, but I knew. I knew exactly where it was hiding inside its cave under the seat. I could almost hear it laughing at me. Had I not capped it from the start, I feared I might hear it audible, which angered me more.    I thrust my hand beneath the seat, ignoring the sticky remnants and grainy residue of things that had fallen there before unbeknownst to me, and tried to get my fingers around the bottle. I could feel it inches, even centimeters from my grasp, but budging back ever so slightly and out of my reach any time my flesh felt its cold plastic skin. This game of cat and mouse pushed me to a new mental state. It turned me into something primal and without any sense of reason whatever.    The yell that this induced from my lungs resembled nothing of the man I saw in the mirror. It was the scream of a madman or a monster. When I finally got my hand around the bottle, I squeezed, with intention, harder than was necessary. I imagined I could hear shrieks of pain, and this brought me joy.    Immediately, I brought the bottle outside the truck and raised it before my eyes, still gripping it with terrible fervor.   Disobey me, will you?! I'll see to it you stay put from now on. You have brought this upon thyself!    I struck that bottle on the pavement over and over and over again, screaming fresh with every insane blow. Traffic slowed to watch the spectacle. It was only after a passerby, who apparently had been in my position before, hollered his approval - Woo HOO! Git ‘er done! - that I came to my senses and realized what a buffoon I was being.    After all, diary, it was just a plastic bottle. How could I blame a plastic bottle?    It was the bag. The bag was to blame.    And I'm sorry, dearest diary, for writing to you so harshly before.     Currently seeking treatment,     Michael      Ok, so obviously, I'm trying to be funny, but just in case anybody thinks I was being serious anywhere in this piece, please observe the following disclaimer:    The previous enactment is a work of fiction. None of the insanity of the story you just heard is real. Michael does not write in a diary, nor is he from civil war times as indicated by the style the prose indicates. While Michael did actually become enraged while attempting to retrieve a plastic lid one morning, he did not yell at a little person. There was no bag of popcorn …. wait, okay, there WAS a bag of popcorn because there's usually a bag of popcorn, but never was it thrown against a wall. That would waste good popcorn. No plastic bottles were harmed in actuality and Michael usually chuckles like a good-natured gentleman when they roll out of the trash bag. Have a nice day and quit taking yourself so seriously.    We've all had those little moments though, haven't we? I'd love to hear about yours.

   I make my home in the Deep South. Northeast Georgia to be exact. I was born and raised here, I love our traditions, I love and respect my mama, I'm proud that there's a church on every corner, and my rear end is plopped on the couch every Saturday in the fall because behind God and family, college football is king. Go Dawgs.    BUT …..    I'm not your typical southern boy. In fact, I spend my days expecting any minute to hear a knock at the door because I'm finally getting the visit from the South-Land Authentication Authority Works, otherwise known as S.L.A.A.W. They'll be asking me to hand over my southern card.      “Ye'uns ain't from around these parts, ere ya?”    “Yes, sir. I was born and raised right here in the Peach State. I like grits!”    “Oh yeah? Cooked or instant?”    “Instant.”    “Hand over that cahhhhhhd!”      It's true. I prefer instant grits to cooked every single time. It's what I grew up with and I like the taste. I particularly favor the brand with the Quaker guy on the front. That alone isn't enough to have my southern card revoked, though. I know others - others who prefer to remain nameless - who like instant grits over cooked. One little hiccup in a person's heritage does not a traitor make. Unfortunately for me, there is a long list of things that traditionally give a southerner their stamp of approval, and I don't match up with a lot of them. For instance …   I don't like country music. Many of us around here don't but I get physically ill when I hear most of the stuff coming out of Nashville today. There was a time when I was quite engaged with the country music scene. I worked for two different country music radio stations and during that time in the mid-nineties, I enjoyed it. Now though, my snobbery which emerges from my distaste for poorly written lyrics and cliched creativity has me plugging my ears with closest thing to me, even if that thing is an ice pick, or a chunk of broken glass.     I don't like cornbread. (What?! Say it ain't so!) It is very much so. I like a corn dog and I can eat my weight in hushpuppies, but don't ask me to take a bite of an actually by golly piece of cornbread. I've tried. Believe me. I just can't make myself like the texture of it alone. There's something different about a greasy hush puppy dipped in an ungodly slop of tartar sauce. I tried dipping cornbread into tartar sauce and it's not the same.     While we're on food, don't offer me fish of any kind, including fried catfish, bream, or bass. (MMMM, boy! You don't know what you're missing out on. Them's good eatin'.”) I know, but I'm the guy that makes it necessary to have the alternative chicken strips at every fish fry. You might be thinking, Well I don't have chicken at MY fish fries. And that's fine. Just don't invite me, because I ain't coming. Neither me, nor my wife will eat anything that comes from the water. Again, we've both tried. It all tastes like fish and we hate the taste of fish.     But Tilapia doesn't have that fishy taste.     Yes it does. We've tried it.     But Mahi Mahi tastes more like chicken than fish.     YOU SIT ON A THRONE OF LIES!!!     And while we're still on the topic of food, I eat my fried chicken with a fork. (Fried chicken, suh, is to be eaten with your hands.) Well, good for you. I don't like the smell chicken flesh leaves on my fingers and it's super hard to get that smell off.       Collard greens? No thank you.     Eggs. (Boy- I say BOY! Is there gon' be anything on this list what don't belong in the food pyramid?!) I'm starting to see your point. Other than country music so far, it's all been about my finicky palette. Still, eggs are a staple of breakfast and I can't stand to even smell them being cooked. I'll eat them on occasion as long as they're really well scrambled and have a whole block of cheese mixed into them. Otherwise, keep them away from me. Even my sister, who loves eggs, will go to the trouble to get the “wiggie” out of every egg she cracks before doing anything to it. I shouldn't have to explain what the wiggie is, but I will, since it's a word she made up years ago. It's the little white stringy thing that's always attached to the yolk. Now you know. And you're better for it.     I don't write “Thank You” notes, or at least I haven't in the past. I'm changing on that as I get older, but not because I think it's the right thing to do. If you receive a gift or service from someone you won't see face to face, sure. Of course, you should send a note of thanks. BUT, it's just my personal opinion that if you give me a gift and I personally, to your face, with a big ol' hug and a tear in my eye, thank you, from my mouth to your ears, then I have thanked you. I have learned the hard way that this is a hot button topic for some people. I know folks who get red hot under the collar because it's their opinion that you should send a thank you note every time someone says bless you after you sneeze. Those people are the reason I have a stack of 20,000 of the same thank you card I bought at the bin store for a dollar. (Well, I NEVER!) I guess not, but now you have. We have our own opinions and mine is just as valuable as yours. I don't think I need to remind you what they say about opinions anyway.     I think keeping a dog on a chain is animal cruelty and if you're caught doing it, you should be chained and left in the heat of the day, yourself. This isn't a particularly southern thing, but I grew up seeing my share of people treat their animals this way. When I hear some redneck that just crawled out from under a rock say, It's just a dang dog, I have to stop and ask God to help me see that person through His eyes. Why? Because my eyes in that moment, want to see that person strung upside down by their toenails and skinned like a catfish. Pets outside are fine as long as they're taken care of and have room to run around. I'm talking about the people who think it's okay to attach a huge, heavy chain around a dog's neck and leave them a filthy bowl of water.     I hate trucks with irrationally large tires and no muffler. I look at stuff like this from a psychological perspective. When a dude blares past me in a pickup so loud it could wake the dead and sitting jacked up so high on its tires that you just about need a ladder to get into it, my first thought is, Somebody has insecurity issues. Somebody doesn't feel seen nor heard. Yet, for so many young boys in the south, that sort of ride is a dream. I think the same thing when a car has the radio booming so loud it rattles the windows. Give me a quiet, sensible, comfortable automobile. I have absolutely zero need to go “Mud Ridin'.”     I have no use for hunting. (Them's fighting words, boy!) Don't get me wrong. I actually don't have a problem with hunters who do it the right way. It's just not for me at all. I tried it years ago when I was young. I got into it for a while and I shot a couple of deer, but since that time, I've changed my ideals. I don't personally have a need to kill something with a face to be happy. Hunters who kill for food and utilize as much of the animal as possible have my respect. I believe animals were placed on earth for various reasons, and some of those reasons include supplying humans with food, shelter, clothing, and tools. But for me, while I really enjoyed the thrill of the hunt when I was into it, i would engage in that activity now with a camera instead of a gun. Not because I'm opposed to guns, but because I don't need to help thin out the whitetail deer population. There are plenty of others around here willing to do that.      So take my card, if they must. I'm more interested in being a country united. I'm southern for the most part, and I'm proud as punch about my heritage. There are just a few kinks in the chain that hangs between the posts at the Mason/Dixon line. 

   You want to know what having ten teeth extracted at once will do for you? It will make you long for your happy place, that's what it'll do for you. I've made no secret that I've had some pretty major dental issues and I've been transparent about it. Why hide it? It's part of who I am. And now, my dental issues have come to a head in a way that required drastic action. I had to get a denture plate for my top teeth. In the long run, it'll be a good thing. As a matter of fact, I'm already reaping the benefits because I now have an attractive smile, but the hours leading up to E-day were stressful.    What, exactly, is E-day? That's what I'm going to tell you about. I'm Michael Blackston. Strap yourself in if teeth-related stuff bothers you, because that's the town we're going to visit from my Funny Messy Life. _________________________    E-day for me was August 16, 2021. The “E” stands for “extraction”, so Extraction Day! … not a day in your calendar where you would expect to plan a cookout, or exchange gifts, or sing happy songs about the joys of getting cavities. Oh the rot in your mouth is frightfuuuullllll!    Oddly enough, I trust my dentist in the area of comfort to the point that I didn't feel a ton of trepidation about it. Maybe I just pushed the thought to the back of my mind with other topics like paying overdue taxes and asking forgiveness for buying another microphone without running it by my wife. Whatever the reason, I didn't think about it until it started getting closer to the day.    For one thing, I had already had to reschedule it once. I had made a plan with another dentist. I was still going to get the teeth extracted, but instead of a denture plate, I was going to go for the more expensive snap-in implant prosthetic plate. I told myself I was too young to have dentures, and I have a friend who got the snap-ins and loves them. Being a performer, I was concerned that I might be in the middle of an awesome rendition of Music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera and my teeth would fly out of my mouth unexpectedly, poking Christine Daae in the eye, and sliding down her face cartoon-like in a trail of spit and Cheezit crumbs from the snack I'd had right before the show.   Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for my wallet, when I went to the dentist the Friday before my first scheduled E-day to pay for everything early so I didn't have to worry about that with a numb mouth dripping spit, and blood, and Cheezit crumbs from the snack I'd had just before the appointment, I found out that particular dental office was being run by drunk monkeys. They didn't have anything together, so I told them to forget it. I'd go somewhere else.    After talking to several people who wore regular dentures, and being assured of the quality of suction available nowadays, not to mention the expense if half that of the snap-ins, I became convinced that a regular denture plate was the way to go. So I made an appointment with a former dentist I trusted.    I mention all of that to say that I was just ready to get it done, and that might have contributed to my peace before going in.    As the days drew nigh, though, the reality of what I was about to have done began to hit me. Snap-ins or not, it didn't matter. Either way, those teeth had to come out.    People asked me a lot of questions the closer I got to E-day ...      They gon' put you to sleep?    No. They said they'd give me gas, but to put me to sleep would be more expensive and was something I'd have to have done elsewhere. It was too many steps.    Won't insurance cover that?    I don't know. I don't have insurance because a self-employed man with dental insurance is rare. Dental insurance for a self-employed person requires $30,000 a month and selling your soul to Satan.    So they ain't gon' put you to sleep for that?    See my answer to the first time you asked me that. And by the way, this line of questioning isn't making me feel any better about it.    Can I have one of them Cheezits?      As it turned out, I didn't even get gas. They didn't offer it, and by the time they got through sticking me eighty times in the gums with a needle, I was numb enough that I didn't figure I needed it.    As the days wound toward August 16th, I started to think more about it.    On the Sunday before it, had I not been singing on the Praise Team at church, I would have knelt down at the front and bathed in a little of that sweet altar juju. I spent the rest of that Sunday afternoon getting the requisite well wishes and folks telling mew they'd be praying for me. One theatre friend told me to Break a leg!    Then it was night. The sun went behind the horizon and things began to take on that eerie feeling. It's like watching a scary movie at noon and thinking, there's nothing to it, then trying to go to bed later that night and hearing every crack and shift of the old wood that holds up the house.    I started to realize what having ten extractions actually meant. Having ten tooth extractions at once means that someone is about to extract ten teeth out of your face at once, but it's more than that. They're going to then send you home with a hundred pounds of gauze because that's how much it's going to take to soak up everything that tends to ooze from ten gum holes where teeth used to be.    What's wrong, honey?    Kayla realized I was crying.    I can't do it. I can't go through with it.   Yes you can. It'll be over before you know it and I'll be there with you.    It's all gonna ooze … I don't wanna ooze!    Go to your happy place.    That was a good idea. I should go to my happy place in my mind where I could at least fall asleep among the things that I love.    And I did. I love Christmas. Christmas is my happy place. Disney World is also my happy place, but there are too many characters walking around there sporting big, perfect teeth. I didn't want anything to send my mind back in that direction any sooner than necessary. So, I chose Christmas as I drifted off to sleep and dreamed ……    Silver bells … manger scenes … lights, and laughter, and family, and …..   Twas The Night Before Dentist   Twas the night before dentist and all through my mouth Not a tooth understood what my nerves were about Preparations were made at the surgeon's with care And tomorrow, first light, I'd lay back in the chair   The children were wrestled and sent to their beds While visions of toothless me rent through their heads And mama with her phone out and me in a mask Had just settled in before morning's bleak task   When into my slumber, my mind took control And sprang into fantastic story time mode At once, I was partying, quite happy to go To the dentist and loose my teeth, row after row   The celebrants danced and they played in the sun As a farewell - a send off - to the unfortunate one “It's me!” I proclaimed with a face full of cake Why this hullabaloo? It feels more like a wake   When what to my curious eyes should be brought But a fistful of strings, their attachments aloft “It's your ride to the dentist!” said my Mother with cheer Offering me the large present of helium gear   I took them suspiciously, and questioned as why I should not go by car, but instead I should fly “‘Cause BALLOONS!” She responded, then bounded away  With agility not in her wheel house today   She left me there standing with strings in my hand And bright rubber orbs floating high o'er the land The party continued as I took my flight Hovering just a few feet, for my weight is not light   As I drifted off townward, they waved their goodbyes And I set my eyes downward for my journey was nigh First I sailed out of course and got stuck in a tree While the guests from my party stood pointing at me   Away to adventure, I corrected my course For awaiting were dentures and a pie hole of sores Now needle, now mouthwash, now suction, now spit On face mask for gas, so I'll not give one … care   Through the town toward my destiny as onward I flew When suddenly a carnival appeared out of the blue Now the tree I'd encountered had popped some balloons  So my flight was more labored than first I'd assumed   Yet alas, what came bumbling amid all the sass Of the carnival atmosphere now come to pass But a filthy, drunk clown, stumbling toward me and he Held a crop of balloons, which then filled me with glee   “I say, my good clown, might I buy them from you At a dollar apiece?” But he said, “That won't do. You may not! They are mine!”, quoth the clown with a heave And my dream jumped ahead once he'd taken his leave   What to do? What to do? I shall linger all day And be late to the dentist. “Oh, I hate clowns!”, I say But just as this freak show appeared from nowhere In an instant it disappeared into thin air   What was left was the sound of a siren ablast But no sign of confusion my mind had amassed It was time to wake up, and the sound? My alarm For the hour had come to, in truth, face the storm   I was oddly at peace as my wife drove me there With no hint of balloons, or drunk clowns, or the fair So I now have no teeth at the top of my mouth Only sore, bloody holes and some pain meds to tout   And oh yes, there's the denture I'm getting used to You can probably tell by the "esh" shounds I do But you'll hear me exclaim, ere I end this tonight There just isn't much pain, and I'm speaking alright

   It's refreshing to be able to find a place to rest from a road trip and ease my mind from the perpetual gray asphalt desert that the interstate can be. There was a time in my career when I could hit the road at 3 am and keep moving till I got where I was going, no matter how far the destination, with the exception of bathroom and food stops. But I'm getting older by the minute, and I can't make my trips as easily without taking a break. No duh, right? Every minute that passes, you're another minute older, Captain obvious! It's just that I used to be able to ignore it. I can't ignore it anymore. I seem to be falling apart - something my younger self was warned about, but I pushed away from my mind because that was in The Future …    Well now I'm coming to terms with the reality that my body has its own agenda. It wants to call it quits. It's my body's grand scheme to rot like that bag of salad you said you were going to eat, but then threw to the back of the refrigerator and forgot about. That salad got soft. Things turned colors they weren't intended to turn. There is a smell coming off it that causes you to make a certain kind of stink face and when you finally take it out to throw it away, you exclaim, “That's OLD!”    From Atomic Red Studios in the heart of Granite Country, I'm Michael Blackston, and while some of you might still call me a youngun at the age of 48, I‘m not feeling it anymore. Let's get acquainted with some of the things that are flashing bright red as a great big warning sign in my Funny Messy Life. _________________________      The first thing a doctor would tell me is that my biggest issue is my diet and exercise habits, or lack thereof. Dear old doc would explain that of course I wake up feeling like Mr. Magoo after he's been run over by a dump truck hauling a ton of broken wheelchairs and walkers. When a person goes to bed at night after eating a family sized frozen lasagna and three Little Debbie Fudge Rounds, that person will naturally wake up with the sensation that they got too close to the cars of a Tilt-A-Whirl and all of the passengers were contestants on The Biggest Loser. Add to the fact that the last time I engaged in any sort of real, regular exercise, I was unable to grow facial hair, and there's the answer.    I know I haven't helped my cause over the years, but my body still hates me. And I think that even if I ran five miles a day and ate only tofu and broccoli, the things I'm about to mention would still be going on.    Let's start with my teeth.    I've mentioned before what a nightmare my smile is. I could be the grinning poster boy for horror movies, but theatres would never allow it because people would be too disgusted after looking at it to buy popcorn. My teeth started crumbling in my twenties and never looked back. For a while, I was able to fix my smile with veneers. Very expensive veneers, I might add. Thanks to my dad, I was able to put off the inevitable for a while, but because my teeth have always been weak, even that decayed after a while, and now the inevitable is at the door.    At this writing, I'm eight days from getting dentures. I'm still having trouble with the thought of it. It's not the extractions of the bad teeth that are left. I can handle that. It's the fact that I'm having to get DENTURES! At least for right now, it's only the upper teeth that have let me down. The bottoms are getting crowns. Again, an expensive endeavor.    I've always been a singer, and that's what I'm most worried about. I haven't know anything but singing since I was four or five years old. I recently had an … episode … while I was traveling and had too much time to think while the gray desert loomed ahead of me. I began to think about what life would be like if my new upper plate restricted me from singing or speaking. I love my visual art, but if you asked me which activities mean the most to me, it wil be first leading worship at church, followed by performing on stage. And guess what? DING DING DING! You guessed it! Both of those things involve me using my big ol' loud mouth. And that's not to mention the fact that I hope to start a speaking ministry when I get my teeth situated, or that I'd like to continue voice work like this podcast, recording audio books, and doing voice overs. I won't be able to do any of that as effectively if I sound like I have an enormous, unwieldy, apparatus in my mouth because I have an enormous, unwieldy apparatus in my mouth.    So I freely admit that I had … an episode … while driving alone in my truck.    As I noodled it through, and imagined myself in front of the congregation at church, sounding like Sylvester the cat, I started to lose it. It sounded something like this:    “Noooo, God! No, God, Please no, no! No! NOOOOOOO!!!!”    After that I cried a little and pled … pleaded? Pledded? I pledded with God not to make my speech and singing a huge, mushy mess of spit and incoherent babbling.    Here's the good news, and I swear this isn't a joke. This happened. Immediately after that, I realized I needed to pee, so I pulled onto the next exit and while I sat idle in my car, I felt led to do a search on YouTube for Singing with dentures. And after I fixed the autocorrect, which wanted to help me search for videos about Stinking Wig Dennis, I found a video that lifted my spirits. I think I was pointed there by God. It was by a beautiful young woman who was a singer who wears a full set of dentures, both top and bottom. And they're not implants. They're actual dentures. First, I noticed that she's beautiful and the teeth look great. But then she said so many people who are aware of her dental issues have asked her if it affects her singing, so the whole video was made to set their minds at ease. She sang a few verses from a Christian song I happen to love, and she sounded amazing! She said she had not been affected at all.     Now, I realize that's not the case for everyone, and I fully expect a period of getting used to speaking around mine and during that time, I may very well sound to t he congregation like there's a Pharisee hiding out in my mouth, purposefully trying to make me unintelligible. But now I have hope. If I'm meant to lead worship, God will make a way for it and I'm content with that.   Teeth aren't my only bane. I have a back that used to be stronger. I could do a hundred sit-ups at one time in my life. However, a few months ago, I decided that I needed to tighten my abs, but I was in a hotel room and had only the floor to aid me. I laid a towel on the floor to act as a barrier between my body and all manner of filth that lives and thrives in the carpet of a hotel room. Not creating a barrier between you and them is asking for trouble. You want a Pharisee in your mouth? Because that's how you get a Pharisee in your mouth.   I prepared myself that since it had been quite a while between now and the last time i did a real sit-up, there might be a hint of resistance. But there wasn't a hint of resistance. When I tried to perform the sit-up, there was all out maniacal laughter from my back region. Exercise hoity-toities call that your Core.    My Core was mean to me.    HAHAHAHAHAHA! You thought you were going to get up from this position without being creative, much less perform even one measly sit-up? What were you thinking, my naive friend? How old are we now? Eighty? Feels like we're eighty if I'm being honest. Dude, you might even have to call for help to get up at all. OOPS! You left your cell phone WAAAAY up over there on the counter at the sink and you got to know that hotel phone is CRAWLING with Pharisees! HAHAHAHA! You're stuck! HAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!    Yeah, I couldn't do a single sit-up. Since then, I've slowly remedied that and my core is a tad stronger, enough that I can do a few sit-ups, but starting a finicky pups mower is a whole different story.    I woke up one morning a few weeks ago barely able to walk and I couldn't figure out what I'd done to my stupid “CORE”. It got better after a few agonizing days, but I did it again a couple of weeks later, and I recognized the pattern. On both occasions, I'd insisted that the push mower would start if I just yanked on the string long and hard enough. Neither time worked, but both times saw me waking up the next morning feeling like the victim of a Grizzly Bear in rut with bad eyesight. I realized where I had made the Faux Pas.    And the sight in my right eye is still bad from the attack of the Shingles I endured back in March of 2020. It got into that eye and blurred everything out. I hoped it would clear up after a while, but not so. It's not as bad by the end of the day, but again, first thing in the morning, I can't see much at all and that's not great for someone who makes their living as a visual artist. I'm already nearsighted in the other eye, but for now I can see clearly enough from my one good eye to do my work. Someone asked me to describe the effect from the Shingle Eye. I said it's like a Grizzly Bear with bad eyesight is in rut and is having an epic battle with a Pharisee in the middle of a snowy field. They kick up all that snow and that's what I see in the morning.     The maladies tally like the list of food items at the world's largest buffet. Shoulder pain that flares up when thar's a storm a-comin'.  Pale, pigmentless skin that combusts when exposed to the sun and the scars that remain come in the form of cancers. My hearing has been leaving me for some time. You generally have to say everything to me twice.  I had a fungus once that left my big toe permanently yellow.  I mentioned the teeth, there's, and the back. Type 2 Diabetus. Tinnitus. Which occurs as occasional ringing in my ears and I'm frequently able to hear my pulse in my head when I'm laying just right. I have a few skin tags. I call them my Love Dangles. My fingers hurt from time to time and I fully expect that will be getting worse. A friend called it a visit from Uncle Arthur. I randomly itch when I'm trying to go to sleep, especially when I start thinking, I hope I don't randomly itch while I'm trying to go to sleep. There's a hair that grows from the side of my nose and I have to pluck it. And lately I've started using certain words like, Hooligan and Whippersnapper.      I'm growing old, and getting old is getting old. It comes with the territory, I know. Lots of people are worse off than me, I know. One day I'll be in heaven and everything will be perfect, I know. I can't wait for that. Until then, I'll try to bite my tongue if the Pharisee in my mouth tries to start any monkey business, and I'll work hard at being content with where I am in life.    As a matter of fact, let's embrace a better term. Mature. Ha! I've never been accused of being mature.

   The older I get, the more I realize Mama was right … Your mouth can get you in trouble. Actually, the older I get, the more I realize Mama was right about a whole lot of things, and I try to implement the lessons I've learned as much as I possibly can. Take my chickens, for example. They're always hatched before I count them. Well, they're mostly hatched. My chickens are sometimes hatched before I count them. On occasion. Occasionally, I will wait to count only the hatched chickens. Once in a blue moon.    Maybe it's obvious I'm hard headed. And I have a mind that doesn't always run my words through a filter, so I have to be careful about what comes out of my mouth. That's why I have a shirt that I bought at the World of Wally to help me remember who I am. I'm a Christian and I should behave like one. My shirt says Team Jesus across the chest. When I'm wearing it, I feel like I'm getting a little extra mental discernment before I speak because people can see before I open my pie hole, what they ought to expect from me. But it can have its disadvantages too, and that's the subject of this episode.    From Atomic Red Studios in Northeast Georgia, I'm Michael Blackston and this is Funny Messy Life. _________________________      "So if you're a Christian, what are the disadvantages of wearing a Jesus shirt?"    It's just what I said … People have immediate expectations based on what they know about Jesus. The word “Christian” actually means, Little Christ. We're supposed make our best efforts to represent that name and His teaching. We are to try to be as much like Jesus as we can. I believe a person's best witness is how they are seen in the eyes of other people. So, if you're mouthy, like I am, and if you have a hard time filtering your thoughts before you spit them out MO-ron style, like I do, it can set a bad example if you're misbehaving while wearing a shirt with Jesus brandished across the chest. Yes, it does help me to think more deeply about how I behave, but when I DO mess up, there I am with the name of the Son of God emblazoned for all to see. It's a good thing, but it can be dangerous if you're not careful. I know what I should and shouldn't do or should and shouldn't say according to my belief system, but I'm not perfect. There's going to be something that I stumble over and somebody else might see that and start thinking, Not only is he a MO-ron, but he's a hypocritical MO-ron.    That doesn't mean I'm going to play it safe though, and not wear my Team Jesus shirt. I have faith and it's a discipline I need in my life anyway.    It doesn't escape me, however, that this would be a really boring piece if I left it there sitting in a puddle of psychological self-awareness and potential piety. Instead, if you're anything like me, you'll be thinking, Michael, please give me an example. There MUST be some situations you can think of - some mental packet of mayonnaise you could squeeze onto the meat of this sweet, sweet literary burger.    And you'd be right. In fact, that's a good place to start. With condiments.    Imagine I walk into a dingy diner where the walls are covered with people's names written in Sharpie. This place has been a staple of this tiny town in the middle of Alabama since Columbus sailed the ocean blue.    I deem this land the property of England and I shall endeavor to befriend the natives, teaching them the proper way to live and also the way to die if they don't agree to the way I teach them to to live. And also, if I want what they have, but they refuse to give me it. I shall teach them how to die then as well. But first, we shall build dingy diners so fellow sojourners might scribe their names onto the walls with their quills whilst dipping fried potatoes into a paste deriven from the tomato plant!    There's no such word as “deriven”, sir.    I claim it for England!   What if I would like to dip MY fried potatoes into a paste made from the tomato plant, but when I go to tear a small corner of the packet, it catches a seam and rips all the way down the side?    Don't you even try to tell me that's never happened to you and you know how aggravating it is.     I'm wearing my Team Jesus shirt though, and while my initial reaction is to become angry because everything I've touched today has either fallen, broken, or rolled under the most impossible crevice, and now THIS, I can't scream at the top of my lungs.    CURSE YOU, UNWIELDY KETCHUP PACKET! THINE STRAW BE THE LAST!    I have to think about Who I represent and act calmly. My rage must be contained in that moment. If I'm to say anything at all, it will have to be along the lines of, I forgive thee, imperfect packet. I shall try another.    Or in the event that I have to text something important to someone, but due to the fact that I have short, stubby, sausage fingers, I keep misspelling everything. I'll immediately want to throw my phone at the wall and declare, VILE DEVICE! HOW SMALL IS THY KEYBOARD! SUCH THAT MINE DIGITS DENY THEIR RIGHTLY POSITIONS! A PALL UPON THY MAKER AND SHALL THEE SUFFER ETERNALLY HENCEFORTH!    But nay. That's not nice. Anger is sometimes warranted, but it's my own pudgy fingers that are to blame. I think about my shirt and I'm moved to adjust my thinking before I speak. How I wish my fingers and your keyboard were fairly met, dear phone. Verily, I say that it is not your fault. I shall pick up the pieces of you that have shattered to the floor from your contact with the wall,  and I shall weep over you. We shall meet again on the other side in the new contract I'll have to sign now because I have behaved poorly.    Obviously in this example, I didn't catch the initial rage in time and I would have to repent if it were real. I would have to look down at my shirt in shame.    Michael, I think you're being little over-the-top. No one is going to expect you to walk on water just because your shirt says “Jesus”.    True. No one will expect that, nor would I want them too. Still, we live in an age where you can't blow a gasket and expect it to be forgotten as soon as it happens. There is the potential that your poor decision to flip off the guy who cut in front of you will find its way to the internet, and if you have a Jesus bumper sticker on your car and it's the guy behind you filming, you've just made all of us look bad. People judge with big blankets, so if we claim to represent a certain way of thinking, then act in a manner counter to that, most people will cast a stinky eye toward the whole lot. I didn't say it was right, but it's the way people are.    In light of that, it wouldn't do for me to walk into a pot shop in Colorado wearing my Team Jesus shirt and holler, Gimme the FATTEST doobie ya got!    I don't smoke anything, of course, and especially not pot. I've never had occasion to request a fat doobie. In fact, other than this piece, you're likely never to witness me use the term again, unless it's squashed between the bookends of the words Scooby and Doo. But if I did do something like that and you were there, purchasing your own fat doobie (there I go again, saying the word, doobie), which is legal to do in the state of Colorado, wouldn't you cast a tiny bit of judgement in my direction?    I think you would, if we're all being as honest as Abe here.    I understand what my weaknesses are. I've let my mouth get me in trouble since I started talking. It's nice to have something extra on me every once in a while to sit there in the back of my mind, saying, I know you want to want to avoid that person in the store that won't stop talking once you let them get started, but you're supposed to be a representative of Christ. It says so right there on your chest. Certainly you didn't put on that shirt and expect you could act any silly old way, did you? Now get over there. She might want to tell you all of the gory details of her bunion problems, but she also might NEED to tell someone about it. Lend her your ear, Christian. There's even a blessing in it for you.    I know listeners might think I take my belief in Jesus lightly, but I promise that's not the case at all. I simply have a solid inclination that God has a great sense of humor and appreciates a good laugh. Seriously though, I do pay a little closer attention to the way I behave and treat people when I'm wearing that shirt. It's not that it gives me more power, but it's sort of the same thing as people touching a cross they have around their neck in a difficult situation. It's not a talisman, but a reminder of who I proudly am. I'm a child of The King, that's who I am. I don't need T-shirt to tell me that.    But it doesn't hurt.

   Today, I'll tell you that I wouldn't change a thing. I'm blessed to get to do what I do for a living, and although the road getting here was long and winding, frequently taking turns onto dark and unfamiliar lanes, I can definitely track God's plan. Some of those lanes got bumpy though, and those were never long. I'm going to tell you about a road along my career path that only lasted a couple weeks, and one that only lasted a few months, but both share a single common fact … I was not cut out for them.    I'm Michael Blackston and at the time of this writing, the country is going through a new pandemic called an employee shortage, which is what prompted me to tell you a few new stories about my own work history during my Funny Messy Life. _________________________      Like I said, at this writing, the United States has a huge problem. Nobody wants to work because they're getting free unemployment money from the government. There are two types of people in this scenario …   Those who are willing to work because they can and have enough integrity, self-worth, and, by glory, intelligence to know that a society needs its people to pull their weight.  Those who COULD work, but instead will ride this wave of political stupidity, with their lips suckled firmly around the government teat, as long as their fat, lazy, sorry, no-good, trashy selves can ……… not that I'm judging.      I do understand that there are those who legitimately require government assistance to survive for whatever reason. I'm not talking about those people. I'm talking about the mush-brained, crawled out from under a rock, scum of the earth, pond scum that have no excuse, and have brought the country to a halt because they refuse to go back to work until they have to. They know who they are, and they don't care.    But that's not even what I wanted to talk about here. And now that my rant is over, I can get back to the stories that are adorable little islands in the middle of Lake Me.    The problem with my work history is that I have always been an entrepreneur at heart, I've always wanted to work for myself, largely because I get a lot more done when I'm the boss of me than when someone else is the boss of me. That's why until I found etching, I never stayed at one place for more than 2 years.    I can't remember for sure, but that might be the amount of time I worked for the Walmart portrait studio in the mid 1990s. It wasn't the worst job I ever had, but I didn't really enjoy it, especially when it came to the selling part. I was working there when I got married and I began to think that I needed to make more of an income than the weekly block of cheap, moldy cheese and half bag of oats it felt like that job paid me.    My stepdad was working for a motorcycle place in town and there was an opening, so he put in a good word for me. It was all commission sales, but the potential to make a better income was there, so I took the opportunity and quit blowing bubbles to make babies smile. It was also nice to not have to take the same photos every month for a woman that kept coming in to try and get headshots, but always made this wide-eyed extreme face like Dracula if you open his coffin in the daylight and he's naked.    There was an inherent problem with me selling motorcycles, though. For one to adequately and effectively sell motorcycles, it helps to actually know something about motorcycles. I mean even one thing would be nice. I knew then, and pretty much still do now, exactly zero things about motorcycles. I think they're cool and all, but I'm afraid of them. Moreover, I'm afraid of the lack of respect a lot of other drivers have for them.    When a potential customer came in and I had to try to sell them this metal horse with the potential of untold power they could wield under them, I had nothing to give. Actually, the power was very much told. I just didn't know the details. And the customer could tell it immediately. That job was horrible for me because I realized at that moment in my life that in order for somebody to be the best salesperson they can be, there must be at least the slightest interest and belief in the thing they're trying to sell.    On top of the skyscraper of cards stacked against me the very second I first walked through the doors, was the personality of the owner. He was from New York, or New Jersey. I can't recall which, but he had the accent to go with it, and the countenance. I love my northern brethren. I think we can learn a lot from each other, but just as there is a difference between a Good ol' boy, a Redneck, and Inbred Mouth Breathers, there are levels of culture above the Mason-Dixon Line. There are Those Who Hail From The North, there are Yankees, and there are DANG Yankees. If you're in the category of Those Who Hail From The North, You'll typically visit the southern states with some respect. If your ways are of interest to one of us, you'll gladly explain it in a mutual dance of culturally enlightening gooeyness. The plain old Yankee has good intentions, but from to time, will forget that they've entered a realm where the southern drawl is as thick and syrupy as the sugar in our tea. They have a difficult time getting their heads around the fact that Grit isn't just a sandy kind of substance that gets between your toes when you're walking barefoot, but also a term for a starch that can be served on a plate in a myriad of delicious ways. Still, they get that it's an “us” thing and they can leave it off their order. The Dang Yankee doesn't care that you have your own culture in a particular region. They think you should be throwing parties because they finally deemed you worthy of coming to your area to teach you savages the ways of the intelligent man. He scoffs at your attempts to say hello, even if you don't know him. He sneers at your grits on the menu and makes snide comments about them to the serving staff. He calls you names like, Yokel, Idiot, and In-bred Mouth Breather. He's not always wrong, but he also doesn't keep it to himself. He wants to bring his culture down here and burn yours to the ground like Sherman marching to the sea. The word “Dang” might be replaced with a variety of more colorful words depending on the culture level of the person saying it. This guy was a caricature in every sense of the word. He was a Dang Yankee. When somebody who doesn't spend a lot of time in the breadbasket of New York culture, they send to go with the loud, neurotic Italian persona, and this guy hit that mark to the hilt.    Remember when I said I don't like to be “bossed”? I don't like to be bossed. This guy was the owner, so he had the right and obligation to boss me, but he took it to a whole different level, or at least different from what we're used to here in the south. He took it to Dang Yankee level. Allow me to dramatize a particular scene that really happened. And this will be nearly word for word.      (The scene opens with Michael bent low beside a motorcycle, polishing the chrome. He is alone in the store, except for a couple of other employees. There are no customers either inside, or outside. I repeat, there are NO customers. The boss enters the showroom and, without slowing pace as he heads toward the door to leave, shouts to Michael.)    BOSS.   Hey, Mike! How's about you sell somethin'?    MIKE.   There are no customers either inside, or outside. I repeat, there are NO customers!    BOSS.   I don't wanna hear excuses. Sell somethin'!    (End scene)      That happened and that was his mentality. It was something to that effect every day, so after a few months of working for a man who thought he was The Godfather, and making little to no money, I left for the golden promise of fortune in the loan business. I tell all about that in episode 23, titled The Loan Man.    I just don't do well with management that refuses to be logical. I can handle a competent boss. I worked for a little under a year as a locksmith under a boss who loved his employees and treated us like family. He died recently, and I didn't know it until well after the funeral. It's a shame. I liked to go back into the shop every once in a while just to say hello.    I did have one bad experience that turned into a tasty bite of You Get What You Deserve sandwich.    There was a tiny independent fast food restaurant where I lived called, Katherine's Kitchen. Back in the day, it was famous for its fresh, made from scratch biscuits. There were a couple of ladies in the back that cooked them, and there was some kind of special southern ju-ju they put into the dough. They were amazing biscuits, and people lined up to order. A normal morning was busy, and it always took someone on the outside walking from car to car taking orders so they didn't get backed up. But I on Saturday mornings during college football season when the Clemson Tigers were the home team, the line was all the way out of the drive way and into the road, and it stayed that way for hours. Saturday mornings at Katherine's Kitchen would have given a Chick-fil-A crew a run for its money.    I had worked there for a week, so I was still a rookie, when I met a certain manager for the first time. He'd been on vacation when I started, and I had already worked one Saturday morning shift. My first day meeting him was on a Friday. We did not hit it off. He was a sloppy, ignorant, loudmouth of a guy, who must have been extremely insecure around me, because he wasted no time throwing his considerable weight around. Nothing he said to me was in a kind way. He didn't even behave like a drill sergeant who runs you hard because he's honing you like steel on steel. No, this guy was a belligerent blowhard who had someone under his authority and he liked to be a bully.     I took it for the first day, but dreaded going in to work the next morning. Clemson was playing a home game and it would be insane. I didn't know if I could take his bullying as silently as I had the day before.       He wasn't that bad before the doors opened. He was gruff and I could tell he was waiting for the perfect time to pounce, but he apparently meant to do his work in front of an audience. The second the doors opened and the line formed, he began his game. He would insult me in front of customers, berate me for things I had no part in, and smile to the customers the whole time, as if to say, Hey, look at how big a boy I am. I can bully dudes.    I took it for about an hour before I'd had enough. What this guy didn't understand was that because one of our other workers had called in sick, the last thing he wanted would be for me to leave an entire Saturday morning Clemson football crowd to be handled by himself.    As I took an order from a man decked head to toe in orange and purple, yet distinguished, like he might be watching the game from a private box, my manager stood behind me and began to make fun of the way I was taking the order, for no reason. The orange and purple man didn't appreciate it any more than I did, and he told me so.     “I wouldn't take that from that moron,” he told me.    “I need the work,” I probably said back.    “It ain't worth all that. I'd leave him with it if her does it again.”    A few seconds later, the manager returned with a fresh set of insults. Each successive one worse than the last. His grin widened more each time as well. The orange and purple man gave me a look that required I do something about it. I got the sense that the orange and purple man knew something about power and standing up for one's self. It gave me wings and I turned around to face my manager.    “One more insult, and I'm walking out. I'll leave you with this to handle on your own.”    He laughed at me. He needed to show the crowd, who was watching intently now, to see how this pre-game entertainment might play out, that he wasn't scared of little old Michael.    I turned back around to face the customers and continue with their orders, when I heard something from behind me. He'd tested me and mocked me again. The orange and purple man stared through me. Time to put up, or shut up, boy. I silently took my name tag off my Katherine's Kitchen shirt and laid it down on the counter.    “I'm sorry folks, but your orders will take a while longer now.” I turned around to the manager, who was still wearing a smile for the moment. I'm gone,” I said. “It's all yours.”    “What?! You can't do that? I can't handle all these orders!”    “Good luck,” I answered, heading for the front door. The orange and purple man grinned and gave me a wink and nod.    “You came back here. You can't just leave me here. They'll fire you!”    I pointed to the counter where I had laid my name tag and his eyes widened as he realized this was actually happening.    “You can't fire somebody who's already quit,” I explained and walked out.     I'm not certain, but i think I might have heard a spattering of applause, ever so light, from beyond the door. I didn't look back. I didn't think that's how the orange and purple man would have handled things.    Years later, I ordered at a chain restaurant drive thru. I didn't recognize the voice on the intercom, nor the guy at the window. He was that forgettable. But he recognized me just as he handed me the bag of food. If he'd recognized me while it was being made, I might not have taken it for fear of what he might have done to it. As he handed over, his eyes widened, just as they had when I pointed to my name tag.     “It's you!”    I still didn't know who he was. Better people had passed before my memory than him. “Do I know you?”    “You left me at Katherine's Kitchen to run it alone, you S.O.B.!”    I laughed. Now I remembered him. “Oh yeah. About that, you know what? … I'd do it again in a heartbeat.” And I drove away. Smiling from ear to ear.    I hope that guy has grown up and changed the way he treats people. And I wish I could have gotten to know the orange and purple man. Something tells m e he had a lot to give in the way of doing life. I thank him though, for that one lesson. I don't let people run all over me anymore.

   I've been toying with some ideas about new kinds of stories to tell you. Originally, I thought I could get listeners to send in tales about their own funny, messy, lives because, let's face it, I'm getting older, but I haven't lived forever. I'm gonna eventually hit a wall and there won't be much left to tell about my life. I'm starting to see that wall in the distance and I'm not ready to stop running my mouth. Pair that with the fact that nobody seems to want me to tell their stories and I have to start figuring out where my content is gonna come from in the long run. Then it hit me … every town in the world, from the biggest to the smallest, has interesting stories. I don't want to dive into folklore too much - the podcast LORE by Aaron Menke does that just fine already. I don't want to give an interesting history in the lives of famous people - the podcast The Way I Heard It by Mike Rowe accomplishes that extremely well, thank you very much, and Mike's got one of those amazing, deep voices that's so buttery, Paula Deen would toss it in one of her recipes if she could. I recommend both of those podcasts highly, by the way, and I never miss an episode. But I realize that I could tell interesting stories whenever I come across them that seem to be at the heart of a place, and I came to that realization when I found myself reading a pamphlet from my own hometown, Elberton Georgia. It's a story rich with history, brotherhood, southern pride, and some drunken shenanigans peppered in.   This is the story of Dutchy. I'm Michael Blackston and while it might not be my own tale, it is a good one to tell about my own hometown's Funny, Messy, Life.    If you know anyone who works in the granite monument business, ask them if they've heard about a small town in Northeast Georgia who claims to be The Granite Capital of the World. They'll say you're talking about Elberton, Ga, named after Samuel Elbert, whose grave you can find in one of the famous old cemeteries in Savannah. We believe ourselves to be the number one supplier of granite in the world and if you argue about it, well … them's fightin' words.    Sometimes people will ask how our little town got involved in the monument industry in the first place, and the story might surprise you. It starts, oddly enough, with an ugly, squat statue that everybody hated from the moment they laid eyes on it.    It was 1908. His name is Dutchy.    That wasn't his name, originally. He didn't have a name, originally. He got his name the way a lot of us have - meanness and the need people feel to put words to an emotion. Some kids get tagged with nicknames like, Stinky, Booger, Slim, or Back Seat Bertha … Dutchy got his name because of the way he looked. Those details are on their way.    The American Civil War had ended 30 years earlier and the Daughters of the Confederacy wanted to erect a monument to the Confederate dead. I'm not really sure what Elberton did before then, but I'm pretty sure a lot of folks plowed the land, farmed the land, and made babies on the land. The monument industry wasn't even a blip on the radar, which hadn't been invented yet, so maybe I should change that to The monument industry wasn't even a footnote in the Farmer's Almanac.    Anyway, when the Daughters of the Confederacy moved on getting the monument made, the first granite finishing plant in Elberton was created for that purpose alone. Later, that finishing plant would stay in business and become the first in a succession of granite sheds that dot Elberton's landscape like God was holding a bunch of sheds in His hands because He wanted to carry them all into the house without having to make two trips, but there were too many, and He dropped a few in North east Georgia.    A sculptor was commissioned to carve a statue out of the gray granite that runs forever under our feet. If you've ever heard of Stone Mountain just outside of Atlanta, it might interest you that what that huge piece of rock amounts to is an obnoxiously large boulder poking through the earth. It's a piece of granite. The vein that it rises from runs all the way under our town a couple of hours away. We happen to sit right on top of probably the richest section of it. Apparently, the sculptor they hired, being Italian and unable to google American Civil War, didn't know much about how a confederate soldier was supposed to look and did what my teenage son would call a ratchet job. I understand “ratchet” means bad nowadays, and not necessarily a tool I can never find the right bit for.    The citizens didn't like it one dang bit and they named him “Dutchy” because they said he was squat, ugly, and wore the uniform of the heathen north. They claimed he looked more like a Dutchman than a God-fearing' Confederate soldier. In those days, it wouldn't do to dress your statue like a soldier that wasn't God-fearin', and worse to make him look like he ain't from around heeyah!    That's why it didn't take long before the local children were calling him names and pointing at him as they pushed their wheels with sticks through the town square. It's said that people would throw rotten vegetables at him and that old men would give him Whut Fer with their eyes as they passed.    Poor Dutchy. He didn't ask to look the way he did. The world was still as politically incorrect as it could possibly be. There was definitely no one who had yet “woken” so they could tell us all how we have a right to our own opinions as long as our opinions jive with theirs. He was the victim of the ultimate bullying situation. The whole town was against him. And it was about to get worse.    One night, when some of the young men had been drinking heavily, once of them started up some meanness about Dutchy.    I feel like what I should do here is develop a scene for you. It's what could have possibly been the conversation that led up to the disaster that happened to Dutchy later that night. I'll take my best stab at what that might have sounded like.    (Scene: A dingy side bar right off the town square. The tables are made of wood. The chairs are wooden. The spoons and forks … wood. The teeth of the waitress … also wood. A group of men sit at two tables next to each other. They all smell of dirt, granite dust, watered down beer, and barn animals. Man 1 stands up.)    MAN 1.   Yankees! I hate me a Yankee!    CROWD.   YEAH!    MAN 1.   We'd have won the war if'n that yella belly, Lilly-livered so and so had'na signed that paper at Appomattox!    CROWD.   YEAH!!    MAN 2.   I shore wish they's sump'n we could do about it.    CROWD.   YEAH!!!    MAN 1.   Whut if'n I told ya thar IS sump'n we can do about it.    CROWD.   Yeah?    MAN 1.   Yeah. Thar's one of ‘em standin' on a pedestal right over yonder. He's an ugly cuss, boys! Looks like a dang Dutchman what don't fear the Lord and I thank it's high time he got whut's comin' to him.     CROWD.   YEAH!!!!    MAN 1.   Whaddya say, boys? Wanna pull him down and bury him?    CROWD.   YEAH!!!!!    MAN 1.   Wanna drink some more beer before we do?!    CROWD.   YEAH!!!!!!!!! (BUURRRPPP!)    In the dark of night, a group of severely drunk townsmen got some rope and lassoed the statue around the neck. A few of them hollered, Yee-HAWWWW! A few more threw up in the bushes. Before pulling the statue down, they dug a pit at the base of the pedestal where Dutchy stood and when it was ready, they all grabbed a part of the ropes. There was laughter and merriment by the ones who pulled, and triumphant shouts of victory.    The south will rise again! Long live the Confederacy! Thar IS a God, ya heathen Dutchman!    The ones over at the bushes had now passed out, so they wouldn't remember a thing come morning.    Dutchy came toppling down into the grave that had been dug for him, his legs breaking apart from his torso as he hit the ground. The drunk men replaced the dirt into the grave and went their ways, becoming a unique part of Elberton history.    I remember my mom driving me and my sister to the square one afternoon in April of 1982. The memory is foggy and broken, a memories become over a span of forty years, but the right pieces are there.    “What are they doing, mama?”    There was big equipment at the base of the memorial that had replaced Dutchy after he was brought down. A crowd had gathered, but to the best of my knowledge, nobody was drunk.    “They're digging up an old statue. It was there before the one you see now.”    We watched for a while and then moved on, recoding this piece of history into our “Where were you on the day …” memory banks.     The town officials hired the proper people to dig him up and give him a bath. The once pristine gray granite was caked with a century's worth of red Georgia clay. And now he resides in his own room at the Granite Museum about a mile away from where he was buried. He gets the respect he deserves now, and if you'd like to get a look at him yourself, there's plenty about him if you search online for “Dutchy Elberton”. You can even find a photo of the square when he was unveiled in 1908. But if you're close by, take a side trip into Elberton and visit the museum. We're awful proud of Dutchy now. He's sort of an unsung hero around here. I'm sure he'd be happy to make your acquaintance and have a little company. He might not look like much, but you can't keep a good man down forever.    Live on, Dutchy. 

   As a whole, I'm happy about how my life has turned out so far. Hopefully, there is plenty more left of my story, but you never can tell. We live second by second, and minute by minute. I first learned about life in that context through Rick Springfield's epic eighties ditty, Love Is Alright Tonight from his Working Class Dog album. That album is one of the things in my life I do not regret. My sister and I sang that song at the tops of our lungs while the LP played on her stereo before karaoke was a thing, and those are happy memories. The pattern on life's wallpaper is not always pleasing, though. Sometimes you sit back in your chair, staring at the stains and faded designs that mark the walls of your life and you think, “That part wasn't pretty. Or smart. Or made any sense at all, you complete moron.”    It's the complete moron marks of my history that I want to talk about now. The ones that were made in permanent marker. You can't erase them because if you could, there wouldn't be anything there to remind you not to be that stupid ever again.     From Atomic Red studios in the heart of the Deep South where God would have placed Eden to begin with if it hadn't been so stinkin' hot in the summer, I'm Michael Blackston and these are things NOT to do that I've learned during my Funny Messy Life. _________________________      Starting from earliest to most recent, I will tell you a couple of things I've learned never to do, ever, for the love of all that is pure and holy, ever.    Maybe you have the stomach of a goat. Perhaps your bowels are able to tolerate things like the Carolina Ghost Pepper, the mayonnaise at a county fair, and dudes over 30 singing emo music, without it putting your body in a state of incapacity. If that's you, then congratulations. Enjoy the fair and grab yourself a turkey leg right before getting on The Scrambler. In fact,,,,,,, that reminds me of a disgusting thing that happened to my while riding The Tilt-A-Whirl with my cousin who did stupidly stupid things with me. And now I've made a note in my Stories-To-Tell app for this podcast/Blog/thingy.    I don't have that kind of intestinal fortitude, though. I can hold my own under normal circumstances, but when you introduce conflicting delicacies from the culinary world, as delicious as they may be separately, or in concert with their kind, my body will protest. It will say, “Nay! Thou shalt not combine these two things, you complete moron!” I found this out the hard way when I was somewhere around 18 or 19 years old. Part of the issue i have, being mildly Obessive Compulsive, is that everything has to balance. I'm uncomfortable with odd numbers, so as a younger man, it never occurred to me that I could eat just one of anything and make it out of the day alive. Enter my mom's burgers, fried on the stove, greasy and perfect. I always ate two of them covered in two slices of cheese each, and lousy with mayonnaise.    On this evening, I remained true to my ritual, but it was also the Christmas season and my mom had bought some eggnog at the grocery store.    I love eggnog. I don't much care for eggs prepared by themselves in any way, except for scrambled, and even then there better be a 2 to 1 cheese to egg ration. I'm cool with them as an ingredient, though. If I can't taste the edginess of it all, it's fine. I especially like it as a nog. And being that I wanted to enjoy some nog as a postlude to my cheeseburger feeding frenzy, and being mildly Obsessive Compulsive, I down two large glasses of the stuff immediately following supper.   It didn't happen for a while. It would have been nice if my stomach had given me some notice so I could mentally prepare myself for what was to come …    Hey, buddy! I don't want to alarm you ‘er nothin', but later, you're gonna regret what you just did there. I'm just giving you a heads up because this isn't going to be a minor inconvenience. Nossir, this here is gonna be something you'll tell your grandkids about. It's going to be so bad that you will beg God to take you home to sweet ol' Beulah Land because my friend, you're gonna feel like you're absolute hell. Alrighty then. We good? Great!    That's not how it went down, though. I went to sleep happy. I fell asleep quickly, and dreamt of frolicking with beautiful teenage Sugarplum fairy girls. We kissed and fawned all over each other while eating the biggest, greasiest cheeseburgers to be found in Sugarplum Land. And between our soft smooches, we sipped eggnog from the blossoms of candy roses.    But you what it's like when you dream. Things can turn fast. My beautiful fairy glided her delicate hand along my cheek, but didn't stop there. It made its way past my neck to my chest, moving downward, and stopped on my stomach. In a flash, the delicate hand transformed into a cheeseburger fist, only the cheese pour from between the buns was made of broken glass and rusty nails. She sank her burger fist deep into my belly and the pain was terrible, like having the Super Bowl firmly in your grasp, then the coaching staff deciding NOT to run the clock out and letting the other team come back from a 28-3 deficit in the fourth quarter to beat you. Actually, no. When that happened to my Falcons, I think that was worse than the fairy with the cheeseburger fist full of glass and nails.    When I felt the pain, I looked into the eyes of my beloved teenage fairy. (It's okay to write this because I hadn't met my wife yet, and if I had, it would have probably been her in the dream and we never would have gotten married because, well … cheeseburger fist.)    Her whole face had changed from the fantasy of my good dreams, into an evil, grotesque creature of my nightmares. She grinned from ear to ear in a smile that stretched impossibly the full width of her face. Her teeth were wedges of rotten pickle and she drooled rancid county fair mayonnaise from the corners of her lips. Her wild eyes had grown enormous with insanity and the delight of what she was doing to me, and she began to cry happy tears that looked curiously like thick tendrils of eggnog.   I woke from the dream enduring the worst pain in my gut I'd ever experienced. It felt like I was a man having a baby. I thought maybe I was. Somehow I'd been impregnated by my dream fairy/ogre and I was about to deliver a demon child with cheeseburgers for hands. I made my way slowly into the hall towards the bathroom, propping against the wall with my hand to keep myself upright. I looked down at the floor at one point to make sure my eggnog hadn't broken, and finally made it to the bathroom, shutting the door behind me.     I sat on the toilet just as the worst surge of pain so far erupted in my bowels. I tried not to scream and wake up my parents, and that's the last thing I remember before waking up on the floor between the toilet and the sink. My mom was pounding on the door, calling my name.    “Michael, are you alright? Answer me! I heard a huge crash in there.”    I came to my senses just enough to answer her.    “Don't worry. It's just gas.”    Since that night, I've learned that it doesn't matter what the volume of the food comes to, if I eat even one greasy cheeseburger and chase it with any sort of dairy product, I'm going to get the same result. My fairy demon will return to me in my sleep and stab me with her meat hands.    Five or six years later, I found myself working an overnight shift at a large market, 100,000 watt powerhouse radio station in Greenville, SC. I'd been there for a few months, so I knew where they kept all the goodies, like CDs to give away, T-shirts, coozies with the station logo, and products that had been given to the station by sponsors. It was good thing that I knew where to look when I found myself trying to take phone calls from drunk listeners and at the same time, nursing the worst headache I'd ever had.    “WESC this is Mike.”    “Hey, buddy! How about playin' that Achin' Breakin' Heart song by Rilly Bay Sarce?”    I've noticed that nothing good usually follows a guy starting his sentence with, “Hey, buddy!”    “I don't think I recognize that one. Who am I talking to? What's your name?”    “Puddin' Tame! PBBBBTHHHHH HA HA HA! Hey, buddy … hey! My old lady loves that song and I'm tryin' to get her goin'. You know what I mean?”    “Oh, you mean the one by the guy whose little girl is going to win everybody's heart on the Disney Channel one day, then lose everybody's lunch for them a few years later by acting a fool. I tell ya what … I'll try to get that on for ya.”    That's what we always told people who insisted on us playing requests when we weren't allowed to play requests. I'll try to get that on for ya!    Anyway, that's the kind of thing I was dealing with while my head felt like it was being beaten senseless by Miley Cyrus's microphone.    Luckily for me, I remembered the goodie supply. Actually I remembered the GOODYS supply. We played spots fort he popular headache powder, and they had sent us a thousand year supply of the stuff. There was a case of it in the cabinets above the coffee pot. I'd taken GOODYS before, so I knew it was fast acting, and would hopefully take the edge off of my headache. I went and got me a pack.    I sat back down in front of the control board. The song that was playing was about to end … something by Toby Keith, or Reba McEntire maybe, and I went live to introduce the next song and tease the weather before I took my medicine.    Oh God, let me live long enough to get through this so I can take the GOODYS as soon as the next song starts.     “92.5 WESC - Good Times and Great Country. It's gonna be wet for the remainder of the weekend, but don't worry. I'll give you the forecast and everything you need to know about how to still have a great time with all the happenings around the Piedmont. That's coming up right after Reba McEntire tells us all about how awesome it is to send our daughters away to be hookers. Here's Reba … and Fancy … on your station for Good Times and Great Country … 92.5 WESC!    I killed the mic and looked longingly at the tiny, rectangular packet of headache powder. Back then, it was just folded paper. You unfolded it, worked it between your fingers, and chucked it to the back of your throat. Then you chased it with anything that was liquid and wouldn't kill you to avoid as much of the bitter horror that is the taste of headache powder.    The only thing was, my headache was worse than anything I ever remembered having. I also remembered once hearing that it got to where it needed to go more quickly if you snorted it like a cokehead. I mean, it was already powdered, and it came handy with a paper packet that I could easily roll into one of those straws like the junkies do. Win/win, right? What was there to lose? It was just medicine, not hard drugs.    First, I emptied the packet of powder onto the counter in front of the control board. Then I rolled the paper in a tight little straw, just like I saw them do once on Miami Vice. But then I noticed something. The powder was too ill formed on the counter to make this efficient. According to the movies, the powder needed to be cut into a couple of thin lines with a razor blade. Bonus! There was a razor blade to my left because back in those days, there was still a reel to tell machine and some things had to be manually spliced.    I picked up the blade and made my lines. The Obsessive Compulsive in me insisted that there be two, and that they should be perfect. By then, Reba had already advised Fancy to be nice to the gentlemen and they'd be nice to her. I didn't have much time left before I needed to break in with that info I'd teased about.    I stilled myself because I didn't know what to expect as far as sensation, and I stuck the rolled up paper into my right nostril, bending over the lines of GOODYS powder.    It's at this moment that at this time, it would have been nice if my nose had broken in to give me a word of warning …    Hey, buddy … I know what you're thinking. You're thinking ‘I saw a dude with a sweet mullet do this on TV in the mid eighties and I think I'm tougher than him'. You're not tougher than him, buddy. You know why? Because he's a character and that actor didn't really snort that stuff. Sure, people do snort coke. They take a snow ride. They sniff the nose candy. But they're stupid. Are you stupid? Let's find out. Because if you snort that, it's gonna light you up like a firecracker. You know how that feels … your sister lit one in your hand. Is that what you want, buddy? For your face to feel like your sister lit a firecracker inside it?    That didn't happen though. The only thing I heard just before I took a big old snort of GOODYS headache powder was the sound of innocence lost streaming over the room from speakers booming the voice of country music's favorite redhead.    I was desperate and I snorted it.    Let me explain now, the sensation that goes hand in hand with snorting a GOODYS headache powder.    It's nothing like having your sister light a firecracker in your nose. In fact, the nose part of your face is the least of your worries. Sure, it stings, but what happens all up in your sinus cavity is the real thrill ride.    Immediately upon the snorting action, your face is invaded deep within by white fire. White is the hottest visible color when it comes to a flame. If there were a hotter color of fire, say … chartreuse, then I would describe it as fire in your face the color of chartreuse. Chartreuse face fire. It knocked me off my chair onto the floor. There was screaming involved. I'm glad I was alone, or someone would have called 911. Maybe somebody need to call 911.    “AHHHHHHH! OH GOD!!! MY FACE! MY FACE IS ON FIRE! MY FACE IS ON FIRRRREEEEEE!!! THERE'S CHARTREUSE LAVA INSIDE MY HEAD IN THE AREA OF MY FAAAAACCCCCEEEE!”    I'm not proud of myself. I'm not certain how long it took me to realize that Reba had stopped singing and there was nothing but dead air and the sounds of my sobbing, but the good news is, I'd forgotten all about the headache.    Needless to say, I DO NOT recommend snorting headache powder, or anything for that matter, without being in the presence of a doctor. My wife and son do some kind of thing where they shoot something up their noses for their allergies. I won't. Nope. I refuse. Because I know good and well that just when I need that voice of reason, there won't be anybody in my head saying, “Hey, buddy …. this is gonna hurt!”    We have to learn lessons as we grow, I guess. Those are two that I'll never forget. I'm always up for hearing about your bad decisions. Send me an email if you'd like ...

   I don't want to be one of those old men that constantly gripe about stuff because I'm just generally mad. I like to think I have a positive outlook most of the time, but I'm no different from anybody else in that I have my days. Even when I'm putting together a piece for the podcast, I at least give it an honest shot at putting a light, humorous spin on things if I'm complaining. There are some things though, that no matter how happy I'm feeling at the moment, no matter how full of flavor my crunch berries were that morning, no matter how much Ram I currently have in my Rama Lama Ding Dong, I will always hate them with every tiny, sinuous fiber of my being. I'm going to tell you what those things are and why, even though I respect and fear God to the uttermost, I'll have a few questions for Him when I get to Heaven.    From Atomic Red Studios in the Granite Capitol of the World, I'm Michael Blackston, and this is a thought provoking episode of Funny Messy Life _________________________      (The following is a pre-enactment. It's how I think things are gonna go down once I'm comfortably in my heavenly mansion, which is inside a 24 hour Krispy Kreme, and God drops by to see how I'm settling in.) (Cue the music.)    (There's a knock at the door.)    ME: Who is it?    GOD:   It's God. (Pause) I've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty. (God howls with laughter.) Not really. (Longer pause.) It IS really God, though. I saw that the light was on.    ME:   OH! Sorry! Come in.    GOD:   This is niiiiice. You know, I've always remembered fondly on the day I created the doughnut, but all anybody ever appreciates is that chicken place. And they don't even know how to spell “chicken”, ha!     ME:   I for one, am a fan of the doughnut. I'm glad You made that happen.    GOD:   Well, I saw that it was good.    ME:   God, can I ask You a question?    GOD:   Sure.    ME:   Promise you won't get mad. Because I don't mean any disrespect; I'm just curious.    GOD:   I'm not mad now, Am I? I already know what you want to ask Me anyway.    ME:   You do? How … ? Oh, yeah.      The conversation will continue over fresh glazed doughnuts and coffee … (sorry Mormons, but God drinks coffee), and he answers my questions satisfactorily. Because He has His reason for everything; I just won't understand them entirely until I get up there. With that in mind, I'm going to post the questions and answer them with the explanation that I believe, in my imperfect flesh, might be God's reasoning. And because God has a cameo in this episode, and He already knows what my questions are, I'll let Him ask them for me.   Question #1. GOD:   Mosquitoes are food for bats, but fire ants? What's that about?    Fire ants are a direct punishment for God for the fall of man when Adam and Eve bit that fruit. The Bible is extremely detailed - astonishingly so, but it doesn't contain everything that was ever said by every character in it. I won't add to the words of The Bible, but I'm certain that among the things God was explaining would be a punishment for going ahead and eating the apple He specifically told them not to nosh, He included that curse. “Survey says, ….. Fire Ants! How do you like THEM apples?!”    Do we even have Aardvarks in the American south? I'm sure they're a delicacy for some animal. Armadillos maybe? They kinda look like an Aardvark wearing sheet metal. It's the only thing I can think of as a decent reason for fire ants. Food for Armadillos and a curse on the face of mankind to be endured through the ages by barefoot picnickers and anyone who dares walk anywhere in any grass anytime in the Deep South. Hate is a strong word - a terrible word. We don't use it nonchalantly in our home, but I hate fire ants. Kayla won't let me set the mounds on fire, but I often fantasize about what it sounds like as they die their tiny little devil deaths when they take the ant bait back to the queen. I imagine the squeals of agony and cries in the dark as they leave this earth to spend forever in hell and I find joy in it. Revelation tells of the end times when Satan and his demons will be thrown into the fiery pit to be tortured for all eternity. I'm kind of hoping that pit will be full of fire ant hills.   Question #2. GOD:   People need electricity, but the Power Company? What's that about?    Just a notch below Fire Ants is the Power company. I hated them when I lived in a different state, then I hated the new power company when I moved to Georgia, then I hated my current power company when I moved to another county. I used to think that as I got older, my pure, unadulterated loathing for the power company would subside. I would understand them. I thought I would learn to appreciate their culture of cold, unloving greed and megalomania.    But no.    As I've grown, I've learned to think of them in the same category as fire ants. Of course, I don't fantasize about people who work for power companies dying horrible deaths, but I do enjoy it when I see another house with solar panels on the roof. I imagine that for every solar panel that's added to a roof, a power company executive loses another golf ball.    I think God will tell me that He created them to test our capacity to love. Humans are easily disgruntled and carry grudges for extended periods of time, so maybe the power company is a way to teach us to see others through God's eyes. Sometimes, because we are told we should love everyone, we must learn to let God love them for us because we are weak. Even the wretched among us deserve love.   However, I fully believe that if power companies could find a way to operate off of pain, they would harness the evil of fire ants and feed on the tears of small children.    Question #3. GOD:   Jorts. What's that about?    There are jeans and there are shorts. Another curse on mankind, I'd wager. God was so upset with Adam and Eve that He felt the need to create the existence of a knee-length jeans/shorts hybrid. Fortunately for the world's first couple, God couldn't bring Himself to make them wear them, so He gave them the option to choose leaves and animal pelts to cover themselves. Later, He would still show mercy and allowed us the more fashionable toga, but eventually, our crimes would become so fierce that he flooded the whole earth, only to find that we would repopulate and create Florida Gator fans. That's when the curse of the jort hit us full throttle. Extra pockets couldn't even save us from the horror. God sent us a rainbow after the Great Flood as a promise to never render His judgement in that way again. We've gotten no such promise about the jorts, and so we must endure it until the end of time.   Question #4. GOD:   The Funny Bone. What's that about?    We all have one and we've all konked it on something. I've always wondered what was so dang funny about it. It's pain. I don't tend to laugh at pain. I handle pain about as well as any normal person, but that has never included slapping my knee, other than to bring the feeling back into my pinky finger. Because that's what happens when I bang my funny bone on a door jam. The feeling goes out of my pinky finger. I might slap my knee then, followed by shaking my arm all about like I'm playing some weird solo version of the Hokey Pokey, but laughter never, ever happens.    My suspicion on this is that God enjoys humor. Every other point on our body that is encountered rudely will behave in a similar fashion. It will hurt to varying degrees, but it is clearly pain. With the funny bone, it's still pain, but it's different. Our reaction to it is different, and, I suspect comical for Him to observe from up there on high. When we hit our funny bone, we stop for a second as the realization consumes us. Our eyes cross, and it usually feels to me like it happens in slow motion. Our mouths gape open for a silent moment, then the sounds come.    “uuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!”    When you're around company and you hit your toe on the bottom of a bedpost, you scream immediately, sharply, and try to compose yourself. Someone will have to ask if you're okay or what happened.    When you hit your funny bone, you have to announce it to everybody within earshot, and everybody within earshot will make the same face at once. It's that cringy, teeth bared grimace that might be followed by hissing sounds. It goes something like this:    You're in Dollar General and you're mad because they don't carry the cases of Propel flavored water and now you'll have to go to Walmart after all when you specifically came to DG to avoid having to do that. It's July, and in your irritation, you barrel down the aisle without paying attention to how close you are to the shelf full of Christmas decorations. You konk your funny bone a good one on the corner of the shelf and the hilarity ensues.    “uuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” Your eyes cross in slow motion. “Funny bone! I hit my funny bone! Everybody, I just hit my funny bone!”    Everybody within earshot makes this sound … “HISSSSSSSS!”    “I hit my funny bone, everybody, and I can't feel my pinky now! OH GOD!”    And God, well He's up there holding a glazed doughnut and all of heaven hears … “HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA! Funny bone!”      I think I ought to make a disclaimer here for anybody hearing or reading this who is thinking, “Did Michael just punch his ticket to hell with this one?”    The answer is no. I'm a staunch believer that if God made us in His image as we're taught, then He has a sense of humor, but I also prayed over this one before I started it. And while I never actually heard, “Go ahead and write it, My child,” I didn't feel Him telling me not to in my heart. I love The Lord with everything I have and I can't wait to really see Him face to face. I'll not have any actual questions for Him, because I believe either I'll know the answers, or they'll be inconsequential compared to His glory. And if He's a fan of the doughnut, I'll happily always keep the light on for Him.

   I have a laundry list of insecurities that keep me in a perpetual state of uncertainty. Uncertainty about whether or not the last thing I sang was on key, uncertainty about whether or not the last thing I wrote was up to par, uncertainty about whether or not the last thing I painted or etched would cause the viewer to retch and look for the closest bush. I even worry about the sound of my own voice because it never fails that I'm addressed as “Ma'am” at a drive-thru, no matter how deep I try to make my voice to avoid it. Just as I sat down to write this, my son sent me a text. And I quote: “Well, McDonalds just ‘yes ma'am'd me. So this is how that feels?” The two of us sound a lot alike when we talk, so I'm afraid he has a life full of annoying drive-thru lanes ahead of him.    One of the ways I've always combatted being insecure around people has been to mirror their personalities. There's a word for this that crossword filler-outers everywhere will recognize. It's called “Aping”. For the most part, the ability to mimic a person's personality has been a good thing for me, because the result is that I'm able to get along with almost anybody, but it's never on purpose. It just happens, and I'm always afraid someone's gonna notice it and call me out.    “So there I was, minding my own business, when all of a sudden that hag comes out her front door and hollers for me to get off her lawn, like I'm the only one that digs up the neighbor's flowers!”    I reply with, “Giiiiirrrrrl, no she DIT-INT!”    I'm not thinking about it. It's just a knee-jerk reaction. But now, my neighbor thinks I'm on her side, and I really can't say anything to her as she walks away from my bare rose bushes with three dozen long stems in her basket.    That's an exaggeration; I don't have rose bushes, but you get it!    I've decided that to make my point even stronger, I should dramatize a day in the life of an ape like me. Maybe it'll help you get to know me a little better and to understand that the struggle is real.    From Atomic Red Studios, I'm Michael Blackston, and this is a reflection, so to speak, of my Funny Messy Life. _________________________    The alarm rings to signify the beginning of a new day. I don't feel like I got enough sleep last night, but I have a schedule to keep, so I go to the bathroom, then take a look at myself in the mirror and sigh in disgust. “Dang. Just dang.”     I try to cheer myself up with a joke because I think I'm clever.    “Time to scratch my rocks.”    I laugh at myself. I'm not clever, but that joke never gets old.    Once I'm out the door, headed to pick up whatever rock I'm actually gonna scratch, I know that I have to detour in the direction of coffee. Unfortunately for the drive-thru attendant, the last thing I watched before going to bed last night was MasterChef, and one of the hosts of that show is Gordon Ramsay.    Can I take your order?    Yes, I want you to make me the most amazing medium cup of coffee.    Cream and sugar?    Ah … cream, my darling. 6 to be precise, but no sugar. You can toss one phenomenal packet of Splenda in the bag, along with a stirring straw.    $1.75. Pull around.    This had better be a delicious cup of coffee, my darling, otherwise, what am I even doing here?    Ordering coffee.    Ordering coffee. You just don't get it, do you? Wow. Wow wow wow!    The coffee is fine, giving me no excuse to shove it back through the window, shouting, “LOOK AT IT!”    I need to put gas in the tank before moving on, so I pull into a station. At the pump adjacent to me, there's a teenager who helped me with a theatre set at some point or another.    How are you, Julie? (We're just gonna call her Julie, because I don't want to use the actual names of any of the other young ladies who've helped me with sets over the years.)    OMG, I'm totally doing awesome! How are you?    (Here it comes) I'm totes awesome, too! Hecka busy, though.    Right?! It's like somebody turned on a busy faucet and totally forgot to turn it off!    Right?!    Right?!   Totes right!    Of course, I live in the Deep South, where not only does everybody know everybody, but they sincerely want details. I get to the office of a granite manufacturer to pick up my stone, and Reba greets me with a smile.    Well, hey! How's ya mama'nem? I saw ya daddy day before yestiddy at the Walmart. He was lookin' good, but said his knees was bothering him.    I don't doubt it, little lady. Paw's knees're bound ta give him the devil's time as much as he's on ‘em. Cain't do nuthin' with that man.    Well, tell yer people I said ‘hey.'    AH-ight. Y'all come go with us.    I reckon we better stay where we're at.    It's probably good that I'm pretty much left to myself while I work, because it gives me an opportunity to reset. I can put on my headphones and wrap up into a world of sound that I'm in complete control of. Maybe I'll listen to some podcasts, some audiobooks, or that new 80s station I found. Maybe I'll dial up The Office and let that play in the background. Whatever path I stroll down in my audio journey, it'll be like wrapping my head in a sound burrito. It won't matter what ingredients are inside it, except for cheese. I promise there will always be plenty of cheese. That's the kind of place my mind can go when I have nothing coming into my head from the outside, and more than likely, it will also influence my lunch preference.     Mexican it is! A burrito sounds like a winner, and so when that hunger bell strikes, I'll head off to … well, the Bell. But then again, nah. I think I want to be served. There's a great Mexican restaurant where I live. I still wonder how close the food in those places comes to real, honest-to-God Hispanic cuisine like you'd get at one of those side street places in Mexico with no ceiling and dirt floors, and there's a mariachi band playing. No, I don't mean one hired to entertain you, but a mariachi band made up of old dudes wearing actual sombreros they built out of straw, and playing instruments they also made out of straw and adobe, but sound awesome. That's real Mexican cuisine. I don't think their food comes out of the oven to your table in those places within two minutes of ordering it. But that's okay. I'm hungry, and they'll keep refilling my tea while I write yet another amazing podcast episode.    There's just one problem. The authenticity of the food might be suspect, but the authenticity of their ethnicity is not. Those are real Mexicans running the place, and as my son will attest, that's a recipe for disaster due to my subconscious aping. Allow me to explain. I'll keep it short, as I can't remember if I've told this story before.    My son travelled with me a couple of years ago to Alabama for a job. It was the summer, and he had not yet decided there were better things to do with his summer than to go on work trips with dear old dad - things like sleeping, sleeping, and sleeping.    There's a great Mexican restaurant in Jasper, Alabama, too, called Pepito's, and I introduced Noah to them. The server was quite chatty that day, with his thick Hispanic accent, and although I didn't intend to insult him or humiliate my son, I think I might have managed to do both. He was talkative enough that his accent got into my head, so that when he asked if I wanted beef or chicken in my quesadilla, I answered with a resounding, “Cheeeekin!”    I know that teenagers overdramatize how badly their parents embarrass them sometimes, but it's safe to say Noah's basically crawling under the table was justified. Once the server was gone, he decided it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard, and he still won't let me live that down.    The good news is, I'm able to walk away from lunch without coming across as a great big racist, and I can continue my day.    I'm not ready to go back to the etching yet, but I remember that the bin store sometimes gets a new shipment on this day of the week, and off I go to find some treasure. Maybe I should have picked a different day.    When I get there, just as my concentration settles on finding more audio equipment I'll never use, the guy next to me decides that I look like just the person to talk to about this wonderful place he's found. He's from out of town, and this store is magical. Problem is … he's from WAAAYYY out of town.    What'll you be tryin' t'foind? The parrfect thing to tek home to ye' woyf, mehbeh?    (It's on) Tha parrfect thing fer me'woyf don't exist, let meh tell ya!    Well bless yer little Irish heart, and every other Irish part!    Now I'm in trouble. He thinks I'm one of his people, which isn't hard to believe. I have the skin of an Irishman, the hair of an Irishman, the blue eyes, and now, apparently the dialect. Why do I do this stuff to myself? I have to come up with something.    Ya think we'd be lucky enough to find us a pint? I understand you can always sound like the real deal if you mention a pint to these guys, and why not engage in a little unfounded, romanticized stereotyping?    If ya, do, let me know, and we'll drain it together. But I wager around these parts, the tongues'll be awaggin' at that.    He has no idea how right he is. I lead worship in a Baptist church. That's why I keep a light conscience. There's no need to fear th' wind if yer haystacks're tied down, I say!    Aye. No sport actin' the maggot when there ain't a need, me boyo.    We go our separate ways at that point, but dang it, now I want some Lucky Charms, so I take a side trip to Ingles before getting back at it with my rock.    (Sigh). There's an angry man from up north ahead of me in the line. He can't stand how slow it's going, and he thinks I'm just the man to whom he should express his stress.    He says, Can you believe how slow this line is goin'? I got places to go, things to do, am I right?    I say, FUHGGEDDABOWDIT!    He replies, Right?! Fuhggeddabowdit!    Then we just go back and forth.    Me: FUHGGEDDABOWDIT!    Him: FUHGGEDDABOWDIT!    Me: FUHGGEDDABOWDIT!    Him: FUHGGEDDABOWDIT!    Both of us together: FUGGEDDABOUUUUDIIIIT!    I realize it's safer for me to head home. So after jumping out of line because I was suddenly in the mood for ravioli, I make it to my truck without insulting anybody else. The day is getting long in the tooth anyway, and I have one more stop to make. I need to pay $200,000 to the vet for my English Bulldog's latest weekly visit. Her name is Barbara and she's my precious baby, but let me assure you that if you're thinking about giving a bulldog a home, they tend to smell, and you'll buy veterinarians large houses and sports cars.    I walk into the vet's office and a bell on the door rings, alerting everyone, including all the dogs in the back wearing their cones of courage, that I have arrived. They all greet me at once. The vet tech at the counter pulls up my records and tells me the total I owe.    That'll be $200,000 for the blood work, a vial of your own blood for the teeth cleaning, and we will accept your first born as payment for figuring out that smell around the anus area.    I reply in the only way I know how. BARK! and then I offer a vein.    I know I'm not really a dog, though.    I'm an ape.

   I'm a Type 2 diabetic, which means that I should stay a safe distance from sugary delights, such as ice cream, milk chocolate, cakes and pies, spoons full of sugar to make the medicine go down, and soft drinks. I thought I was being a good boy when I started ordering diet drinks, but then people seemed to take a wicked pleasure in bursting my healthy eating bubble by happily admonishing me with the news that …    Those are just as bad for you as the regular drinks because your body thinks its really sugar and the blah blah blah blah blah!    They'll tell me that, and in my mind, they're throwing their heads back in maniacal laughter as they take a ridiculously long drag from a straw jammed down into a ridiculously enormous, full-on, jacked up with sugar, absolutely real Pepsi.    When that happened to me recently, it naturally sent me into a tailspin of memory of playing in the woods with my cousin who joined me in the doing of stupidly stupid things. And that's the stuff this episode is actually about. From Atomic Red studios, and frankly, the Huddle House in Hartwell, Georgia, where this was written and I used really sugar in my coffee (yeah, but that orange juice is horrible for you. Just HORRIBLE!), I'm Michael Blackston and this is a rustic, woodsy look into my Funny Messy Life. _________________________      How do the diet drinks tie in already?    My cousin and I spent a lot of time in the woods. Back in our day, the woods were the Play Stations. Our XBoxes were actual boxes that we painted an “X” across because X marks the spot, and we needed to remember where we'd buried the broken glass, poisonous mushroom spore bombs, and sticks we'd whittled to sharp points for when the vampires finally attacked. We were prepared, son! And if you go back there now and look close enough, beneath the briars, and pine needles the earth uses to record the passage of time, you'll likely come across a number of aluminum cans from the mid to late 1980s - Diet Coke cans, to be precise. They'll be faded, even completely robbed of their former red and silver glory, but they'll tell you a story.     First, I guess it's the story about what litterbugs we were. Young boys don't generally think about the environment, and we were no exception. But the real story is one of adventure, one of intrigue, and no small amount of Tomfoolery. It's because we needed those drinks if we were to survive the Georgia summer heat as we made our huts and blazed the intricate trails that wound throughout the property we called, Our Land. But the drinks were off limits. Oh, yes! The Diet Cokes belonged to my grandpa, who was a Type 2 diabetic, and had been told not to ever let anything with sugar in it pass his lips again. Our instructions were to stay out of the refrigerator, and especially, stay out of J.C.'s Diet Cokes. They watched us like a hawk because they knew that we knew that they knew that we knew that they were watching us, and if we were to get our hands on them, it would take a special forces unit to successfully acquire the target. Luckily for me and my cousin, we thought we WERE a special forces unit, and were, therefore, the right men for the job.    The Big M's! That was the name of our secret club, but it wasn't just any normal club like the ones other boys created. There was no scrap plank of wood hanging over the entrance of our main hut with our name scrawled in the clumsy handwriting of a twelve year old with a bucket of old paint and a gnarled, worn out brush. Our club was a secret. Shhh! No one could know about the Big M's, except for those in the organization. We were as invisible as the C.I.A - our existence as sacrosanct as the Illuminati. We had plans and drawings of our future underground lair - a bunker to beat all bunkers, complete with armored war trucks, an ice cream bar, and entire room dedicated to playing with our action figures. And the one thing that was an absolute, chiseled in stone must, in order to be a member of the Big M's was that your first name had to start with the letter “M”. My best friend at the time, also named Michael, was officially a member, but as I recall, it was a thing akin to the first drummer for the Beatles. My cousin's name starts with an “M”, and we were together all the time, so really, it was about the two of us. We had the skills, the stealth, the know-how, and the guts to execute Operation: Grandpa's Cokes and get away with it. We performed this covert action time and time again, but we couldn't throw the empty Diet Coke cans in the trash back at the house. Therefore, the ground in the woods seemed to be the next best option.    We did a lot of preparation for battle in those woods. At that time, Sylvester Stallone had roused our tiny pre-teen hunger to fight anything and everything with an M16 in one hand and an Uzi in the other. Arnold Schwarzenegger also did his due diligence when it came to that, so we saw ourselves as the next wave of ninja killing, terrorist destroying, death machines. We submerged ourselves in the Chuck Norris of it all to the degree that one of the places we always went when we landed at the local department store was the toy department, because at that time, toy companies not only sold realistic looking plastic assault rifles with some rattling contraception inside them that made a sound like playing cards on bicycle spokes when you pulled the trigger, but they weren't yet required to put the silly orange tips on the end of the barrels. Not that I don't understand the need for those orange tips. I'm just saying that a black Sharpie marker fixes that little problem right quick for a kid with even a thimble full of creativity.    Our first exercises to prepare us for war happened with our fists gripping the stocks of guns that were really sticks that happened to bend the right way. If you look hard enough and squint your eyes just right, most branches will do, shape wise, as some form of firearm. Imagination is a wonderful thing. But even more wonderful was the wielding a replica of the real thing, even if the ratta tat tat sound was closer to that of the giant wheel on The Price Is Right than to actual automatic gunfire.    “I got you! You're dead. You have to count to twenty!”    Those were the rules of combat in the woods behind Grandma's house. If you got shot, you had to stop and count to twenty before returning to the game, fresh and unharmed, as if you'd never been riddled by a hundred invisible bullets from a gun that had the power and audio equivalent of someone blowing you a raspberry. Most of the time, you toed the line. If you heard the sound, and the immediate cry from your opponent, “I got you!”, it was over with no argument. That was, at least, until the count of twenty had been made - basically the same thing as “respawning” in video games today, and assuming that you agreed.    Sometimes you didn't agree. Sometimes, you were sure that the bullets had hit the trees between you, or that you were running so fast, that your enemy hadn't been able to accurately aim their weapon. It was in time like those that a sort of debate took place between the shooter and the supposed dead soldier.    “I got you!”    “No you didn't!”    “Yes I did! You have to count to twenty!”    “You missed!”    “No I didn't! You have to count to twenty!    “No I don't! You missed!”    There's a dance that takes place between the two parties. It sounds eerily like a political debate, only more sophisticated.   During the counting of twenty, of course, the shooter gets to disappear into the woods and re-establish covert sweetness.    We either played war or made trails and huts in the woods. There was also a good bit of exploration, but never too far. In the end, we stuck to what we knew. In the winter, it was easier because the thicker layers of clothes kept us from being lacerated head to shoulder by briars. In the summer months, it was a sweat fest and we were constantly on the lookout for snakes. We only saw one during our childhood. Later, as adults, the two of use took a nostalgic stroll through those woods and saw a big, beautiful black rat snake coiled up under a tree. I'm certain that as much time as we spent out there as kids, we must have been inches from the strike of a copperhead or two, but the only snake we encountered was harmless. Since then, I've grown to love snakes and have educated myself on them. I squeal like a kid on Christmas morning when I see one in the wild now, but back then, a snake was a snake, and I held the irrational fear of them that probably 90 percent of the population does.    We were walking along one of the many trails we'd beaten down with the sticks we called our babies, and suddenly from the trees to the right, a bright green noodle stretched across our vision, right in front of our heads. It might startle me for that to happen today, but only for a second. After that, I'd likely reach out and take it in my hands, name it something silly - Mr. Snookeypants - and take it back to the house for my family to play with before releasing it, frightened and confused, back into the woods.    As it turned out, twelve year old me, along with my twelve year old cousin, who did stupidly stupid things with me, squealed, not like kids on Christmas morning, but like terrified children at a gory Halloween carnival, and ran back the way we came. I remember we made it to the house and burst through the door to tell the others of the monster we'd just encountered, looking death straight in the red, glowing eyes. Oh yes, by the time we made it back to the safety of the house, the snake would have had red, glowing eyes full of fire. It would have curled it's head back in that classic “S” shape, ready to strike. Before doing so, it would have opened its great maw of a mouth, revealing fangs as sharp as surgical scalpels, the flesh from its last victim hanging bloody and rotting from them like shredded, rancid curtains.    They'd told us to watch out for snakes and we'd found one.    I've noticed two things about this latest offering. 1. I long to revisit the places of my childhood, and 2. When I read something by Stephen King, it influences my writing.     The woods have been the backdrop for so much of the best scene in my life's play. The woods behind Grandma and Grandpa's house rank at the top, but there are other places. It pains me that my own children have grown up unable to relate to that kind of fun. The woods just haven't been a part of their lives very often. When I was a kid, I didn't realize how important that part of my life would be. It was just the woods. Nothing magical about them. There's trees, and fallen leaves. There are old, weathered logs to step over sounds in the distance that might be danger, but probably isn't. And now, when I give them a reason to follow me there for some small adventure, their eyes light up with excitement. Because they haven't gotten numb to it. And they know there really is magic in there.    All it takes is a little imagination.

  I will never understand why fast food chains use anything other than the Chick-fil-a model for customer service. Until Chic-fil-a came on the scene with their We'll-Do-Whatever-It-Takes-To-Make-You-Feel-Like-King-Special-Britches philosophy, we were all fine with, “Welcome to the Altar of the Arches. What can I get ya today?” But now, we can see a new world of possibility when it comes to customer service, if only every other chain would buy into it.    It's a super-duper morning here at your Chick-fil-a.    It's our pleasure to serve you todaaaaaayyy!!    For some reason, even though these other companies have trouble keeping employees, and their lines aren't looped around the building twice, they don't seem to care nearly as much about how their customers are treated.    This episode is about a couple of times when customer service wasn't just below the standards of your typical Chick-fil-a, but it dove into ridiculously bad. And it's about a better world we may all experience if we'll just embrace the pure, unadulterated power, of two little words … My pleasure.    From Atomic Red Studios, I'm Michael Blackston, and this is my Funny Messy Life. _________________________    I'm not proud of my actions - the ones that resulted at the climax of the situation I'm about to tell you. I am a Christian, who strongly believes that how we respond to negativity can set the tone for not just those around us, but those who happen to be downstream to those around us later in the day. In other words, there's a butterfly effect that starts with us, and can brighten or ruin the day for a bunch of people. It's up to us to decide who we want to be. The bad news is that on this particular day, I wanted to be a stressed out director of a stage show that was opening the curtain to an audience sooner than later, and in the car with me was my stressed out Co-Director and wife, as well as my Assistant Director, and Set director, who happened to be my stressed out sister. We were running late, but we had to stop to pick up food because otherwise, we would all die before the show was over.     We decided a popular fast food chain that serves Mexican fare would be the best choice, because it was on the way, supposedly fast, and cheap. Simple burritos are hard to screw up, right?    No. Not right.    Mistakes are common among those who consider themselves a human person, and I'm no exception. In my profession, I will occasionally make a mistake, and there are much larger consequences for those mistakes than if you screw up a burrito. And yet, I manage to own those mistakes in a humble, customer friendly way. I would think that with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars on the line, I might have at least some reason to be in a less than happy mood if I make a mistake. But it wasd MY mistake, not theirs, and as long as they treat me with civility, I will try everything in my power to fix it with both parties happy in the end.    Enter this burrito that will soon take a prominent role in this story, not to mention a short flight.    You will recall that I said we were already in a hurry, and supremely stressed. There was a show to put on, and inevitably, cast members would be late, somebody would be feuding with somebody else. I don't think this was opening night of Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, when a massive storm raged up right as everyone was supposed to get there, the wind literally blowing my wife to the ground in the middle of the street, and the rain flooding the entirety of stage right only an hour before curtain, but we expected something to happen to cause us panic. That's why it was important that the order taker listen carefully as we drove up to the intercom. None of us in the car like lettuce or tomato on our food, so we all three made a simple order of beef burritos with no lettuce or tomato.    First, the person on the intercom was rude. Unlike Chi-fil-a, their salutation did not come over the speaker riding a rainbow.    “Whatchoo want?”    I'm thinking Really?    I ordered the burritos. No lettuce, no tomato.    We pulled forward and paid, received our bag of burritos, which was basically tossed into the car, unceremoniously by a worker who wanted to be anywhere but there, and pulled over to check it. We thought that would be a smart move, using the service we'd gotten up till then as an example.    Every burrito had both lettuce, and tomato.    I took the bag inside and got the attention of a worker. She walked up to me with an irritated look on her face, and said, “There a problem?”    I could have handled the situation in a couple of ways. I could have matched her body language and responded as if her very presence evoked the temptation to throw up. IO could have mirrored her obvious distaste for anything that resembled a customer, thereby verifying the age-old I'm rubber and you're glue philosophy. But I didn't do that. I understand that appearances can be deceiving, and sometimes people are just having a bad day. I would not mirror her, but instead, I would smile and calmly explain the issue.    “I'm sorry to bother you, ma'am. These burritos were supposed to be beef and cheese only. No lettuce, no tomato. I truly do not mean to be trouble, nor, in fact, rubber.”    The young lady sneered and snatched the bag violently from the counter like I had insulted her mother, her pet bunny, and her priest.    I watched the person remake the order. I could not see their hands, but I was focused on their lips to make sure nothing got spit on. The young lady shoved three new burritos into the bag hard enough that I'm surprised they didn't break through the bottom. It reminded me of those superhero movies when the hero has just realized their powers, and everything they touch ids destroyed by their newly found strength. Except that this woman knew exactly what she was doing, and looked up me as she handed me the bag, as if to say, That's what I do to burritos in paper bags! She didn't say a word - just thrust the bag toward me, and turned around in a huff when I took it.    I should have looked at them again, but I thought at least they probably got the order right this time, and I was in that much more of a hurry now.    We sat in the car, hurriedly grabbed our burritos so that we could get to the theatre, where certainly, we would find out somebody had used up all the eyeliner pencils and foam makeup wedges. This was a show about Egypt, after all, and nobody in the cast naturally looked anything like an Egyptian.    We each opened the wrappers, and of course, there was lettuce AND tomato on each one. I sighed, and calmly took the burritos back into the restaurant.    The young lady was not as happy to see me this time, as she was before.    “What's wrong now?!”    I was pleased with my demeanor. Mr. Rogers, himself, would have been very proud. But as it goes, pride cometh before the fall.    “These still have lettuce and tomato on them. They're supposed to be beef and cheese only.”    Here is what she said … “Just eat the D*#@ burritos!”    I, being much more euphoric than I had a need to be, asked for the manager, who came up to the counter. He was a large, sloppy looking, Neanderthal of a man, wearing a scowl reminiscent of Tommy Lee Jones on a bad day. Have you seen Tommy Lee Jones on a good day? It's still a scowl.    “What's the problem?” he asked me, not as would a manager at Chic-fil-a, smiling from ear to ear, and simply delighted to be able to solve a problem for his valued customer. This guy yelled the question at me like he was daring me to say anything negative.   I took a deep breath.   “Good sir, these three burritos were ordered to be beef and cheese only. No lettuce, no tomato. They came to me with lettuce and tomato, so I brought them back. They were returned to me wrong again. Now, I understand mistakes are made. I believe when I get to the theatre later, I will find a drunk hobo has peed all over the set. However, while I have been pleasant and patient all the way through, your employee has been rude, disrespectful, and the opposite of customer friendly from the moment we gave her the order.”    Here's the manager's reply … wait for it …    “So?”    I was dumbfounded. “What do you mean, so?” I asked.    He smirked and said, “Whatchoo want me to do about it?”    I had come to the end of my euphoria. Now, the stressed, late, irritable director of a show was about to rear his ugly head. A show, by the way, that would no doubt meet me at the door with news that a pack of rabid possums had taken residence in the sound booth.    What did I want him to do about it?     I looked at the burrito I had taken out of the bag to show them, then I looked back at the smirking manager.    I looked back at the burrito in my hand, then back at him.    Then I decided what I wanted him to do.    This is a true story.    I told him he could eat them, shoved the bag on the counter, and threw the burrito, like a major league pitcher, hitting him dead center of the chest.    It takes a lot to make me angry enough to do something like that, but I'm not stupid. He was a large man, so I decided not to ask for a refund. Instead, I turned heel and made my way to the car in the quickest fashion I could manage without looking like a scaredy-cat.    “GO GO GO GO GO!!! I'll tell you in a minute, just GO!” I screamed when I got in the car and slammed the door behind me.    I don't remember if we had time to stop anywhere else for food, or if we ran into anything like zombies taking over the stage and doing their own performance of Our Town when we got to the theatre, but the show went over well, all told.    I'm not proud of myself. I should have reacted differently. As a matter of fact, I hold to the thought that, when dealing with any situation, the outcome is far better if you respond instead of react.    My mom and step-dad responded to a similar situation recently, where the drive-thru attendant definitely made it clear it was not her pleasure to serve them. Believe it or not, the restaurant in question belonged to the same chain. It was a Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, and they decided that instead of the usual after church tradition of fried chicken, they would stop for Mexican fare. My daughter was with them, and probably had some influence in that decision.    The details are fuzzier here, because I got the story from three separate sources, so I'll only report the commonalities.    They drove up to the intercom at the drive-thru and the attendant asked for their order. There were several people in the car, so the order was large and somewhere in all of the details, the attendant must have gotten frustrated. She became extremely rude, and my step-dad tried to help her out.  She must have taken it as aggressive, because what was the attendant's reply? Wait for it ….    She said, “Watch yourself!”    Watch yourself. Let that sink in. An employee in the service industry, regardless of how rude the customer is being, and especially when you can't be sure one way or the other like this moment with my step-dad, should never, under any circumstances, say, Watch yourself. If I had been the owner of the place and that happened, she'd be gone. Period.    After driving away, my step-dad decided the manager should be spoken to, so he found the number to that franchise and called them.    Who answered? Rudely McRuderson, that's who.    My step-dad asked to speak to the manager, and she told him he was speaking to her. Then he asked if she was the one who was so rude to him just now, and she told him “yes,” with apparently zero remorse.    This same company, at yet a third different location, this one in my hometown, recently had reports of employees at the window, asking customers if they could keep the change as a tip, and getting verbally abusive with the customers that said “no.”    My point is, there's a resounding difference between Chic-fil-a and almost all of the other fast food brands I've encountered. And this is not a Chick-fil-a endorsement piece at all. I can hear some of you now … Sure it's not an endorsement. Michael's a Christian and everyone knows Christians think there will be a Chick-fil-a in Heaven.    That's not the case at all. I don't even care that much for the food at Chick-fil-a, but they still get my business. Why? It's not because of anything spiritual, or political. It's because they make me feel like when they saw me coming, everyone's day got brighter just knowing I chose them. I don't require anyone in the service industry to treat me like a God. There's only one God, and I'm pretty sure He doesn't dress like I do. (I stole that line. Ask a nerd to explain it if you need to.)    What I do require is human decency. That's all. I understand that there are days when people feel bad, but give me a smile anyway. Or at least, fix your mistakes with courtesy so that I don't have to throw my food at you, and then run away like a frightened chinchilla.    And business owners, adopt the Chick-fil-a model. You don't even have to say My pleasure. You could say, …    The pleasure is all mine, or    We're happy to be of service, or    Nut'n but love fo ya!, or    OH MY GOSH, YOU ACTUALLY CAME TO SEE US! THIS IS AMAZING!    Be creative. And be nice.

   Having a radio show used to mean drinking a lot of old, stale coffee, coddling drunk callers on the overnight shift, and eating things left over from remote broadcasts that no one really knew whether or not would kill you. Having not been behind a live radio board for years, I can only assume some of that still happens, but there are some things that never change.    This episode isn’t about radio stories. I’ll save those for my interview with my dear friend, Joe, when he comes in studio to remember back to the radio days of good ol’. No, this is about the things that keep your local station on the air, and what about them that drives me insane enough to scream like a B-movie horror woman, and turn down the volume to keep my ears from bleeding.    I’m talking about radio commercials … the bad ones.     From Atomic Red Studios, I’m Michael Blackston, and this is not a test. It’s a deep dive into the snobby side of my Funny Messy Life. _________________________      Let’s get one thing straight, right off the bat. Everything is not right for everybody. You might want to be a surgeon, but if you were born without sight, that’s not going to be a favorable career for you. I don’t want you handling a scalpel in or around my very delicate person. If you don’t have a love for animals, I’d advise you not to be a veterinarian.    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wernkle, but Fifi passed away during the procedure.”    “You were just clipping her claws!”    “Eh. Stuff happens, know what I mean? Next victim!”    The same is true for radio. It’s not that I think you ought to have to pay your dues before your voice is heard all over the place. Lord knows, that would be a losing battle anyway. Have you heard some of the podcasts out there? Quiet, haters!    It’s just that some people need experience before voicing a commercial, because most of us weren’t automatically born with the “it” factor necessary to come across in a way that’s pleasing enough to sell something. This seems to be rampant in the car dealership world. Is it really effective for the announcer to scream at me?   *“COME ON OUT TO BLACKSTON AUTOMOTIVE THIS FRIDAY FOR THE DEALS YOU JUST WON’T GET ANYWHERE ELSE! WE’VE GOT AWESOME DEALS ON USED CARS OUT THE REAR END!  SPEAKING OF REAR ENDS, HAVE YOU BEEN IN AN ACCIDENT LATELY? SOMEBODY TEXTING ONE OF THOSE OTHER DEALERS, TRYING TO FIND BETTER PRICES THAN YOU CAN GET AT BLACKSTON AUTOMOTIVE, AND THEY DIDN’T SEE YOU COME TO A STOP?! BRING IT IN TO US AND WE’LL FIX THAT CABOOSE BETTER THAN IT WAS THE DAY BEFORE YOU BOUGHT IT - AND WE’LL SEND THE BILL RIGHT UP THEIR INSURANCE COMPANY’S TAILPIPE! BLACKSTON AUTOMOTIVE WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU BECAUSE AT BLACKSTON AUTOMOTIVE, WE TREAT YOU LIKE FAM’BLY! THAT’S NORTHEAST GEORGIA’S NUMBER ONE AUTO DEALER, BLACKSTON AUTOMOTIVE. BLACKSTON AUTOMOTIVE!”      That doesn’t get annoying, does it? Yet, you hear it every day. If you’re going to feed me slop, at least put it on a fancy plate. What if that same commercial were presented a different way? What if a smoothe talking bassy voice sold it to you under a bed of sultry jazz? Still not great, but at least you got to hear some jazz.    But they don’t think that way. They think the owner of the company, who may be a fantastic car salesman, should do the spot. He usually has no clue how bad he sounds, and to make matters worse, they’ll often add one of the guy’s kids to sweeten the sell. That’s usually not a good idea. It’s like a carcass in the middle of the road that’s been there for three days in August. In the south. You think we won’t notice the stench if you put a cute hat on it?   *“AT BLACKSTON AUTOS, WE’VE GOT THE BEST USED CARS AT THE BEST PRICES AROUND. EACH VEE-HICKLE  GOES THROUGH A 1.25 POINT INSPECTION, SO YOU KNOW YOU’RE GETTING A QUALITY AUTOMOBILE. BUT DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. HERE’S MY SON, PEA-POT TO BACK ME UP. TELL, ‘EM, PEA-POT.”   PEA-POT:  “THAT’S RIGHT, DEDDIE. HERE AT BLACKSTON AUTO, WE ‘SPECT ‘EM REAL GOOD. IF’N WE FIND A VARMINT IN ONE’NIM VEE-HICKLES, WE TELL IT TA GIT! GO ON, GIT!”   WE DON’T PLAY GAMES AT BLACKSTON AUTO. YOU GIT  A GOOD’N WHEN YA COME OUT HERE. COME OUT TO BLACKSTON AUTO, WHERE WE TELL VARMINTS TA GIT! THAT’S BLACKSTON AUTO! BLACKSTON AUTO!”      There’s a commercial that plays on one of the large market stations out of Atlanta and it gets under my skin so badly that I have almost sent a nasty letter. It sounds like the owner of the place, not a car lot, but a retail establishment, and no one told the guy to take the historically large chaw of tobacco out of his mouth before stepping up to the microphone. To make matters worse, his dialect is nearly as redneckish as the character I just did in the last fake commercial. Allow me to take a jab at an impersonation, but first, I’ll cram an enormous wad of paper into my mouth to complete the effect.   *“BLACKSTON ART SUPPLY IS OPEN NOW TO OFFER ALL TYPES OF ART SUPPLIES TO ALL TYPES OF ARTISTS. IT DOESN’T MATTER IF YOU’RE A AMA-TOOR, OR A ‘SPYURENSED ARTEEST, WE’VE GOT WHATEVER YOU NEED TO TAKE YORE LATEST DOODLE, AND TURN INTO YORE LATEST MYSTERPIECE. YOU WANT PENCILS, WE GOT ‘EM AT BLACKSTON ART SUPPLY! YOU WANT BRUSHES? WE GOT ‘EM AT BLACKSTON ART SUPPLY! YOU WANT SENSATIONAL SWATCHES TO SATISFY ALL YOR QUILTIN’ NEEDS, WE GOT ‘EM AT BLACKSTON ART SUPPLY! COME ON OUT TO BLACKSTON ART SUPPLY, AND WE’LL MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE VINCENT VAN GOFF. BLACKSTON ART SUPPLY. BLACKSTON ART SUPPLY. BLACKSTON ART SUPPLY!”      I have misophonia, which means that this stuff triggers the Mr. Hyde in me. I can’t help it. And now there’s another trend. It’s the good ol’ boy commercial where one of them is the straight guy, and the other one is the goofy dude you just can’t do anything with, hyuck hyuck! The goofy guy always ends the ad by singing a country song as badly as he possibly can and they all have a good laugh, as if they didn’t just cause an entire listening area to throw up their last meal. I shall demonstrate.   “CLEVIS: HEY EARL, I GOT AN IDEA FOR A NEW INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL HERE AT BLACKSTON TIRES AND VASECTOMIES.   EARL: OH NO, CLEVIS, YOUR IDEAS ALWAYS INVOLVE ME SPENDING MORE MONEY? WHATCHA GOT UP YOUR SLEEVE NOW?   CLEVIS: NAW, EARL, THISUN’S GOOD. LOOK HERE … WHAT IF FOR EVERY BRAND NEW SET OF TIRES WE SELL BY THE FOURTH OF JULY, WE GIVE A FREE VASECTOMY?   EARL: GOOD GRIEF, YOU’RE GONE RUN US OUT OF BUSINESS! HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO MAKE A PROFIT IF THE BILL SKIPS THE SNIPS?   CLEVIS: IT’S A GREAT IDEA EARL. THANK ABOUT IT … IT’S THE ULTIMATE GIFT OF INDEPENDENCE WHILE WE CELEBRATE INDEPENDENCE! (SINGING) INDEPENDENCE DAY! IT’S INDEPENDENCE DAY!   EARL: (LAUGHING) I NEED MY INDEPENDENCE FROM YOU, CLEVIS. COME ON OUT TO BLACKSTON TIRES AND VASECTOMIES AND GET A BRAND NEW SET OF TIRES SO YOU CAN SKIP THE SNIP ON YOUR BILL!   CLEVIS: (SINGING) IT’S INDEPENDENCE DAY!      I know. I’m just griping. I can’t help it. I’m a hard sell, and if it seems like you’re giving me the old razzle-dazzle, I’ll kick against it with every ounce of energy I have in me. That’s why I wouldn’t make a great salesman, unless I really believe in the product.    Although, if I ever think about having a vasectomy, it couldn’t hurt to get a nice set of new tires, could it?  

   When you live with someone for a long time, the stories pile up. That’s especially true when the people who live together are siblings, because not only are you with each other all the time, but you’re also going about the business of growing up, and learning to handle the things that life throws at you. Case in point, me and my sister. Early on, I saw the need to tell some stories about how we’ve tackled projects together as adults, but I haven’t gone into great detail about our childhood, with the exception of the time she dotted me in my eye. So now, as I think I promised, it’s time to go a little further back into our childhood, mainly the early eighties, and tell you about some of the things that we got into. Parents, you may cringe, because there is a bit of blood, as well as something that would have probably gotten us labelled as terrorists in today’s culture of jumping to conclusions, and cancelling anybody that breathes in a way some people disagree with.    Today, we tend to cover our kids in bubble wrap, but back then, it was a different time. I’m Michael Blackston. Why don’t you slip on your favorite Underoos, grab a bowl of cereal, and settle in for the Saturday morning cartoon that is my Funny Messy Life. _________________________    When we were kids, my sister spent a lot of her time looking after me, and a lot of her time being annoyed by me. The rest of time, were were in what more cultured Americans refer to as, “Kahoots”. I don’t know if that’s the right way to spell it, and I don’t care. Doesn’t matter. Me and Stephanie engaged in them because it was the eighties - a time just before the dawn of all the technology that keeps kids inside, punching keypads and video controllers with their thumbs. I would say it was safer for kids to play outside unsupervised back then, but by the time I’m done with this episode, that won’t hold water.    Steph is my big sister, so there were times in our childhood when it was up to her to save the day. One of those times came on an afternoon when we were very young, and found ourselves playing in the yard with the boy that lived next door. I won’t give his name, but if you’d like to hear about some of the other trouble he got me into, go back and listen to the episode called, My First Love, when he introduced me to the famous, fabulous, four-letter F-word. You can’t read about it - I used bullet points to tell that story. Sorry.    Anyway, he was mean. He was my sister’s age, or maybe a little older, and he liked to pick on me because I had not yet trained to be a ninja assassin, although I had aspirations.    Behind the house, tucked a little way into the trees, was an old dog pen my dad had built. It had been years since there had been a dog back there, and nature had grown up all around it, so that you had to go down a short path to get to it. The path was bracketed on both sides by poison oak, stinging nettles, rabbit tobacco, and Devil’s Snare. Oh yeah, and Kudzu. It’s Georgia. There’s always gonna be Kudzu. The fence surrounding the thing was probably eight feet high, with rusty points of chicken wire sticking straight into the air like the evil fingers of a robot Satan, stuck in a perpetual freeze as they curse God. And I feel like I need to stop for a few seconds and make a note in my topics list about a future episode. Let’s see … chewing wild rabbit tobacco with my cousin who did stupidly stupid things with me … because we were stupid. I know there are people out there who don’t care for the word, “stupid”, but it’s okay because I’m calling myself and cousin it, and also … we were.    Back to Steph crucifying herself.    Wait … What?! Is this going to be graphic? Yeah. A little bit..    I don’t know how or why the neighbor boy got his hands on the banana seat from my bicycle, but he did. I think the equation in his mind probably looked a little something like this (Mathematicians, don’t laugh at me. I’m an artist. Just an artist.)    Fun + Laughs∞ = (Banana seat + high fence)(Devil’s Snare) x (Michael crying)                                  ——————————————————                             (Butt whoopin’/meanness) ¶ ÷ quota of evil doin’    However it went down in his mind, the fact remains that he got his hand on the banana seat from my bicycle and chucked it over the fence, into the forbidden dog pen, and the door to the pen had a chain on it. If you’ll refer back to my equation, the objective was to create fun and laughter, by virtue of my tears. Mission accomplished. Stephanie didn’t want to be the one to have to climb over the fence, but somebody was going to have to if I was going to shut up. I understand the compulsion of some people to be repulsed by the term, “Shut up”, but we were kids, and I needed to. The neighbor boy certainly wasn’t going to suddenly find a spark of mercy and climb to rescue my bicycle seat, so that left Steph. I was too little and overcome with grief anyway.    Steph found a purchase for her feet and began the climb, fussing at the neighbor boy the whole time. Devil’s Snare reached out for her, awakened by my screams, her anger, and the stench of the neighbor boy’s untethered glee. She managed to find her way safely over the fence, into the pen, and tossed my banana seat back over, triumphantly. But the journey was far from over. The chain kept the door locked from the inside and out. Steph would have to make her way over the fence one more time to get out.    She found a purchase once again for her feet, and began the arduous task of pulling her body toward the top. And she did it. Swinging her leg over the top of the fence, she tried to find a foothold again, to let herself down. And she found that foot hold. She swung her other leg over, and that’s when everything went wrong.    Stephanie and I have always been fantastic climbers. We had Sweetgum trees all over the place in our yard, and because technology had not yet advanced to the stage of letting us send a digital version of ourselves up into the trees, carrying swords and machine guns, we had to go up into the real trees. It doesn’t escape me that there are some people out there who don’t care at all for the very mention of machine guns, but we were kids, and our dad taught us at an early age how to handle a firearm, so if we’d been allowed to, we surely would have strapped M-16s to our backs as we climbed. Dad would’ve frowned on that, though. The point is, that we climbed the trees all the way to the top, as far as we could go without them bending over, so Steph losing her footing on the fence was not an expected occurrence.    Lose her footing she did, though, and she fell.    She didn’t fall far. Those rusty fingers of metal at the top of the fence got into the game by stopping her fall. One of them tore deep into her wrist and held her, dangling and screaming. Now we were both screaming. She was screaming in pain and terror, I was screaming in grief and terror for Steph, and the neighbor boy, seeing what had happened, started screaming too, in terror for the butt whoopin’ he was likely to take, both from his dad when he got home, and Steph, if she made it down from there alive.    I don’t recall how she ended up getting down, but she did, bloody wrist and all. I’m sure I remember it worse that it really was, and I probably got some of the details fuzzy. I was small, after all, and saw the whole thing through a blurry glaze of tears at the thought of not having my banana bicycle seat.    I’ve always respected Stephanie’s chivalry in that moment, and I think she still has a scar on her wrist to show for it, but that’s the least of what could have happened to us.    Later in years, when I was a preteen, and she was a teen, we found ourselves in possession of some firecrackers. I think they were called Black Cats. They were the kind you light, then throw to hear a loud bang, and that’s pretty much it. We stuck a few up the butts of actions figure and lit them just to watch how many arms and legs would go flying. Unfortunately for me, they were also the fast fuse kind. Why unfortunately for me? Well, Steph handed me a Black Cat one afternoon with the following plan.    “You hold it, I’ll light it, and you throw it real fast.”    I, being a MO-ron, agreed. Now, I get it that some of you out there might not want to hear the word Mo-ron. You consider it rude and insulting, but agreeing to this was not one of my finest moments and carries, I believe, the proper information to categorize me as such.    I held the firecracker, and she struck a flame to the lighter. The fuse was long enough, but I suppose that in her excitement, she lost some control of her motor skills, because instead of lighting the fast fuse at the end, she opted for the lighting-the-firecracker-right-at-the-base-of-the-explosice maneuver.    I barely managed to get it out of my hand before it went off. Had it actually exploded in my hand, I could have been seriously injured. As it was, I got enough distance from it - a few inches - that it only FELT like somebody chopped off my hand. I was numb for a couple of days.    So, did that experience serve to teach us a valuable lesson? Yes it did. It taught us that it’s possible to live another day, and we came up with the most sinister plan yet.    There were a lot of those firecrackers left, but we didn’t care for throwing them any more. They were powerful, and they hurt. We needed a way to harness their full potential, and better yet, all at once.    We knew three things: A glass jar would hold all the powder if we meticulously cut through the paper of each firecracker and dumped the powder into it. If we drilled a tiny hole into the bottom of the jar and inserted a very long wick, we could place the jar, and all of its powder, at the center of Brady Bottoms - an area down the road from our house, and hide behind a tree to witness our glory. If we first doused the wick in gasoline, it would surely light and find its way to the jar.    And we did exactly that. Well, almost. It took us days to secretly sit in dad’s metal building with Exacto knives, cutting the firecrackers and dumping their powder into a jar, but we did it, and hid the jar away until we could figure out a way to drill a hole in the bottom of it without breaking it.    Luckily for us, mom found out about our master plan, and intercepted the jar, scolding us to no end, and thanking Jesus that we’d not gone through with it. Mama was wise because she knew three things: Exploding jars break into tiny pieces of glass projectiles that fly faster than Steph or I could have dodged. We would have wanted to see the explosion, so even though we had planned to hide our bodies behind a tree, our stupid idiot MO-ron faces would have been right in the line of fire. We had constructed a bomb, and even in the eighties, that’s illegal. We could have died.    We tried to argue, but mama told us to shut up, and that she’d rather see us playing with machine guns in the tops of the Sweetgum trees, than have us become pasty little terrorists.    So the first Sister Sister episode involved happy things like birthday cakes, the theatre, and parade floats, while this one involved grisly scenes, blood, and weaponry - some legal, others not so much. Needless to say, my sister and I have lived interesting lives, and there’s still a lot to tell. I’ll get to that on down the road. Until then, parents, watch your kids closely, and kids - don’t be stupid.

   As I begin to write out this piece, I’m sitting in a tiny, square sandwich shop called, Bob’s Sandwiches. It’s located on a side street in Brookhaven, Mississippi, and I have never eaten here. I’ve passed by it a time or two, and there used to be a geocache on the property that I wasn’t able to find, but I’m told it’s a piece of Brookhaven history that needs to be experienced. We’ll see. I travel to Brookhaven every six to eight weeks for work, and I was recently told I’m pronouncing it wrong. I say, BROOK’- haven, but apparently, the locals pronounce it, br’k-HAY’-ven. Being corrected sent my mind into a dive as I thought of other words that are pronounced differently, based on your region, which then set me to thinking about phraseology, and I came up with some doozies that separate we southerners from the rest of creation. So sit back a spell and enjoy it, because I’m Michael Blackston, and this is lesson in the dialect that some say amounts to butter rolling off the tongue in my Funny Messy Life ... or as some folks around here say, LYFE. _________________________    The English language is said to be one of the hardest to master because there are so many variations of meaning that can come from the same spelling of a word. That’s called a HOMOGRAPH. Then you’ve got HETERONYMS, which are a type of homograph that are also spelled the same and have different meanings, but sound different. Some words can be both homographs and heteronyms if they sound the same, and are spelled the same, but have different meanings. And then there are WHATTHECRAPHS, which are all of the above, but you say them like a southerner.    Okay, Bob’s Sandwiches just served me my burger and DADGUM! (Which is a southern way of saying, “Well, slap ya grandmama, that’s good!”)    That’s a fine place to start - the word dadgum. Dadgum is distinctly southern, but it can serve to express emotion in a myriad of ways. If you find unexpected joy in something such as a beautiful lady passing by, or the first bite of a delicious large burger with ketchup, mayo, and extra cheese, you can get your delight across to anyone in earshot by exclaiming, DADGUM!    On the contrary, you can use the same word to express disappointment. If you’re waiting at a red light and the last car you need to go by so you can make a left turn has nothing better to do than let their vehicle glide down the road at the default speed in drive without putting their foot on the pedal, you might have to let your emotions be known. Daaaaad-gum it! Because they caused you to miss your chance to turn.    Of course, there are the classics. You say To-MAY’-toe, or To-MAH’-toe ... we say MAY’-ter.    All my life, I’ve spent time around fishermen. I usually went for largemouth bass when I tried, unsuccessfully, to angle, but some folks like to sit on the bank of a river and try for a smaller pan fish called, Bream. We pronounce it BRIM in my circles, but I could throw a rock blindfolded and hit somebody who will pronounce it, BREE’-yum. That’s just our southern accent, though. There’s another popular fish - a hybrid between a largemouth bass and a bream - that I’ve always called a Crappie, pronounced the same way you pronounce a typical critique of Star Wars, episodes 1-3. But the other day, I was in a conversation with a customer in Alabama, and when we started talking about fishing, I mentioned Crappie. She said, “You mean, CRAH’-ppie.”    “No, I meant crappie.”    She shook her head, “No, it’s pronounced, CRAH’-ppie. Not crappy, like you’d say it if you were describing Auburn’s football program”.    I told her where I’m from, we say CRAP’-pie.   She screamed, “Roll Tide!” and stormed out.    Dialects have been responsible for changing the pronunciation of words for years, though. The thing that makes a southerner’s words roll off the tongue like melted butter off a biscuit is the use of particular phraseology that is unique to areas below the Mason/Dixon line. There are a ton of them. I’ll list some of my personal favorites, and try to give the best explanation I can as to how they originated.    I’m not the first person to point these out either, so I’m going to try to visit some of the less cliche’ phrases, like Bless your heart, and Y’all come back, now. Instead, let’s tackle some of the more colorful turns of phrase in the catalogue of the Deep South.    1. If the Good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise.    When I started the research for this, I realized right away that this whole process might be a rabbit hole I didn’t want to go down. You say this to somebody when you’ve been invited to a family reunion that’s three months down the road, or a gospel singing at your neighbor’s church tomorrow night, when your neighbor is a Methodist, and you’re a Baptist. It basically tells someone, I’ll try to make time, but I got a lot to do. It doesn’t always mean you’ll find a way for the Good Lord not to be willin’, or that you’ll go tear up the beaver dam in the creek behind your house, just so you’ll have an excuse, but sometimes it does. I’ve always seen it as a put off that’s less obvious than if you said, “If the wife don’t mind me leavin’ my underwear on the floor, and basement don’t need cleanin’ out.”    2. Madder’n a old wet hen.    To my understanding, this originates from egg farmers who used to dunk their hens in cold water if they got aggressive about people messing with their eggs. Apparently, being dunked in cold water makes a hen super mad, hence the phrase. Someone gets linked to this phrase when they’ve just had it and they ain’t having no more of it! A more current version of this kind of recognition might be along the lines of, Settle down, Karen!    3. The pot calling the kettle black    If you think about them for a minute, most of this terminology will make sense. This one means, You done gone and accused me of the same thing you’re doin’! You’re a hypocrite, .... preacher! On the stove, a pot gets the same char the kettle does, so why in tarnation would the pot have the sheer audacity to point out the blackness on the kettle’s butt, when it’s got some wiping to do of its own?    4. In tarnation!    My wife and I have spent several car rides discussing the origins of this gem. We believe it likely derives from the southern ability butcher multiple words in a sentence, then squish them together into one phrase. In other words, What’ntarnation?! could have originally been, “What in the entire nation?”    5. Well, ain’t you precious?    Sorry. It’s not a compliment. That reply comes right after you just told me the way something ought to be done because it’s the way you did it back home. Then you came here and thought, I’ll teach Billy Bob the right way to do things. Or maybe you told your grandmother her peach cobbler was a little too sweet. Nine times out of ten, hearing this means you’re one breath away from somebody jerking a knot in your head.    6. I’m about to jerk a knot in your head!    You just said the wrong thing after being told you were precious, and through some sweet, southern grace and mercy, you’ve been given once last chance. Think very carefully about what you do, or say, next. It could mean the difference between living a full and happy life, or finding yourself ...    7. Deader’n a door nail.    This means dead. Not just a little dead, but really, seriously, dead. Scholars think the use of the word “door nail” could be referring to the large nails on medieval doors. Versions of this term have been used as far back as the 1300s, and some semblance of it was mentioned in the writings of Shakespeare. I doubt your granny will care where it came from though. Poor mouth her cobbler one more time, and you’ll become acquainted with it fast.    I just love the south. We pride ourselves on the way we talk, though I’m not crazy about listening to someone who speaks inarticulately because they think it makes them sound tough. My wife and I have worked hard to raise our children to speak clearly, but to also take pride in their heritage. We don’t use double-negatives, but we do embrace a few unconventional contractions, and we ain’t never gonna stop. And if that bothers, you, well … bless your heart.

   Death is something everyone handles differently. Even when mourning looks relatively the same among people from the outside, the emotional details can be a lot different. For me, death has always been another part of life, and due to my strong Christian beliefs, I tend to mourn more when there’s ambiguity about where my loved one has gone in the afterlife. In other words, if I’m sure you are in heaven, I’m not as likely to cry much for you because I’m happy for you, even if I’m gonna miss you terribly during the time I have left here on earth. That’s the way it’s been for me after recently losing my grandma. Sure, I cried a little, but I’m happy that she’s not in pain anymore, and might be telling Jesus right now about the time she hit a neighbor kid in the head with a sack of potatoes when he tried to take her shoes. Yes, Jesus knows about that already, but maybe He enjoys hearing the story again from her, just like I did every time she told it. With all of that in mind, I surprised myself with what happened when I found myself alone in an empty house that was the backdrop for almost all of my memories of my grandparents.    You might want to grab a tissue, just in case. I have a napkin holder at the ready in the restaurant where I’m writing this, and I can already feel the water want to spill from my own eyes as I prepare to be really transparent about how I’ve handled moving everything out of my grandparents’ house on Washington Highway.    I’m Michael Blackston and I hope you’re spared ever having to deal with anything similar to this chapter of my Funny Messy Life. _________________________    If I’m going to share parts of my life with you, it’s only fair you get to peek in on the messy, as well as the funny.     For reasons more personal than I have a right to divulge here, it was decided to sell my grandparents’ house. After Grandma’s passing, it became necessary to move everything out, and prepare it to make way for the new owners. After a couple weeks of hardcore moving by my mom and stepdad, my mom’s two sisters, and my own sister, there were a few things I was asked to help with. I drive a pickup truck, so I knew my services would probably be needed. For the most part, there was just a lot of stuff that needed to be thrown out from decades and decades of living.    The house was built in the sixties, think, by my grandparents. That makes it even tougher. A young J.C. Mills wanted to provide a good home for his expanding family. In Elberton, Georgia, our industry is granite. Everything is granite. Even our high school football stadium - The Granite Bowl - is dug out of the ground and terraced, using the very stone that supports our community. The only place I remember my grandpa working was a granite company and a small photography business he had for the weekends. A large portion of the wedding pictures that hang on walls around the county were taken in the living room of that house on Washington Highway.    I’m not sure what grandpa did before granite, but whatever it was, financed the house. They had it built, and started a chain of memories for a family that became, to some, unusually close.    It was love that made us that close. Once the daughters started moving out and having children, they formed traditions that would forever shape the way we all lived our lives.    I dropped by a couple of times during the moving out phase. Moving is never easy, and this one was under-painted with a palpable sadness, but we all seemed to be holding it together okay. We laughed like we always do, took verbal shots at each other in a fun way, like we always do, and pretended this was just another turning of the page. I never cried during that.    They cleared the house and cleaned it as best they could. There are stains there, and faded places on the walls - testimonies, I believe, to good family structure and solidarity. We’ve been blessed in that regard. Those things will eventually be painted over, and ripped up and made new for someone else to make memories. Until I went back in there, alone, I didn’t realize how much power those things can have.    My task was to take any remaining junk off the property and haul it off. No problem. I can do that. But there was also one last thing inside that I needed to get. It was a cable box and its components that I was to take back to the utilities office. My sister had left them on a single, old, wooden chair in the living room. It was all the business that was left for me inside the house after 47 years, and I nearly didn’t make it out in one mental piece.    I described it to my mom this way:    Remember in movies when a person walks through an empty house and suddenly, as if like a dream, everything reappears around them, taking shape, as the memories flood back? I did it on purpose. I picked up the cable equipment and started toward the door, with no intention of allowing my emotions to have their way with me. After all, this was another page to turn in a story that isn’t finished for any of us, …….. Right? Instead, I put the stuff back down and found myself being tugged deeper into the house, almost unwillingly, but not really. I needed this, and later found out I wasn’t the only one to make the same final journey. I think my sister might have gone through the whole place, before they changed anything, and took pictures. I’m glad she did that, but I won’t need them to remember.     The front bedroom. Grandma and Grandpa’s bedroom. When you walked in, there would have been a photograph of a military ship on the sea. We think it was the ship grandpa was stationed on during the Korean War. How odd not to see it there anymore! I stood in the middle of the room as visions of the way it was returned in full detail. Not much to remember here, other than it was pretty much off limits, unless necessary. We knew not to mess up the covers because Grandma liked a made bed. There was a time when there were a couple of rifles on a gun rack on the wall, but those had been gone for a while, since grandpa died. Under the rack was Grandpa’s desk, left just as if he was still using it. There were pens and things older than me in the drawers, and that always intrigued me. I wondered what the pens had written, and long ago they had written them.    Next to that was the back bedroom. The daughters all shared that room as the years passed in some form or another. Again, not many memories for me there, except that’s where I took my kids and shut the door when they were misbehaving and needed a “talking to.” One thing did occur to me all of a sudden while the walls were bare. I'll say nothing more than that I looked for the bullet hole. There wasn’t one, but I’ll ask somebody about it at a later time.    From there, the hall leads to the bathroom, and then the main part of the house. There is a small closet to the left and that, my friends, in a tiny space, is overflowing with memories. What didn’t that little closet do? That’s where the toys were kept, and the coloring books, and the zip-lock bag of crayons that was started sometime in the eighties and kept magically refilling itself over the years. That closet held the baseball and football stuff - the essentials for our summertime Sunday afternoon, epic sports battles. That tiny closet held the gloves, balls, and bats that led me to realize I actually did have at least some semblance of an athlete in me. The same stuff would also help me to realize on my thirtieth birthday, as I chased down a fly ball in the field next to the house, that my twenties were definitely over, and something was definitely wrong with my body. That closet was a place for hide-and-seek. It was a clubhouse, where we wrote childish things on the walls that are still there to this day. And it was the place where Grandma kept the blankets that comforted us on so many days when sickness kept us out of school, but mama still had to go to work.    The living room is to the right, and it’s here that I understood the depth of ugly crying that I was about to have to endure. I mentioned the traditions we made. The living room was big enough, but only just so, to hold the whole family if something big was about to happen on the tv with the Braves, or the Falcons. The room would fill up in the eighties when number 3 stepped to the plate, and somebody would inevitably scream, “Dale’s up to bat!”    Around me, standing center, the room filled with the smell of ham, and peppermint, and wrapping paper. The floor filled to my ankles with crinkled up gift wrap and the sounds of Christmas cheer. I turned behind me, and there was the tree with my cousin Chuck’s personalized Christmas ball - we all had them - holding its place at the top. Grandma and Grandpa were there, sitting toward the back, surrounded by gifts, and watching it all with pride because they had made that, and it was good.    The first real tear fell, and my face twisted. I was alone, so I didn’t put up a fight. What was the use? The dining room was next, and I would be powerless now.    The large table was gone, but not really. I could see it, and we were all around it. First it was Christmas and we were stuffing food in our faces, because the last memory was Christmas and the storyteller in me insists on a smooth transition. But then it was every Sunday afternoon that ever happened there. I was small enough that the table was enormous. Then I was a teenager and cared about two things - fried chicken and football. Then I was a young man, and my future wife was next to me, holding my hand under the table so no one else could see. Then there was Noah, then Merida. And all the while, the rest of the family enjoyed the company, talking, and laughing, and the echoes of kit all bounced from the corners of the room in the way I think heaven might sound like. Grandma and Grandpa were there for most of it, too, sitting back and watching, listening. Because it was good.    The tears finally fell free, and fast.    The kitchen area is small, and hard to navigate when more than a couple of people are in there, but it keeps its share of memories, too. Those mornings when Mama brought us to grandma’s because we were sick and she had to work … those mornings would start at the little table to the side. We’d sit there and talk to Grandma while she made us breakfast and little instant coffee with loads of cream and sugar. I still take mine that way. Later, when I sold insurance, I would come over for lunch and sit at that table with Grandpa. Grandma always made me two delicious grilled cheese sandwiches. I kept telling her I only needed one, and every afternoon there would be two.    And last, I walked into the small utility room off the kitchen. There were the washer and dryer in there, and also a large freezer, and ancient bureau with twin mirrors on the doors. My cousin and I - the one who did stupidly stupid things with me - spent a lot of time in front of those two mirror. That was easy before we did the stupid things. In those days, we did the things children do. We grabbed the binoculars  from the bureau and tried to look through the trees toward the red dirt. To us, at five years old, the big stack of what I believe was asbestos, was actually Dracula’s castle. We hoped we’d finally get a glimpse of him, but alas, he slept in his coffin during the day.   We learned to stand up for ourselves in front of those mirrors. We pretended the boys reflecting back to us were not only two different boys, but our sworn enemies. We scoffed at the boys in the mirror and we threatened harm to them if they ever got brave enough to come through. We knew they were us, of course, but what a telling tribute that was to the truth of the duality we all struggle with. We didn’t know anything about that then, but I found myself looking into my side of the mirror for the last time. I had to bend a little lower to get all of myself in frame, and that’s when the finality of it hit me with everything it had. The boy was gone, or at least he wasn't alone. The years had flown by, and I’d been so busy, I missed a lot of it. Still, there he was. The other boy. The memory. And behind him, stood a man who wanted to hold on to the boy as tightly as he could, but knowing he had to let go.    I said goodbye because I had to. And in doing so, I've noticed since then, that every time I see my reflection, I’m not alone. The boy in the mirror will always be there as a reminder of that house.    Because some pages refuse to turn.    I’ll always cherish the letters on those pages between the boy and the man in the mirror.

   Human kind is a veritable cornucopia of diverse personalities. To observe the Homo Sapien in its natural habitat, is to be immersed into an environment unlike any other, where subculture, after subculture, is represented with pride, and more often than not, stupidity. There is no better environment to witness the state of the human condition than a Walmart, and today the natives are restless.    I’m Michael Attenborough, and this is a special presentation from Atomic Red Studios of Funny Messy Life.    This is The World of Wally - A Mockumentary _________________________      As we arrive into the parking lot of a local Walmart, we are met immediately with what seems to be a representation of every kind of human, many of them beaming from ear to ear, as they carry large purchases back along the trails toward home. There are televisions and hoverboards, and video gaming systems, and more televisions. I approach one of the humans cautiously. It appears to be a male, and he’s stepping proudly as he pushes a trolley overflowing with boxes of alcoholic beverages, and a miniature refrigerator.    “Pardon me, but might I ask the meaning of such a purchase on a Monday afternoon?”    “BEER COOLER! AND BEER FER M’NEW BEER COOLER!”    “I see. And why today?”    “Guv’ment sent me a check fer me an all six of m’younguns. Tomorrow, I’ma buy my old lady them fancy curlers she’s been nagging me about.”    As we set our course toward the entryway of the store, it occurs to me that due to the arrival of stimulus checks, the American human is mimicking holiday behavior, acting out fiscally, in a way that is normally seen in November, the day after Thanksgiving. However, it is well documented that upon the occupancy of any sudden windfall, the human person is known to exhibit this sort of behavior, regardless of the season. Now that the tax season is upon us, coupled with the influx of checks that bear stimuli, I suspect that we may encounter more of the same, once inside.    The door opens automatically and as we enter, I remark that there is a large sign overhead, declaring that this avenue is the correct one for entry. Curiously, there is a human to my right, completely ignoring the sign above a second set of doors that clearly reads, Exit Only - Do Not Enter. Still, the doors open, and the human is allowed in without obstruction. What a delightfully carefree and rebellious species!    To my left, just inside is a desk with humans both in front, and behind. The specimen behind the desk appears bored, or rather irritable, as they attend to another, more provoked human. Let’s listen in.    “I’m sorry. I asked the manager already. Your signature has to match the name on the check.”    “It’s in my old man’s name!”    “Then he’ll have to be the one to sign and cash it.”    “I want one of them beer coolers before they git gone. And some beer for my beer cooler!”    “I’m sorry.”    “Hold one fer me ‘til I git back.”    “We’re not allowed do that.”    “BEER COOLER!”    I think it best we leave the area before violence erupts, and so we journey further into the jungle of departments, and try to observe a different subculture of humanity.   Ah! The area known as The Market. Here we shall discover our humans in preparation for mealtime, foraging for the nourishment they will take home to their dens to feed the tribe.    Here is a rather large male, scouring with his eyes, an assortment of confections in boxes marked with the image of one of their idols. The idol’s name is Debbie. She is found to be diminutive in stature, but gigantic in flavor, and one of the male’s cubs has taken a particular liking to one of the boxes.    “Git me some Star Crunch, deddeh! I want me sum’nim Star Crunch.”    “Them thangs’ll ruin yer dinner! Ya mama’s fixin’ tater chips later.”    “Can I have’em fer dessert, deddeh? I won’t eat them Star Crunches till after my tater chips. I promise, Deddeh!    “We still got Devil Sqars from last week. Boy, git-chyer hands offa them Star Crunches ‘fer I take hick’ry to yeh!”    More activity diverts our attention behind us where two carnivores are engaged in an astounding display, attempting to decide which of them should walk victoriously away with the last rotisserie chicken. The two stand facing one another, each displaying her own plumage. The closest to us is tall and thin, and flaunts an enormous blue hat with one large feather rising in astonishing glory to the sky. The other, a rounder specimen, pokes her chest forward in an attempt to intimidate the other with the words written on her sleeveless t-shirt that read, If It Ain’t Duke’s, It Ain’t Real Mayonnaise.    Their hands linger a breath away from the chicken now. Which one will make the grab, leaving the other without the protein she so badly desired?    We wait. The tension is palpable. There’s movement to the left and the day is saved. Both of them shall have their meal, as a deli worker has brought over a trolley full of fresh chickens. Unfortunately, only one of them is flavored with lemon pepper, and both desire it. Once more, the eyes narrow and the hands hold position to strike.    Moving on, we travel to our final area. The land here is vast, and it would be impossible to observe every segment of the topography.    We’ve made our way now to the land of hardware. Two older humans - one male, one female - have perched in front of a display of floor tiles. They, too, are not agreeable.    “I don’t like none of these. I told ya I like the linoleum. This ain’t as easy to clean as the linoleum.”    “These is easier fer me to lay. I can’t lay a sheet of linoleum like I used-to-could. It’s ter’ble on m’knees.”    “You got to git on your knees to lay floor tiles. What’s the dif’fernce?”    “Ain’t the same. I like these because ya can peel the back off and it’s sticky. Ya just stick it down. Peel and stick. Peel and stick.”    “You’re just bein’ contrary to git me all riled up!”    “You’re just bein’ contrary ‘cause ya can’t stand change! I say stick ‘em. Stick! Stick!”    “Vinyl!”    “Sticky!”    “Vinyl!”    “Sticky!”    The natives are quite restless. We’ve come to the end of our journey among the Homo Sapiens that frequent the World of Wally. Their behavior is extraordinary, and at times, disturbing.    Join me next time as we explore more culture. We’ll be hiking through a desert of humanity as they navigate the exhilarating experience of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Tempers will be high, patience, will be short, lines will be long, and the clerks will be slow. I’m Michael Attenborough. Thank you for your company as we made our way through the World of Wally. Until next time. Goodbye.

   I like to mess with the phone scammers that call me eighty times a day. I’ve visited this past time before in Funny Messy Life, every so often, you bump into a topic of content that warrants a second dip in the pool. I was sitting in the parking lot of a restaurant, waiting for them to open for lunch, and trying to decide what to write because I was running close to the deadline for releasing the podcast. I had barely opened the app on my phone where I keep my list of topics, when low and behold, I get a call from a number that seems local, but with a name I didn’t recognize. The planets aligned perfectly, after weeks of trying to be in the right environment to record my playtime, and I got the audio.     I’m Michael Blackston, and if you hate getting the “Car Warranty” call, stick around for the whole episode. Because I’ve got more to say about the annoying world of telemarketers, and how they affect my Funny Messy Life. _________________________      They used to at least be from legit businesses. When telemarketing first began to be considered the smelly armpit of telecommunications society, they were much more limited. They seemed to focus their efforts around the time families were sitting down to dinner, because they knew people were home from work, settling in for the evening, relatively happy. We were eating, which makes us happy. The work day was newly over, which made us happy. Vanna White wasn’t getting letters from AARP yet, and that made us happy. The people who ran the marketing companies knew that “happy” is an emotion conducive to selling garage doors, new carpet, and exciting time share oppportunities. There were also a bazillion surveys they wanted you to take, and calls asking for donations to the campaigns of political candidates you probably wouldn’t vote for, even if they promised to give you your very own Chick-fil-A.    Then we wised up. Technology gifted us with a glorious thing - Caller I.D. Suddenly, you could look at a display and tell who was calling, and if you didn’t recognize the number, or if it was Aunt Mabel, who always wanted to tell you about her toe fungus, you could ignore the call.    But alas, technology, as a friend, has two faces. The combination of the internet and phones people carrying in their pockets, on their person, at all times, even to the bathroom, brought out the worst of humanity. The scammer.    I was never one of those who fell for the early emails from princes in Uganda, but strangely enough, there are plenty who did. There were long lost cousins overseas who just wanted get the millions of inheritance dollars owed to you into your hands, and they’ve been trying to reach you, and now you’re risking losing it all, unless you act immediately, and all you have to do for them to put those millions in your bank is to give them your checking account number.    People fell for it, and it evolved from there. Now we all get the calls every day. For a while, it was a real person when you answered the phone, but they eventually realized they could cover more ground by having a recorded voice deliver the original bait, then you get a real person, overwhelmingly with an Indian accent, when you press “1” to speak to a representative.    So in playing with them, I’ve tried several approaches. The first time I talked about this in the podcast, I had some fun recreating fictional situations, but soon, I’ll play the audio from a real one, so stick around. It’s coming up.    I tried being a super-redneck, but that never gets me very far, and my goal is to waste as much of their time as I possibly can so they’ll have less time to bother others. I know it’s really a drop in the bucket, but if they’re going to be relentless, I might as well get my licks in too. I started watching YouTube videos of hackers royally disrupting these scammers and actually getting into their computer systems, while posing as victims. Those have been fun to have going in the background while I work, and they’ve given name a bit of insight into the way these chunks of sewer filth think. They’re not after a redneck. A redneck may have a distinct way of speaking, but many of them are quite intelligent. The scammer recognizes that. No, they want someone who they can intimidate, and who they think will be uneducated enough with technology that they can scare them into giving them all of their information. I found that older ladies hit the bullseye for how long I could keep one of these Jack Wagons on the phone.    I usually get one of three main scams. The Car Warranty. - They tell you they’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s warranty. I’m not sure how it works, but it’s one of the most commonly used. Facebook is lousy with memes that portray outlandish ways this scam could be done. The IRS Is Coming To Take Your Butt DOWN! - They’ve never been able to tell exactly why, but they swear if you’ll give them the last four digits of your social security number, they’ll make it all go away. The Social Security Administration Is Coming To Take Your Butt DOWN! - Same deal. Someone has used your number to steal your identity and perform all sorts of lewd and unseemly acts that would embarrass your grandmother, even if she’s already gone to heaven. They can’t tell you WHAT these identity thieves have done, but they want you to take their word for it - the details would straighten the curls on your grandpa’s bald head. You Amazon Account Has Been Hacked And Someone Bought An IPhone For $100,000. - I haven’t gotten far with these guys yet, but my new persona might finally break down that wall.    So what is this new persona? I think I’ll name her Aunt Mabel. She’s feisty, and loads of fun. She’s cheerful, and happy to talk. She’s exactly who they’re targeting. I have to admit that what you’re about not hear is largely inspired by the likes of Jack Vale, and others, because it’s what seems to work.    So without further ado, we lean into the audio of my latest attempt to waste a scammer’s time. Enjoy. (Insert Audio)    There will be more to come. I hope I can remember to always have a way to record these close by. I’ll try out different characters and personas, and maybe, with enough of us fighting back, we can educate people, put a dent in the predatory activity of scammers, and have some fun at the same time.

   As I tucked my daughter into bed later the same night after I had interviewed her for this podcast, I could tell she was upset about something, so I asked her what was wrong.    I want you to erase what we recorded earlier, she told me.    I didn’t understand why, but she told me she didn’t think it was funny and she wanted to do it again. Something funnier, she said.    I promised her it was fine and plenty funny - that we would do another episode where she could be funny the way she wanted to, but honestly, that scares me a little. Why? Because I was once a young child and the things that I thought were funny were, in fact, not funny at all, when adult me looks back on them in horror and once more realizes how much more … oh, what’s the term my grandpa would have used? BUTT WHOOPIN’! How much more butt whoopin’ I should have had coming my way. And if you wonder why I was such a deviant child, don’t forget that most of my badness had a partner. If you’ve listened to all of these episodes, you ought to know by now that right beside me stood my cousin, who did stupidly stupid things with me. Yes, it’s more evidence that I should have been locked in a padded room for a lot of my Funny Messy Life. _________________________      There’s a large Ingles grocery store there now, but in the eighties, it was a strip mall. It was before Sam Walton had staked his flag firmly in the We-Sell-Everything retail market and and there were several different chains of bargain department stores. Sky City was the only one in Elberton, Ga, so if you wanted to buy blue jeans, a new spatula (spatchler, if you have the right amount of Georgia clay running through your veins), and a box of Marlboros, all from the same place, you made a trip to Sky City. They still sold music on vinyl back then, unless you were fancy enough to have a tape player, and live tank fish, which were right next to the fishing tackle. I always thought was a tad cruel. It was like telling the goldfish, Hey … we might be selling you to entertain us if there’s nothing to watch on the three tv channels, but you see that big hook right there? That’s about to stab your uncle Carl through the lip part of the face and drag him out of Lake Russell flipping and screaming.    My cousin and I used to get to go to Sky City together sometimes when our mothers took a fancy to trying on clothes. Small town living had not yet realized the dangers of allowing nine or ten year old children run around a store unsupervised and we were set free to do as we pleased as long as we promised to behave. So we promised.    Our first trip would be to the toy department so we could see what new items hung deliciously in blister packs. They were items our moms would say no to just a little bit later, and then it was off to the music racks. We took particular interest in the album covers of Ozzie Ozborne because he somehow knew that fake blood and deranged images would sell albums. That grew tiresome quickly, though, because my cousin and I had developed a ritual we thought was hilarious and as long as it was the dead of summer, so that the fans they sold were all going full blast to battle the heat due to the lack of air conditioning. I guess the initial blame might belong to poor design of the departments and displays. Because had the fans not been only one aisle over from the fishing tackle and supplies, my cousin and I might not have realized how comical it would be to do a stupidly stupid thing.     I fished because my cousin did. Otherwise, I didn’t care too much for it. But he was just getting into it and the day we came up with our scheme, which we repeated over and over again, to the dismay of store management, we were looking over the equipment and baits they had to offer. At one point, we came upon a type of bait used to catch catfish. It came in a small plastic container and on the lid were printed the words, Blood and Cheese.    Interesting.    It couldn’t really be blood and cheese, could it? I mean, why would any normal thinking person do that, right?    We opened the container to see what was really inside and found out that it was, indeed, very much filled with a mixture of blood and cheese. I pray you have never had the priviedge of smelling that combination. I think it’s what they shove up into your nostrils as a welcome gift the second you get to hell.    We both reacted the way you would expect anyone to react when the odor hit our noses. We quickly put the top back on it and backed away, making crosses with our fingers like you’re supposed to do when you want a midnight snack, only to find there’s a vampire between you and the leftover taco salad.    But then, adolescence gripped us around the frontal lobes, and suddenly we had a sneaky, evil, disgusting plan.     It was hot in that Sky City. They didn’t always air condition the stores back then and the fans on the next aisle over were all blasting away, and rotations back and forth at maximum velocity. How funny would it be to open a container or two of the blood and cheese catfish bait and place them strategically behind a couple of fans on such a steamy, sweltering, Georgia summer day? Our answer to that question? Hilarious. And so we did.    And then we ran. This became a tradition every time we were together in that store, until one day, magically, the fans had been moved and the establishment no longer seemed to carry the blood and cheese catfish bait. Do you realize the amount of tearing up our behinds that would have happened if we’d ever been caught?     Eventually, my cousin and I got old enough that our parents would let us ride our bikes around town unsupervised.    There have been many,many times recently, when my own son has made the statement, You don’t trust me, dad. To which I reply, No, son. I do not. He’s asked me why once or twice, too, and I always say the same thing … Because I was a boy once. I know what boys do. Then I promptly go into a closet and fall to my knees, asking for salvation again. Just in case.    It was easy to get bored in the small place where we grew up, so it didn’t take much for a young boy to become what my Grandpa used to call a Baddun In The Town. He used to call us that when we were mere babies because he could probably see the rottenness in our eyes. Double that and give two boys bicycles, and no good was gonna come of it.    Our favorite thing to do for a while was to ride over to the same strip mall where we’d thoroughly sickened the customers of Sky City, and park ourselves on a bench outside of another store called, Otasco. I can still smell Otasco. They sold a lot of tires and the smell of the rubber and whatever else was in there was distinct.    The goal, as we sat on the bench, was to engage in a hearty game of Truth or Dare. Of course, neither of us ever chose truth. We knew everything about each other anyway, and what would be the fun in that? We intended to compete to see who would break first and refuse the dare, resulting in a punch to the shoulder as hard as we could. My cousin was a lot stronger than I was and I didn’t like him punching me in the shoulder, so I doubt I lost the game very much. And knowing him, he probably didn’t either. I imagine he probably refused the last dare and then told me he wouldn’t be taking any punches to the shoulder, and if I did, he’d punch me in the shoulder. So the game would end in a tie because, you’ll recall, I didn’t like him punching me in the shoulder.    The dares usually took the form of something embarrassing we would say to the next customer coming into the store. Bark like dog, or call the next old lady Mister. I only remember the specifics of one of the dares I have to complete and I wish I could take it back. I also hope they didn’t know who my mama was, or she would have been the conversation over their dinner table - she and her lack of good parenting.   My cousin asked the question … Truth or dare?    I thought over it for a second. You had to do that just to make it seem like you were playing the game right. Dare! I said.   Okay. The next old person who comes by, you have to pretend they look familiar to you. You have to ask them if they’re any kin to … (snicker) … The Janittles.    I was a little confused. Why would that be a dare? What was embarrassing about asking somebody if they were kin to the Janittles? Who were the Janittles, anyway?    Then it hit me. It wasn’t spelled J-A-N-I-T-T-L-E-S … it was spelled … G-E-N-I-T-A-L-S.    I shook my head crazily from side to side. I ain’t doing that!    Then you’ll have to take a punch to the shoulder, he told me.    I’ll punch you back in the shoulder! I threatened.    Then I’ll punch YOU back in the shoulder two more times!    Check mate. I had to do it, and lo and behold here came a blue haired lady, parking her enormous 1980s vehicle right in front of us.    I swallowed hard and waited for the lady to exit the car and walk up. In my mind’s eye, I think she had the look of the world’s stodgiest librarian, who had her funny bone extracted by aliens. Either that, or she didn’t like hooligans, and, having taken one look at us, recognized us to be exactly that. Which we were.    Ma’am, I stopped her as she was heading in, hoping to ignore us. My cousin was already having to cover his mouth to stifle the gales of laughter that would be coming shortly thereafter. You look familiar. Are you kin to the Janittles?    What did you say, young man?    Are you kin to the Janittles?    No. Why?    We hadn’t anticipated a question in rebuttle and my cousin, who did stupidly stupid things with me, wasn’t prepared for it.    Because you favor one, I replied.    BWAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA! My cousin erupted and the poor lady went inside without another word. I can’t believe you said that … I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU SAID THAT!    I didn’t get a bruise on my shoulder that day, but there was always a bit of a scar. Even at my young age, I realized how words could hurt. That lady probably shrugged it off without a thought and maybe poor-mouthed a mother she didn’t know over meatloaf later that night. Old birds like that are usually real tough and the shenanigans of two adolescent morons on a bench outside of Otasco probably didn’t come close to piercing her skin. And then again, you never know how deeply your words might dig  into a person. If they've had a particularly bad day, or perhaps they battle a bunch of insecurities, something like that could actually make matters worse for them.    Nowadays, I try my hardest to make those I meet to feel better after they leave me and I’m not lying when I tell you that over the years, I’ve revisited those games of Truth or Dare and people we might have affected by our actions in Sky City. I’ve spent a lot of my adulthood feeling regret over the childish things I did when I was young, but I also realize that the past is the past. We can only move forward from today. If there’s an opportunity to make amends, we should do so. Otherwise, I think our best move is to learn from our past and try to do right by people.    Hmph. Janittles. You gotta be kidding me.

   The recent weeks have been hard on my mom’s side of the family because my grandmother, the incomparable and amazing Sue, which is somehow short for Geneva (I’ll explain that in a different story because Sue needs a piece dedicated only to her), had been suffering. She fell and broke her hip a couple of years ago and was taken to a nursing home for recovery, which, because she was the ripe old age of 93, never happened. We knew it wouldn’t. The lady was already weak, so we knew she would never walk again. And after fighting to bring her home and the saint-like diligence of her three daughters and my sister, accompanied by an angelic team of home-health care workers, at the end of February, 2021, my Mema - Ah-Mama to the great grandkids, went home to be with the Lord. I have a lot more to say about how her passing will affect our family and some of the stories she told of her childhood are classic, but that’s for later. Right now, I want to dive into some culture and theology that seems to flare up like the burners on Mema’s ancient gas stove whenever someone dies. I’m talking about the concept of Heaven, and more specifically, what we’ll be doing up there.    I’m Michael Blackston and this is an otherworldly dive into my Funny Messy Life. __________________________      You might be saying, I didn’t come here to be preached at!    And I’m here to tell you not to worry. I don’t do that here ... much (listen to the story called, The Trendy Curmudgeon for a slight departure from that rule). There may be a Christian themed podcast sooner or later where I bring hell-fire and brimstone, but here at Funny Messy Life, I like to keep it light. That’s why I beg of you … if you have trouble telling the difference between seriousness and satire, listen (or read) carefully ... I’M JUST HAVING A LITTLE FUN!    Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I can begin my commentary.    I’ve been to my share of viewings and funerals and graveside services over the course of my lifetime. I know my duties as a Pallbearer and I understand what to say and what not to say to the family of the deceased. For example, NEVER ... and I mean NEVER, no matter how similar an experience you’ve had ... NEVER  EVER tell a member of the grieving party that you understand what they’re going through. Because you don’t. You might think you do, but ya don’t.     What you do say to them, depending on the region, is how sorry you are for their loss, and that if they need anything at all, it would be an honor to help.    There are some alternate words you might consider, again, depending on the region. If you’re in:    Georgia - I’m so sorry for your loss. She made the best sweet tea.    South Carolina - I’ll be praying for your family. Your daddy could swat mosquitos better than anybody I knew.    Florida - Bless your heart. Will your grandma be buried here or back home in New York?    Alabama - ROLL TIDE!      Of course, I’m from the south, so that’s all I can offer, but if you call your local funeral home and request a list of regional condolence alternatives, I’m sure they’ll be happy to send that right out to you. Unless you’re in California. They’ll probably just label you “insensitive”, call for a boycott on everything “You”, and tear down a random statue to make a point.    Anyway, I’ve made a left turn into, What the heck does this have to do with heaven?    Here’s the connection. More than a few times, because she was bedridden for so long, I heard people say things about my grandmother like, Well, she’s up there now, just a-dancin’ away, or She’s singin’ In The Garden with a heavenly choir as we speak! There are several of these little nuggets of ointment for the heart, but I started to think about what I want people to say about me when I go on to the Great Beyond. I started thinking about it during a trip to the grocery store when I was insanely hungry, but only had enough cash on me to buy the bare essentials. This is what I told my wife ...    When I die, if anybody says I’m up there dancing or singing, I want you to tell them what I’m really doing.    What’s that?    I’ll be eating. I’ll be at a big table with everything I ever wanted to eat in front of me because it’s heaven and I can have whatever I want and as much of it as I want because it’s heaven.     Seriously? Your idea of heaven is sitting at an enormous table, cramming your pie hole with macaroni and fried chicken?    Of course not! I will be cramming my pie hole with pie. I’ll get to the macaroni after I tire of anything that’s loaded with sugar because it’s heaven and Wilford Brimley can’t tell me what to do. And if anybody dies and comes looking for me, tell them to just follow the trail of movie theater popcorn butter and it’ll lead ‘em right to me. Because heaven.    You’re pathetic.    IT’S HEAVEN!    I started to think about all the other things that will be available to me, but nothing, other than Jesus, interested me. I think I mostly look forward to chewing delicious morsels of heavenly goodness, followed by swallowing said morsels and having them disappear into space without being bad for me.    Because heaven.    And then, because my mind won’t let a thing go very easily, I started thinking about the one thing other people might be looking forward to when the Roll Is Called Up Yonder.    Again, don’t write me with your opinions about whether any of the people I’m about to mention will go to heaven. This is a comedy piece, not theological, as you can already tell. So quiet, you!    I imagine The Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, is snuggling up to the biggest crocodile you ever laid eyes on, giving it a noogie, and flossing it’s teeth, while wearing a necklace made from live baby cobras.    Perhaps Lady Gaga (she’s still with us - don’t panic) will have a bathtub full of never ending feathers and eyeliner pencils and all the Elmer’s glue in the world to put together her next outfit.    My literary muse, the late Lewis Grizzard, may well be watching reruns of the Run Lyndsay, Run play from the 1980 Georgia/Florida game. He will have a typewriter close by and, because it’s heaven, everybody up there will agree with everything he said in his latest article.    Comedic actor, John Candy,  will .... well, I guess he’ll be cramming food into his pie hole with me at the huge food table.       Funerals are a weird experience. This was my daughter’s first time. Luckily, she didn’t have to endure watching too many people cry because we were all happy Grandma had moved on to what we believe is a place where she’s young again and perfect and eternally happy. And we believe we’ll get to see her again.    At one point, during her last days, dementia had set in pretty aggressively and she began to think she was once again cooking biscuits from scratch.  I told my mom they had missed a golden opportunity. They should have brought the ingredients over a;long with a big bowl and let her go to town. It’s been years since any of us have tasted Grandma’s homemade biscuits. She got too old to bother messing with them, but there was a time when she made them at every meal. I never knew one way or the other whether or not she enjoyed making them all those years or if it was a chore she was glad to be rid of. Something tells me she didn’t mind not having to make them, but there at the end, they must have been a reminder of a happy time for her to go back to them like that. She was surrounded by loved ones that had passed on during those last hours, too. She talked to her sister and brothers and my Grandpa. While we gathered around her and tried to keep her comfortable, she was in a different place in her mind - a different time. Back then there were few shows to choose from on the tv and very little, if any color in them. There were children and grandchildren and great grandchildren still to be raised and nosey outside cats to shoo away from the laundry basket while she hung clothes on the line in her bare feet. There were several of those mouse catchers over the years, but they all went by the same name … Kitty Tom.    In the last days before she passed, I reckon she might have visited a Christmas or two when the family was all together and none of the dramas that filled our lives later on had happened yet. The tree in the corner would have been a real one, a bushy cedar, cut down by Grandpa’s own hand from the woods behind the house, and it would have been draped in stringy tinsel, and those huge colored lights that used to get so hot, it’s a miracle there weren’t more Christmas house burnings back then. There would have been Gene Autry playing a lonely cowboy tune on the cabinet stereo, or maybe a laugh track behind a black and white screen featuring Red Skelton on a television way smaller than a lot of people nowadays can remember.    And I’m sure she could smell the biscuits cooking in the oven. That glorious aroma of fresh, golden brown bread.    Yeah, that’s where I think I’ll be. Sitting at that table in front of a plate piled high with Grandma’s biscuits, sharing a meal with her one more time. One more of an eternity of times to come, and listening to her tell me her stories again.    That’s where I’m gonna be.    Because heaven.

   I like to think I’m charming and kind. My mama raised me to respect others and to think twice before I spit out the first thought that pops into my head. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen. This episode is about putting your foot in your mouth, or more specifically, some of the times I have put my foot in my mouth. I’m Michael Blackston and this is a helping of embarrassing moments from my Funny Messy Life. _________________________      Maybe you always look both ways before crossing a verbal highway, but just take a look at social media and you’ll quickly see that most people don’t bother to do that. In fact, on Twitter or Facebook, it seems like people do the equivalent of jumping right out into the middle of traffic on a busy verbal highway, wearing a blindfold, music blaring at top volume in their earpods, and screaming something political at the top of their lungs they know absolutely zero about, other than something snarky they saw from a friend who thinks the way they do screaming in a meme that featured Kermit The Frog or Willy Wonka. Sorry for the run-on sentence, but it had to be done. I’ve done my share of blind posting, too, but that was before I came to the realization that I do a jam-up job on my own of saying things I immediately regret, without attaching it to an adorable photo of Betty White.    And sometimes it’s completely innocent.    Let’s take this very podcast as an example. I call it Funny Messy Life. I like that name. I think it’s swell. I think it’s catchy. And I think I almost peed myself when, after several episodes in and shortening the title in some posts to FML, my son says to me …     Dad, you know what FML actually means, don’t you?    No, son. Is there another meaning?    Yes, there is. And you’re not gonna like it.    What does it mean?    It means (Blank) My Life. It’s what people text when they’re upset.    Ha ha ha! You’re such a cute, silly, boy child. Of course not. “Blank” doesn’t start with a “B”. It starts with and “F” ….. Oh.    Yeah. Oh.    Well, what was I supposed to do? I’d already done everything to build Funny Messy Life. I wasn’t going to go through the work of changing it, so I stopped using the acronym whenever possible. I felt a little stupid, too. It seemed like I should have mentioned it to somebody beforehand, but how was I to know? Things change so rapidly that as you get older, the more you find yourself treading the deepening waters of language. Or at least, dodging the scooters and mopeds of the verbal highway.    I may have told this story before, but it bears repeating, if for nothing else than to educate you about the perils of assumption.    The scene is a chain restaurant - Red Lobster, to be exact - and my family had eaten there enough to know the staff on a first name basis. Our usual waitress was a large young woman with a beautiful smile and a bubbly personality to boot. We liked her and, of course, her size was of no importance to us, other than the obvious concerns about her health, which, we concluded, could not be helped any by her being so closely engaged with all those garlic cheese biscuits they serve with reckless abandon. Her girth was hew business, though, and we loved her no matter what.    On one evening, she approached our table with the requisite eight baskets of Cheddar Bay Biscuits, and she appeared extra bubbly. She was, in fact, glowing. One family member asked why she was in such a good temper.    I say, what puts you in such a good temper, good woman?    Oh my, she replied. I am on top of the world, sir. I have delivered a girl child and she is a doll, you see. Simply a DOLL!    My family was genuinely happy for her and told her so as she topped off our drinks. Bully for you, my dear. May your days be filled with the joy and merriment brought about by the delightful sounds of your precious princess. Hazah!    That should have sufficed, but I’m not one to leave a thing unspoken …. Sadly.    I said, THIS WHOLE TIME, I NEVER KNEW YOU WUZ PREGNANT!    If you’re reading this, you’ll realize that I typed that in all caps. It’s because that’s exactly how it felt the second it came out of my mouth. It felt like I was yelling, because while every part of that statement was completely innocent, NO PART of it should have been spoken.    Yes Virginia, there IS and idiot.    I hadn’t meant to insult her weight, but in one glorious sentence, I managed to dump a whole shaker full of awkward onto our table and if I recall right, we didn’t see our waitress as much as usual that night. I borrowed a couple hundred dollars to leave as a tip, but the damage was already done and the rest of the dinner was spent with the men laughing too hard at jokes that weren’t funny, my mom, my sister, and my wife glaring at me like I’d just beheaded a puppy in front of everybody, and the occasional sounds of consolation coming from the direction of the kitchen. There, there. You’re not fat. He’s just a very stupid man. Now, put down that biscuit.    And then sometimes I haven’t been innocent. There have been times that I was a total jerk-wad dork-face and deserved the consequences of my actions.    And much as I hate to admit it, I used to have a really bad habit of making fun of people behind their backs. I know the psychological reasons behind it, but there was never any justification for it and there came a time when I was caught in the act and the guy confronted me. It may have been the very moment I did some growing up and realized I was being, essentially, a bully.     It was the first radio station I ever worked for and I was a young man in my late teens or early twenties. Back then, I could still chase down a fly ball without pulling a muscle or breaking my hip, and I thought I was made of Kevlar. Nothing could hurt me. In my mind, I was so clever, I could poke fun at anyone I wanted to and as long as I never did it in front of them, I was the life of the party. When I think about how cruel I could be sometimes, I want to go back and force young man me to walk barefoot across a field of Sweetgum tree balls.    I had a co-worker at the station - a fellow DJ with more experience than me - who had a very distinctive voice. It wasn’t the typical radio guy booming voice that resonates in your socks, but instead, it was more to the tenor side. It was a voice a person would recognize immediately as him the second they heard it, and that’s a valuable thing when it comes to radio.    Unfortunately, the guy had a super quick temper and it had gotten him in trouble at other places, which made him a journeyman in the local radio circuit. This got under my skin and instead of being a friend about it and seeing what I could do to help, I decided it would be better to be a fourth grader and make fun of his voice.    One evening, another jock and I were working late in the recording studio, hammering out some commercial spots, and got carried away making fun of the DJ with the distinctive voice. And the meaner we got, the funnier we thought were. We started to recorded our private roast once we began mocking him by doing impressions of his voice.    Any ex radio person who remembers working with an old reel-to-reel recorder will tell you that unless you pass the film over a magnet, the audio stays there. Well, we forgot to erase the tape and guess who was slated to record ads first thing the next morning.    The next evening, he was there as I came in for my shift and when we were alone, he came in and shut the door behind him. He was red in the face, but I could tell he was trying to keep his composure. He’d never said an unkind word to me and I had been a friend to his face, but that night would be different.    I had forgotten about our making fun of him the night before and in those recordings, I had attributed his voice to that of a beloved muppet, so you can imagine how my heart sank when he started by asking …    Do you really think I sound like a popular muppet?    Beloved muppet, I answered weakly.    At that moment, I thought I was about to have to fight for my life, but he held his cool and explained how he’d found the audio this morning. He told me he was deeply hurt and that if I had any problems with him, I should have come to him personally.    There was no way of explaining my way out of a thing like that and I was hurt too, because suddenly, a light was shined on what a cruel person I was. It wasn’t because I’d gotten caught, either. I really felt bad and I can’t remember attacking anyone in that way since.    There was nothing funny about that, but these last two are hilarious now that they’re over. One was a near miss and the other was … a really unfortunate bulls eye.    The near miss:    I know good and well I’m not the only person to accidentally send a text message to the wrong person from time to time. But on this occasion, I had been texting to my wife all afternoon while I was out of town and because we still like to get frisky every once in a while, the texts got further and further down the road to FOR-YOUR-EYES-ONLY town. I’d been working on a stone for a family who wanted to come in later to see it when I finished, so they could give their approval, and since I finished it right at closing time, I left and went to my hotel. Along the way, I thought of something to text to my wife - something you’d find right in the middle of the town square of FOR-YOUR-EYES-ONLY, but I was driving and couldn’t immediately deliver my steamy little message, which involved a detailed description of one of my body parts and some activities thereof. Again, it would have fit best in a schoolyard commentary between immature boys. These are the same boys who would later giggle uncontrollably in geometry class when the teacher uttered the words, Grand Tetons.    The owner of the monument company, who is to this day a dear friend, a beautiful woman, a wife, mother of two wonderful children, and a child of God, sent me a text as soon as I walked into the hotel room. The customer had just been by and loved the etching. I replied to her that I was glad. Then my mind went immediately back to the dirty thing I wanted to send to my wife because while I do inhabit the body of a man, I still have that fourth grader in my head that thinks passing gas in church is funny. You can tell where this is going, can’t you?    I composed in my head, the perfect filthy comment concerning my body parts, without hesitation. I typed the lurid statement into my smart phone without thinking. I also did those things without changing who the message would be delivered to and so we find my finger hovered perilously above the send button.    I yelled like a girl and dropped my phone like it was molten lava, just in time to save the monument company owner an eye opening surprise. That was close. A near miss. I did tell her about it in the office the next day, saving her the actual details of the text, and we both had a good laugh. But it happened again just the other day and this time, I wasn’t so lucky. Neither I, nor every member of the praise team at church.    Bulls eye:    Several months ago, we had a slight flooding in our basement and several boxes of stored books were damaged. I was going through them to throw them away and I took one of them, a book of nursery rhymes by Mother Goose, to use as kindling for a bonfire I was trying to start to burn some old pallets. As I tore through the pages, my eye caught on an old poem from days of yore that had to do with a kitten. A baby kitten, in fact, but it didn’t use the term kitten, nor was the word it did use, followed by the word cat. It was titled, My Little … I’ll let your imagination run wild. It was an adorable poem, full of lighthearted, childish prose, and nothing at all perverted. Unless, of course, you have a fourth grader living in your head and a wife you could text.    So I took a picture of the poem.    I posted the picture in a text with a laughing emoji, as if to say, Hey, I know this isn’t perverted and all, but if you imagine yourself on a playground and take it out of context, it’s pretty funny, right?    And    I    Pressed    Send.    Unfortunately, my mind had been on a lot of other things, including some important music information that I’d been going back and forth about with the praise team.    Via text.    Guess who, once again, didn’t think to check who my new text would be going to and to make matters worse, I partner with my wife at the church as the Worship Leaders. We’re on staff.    Again, my heart sank and my skin went cold. I sent an immediate apology to the group and explained that it was supposed to be a private message to my wife only and please forgive and I’m sorry and embarrassed and please forgive me and forget you ever saw that. In fact, go right now and wash out your eyes with soap. This is your Worship Leader speaking!    Later that night at rehearsal, we all had a big laugh about it, but I think I’ve finally learned my lesson about putting anything out there where satellites can get a hold of it if it’s meant for private eyes.   And while I won’t do that anymore, I know my days are not over for sticking my foot way up into my mouth, because in my head, there’s still a little boy who wonders if you can really create a blow torch by passing gas in front of a lit match.    So just be patient. Eventually this topic will have a part two.

   Every now and then I sit down to prepare an episode of this amazing podcast and go through all the trappings that encapsulate the perfect writing scenario. I decide on the restaurant, I locate the desirable seat, which has is preferably a comfy booth with plenty of room to spread out my stuff, order the food, then get to writing. On most occasions, I’ve already decided what I’m going to write about and have become sufficiently submerged in the goo of mental hype so that when I break out the blue tooth keyboard and see that it will turn on despite my constantly forgetting to change the battery that was put in it five years ago, I’m able to immediately go to town on the story. Sometimes, though, it doesn’t work out so easily. Sometimes I can’t decide where I want to eat and drive around aimlessly, looking at restaurant signs, going, Nope. Nope. Nope. Ungh uh. Never. Nyet. Nine. Maybe ... ehhhh ... Nope. And that just puts me in a foul temper, which usually makes the mental hype goo stinky. And then there are times like this one, when I see that a dining room is BACK OPEN since the pandemic started and I shout to the rooftops, THERE! ORDER ALL THE THINGS AND EAT THEM INSIDE LIKE A STARVED CARNIVORE! Unfortunately, I got so overwhelmed with the thought of eleven herbs and spices being devoured in their own confines that I left my bottle of fresh mental hype goo on the kitchen table with the laundry that needs to be folded and hung. Lucky for me, I keep a running list of topics on my phone for just such a scenario and I started to skim over them while my mashed potatoes cooled. Nope. Nope. Nope. Ungh uh. Never. Nyet. Nine. Maybe ... ehhhhh ... nope. But the I saw it ... there at the bottom of the list. The Bin Store! I’m Michael Blackston and I’m about to fill your in on one of the latest obsessions that fills at least an hour of week of my Funny Messy Life. _________________________   It started with a man in my church - a man my daddy worked with, before he retired, at the Georgia National Guard. It was before the pandemic started and nobody thought anything about rummaging after strangers through big, wooden bins full of items that were returned to retailers and had now been loaded into a truck and dumped out for sale at enormous discounts. The man from my church caught me on the way out after the service and said, “Tell your daddy to quit going to the bin store. He don’t need no more crap.” He was joking around, of course. It was his way of telling me to say “hey” to my daddy’nem. But I was intrigued and I asked him what he was talking about. He went on to explain to me that the bin store was a new place that had opened up[ in the building where Family Dollar used to be. He told me how it worked and that he saw my daddy in there all the time. The next time I saw my dad, I asked him about it ... after I told him Bill said “hey”. Dad’s eyes grew large and filled with what you might describe as unbridled  whimsy as he dug around in his own head, like a child recalling the first time they saw the castle at the center of Magic Kingdom. My dad’s head is quite the realm filled with glass and clay and plaster and arrowheads. And lately a lot of God, which is a good thing. “It’s a place like no other, my son. At the bin store, your wildest dreams can come true on any given day. It’s a place of miracles and pain. A place of lovely, fragrant aromas and sometimes, the unmistakable stench of unwashed body parts. At the bin store, treasures be found and fer certain, monsters be thar too!” That was all I needed to hear, I mean, come on! Treasures and monsters ... miracles and pain ... lovely fragrances. I wasn’t crazy about the aspect of unwashed hind parts, but hey ... sometimes you have to make sacrifices. Here’s how it works, if you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of a bin store. And I’m sure they each have their individual nuances that make them special in their own way. You enter through the doors and immediately get the sense of both chaos and possibility. The central feature, of course, is the bins, which should be filled to the brim with stuff you might want. Yes, it’s stuff somebody else didn’t want, but one man’s trash is another man’s treasure and all that. But it’s not a yard sale. There are items I’ve run across that were obviously pre-owned, but for the most part, it’s new ... just maybe damaged a hair or missing a small part. Some of it, though ... WHOO BOY, SOME OF IT ... is pristine, high quality stuff you’d pay a pretty penny for. But wait, you don’t have to pay a pretty penny for it. Why? Because it’s the bin store and they dumped a truckload of junk in the bins that people are just trying to get rid of. Wherever it came from was a place where it had no value for whatever reason. Maybe the demographic was wrong or when Amazon shipped it - there’s a bunch of Amazon returns - it wasn’t exactly what they thought they wanted. Maybe that’s part of the allure. Maybe knowing I might be able to save something from the Bin of Misfit Crapola is what’s drawing me there, on top of the thrill of the hunt. After all, I don’t hunt things that can run away, except the mouse that’s in my pantry - his name is Jerry - and I can’t catch him because I refuse to kill him and he ignores the humane trap ... a trap I bought at the bin store. The next reason to check out your local retailer of bin sweetness is the prices. Now, at this time, I have a bone to pick with my local store. As I’ve said before, I’m not a huge fan of changing things up, especially when I’ve just gotten used to the system. When the store first opened, They had a tiered format. The day they dumped a fresh truck, all items were six dollars. That’s awesome to start with, because I’ve found some amazing things on what most of the regulars creatively called, Six Dollar Day. But the next day was ... wait for it  ... FIVE DOLLAR DAY! Everything that wasn’t bought the day before was even a dollar cheaper. Then it was Four Dollar Day, Three Dollar Day, and finally,  Two Dollar Day. Those of us who weren’t worn out from thinking up clever names for the different days could get anything in the bins for two bucks! It’s a gambler’s paradise because what you aren’t willing to buy for $6, you can try to wait out and get cheaper. Maybe it’ll still be there and maybe it won’t. That electric tea kettle you had your eye on - you know, the one with the tiny dent you decided you could turn toward the back side of the kitchen counter - yeah, it might get buried beneath layers of torn boxes of dental floss and packs of male grooming kits called, MANSCAPED, or it might catch the eye of someone who loved it for what it was and didn’t care if the dent faced the wall or not. Then again, it might be there on Two Dollar Day, victoriously shining like a beacon in all its chrome-plated glory. But now, they’ve changed their structure. Every day is Six Dollar Day and the bins are filling up to obnoxious levels because people come get the new truck stuff that’s worth $6 and ignore the lesser merchandise. Then they dump another truck and the unwanted stuff just stays. The initial structure cleared the bins better as people were willing to spend a couple of bucks on the discarded trash left after most of the good stuff is gone. It’s not always a successful trip, either way. Sometimes the bin store yields treasures beyond my wallet’s capacity, even at the low prices, and sometimes the pickings are as desolate as the brains of the average politician. I have a kind of niche product I’m typically on the lookout for. Musical or recording equipment are especially irresistible. Take the microphone that I’m using to record this podcast. It’s made by Amazon. Amazon Basics is written right on the side, but it’s nice and heavy. It’s sturdy and it’s directional, which is great for podcasts and vocal recording because directional means that you have to be directly in front of it with it pointing directly at the face part of your face for it to pick up like it’s designed. Normally, I’ll be using my RODE NT1 fancy-pants professional condenser mic to record the podcast, and condensers pick up from everywhere around you. It’s one of the things that make it so important to sound treat your studio well if you’re gonna use a mic like the NT1 and now I’ve run off on a tangent, so let’s get back to the bin store. Anyway, I’m using the Amazon mic this time to prove a point. The sound is nice from a microphone I dislodged from underneath a pile of bed sheets and off-brand sanitary napkins. When you order it from Amazon, it comes with a nice XLR cable and has a 4.5 our of 5 star average rating as a product. Amazon charges $20 for it. And guess what? I’ve bought three of them from the bin store!  For me, it’s fantastic because people are ALWAYS asking to borrow my microphones for things like weddings and such. They don’t always make their way back to me, so these bin store finds are a real steal! It’s something to consider as well, if you’re thinking about doing some recording of your own. One of the first problems new podcasters discover is getting their hands on halfway decent equipment. This episode experiment goes to show that you don’t have to have a RODE NT1 or better to achieve good sound.  I also love other equipment such as the accessories that go with microphones and recording gear. I’ve bought three different boom arms with shock mounts - - items that can get quite expensive - and outfitted my studio with more professional style equipment. I won’t go into the details about boom arms and shock mounts. Look them up on Uncle Google if you’re curious. I just wanted to give some praise to the humble bin store. I didn’t even mention $20 bag day, which is the best day of all - the day when you’re invited to fill a garbage bag with whatever is in the bins and the entire bag is only $20. It’s another way to clear out the smalls that clutter up the bins. There hasn’t been one of those days, either, in a while and I’m jonesing for it. So if you have one, check out your local bin store. It takes a minute to get into the groove, to get over the feeling that you’re dumpster diving. But I promise, once you find that thing, and you’ll know it when you see it, you’ll be hooked. Like me and daddy.

   I got a chance to talk my cousin the other day - the one who was always right there beside me as we did stupidly stupid things. We don’t get the chance to talk much anymore, so it never fails that, upon hearing his voice, I’m struck with memories of our childhood. Those memories usually involve something we did that would have made our mothers cringe. I know most young boys, when they get together, are apt to find themselves in situations a grown person would call, Up To No Good, but the issue was heightened with me and my cousin because we’re both primarily creative people. And other times, we were just rotten and ought to have had our hides tanned with a hickory if we’d have been caught. Hickory is southern for: An implement of discipline, typically a small branch harvested from a tree grown in the fires of hell. Also reference, “I’Mone take a hick’ry to yeh!” or “Go on git me a switch!”    I recall a couple of interesting stories where fate took the preverbal hickory to us after a bout of rottenness and we had to learn lessons the hard way.    I’m Michael Blackston and we’re about to hit 88 miles an hour in the Delorean of my Funny Messy Life. _________________________      The mid to late eighties saw me and my cousin, who did stupidly stupid things with me, getting bolder in our delinquency. We had reached 16 years old and my cousin had a car - an enormous Dodge Magnum that probably got 1.5 miles per gallon and took up the curbside in front of three houses. It was black and all metal and you could drive that thing through a brick wall without scratching it. We tested out the durability of the Magnum at one point, but that’s another story for another time. Right now, just know it was simply the method we used to get from Point A to Point B, Point A being the small convenience store where we acquired our fishing tackle and Point B being a pond out in the country, where lived a mystical largemouth bass we affectionately called, Granddaddy Long Balls. That’s the only time I’ll say the full name of the fish because it’s crude and this is a family show. I’m also a deacon and may yet have to answer for that. From here on out, he shall be called, GLB.    My cousin was the best fisherman of the two of us. Wait, let me take that back and be more specific. My cousin could whistle and fish’s would jump on his hook. I could be equipped with the latest and greatest of angling technology and the fish would pop their heads out of the water and blow me a raspberry. There was only ever one fish that I knew my cousin to have trouble catching. GLB. He was obsessed with catching the fish if he had to throw hooks into that pond till he was eighty years old. My cousin would say things like, I’ll catch the fish if I have to throw hooks into that pond till I’m eighty years old!    Perhaps finally seeing him hooking GLB was the catalyst behind the life of crime we turned to in order to get the very best tackle. The convenience store was tiny and back in the mid eighties, there were no video cameras. Top notch security surveillance meant a round, bubble shaped mirror perched high on the back wall behind the counter. It was supposed to give the 267 year old man, who seemed to be the only person who ever worked there, the advantage of seeing everything that happened in the store in real time. Unfortunately, because of where it was placed behind him and the fact that the only movement we ever saw from him was the occasional shallow breath or creaky turn of his head, as if he’d have a look around the old store if only they made WD-40 for necks, it felt like we could have gotten away with just about anything. And we did. The store had a pretty massive collection of fishing tackle. That was a staple in a lot of stores back then because the world had yet to be brought to its curricular knees by cell phones and video games. You actually had to bait real hooks and hold real poles and a lot of us did.  The store, though, had the good stuff. I’m talking the latest precision lures and fishing line. There were plastic worms galore in all kinds of colors and shapes. Rubber minnows and lures with skinny things on the end of them. Top water lures and divers, something called plugs, and even styrofoam cups with holes poked in the top of the lids with soil and wriggly, squiggly, live earthworms inside. Somewhere, my cousin had gotten his hands on a gigantic tackle box that had what seemed like hundreds of compartments. Every time you thought you’d opened it up as far as it could go, you found another clasp that allowed entry to yet another compartment. You could have rented it out as an apartment complex. It was too big to have been purloined from the convenience store. We weren’t that brave, but the things that we put into it ... well, we never paid a cent for it. As a parent and business owner, I’m making myself mad just talking about it. Mom would have been so ashamed of me and if I had even the slightest inkling of who had owned the store back then, I’d make a donation in their name to some charity or just pay them back outright. Sadly, the days have passed for that store and there’s nothing I can do but say, I am truly, deeply sorry for our behavior and saddened to the point that I’m considering going to find a hickory to use on myself. We went back over and over again and filled our pockets with booty from the fishing aisle, laughing because the old man behind the counter never noticed. We weren’t sure he was even alive, and we outfitted the palace of tackle boxes with the newest and best fishing gear of probably any in the county. We were proud of ourselves because while our parents had taught is better, we were at the age when we thought we were smarter than anybody else in the world and the idea of moral behavior wasn’t interesting. We were in it for what we could get and what we could get was the best shot at landing GLB. We thought we were smart, but watching over us, laughing, and planning to teach us a lesson we’d never forget was God Almighty. Remember in the Bible when He made the donkey talk? Well, this was no donkey. It was the biggest bull we’d ever seen in our lives and while didn’t make it talk, it had no problem communicating how angry we’d made it by ducking under the rusty barbed wire fence that surrounded the country pond and daring to set foot on its turf. My cousin pulled his big Dodge Magnum to a stop in tall grass right next to the fence. We could almost hear GLB taunting us in his little fish voice, Come and get me, ya lily livered, cotton pickin’, lure stealin’ varmints! I always imagined GLB sounded a lot like Yosemite Sam, but with more bubbles. I think I thought of it that way because what else kind of fish would inhabit a body of water we called The Civil War Pond?  And we called it the Civil War pond for no better reason than because it was said it had been around since the days of the Civil War, as if it were the only pond in the south that had been around that long. Imagine looking at a big oak tree and someone tells you it’s over 200 years old, then you say, That’s the Civil War Tree! Anyway, I digress ... We got our gear from the back of the Magnum, my cousin handling the ridiculously large tackle box, and proceeded to carefully negotiate the barbed wire fence. Once on the other side, we could make out the essentially 8 million lily pads that covered the pond. Now wait a second ... that wasn’t the Civil War Pond, it was a different pond. The Civil War pond was where he and I used the property owner’s flat bottom boat, without their permission, to go out and cast our lines toward the bank. THat’s the day I finally hooked what I though was my legendary monster catch because the way it fought, it felt nearly impossible to reel in. When i got it to the boat, I saw that it was a tiny bream that I’d hooked in the side as it swam by, minding its own business. But I digress ... Now that I’m remembering right, the point GLB lived in had a different name because of all the lily pads that covered the top of the water like a blanket. I told you that my cousin and I were creative types, and so we named this one ... you guessed it ... The Lily Pad Pond.  So now that we’re back on track, my cousin and I outfitted our lines with rubber worms, threading the hooks just barely back into the lure so they wouldn’t snag on the undergrowth beneath the surface. I think fisherman call that something like making your worm weedless. And we began to fish - casting and reeling, casting and reeling, making the worms do their little jiggle under the water and probably passing gas and blaming it on each other. I imagine we talked about the things sixteen year old boys talk about as all the while, a bull the size of my cousin’s Dodge Magnum was slowly making his way to the top of the hill to our right. My cousin said, Ya hear that? I said, Naw. He said, There it went again. It sounded like a snort. I said, I didn’t hear nothin’. Did you fart? Then we both heard the same thing, but it wasn’t any snort. Sometimes cows and bulls will throw you an adorable Moo - the kind you expect in nursery rhymes. With a Moo-Moo here and a Moo-Moo there. Here a Moo, There a Moo, Everywhere a Moo-Moo. But here was no moo and there was no moo. My cousin and I realized at the same time that we had done yet another stupidly stupid thing because charging right for us, blaring the most hellish bull-honk that’s every been blared, was Satan’s prize bull. He was pitch black, with red eyes that burned with fire and smoke billowing from the cadaver s of his nostrils like the gray aftermath of an atomic explosion. His voice was a siren of death and his horns were like great, curved columns hewn from the Temple of Hades. He charged us faster than anything we could have expected, his massive hooves, beating the ground hard enough to make a sound like rolling thunder. My cousin’s eyes because the size of tractor tires and he said the only thing a person can say in a moment like that.  “BULL!!!” We dropped everything and ran back toward the car, praying the bull wouldn’t catch us. In an act of blessing, it stopped where we had been at the edge of the pond and sniffed our gear. Then, in one last meaningful expression of the mission it had really been sent to accomplish, the bull lowered his head toward the gigantic tackle box that was full of everything we had stolen, and hooked it with the point of one of his horns. With an effortless flick, he tossed the tackle box into the pond, thus showing my cousin and I - the one who did stupidly stupid things with me - what really comes of treasures that are ill-gained. I don’t know if my cousin and i ever went back there and I certainly can’t remember if he ever managed to snag GLB, but I would wager he’d tell you he did. Isn’t that how you’re supposed to tell fishing stories?

No transcript again. We're in the middle of a series of interviews with my family, soooo......

   This is an interview I did with my daughter, Merida. (Yes, named after the Disney princess). There is no transcript of the conversation, so please listen to the episode to hear the sweetest little girl in the world. (When she wants to be.)

   If you grew up in the south or even have been a fan of comedy journalism, mainly during the eighties, you may recognize the name of the man I want to pay tribute to in this episode.    The writing style from which I draw my inspiration, at least the style you’re used to hearing and reading, was a constant companion of mine during my teen years. And it came from none other than a small town Georgia boy who grew up to make a name for himself as a journalist and best selling author. I’m talking about one Mr. Lewis Grizzard.    A review of this podcast recently compared me to him and while I would never plunge my torchlight in the same ground next to his, I have to say it was an honor to even be mentioned in the same sentence with a writer and comedian that held so much sway over my formative years.    I’ve recently decided to read back through his enormous and rich catalogue of work and thought I might start here with what I can only hope will be seen as a fitting memorial to, in my humble opinion, a southern literary genius.     I’m Michael Blackston and this is a special tribute episode of Funny Messy Life. _________________________      He’s been gone for a while now - since 1994 to be exact, but it still seems like yesterday that I anxiously awaited every publication of the newspaper out of Atlanta on the day that the new article was due from the man who hailed from Moreland, Georgia ... Lewis Grizzard.    He was an opinionated cuss and left no stone unturned when it came to the culture of the day.    I remember seeing his name on books in the school library and my uncle had a few of them on his bookshelf, but they didn’t mean much to me until I realized at fourteen that the world of literature was a magical place - a real one - a safe one where I could go amid the turmoil of my angst and difficulty understanding what was happening to me mentally and physically. I would find some solace in fiction, primarily Stephen King, and also a little Dean Koontz here and there, but my greatest discovery came when I first checked out a book titled, Don’t Sit Under The Grits Tree With Anyone Else But Me. It might a sound corny or cliche’, but his stories took me back to my own childhood, even then when I was still in it, to a simpler time. They were places I recognized because although I was still young, there were things I realized were gone for good and Lewis Grizzard had given me a tangible way to relive them, or something like it, as often as I wanted. Bike rides down old, forgotten roads in the woods, playing in creeks with my buddies and planning all of the awesome stuff we were going to do when we grew up. I was starting to have to make the real plans by the time I discovered Lewis Grizzard and there was a bit of a gut check for me that those innocent days had melted into a time when mistakes could be way more costly.    Mr. Grizzard was known for his outlandish titles, a lot of times compiled from past articles in The Constitution. That’s what we Georgians called the aforementioned newspaper. The full name of the paper is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Some of the more hoity-toity folks who were already getting pedicures instead of cutting their toenails with a pocket knife called it, The AJC, and now that’s pretty much the go-to. Some of his other books, though, were biopic, such as If I Ever Get Back To Georgia, I’m Gonna Nail My Feet To The Ground. Mr. Grizzard unashamedly laid out his childhood and early adulthood for the world to see and he did it in a way that brought both laughter and tears. I’ll never forget the day one of his new books was announced. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a book dedicated to things of a sexual nature called, Don’t Bend Over In The Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes and my grandmother was appalled.  She was never one of his fans, but she didn’t miss an article and our conversations about what he’d most recently written gave us a tie to bind our generations together.     I think that’s what drew me to him from the start. He was real. He told you what he thought and didn’t care if you disagreed. In those days, political correctness was a thing of fantasy. Unicorns and fuzzy-headed trolls sliding down rainbows were the only companions of the politically correct because back then, you could be you. It didn’t make you right all the time, but by heavens, you were entitled to your own opinion and if somebody didn’t like it, then they could just keep on walking, preferably north or west, to be with your kind. Around here, I believe he would have argued, we cherish our mamas, respect our daddies, love women the way Christ loves the church, and allow people to think for themselves. There ain’t no dang room for forcing our beliefs on people, so we don’t. An if’n ya don’t like it, then BYE! I relish those days and I won’t give any more commentary on the disintegration of common sense or the concept of Live and let live. All I will say is that Lewis Grizzard would have had plenty of opinions on the matter and while I’m not happy he’s gone from us, I’m glad he didn’t have to see our world come to what it has.    He got plenty of pushback from his writings at the time, though, even without the cancel culture of today.    He had his share of detractors, especially his ex-wives, of which there were more than one. One of them even wrote a book of her own about him and their time together, chronicling many of his bad qualities, and I guess he had it coming. I don’t remember exactly to what degree, but he gave the women in his life reason to seek literary revenge, I think. But there were other Grizzard non-fans as well. I don’t think my grandmother particularly liked his sense of humor. Females tended to find him quite chauvinistic and I could always see their point. But reading him, I think I understood where he was coming from most of the time. He was just trying to be funny, but he was hard-headed and the more he got called out for his views that sometimes seemed backward or too far behind the times, the more he reveled getting the reader’s dander up. I always looked at it as a game of tug of war between Lewis and those who didn’t understand him.    Ok, so if you’re one of those who are familiar with Lewis Grizzard and would have tugged the rope on the side of Team I-Don’t-Understand-Him, let me remind you that there are a ton of women who enjoyed his work. My wife is one of them and I was surprised when once she started reading his books, she chewed through one after the other until there was nothing left. She’s even showed interest in reading through all again with me.    My wife is not very surface-minded. She looks deeper into the meaning behind a thing to try and find the heart of it and in the writing of Lewis Grizzard, she found the same things I did.    He was a great appreciator of southern culture and tradition. He talked a comical game against the likes of Yankees and Florida Gators, but I believe that if given the opportunity, he would have invited them into the front porch into a big, old, wooden rocker that might have a fresh coat of white paint or might just as well have been weathered by wind and time, and shared stories with them over a tall, perfect glass of sweet tea. When the Bible mentions nectar, that’s what it’s talking about. Southern sweet tea.    Lewis Grizzard loved his family. He wrote about his mama with dignity and respect and a devotion to her that knew no bounds. He wrote an entire book about his father, titled, My Daddy Was A Pistol And I’m A Son Of A Gun. That book had a profound effect on me and helped me to realize the power jerking tears violently from the eyes of readers with stories that relate and require an emotional response. That book made me cry over and over again because of the love and respect he held for his father. The way he opened up to his audience was pure trust.    There were characters he called back to from his childhood again and again. Names I’ll never forget, like Cordie Mae Poovey and Waymon C. Wanamaker, Jr. a great American, and the voluptuous Kathy Sue Loudermilk. The tales of their antics buried deep in my memory and I found myself right alongside them as I read on, never thinking about the fact that some day I would try to retell my own childhood stories in a way that maybe - just maybe - took my readers and listeners into that same magical space where they could be there right beside us as the old rope swing broke or we conned my cousin’s neighbors out of their change to buy cigarettes. Each one of them just another member of the gang, breathing dust kicked up from the red Georgia clay and sweating granny beads onto our necks in the summer heat.    We had other things in common that made a connection for me; a love and loyalty to our sports teams, for one. We both eagerly awaited the first kickoff of the college football season when the mighty Dawgs of UGA take the field and hunker down to lay a stompin’ on whoever dares to step cleat ‘Tween The Hedges. He was a devoted Dawg fan who, if I’m remembering rightly, never missed being in the stadium during the home games. He didn’t live long enough to see the Braves take the World Series, but I feel like he was there anyway. I thought of him when the play was made to win it all in ‘95. I cried like a baby in my wife’s arms. Silly, I know. A grown man acting that way over a game, but it had been such a long, hard-fought road to get there, and I think maybe some of those tears were on his behalf. I doubt I’m the only one who thought of Lewis Grizzard on that day.    Lastly, he was an American. Agree with him politically and philosophically or not, there was no denying he loved his country. His daddy fought for it and he believed in the principles of life, liberty, and freedom that were the foundations of that fight. If you wanted to get him riled up, speak poorly about the United States of America. He’d fight you tooth and nail because he knew he owed that - I think we all do - to the men and women who, like his father, gave blood and so many, their lives to make sure our great nation thrived and held strong to the ideals it was founded upon.    I strongly urge you to seek out his writing or even his standup comedy. I had the privilege of seeing him do his routine live once. I was a teenager and I went to the concert alone. I wanted to be, just once, in the same mom room with the man who had such a profound impact on my life - a man who had a heart valve replaced with the valve from a pig’s heart, then wrote a book about it. They Tore Out My Heart And Stomped That Sucker Flat, it was called.    In case you’re interested, here are just a few of the other titles I haven’t mentioned in this piece, but this list is by no means, all of them. If you’re a binge reader and like to devour everything an author has produced, you’re in for a treat. *Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You *Won’t You Come Home Billy Bob Bailey? *If Love Were Oil, I’d Be About A Quart Low *Shoot Low Boys, They’re Riding Shetland Ponies    Like I said, there are many more, but I’ll let you be the one to discover them. That’s part of the allure of the man.    The reviewer of this podcast I mentioned earlier, called me the Lewis Grizzard of our time. It’s such an an honor that they recognized him in my writing to be sure, and it was an unsolicited response, but I have to respectfully disagree. I know the person who made that review and he will understand why. The reason is simply this:    There has never been and never will be another Lewis Grizzard.

   I can never seem to make people understand that keeping busy is the way I rest. People see me staying busy and because they, themselves, are happy to spend time in front of Netflix, they think that’s the way everybody out to chill. “You need to take time to rest, Michael.” You’re going to kill yourself working so hard. You don’t always have to be doing something.”    And that’s where they err. I DO always have to be doing something because if I’m not, chances are my heart rate is up, I’m filled with anxiety, and I’m about to explode. My blood sugar raises to DEFCON 80 if I spend too much time idly watching TV that’s not something that teaches me “How-To” do a thing. My blood sugar goes up because I’m an emotional eater. And also, I have the palette of a four-year-old, so I go looking for Oreos or anything with milk chocolate in it. My hands HAVE to be doing something, so if I’m lying in the bed watching The Mentalist, I’ll unconsciously occupy them by frequently dipping my fingers in a jar filled from one of the four million bags of Cadbury Mini Eggs I bought for .89 cents at the local bin store. It’s just one of the aspects of being a Type A personality and I’m the poster boy. I’m Michael Blackston and this is a rather tedious look into my Funny, Messy, Life.   ________________________      I think it’s pretty important that people understand that there are different personality types and what’s good for the goose is not always good for the gander.    My wife needs to rest in the middle of the day. For the longest time, I considered her a little lazy because she’s always wanted to take a nap. It was well into our marriage before I realized that it wasn’t that she was lazy. Studies show that women require more down time, but being an introvert, her body also requires mental recharge time in order to function. Have you ever seen a person melt into unrecognizable goo after about 20 minutes in a crowd? Introverts do that. Kayla has friends who are also introverts that she can relate to. They make sure the other one is going to be at the same parties so they can huddle in a corner and not talk to anyone but each other. I figure the conversation probably goes something like:    “Hey. Glad you’re here so I don’t have to talk to anybody else.”    “Yeah, me too. But I still don’t want to be here, even though we’re friends. I love you and all, but ... you know ... there are people here. I want to be alone in the dark with my cats.”    “I agree. I think I’m gonna go.”    I understand that about her now, so when she’s taking a mid-day nap, it’s okay. I can go right on teaching myself to paint with watercolors and simultaneously learn the basics of arranging orchestral music for the hurdy-gurdy and the didgeridoo, and everybody’s happy.    Take this episode of the podcast for example.    When I left work to go to lunch, the folks in the office told me to take a load off for a while and not think about anything. I’d been tediously etching a triple portrait using a photo reference that was about as clear as that video of Big Foot walking through the woods.    When I said I’d be writing a blog post for a podcast episode, the lady behind the desk said, “Heavens no! You sit back and let your hands rest.” I was patient with her. I don’t visit that company very often and they don’t quite know my quirks yet, so I told her that writing was the way I relax and that I was looking forward to it. She didn’t believe me.    “You work too hard. You’re going to kill yourself.”    It’s constant because people who have a personality different from mine can’t get their heads around it, especially those who know what I do for a living and don’t understand how I can use my hands nonstop all day and rest by typing or playing my piano in my down time. It’s because I’m used to it and I don’t like down time. The last down time - I’ll call it an incident - that I tried to take, I ended up flying off the handle and going outside to completely rearrange the back yard, including the trees.    You might ask, What about vacations?    Well, I love a good vacation. Who doesn’t? But don’t expect me to sit around a pool all day or lay out on the beach. First, I’ll be the guy wearing a full body radiation suit because my skin bursts into flames when it comes into direct contact with the sun. Second, if I am at the beach, I’m probably body surfing or taking my daughter out in the waves or fighting off people who think I’m some kind of alien in my radiation suit. And you can ask my wife if you don’t believe me when I tell you that I will also have a pen or pencil and a notebook or sketch pad with me and I will bury myself in some sort of artistic endeavor.    We love us some Disney World, but if you’ve been there, you know it’s anything but relaxing. I may not be creating anything at the moment, but I promise I’m doing something constructive. I’m taking in the experience and trying to figure out ways to implement what I see around me into my daily life.    But you have to stand in lines forever. There’s not much you can create in the line for Pooh’s Happy Grand Adventure Time Experience Land.    I beg to differ the heck out of that, my friend.    I’m not looking at my phone like every other schmuck in line who’s trying to pass the time. I always bring a mechanical pencil and a pocket sized sketchbook. I sketch the scene around me. I’ve been known to draw architecture, characters, the people in line ahead of me, and once I drew a dude’s feet because he was wearing sandals and he had funky feet. It really should have been against the law for him to be wearing sandals. I also think I once rendered some big dude’s plumber’s crack in graphite.    But I still get grief from the people who have known me forever and should be aware that nothing they say is ever going to stop me from keeping busy.    When I direct a theatre show, I have my hands in almost every aspect of it.    My last show was Nunsense, I co-directed it, built the set, painted the set, planned the lighting scheme, built some of the props, cleaned parts of the theatre ... all because I wanted to and would’ve FREAKED OUT if I hadn’t.    My cast, entirely made up of ladies, told me I did too much and was going to give myself a heart attack, then they all laid down and took a nap.     They may have been right, though. Scientists have found that Type A’s are the greatest risk for heart disease.    But I’ll tell you this - try and stop me from constantly being on the go and I WILL DEFINITELY have a heart attack.    This isn’t a choice I’m making - it’s how I’m wired. I have to create, I’ve got to achieve. I MUST be productive. I don’t believe in the phrase, “I can’t” and I refuse to do “good enough.”    I have to try and master everything I put my mind to and if I fail, that’s okay because I gave it my best effort. I’ll also try, try, try, try, try, try again.    It can get annoying. My wife tells me to just sit down for a minute and for the love of all that’s pure and holy because I’m driving her crazy and she can’t sleep with all that moving around the house as I scrub the floor boards with a magic eraser. And sometimes I’ll give it a shot, but it usually ends up with me darting forth like a person who darts forth, yelling, “DO ALL THE THINGS!”    I guess you’d call it a blessing and a curse, but it’s one I have learned to cope with. And I’m thankful for it, too. It’s because I have a Type A personality that I’ve been able to write the Great American Novel ... two of them so far, actually, although I can’t be the one to call them great. That’ll be up to my readers, but at least I finished them, by thunder! I’ve written two stage plays and a musical, too, thanks to being a guy that never stops. So I won’t apologize.     Type A’s are go-getters. We get things done. We may have ulcers, but we get things done. Yay for Type A! And now the thing I need to go get done is to wake up my wife. She needed a nap.

   The nineteen-eighties are a cornucopia of fond memories for me. That’s when my childhood was in full bloom - the days between the times that have gotten spotty in my mind and the teen years when I got spotty on my face. Back then, I had a few girlfriends and I wanted to be liked just like any young boy, but I hadn’t yet begun to look into every mirror I passed by, making sure each follicle of hair was in place. It was right before the almighty mullet took the world by storm with it’s front/back two-party system and I still enjoyed getting fun things from Santa on Christmas morning, rather than cool things. It was the golden years of my adolescence - when my cousin and I (the one I did stupidly stupid things with) ruled a thick patch of woods behind our grandma’s house and all we needed to cultivate our “Land” were big sticks we somehow ended up assigning too much importance to. Back then, the words “Covid”, “Corona” and, God help us, “Politics” were planted firmly and safely in an apocalyptic future, doing nobody no harm.    I’m Michael Blackston and this is Funny Messy Life. _________________________    There were other days sprinkled about this history when my cousin and I tromped around the woods behind my grandparents’ house with dirty faces and scratched up knees, but the vast majority of our jaunts happened on Sunday afternoons.    In the eighties, kids still had the opportunity to do stuff kids really can’t today. Words like “Abduction” and “distancing” weren’t as much on the radar. We knew those words, but as pre-teens, my cousin and I didn’t pay much attention to them in the relative safety of my Grandma’s house. Strangers never ventured onto the property that we knew about and distancing was just what our parents wanted us to do as a rule - to distance ourselves from them. All I know is that as long as it wasn’t raining, the children were expected to go outside immediately after lunch while the grownups sat around the dining room table and said things we didn’t understand, usually as commentary about whatever person was at the center of their gossip. I recall hearing a few interesting things spoken around the “adult” table that I’d come to know later in life - phrases like, “She orta be ashamed-a-herself!” and words like, “tramp” and hussy”.    For context, you should know that my mom has two sisters and everybody and their children met at my grandparent’s house every single Sunday at lunch time, unless there was a family reunion we had to go to. And until recently that tradition has remained.    My cousin and I knew our cue when the adults decided lunch time was over … one of them would holler, “OUT!”    And we were happy to go. It was time for the adults to be rid of children hanging all over them for a few precious hours. There were no video games to play, no cartoons to watch, and football wasn’t as important to us as the trails and huts we were about to build. I always found it funny that they were so ready for us to spend an august afternoon among the bugs and the grass and trees and dirt, getting soaked to the bone with sweat and developing fine chains of grit in the creases of our necks we southerners call “Granny beads”. And yet, when it was time to come in for the day, they, without fail, would turn up their noses and exclaim, “YOU SMELL LIKE THE OUTSIDE!” Of course we smelled like the outside! What do you expect?! We’d been one with the outside all day long. If we needed water, they’d give it - reluctantly - and then point back toward the door … “OUT!”    So off we’d trot into the woods behind the house with only two nuggets of parental wisdom to guide us: “Watch out for snakes” and “Come on when I call ya, now”. Other than that, the adventures of the day could begin or continue.    So what did my cousin and I do exactly?    I told you already. We built trails and we built huts. Not just any trails and huts, though. While strangers didn’t normally show up unannounced, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. In our minds, there might one day be an evil plot - a coup, if you will - wherein terrorists or worse - insurance salesmen - would overtake our grandparents’ home, presumably on a Sunday afternoon, so I guess they didn’t get any Jesus earlier in the day, and we would need to flee to the cover of the maze we’d created in the woods and make our stand from there.    The implementation of our vision was nothing short of spectacular. Every trail we beat down with sticks, every clearing, every hut we constructed, every bush we peed on had a name. I even remember some of the names we gave them.    There was the “Briar Trail” because when we made it, we had to beat down an excessive amount of briars and went home that afternoon with countless points of blood loss on our tiny little southern redneck baby-child bodies.    There was the “50/50”, which was a clearing in the middle of it all that had once been someone’s garden and if you dared cross it during one of our games of war, you only had about a 50/50 chance of making it through without getting drilled by a hailstorm of bullet noises we made with our mouths.    There was another clearing beyond the perfectly mowed boundary of my grandparents’ yard and it was a mystical place. We didn’t make it, but we claimed it. It had always been called by our parents, “The Red Dirt.” It was an area of land that was a barren desert of a place where nothing but a few small, scrawny pines and grayish yellow weeds grew. Everything else there, in an area a tad smaller than the size of a football field, was deep red Georgia clay. Many years before, something had been deposited there in the middle of the expanse of red dirt. It was a large stack of some sort of crumbly building material that I’m starting to think might have been asbestos or the lining of a nuclear bomb silo, hence the reason nothing could grow around it. We climbed all over the stuff, chewed on it, probably licked it a little - so now that I think of it, maybe the skin cancers I constantly battle have a better explanation than my being in the sun too much as a kid. Our parents wandered out there as kids. The youngest of three sisters, the tom-boy, used to ride her motorcycle out there and jump the hills. I’m starting to think I know what’s wrong with the whole family and I should either report it to the authorities or call the writers of Stranger Things.    We beat down all of those trails with sticks, but we didn’t simply find any old dead branch lying around like uncivilized caveboys. Our sticks were carefully chosen and given names. They were used every week and carefully hidden at the end of the day so we would know exactly where to find them. I don’t remember what we named them. My cousin probably named his something like “Hulk” and I would have named mine something a little less aggressive - something that fit my personality more closely - “Little Orphan Annie” perhaps. We called them our “babies” and when one of them would finally get smashed against something one too many times and shatter, we would hold a funeral for it. Yes, an ever-lovin’ funeral. For a stick.    We dug holes here and there and hid stuff down in them as weapons caches for the inevitable ninja attack, but we only had the natural resources around us to work with. Then we’d cover them with a layer of sticks and leaves and mark them so that we could come back later if we needed to protect the family from rabid, flesh-eating gila monsters. Remember the mushroom things that had spores all in them and would make a big dusty - and poisonous, according to our parents - cloud? Yeah, we hid a bunch of those in the cache holes. I said CACHE holes! There were pointy rocks, sharp sticks, and pieces of glass we found and some chunks of the radioactive alien asbestos that had broken off of the pile at the Red Dirt.    We were ready for the fight and all we had to do if the crazed army of savage zombie Cabbage Patch Kids attacked was to find the nearest hut and batten down the hatches with a bunch of poisonous spore bombs, the Hulk, and Little Orphan Annie.    Speaking of huts, we were master builders of those. Old logs and fallen branches were prime construction material and low hanging branches from healthy trees never stood a chance. I guess there might have been five complex structures hidden in those woods and we would protect them like fire ants protect their evil little mounds. Well, we would have if the Boby-building Wizard Women tried to take over.    We worked tirelessly to cultivate our private little military compound and we considered that patch of woods to be our property. We talked on the phone during the week planning what we would do on Sunday and we even spent the time to come up with a clever title for it. Now brace yourself for the torrent of impressiveness you’re about to experience because of our creativity. We called it ...  “Our Land”.     Then one day, it was gone.    We pulled into the driveway of my grandparents’ house and I could see the construction machinery in the distance. We were told we couldn’t go out there anymore. Most of the patch of woods had been cleared away. With the trees and trails all gone, there was no way to know what was where. We couldn’t even save our babies. Hulk and Annie were just two more pieces of collateral damage, unrecognizable from any of the other rubble, from a bomb that had been dropped on us by something we never anticipated - culture. Our land was gone. Until that moment, neither I nor my cousin who did stupidly stupid things with me had any concept that somebody else owned the property and that they could sell it out from under us. That they could clear it and build a home right on top of it. On our land.    Oh well, nothing lasts forever. It’s a lesson I keep having to learn over and over because I’m a positive thinker and whenever things are going good, I can’t stand to look in the direction of reality - out over beyond the yard where life’s bulldozers and backhoes grin with their stupid metal teeth as they tower over my dang happiness.    It’s funny that I actually just teared up a little bit thinking back on that memory. Reality is so much more foreboding when you’ve blown through years and seemed to by-pass forty without so much as a double-take. That was a sad day for us. I’m sure our parents talked about progress or even gossiped about the sellers or the buyers … “Orta be a-shamed of tharselves!” But to us, something major had changed. We’d experienced a passion being ripped away from us. Something had destroyed what had taken so many countless hours to build. And while it’s a small thing in comparison to real battles and the actual monsters I’ve had to face over the years since then, it might just have been my first real taste of working hard to do a lot of something for a whole lot of nothing. Then again, we made memories and those are something no bulldozer can destroy.

   One president is famous for saying, “Change is good.” He’s also famous for such gems as, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” and “It depends on what the definition is of is is or isn’t is.” And I don’t agree with that former president. I’m not a fan of change. It also turned out that he did have relations with that woman, by the way, and the definition of “is” happens to be “is.” Unfortunately, just because I don’t like change, doesn’t mean I’m exempt from it in desperate times and that’s exactly where the world now finds itself - in desperate times. Even the stretch of time between this episode and the last one is a testimony to how hard I fight against change, but I’ll get into the details of that later.      For now, strap yourself in because thanks to Covid-19, I’ve gathered a list of changes we’ve had to make and how I feel about them, but also a few changes I think are due to come by the time all of this is behind us.    I’m Michael Blackston and this is an infectious episode of Funny Messy Life. ____________    In a history of my own creation, a wise man once said, “Pandemic, Shmamdemic. Just get out of my way in the buffet line.”    Well, let’s start there in our discussion of what I’ve been dealing with as a writer. Because the fact that restaurants closed their lobbies wasn’t as big a deal to me for the same reason it was to most people. I don’t mind eating at the house or outside the restaurant where I just picked up my order. I don’t mind trying to balance a hot bowl of Chicken and Gnoci soup from Olive Garden on my knee while driving 75 miles an hour through Atlanta traffic. While most people I know were over eating at home after the first two meals and moaning incessantly about having to cook or get delivery, “The pizza guy’s taking too loooooong. Life is so haaaaarrrrd.”, I was brought to a screeching halt when it came to my literary creativity. In other words, I couldn’t write unless I could go into a restaurant and sit down.    Apparently, I’ve conditioned myself that way over time and when I tried to settle into a cozy nook of my living room with my laptop, I couldn’t conjure up a single cohesive sentence. I’ve complained before about trying to write in a restaurant and having people come up to talk to me, which I don’t mind, but I want the conversation to be short so I can get back to writing while I have the creative juju. And since in my own home I’m supposed to be the master of my domain, I should be able to make the juju flow like sweet, buttery, buttered butter. But I’m not the master of my domain at my house. I’m the guy that hears my name called every ten seconds, whether it’s the “Dad” moniker or the “Honey” one so that my juju turns into some gummed up, old gummy gum that all the good was chewed out of and then stuck under the seat of a subway car in 1972, one year before I was born. That ain’t writing juju!    I didn’t intend to set myself up to only be able to write in a restaurant, but I did and this is only getting written as I sit alone at lunch in a diner for the first time in a few months.    So thanks to Covid-19, we have been forced to forage for our own food like neanderthals who can’t write because they’ve got old, dry, gummed up caveman juju.    Another thing that has affected me big time is the movie theaters being closed. Even at this writing, they’re still closed. I realize that movie theaters are cesspools of filth and if you took a black light and shined it on the seats and floors, you’d find disgusting stains and stuff that resembles my writing juju. But a man has needs and one of those needs for me is a bucket - no - an enormous vat - of movie theater popcorn that’s been buttered on the bottom, the mid bottom, the middle, the upper middle, all over the top, and every dry spot that’s left.    But Michael - you, sir, are a diabetic. Do you not know that what you just described would kill a healthy buffalo?    The answer is yes. I do know. And I’ll die with high viscosity and a thick layer of oily butter all over my mouth and chin. A mouth that will be smiling because of all the oily butter.    Let me tell a quick nugget about that so you might get a proper visual. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it before.   Once while enjoying a movie with my bride and scarfing down huge handfuls of dripping, buttery popcorn like an ogre, I realized I needed to go to the restroom. I eased my face over to my wife’s ear and whispered the usual line.    “I gotta pee.”    She nodded and off I skipped to the restroom quickly so that I could get back before I missed anything good and also because there was more sloppy popcorn to devour like a starved dog. As I came back into the theatre, I caught my wife’s eye and the light from the screen must have hit my face just right so to cast a glorious beam on me, filling out every detail. My wife started to laugh hysterically, although there was nothing funny happening in the film.    When I got to my seat, she was still guffawing and couldn’t seem to stop. So I asked her the usual line I do when she’s laughing at me uncontrollably.    “WHAT?!”    She leaned in and through great yucks and the tears that were in her eyes, said, “Your chin is completely covered with butter. It’s so greasy from all the popcorn you’ve been shoveling into your pie hole, that it shines like a diner sign. You look ridiculous.” I had walked out into the lobby like that. I’d probably said hello to someone while sporting a chin dripping with popcorn butter. So that’s a change I’ve had to get used to thanks to COVID-19. No movie theater popcorn.    I could go on and on and on about the first world struggles we’re having to endure, but you know them. You lived them yourself and a bunch of them have been discussed ad nauseam on Facebook and Twitter. Things like the worldwide toilet paper shortage and the fact that people seem to believe that the cans of soup that were on the shelves would be the last cans of soup ever made. Except for Cream of Mushroom. Nobody wants the Cream of Mushroom.    So instead of boring you with any more problems you already know about, I’ve searched deep into my creative mind where, because I’m able to write in a restaurant again (by the way, I had to stop a while back and this is being written a couple of days later while sitting in an Olive Garden where I have Chicken and Gnocci soup dripping all over my chin {Squeee!}), I’m now feeling my juju getting pliable, like somebody pulled it out from under a table and started chewing it anew. I can foresee some things we might be having to deal with in the near future, thanks to COVID-19.    1. People will pass out in streets, on sidewalks, and in Walmart aisles at the sight of so many mouths. By the time we, as a nation, feel like this pandemic is safely behind us, we will have become used to seeing so many face masks covering up people’s mouths and chins, it will be utter shock at the sight of so many lips - beautiful lips and chins, ugly lips and chins, lips and chins smothered in oily movie theater butter because the cinema is back open. It’ll be like that episode of The Twilight Zone where the woman’s face is unwrapped and to the viewer appears beautiful, but she’s horrified at the sight because in her world, normal people look like that sculpture of a face you tried to make with clay in art class.    2. Speaking of the movie theaters opening back up, you’ll be able to finally go see Fast and Furious part 68 - Hobbs and Shaw Open A Deli, but it’s gonna cost you $82 for a single ticket because Hollywood’s been shut down this whole time like the rest of us and they have to recoup their money somehow. And because concessions is where the theaters make the money to keep the lights on, your popcorn, which was already highway robbery, will now cost you an additional $80 for a small. The good news is that you will have the option of getting the large bucket for a $20 upgrade and if you want the combo, which includes the bucket, two large soft drinks, and the candy of your choice, you only have to pay three easy monthly installments of $99.99.    3. But wait - there’s more! Toilet paper! TP-ing somebody’s yard will become a federal crime. Why? Because of the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020. I guess I have to mention it because this will be devastating to teenagers. According to my source, Principal Schmelton of Tallyho High, Old Man Schmelly to his students, kids all over the country will receive marks on their permanent records after the first offense. This will not apply to first year students, who will only be given demerits, due to their being, as he puts it, Fresh Meat.    And there’s more to come. There’s a lot more that we’ll have to stomach and accept as the - dare I even say it? - New Norm. And the sooner we prepare ourselves for that, the better off we’ll be. Welcome to the world after 2020.    Thanks, COVID-19.

   I guess everybody has something they’d call a guilty pleasure. Even the best of us sometimes give in to temptation and it depends on the offense as to whether or not you ought to just be careful or be taken into custody. I’d say the guiltiest of my guilty pleasures would be my addiction to the NBC super hit, The Office. I’ve watched the entire series ten times now, which is in itself something that should be cause for concern, and I used to think I was only one of a few who were so obsessed, but apparently, I’m not. There are a bunch of us the world over. But this episode isn’t about the obsession, it’s about why I should probably never meet anybody from the cast. I don’t know that I’d behave myself appropriately.    I’m Michael Blackston and this is probably the closest I’ll get to being called a fanboy when it comes to my Funny Messy Life. _________________________      I think the reality of my ever getting to meet an actual member of the cast of The Office is pretty slim. I guess if any of my books get sold or any of my plays get picked up, there’s a possibility, but the likelihood of that happening is not good. I suppose if I composed a musical about a beet farmer named Dwight who gets beamed up into a real life Battlestar Galactica scenario and defeats an alien attack with a laser gun made from a nutcracker machine he has to fish out of a big old mound of Jello, I might hear from NBC’s legal department, but otherwise, let’s be real.    What’s got me thinking about this is the recent arrival of two podcasts created by cast members from the show: An Oral History of The Office, hosted by Brian Baumgardner, who played Kevin, and Office Ladies, hosted by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, who played Pam and Angela. The Office has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity lately as people are discovering what I’ve known for years … it’s possibly the best show that ever graced the screen of anything. I know it is for me. And one thing I’ve learned by listening to these two podcasts is that the cast of the show seems to love it as much as the fans. That’s a revelation to me because you would think after so many seasons and new opportunities and the constant obsessive fans bringing up the same old phrases and jokes, the actors would be saying, “Enough already!”    So as I sat listening to an episode of Office Ladies, a podcast where Jenna and Angela break down every single episode, walking down memory lane with cast and crew and offering behind the scenes nuggets of Office goodness dipped in awesome sauce that’s been lovingly created with the voices of the hosts and adding ever more flavor to my world which I once believed to be devoid of further tastes of The Office, I noticed they often mention the names of fans who write in with questions. And I thought to myself, “Self, what would it be like to hear my name spoken aloud by Pam or Angela or Jim or Kevin, or the holy grail of it all, Michael Scott?” And that’s when I decided it probably wouldn’t be a great idea to meet them in person. Because my heart started to beat wildly. My nose started to run. My eyes watered and I began to sweat in places I can’t mention in a family podcast.    I’d actually heard my name spoken a lot during the run of the show. Like I said, the lead character, until he left after season seven. Was Michael Scott. So I’d heard them all say “Michael”, but it’s not the same as if they actually said something along the lines of, “Strangely attractive fanboy Michael Blackston sent in a question about Steve Carell. He asks: Jenna and Angela … Do you think Steve might have had an inappropriate crush on the two of you, seeing that he was married at the time and if so, did his wife Nancy mind, knowing it was just a fantasy kind of a thing? Asking for a friend. Signed, Michael Blackston.” or even, “Wildly talented writer, composer, singer, and actor Michael Blackston, who would totally accept an offer to work on a reboot, writes in with a question: Dearest Jenna and Angela or Jennjela - (do you mind me calling you Jennjela?) … Do you think Steve might have had a man-crush on John Krazinski and if so, did Pam mind, knowing Steve was married? Asking for a friend. - Michael Blackston (professional artist who would have definitely attended Pam’s art show and friend of cats, who would have never put Sprinkles in the freezer.)  Something like that would set my soul aflame. But meeting them? Actually MEETING them? I don’t think I could handle that, at least not well. Not in a way where they would come away from it NOT uncomfortable. Let me sprinkle some thought over this … Sprinkles …    Let me share with you why it might be a bad idea.    I’ve never been the type to go nuts over celebrities in the first place. I know they’re real people just like you and me, they put their pants on one leg at a time just like you and me, and they probably hate putting on stage makeup just like you and me. But it’s different with The Office. I think I’ve watched it so many times and made those characters such an integral part of my life that they’ve taken on the feel of real people, not actors playing roles. I knew this would be a problem for me after listening to the first episode of Office Ladies. I understood it was Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey on their mics, but I found myself wanting to hear them take on their characters. It was easier when Jenna referenced Angela because Angela played Angela in the show, but when Angela mentions Jenna, I think, No. She’s Pam. I want you to call her Pam because she’s Pam and she loves Jim and she likes to draw illustrations. I start feeling Like Stephen King’s character Annie Wilkes in Misery (Played by Kathy Bates, who, by the way, played Jo on The Office for a while), except that I don’t intend to kidnap Greg Daniels and break his leg so he can’t go anywhere until he vows to bring back the show, including Michael Scott. In that book, Annie couldn’t make a distinction between real life and the world of her favorite book character. I know the difference and I respect the actors, but I don’t want to let go of my favorite show.    If I actually met Jenna or Angela, I would be completely respectful, but I don’t think I could get through the meeting without starting to cry. And that would be embarrassing because it wouldn’t be a charming cry like you might get from a normal person meeting someone they admire. “How sweet, Ange … he’s got a tear in his eye. What a charming and normal man-fan.”    No, I’m afraid it’d be far worse than that. “Lady, he’s sobbing like a baby child. It’s embarrassing to watch and sad.”    “But he’s happy, Jenna. I think that’s joyful sobbing.”    “It gives me no joy, Ange. No joy at all.”    It could also go the other way. I could become so insecure that I was incapable of saying a single word. I’d try not to be that fan that blats out stuff from the show as if they’re the first person who thought of that. I don’t know that fans ought to look for reasons to shout That’s what she said to Steve Carell, but I’ll bet it happens all the time. The rest of the cast has earned the right to go there at any time, but me … I don’t think so. Still, I doubt I’d be able to help myself and I’d also bet money that I’d be so eager to do it that it wouldn’t even make sense.    Imagine this scenario.    I’m in Atlanta, the closest large city to where I live, and I’ve felt the need to pick up a bag of Oreos and some milk for my ride home because that’s what diabetics do. Actually, it’s not what we should do, but in my case, it’s part of what I do that made me a diabetic, but anyway … behind me in line is Steve Carell, who has come to town because they’re filming another Avenger’s movie and Marvel has decided the SHIELD agents could do with a Scarn-like quality. He notices my items and because I understand that Steve is a real down-to-earth kind of guy, he comments to be neighborly. “Sometimes ya just gotta go with milk and cookies, am I right?”    I turn, realize who’s behind me and can’t stop my stupid mouth before screaming, “THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID!” right into his face. Not the best impression, to be sure. In my soul, I would have wanted to say the perfect line, something so brilliant that Steve grins wide and asks for my number so we can be best friends forever and ever, but I suspect I would more than likely make myself look like a dufus.    Brian Baumgardner is from Atlanta, so I guess there’s a small possibility of our meeting and me shouting, “Do Kevin … DO KEVIN!”    Rainn Wilson would have to endure me throwing out a random reference to Bears, Beets, Battlestar Galactica .. in that order. Or saying something like, “Whar’s Mose? Ya talk to Mose lately?””    I could go on and on with every actor who has become a part of my mental family and that’s the way I think of them. And that’s why I have so much love for them all. There is no other television show that has affected me so completely as The Office. And it makes me happy when I hear the likes of Jenna and Angela and Brian and Steve discuss in interviews and podcasts how much it touches their hearts to know they’ve been welcomed so fully into homes and families all around the world.    So I guess this did turn out to be more of a love fest for The Office, but that’s how I feel. Those characters and stories continue to make me laugh and cry every time I watch it, no matter HOW MANY times I watch it. And in all honesty, if I ever get the opportunity to meet any of them, I will be a total gentleman and not get all awkward. I mean after all, it was just a show about an ordinary paper company, although in Pam’s words, there’s a lot of beauty in ordinary things. Isn’t that kind of the point?

   2021 promises to be a great year for me. Of course, I think I said the same thing at the beginning of 2020 and look what a dumpster fire that turned out to be. But 2021 is starting out with a bunch of stuff in place that I’ve been wanting to implement for a while and so I’ve hit the ground running. That’s what this episode will about. It’s gonna be a kind of update/story time/apology that should get us back on speaking terms after my extremely obnoxious lack of posting episodes of this podcast. I’m Michael Blackston and it feels like I’m finally back in the saddle of my Funny Messy Life. ____________    It’s not like I haven’t been thinking about you because I have. It’s just that, like everybody else, 2020 kicked me in the life-junk over and over again and it got hard to find the time to create episodes. I was busy and some things kept happening that directly affected the way I record these things. I got really busy while not going to restaurants or movies or to see my grandma in the nursing home because COVID-19 is a jerk. I thought my business would suffer during the pandemic with people being out of work or quarantined, but it didn’t. I thrived and I got busier than I’ve ever been.    I know, I know. That’s what I say every time I huge span of time between episodes and it sounds like an excuse. To be honest with you, I have considered cancelling this podcast several times because I don’t like promising something I can’t make good on. It’s like breaking up with someone and saying, It’s not you, it’s me.    My wife and I have been married for nearly 26 years and these situations I keep finding myself in with you, the listener, sort of reminds me of the time I broke up with her for five minutes. I won’t go into too much detail about it because I plan to have her on with me soon to tell our story - it’s a cool one - and we’ll probably touch on the break up, but let me just say that when I did it, I really thought that’s what I wanted. Then I kept thinking about her and I kept calling her and before I had blinked, I was buying her a stuffed animal and taking her to a concert.    In the same way, I keep taking time away from you, but I can’t stop thinking about your long hair and the way I feel when we’re together, so here we are. Together again with promises that I’ll treat you right this time.    At least there’s nothing wrong with us having an open relationship, so hopefully there are other podcasts you listen to for company. I guess it’s similar to the early Mormons, who had multiple wives. It’s what you might call acceptable POD-lygamy ... I’m sorry. I should be ashamed of myself. But that’s what you do to me. When we’re together, I feel like I’ve got the freedom to be myself and say the first thing that comes to mind, whether it’s a good joke, or something that ought to send me to pun-hell. But lets put our past behind us and move on, shall we?    It might sound like an excuse, but 2020 was busier than I ever believed it would be, despite the limitations of the pandemic. I finished my second novel, Shoeshine Drop, began to get my music ready for the stage, decided to create a production company for my plays, accepted the position of Minister of Music at the largest Baptist church in my town, became a deacon at said church, and in the biggest change to my routine, moved my business home so I don’t have to travel very much at all anymore.    You can see why it might be hard to find time to write, and then record, podcast episodes in the middle of all that. The biggest thing that stopped the recoding process was my frustration with my studio. In the past three years, I have recorded this podcast in hotel rooms, the cabs of two different vehicles, and in various places I called a studio in my home. My goal has been to have a dedicated space to record professional sounding audio, but nothing I’ve tried in my house has worked for one reason or another. During those three years, I’ve built, taken down, and rebuilt my studio nine times. Until recently, something has kept me from getting right every time, whether it was outside noise bleeding into the recording, inside noise bleeding in, electronic interference, echoes and audio bounce back, etc. It was something every time and unless you’ve ever tried to do something that should be pretty simple, only to meet obstacle after obstacle, you won’t understand how it can suck the life and desire to do that thing right out of you the same way political runoff campaigns will suck the life out of you and make you want to fly screaming off a cliff like the pigs in the New Testament that had the demons driven into them. As a matter of fact, I don’t know what’s worse, politicians and their campaigns or having demons driven into you. It’s pretty much the same thing. Anyway, that problem has been solved now. This episode comes to you from my brand new studio in one of the second floor rooms of my church. It’s a little room tucked deep into the center of the church at the end of a maze of rooms nobody ever uses anymore. I was able to build a frame along the walls of the interior of the room and hang sound treatment to allow me to control the sound. There is no outside noise to deal with and no inside noise, either. It’s a beautiful thing and not only will it allow me to consistently have a professional environment to produce this podcast and another one I’m planning based on Christian Apologetics, but it finally opens the door to my being able to seriously step my foot into the waters of commercial voiceover work.    The last thing it allows me to do is record audio books. I have my two novels to record, but also some classics. The first one I plan to record is The Picture of Dorian Gray.    So what I’m saying is that I’m back in the saddle and things are looking bright.    For a while one of my biggest concerns about this podcast was whether not I had much left to say. I felt like I was getting close to all I had in me, but then I realized that the world gets more and more stupid every day. All I really need to do is check in on Facebook and Instagram to see something that inspires me to write. It might spark a memory from my life or it might cause me to spit out some of my opinions about the today’s culture. A culture, by the way, where a politician seriously ends a public prayer with A-Woman because he thinks he’s showing equal respect for the females of our species.    Yeah.    I know.    And I share the ideal that men and women are equal in worth, I’m saddened that a person calling themselves a pastor doesn’t know that ending a prayer with Amen isn’t referencing men. It’s Hebrew for something like, So be it. Some good has come out of it, though, and that’s the hundreds of new memes to enjoy, making fun of it. My problem is that while 2020 has given me plenty to talk about, you come here to get away from the stuff you get bombarded with on a daily basis, and especially the things that made 2020 what it turned out to be. Now that we’re into a fresh year, if you’re like me, you want to forget about a lot of last year, so i need to keep things fresh.    I decided that since I was going to ramps things up again with the podcast, it might be a great idea to go back and re-listen to all of the past episodes, mainly because the older I get, the more things I can’t remember like where I put my glasses, why I walked into a room in the first place, and what I’ve already talked about in the podcast. And while i was listening through them, and cringing again at my delivery because I’m never happy with it, I came upon a short update I inserted between episodes when I had, like now, neglected to post anything for several weeks. In that update, I mentioned having guests on to share their stories in the future to make things more interesting, but I never did that. I also told you that I would be delivering my episodes via bullet point instead of writing them out verbatim, so that my delivery was more natural. I did that for a couple of episodes, then went back to writing them out because I noticed that I’m more concise when I write it out. And it’s still genuine when I put in the time to write it out, plus it’s way easier later on when I decide to try and make a little cheddar by putting the episodes into book form, which I have decided to do and will tell you about at a later time. As far as guests go, I realized that it was hard to go very far that way without a great deal of extra work that I don’t have time to do. I still plan to have some guests. My wife will be on soon to tell our love story. My son will be on soon to talk about some stuff and partly as test of our chemistry for another podcast the two of us have been wanting to do for a couple of years and now have a good place to do it. I’ll have my dear friend, Joe Trusty - hi Joe ... he’s an avid listener - to reminisce about our radio days, and there are a few other interesting people I’d like to share with you. But as a rule, it’ll likely be me most of the time, doing what I’ve been doing for the first forty episodes.    But I do want to extend an offer to you. In the past, I opened the show up to the possibility of sharing stories from listeners. All you had to do was email me, tell your story, and if it passed the mustard, I’d share it in an episode. Well, nobody sent in their stories and that’s okay. I understand. One thing I’ve learned from several years of on and off podcasting is that begging listeners to talk to you doesn’t do anything to help you communicate with them. Unless you’re one of the huge shows like Joe Rogan or the Office Ladies, you won’t get huge amounts of reviews and hearing feedback from listeners is as rare as the planets aligning to make the Star of Bethlehem like Saturn and Jupiter did in 2020. It used to bother me, too, because I really did beg for feedback. Is anybody there? Hello? Anybody? TALK TO ME!    And them I realized something. You pull up a podcast to be entertained, not get into conversation with the host. You need someone to talk to you and engage your mind on you commute or during your workout or when your cousin Melvin won’t shut up and doesn’t realize you’ve shoved your AirPods in you ears as far as you possibly can. And you’re choosing me. You’re choosing me over Melvin and I thank you for that. I guess it goes back to my radio days when I had actual fans who couldn’t wait to call me when my shift started. My friend Joe will attest to that, so it feels weird not to hear from you.    So if you don’t want to tell your story, I understand and don’t hold it against you. The podcasters I listen to never get feedback from me, either. But if you do think of a story that’s really interesting and that you wouldn’t mind having accessible to the world, then send me the details. I might even be willing to record a phone call with you so you can tell it yourself. Who knows? Maybe another segment for the show might be born. But if not, I’m content if you simply sit back and let me do the talking. Because even though it probably seems like I’ve forgotten about Funny Messy Life, the numbers keep growing and a few folks here and there keep subscribing. So that tells me there are people who enjoy what I’m doing.    And by the way, I’m not saying I’ve NEVER gotten any feedback. I have a couple of listeners who have reached out and to you, I say thank you. As one of f my favorite podcasters says when he gets encouragement from listeners, it puts gas in my tank.    If your name is Melvin, I hope you understand that I wasn’t necessarily talking about you earlier, unless you’re one of those people who never take a breath and let other people talk into the conversation. If you are, then maybe try listening some. The communication is a whole lot better when you do that.    And if I go a minute without posting a new episode, just know that I haven’t forgotten you. I’ve just gotten busy or something happened to make my studio unusable and I’m in the middle of moving and rebuilding it ... again.    If you do have something you’d like to share with me, let’s start out by having you email me at funnymessylife@gmail.com. Keep it PG and we’ll probably be fine.    Lastly, do me a favor and share the podcast with your friends and loved ones who you think might enjoy it. My best weapon in the battle to be found is you, so do me a favor and be a tank in my arsenal. I’d really appreciate it.

   My pastor recently delivered a sermon that I needed to pay extra attention to. It’s not that I don’t always pay close attention to the sermons, but anybody who’s spent much time in the congregation of a church will tell you that on occasion a person’s mind can wander. When I was an early teen, I was in love with the preacher’s daughter and so my mind was on the two of us skipping gaily, hand-in-hand through meadows of dandelions while the theme song from The Neverending Story played on the wind in the background. In fact, thinking about her now brings back an embarrassing memory involving her from those days and I’ll tell you about it at the conclusion of this episode. I’m Michael Blackston and this is my Funny, Messy, Life.    Nowadays, I’m more apt to stay engaged with the sermon and only mentally stray when he mentions food, or football, or food. But this recent sermon was different because he was going into detail about deaconship in the church - what it really means and what’s expected of someone who’s called into it. It was important to me because I was, that very day, being ordained as a deacon and I’m here to admit that I was terrified. Why? Because all of my life I’ve had this idea that being a deacon was something that was for better men than me. I know that’s not true - that men are men and we all have our flaws, but there’s a standard that comes with the position. Not that we’ll always meet it because of said flaws, but that we’re at least expected to honestly strive for it. The pastor joked that he thought of the word deacon as less of a noun and more of a verb, so he would be preaching on what it means for a deacon to deac. We all had a laugh and I paid close attention to what he said, but sometimes a spark lights in my head and I just can’t douse the flame. It has to do with how wrong I was when I was a kid about what I would have to face if I ever became the deacon of a church and I feel the urge to remind any of my fellow church members who might read or hear this that I think I’m funny and you need to keep that in mind if you’re gonna go any further in this piece. Also, I take my deaconship seriously and have seen the error of my ways when you compare the truth to what’s next.    So, without further ado, the following is a list of things I thought were possible issues I might have to face if I were to become a deacon. Incompetence In Finger Pointing.    When you’re a kid, you think every adult in church knows better than you and feels like an authoritarian. Double that when it comes to deacons. I always thought of the deacons as the church deputies, Barney Fife-ing their way into God’s good graces in the hopes of getting a pocket FULL of bullets when they got to heaven. I’ve since learned that’s not the case. Our relationship to God is not Barney’s relationship to Andy, but Opie’s. Unfortunately, kids have active imaginations and I always thought it would be a daunting task to be one of the ones who pointed their fingers at the rest of the congregation when they were getting out of line, like not putting anything in the plate when it came by and singing the wrong words to Just As I Am. “Just as I aaaam, without one flea …” Forgetting All Of My Deacony Blocking.    Speaking of passing the plate, this one was always a big deal for me. How do they do it, bookending the pews as one passes the plate down, the other intercepts it, then moving another row back in a complicated volley of plate passery that even Joe Montana would be envious of? I can’t concentrate on anything for more than 30 seconds, so how would I, little Michael be able to learn such mastery if I ever became a deac … oh look, Alaina just played with her hair. See, that’s what I’m talking about. Even the “memory me” is incapable. Heaven forbid I considered the whole Communion dance, what with the trays of broken up saltines and Smurf sized cups of grape juice. In that scenario, I always saw myself dropping the juice tray or forgetting I’d already passed the tray down an aisle and those people would have to explain why they’d had seconds at the Lord’s Supper. Being Called On To Pray.    I would say this is probably still a concern for most people today if yours is a church where random people in the congregation are called on like tributes in The Hunger Games to pray during the service. They say the fear of speaking in public is number one on the phobia list for most people, but it doesn’t really bother me too much today. As a kid it terrified me because I saw that a lot of times, it was one of the deacons who got called on. I never once saw someone jump up from their pew and volunteer as Tribute for the one called upon. If you were chosen, you either obediently prayed aloud or suffered eternal hell. The choice was yours. On top of that misguided outlook, I heard eloquence in those prayers. Old men went on for hours praying over everything they could think of, using impressive words like, Thee and Thy, or adding “eth” at the end of everything because they only prayed in King James. Since then, I’ve learned that God actually prefers less eloquence when it comes to prayer and favors words that come from the heart, which is a good thing for me. You’d think a writer could pray it up nice with the best of them, and I could if given an entire lunch time and a glass of tea to come up with just the right way to say it. That’s not the way I pray off the cuff, though. I pray like a cave man who has just discovered fire and wants to thank the bright, shiny, ball creature that comes out in the sky during the day. Being The Next Man Up.    I know it’s not like politics where if something happens to the preacher, it’s the next guy in line that gets the job, but as a kid, I didn’t know that. I thought that the higher up the deacon ladder somebody got, the closer to the pulpit they got. That meant I would have to be the one who gives the sermons if tragedy suddenly struck and everybody ahead of me was killed by a rogue baptismal pool electrocution and the pastoralship landed in my lap. This also makes me wonder just what I thought went on in those deacon meetings. Today, I could do it. I enjoy studying the Word, but back then my expectations were that I would have to know every name in Chronicles by heart. Let me re-pronounce that for my super-southern friends … Ca-RON-icles.    It’s not as daunting a task as I thought it might be, becoming a deacon. Don’t get me wrong, - it’s a serious appointment. I’ll have weeks that I’m the “deacon-on-call”, I have widows that are assigned to me and it’s my responsibility to see to it they have everything they need. I don’t have to worry about being called on to pray because I’m the worship leader and I’ll be doing my share of that anyway. There are other things that’ll be expected of me as well, but now I know I’m up to it. It just took a little growing up and getting my head on straight. I still have a hard time not looking at a couple of girls during the service, though. One’s my wife and the other one is my daughter, but they're never more than an arm’s reach away and I’m the one who periodically runs a finger through their hair.    So one more thing before I bring this one to a close. I promised you I’d tell you about the preacher’s daughter I was so in love with. I’ve already told you her name. It’s Alaina. She’s the reason I think I’ll always have a soft spot for Italian girls. I contacted her to get her blessing before mentioning the following story because I initially intended to keep her name out of it. I didn’t know if she’d want me calling her by her real name and I won’t give you her last name, although my peers who grew up with us will know her well. I looked her up on Facebook and messaged her. It’s the first time we’ve communicated since my days of pining for her and she was a great sport about it. In fact, I revealed a secret I’d been hiding since I was 13 years old and she told me she was honored to be such a sweet part of my memories. So let me get into it because it’s pretty cheesy in my opinion and cowardly of me to boot. Here’s a bit of backstory …    I hadn’t thought of Alaina as any more than a friend that I rarely talked to as a preteen until a dream I had one night. In the dream, Alaina and I were riding in the backseat of my mom’s car and she pulled into a parking space in front of Sky City. That’s a long forgotten chain of stores that disappeared sometime in the late eighties, I think. In the dream, I looked to my left and there was Alaina looking back at me with those big brown eyes and smiling. That’s all there was to the dream, but it was enough. To this day, I don’t have a clue as to what caused it, but I remember it like it was yesterday. Always have. From that moment on, my Sunday mornings at Grace Baptist Church in Elberton, Georgia were changed forever. I thought I was in love, but I never told her. I just pined away for several years from a distance. Well, I take that back … I told her once, but I didn’t sign my name. This is the part that I said was cheesy and more than a tiny bit embarrassing on my part.    Apparently, as is so often the case with someone who admires another from afar, eventually the tension mounted to something that could no longer be contained. That’s why one afternoon, I couldn’t take it any more and wrote a letter to Alaina, expressing my love, but I was still too shy and insecure to tell her who I was. I was living in a house about a mile from her in town and I would ride my bike past where she lived constantly, hoping to get a glimpse of her and her long, dark hair. I planned on waiting until everybody in my house was asleep and sneaking out to leave the note in her mailbox. And I did just that.    Okay, okay, you want to know what silly old thing a 13 year old boy writes in a note as a secret admirer. I guess since I’ve gotten this far, I should probably tell you.    Here’s what it said … wait for it ……..    Someone out there loves you.    That’s it. No name, no anything. Just that simple sentence, loaded with extra cheese. I slipped it into the small mailbox that was on her front porch in the middle of the night and it’s taken me 34 years to come clean about it. That’s right, I came clean. I had to if I was going to tell the story to the tens of people who listen to my podcast.    Alaina has been great about all this, Again, she said she was honored and thanked me for taking her on a trip down memory lane. She also assured me that my message asking permission to talk about this was in no way creepy because I mentioned a couple of times that I wasn’t trying to seem like Creepy McCreepers from Creepytown, USA. As for the note I left in the mailbox, she hasn’t mentioned it in our correspondence and that’s okay. She either doesn’t remember it, never got it, or doesn’t want to talk about it. And there’s no reason to. Whatever the reality, she now knows she had a secret admirer and she knows who it was. And I think that’s pretty cool. I, myself, wouldn’t change anything about how my life turned out. I’m completely head-over-hills for my bride and the sweet, musical stage babies we made together. Still, this lane of memory is one that I think will always make me smile because as cheesy as it might have been, it was innocent, honest and true. And I believe that’s the way childhood ought to be.    I’m giving you permission to share this if you liked it, even if some of my classmates get wind of it and point fingers at me for being such a dork. It’s okay … I embraced the dorkness of it all a long time ago. And if you’re ever passing through Elberton, Georgia on a Sunday morning, we’d love to have you over at First Baptist. I’m the worship leader there and now that’s also where I deac … I’m deac-ing? Deaconing … That’s where I’m a deacon! I’m Michael Blackston and after a looooong hiatus I’ll regale you all about soon, it’s good to be back in the saddle, telling you stories from my Funny, Messy, Life.

   The state of Georgia got its orders like every other state did. Our official decree was something along the lines of, “Stay in your homes for the love of all that is pure and holy. Keep yourselves barricaded behind a toilet paper fort if you’re among those who hoarded it and kept good, sane, decent folk from being able to get any. If you’re among the good, sane, decent folk who did not find it necessary to be a greedy, inconsiderate imbecile (I used the word moron at first, but changed it because it sounded mean and now you know how I really feel about it) and so find yourself without toilet paper, just do the best you can and you will have your reward in heaven. Either way, do not leave your house until the end of eternity.”    Now, you might think that this episode will be about COVID-19 and the quarantine, but nay. I only mention it because at least you probably didn’t have to be quarantined, safely hidden away from The Rona, only to be rudely attacked by another virus - one that lies in wait. One that infiltrates early in life and sits waiting for the perfect time to strike, making you an irritating, whinebag of a ninnyboy. Unlike me, you probably didn’t develop a case of the shingles.    I’m Michael Blackston and this is an excruciating episode of Funny Messy Life.   _________________________      It’s April 8th, 2020 and I didn’t feel like sitting down to write out this episode at all. The only reason I finally started was because I felt obligated to and to be honest, while you’ll not be able to tell, it’ll probably get done over time, in whatever little squirts of inspiration I can muster. It’s not because I don’t like you or don’t want to talk to you. It’s because I’m still dealing with an outbreak of shingles and not just any outbreak, oh no. Mine appeared on my face and head.    It’s now April 11th, 2020. The intro and that first little paragraph is all I was able to manage before I had to stop and do whatever it was I did. I think I laid in my hotel bed and watched a movie. That would have been the Angelina Jolie vehicle, SALT, which was okay at first, but turned into something I didn’t care for. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Shingles Face.    I’m one of the lucky ones that aren’t considered essential and yet I’m still able to work as long as monument companies still have stones for me to draw pretty pictures on. At this point, I still travel, although I’m trying to remedy that, and I’m alone. I’m alone at work and I’m alone in my hotel room, especially now that nothing’s open and there’s nowhere to go. In fact, the hotel is a very safe place and seemed to have an endless supply of toilet paper. So there I was, feeling blessed not to have to lose work - at least for the moment - and while it was boring in the hotel room, I still had a comfortable place to sleep. My one issue was a nagging little stinging place on my eyelid that I thought might be a spot of poison oak. I’d had poison oak there before when I was a boy and it ended up pretty bad, but I knew not to scratch now and it wasn’t really bothering me. I had a topical cream to put on it and I was good to go. I figured I got a spore or two there from the area behind the dumpster at the monument company I’d worked for the week before. They have no bathroom and I have to pee out back when I’m there, but poison oak and snakes are the only things I really have to watch for.    I went to bed that night, blissfully unaware of what was happening in my body and feeling very proud that I’d been so diligent about applying my topical cream, but I was awoken around 3 am by the distinct sensation that my right eyelid had made a decision to inflate like a giant red balloon. When I got up to look at my face in the mirror, I was shocked. Aghast might be a good word. I was dismayed at what I saw and a tad frightened that maybe Pennywise the Dancing Clown might suddenly appear from behind my ballooned up eye socket, asking me if I wanted to float. There was another problem, though. There was now a rash on my face, spidering out from the area of my eye and crawling like raw tentacles up my forehead and to the side, heading toward my ear.    I remember thinking, “That’s unfortunate and somewhat alarming.”    I decided my poison oak was being a serious douche and I should probably go home immediately. I figured if it got any worse, I’d be glad I went ahead and drove the five hours back while I still could.    I stopped in at the monument company on my way out to leave a note on the desk in the office and didn’t even bother to load up my equipment. I knew that when I went back to work, it would be there anyway. The note read something like this:    This is Mike. I had to leave in the middle of the night because my face is being a serious douche. I’ll explain when I come back. Who knows when that will be. I’m leaving my equipment. Please don’t sell it because I don’t think I’m going to die. I don’t think. This was Mike.    I was sure it was poison oak. I couldn’t really think of any other option that didn’t include an alien laying an egg in my eye socket, even though I did look like that might have happened and now the alien was trying to crawl out. The weird thing was that it didn’t really itch or hurt. Yet.    The next day I walked up to the medical center where I live and a nurse was waiting outside the door to take my temperature. COVID-19 procedures stated that if I was running a fever, I would have had a whole lot of complicated things to do to get seen and I was afraid with the way I looked, I might just be a little hot. Luckily, I wasn’t.    She asked me what I needed to be seen for and I pointed to my head.    “Poison oak being a jerkwad to m’face.”    She nodded, wrote down my perfectly normal temperature on a slip of paper and told me to hand it to the nurse when they called me back. In this season of our world’s history, I expected the lobby to be full, but there was only me and a couple of other people, one of which was loudly telling everyone who came in how bad a bunch of doctors they had there and we ought to be worried for our lives. Discretion and wisdom kept me from asking, “Well why are you here, then, Einstein?!”    Once I was taken back, a nurse took my temperature and glanced at me, asking the normal questions. What have you eaten recently? Are you allergic to anything? Is that some kind of weird bug crawling up your face?    Then she asked something unexpected. “Have you ever had shingles?”    That one surprised me.    “Shingles? That thing old people get that make you tell yourself I hope I never get old enough that I have to tell people ‘I got the shingles.’ Those shingles? No.”    Soon I found myself sitting in a room and before long, the doctor came in. I know this doctor very well. He’s a general practitioner, but also delivers babies. He’s delivered probably 95 percent of the population of my county and he’s been doing it since 1843. He’s an old Chinese man who speaks with broken English, but whatever he says, you can believe it. He’s seen it all.    “You have shingle,” he said when he walked in and took one look at me.    I thought he was asking me if I had shingles and I said I didn’t know.    “I know. You have shingle,” he said again and I thought to myself, OH CRAP!    He said he’d be right back and left the room, so while he was gone, I googled what to expect when battling a bout of shingles. Everything I found pretty much said the same thing, which is:    You have shingles? Oh crap. You’re in for a fun ride. You can expect in the next few days to be in some of the most unbearable pain you’ve ever experienced. Depending on where the breakout is located on your body, you will feel like that area is manifesting the darkest, most torturous bowels of hell that were originally reserved at the beginning of time for the vilest of evil.    Mine was on my face. The interweb went on to explain the situation from there.    Congratulations! You’ve broken out with shingles on your face. Shingles on your face is a real douche. Shingles attacks the nerves under your skin, usually starting around and spidering out from your eye like some jerkwad alien creature that secretes acid. Your face and head and neck and even your shoulder will feel something akin to the devil constantly scraping every tendon with the harshest grade of sandpaper and then defecating on your raw flesh with his hellish demon feces of fire. This will go on for days until the skin over the rash area has been deadened. You might think, “Oh boy! What a relief!” Ha ha ha, but that’s no relief. The rash will occasionally itch deep under the skin and the only way to really satisfy it will be to dig deep beyond the deadened nerves until you reach the place where there’s still feeling. But be careful. That’s also the place where shingles dragon babies are suckling the teats of your tender nerve endings and you’ll go shooting upward into the ceiling with agonizing screams. But don’t worry. You’re not contagious to most people, so this is something you can experience all by your lonesome. Let’s raise a glass to shingles! Here’s hoping you have a caring loved one to wait on you hand and foot because if you don’t you’re going to be in a special kind of hell. SHINGLLLLEEES!    And that’s exactly what I experienced for two or three days immediately after getting home. It’s like once I knew what it was, it had been given the green light to do its worst.    Two things happened next. First, I woke up the next morning, having hardly slept at all because of the pain, with my face swollen twice as much as before. I looked like a prize fighter who’d just gone twenty rounds. Second, I was extremely nauseated. While I was at the doctor, he had decided to give me a supplement for my diabetes meds while he was prescribing pills for the shingles. The side effects of this new supplement, I found out later, include nausea and for the next couple of days, until I figured it out and on top of the pain from the shingles, I couldn’t stand up or eat without feeling like I was gonna be sick. I had to go back to the doctor because of the nausea and the fact that now my face looked and felt like I was prepping for the role of The Elephant Man.    “Ish thsh shponshna hernpnern?” I asked the doctor, which translated from my swollen face language means, “Is this supposed to happen?”    “Swelling, yes. Nausea, no. I change the medicine.”    Once I finally got a handle on everything and the swelling started to go down, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m told some of the effects of the shingles can stay with me for quite a while, but that normally it only happens once. Unfortunately, there are cases of multiple outbreaks in people, so just understand that if that happens, I’ll know what I’m looking at early and you can bet that I’ll be self-quarantined until it’s over so you don’t have to listen to the unearthly screams.    I hope you don’t get shingles. There’s apparently a vaccine you can take and I would highly advise talking to your doctor to see if it’s right for you. I survived it, but knowing what I know  now, I definitely would have considered looking into it. I also hope you liked this episode and if you did, next time you’re on whatever platform you get your podcasts, how about giving me a quick rating and review. If nothing else, it’s a great way to let me know how I’m doing and that you’re out there. If you’d like to communicate with me, there are several ways to do that at the website, funnymessy.com or you can email me at funnymessylife@gmail.com. So until next time, I’m Michael Blackston. Thanks for letting me vent a little and joining me on another journey into my Funny Messy Life.

   The world has changed overnight. Things that only happen in the movies are playing out right before our eyes and it’s pretty surreal knowing we’re going through a major historical event. As COVID-19 continues to be a big, giant butt hole, humanity has had to learn a lot of new techniques to cope, especially when it comes to quarantine. Looking on the bright side is one of them. For instance, this pandemic may be horrible, but at least we’ve got something of our own now that we can throw in the faces of future generations like our forefathers have in the past.      “Boy, you don’t know how good you got it. Back in my day, they forced us to stay indoors … in the air conditionin’ … told us we couldn’t work for weeks and all we had to occupy us was eatin’ tater chips and layin’ around in our pajamas all day watchin’ Netflix and postin’ self-righteous memes on the Facebook!”      But for me, and maybe for you as well, I’ve found that finding stuff to keep myself entertained has brought me back to some things in my life I’ve neglected, namely my absolute passion for Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s adaptation of The Phantom Of The Opera. And that’s what this episode is about - My life with The Phantom.      I’m Michael Blackston. Join me as we open an enormous theatrical curtain on my Funny Messy Life.   _________________________      I grew up singing for audiences, and not just normal kid songs, either - songs like I’ve Been Working On The Railroad, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, or I Like Big Butts And I Cannot Lie. No, while my first official solo at age five was called, Dead Eye Dick, I quickly graduated to fancier numbers like, The Rainbow Connection and Tomorrow from ANNIE. Then I pulled out the big guns. I think I was eight when I performed Memory from CATS in a competition and I would have won first place if the judges hadn’t been such push overs and gave the win to a little girl who turned a bunch of schoolyard flips to music and called herself a “tumbler”, Halfway through her act, she did something wrong, got scared and ran off the stage, and was eventually coaxed back on. I sang flawlessly, but got second place behind tumble girl. I deserved first place and I know it because my mom and my grandmother told me so. But I’m not bitter.      Anyway, singing Memory was the first time I was exposed to the magic of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. He composed CATS and would eventually become my hero as I started writing plays and musicals.      Jump forward into my teens. Fifteen to be exact. My step-father took my mother and I to New York City for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. During the trip, my mother thought she’d surprise me with a night on Broadway - the Winter Garden Theatre, which was home to CATS. She thought I’d be elated, but alas, I was not. I was fifteen and my interests had temporarily changed from singing and performing to hunting and fishing and being the most obnoxious redneck I could possibly be. I told her I didn’t want to go see a bunch of dudes wearing tights dancing around like a bunch of sissies. I wanted to stay at the hotel while they went to the show.      Mama calmly told me that the tickets had already been purchased and I would love it and I was going and if I argued about it again, she would throw me right into the Hudson river. So I went and it was magical. It changed my mind about theatre right then and my world went from wanting to fish in the rain to wanting to sing in the rain.      Not long after that trip, my step-father surprised us again with a package of tickets at the Fabulous Fox Theatre in Atlanta. The shows included: The Buddy Holly Story, Annie, CATS again, and The Phantom Of The Opera. This time I WAS excited, but I didn’t know just how affected I would be after seeing Phantom. I think the finale scene where The Phantom is holding Christine’s dress and she rides away in a boat with Raoul and The Phantom wails in despair, “It’s over now - the music of the night” … that moment might have been the first time I cried at a show. It still gets me every time I hear it. It’s my favorite moment in the play because when the actor playing Erik - that’s The Phantom’s name - gets it right, it’ll tear out your heart and leaving you bleeding in the mezzanine … or the orchestra seats if you spent the big bucks.      From that moment on, everything was POTO, which is what cool Phans sometimes call it and is easier to keep typing out instead of Phantom Of The Opera. Phans, by the way and in this case, is correctly spelled with a PH.      First, I went out and bought the original London cast soundtrack with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman. I learned it note for note and walked around everywhere singing it. There was a used bookstore in town and one afternoon I found a large paperback that not only went into detail about the creation of the show, but had a step by step photo diagram of The Phantom’s makeup application and in the back was the full libretto. When that book caught my eye, I probably screamed like a fan girl, maybe cried a little, and held the book to my chest like it was an original manuscript of the Bible. You couldn’t have plucked it away from me if the entire female portion of the cast of CATS was just outside the window in their skin tight leotards, grinding away to Mr. Mistopholes.      I read that book cover to cover several times before lending it to a friend who never gave it back. I should have known better. In fact, let me jot ordering it again right onto my to-do list while I’m thinking about it.      For most of my adulthood, you could count on three loves in my life behind God and family. Those were Theatre in general, University of Georgia Football, and POTO. I needed nothing else. I had my Phantom picture frame, I had my official mask I bought from The Really Useful Group that wasn’t exact;y right had too much shine, but I didn’t care. I had my two revues that I performed Phantom numbers in wearing said mask … I was happy.      I dressed as The Phantom every single Halloween until I overheard someone say, “Here comes Michael dressed as The Phantom - again.” After that I gave it a year off, then dressed as The Phantom the next Halloween. There’s something about becoming that character for lovers of the musical that inspires passion and intensity. I never felt that way dressed as Dracula or Batman or a Hooters girl.      But there was a time that I lost my way. I had one kid, then another. I started writing plays and novels and became all consumed with those endeavors until Phantom slowly faded into the rest of the craziness around me.Instead of being a beacon lighting the path to a happy place, it was just another boat lost in the rocky sea of my life.      Then the pandemic hit and suddenly I was finding extra hours that needed filling. Actually, two things happened. The pandemic, yeah, but I also finished my second novel and began my current project, which is finishing my own musical. I started composing and needed something special in the way of inspiration.      One night, right at the beginning of when everyone was being told to stay home and only poke your head out the door to see how cold it is or if we’re going to have six more weeks of COVID, I saw my hero - Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber - videoing himself from quarantine, playing All I Ask Of You from Phantom. I couldn’t believe it. I was getting to see the man perform his own work from his home on his piano. It was one of the dearest things I’d ever experienced and suddenly the light was back, beckoning me to my own piano. Since this reawakening, I’ve made more progress on my show than I ever have. I joined a group on Facebook for Phantom lovers and everyone there has been amazing and helps to keep my creative juices flowing.      I don’t know, I guess everyone has that one specific thing. I have other loves in my life. I can’t seem to stop watching The Office from end to end, then starting right back over again. And there are plenty of other things too, but there’s something special about The Phantom. His deep, consuming love for Christine. His secret lair on the lake beneath the Paris Opera House - a lake that really does exist. The gothic, hauntingly beautiful melodies that pierce you to the marrow from the moment the main theme erupts at the beginning of the show when the mountain of a chandelier begins to rise from the stage and hovers ominously and foreboding above the audience. The knowledge that the time will come when that chandelier will come crashing down, making good on the deadly promises of The Phantom. It’s all a perfect experience that takes you in and makes you want to be there … to really be there.      So while this episode wasn’t necessarily very funny or messy, it does represent an integral part of my life. I plan to hold tightly to The Phantom from now on, because I never want it to be over - the music of the night.      If you enjoyed this episode, there’s a lot more you can listen to and hopefully a lot more to come. All you have to do is subscribe. Most folks do that via Apple podcasts, but it’s available wherever you listen to your podcasts and you can even subscribe at the website, funnymessy.com. Maybe you have a Phantom or theatre story of your own … I’d truly love to hear it and we can be pals. You can get in touch with me at the website in the comments sections of the blog, from the contact page, or if you’d prefer to email me, it’s funnymessylife@gmail.com.  

   I’ve mentioned several times over the span of this podcast that I make my living as an artist. Mostly, I etch on black granite gravestones, but I haven’t talked much about the fact that I dabble in several other artistic mediums. My entire life - as far back as I can remember - has revolved around some form of creativity and for the most part, it’s a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, nothing’s all pros and no cons. When people make the comment, I wish I was creative, I want to ask, “Really? Because it ain’t all pretty landscapes, standing ovations, and sipping from your tea glass with one pinkie out.” So while I won’t lie and tell you I’d change a thing, because I love being the creative type, I have to admit that there are plenty of drawbacks to being an artist as well and those are what I want tell you about in this episode.    I’m Michael Blackston and this is what covers the canvas of my Funny Messy Life.   _________________________      Most artists I know realized they had the skill to create early in life. It was the same way with me and I was one of about four or five kids in my grade who everybody knew could draw. It didn’t take long after the first instances of public artistry that some of the frustrations started to rear their ugly heads. First, a kid who is just learning to find their artistic groove wants to draw or paint what he or she wants to draw or paint. The concept of selling my work hadn’t crossed my mind in fifth grade. All I knew was that I had a deep, intense desire to draw The Incredible Hulk over and over again. And it was alright when Kenny Parker started watching over my should and asked what I was drawing. It was kind of cool to have an audience who admired my work. It was not alright when Kenny Parker started making suggestions.    “You know what you oughta do?”    I didn’t answer him because I did know what I oughta do - exactly what I wanted to do. But Kenny Parker answered his own question.    “You oughta give him machine guns.”    I think that this might have been the first time in my artistic life that I realized people are stupid. The Hulk didn’t use machine guns because he had muscles and he destroyed everything with his fists. I knew it, Kenny Parker knew it, and everybody else in fifth grade knew it. Bruce Banner never warned his enemies by showing them a couple of M-16s. He told them not to overly irk him and that if they did, indeed, spark his ire, the enemy in question would find no fun sport in his resulting aggression. I guessed I’d have to remind Kenny Parker of that.    “Hulk don’t need guns.”    “Yeah, but it’d be cool. Draw him some guns.”    “No, Kenny. Leave me alone.”    “What’s that on his chest?”    “It’s pectoral muscles, Kenny.”    “It looks like he’s got boobs.”    “It’s not boobs. It’s muscles.”    “Hey Mike, you know what you should do? Draw him a Hulkmobile.”    “No. It’s my drawing.”    “Fine. Mrs. Ayers, Michael’s drawing boobs!”    I had to explain to my teacher that I wasn’t drawing naked people. I hadn’t learned how to draw pectoral muscles well yet, so yes - Hulk’s chest looked a bit like the naked chest of an 80 year old woman and I was asked not to draw anybody - Hulks or old women alike - with their shirts off. Incidentally, later on Kenny Parker was caught drawing naked people on the bathroom stall and they looked suspiciously like the Hulk. So that experience was also the first time I encountered censorship and plagiarism.    I’ve never met an artist who hasn’t had to deal with someone telling them what they ought to do, but that’s not the only common thing.    I frequently have to do layouts in pencil for customers to approve before rendering their final piece and since that happens a lot while I’m on the road, I have to find a cozy booth in a restaurant so I can work over a glass of ice tea or a cup of coffee. Without fail, I’ll get the obligatory compliment about the work from a stranger who has built up the courage to ask if they can see what I’m doing, immediately followed by something along the lines of, My granddaughter can draw like that. The need for people to tell me all about their lives without you having asked them is uncanny, which is why I thought, when I asked listeners of this podcast to contact me and tell me their own stories so I could put them in an episode, people would jump at the chance. Crickets. Crickets is what I got. Anyway, the stranger is never done. They’ve opened a door and I’m too polite to ask them to leave me alone. I get to smile and nod and encourage their granddaughter, or nephew, or cousin Bertha who makes macaroni art, to keep up the good work. My granddaughter draws the cutest little naked superheroes. You know at first, the men looked like they had boobs, but now she can draw muscles. I try to giove her advice, but she doesn’t seem to like it very much.    Go figure. At least from my experience, she’s on the right track.    I find it interesting that there is a universal comment non-artists will make to explain just how far the distance is in the gap between you and them when it comes to creating an image on the surface of something. They always watch me for a little bit and before long, they can’t help themselves. Maybe you’ve said it, too.    I can’t even draw a stick man.    It happens every time.    Sometimes they tell me they can’t even draw a stick man, BUT their aunt Hilda’s gardener’s stepson can draw anything he sees.    On occasion, someone will actually seek advice to tell their loved one who aspires to be an artist.    I’ll usually tell them to learn how to draw pectoral muscles because otherwise, people will just think you’re drawing boobs.    You learn a lot about people and realistic expectations if you’re an artist and let others see your work. I used to get excited when random onlookers would ask questions like, Do you do private commissions? or How much do you charge for something like that?    The learning curve was a quick one because I’ve come to realize that when most people ask you stuff like that, they’re usually doing one of three things:   Just trying to make conversation Genuinely think for approximately 2.63 seconds that they might be interested in buying art from you, but they also like buying stuff from other people, like As Seen On TV stuff off the shelf at Walmart, Stuff they actually see on TV and can’t live without, beer, cigarettes, and chia pets. All stuff that will seem more important later in the day than a piece of your artwork. Or they’re a fellow artist who can’t figure out what to charge for their own work and want you to tell them.           That’s what business cards are for. I simply tell them that every piece ids different and I charge according to what’s needed to be done. I then hand them a card with my number on it and tell them that when the timer comes to call me and we’ll discuss it. But they’ll never call. They’ll lay the card in the junk catcher compartment of their car and won’t see it again until they need to fetch something with a stiff edge to pick out the piece of meat that got stuck in their teeth. Come to think of it, that’s a waste of my good business cards, so from now on, I’ll print out the ones I hand to those people at home on an old roll of paper towels that fell in the dish water, then dried out, but I never had the guts to use.    Of course if you hang around the art community long, you’ll run into a varied array of artist personalities. There’s the insecure artist who could hold gallery shows, but thinks their art is crap. There’s the artist whose art is crap, but thinks it’s great and holds gallery shows, the artist who flits from style to style and medium to medium depending on what’s selling best at the moment at the craft shows, the snooty artist who uses words like passe and kitsch about other people’s art. And there are plenty of artists who create because it’s what drives the beat of their heart. I like to think that’s who I am, although I suspect I’ve been a touch of all the others at some point. I try to respect any style of art that’s rendered as long as it’s done to create something that moves either the artist themselves or the viewer.    I’ve camped out in the area of the visual arts this whole time, but I’m one of those people who uses the artsy side of my brain completely and apparently never developed the other side. I can do basic math and figure out some things based on formulas I memorized, but throw a letter in with numbers and I’ll run screaming from the room and go find a pretty picture to paint. I sing, I act, I write, I paint, I draw, I direct (which is an art all by itself), and I’m a good public speaker. That’s enough to occupy my time with something for the rest of my life and I’ll be happy if it earns me a dollar or a smile. Either way, I’m happy.    And by the way, if you see one of my business cards floating around in a gas station toilet, how about boiling it and handing to the next person who asks if you know a good artist. Maybe they have something stuck in their teeth.     Until next time, I’m Michael Blackston. Thanks for joining me for an artsy fartsy look into my Funny Messy Life.

   As I sit in a fast food restaurant creating this episode, my son is 15 years old and wants to drive everywhere. In a few months, he’ll be going for his driver’s license and I’ll begin the era of parenting when my heart thumps a million beats per second every time he’s out on the road by himself. And he’s doing really well. He takes Driver’s Ed right now as well, so he’s getting plenty of practice, but he prefers me to go out with him to his mother, who apparently goes into a screaming panic whenever he makes the tiniest mistake, like crossing into the oncoming lane when there’s oncoming traffic and that oncoming traffic is a tractor trailer. I’m cooler in those situations and give constructive criticism like, Should probably get back in your lane, instead of doing like Kayla, who would grab the handle above the door and scream, WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! I understand it, but I’m the one who taught my wife to drive and there are a couple of quips from those days I thought you might find interesting. And there’s one from her mother’s driving days that was funny enough to make it into my first novel. I’m Michael Blackston and this is a fast and furious episode of my Funny Messy Life. _________________________    I just remembered I’ve never told you how my wife and I met, so that’s coming soon It’s a cool story that makes women-folk go “AWWWW!”, but for now, we’re going to jump a little further beyond that about 30 minutes into our first date. We’d been talking for a while, but we’d never been in the same car together. I picked her up for that date and headed into town for dinner  and a movie. I was driving an AMC Spirit. It was tan and looked a lot liker a Pinto, but probably didn’t drive as well. It had about 800,000 miles on it. My dad had given it to my sister as a gift when her car died, but she couldn’t steer it because the wheel was like trying to turn an anchor that had been planted in a block of cement. It was hard for me, but Steph is a small woman and she preferred to drive something that didn’t require her to only drive in a straight line. So I took the car and that’s what I picked up Kayla in for our first date.    We were nervous heading into town. We only knew each other from the telephone - a sneaky tidbit I’ll tell you more about in the How We Met episode - so I don’t think there was that much being said during the drive. My mind’s eye remembers a lot of sticky sweet giggling and me trying to look as macho as I could. The one thing I’ll never forget is being suddenly berated by my would-be bride.    I could show you the piece of road because it scared me and honestly, she still fusses at me for the same thing to this day.    I had found a voice and was telling her something - probably trying to solidify myself in her eyes as Mr. Macho Big Shot Impressive Hunk Of  A Man - when she suddenly yelled at me. I had gotten a little animated with my story and when I do that, my hands fly around like they’ve got an infestation of bats inside them and those bats have been disturbed.    “KEEP BOTH HANDS ON THE WHEEL!” she yelled at me. “Never take your hands off the wheel when I’m in the car!”    “Sorry.”    I put both hands at 10 and 2 from then on and had to work up the courage to carry on a conversation.    So I know how Noah feels when he says she’s a nervous passenger. In fat, she drives 99% of the time that we’re in the car together and only gives up the wheel when she has to. Which is hardly ever. She claims it’s because she gets sick, but I wonder if there’s a little bit of her being in the car with me for so many years now … me and my bat hands. But she’s had her moments too.    I taught her to drive and not only that, but I taught her in a manual transmission. My wife drives a stick as well as anybody, but that wasn’t the scariest part of teaching her to drive. Her problem was that she loves animals so dang much, especially a kitty.    By the way, I had to stop after that last part and leave the fast food restaurant because I needed to get back to work. Now I’m continuing the story after work in a table service restaurant and yes - I know I have a problem. At least at the fast food restaurant, which will remain nameless because I don’t advertise for free, but it rhymes with Nubway, I had a salad. My diabetes dictates that I should incorporate some leafy greens into my diet and also a crap-ton of Caesar dressing and croutons. The report I read didn’t exactly have those last two things in it, but I believe that to be an omission typo. At this restaurant, who’s name rhymes with Larfield’s, I am not having a salad. Let’s just leave it at that, except to say that I ordered extra sour cream.    Anyway … driving lessons and kitties.    I started my wife out with a few easy, non-threatening jaunts around my neighborhood. It’s a peaceful neighborhood where my parents still live to this day and you can walk around all safe without fearing for your life. It’s even a place where kitty cats and puppy dogs gallivant about, just happily licking their paws and smelling butts with reckless abandon.    It was one of these paw licking kitties that caught the attention of my wife as she was learning to drive. The cat was paying us no attention because it was all the way across the yard from the road, up next to its house. But Kayla noticed it and suddenly we were no longer on the asphalt. There was grass in front of us and a cat that suddenly did notice us as we barreled toward it.    Okay that’s a little bit of an exaggeration. She did point the car toward the cat and veer off the road, but me grabbing the handle above the window and screaming, WE’RE GONNA DIE! brought her quickly back to the reality that she could not at that moment and from behind the wheel of a metal death machine, pet the kitty.    Why would I even make such an exaggeration? Because of this last nugget from when Kayla’s mom was a presence on our roads.    Hazel. I need to dedicate an entire episode to stories about Hazel, but I’ll let Kayla and her sister provide me with the content because … well, you could make a movie about Hazel. She’s gone to be with the Lord now and I can only hope she has a way to listen to this from one end of her kitchen table in Heaven, probably nursing a cup of strong coffee.   As the story goes, she was driving somewhere and something caught her eye. She was passing a local cemetery and there were three or four workers filling in a grave by hand. As most good southerners would have, Hazel thought to herself, I wonder who died.    Now, after I heard this story from Hazel herself, who told it and every other story like nobody ever could or ever will be able to again, I started to understand where Kayla got the tendency to point the car in whatever direction her head was turned. I think you can probably see where this is going.    When a person sees other persons digging a grave by hand, I would think it’s logical that they would find it more interesting than the other stuff around them like the speed limit and the road in front of them. And that seems to be consistent with how Hazel felt about the situation. According to her, out of nowhere, she started to see through her windshield, shovels flying in the air and she heard lots of yelling. She barely realized she had turned off the road and was heading through the cemetery, straight for the grave workers, in time to stop before she drove the car right into the fresh hole. It’s a good thing she did stop because into the fresh hole is where the workers had jumped to avoid getting run over.    Whenever Hazel told that story, she’d get beside herself and tag it with her signature cackle. The grave workers that day hadn’t found it so funny, but Hazel sure did and I can see her now, sitting behind the wheel, cackling like she did while they climbed cussing out of the hole and picked up their shovels.    Like I said, that one made its way into my first novel, Mr. Long Said Nothing, with the difference being that the character influenced by Hazel wasn’t alone and it was a horse and buggy she almost plunged into the grave.    I’ve had close calls of my own and maybe one day I’ll tell you those. I already told you about totaling my Hyundai in a rainstorm, but there are others, like the close one that fixed my little red wagon when it comes to driving sleepy.    For now, I’ll leave it there. I just pray safe travels for you, always and tell you to remember to keep both hands on the wheel … at least when my wife is in the car.    I’m Michael Blackston. Until next time, thanks for taking a drive down memory lane with me and my Funny Messy Life.

   I love to tell stories, especially in writing, and if I can use the responses from the stuff I’ve created as a gauge, I’d say I’m pretty darn good at it. I’m not tooting my own horn here. All a writer has to go by is audience response, but there might not have been a response to give if it hadn’t been for one woman - my eighth grade English teacher, Mrs. Thornton. I’d like to thank her for the way she encouraged me, but I can’t. She’s not with us anymore and I waited too late to tell her just how much her hard-nosed approach made a difference in my life.    I’m Michael Blackston and this is an important part of my Funny Messy Life.    I wasn’t a great student. I wasn’t even a good student, but I had something most prepubescent boys care nothing about. Potential.    My mother was an elementary school teacher for most of her working life and so in the small, southern town I grew up in, all the other teachers knew me. I was Brenda’s son - the one whose summer breaks were cut short because I was made to go a week early and help mom at the beginning of the year to get her room ready during pre-planning and at the end of the year to clean up during post-planning. I was always made to help the other teachers too, by doing things like pushing loads of textbooks back to their storage places on those carts that had two levels and always had one wheel that just spun around like your messed up buddy sometimes randomly did when he was on a sugar high, and all the time the other wheels did their jobs.    By the time I got to the eighth grade, most of the teachers in the school system knew Brenda’s boy and I got used to that. I had a deeper relationship with them because I helped them and I think they had a little sympathy for me because while the other kids were starting their summer breaks or getting in their last week of it, I was pushing that stupid cart around the empty halls of the elementary school, weaving that huge thing around with my tiny seven year old body like I’d had too much to drink the night before, and all because of that one rogue wheel.    I used the fact that they all liked me to my advantage and because mom was a single mother with stacks of papers to grade every night and couldn’t stay on top of me and my homework, I got into the habit of being what we in America call, A Dang Slacker. And I got away with it for a while. I sort of feel like I got a little extra consideration at times for being Brenda’s Boy. That was, until eighth grade, when I was assigned to Mrs. Thornton’s English class. She wasn’t mean; she wasn’t unreasonable. She just expected the best out of her students and would accept nothing less. She was a strong black woman who commanded the room. When she spoke, it was with confidence and articulation. She intimidated me.    Mrs. Thornton knew that if you allow children to function at their lowest level, they’ll grow up to function at their lowest level. If my mind wandered in class, she’d call me out. If I was bored and just stopped paying attention, she’d call me out. I couldn’t stand the woman.    I’m sure I had hurtful names for her and said things behind her back to my friends that made me feel good at the time, while she stood by, fully aware that I was doing it, and she wouldn’t give one, as we say here in the good ol’ U.S. or A., Tee-Total Rip.    Why?    Because she cared a lot about us. She wanted the best for her students, no matter what it took and no matter what we thought about her. We were children and in the long run, there might be one or two of us who realized how much she did care and would appreciate it. I wish I could tell her that I’m one of those kids, but I can’t. I waited too late.    Despite Mrs. Thornton’s and my mom’s best efforts, my eighth grade year was mostly an exercise in me being what we red blooded, southern Americans call, a Jim-Flammin’ Iggit. By the end of the year, I had nearly failing scores in all of my classes except for Chorus. My Math and English scores were failing, but I had one last hope of bringing my grade up enough to pass in Mrs. Thornton’s class. She was waiting on a term paper she said I hadn’t turned in. I actually thought I had turned it in, but it was nowhere to be found and she informed me that if she didn’t get it by the deadline, my English grade would be posted below 70. We could fail one class and still advance to the next grade, but failing two would hold me back to repeat the eighth grade.    There was no way I was going to get my math grade up. They might still be showing that grade to curious gawkers for a quarter apiece at fairs. But I dug in my heels about the term paper. I told her I had turned it in and she told me I had not. If you’re familiar with the attitude of what we Yankee Doodles Dandies call, The Male Eighth Grader, you know they’re stubborn and I wasn’t an exception.    I didn’t do the paper and I had three reasons: #1. I was a male eighth grader and I knew everything, #2. I was a male eighth grader and I was lazy, and #3. I fully expected to get that Brenda’s Boy credit.    When the report cards came out, I opened mine up, already planning my crazy escapades of the summer, and I started to cry. There were all of my scores - Chorus was a bold, high A, Math was failing and I knew it would be, all the others but one were passing. Barely, but passing. All but one. English. It was a failing grade, just as I had been told it would be, and I was figuratively  hit in the face with what we around my grandma’s house call, A Big Ol’ Heapin’ of I Told Ya So!    Mama asked me what was wrong, but she already knew. She’d had a conversation with Mrs. Thornton before I got my report card and she was fully aware of everything, including what was to come next.    “I faaaaaiillled! Mama, I have to repeat eighth grade! WAHHHHHH!”    Mama waited for me to calm down and asked if I turned in my term paper like I was supposed to. I told her I had, but Mrs. Thornton lost it. Mama asked if I had rewritten it to make sure Mrs. Thornton got a copy on time and I screamed something to the effect of …    “She hates me and she lost it the first time - probably on purpose - and I turned it in and it’s not fair to make me write a new one because it was her fault and she lost it and she hates me and she’s always been mean to me since the first day of school and I didn’t know why and I’m telling the principle and she’s gonna get fired and … WAAAAAHHHHH!”    Mama calmly explained that Mrs. Thornton wasn’t to blame for any of this. I hadn’t kept up my homework, I hadn’t studied like I was supposed to, so I failed a lot of my tests. I didn’t pay attention in class and if I had done right, I probably would have passed even without turning in the term paper. She reminded me that I’d been warned this would happen and that Mrs. Thornton had been more than fair by even giving me the chance to rewrite it.    After a while, she also told me the plan going forward and I couldn’t believe my ears.    Mrs. Thornton had called mama and told her she’d give me one last chance. I was to come to her classroom during post-planning the next week and rewrite my term paper. She would read it and if I followed the guidelines for the paper, she would give me a grade one point above failing so that I could go to the ninth grade.    I rode my bike from the house to the school the next Monday morning and went to Mrs. Thornton’s class. She was bent over a stack of paperwork she had to complete to start her own summer break and she looked up from that when I walked in.    “Have a seat at your desk, Michael,” she told me and pointed to the spot where I’d slacked off all year long. She brought some paper and a pencil with her, along with a printout of the expected guidelines for the work. “If you’ll focus, it shouldn’t take you long,” she said, clearly disappointed that it had come to this for one of her students. She also knew that I blamed her for losing the paper and to this day, I still think I turned it in.    I started to write, but I couldn’t think. All I could do was dwell on the fact that there were woods to be explored, bikes to be ridden, and games of pretend Rambo to be played. I got madder and madder, until finally I found the courage to just ask Mrs. Thornton right out.    “Why don’t you like me?”    I think it surprised her and she got back up from her desk again to come sit in one of the smaller ones close to mine.    “Why do you think I don’t like you?”    I hadn’t planned the conversation past the initial question, so I stalled for a minute, but eventually came up with something. “You’ve been mean to me all year. Embarrassed me in front of the class, you’re making me do this paper again when I promise I turned it in.”    “Where did you put the first one?”    “I laid it on your desk.”    “Where on my desk?”    “Right in the middle.”    “Mmm hmm,” she mumbled and walked back over to her desk, taking something off it. She brought the thing to me and presented it atop of the paper I was trying to write. “Do you remember when I showed this to the whole class?”    What she had brought over was a tray, labelled boldly on the front. Term Papers. I shook my head that I did not remember.it.    “I showed this tray to the whole class and asked you each to place your papers in it. I said it was very important and that if you didn’t, I might not see it. It may have gotten mixed up with other things on my desk and I may even run across it one day, but you didn’t follow instructions and that’s not my fault, is it?”    “No ma’am.”    I’ve always had a problem paying attention. I was never diagnosed with ADHD, but I imagine if I had ever been tested for it, the results would have been posted right next to my math grade at the carnival. The doctors probably would have said something to my mother like, “Ms. Blackston, we think your son would benefit from medication.” If she asked which medication, they’d reply, “All of them.”    Mrs.Thornton had learned that about me and I think because of it - and a little bit of the Brenda’s Boy thing - she knew I struggled. But the biggest thing was that she believed in me. I realized early in life that I liked to write and some of that made its way out of me over the course of the year. And that’s what she told me.    “Michael, you’re here today getting another chance because I’m impressed by you. You’ve got a real talent for writing and I don’t want to see it go to waste. I’m not going to pass you without you rewriting this paper because I’ve seen what you’re capable of and I want you to see it too. I want you to understand the value of hard work and to reap the rewards only when you’ve completed the task. You’re a good writer and I’ve not been mean to you this year, I’ve been tough because I see something in you. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have bothered to call you out. I wanted you to get it. I don’t hate you. In fact, I like you very much.”    Now, I don’t care who you are or what kind of attitude you throw out there, if someone says that to you, it’s gonna leave an imprint on your life. Nobody had ever told me they actually liked my writing before then and something Mrs. Thornton knew was inside me erupted forth and from that moment, I gave everything I had to my writing.    I finished the paper and she passed me into the ninth grade. I wish I could tell you that my talk with Mrs. Thornton moved me to become a superior student overall, but it didn’t. All through high school, I was what we writers call, Stubborn As A Mule. But I did take it seriously every time I was given a writing assignment and I excelled in those classes. I was on a mission because suddenly I loved Mrs. Thornton. It’s hard not to love someone who inspires you and ignites a fire of passion within you for something.    This podcast comes to you courtesy of that passion. I tried to record a few of these by just writing down a few bullet points and even flying by the seat of my pants without much of a plan, but it never felt right. I always came back to writing the episode all the way out because it’s what I do and I love it. I went through a time of not writing much, but I came back to it and at this recording, I’ve finished two novels and two plays, with more on the horizon and I’m just getting started. I owe that to one teacher who, in her wisdom and love for her students, refused to accept anything but the best from us. I wish I could tell her that, but I waited too late.    You know what? I’ll tell her anyway.    Thank you, Mrs. Thornton.    I love you.

   I work in the death industry. That’s the way I put it when I don’t feel like going into detail about what I do for a living and would rather you left me alone about it. It’s not very often that I have to give that as an answer because I usually like to talk to people about my job. But sometimes it’s been a tough day and all I want to think about are cuddly puppies and cheese steak sandwiches, so if you ask me what I do, I’ll reply, “I work in the death industry,” and that’ll probably end the conversation. But not always. In this episode, we won’t talk too much about what I do for a living, but because of my vocation, I hear some strange stories and I also frequently think about how my own passing will be handled. I’m Michael Blackston and this is my Funny, Messy, Life.    ___________________________________    Because I etch pretty pictures on gravestones for a living, and by the way, that seems like a decently short answer to give as well and isn’t as creepy, people will sometimes ask what my own tombstone will look like, whether I’ll be buried or cremated, etc. We’ll get to that in a minute. Right now, I want to discuss something that seems to be a growing trend in the funeral game and that is something called, Extreme Embalming.     I remember first hearing about it on the radio and checking it out, then saying to myself, “Self, that would make a funny topic for the podcast,” so I wrote it down in a note app on my phone and promptly forgot about it. There was probably a cuddly puppy or a cheese steak sandwich nearby or a cuddly puppy WITH a cheese steak sandwich nearby, which brings to question what I would do to get the sandwich away from a puppy who would be very eager to eat a cheese steak and how far I would go to wrench it from the little thing’s jaws. Would I hurt the puppy because I’m bigger? Would I coax it to let go of the sandwich with old fries from under the seat of my car? Would I just gnaw on the other end until me and the puppy met in the middle like the spaghetti scene from Lady And The Tramp? You can see how my mind works and why I might forget about the Extreme Embalming topic for a while.    But I’m back to it and if you’re wondering what it is and don’t feel like googling it yourself, then stay with me. My initial reaction was, “That’s gross and stupid and dumb and gross!” My second reaction was, “That’s not entirely different from something they used to do in the old days.” My third reaction was, “I’d probably try the cold fries from under the seat first.”    Extreme embalming is the practice of normally embalming a body, but instead of placing the body in a coffin with hands folded and eyes closed so they look peaceful and at rest like decent people, the family chooses to create a scenario for the viewing and sets up the body of the deceased in an interesting and whimsical pose as if they were still alive and having one hum-dinger of a time. This is a real thing!    Did you hear me? This is a real thing!    Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:    Uncle Walt has passed. He was old and he went peacefully, but he was also a maverick and Danger was his middle name. Uncle Walt had been a rodeo cowboy in his heyday. Perhaps the family feels like this is an occasion for an Extreme Embalming and so when you walk into the funeral home, you aren’t met with the fragrance of flowers, old lady’s perfume, and a casket at the end of the room with people somberly giving their condolences. No, it’s a rodeo with hay bales and ropes and barrels with goofy clowns hiding in them. And over in the corner, because Uncle Walt was a bull rider, there’s a mechanical bull like you see in honky tonk cowboy bars, going wide open. Hollers of “YEEEEE HAAAWWW!” and “RIDE  ‘EM, COWBOY!” or maybe even “GITTALONG, LITTLE DOGGIE!” pierce through the crowd full of mourners. But you don’t get a chance to ride the bull. Oh no, that’s a privilege reserved for just one man. Uncle Walt. He’s been strapped to the mechanical bull so he don’t go flying off and his right arm is stuck high up in the air holding his hat. Uncle Walt is flopping around on that mechanical bull the whole time - just as stiff as a board, but holding on to that thing for dear … well, I would say life, but … you know, and flailing around to and fro like a champion because the bolts they used to screw him on are bigguns. In my sick mind, I hear the mortician in my head stepping back after tightening the bolts and saying, “That ain’t goin’ nowhere.”    You can find pictures of some of these scenes online if you’ve got the stomach for it and I guess I can understand the sentiment. Like I said, there was a time that something akin to this was a normal practice. In the Victorian era, when photography was brand new, people realized that if they took a photo of their deceased loved ones before they were buried, they could have one last thing to remember them by. Before cameras, if you wanted a picture of somebody after they died, you had to get an artist to draw them.    “Call the doctor! And while y’uns is at it, fetch cousin Ruby. She draws good!”    In my line of work, I’ve seen several modern day photos of bodies in caskets taken at the funeral home. But back in the day, they didn’t just take a pic right before the lid was closed on the coffin. They posed Granny in her favorite rocking chair and put the photo in an album filled with other photos just like it. They even had a name for albums like that - The Book of the Dead - and once again, if you have the nerve, Google will happily show you some photos. Just search Victorian Book of the Dead. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when you can’t sleep tonight. And you can’t blame the cheese steak.   I don’t see the need of having my body Embalmed Extremely. I won’t be doing that to any of my loved ones, either. But don’t think for a second that I haven’t thought out what my scene might look like. After all, I’m also a playwright and creating scenes is something I do. So if it becomes a law that Extreme Embalming MUST be done at every funeral, here is what I’m asking my family to do at my viewing …    I want there to be a living room setting with a big, comfy couch. On the wall is the largest flat screen TV you can get at the time and on that TV is a Georgia Bulldog football game. We better be playing a good team and we better be winning. I want to be sitting in the middle of the couch, dressed from head to toe in UGA gear. I want people to be tossing a football around the room and at least every two and a half minutes, whoever is holding the ball has to strike the Heisman pose. If they don’t a safety will be awarded to somebody the person holding the ball will have to punt.    On my right hand, which is raised like Uncle Walt’s because I’m cheering for my team, is an enormous, red, foam #1 finger. In my left hand is a cheese steak. Sitting next to me is the bulldog puppy I just took the cheese steak from. There is to be a bowl of Cadbury Creme Eggs on the coffee table in front of me and several other bowls of assorted chips and dips. The game should be one from before November 20, 2011 because I want the sound on the TV turned all the way down and a radio in the room blaring the call of the game by Larry Munson. Now that I think of it, I want it to be the Buck Belue to Lindsay Scott RUN LINDSAY, RUN! win over Florida. At halftime, I want Bulldawg Bite played by the Redcoat Marching Band.   Seriously, though, I do have a plan. I want to be cremated and I want to build and etch my own urn. It’ll be black granite and I’ll etch things pertaining to my life and loves on all four sides. But it won’t hold all of my ashes - only one third of them. I want the other two thirds handled in a special way     I want one third of my ashes mixed into paints and a painting created by an artist. I want the last third mixed into ink and a hardcover copy of my first book, Mr. Long Said Nothing, printed and encased in glass to be handed down to future generations of Blackstons.    Yep, I recognize that’s kind of morbid and probably stupid expensive, but in my line of work, you get a little numb when it comes to these things. I guess if it’s too expensive to to that stuff, my next of kin could go to the Dollar Tree and pick up a cheap glass to throw my funky dust in - it won’t matter to me anyway. I know where I’m going and you wouldn’t be able to drag me back if you wanted to.    Just … please, don’t bolt me to a mechanical bull.

   I’m a guy and guys have lots of different things about them that make them unique. There is one universal thing most guys have in common, though, and that is a deep love and appreciation for the comic form known as Bathroom Humor. There are occasionally women I’ll run into who understand the genius of this art form and my wife is not one of them. I will mention a lady a little later on who would go toe to toe with any man or boy when it comes to the intricacies of the humble fart, but for now, I have a story to tell that I teased several episodes back. You see, there is no better bathroom humor than humor that actually begins in a bathroom, so now I shall regale you with the time I peed on my leg. I’m Michael Blackston and this is Funny Messy Life. ____________________      It starts with The Statler Brothers. Growing up in the 1980s with parents and family who favored country music, my wife fell in love with the tight harmonies of The Statlers. She didn’t force their music on me when we started dating because she thought most people who liked them were already taking Metamucil everyday and getting letters from the likes of AARP and Back In The Day Weekly. She didn’t realize that I also like sweet, sweet harmonies, super high tenors, and basses so deep you can feel it in your pants. After a while, she found this out and we spent many hours in the car listening to them.    You can imagine the glee on Kayla’s face when I told her I’d gotten us box seats to see the Statlers at the Georgia Theatre in Athens - you guessed it … Georgia - for something we were celebrating, Probably her birthday, our anniversary, or maybe in those days, the fact that we hadn’t gotten a collection call about a late bill that week, which would make it seem frivolous to buy concert tickets if that were the case. Nevertheless, she was overjoyed at the prospect of hearing those pants punching bass lines live.    The night of the concert arrived and my bride and I put on our nice clothes - we call them our Go To Church clothes in the south - because we had box seats and we didn’t want the hoity-toity people around us to be able to tell we were driving a car the finance company was chasing us to repossess.    Oh look, Rupert. It appears we have the dregs of humanity in our amidst. Shall I fan their stink in the other direction?    Oh, do, Bedilia. I simply can’t fathom the thought of breathing the same air.  Fa Fa Fa Fa!    Church clothes it was with a touch of haughtiness to boot - xomething my grandma would have  called Puttin’ on airs. Kayla wore a dress and I wore a button down shirt - freshly pressed - and light tan slacks. My hair was parted perfectly and since Kayla had long locks back then, I assume they blew beautifully in the breeze around her face like the golden halo of an angel. (Actually, her hair is more reddish brown than golden, but I’m painting a mentsal picture here.)   We got to our seats and tried our best to look like we belonged in the same room with Rupert and Bedilia. We even secretly sniffed our armpits to make sure we didn’t stink. Then we sniffed each other’s armpits to make sure we were right the first time and before long the concert started.    I don’t remember who the opening act was, but I do recall she was fantastic. Her show lasted about thirty minutes before the Statlers came out and between the sets,  the crew had to switch the stage for the main event. They gave us a fifteen minute intermission while they did that, so every person in the building decided at once to take the opportunity to go to the restroom.    Bedilia my dear, I believe we should retire to the loo, don’t you think?    Oh I do, Rupert I simply doooooooo!    Kayla and I went too and normally, as you probably already know, Kayla takes longer getting back because the line to the ladies restroom is backed up like a Soviet cold war era line for … well … toilet paper. But that night, she made it back first because I had myself a delay. The men’s facility was packed and all the urinals were taken. Thank God because I got into a stall and what happened next wouldn’t have been fun in a crowd.    I assumed the position over the bowl - yes, I lifted the lid - and unzipped my pants. I had to go pretty bad and I was closed off from the public, so there were no bladder freeze issues, and I let ‘er rip. It was all good for a few seconds until I realized that I could feel a distinct pressure on the front of my left pant leg, like the caress of a gentle spring rain. I casually looked down and saw what was happening.    It wasn’t a gently spring rain.    Somehow, the stream of my pee was divided into two. One stream found its rightful place in the direct center of the porcelain bowl, while the other stream seemed to hit some invisible wall and bounce back onto my pants leg, creating a track about two and a half inches wide from mid-thigh all the way down to my ankle. I mentioned I was wearing light tan slacks. Do you know what happens to light tan slacks when they meet a two and a half inch wide stream of pee? They make a dark patch from mid-thigh all the way down to your ankle.    I didn’t know what to do. I performed some sort of emergency jiggle and reincorporated the two streams into the toilet, but the damage had already been done. I had to make a plan.    First, I would wait until I was sure everyone was out of the bathroom. I’d probably have to miss the first part of the concert, but that was okay because they’d turn down the lights and I’d be less conspicuous.    Second, I would frantically soak paper towels in water and try to scrub as much of the pee out of my pants as possible. This would make the track on my pants infinitely worse, but at least I wouldn’t stink and be the butt of Rupert and Bedilia’s jokes.    Last, I would hold my leg up to the blow dryer on the wall and hopefully no one would be the wiser.    That was the plan.    Here’s what actually happened.    It took forever for the bathroom to empty out. There was a dude in the other stall who must’ve had rotten tacos right before the show. After he finally left, I leaned down to peek under the bottom of the stall and make sure I was alone. By then, the pee track had gone cold and I had that wet clothes feeling down my leg, which made me walk, when I left the stall, like all the blood had gone out of my leg as I tried to minimize the contact with my skin.    When I got to the sink, I found that there were no paper towels. I considered soaking some toilet paper with water to scrub out the pee, but we’ve all seen what happens to TP when it gets wet, so that was a no go. I had no choice but to try and use the dryer on the wall and hope I didn’t smell.    It seems an easy thing to do to lift your leg up to those dryers when you plan it in your head, but in reality, you’d have to be either extremely tall, extremely agile, or fast enough jumping up and down so that more hot air than not gets to the spot on your pants.    My only option was the jumping and I’m not that fast. I tried it and I knew right away that it was an exercise in futility. It was over. I had to make my way back to the seat as cleverly as I could so as few people as possible saw the art running down my leg.    I left the bathroom, still doing that floppy leg walk because I hate the feeling of wet clothes on my skin, but I added the spectacle of trying to keep as much of my thighs together as I could to hide the spot.    I hobbled like Egor all the way back to my seat and Kayla looked at me concerned.    “What took you so long?”    I told her the story and ended it with a final declaration. “I’m pissed off.”    Of course, my adoring wife couldn’t pass up the opportunity to reply. She said, “Sounds to me like you’re pissed ON.”    I could have sworn over behind me I heard, “FA FA FA FA FA FA!”    It wasn’t funny when it happened, but now I look back on it as one of my favorite stories to tell when I want people to give me that face that asks, What’s wrong with you?    Which brings me to the lady I know who appreciates that kind of humor. Her name’s Kelley and she’s a dear friend. I’ve done several theatre shows with her and even mentioned this once before in a story called, The Stuff Wings Are Made Of, but it’s worth mentioned again.    Just before were were to go on stage  - I mean right before we were about to go on - I whispered into Kelley’s ear, “Hey … did I ever tell you about the time I peed on my leg?”    She died laughing and it’s been a running joke between us ever since.  

   I’m always the last one to the party when it comes to whatever whippors the younger generation is snapping. Just when I felt comfortable using words like “Bad” to describe something as good, I was told that I’m behind the times. Suddenly “Dope” was the term used for something good; no longer the term we used for drugs. Add to that the fact that being in possession of a particularly powerful drug meant that you had gotten your hands on “The Good Stuff”, and life could get confusing. This was all years ago while I was still a kid. I was the fogey among my friends, I suppose.    But as I get older, I find the trend of lagging culturally behind has remained in place while the new slang gets more and more weird. At one point in time, the phrase, “Sup Yo” was an admonition for a dude named Yo to partake in a meal or a glass of tea. Now it’s a question you ask in passing to your buddy or your ex gym teacher if he was the sort of educator who liked to “hang” with you or considered you his “homey”. Even recently, I was informed via a radio morning show (so you know it’s accurate) that it is no longer acceptable to "LOL" anything. That’s apparently old school texting. I remember metal turn dial desk telephones that weighed the equivalent of a busload full of The Biggest Loser losers and now there’s an area of texting that is considered old school. I had just achieved the confidence of typing LOL without feeling stupid. Now we are to reply to something funny by typing out the actual sound. “HA HA” is the new cool. I’m okay with that. I actually feel better typing HA HA than I do LOL. But I began thinking about what could possibly be the future of our language in terms of slang and texting procedures. And after mulling it over, I believe I have come to some pretty accurate predictions. Here now, is a list I have compiled through no small amount of mathematical and scientific hypothesis awesomeness. HA HA.    These are common phrases and words we may fully expect to see make a complete 180 in their descriptions. I think this list is pretty sick (meaning fantastic). FLAPJACKS – You might expect this to mean something related to breakfast or devices people with floppy skin might use to hike up their arm wings. But you’d be wrong. This will be the new alarm sounded when your team scores a touchdown in American football and likewise for something people call futbol. Now, when our team is successful, we shall jump up and scream, “Thass right! FLAPJACKS boyeeeee!” My sources tell me this new form of expression will be considered quite “Sweet” (meaning “sick”, meaning “dope”, meaning “bad”, meaning “good”). PEBBLES – The charming nuggets used for skipping over a pond or a popular Hanna Barbara cartoon child who turned into a Hanna Barbara cartoon hottie in later years? Absolutely not. It will be the new curse word favored by trash mouthed high schoolers all over the good ol’ U.S. of A. It will be splattered willy-nilly across your social media pages. “Did you see that pebbles jacket Heather was wearing? She looked like a pebbles hobo. If I were Heather, I’d say pebbles that jacket. PEBBLES IT!” Parents will cringe every time they hear the “P” word in movies and eventually on late night cable. GRANNY - Sorry, guys. It’s the new hair-do for men. It will be all the rage to shave a wide, bald strip right down the middle of your head from front to back. The hair left on either side is then braided and glued into crazy shapes like lightning bolts and saw blades. Why is it called the GRANNY? Who the heck knows?! The consensus is that this style, much akin to the upside down afro men are sporting on their chins now that makes them all look like they’re about to go minin’ fer gold up in them thar hills, will be accepted as “killer” (meaning “sweet”, meaning “sick”, meaning “dope”, meaning “bad”, meaning “good”). SQTASTJIME (Text Initials) – I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that can only stand for, See? Q Tips Are Safe To Jam In My Ear. I can’t tell you how many times that particular acronym would have come in handy before. But you are wrong, my friend. Soon the world will text SQTASTJIME to convey the message, Sitting Quietly Taking A Simple Test; Java Is My Electricity. Some Christian texters will replace the word Java for Jesus. Jesus will be our electricity. GOO – No longer a word for a sticky substance in the back of your refrigerator or that stuff you wake up with in the corner of your eye. Believe it or not, it will be associated in a familiar fashion as a nonsense word uttered by a toddler. However, the connotation will be accusatory as if the recipient of the word in a text or comment is dumber than a small drooling human. To pour salt on the wound, the word will eventually be replaced by a freakishly ugly baby doodle emoticon. How Adorable! – Speaking of ugly babies … This phrase will come to mean just the opposite of how it sounds. A remark of this kind will tell the parents of a child, “THAT IS AN UGLY BABY! PLEASE LEAVE AND GOOD DAY!” GOOD DAY – Interestingly enough, “Good day” will come to mean, “I hope you have to build an igloo out of bottle caps and newspapers to live in. And then I hope it rains on your newspaper bottle cap igloo.” As you can clearly see, our world is becoming increasingly hostile and it doesn’t look to get any better. I hope, for humankind’s sake, that we get back to letting “yes” mean “yes” and “no” mean “no”. Stop changing our words on us and maybe communication will be easier, humanity will get along, and we won’t be afraid to say what we feel. So with that, I say God bless and good day. Good day in the bad way. Not the bad way as in “bad”, but as in sick. Not sick as in nauseated, but, you know … dope. Oh, never mind. I’ll just go build my igloo.

Feets Don't Fail Me Now For years it went something like this … “KICK! And TURN! And BACK! And BEND! And … Arms loose, ladies; Guys, keep those shoulders back. Posture, people. POSTURE! We open in two weeks! Okay, keep it goin’ annnnd … KICK! And TURN! And BACK! And SP- … No, no, Michael. It’s BACK and SPIN, not SPIN, KICK, BACK. No, no, no, NO! There’s no LUNGE in this routine, Michael. Stick to the choreography. Here we go … KICK! And BACK! And … Michael … Michael … MICHAEL! WHY ARE YOU THRUSTING LIKE THAT? GET OUT MICHAEL. GEEEETTTTT OOOUUUUTTTTTT!” To put it mildly, my dancing has always resembled something like a kindergartner’s recital if all the kindergartners were blindfolded and on roller skates. I Can’t help it, though. I was born a singer and an actor, not a dancer. I have spent my entire life avoiding anything that had the remotest indication of movement in rhythm and because of this behavior, it’s with no surprise that my reaction to the suggestion of a dance in any form has always been, “… (blink) … You, um … (blink) … You want me to do what?” I go numb. My brain reminds me of the scene above where I thrusted and lunged when I should have kicked and spun and the teacher threw me out. I’d never been thrown out of church before. I never will again. Because … I. Don’t. Dance. But wait! What’s this happening to my feet? Why are my hips twisting, my toes tapping, and my hands assuming the splay-fingered form known as Jazz? It’s because I have found my groove, at least I hope. The curtain opening on The Addams Family – The Musical will not only find me adopting an entirely different look, but there will also be another aspect of the Gomez role that many who know me will absolutely not expect – dancing. The opening number is heavily choreographed already, but there’s a tango at the end that is pushing the limits of my “able to”. I'm managing it though, and frankly, I’m starting to get a little cocky about how well I feel I’m doing. Forget how many times I hear the encouraging words of my choreographer (“Don’t worry. You’ll get it.”). The plain fact is, I think I got it! And I can’t wait to put my new dancing shoes into play with my everyday life. No longer shall I hear, “Michael? Dance? Hahaha … hahahahahaha … HAHAHAHAHAHA! No offense, but … BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” From now on, it’s move over Kevin Bacon, ... hold on to your jacket, John Travolta, ... not so fast, Carlton. It’s "Michael Time" and you absolutely cannot touch this! I’m so excited that I'm ready to burst a move at this very moment. I’m feeling sort of hot and beginning to think perhaps I should drop it like such. I still don’t know what that last one means exactly, but I’m sure it has nothing to do with an unsavory move involving one’s rear end. Twerking? NO. I draw the line there, dirtbag. I can say that you may very well see me in the potato chip aisle at the local grocer, however, shaking my groove thang. In my next business meeting, it’s possible I could actually stop, collaborate, and listen. My life has opened to a world of possibilities now and I can’t wait to move to the beat of it all. Can you even stop the beat? No. No you can’t stop the beat. I found that out the awesome way. I’m having a Jellicle ball thanks to learning that I have what it takes to boogaloo and even slide electrically. Whew. I had to wipe my brow a little after that. Are you tired? I’m tired … tired of standing still! I know all my references are old school. I have intentionally been away from the current music scene and I don’t plan to change that. I have so much to catch up on that I probably won’t get to today’s moves until I’m ninety – a fit, in shape, ninety year old man who still thinks he could play The Rum Tum Tugger if need be, by thunder! So now that I’m armed with this new found ability in my theatrical arsenal, I’m thinking of dancerly shows I’d like to tackle. I mentioned CATS earlier, but I still have quite a road to travel before I'll be able to fit my buttocks into a leotard. Singing In The Rain might be a possibility as well as Chicago … wait, no. The dancers in that one are mostly ladies and I won’t be doing any cross dressing. Also … leotard. That leaves A Chorus Line, maybe. I know what you’re saying to yourself. You’re saying, “Slow your role, buddy. That kind of dancing takes a lot more work and effort than you think. Years go into perfecting the craft.” And I know you’re right. So I suppose if I must, I’ll take it a bit slower just tomake you happy. (And not make you jealous of my sweet new moves) To start, I’ll just try to get through the current production without breaking an ankle or throwing out my back. It is a comedy, so maybe I can play it big, yet on the lighter side so that I don’t show up the rest of the cast. That’s what I’ll do. If you come to The Addams Family and see me up there pretending to give it my best, but looking a little like I have two left feet, please understand that it’s just for the sake of the show. We’re all a team on that stage, so there's no need to show off. Yes, that’s the thing to do. Don’t expect greatness on my part, just the appearance of a guy in his forties who doesn’t put the word dancer in his resume. But know this – I may be holding back as far as you can tell, but in my chest beats the heart of a Fred Astaire, a Michael Jackson, a Gregory Hines, or a Ted Koppel. And now that my feet are learning to be free, there’s no caging them. And yes, I did have A LOT of coffee tonight while editing my podcast. How did you know? Oh, who am I kidding? You’ll never see me on a dance floor in a freestyle tornado of shimmying; body parts flailing willy-nilly with reckless abandon. That’s not me. But I can say I’ll not be shying away from shows that feature dancing any longer. It’s great for the mind, body, and spirit as long as you don’t care how you look. I’ll just have fun and give it my best. And if A Chorus Line ever comes around, I’ll audition. God, I hope I get it.