When I was a kid, man, did I love baseball! Loved everything about it. I studied stats for hours. I stared at pictures of great players. I collected baseball cards. I dreamed of playing baseball, dreamed of the sound of the ball smacking an oiled mitt, the crack of a bat, the cheers.

Unfortunately, when it came to actually playing baseball, I stunk. I was so small I could barely hold the bat off my back shoulder. My swing was awkward, as was my gait around the base path. I couldn’t catch for a damn, either. And despite hours of practice with my usually impatient father, I wasn’t getting any better. However, my father and I persisted. Take that boy out of right field, we dreamed! Put him at the top of the order! Let him smack a few dingers over that chain-link fence!

One afternoon while my family was visiting my grandparents in New Jersey, my dad took me out into the backyard for some baseball practice. That day’s lesson: learning how to dodge an errant pitch. Now, despite the fact that I rarely connected with the ball, I still got on base frequently, mostly due to the fact that the pitchers were wild and my strike zone was practically nonexistent. But I was getting hit by a lot of pitches. And to make matters worse, I usually cried after I got beaned; and that was embarrassing for all involved.

So, there I was in the backyard, my bat on my shoulder, dodging pitches from my father thrown intentionally at my person. Now, around this time I had the strange penchant for placing a blade of grass in between my lips and occasionally chewing on it. I guess this was my substitute for chewing tobacco or sunflower seeds. Anyway, my dad threw a wild pitch, which headed straight for my helmetless head. I jerked away, stumbled, and fell on the grass. It just so happened that when I hit the ground, I managed to swallow that blade of grass in between my lips. Except, I soon realized due to a peculiar scratching in my throat, that I didn’t completely swallow the grass. In fact, as I soon realized upon going inside and looking in the mirror, that the blade of grass was stuck, yes stuck, to my uvula (usually referred to by many as “that hangey thing in the back of your throat”).

And no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the grass unstuck. I tried drinking copious amounts of water. I tried eating and swallowing excessively. I even tried to pull it out with my fingers, but, of course, this proved impossible because doing so made me gag. Unbelievable, my family collectively groaned. Another embarrassment, another baseball failure.

Ultimately, I had to go to our family doctor who, after proclaiming he had never seen anything like it, took out a pair of lengthy tweezers and effortlessly removed the blade of grass from my uvula.

I never did get any better at baseball, and I hung up my cleats for good after one last embarrassing season where I batted a mean .000 (yes, I never actually got a hit).

P.S. Go Phillies!

Andy liked to drive fast.  Always.  I was in the passenger seat as Andy sped down a stretch of Good Hope Road in his second car (we were only seventeen): a used, coffee-colored hatchback.  It was gray and sunless outside, a bone-chilling Pennsylvania winter afternoon.  I clutched at my door handle and stiffened in fear.

“Is my driving scaring you?” Andy asked with a smile.

“No, it’s cool,” I stammered.

I peeked at the speedometer—70mph.  We were on a narrow, woods-flanked road with a speed limit of 35mph.  Fortunately, I guess, cops rarely patrolled this stretch of road because there was nowhere for them to hide.  On our right was a steep, wooded and weed-choked embankment; on our left a steel guardrail and some houses on stilts.

As luck would have it, we soon approached a slow-moving car from behind.  Too treacherous to pass, Andy merely cursed the presumably (to Andy) female-driven car:

“God, I can’t believe this bitch!” Andy said.

Inwardly, I sighed with relief as Andy slowed his car.  But then, a side road appeared on the right, and Andy punched the gas and made a wild right turn.  He laughed as we bounded up the steep hill.

“Jesus,” I said.  “You drive like a maniac.”

“I know,” he said, and laughed again.  “I’ve never gotten a ticket, though.  I’ve wrecked twice, but I’ve never gotten a ticket.”

Seconds later, Andy took a sharp left turn and we drove over a short bridge.  Now, for those of you not accustomed to colder climates, bridges usually freeze before the rest of the road (see HowStuffWorks for an explanation).  Now on this day, the roads were fine, but this bridge was icy as all get out.

Immediately, Andy’s car fishtailed and the car swerved to the left.  Through the front windshield, I could see us headed directly towards a guardrail.  I shut my eyes.  Andy grabbed the wheel and spun it in the opposite direction.  We swerved again; now I was looking at a tree.  Andy spun the wheel again—I thought I was going to come out of my seat and I swear at certain moments I could somehow see out the back window.  Now I was looking at a telephone pole.  We served again and this time we reached the grass alongside of the road where we faced a row of about seven mailboxes.  In my mind’s eye I envisioned Andy’s car mowing down all seven mailboxes, sending them spinning into the air before we sped off and never looked back.

Fortunately, however, Andy somehow managed to stop the car back in the middle of the road, perpendicular to traffic.  We sat in silence for a few seconds, catching our breath.  Then I started laughing.  I doubled over in laughter.  I thought I was going to throw up.

“Shut the fuck up, asshole!” Andy said.  He punched me in the arm.

“Stop! Stop!” I said, still laughing, envisioning what it would have been like to see Andy’s car swerve back and forth across that road.

Finally, I stopped laughing.  “Jesus,” Andy said, “That was fucking ridiculous.”  And we drove home.

It’ seems to me that almost everyone has a good car crash story. Fortunately, I’ve never caused a car wreck myself, but I’ve been in a few. This one happened back when I was a mere sixteen-year-old on a rainy Friday night in Pennsylvania…

I didn’t have my license yet, but my friend Chris (same guy from “That was Awkward”), who was also sixteen, had just gotten his license recently. He picked me up from my parents’ house in his blue Oldsmobile, which had many amusing quirks, one of them being that you could take the key out of ignition while the engine was running. Yeah, that’s safe.

We were on our way to the local movie theater when it started to rain. Now, Chris was never that great of a driver, but he was especially inept when it came to driving in areas that he wasn’t familiar with. So, we drove down Orrs Bridge road, which curves sharply to the right just before you go over a short

bridge. Chris, not being familiar with this particular stretch of road, took the turn a little fast, fast enough for me to brace myself and say, “Whoah, dude!”

We made the turn but the car slid over the center line and smashed almost head on into an oncoming car. After the impact, we sat in the car, silent, for a few moments before Chris said, “Man, accidents suck.” From that point on, Chris and I for some reason could not stop laughing. We laughed as we exited the car. We laughed as we realized the three people in the other car were safe. We laughed when we realized that we knew the other driver—a girl from our high school class, who was in tears. And we even laughed when the cop showed up. Now, this wasn’t a very “funny” moment per say, but our laughter probably came from a source of relief or nervousness. It also didn’t help that Chris was wearing shorts, sandals, and a pair of outrageous rainbow-striped, knee-high toe socks for some reason. “Man,” he said, looking down, “why did I wear these socks?”

As Chris went over things with the police officer, and as the other driver and her two guy friends regained their composure, I picked up a piece of Chris’s bumper from the side of the road, a memento from car crash number one.

Update: Since I posted this blog last night, a friend of mine did some research, and as it turns out, the following tale is an urban legend. I must concede that I was duped completely. Oh, well. Hey, in my opinion it’s still a great story , so enjoy!

For some reason, dogs get the short end of the stick when they appear in this blog (see “Tail” of Woe). This strange true tale of woe, told to me by a friend, is no exception…

A young woman—let’s say her name is Nicole—was put in charge of watching her friends’ dog, an old German Shepherd, while her two friends (a married couple) were away on vacation. One bright summer afternoon, Nicole went to her friends’ apartment to check on the dog. She found it on the kitchen floor, dead.

Not knowing what exactly to do, Nicole called her friends and told them the sad news. Her friends were upset to be sure, but the dog was old and they were not wholly surprised by its demise. Not wanting to cut short their vacation, however, Nicole’s friends asked her if she could take the dog to the veterinarian and have it cremated. Nicole agreed.

Now, most people at this point would have called Animal Services or something, but I should let you know that this event happened in my hometown, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and God knows if they even have such a thing as Animal Services like they do here in Los Angeles (a quick Google search for “Animal Services Mechanicsburg” didn’t yield too many useful results). But, of course, if Nicole was that sensible, this story wouldn’t be heading in the unfortunate direction it’s going, and the world would be short one perplexing story. But I digress…

Nicole tried to move the dog, but did so with much difficulty. First of all, the dog weighed over seventy pounds; and Nicole herself barely weighed 100 lbs. She soon realized there was no way she was going to get the dog out the apartment door, down the hallway, into the elevator, and out to her car without some kind of assistance. So, Nicole called the dog’s owners again.

The owners suggested that Nicole put the dead dog in a suitcase they owned, which was large and had wheels. Yes, a suitcase. Nicole agreed. So, Nicole stuffed the dead dog into a suitcase and wheeled it out of the apartment and to her car outside. But when Nicole went to lift the heavy suitcase into her trunk, she was again met with difficulty.

Fortunately, a man driving by stopped his car and asked Nicole if she needed any help. Nicole said, yes, she did. The man got out of his car and lifted the suitcase, felt its weight.

“Jesus,” he said. “This is heavy. What do you have in here?”

Nicole, not wanting to tell the stranger that she had a dead German Shepherd in a suitcase, said something to the effect of Well, I’m moving and I basically put my entire life in this suitcase.

Then, the man who offered his assistance presumably realized how valuable the suitcase was if it in fact had the young girl’s worldly possessions in it. So, he did what any sensible man in his situation would do:

He punched Nicole in the stomach, snatched the suitcase, jumped in his car, and drove away.

And that’s one way to get rid of a dead dog.