ANOTHER BAD WORD BUT FUNNY SHIT

 This story cannot be told without an offensive word, sorry it happens for when it comes up. 

When I was 14 I was at the Elk's with my father. He announced to the bar, "My son is now a man so you can talk to him like a man now." This meant they could swear in front of me. I was sitting next to a guy I worshipped, his name was Joe Oulette. He had been in the Pacific War and totally had tattoos of hula girls on his shoulder and forearm. He was talking to me he'd probably had a couple drinks, beer was only a fucking dollar, I would have had a hundred. Joe Oulette was telling me a story about being in the Navy, at one point he proudly announced, "I was the only guy on my ship that fucked a midget!" 

Another great thing I have about the Elk's is when I was 18 I had a job in the city that I took a train to and from. Every night I had a choice of sitting and waiting for my father to get done drinking and I would drive us home or I could walk 2 miles from the train station to my house. As awful as sitting around while my father got wasted was, I still did it a lot because 2 miles is a long fucking walk. I was there so much in fact that at one point the other people there said, "That kid has to become a member." So I joined. I am an Elk. There was a candlelit ceremony and everything. I remember taking an oath, it was nuts. I never paid the dues once so my membership eventually expired.

Me and my cousin were under 21 but old enough to drive. We were going to a party, it was a Friday night. We needed to borrow my father's car to go so we were at the Elk's to pick it up. We were sitting at the bar while my father drank beers. He turned to my cousin Peter and said, "You wanna leave now or later?" I tried to say with my eyes to Peter, 'Whatever you do, you have to say 'Whenever you wanna go.'" Peter like a normal person said, "Let's go now." It was Friday night and we had been there probably a fucking hour and not said a word. My father said "Fuuuuuuck yooouuuuu" to Peter and one of the guys at the bar said to him, "You just bought yourself another 20 minutes." I'll never forget the look of confusion on Peter's face. 

FUNNY THAILAND SHIT

In Thailand there was a stretch of the street I lived off that was basically a mall for tourists on the sidewalk. Entire tables of Jade elephants and brass knuckles, shit like that. I realized everyone working the tables was deaf-mute. Pretty sure they were wicked cheap labor, the Mob that ran everything probably didn't even pay them. The tourists were constantly haggling like a dollar off shit that was already two dollars and so the workers all had calculators and when a customer asked the price they would show them the calculator. The customer would take it and put in the price they wanted and would hand it back. Then the worker would put in another price and give it to the tourist, blah blah blah this went on. You get the idea. I started going to the deaf workers and asking for the price of something, they would show me the calculator and it would say 600 on it, for Baht. I would take the calculator and type in 599 and hand it back. They loved this they all thought it was funny, so did I. Thai people don't understand sarcasm but they totally got that joke about farang. The word for "mango" was "farang" also, so whenever they saw a tourist eating a mango they laughed really, really, really hard. They also loved any time a big, fat person had a little suitcase. They loved this shit and would yell, "Big man, little bag!" 

I was out one night with a girl. I was really into learning Thai. It was well after midnight and like at least 90*. There were people selling all kinds of shit. I particularly loved this watermelon they sold. It was wicked cool on your throat and there was sugar in the bag so when you picked out the watermelon chunks with the pointy stick they gave you, it had fucking sugar on it. It was so good. One night we're getting some and this girl totally spoke English so I asked her "What is the word for watermelon?" She said in a heavy Thai accent, "water-melon." I was expecting some exotic word.

Bar Girls have a guy they would call when they weren't working, this was called her "Gik". I had an Australian friend who called me Mike McGik. One night there was a girl coming over, I was not her customer, I wasn't her Gik yet, but it was coming. That day, because my apartment smelled like cigarettes, I bought incense. I was at the store and I chose one that smelled good. When the girl came over and entered my apartment she said, "It smells like a funeral in here". You know incense totally means shit to them. 

THIS IS HEAVY BUT GODDAMN FUNNY

This is heavy but goddamn funny. I'm gonna get the heavy shit outta the way. This story is about a guy I worked with who died when we were both teenagers. He was older than me and bigger and from a weird Massachusetts town called Berlin. The town had a fucking milk man. But my friend was a tough guy, his name was Tom Brown. He was a cutter at the doughnut shop we worked at. I was the fryer and he cut them. He loved Led Zeppelin. This was all he listened to. One of the other doughnut cutters had a ZOSO tattoo. This is back when tattooing was illegal in Massachusetts. So you get the idea. These people didn't have much of a future. So the older cutter Tom played Led Zeppelin all the time. One of the other fryers was into weird music like me. We played the Violent Femmes every Friday night. One time Tom yelled "I don't wanna listen to them. All their songs are like- he started mewling and mincing-  "I wanna get laid, I wanna get laid." The thing is, Violent Femmes always sang about wanting to get laid but Led Zepplin was singing about actually getting laid.

THE BLIZZARD OF '78

In 1978 there was a week-long blizzard in New England. It came at the tail end of Christmas vacation so we literally had a month off of school. I basically jumped off roofs of houses into 9 foot snow drifts for a month, it was awesome. Every kid I knew had a fucking runny nose for a looong time. When they called us back to school the bus came and got me. We were halfway to the school and somebody started the Queen "We Will Rock You" foot stomp -- "Boom Boom Ch, Boom Boom Ch" -- everybody joined in. They started chanting, "Hell no, we won't go". I was 8 years old so I was afraid to join in, this was some 5th grader shit. When we got to the school none of them got off the bus, I sat in my seat and didn't move. I learned from my drunk a-hole father that moving when anything was going on made you a target. Back then any question was answered with 'None of your business." We were all on the bus and the principal (Mr Daniels) came on with a dustpan and brush.  Anyone that went to Willard School knows exactly what he looked like, he looked like a cross between Alec Trebek and Larry Bird. The people on this list include Jessie Bilodeaux, Colin Nissan, Jimmy McSweeney, Kirsten Rarich, Karen Dronzek, Robbie McCormick, Bonnie Hills, and a fucking thousand more. Anyway Mr. Daniels got everyone's attention by banging the dust pan and brush together. Then he threatened to call our parents if people didn't get off the bus. The kids did that. We all got in a line and went to school.