NAMES

 I was at General Assistance. I was getting food stamps. This was kind of awhile ago. They take all your info and send you to a giant waiting room where they call names over the loudspeaker and send people to various doorways. Eventually they call you and tell you what door to go in. I was sitting there reading and over the loudspeaker the guy said, "So and so go to door 1". After like 50 times he said, "Denzel Washington go to door 3", then he said, "Angelina Jolie go to door 2." Nobody noticed, I couldn't believe it, the guy was totally fucking with everyone in the room. 

I was at the gate at the airport. You know how they call names and say, "We have a full plane if anyone will forgo their ticket we will give you another ticket," and then they start calling names. One of the names they called was fucking Hunter Thompson. That guy or woman whoever was working at the gate had no idea somebody had either given a fake name or there was actually someone named Hunter Thompson on my flight. I figured if there were really someone fucking with everyone they woulda said "Hunter S. Thompson" because the S is kind of important. 

When you are on the plane in this era they assign you people and they push you all around the place. I used to be going to visit my father in Florida a lot. There were no direct flights to his town so I always had a layover at Atlanta. This is a giant fucking airport. There are trains and shit underground and it would take like an hour to get me from my plane to my connection. We were always in line at the elevator and we wait in line with other people in wheelchairs. As we rolled up I would say, "What is this, the winner's circle?" They hated it. No one ever laughed. 

That reminds me, I used to fly into Orlando. When you got off the plane and onto their tram thing, over the loud speaker it would say, "Welcome to Central Florida." Is there anything worse than Central Florida?  

BASEBALL

When  I was 5 years old my father put me on a Little League team. I remember all the kids were like 8 or 9 and they were astonished that I had been put on a team at 5 years old. I remember a couple weeks before he made me play baseball, I was in bed and I woke up to my father drunk off his ass, tapping me on the heart and saying, "You could've been a great baseball player one day" in a slurry voice. I remember thinking, "Whatever.." 

I played baseball for 3 years and I had 3 hits in 3 years. That's pretty fucking awful, literally 3 hits in 3 years. I was so afraid of striking out I just never swung the bat so I either got hit, walked, or struck out. I remember my first coach told everyone "Go out there and get a hit!" when they were leaving the dugout to go to bat. Whenever I was going up to bat he'd say, "Alright Mike, go out there and get hit." 

One time it was like 22 to nothing in the first inning. I am so old they didn't even have the "Mercy Rule" yet. We were losing that badly. As another dude was going home from 3rd I said to the coach, "There goes our no-hitter," He totally laughed. 

The last year I was on a different team. The coach used to read everyone's batting average at practice. I'll never forget him saying, "Mike McGuirk has a zero, zero, zero average but that's ok because he's always on base even though he's not hitting." 

That reminds me, I only lasted one week in college. When I went to the Bursar's office and asked him for financial aid to go a second semester. I had skipped all my finals -- I had a zero GPA. I was literally like the guy in Animal House. He said, "You have a  zero point zero GPA."