The Feeding of the Children

One day at the recent family reunion, I found myself driving back from the park with two of my sister's youngest kids. How I ended up driving two little kids all by myself, I have no idea. This was not my plan. But that's not unusual. I never have a plan. I don't like plans. But the problem with never having a plan, is that once in a while you end up with two little kids in the car with you. And you're in charge of their welfare. And that's no good. I'm pretty sure I was set up.

The idea is that all of the relatives were supposed to leave the park, go grab whatever they wanted for dinner, and meet back at the hotel around 5:30 to eat. That was the idea. And if I had been all by myself in that car, I would have been the first person to arrive back at the hotel. And I would have finished eating my dinner before anyone else showed up. And I would have been happy.

But I had two little kids to feed.

Unfortuantely, I don't know how to feed kids.

I don't want to feed kids.

But these were my nephews. Two cute little boys, who I love. And I was responsible for them. So I decided I would do my best to feed them.

Now I'm absolutely no good when it comes to anything having to do with kids. I don't even know exactly how old these boys are. I estimate somewhere between 0 and 10. All I know is that one of them is about a year older than the other. But I did learn a few things during this little journey.

First, I learned that you should always tell a kid what he is GOING TO EAT. You should NEVER ask a kid what he WANTS to eat. If I had known about this rule ahead of time, the three of us would have been back at that hotel in about 5 seconds enjoying our dinner of Skittles and Dr. Pepper. But I made the mistake of asking, and they said they wanted pizza. That might not be so bad, but I then asked them what kind of pizza they wanted. It then took the three of us 16 hours to agree on Pizza Hut.

So then I looked up Pizza Hut on the GPS thingie on my phone. Unfortunately, my stupid phone doesn't let me just press something to automatically dial the number. I had to commit the number to memory, switch to the phone part, and then dial the number. But then I figured, Hey, there's three of us here. We can each memorize a few numbers and it'll be easy!

So I memorized the area code. Then I said, "Hey Joseph, here's a number: 345. Can you remember that? 345."

"Uh huh."

"What's your number Joseph?"

"345."

"Good! And Jacob, here's your number: 8672. You got it?"

"8672," he said.

"Good!"

Then I turned off the GPS thingie and got to the phone key pad. I dialed the area code. Then I said, "Okay Joseph, what your number?"

"3."

"Jacob, did you remember your number?"

"4."

It took me 7 minutes and 19 seconds to remember all 10 numbers myself and dial Pizza Hut to place the order.

But Pizza Hut must have ditched all of their phones during the economic downturn, because I couldn't get anybody to answer that number. So I began driving to the restaurant, praying to God the whole way that when we arrived it had not burned down or been turned into a Jiffy Lube.

Ten minutes later we arrived at Pizza Hut. Of course I had to order two different kinds of pizzas because these two little kids insisted on different toppings. I suppose I could have had them split the toppings on one pizza, but I didn't think of that because I'm stupid.

They told me it would be 25 minutes before the pizza was done. This is when I learned another lesson about little kids. For little kids, 25 minutes equals 25 years. I guess there was a time when I was the same way -- years ago when I was a little kid. But now I'm old, so 25 years is like 25 minutes to me.

For the next 17 minutes I kept saying stuff like: "Hey, you guys come sit down over here" ... "Hey leave that alone" ... "Hey stop that" ... "Hey don't do that" ...

At about minute 17, the younger of the two boys had exhausted all possibilities and was now lying face down on the disgusting Pizza Hut floor. I was going to make him get up, because I think that's what my sister would have wanted me to do. But then I decided that's what she gets for sticking me with two kids who, although very cute, cannot memorize numbers or agree on one topping. So I allowed him to continue to explore the goo on the floor until the pizzas were done.

We arrived back at the hotel over an hour late.

Everyone else was already finished eating.

I was exhausted.

Our pizza was greasy.

But I did return both kids in one piece.

Even though Joseph had Pizza Hut's floor on his face.

The end.

New Stuff and Fat Hairy Nekked Men

First, as Jimmy Chitwood once said, I got somethin' to say...

Launched my brand new website last night (www.paulstoecklein.com). There are a few short stand-up video clips on there, and more from other shows coming soon. Also got a new Facebook fan page and Twitter page. Those are the best places to find out about my upcoming shows and whatnot. They're also the best place to see that I really don't have any fans, but my Web dude said they're the thing to do, so there ya go.

Now, onto something more important.

Why can't men who go to the gym be more like women? My wife told me that women never walk around the locker room with everything hanging out there, dragging on the floor. She said they always go behind the curtain to get dressed and undressed. In short, they have the common courtesty to be ashamed of their bodies.

Not men.

Every single morning when I go to the gym... Every Single Morning... I walk into that locker room and there's about 15 old, hairy, fat, disgusting men walking around with their enormous swollen bellies bouncing around and their tiny little thingies floppin' back and forth. They just walk around without a care in the world, like they're cruising around from room to room at a cocktail party.

I can barely get to the my locker without accidentally touching somebody. And I try really hard to avoid that. I look like I'm playing Frogger in there.

And these guys always want to talk to me too.

"Looks like it's gonna be another hot one out there today."

I never know what to say in return because my brain freezes in that locker room. When somebody is talking to me and and I know that their penis is only a few feet away, completely uncovered, I start developing a seizure and a severe case of acne.

If man truly is made in God's image, then I really hope if I make it to heaven, that God is at least wearing a towel.

Mowing My Weedgrassdirt

So the other day I went outside to mow my weedgrassdirt. I was raised on weedgrassdirt. My father mowed weedgrassdirt. His father before him mowed weedgrassdirt. It's part of my family heritage. It's in my blood.

Now I've seen lawns that are just grass (no weeds anywhere), and I've often wondered, I wonder what that kind of life is like. I imagine that people who have purely grass lawns must be the same people who actually clean their barbecue grills and buy those expensive cookies on the top shelf at the grocery store. They're really the closest thing that our country has to royalty.

Even if I wanted to turn my weedgrassdirt into pure grass, I couldn't do it. First, it would mean additional manual labor, and that's just not gonna happen. Second, it would mean using deadly poisons to kill the weeds, and Jodi won't let me do that. The reason Jodi won't let me do that is because she likes birds, and she doesn't like the fact that three-quarters of the birds that come into our backyard are blind mutant birds due to other people in the neighborhood using deadly poisons to get rid of their weedgrassdirt.

That's okay. I'm fine with weedgrassdirt. I was never cut out to be royalty anyway.

So I started to mow the first third of my lawn while blind mutant birds from the neighborhood flew helplessly into the side of my garage.

I have to mow my lawn in thirds. Why? Al Gore.

Al Gore made me buy an electric mower instead of gas-powered mower. Unfortunately, modern technology has not advanced to the point where we can create an electric mower that can finish an entire yard in one sweep. So far, our technology only allows us to create blind mutant birds.

Just after mowing a few strips of my weedgrassdirt, our old lady neighbor stopped by to chat for a few moments. Nice lady. Her adult son still lives with her. I wouldn't really go so far as to say he looks after her. In fact, one day, this old lady was sick with the flu. Her son, who does not drive, came over to our house and asked me to drive him to Kentucky Fried Chicken so he could get his mom something to eat. (Note #1: In the south, KFC is considered healthy food for sick people. And gravy is an aphrodisiac.) So he literally squeezed into the passenger seat of my very small old VW Beetle and off we went to KFC. (Note #2: Many people in the south do not fit easily into an old VW Beetle.) He bought the food, we drove back, he thanked me, and he returned to his house to nurse his mom back to health with some extra crispy, extra greasy chicken and a tub of mashed potatoes... The next week, the old lady was feeling better and thanked me for driving her son to KFC so he could get himself something to eat.

The old lady and I talked for a minute or two, and then down the street came an elderly guy on a little motor scooter. Helmet, goggles, stickers -- the whole shabang. I have no idea if this guy was drunk, high, crazy, or all of the above. But apparently, as he was driving down the road, he had been having a conversation with himself and the voices in his head told him to stop and merge our conversation with his. He pulled over, stopped right next to us, slipped off his helmet, and continued with the conversation he'd been having with himself for God only knows how long. I had trouble making out most of the words, although I think some of them were English. Some of it had to do with how old people should be treated in rest homes. I think he might have been an escapee. He was probably the Steve McQueen of Shady Acres Nursing Home or something.

You see, the good thing about living in the south is that sometimes people just stop to chat. And the bad thing about living in the south is that sometimes people just stop to chat.

Well, this guy finally finished his verbal manifesto after about 10 minutes, and just as suddenly as he arrived, he slipped on his helmet and rode off into the sunset. As he drove away, I noticed that the license plate on his scooter was a Bible scripture. I don't remember which scripture it was, but it was probably from one of the gospels, where Jesus says to the apostles, "Take this bread and git 'r done! Just git 'r done I tell ya! Just git 'r done for Jesus! WOOOOOOOO! Nascar rocks! WOOOOOOO!"

Even the old lady thought he was nuts. There was really nothing left to say, so she went back to her deep fried domicile, I finished mowing the first third of my weedgrassdirt, and the blind mutant birds continued flying into the side of my garage.