The Final Year

(Continuation of the top three Chris’ Idiot Show episode countdown. See the previous post with the #3 episode first!)

#2: The Driveway of Obscurity

I admit, I will go see movies on occasion. Sometimes, I go to theaters which have little-to-no parking available nearby, mostly ones on the West Side. One night in college (2002) my friends and I decide to catch a flick in nearby Culver City, land of S.W.A.T. raids and halfhearted gentrification. Needless to say: very little parking. I am to meet them there, but alas, I am running late (see above). I know for a fact that finding a place to stash my car will be difficult, but them’s the price for quality entertainment. I think we were seeing ‘Scooby-Doo’. (Just kidding. It was ‘Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams’.) Anyway, imagine my utter shock to find someone pulling away from a spot across the street from the theater just as I approach, making it likely that I might get inside before the start of the movie! I slam my car into the tiny parallel niche, jump out, and run in to join everyone. Laughter and frivolity all around.
We leisurely stroll out the front doors of the shabby multi-plex after the movie to find it dark and bustling on the streets of CCity. (SK2:ILD is a LONG movie!) I need to go home and finish some homework, so I walk back to my car to find someone has double-parked right next to me, blocking me into the wee parking space. Indignant, I storm up to my vehicle and find the owner of the Mustang-shaped barrier sitting nearby chewing on a toothpick. It might have been a crowbar. I couldn’t tell.
“What is this?!” (sigh. That’s me.)
“What do you mean, ‘what is this?!’ You’re parked across my FREAKING DRIVEWAY is what this is!!” I sort of realize that this man may be a tad upset. And I may possibly be the cause.
“Oh.” The weight of what has occurred slams down, an anvil on my gingerbread house of contentment. Daa daa da da da daa! IDIOT SHOW!
I spend the next almost twenty minutes trying to explain to him that I am stupid and that cutting off all vehicular access to his property was in no way a slight against his lovely home or his tiny, crumbling, dirt-covered driveway. He wants nothing more than to remove my head and throw it into the street like a pumpkin on October 30,  but eventually gets tired of chewing me out. He moves his muscle car, and I screech away with my (figurative) tail between my (literal) legs. The worst part happens when I get home and talk to my roommate Tom about it. He’s a very understanding, kind sort of guy, and I need some moral support. He had witnessed the aftermath of my dumbtacularity firsthand and smartly pretended that he was not my friend and in fact had never heard of me nor did he know where I live.
“I can’t believe I just did that.” (I SAID) “It wasn’t that moronic, was it?” I pleaded with my eyes for encouragement.
“Actually, Chris, I don’t think I could ever do something as asinine as put my car across someone’s driveway and think it was a parking space. I’m going to go to bed now. Please don’t talk to me for a week.”
Crap! NO! Confirmation of my idiocy! And you know what’s really astonishing? #1 is yet to come. It occurred just two days hence, and is the reason I launched into all this messy verbiage in the first place. It is the most classical kind of stupid, and it happened to me.

If you’ve lived as long as I have, and you are as dumb as I am, you have probably accumulated quite an assortment of episodes in which you are the star of The Idiot Show. Most of my Idiot Show moments come thanks to a shocking lack of foresight. To warm up the foresight concept, I’ll first describe the most common of my Idiot Show moments that happens almost every night/morning.

I’m pretty much always late for work. It can be by as little as a couple of minutes or as much as a quarter hour. It’s not that I’m lazy, or that I drive slowly, or even that I’m not aware of the hour. I just can’t make myself go to bed early enough to get the 8 hours of sleep needed before I have to wake up so that I can make the drive to work on time. Which leads me to ask myself (every day) why is this so hard? I can’t figure out when to go to bed? That’s completely retarded! (Excuse my French)

If you can’t plan ahead 8 HOURS, I don’t know how or why, but sooner, not later, you will die a horribly embarrassing death. 8 hours is nothing, a blip, a tiny moment, a Michael Jackson-sized nose. It’s been a completely insignificant temporal quantity since, I don’t know, my 21st birthday or so. When you’re a kid, of course, you might remember that 8 hours was an eternity. I’ll demonstrate:

Kid: Dad, when’s Santa coming?
Dad: Well, kid, it looks like (pauses to look at watch) in 8 hours we can start opening gifts!
Kid: 8 HOURS!! Now I’ll NEVER get any presents!

But when you’re an adult, 8 hours passes like a white guy in a comic book convention.
Guy 1: Dude! It’s July 20! Wanna hit the bars for my 29th birthday? Last one before the big three-oh! It’s only 8 hours from now!
Guy 2: Dude, it’s February.
Guy 1: WHAT?!
Guy 2: And you’re 42.
Guy 1: DAMMIT! How does this ALWAYS HAPPEN?! Now I’ll NEVER get any presents!

Ok, I’ve completely lost track of what I was talking about. Anyway, yeah, 8 hours from right now is not that far away. I should be able to just go to sleep at 11:30, wake up at 7:30, get to work by 8:30, and be praised by my bosses for my timeliness. Instead I roll into bed at quarter past midnight, hit the snooze button until 8:15, frantically shower and get ready in ten minutes, and hurry to work by 9:05. Which, I should reiterate, is five minutes late. Typical Idiot Show episode.

However, because of recent events, or recent event, I should say, over the next few days I will count down the top three episodes of my personal homebrewed Idiot Show. I will enumerate them in present tense, so that you may well appreciate and accurately experience the full measure of my benightedness.

#3: The Toll Bridge of Obtuseness

The setup:
It is the summer of 1999 and I am living in Berkeley but working in Palo Alto, a two hour drive away. For two weeks while I look for an apartment near the Stanford campus I live with my best friend Steve, who has graciously allowed me temporary shelter in exchange for a VCR. I complain often and audibly about the toll I must pay just to drive to work across the Bay Bridge.
Day 1:
Having gone out on the town the night before, Steve is aware of my completely empty wallet. I wake up (late, see above), fly out the door, and begin my drive through Berkeley toward the bridge. I receive a call on my cell phone. “Hello?” (it’s how I answer the phone)
“Chris, do you still have no cash at all?” (Steve’s on the line. See, I thought that might be obvious, and didn’t want to go into a lengthy explanation about whom I was talking to, but I’ll spell it out just this once: It was Steve.) I pull out my empty wallet, which is completely 100% empty, and also has absolutely nothing in it. I look ahead, and realize that I am speeding with reckless abandon toward the onramp for the freeway/toll bridge.
“Um…yes.” (That’s me again. See if you can follow along now.)
“You know the Bay Bridge has a $2 toll. Do you have any coins in your car?”
“Um…no.”
“Where are you?”
“Down the street from your place.”
“Pull over, I’ll be there in two minutes.” I comply, and sure enough, two minutes later (my friend has none of the time issues that I do) Steve’s silver Toyota shows up (Steve’s driving it. You know what? I think you could have figured that one out.). He gets out of his ride and walks to the passenger side of my car. I sheepishly reach two fingers out the crack of my window and hide my face as I pull two dollars into the car before driving away in shame.  I see a glimpse of Steve shaking his head in disbelief in the rear-view mirror before I turn the corner and continue on to work. Stupid, eh? YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW THE HALF OF IT. Or, maybe, you technically know exactly half of it.
Day 2:
THE VERY NEXT DAY. I awaken (late, see above), fly out the door, and begin my drive through Berkeley toward the bridge. I think about how nice Steve was to not only chase me down and give me toll money, but to even think of me and figure out how much money I had and how much I would need and put it all together before I got 4 blocks from his house. What a friend! I look up from my thoughts to find a man angrily staring into my car. He is dressed in a big shiny yellow toll booth. Daa daa da da da daa! IDIOT SHOW!

If you’re still not with me, I have exactly the same wallet with exactly the same contents in exactly the same configuration as the day before. Dammit Steve! Where were you this time! (He probably assumed that I was smarter than I am. Many people have made this mistake.) I spend the next few minutes filling out a form applying for membership in the ‘Please Just Hit Me In the Face and Get It Over With’ Association as twenty-odd commuters murder me with their horns again and again and again and again. On the bright side, I’ve been a member of PJHMItFaGIOW for almost nine years now, and the networking possibilities alone have been worth the hefty dues. It’s how I got into the architecture business!

(check back soon to see which episode took the #2 spot!)