The Idiot Show - Top 3 Episodes Part I
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!)
