For the last 12 to 15 years I have been jotting down ideas, stories, jokes and memories. Sometimes it’s a line or scene for ‘this novel I’m gonna write’, or ‘a screenplay that I’m gonna knock out with my friends’, or ‘my standup routine for an open mic night at some comedy club’. Not gonna happen.
That said, I still have sheets of paper, Blackberry voice recorded notes, and calendar reminders full of crap that I swore I would use someday. I had been perfectly content to just let all of these notes live out their lives in their respective idea dungeons until something started to happen more frequently.
They started popping up in other places. My ideas, my shared ideas with my friends, inside jokes that had mainstream funny potential, many of them arising in movies, tv shows, other people’s tweets, and other medium.
The example I will provide that was supported by the most material evidence and character witnesses was our “Strength in Numbers Theory” that examined the perceived hotness of female bar patrons. This exact concept was portrayed on a hit CBS comedy and given a similar name. Damn.
As plenty of my friends have agreed in the past, the only difference between us and the employed writers and performers of the world = ambition. This blog was born as a way to document these silly musings and concepts which will forever be tagged with a datestamp as a way of planting our flag on the joke.
When I was about 8 years old my folks took me and one of my sisters to visit some family friends who had a lake house. I actually don’t know exactly how old I was, but I hate to say “when I was a kid”. I have no idea how people are always able to remember exactly how old they were when referencing certain events. My memories exist in more of a Venn diagram than a timeline.
Anyway, this was my inaugural voyage to a self-contained body of water. I had been to the ocean before, but as far as I recall no previous lake excursions. The most important lesson I learned that day was not to lean over the side of a canoe to look down into the water. My beefy 87 pound frame provided enough of a weight shift to flip the sea-faring vessel upside down and send my unsuspecting parents plunging into the depths of Canisus Lake (which I now refer to as “Lake Wrestlemania” – story to follow).
Ever the survivalist, I grabbed one of the canoe’s bench-like seats and held on, hanging for what seemed like hours in the air pocket between the inverted boat and the water’s surface. My dad was pretty impressed with me. My lasting image of that afternoon is the contents of my father’s wallet laid out to dry on a towel on the flipped-down tail gate of our sweet station wagon. Good thing this was pre-cell phones.
That aside, the real reason I speak of the lake trip today is because I want to give you some insight as to how I perceived the world as an 8 year old boy. At some point during the lake day, I found myself sitting alone on a deck or pier of some sort. Gazing at my surroundings, this was my inner monologue:
“I can’t believe people swim in this. I got in it once and there was all this slimy disgusting seaweed that touched my feet and scared the shit out of me. I’m never going in a lake again. Swimming pools are SO much better. There’s never any creepy vines reaching up and touching your feet (seriously, how horrific?!), and definitely no fish or other mysterious sea creatures. Seriously, how would I know if there was a massive nasty fish coming up to get me in a lake? You can’t see anything! The water is so dirty.”
OK here’s where it get’s good:
“Hmm. The best part about a pool is that it has a liner at the bottom (no seaweed) and it’s chlorinated (so the water stays clear). Why wouldn’t they just put a big liner down in this lake and pump some chlorine into it?? Then this whole place would be worth a damn. The liner would have to be a little stronger than a standard residential pool liner, what with all of the jagged rocks and debris that presumably inhabit the bottom of this lake, but nonetheless, a sturdy idea. Certainly I can’t be the first one to think of this concept. I’m sure it’s already in the works.”
Yes, surely there is a group of like-minded lakeside residents somewhere in central/western New York State who is heavily lobbying local policymakers to get that lake lined and chlorinated ASAP. What was the holdup? Stupid red tape. The concept was rock-solid.
I rode home that day in my preferred manner of travel: in the backward-facing third row of that yellow Chevy Caprice station wagon. It never occurred to me that the millions of aquatic organisms that lived in Lake Wrestlemania would object to my plan.
What has occurred to me in reflecting on that day is that I prefer controlled environments. Give me a contained swimming pool over a sprawling body of water any day. I can see my feet. I prefer driving over riding because I’m in control. I like safety nets and soft landings. I venture out of my comfort zone just once to lean over the side of the boat to peer into the deep abyss and what happens? I dunk my family in the lake. Writing this blog is in a lot of ways venturing out of my comfort zone, but I’m in control of it. Somehow putting all of these silly thoughts and jokes to paper makes me feel like I’m in control of their fate.
cant wait to read about Lake Wrestlemania. Wasn’t that co-starring a frail 11 year old named Jay Knupp?
funny you mention being 11 years old. That is kind of the basis of the WM3 post I have cooking. Should be up early next week. Thanks for reading.