"With age comes wisdom."
I think there's a saying that's along those lines. Or maybe it's "the wisdom of age." Regardless, the general understanding is that you get smarter as you get older. And while for the most part that's been true in my life, sometimes I think the trajectory gets knocked off course a little bit. I guess you could also chalk said departures up to lapses in judgement as well. But in the past weeks I've managed to surprise myself not once but three times by doing things that most people figure out not to do well before the age of twenty five. Usually around say, twelve. I'll work my way through them in descending order of stupidity from "you're SURE you made it out of grade school?" to "tell you what, let me have those matches back."
The first being blowing up my toilet last week. And I don't mean in the "duuuuude, I just took the burliest dump EVER, I blew that shit UP" way. I mean in the more literal sense. To preface the situation: for those of you out there who are dirty commies/don't have calendars, last Wednesday was the 4th of July. Being a red blooded 'merican who really enjoys drinking, bar-b-que'ing, fireworks and any and all out-of-doors activities, it's a holiday I look forward to each year. With the exception of Christmas it's probably my favorite one.
This year however, was not one of my best. In fact, I'd say it was probably my worst. That's assuming I didn't have any particularly horrible 4th's in the first couple years of my life that were so traumatic that I've blocked them from my memory. Due to a variety of factors including my work schedule, inabilty to travel, weather and how long it took to get anywhere that day, I ended up doing exactly one of the handful of things I'd planned on doing. By the end of the night, my roomate/confidant/writing partner/belly-chain enthusiast Steve and I had given up on going up to our friend Trevor's for the fireworks, and ended up watching "Accepted" in our livingroom. Afterwards, I wanted to at least go sit on the roof and shoot off some of the sack of fireworks I had leftover from a trip to Cleveland a month or so ago. Despite his many positive qualities that make Steve the joy that he is, one of his downsides is that he's a pussy. By that I mean, he's afraid of heights/doesn't like fireworks that much, and he refused to climb the fire escape to our roof with me and light off fireworks. So I ended up on the roof by myself in the drizzling rain shooting roman candles and bottle rockets down into the street.
Now, as anyone who knows me well can tell you, there are few things I love more in the world than fireworks. Specifically the kind that you can shoot off yourself. The big shows are nice to watch and all, but I prefer the more up close and personal kind. A large part of that enjoyment comes from lighting them off with/at other people. One of my single favorite things in life is a good fireworks-fight, and that's one of the many standard 4th of July activities that I missed out on this year. Which also contributed to it being a kind of crappy year.
Point being, as much as I love fireworks, sitting on your roof in the rain by yourself is a pretty lonely time, no matter the activity. Around the same time that I started to get good and wet, my lighter started to shit the bed, so I headed inside. Still pretty bummed on the days events, or lack thereof, I went for a last ditch effort to cheer myself up. Amongst my various fireworks were a few packs of little black cat style firecrackers with waterproof wicks. Now, I've had black cats go off in my hand, in my pocket, down my shirt, pretty much everywhere they could go off save for between the ole' cheeks. (Yet.) So I assumed, like any other rational person would, that these things aren't exactly halfsticks. Being that the only body of water in my apartment was my toilet, I tossed one in the bowl, watched it sizzle, then PLOOP, nice little water spout.
Say what you will about me, but it really perked me up. Frankly I take pride in the fact that it's the little things in life that keep my spirits soaring. A sunny day, a crisp apple right off the tree, the smell of fresh cut grass, blowing shit up in a toilet...
The problem arose on the third try. After the pleasing geyser, there was a distinct cracking sound, and the lower half of the toilet bowl separated from the upper. The water that was left ended up on the floor, and that was pretty much the end of the toilet. I already knew this wasn't going to make me too popular with my roomates, and it probably didn't help matters that when Steve came in to see what I was talking about I started laughing again.
As an aside, we have two toilets, so it's not like I was causing anyone to have to go hobo-style and shit in a bag and throw it out the window. And yeah, blowing up the toilet was a stupid thing to do, but it's one of those things that no matter how rationally you can realize and understand that it was a bad idea, it doesn't stop it from being funny. I tried to propose the idea of not fixing the broken toilet so we'd have one toilet to make in and another to blow things up in. That resolution was voted down two to one. (I bet you can guess which to no-fun-niks voted "nay.")
The next morning I was waiting for the train to go into work after hockey, and I noticed that all the support beams in the subway station were now a much brighter red and had "wet paint" signs on them. Before I could even stop to think twice, I was just like "Really? For sure?" and stuck my hand on one of them. And believe it or not, the signs weren't kidding, it was wet paint. So I had a nice bright red palm to take to work.
The last thing happened the following day. A couple buildings on my street are under construction or being renovated, so there's a big dumpster parked down the block. Someone threw out a mattress that's just been leaning up against it for awhile now. It had rained on the fourth, pretty hard at times, and as I walked by it, I thought to myself "boy, I bet that old wet mattress that's had time to bake in the sun smells TERRIBLE." And again, before I really thought about it, I stuck my nose in for a big whiff. And yup, it smelled fucking disgusting. Jamming-a-hooker's-hoo-hah-with-a-dead-rat-on-a-stick-disgusting.
Again, that was probably something I could have assumed without double checking, much like the wet paint. But for whatever reason my initial instinct is just to check it out for myself. As someone I just met suggested when hearing all this, I guess I'm just curious.
Oh and the toilets fixed, so I won't get to find out what happens when you stick a bunch of firecrackers inside a tube of toothpaste and put it in the toilet. But whatever happens, I bet it's awesome.
