I bought the wine—a liter and a half of Sawmill Creek merlot, $14.99—on my way home one day last week, before picking up Abby from daycare. Once home, I parked in the garage and began gathering my things: laptop, coffee mug, daughter, bag containing a moderately-priced bottle of merlot, and so on. I pulled out the umbrella stroller—a simple folding vehicle with an upright hammock seat and hooked handles—and popped it open.
We often use this stroller because it’s light and compact, and when Abby is in it, we can hang things like diaper bags or grocery purchases from the handles. The salient point here is that Abby has to be in the stroller. Well ok, maybe not Abby necessarily—I suppose it would also work with another, less gifted toddler, or a sack of onions—but the principle is the same: you need the counterweight in the seat in order to hang weight from the handles. It’s an elementary law of physics, really, but it’s astonishing how many times I have been surprised, upon lifting Abby out of the seat, to see the top-heavy stroller flip onto its back, wheels spinning in the air. When it comes to gravity, it seems, I have the intuitions of Wile E. Coyote.
This time I wasn’t stupid enough to lift her out of the seat while I still had bags hanging from the handles. No, this time I was proactively stupid and I actually hooked the liquor store bag onto the stroller handle before I even opened the door to get Abby out of the car. Gravity performed its duties swiftly, and with punishing force. There was an oddly muffled, but nonetheless explosive crack and I stood there, dumbfounded, as a liter and a half of moderately-priced merlot seeped out of the bag’s puncture wounds and slowly—very slowly—slipped across the concrete floor toward the drain.
The stain on the floor is still there.
CONSEQUENCES: Abby learned new colorful words; I drank orange juice with dinner that night
STUPID THING I DID: Accidentally ate dog food in public
I love getting free samples. It doesn’t matter what’s being offered, if it’s free I want it. I can pretty much get an entire filling meal just by circulating among the display stands at Costco on a Saturday afternoon. The trick with the Costco giveaways, though, is to be focused enough to get a sample while they’re fresh and bountiful, yet not appear like someone who is trying to get an entire meal by circulating among the display stands.
I usually start by hanging around the periphery of a target stand, innocently comparing the prices on cotton swabs, say, while eyeballing the preparation of the microwave lasagna. Then, as soon as the offerings are being put on display I smoothly, but quickly, advance on the table. I give a little “well, what have we here?” mutter of interest, real casual-like, as if I just might need to be coaxed into giving the morsels a try. I seize a sample (or two, if the attendant glances away for a moment) pop it into my mouth and make appreciative sounds. It doesn’t matter if I really like it, one must be polite. Then I make a show of examining the packages, as if seriously contemplating a purchase. As others start to gather behind me (rookies!), I make a smooth departure and seek out the next offering. Yes, I am a deft and artful moocher.
So when we tumbled on Port Moody’s streetside Farmers’ Market one drizzly weekend afternoon—one of those quaint little cooperatives where earnest folks in earth tone sweaters are doing holistic things and selling organic goods with new age-y zeal—I was quick to spot the table with the freebie platter. I saw it from twenty paces way: a generous helping of what appeared to be a salmagundi of artisanal bread chunks—just the sort of think you would expect in a farmers’ market run by a bunch of organic hippies—and I shamelessly abandoned my wife and daughter and strode smartly to the table.
I smiled graciously at the earth-toned, multi-pierced young ladies behind the table who were chatting amiably amongst themselves. I gave my customary “what have we here” mutter of interest and pinched a small fistful of what I had every reason to believe was artisanal bread.
I’m not really sure what happened next. Was it the flavor that hit me first—sort of a pungent, “dirty-sponge-dipped–in-a-wet-ashtray” taste? Or had I by then noticed the array of organic dog treats, wrapped in festive cellophane, and the bones and leashes and various earth-toned dog accoutrements? Or perhaps it was at precisely that moment that I became aware of the sudden silence from the other side of the table.
In any case, by then I had already launched into my customary post-sample–snatching appreciative noises, so I really had no choice but to go with it. I mean, once you’ve eaten a helping of dog food and pretended to savor it thoughtfully, with all the mmms and the closed-eyed head-nodding, your only real choice, upon discovering your faux pas, is to attempt to pass yourself off as a dog food connoisseur.
I made it a point not to look up and make eye contact, and I continued to munch as I examined the wares on display, nodding and munching, nodding and munching, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to be standing in a market stall eating dog food. Then I slyly and casually slipped away around a corner and expunged the contents of my mouth onto the ground.
As for the raucous laughter coming from the dog-food-disguised-as-artisanal-bread stand…well, I’m sure they weren’t laughing at me.
CONSEQUENCES: Public humiliation; new appreciation for fact that I am not a dog.
STUPID THING I DID: Almost ran myself into a coma
Many people ask me how I, an endurance athlete who enjoys free lasagna and intemperate quantities of moderately-priced merlot, train for my marathon runs. After all, to look at me, you might think, “he doesn’t strike me as a natural athlete,” and you’d be right. You might even think, “he doesn’t strike me as someone who could pull on his own shorts without help,” in which case you’re just being rude, so cut it out.
Anyway, here are my secrets: First of all, don’t run regularly. If you practice all the time, that just diminishes the achievement on race day, and besides running long distances is extremely boring. Second, when you do run, pick a really hot day and go out around noon when the sun is high. One run like this is worth a whole month of training. And finally, use creative visualization. This is a technique where you imagine yourself—actually see yourself—reaching your goal. Some people imagine themselves crossing the finish line on race day. Me, I like to imagine that I have crash-landed a spacecraft on a remote and forbidding planet and I have promised my crewmate, played by the voluptuous B-movie actress Adrienne Barbeau, that I will run to get help from a village over the horizon. How this village got there and who is in it, I don’t know, and it isn’t really important. What’s important is that I get there and then make it back to Adrienne Barbeau before time runs out. What happens when time runs out I’m not clear about either. As you can probably tell, I haven’t really thought this scenario out, except for the part about Adrienne Barbeau.
Voluptuous B-movie actress Adrienne Barbeau
So there I was last month, on one of the hottest days during the summer heat wave, pathetically out of shape, pounding doggedly down a path through an open, desolate expanse of nature reserve, in the scorching noon-day sun, when I started to feel queasy. Spots were swimming in front of my eyes and my brain started to feel soupy. Suddenly, I was intensely aware of how hot it was—how hot I was—and I teetered unsteadily to a stop. My head felt like a furnace. I looked around for shade. Nothing. Foolishly, I had ventured out far from help—stuck in the middle between Adrienne Barbeau and the village, as it were—and I had very little water left. More importantly, it seemed that I had very little consciousness left, and I started to panic, thinking that I was going to pass out and lie there cooking in the sun like a weenie on a grill. Or like a free Costco sample of lasagna.
Luckily I stayed conscious, and I managed to keep moving (I am an accomplished endurance athlete, after all). Eventually, the worst of the heat hallucinations subsided and in time I reached an area where there were big shady trees and a few people strolling. I sat for awhile, then I walked the rest of the way home, slowly, where I drank water like a camel and slept soundly for about three days.
CONSEQUENCES: Persistent dry mouth, exfoliating of massive number of brain cells, leading to difficulty with elementary physics and trouble distinguishing dog food from artisanal bread.
