Tour de Midget

From the surreal files:

The place to ride a bike in Chicago has to be the lakefront path.  Winding 18 miles along the city’s uneasy border with Lake Michigan, the path is overcrowded in the summer, deserted during the frigid winter, and home to just about every sight you could hope to see.  One Sunday, I spotted a man pushing a wheelchair occupied by a mannequin whose arm was position to hold an old-fashioned VHS video camera.  The day after Halloween, I spotted a double dong dildo by Roosevelt Ave. 

However, these events pale compared to the events of one chilly May morning.  Trying to get a little exercise in, I’d decided to ride my bike uptown, and was heading north on the path when I came across a pack of children riding their bikes.  This in and of itself was nothing new; Packs of rugrats often scuttled up the path, particularly by Southside neighborhoods where parental supervision was… shall we say a but more lax. This group of kids was out in the middle of nowhere, and nary an adult was to be seen accompanying these kids.  Even though the group was fairly well-behaved – very little of the classic weaving associated with children on bikes – the absence of an adult enforcer had me worried. 

As I passed them, I realized that the children were actually midgets.  A pack of cycling midgets.  All of them were pedaling tiny road bikes and wearing tiny spandex shorts.  Most of them were wearing pink and purple helmets that were obviously made for children.

They were moving slowly.  I fell in behind them and waited for them to get off the path.  There are three kinds of people you just don’t blow by: cops, (real) people in wheelchairs, and midgets. 

The midgets showed no signs of deviating from the path.  After about five minutes, I noticed one of the really tiny midgets was riding one of those kid bike trailers attached to another, slightly larger midget's bike. A minute later, he turned back to me and said, "Nice day for a ride, eh?" in a squeaky little voice.

This freaked me out. I nodded solemnly, said “screw this” to myself, turned for home and ate a gigantic breakfast.

Noah Averts Political Strife

Nestled in the inner city of south Chicago, the Hyde Park neighborhood is a bastion of liberalism.  The neighborhood was not only home to the ultra-liberal University of Chicago, but is also home to current president Barack Obama (note to self: edit article in one to five years), whose former office was now a bike shop around the corner. 

Unsurprisingly, prior to the 2008 presidential election, the favored candidate for the area (as well as the state) was completely decided.  Like any area that leaned heavily to the left or right, propaganda often ran unchecked, and soon reached ridiculous proportions, at least to someone who was particularly moderate.  Or reasonably sane. 

One of the most outrageous claims was the “Impeach Bush” movement, ostensibly over accusations that he’d lied about our reasons for invading Iraq.  While I doubt anyone in the Bush administration was on tenterhooks over the notion, the school of thought had spread across the neighborhood like an infectious disease. 

In my awesome opinion, political bloviation is the greatest waste of time and effort in the modern age, one step removed from trailer trash baby mommas yelling at each other on Jerry Springer.  That said, when you see someone living in fantasy land, you just can’t resist calling them out.  For several months, I’d been walking past a battered Jetta covered with stickers proclaiming “Clinton/Gore in ’92” and “Republicans for Voldemort.”

Three weeks before the election, the Jetta’s owner added to his or her arsenal by stuffing a cardboard placard in his back window that read “Impeach Bush.” And I called shenanigans.  The next day, I left the following note under his windshield wiper:

Dear motorist,

Hey dude, we get it: You’re a man of the people, an idealist who doesn’t buy into the political-industrial complex, stands up for his beliefs, all that shit. We love your wit, the way you bravely add another layer of bumper stickers to the Jetta to show everyone that you’re a free-thinking intellectual who apparently supports every last platform of a major political party. 

But then you had to ruin the illusion of intelligence with your “Impeach Bush” sign.  You see, there’s a hole in your logic large enough to drive a beer truck through.  I’m not sure how much you know about governmental succession, my Jetta-driving friend, but unless you want Tricky Dick Cheney running the show, I’d take the sign down.

It’s a tough world, mi amigo, but sometimes we’ve got to settle for just keeping the shit in the toilet.

Cheers,

Concerned Independent

The next day, the sign was gone.

That Famous Line

In which Noah discusses best sexual practices with his fiance’s father.

Note: I was forbidden from sharing this story until Susan’s father died. Unfortunately, he passed away a few months ago at the ripe old age of 88. This one’s for you, Jerry.  

In June of 2010, during a trip to San Francisco, I convinced a woman to marry me. As these things tend to go, Susan and I spent the next month basking in the wash of attention that inevitably follows the facebook relationship status change from “in a relationship with…” to “engaged to…” Most of the attention comes from married or engaged girls in their late twenties and early thirties.  These people, I suspected, were not so much happy for Susan and me as they were relieved that someone else also decided to get married, providing herd-mentality validation of their life decisions that they so craved. 

But I digress. Amidst this frenzy of congratulations, it took us about a month to realize that no one had broken the news to Susan’s father. This was understandable. Susan’s dad was ancient. And divorced from Susan’s mother, which meant he was out of the loop, in a non-dementia sort of way.

“Do you want to go by your dad’s tonight and tell him you will soon belong to me?” I asked Susan one evening.

“I guess.  I’ll get my coat- hey, isn’t Dancing With the Stars on tonight?” Susan asked, sinking back into the couch.

Several more apathetic weeks passed before we actually made the trip downtown to tell her dad the news.

Let’s break from the present story for a moment to travel six years back in time, all the way back to a bullshitting session that occurred when I was a not-so-wee graduate student at the University of Florida. On that fateful day, I was part of a routine bullshitting session. The topic on this particular day was marriage. Specifically, one of my friends had just gotten engaged and the rest of us were trying to imagine ways for him to screw his engagement up.

“OK, everyone” I asked, ”Let’s say you want to get out of the relationship. Your plan is to offend the parents so much that they forbid their daughter from ever seeing you again, no matter how much she pleads that you really didn’t mean it.”

‘Rules?” someone inquired.

“Simple. You can say one thing and one thing only, and it’s gotta be bad, so bad that you would never again be allowed to enter these people’s home again. They would attack you on sight, just because you said whatever it is you said. So what is it? What can you say that would be that massively offensive?”

“I got it” my roommate said, “Just eyeball the mother and then say ‘I see where your daughter gets her slutty looks’ to the father.”

“Good one,” I said. “Anyone else?”

And so it went. The clear winner was by girl named Lindsay, whose prize is being mentioned by name in this story. Here was her entry: “Look the dad in the eyes and say ‘Sir, of course we’re engaged in premarital sex now, but I want you to know that we’re saving the butt for marriage.’”

The sheer political incorrectness of telling a parent something like this intrigued me.  For years after, I prompted my friends to try the line (usually claiming I had thought of it – sorry Lindsay), particularly to a priest in mandatory Catholic premarital counseling.  To my knowledge, no one has had the courage to utter these words under battle conditions. 

If you know about literary foreshadowing, you may know where this is going.

Flash back to present day, as we sit down to dinner with Jerry. Here’s the biopic on the guy: In his late fifties, he married a woman 25 years younger and produced a single child. Susan was not close to her father in the way that most children are. After three years of dating, Susan offhandedly mentioned to me that her father had never once said he loved her, nor had she ever told him she loved him. 

As Jerry aged out, Susan’s mother divorced him and married a truck driver she’d known in grade school. According to the unspoken rules that govern women who divorce their much older spouse, Susan’s mom still took care of her now-decrepit ex-husband, in the process exposing him to the new life she had made for herself with a younger man.  Occasionally, we would have forced family events consisting of Susan and I, Susan’s mother and her new husband, and a very bitter Jerry. These were not pleasant.

When not on forced family outings, Jerry lived alone in a cluttered downtown apartment. Most of his time was spent sitting on the couch, admiring a vaguely creepy photo of himself from twenty years previous. Jerry’s main passion (aside from complaining about Susan’s mom divorcing him) was food. He still made the daily plod to McDonalds, and Susan often bought him Twinkies as birthday or Christmas presents. Jerry may have been waiting to die, but he was going out with a full stomach.

Knowing this, we had decided to take him out to dinner to break bread and share the good news.  “Keep him moving, he eats slow,” Susan instructed, as we knocked on his door.  “No dessert.”

Before we’d even reached the restaurant, Jerry was already getting pissed about his life. “Can you believe your mother left me for a truck driver?” he asked as we sat down.  Whine with cheese; the ultimate for Jerry.  As our appetizers arrived, it was time for Susan to break the news. 

Susan tried valiantly to ease her father into the news with an elegant gesture, first dangling a ring-bearing hand in front of the old man, then asking him whether he noticed anything new about her appearance. Nothing, Jerry reported, tearing a piece of bread apart with an audible grunt.

(Since you’re no doubt wondering: At this point, I had no intention of using the line, which was safely buried in my subconscious, far from my tongue.) 

“Guess what happened on our trip to California, dad?” Susan tried again. 

Jerry didn’t look up, too intent on putting a second packet of butter onto his bread.  “I was stationed near San Francisco during World War Two,” he said, stuffing bread into his mouth.  “I was with the air wing at –“

“Noah and I had a little talk while we were in San Francisco,” Susan pressed on, cutting off the impending story.  “And he gave me something.” Another brandishing of her ring.

(Still wondering? At this point I had no intention of using the line.)

“That’s very good,” Jerry said through a mouthful of bread.  “If your mother would have talked with me-“

The soup had arrived, and Susan was out of patience. “Dad,” Susan interrupted, “we’re engaged.”

“And what is it you’re engaged in?” Jerry asked, completely serious.

The word ‘engaged’ set me off. From the derelict netherworld of my mind, the memory of Lindsay’s line hit me like a bolt of lightning. There was no time to review its appropriateness: The thing about lines is, if you don’t have the right timing, they tend to suck. It was now or never, and I picked now. I figured I had little to lose; Jerry frequently forgot my name. 

“We’re engaged in premarital sex,” I announced.  “But don’t worry; We’re saving the butt for marriage.”

Susan, who was already about to blow up with exasperation, jabbed me in the leg, but the words were already out.  Beneath the table, I moved my hand, partly to shield my groin from additional attacks by Susan, partly to check to see if my balls had grown noticeably. 

Jerry had ordered the tomato broth. He had a spoonful of it inches from his lips when I delivered the line.  Without comment, he downed the liquid. We waited with bated breath for him to finish his old-man swallowing and react.

“This soup… is delicious,” Jerry announced, resuming eating as though nothing had happened.

“I think I broke his brain,” I said out loud to Susan.

“Asshole,” she said tiredly, rubbing her forehead.

“Takes one to marry one,” I replied.

‘What’s that?” Jerry asked, looking up from his now-empty cup.

“We’re getting married!” Susan snapped.

“Oh,” said Jerry.

Eight seconds passed in silence.

“The soup here is wonderful,” Jerry added.

Charlie Gets His Pizza

In which Noah, a mentally retarded man and a pizza delivery come together at the wrong moment.

Disclaimer: In this story, I will both describe and discuss abnormal actions of a person with Down syndrome.  Yes, I know this is normally verboten, but I am going to do it anyway.  The official reason will be because I work in biomedical research, and can say things about neurological disorders because I’m the guy who’s working on trying to fix them.  Of course, the main reason you’ll still read this is because stories involving the mentally compromised are often fraught with unintentional hilarity. Skip this if you’re sensitive.

May, 2007. I’m living on the South Side of Chicago with two roommates who hailed from Nebraska. My roommates happened to be sisters, and this particular week they were being visited by their mother and brother.  The mom was standard issue, but the brother was  (no pun intended) something special. He had, to put it indelicately, Down syndrome up the wazoo. Mom had obviously not read the novel Flowers for Algernon[1], as she’d named her severely retarded son Charlie. 

As a scientist, I found Charlie fascinating.  Down syndrome is attributed to having three copies of the twenty-first chromosome, creating a genetic imbalance that manifests itself through mental retardation, shortened stature and congenital heart defects.  Despite the relatively straightforward genetic cause, the disease penetrance (how severely the disease manifests) varies dramatically between individuals.  Already in his mid-twenties, Charlie was pushing the envelope in terms of lifespan, and was not in the best of health.  While Charlie’s mother and sisters stepped out, I performed a couple of rudimentary neurological tests on Charlie, which suggested his IQ was in the fifties.  This suggested Charlie was fairly affected by his condition, an observation that was at odds with his preternaturally long lifespan.

While they visited, Charlie and his mom stayed with us.  For those who have never had the pleasure of a mentally retarded housemate, I can tell you that it has its good and bad points.  One morning, I woke up and headed around the corner for my morning pee, only to discover the door wide open and Charlie, pants around ankles, taking a leak with the door wide open and his bare ass blowing in the wind.

Despite Down’s patients suffering from poor muscle tone, Charlie was amazingly strong.  One of my roommates’ favorite games was to play horsey with Charlie. One of the girls would yell ‘Charlie… horsey time!” at which point Charlie would put his palms on the floor (a gymnastic feat made rather elementary by his stunted stature) and mimic a bucking bronco. I was not allowed to play this game. In fact, mom and the sisters got pissed off when I asked them if they’d ever tried to see if one of them could stay on the full 8 seconds during “horsey time.” After that, I was careful to watch my mouth.  Everything was carefully filtered and censored. It was draining. Of particular difficulty was communicating: Charlie could not speak, so I was often forced to ask others about the finer points of the random shit he would do. “Why is he flashing me the peace sign?” I asked one of Charlie’s sisters as the three of us watched track and field. 

“It’s not the peace sign,” the sister explained.  “He’s telling you he came in second at the special Olympics this summer.”

“What sport?” I asked.

“Rhythmic Gymnastics,” she replied. At great personal cost, I kept a straight face and refrained from comment.

Although impossible to confirm, it appeared that Charlie liked me.  In fact, Charlie liked everyone.  No doubt due to his impaired social inhibitions, Charlie had a penchant for issuing hugs to anyone he could get his hands on.  His caretakers did nothing to prevent these spontaneous bursts of affection, laughing each time Charlie latched onto an unprepared victim.  It reminded  me of new mothers and/or dog owners, who seemed to think everyone rejoices in the slobbery affections of their charge. The day after Charlie arrived, we found a wallet on the street. When the owner (a petite Asian girl) came to collect it, I could only watch in horror as Charlie handed her the wallet, then bear-hugged her, scaring the shit out of her in the process.  Seriously, unleashing your twenty-five-year-old retarded son on complete strangers?  Not cool.

The next day, around dinnertime, Charlie was left alone with me while his mother and siblings ran an errand. There was no way in hell I was making him dinner, so I ordered a pizza. Twenty minutes later, our doorbell rang. The delivery man was twenty years old, black, and clad in a ‘do rag and jeans that sagged low enough to make the three flights of stairs to our door a challenge.  From his vacant facial expression, I judged that delivering pizzas was not among his life goals.

Our apartment complex was a converted mansion that had been built around the turn of the century.  As a result, the floor layout was odd, with one of the bedrooms opening on the entry vestibule.  Charlie happened to be in that bedroom and, upon heard the give and take comprising any pizza delivery transaction, he apparently decided to pop in and spread a little love around.

I’d just said, “how much do I owe you,” when Charlie made his move, darting into the vestibule and blindsiding the delivery man with a fierce bear hug. 

The wannabe-gangbanger delivery guy looked down to see a small man hugging him.  Homophobia kicked in. Big time.

“Get the fuck off me, faggot!  I ain’t gay!” he blurted out, as he attempted to scrape Charlie off of him while still balancing a pizza. 

Charlie looked up, tears of rejection welling in his eyes.  A thin sliver of drool spilled from the corner of his mouth, complementing his vacant countenance.   

The delivery guy’s face morphed from anger to remorse.  “Awww, man; I didn’t know you’s fucked in the head,” he said, extending his free arm in a halfhearted request for another hug.  “Rock on, my gay brother.”

An uncomfortable moment followed.  Charlie was frozen, dumbfounded, and in that moment, the delivery guy realized he had just belittled a small retarded man over his sexual preferences in front of his caretaker.  He turned to me, doubtlessly looking to smooth things over.  “’S OK, dude,” he said to me, thumping his chest twice in a gesture of solidarity, “my cousin got the palsy too.”

Less than a minute later, the delivery guy left with a 30% tip (for the show), and I found myself back on the couch, splitting a pizza with Charlie.  It occurred to me that, since Charlie couldn’t really talk, this politically incorrect monstrosity of an incident would probably never be mentioned again.   

It also dawned on me that, in this consequence-free environment, truth inevitably trumps political correctness.  I took my shot: “Hey Charlie, I didn’t know they let guys compete in rhythmic gymnastics.  That’s a special-Olympics-only thing, right?”

Charlie didn’t speak, but set his slice of pizza down and flashed me the peace sign again. 

---

[1] For the uninitiated, Flowers for Algernon is the fictional account of a severely retarded man named Charlie who undergoes an experimental treatment and becomes a genius before gradually slipping back into the chasm of mental retardation.  Come to think of it, the movie Lawnmower Man pretty much ripped this idea off.

The Rules

On the heels of writing a longer set of stories with a common theme, I decided that (a) I'm a little bored and (b) I miss writing and sharing stories. So let's keep it going. "Chicago Fairytales" are the most interesting stories that have happened in the five or so years I've been living in the windy city. But before I begin, here are the rules:

(1) I will write and share these whenever I damn well feel like it. I make $0.00 doing this.

(2) My proofreading will be shit. Proofreading takes time and it's boring. The story is the important part. I will do just enough editing to get the point across and then let it fly. I am not incapable of doing a good job, I just choose not to.

(3) Funny stories do not happen to me every day. Posting one or two stories a week, I will run out of good ones sooner or later. Inevitably, when this occurs, I will post mediocre shit until I get frustrated and go on hiatus to build up more stories. Prepare yourself for that eventuality.

(4) The only way I advertise these is on Facebook. Friend me if you want to know, or subscribe.

(5) Like I said, the story is the important thing. I'm gonna write about whatever I've got. As long as it has a plot and is true(-ish), it's game.

There are far less rules than I thought there would be when I started this list.

OK, let's do this.