Joyous Jackolantern Smiles

Its the end of the summer, and for the first time in my life this means nothing more than August is ending and September is sweeping in right on time behind it. I don't have to worry about packing my life into boxes and moving back into college. I don't have to look up a book on sparknotes because I forgot to do my summer reading. And I don't have deal with the pressure of choosing seats on the first day of class. But with the end of summer comes the end of opportunity for me. I dropped the ball and have just come to grips with what I lost, even though it was at my finger tips.

It has been another summer without driving an ice cream truck. My dreams and ambitions of playing the tunes of children's happiness is washed away when Auntie Autumn shows up, wearing something way to revealing for a woman her age, and making all of the leaves change color from embarassment. Only once in my life do I want to drive around that magic truck of good times, delievering joy in the form of an overpriced Flintstone's push-pop. It is very important for me to accomplish this at a young age because the girls that babysit these children aren't getting any older and soon it will not only be illegal; it will just be plain creepy.

Sure, most girls of legal age have legitimate jobs working at ice cream stores but every so often there's one whose job revolves around the lives of their neighbor's children. Those are my targets. How do I know how old they are? Simple, I would have to card every person coming up to my truck because who can make enough money just selling ice cream. I'd be a moble liquor store, tabacoo palace, and gun shop. Kids love ice cream, but they also love firearms. There's nothing qute like the look on a youngin's face when you hand them a fully loaded 12-guage shotgun and they can live out their wildest counter-strike fantasies. Of course, I don't let the kids keep the gun, that would be immoral and wrong. I just let them pick off a few pigeons; feel the power.

In fact, I probably won't have enough room on the truck for the ice cream with all the other merchandise. But I'll still have the jingle. The sweet call of the ice cream man, who sells knives, chinese throwing stars, and electronics he got from a guy. The innocence of children walking up the truck and ordering their choco-taco, pep-pills, and placing a bet on Hope Mom Doesn't Walk In to show in the 5th race at Saratoga. The warm feeling in my heart after a toddler walks away from my truck with his Astropop, proximity trigger mines, or cigars of only the finest Cuban tabacoo.

Some think what I'm doing for these children is going to make the headlines someday. They stand on the street yelling "I am calling someone about this. You will get what's coming to you!" and I simply tell them not worry themselves with rewards. I'm not in it for the fame or the money. I'm all about seeing those little faces smile.

What Ever Happened To...

There are a few moments of transition in a person's life. Around my area, going to highschool was one of those transitions because two different elementry schools emptied into one highschool. This meant that half the school would not know about the time you cried at the 7th grade dance when Tiffany Howard wouldn't dance with you, then you went into the bathroom slipped and broke your arm in three places but they never checked so you were stuck inside that bathroom until Monday morning when the janitor found you. Your past was mysterious and you could recreate yourself into a smooth mamajamma. At least that's what I thought could happen until I got to highschool and everyone was still refering to me as the Bathroom Kid. Teenagers are harsh.

But another thing that happened with that transition is some of the people you hung out with in the eariler grades started to slip away. Whether they did not make the football team or they sprouted boobs and suddenly became more popular with the upperclassmen, some of our close friends became not so close until ultimately at graduation you did not even acknowledge each other's existance. Its no one's fault, and it happens throughout life.

They move away to another state or the court decides you are no longer allowed to contact them; usually something gets in the way of that connection you used to have. You lose touch with people and most of the time its people you've seen naked. Now, I have lost touch with people I haven't seen naked. But most of the time, you've seen them naked. No matter how hard you try you will not be able to forget you saw them naked. Especially if she's ugly and your friends know about it because friends never let you forget about the ugly girl. Oh, they will forget that time you got Tiffany Howard at junior prom in the coat check room, but the time you skipped gym class and made out with Bridgette Kovolski because "it was dark, and her snaggletooth wasn't as dominant" will plague you until you die.

As you grow older maybe those old connections with people will florish in your life again along with your three kids, beautiful wife, house almost paid off, and Bonkers the family dog. Then you can throw it all away for a fling with some girl you met in college that you ran into visiting your old school on Homecoming. Fourth floor of the library, like old times. And just like old times, you walked away with an unpleasent sensation and I am not talking your conscious. Some people are best left in the past.

Summer Lovin'

Making it to August normally signals the end of summer is right around the corner. And even with global warming in full effect this season of sunshine and happiness is coming to a close waiting ever so patiently for the season of snow and depression to creep up on us. But for some people out there, they don't have to wait until Mr. Sun no longer listens to the praise of children to "please, come shine on me" to fall into that drafty basement of being down. No, for although these months were specific created by the Babylonians to assure that everyone got at least one round of Tickle the Grapes in the Garden, some people have been unable to find that summer fling; and its almost harvest season.

The summer fling. Either its a time of adolescent fun between two people shared for a few short weeks out of the year never to happen again. Or its a lie you tell your friends about a time of adolescent fun you had with this "totally hot girl named Theresa, but she lives in Oregon and I don't have her number." There is something about a summer fling that is different than a relationship that can last through winter. For starters; these people do not have to have anything in common with one another. She loves horses and writes in her journal every night telling it all the things she would die if her friends found out about. He likes Rage Against the Machine and once ate a wool sock on a bet. But their parents rented houses on the same block the summer of 2003, and she let him get to second base one night on a jetti; because that's how a summer fling works.

There's no love. In fact, there's no love at all. Not in summer flings, not in fifty-year marriages; love does not exist. They've done studies. Plugging people's brains into machines trying to determine which lobe controls the love function in the brain. Hell, they don't even have a definition of what love is. Ask anyone that's used that term to describe it, what do they say? "Love is indescribable" I can't see love, I can't taste love... you can smell love, but that's something a good roommate will ignore when you're driving his ass to the train station the night after you had a date.

Love is something that science cannot prove its existence in the universe. But you know what they can prove exists? Big f**king rocks. Hell, they don't even need all those equations, I can see the rock. Its right there! That rock is REAL. You can metaphorically be "struck by Cupid's Arrow" but I can literally "throw a big f**king rock at you."

The End of College

Graduating from college really opened my eyes to a lot of things. Walking up on stage and getting a diploma from a man who you have not had a full conversation with in four years time is not much of an accomplishment. I am sure if I paid any average Joe on the street $120,000 to stand up on stage wearing a silly robe and give me a xeroxed piece of paper with my name on it many men would stand up to the call. But I sat through the graduation speeches and heard my mom screaming from the crowd as I strolled across the stage and shook hands with some guy making more money than I will ever manage to scrape up for a degree I won't use. I know not everybody graduates from college but a lot of people in this day and age do, and it is starting to lose its prestige. Its enjoying a band before they hit it big, and then afterwards realizing their nothing too great. The Nickelback Special as I like to call it.

I am not saying I didn't learn anything in college. I became a pretty good bartender at school. And as the years went by I got better and better at slight of hand because all the girls started to ask questions like "What did you just put in my drink?" and "Why is there a large bottle of GHB next to the cherries?" And as the time passes in the real world I am starting to realize my professors were right in saying the skills I learn at college will help me in the real world. Just yesterday I was walking down the street when a crazy man wearing nothing but a trench coat brandishing a box cutter asked me; "What does The Block World Theory institute about the construction of the universe?!" Well its a good thing I attended a lecture last semester on a book written by Stephen Hawking because after 20 minutes of debating the practicality of the String Thoery with this man, he let him guard down to reiterate a point and I hit him with a trash can lid.

College has become what highschool was 25 years ago. It is the myth of what the minimal basis for being successful and has gotten easier. I graduated a few points shy of Cum Laude and never read a full book. Hell, I had a class my senior year whose final was 35 multible choice questions and no essay. At the time I was not going to complain but looking back I can get more information from an article in Rolling Stone than I can get sitting around listening to a professor for 16 hours a week. There is more useful information about global politics in an Audioslave song than there is in the classroom.

Ok, so maybe college now just is not supposed to be the intellectual boiling pot of ideas to achieve a higher understanding of a specific area of study. I think the sooner colleges accept this to be true the sooner they can start charging even more than they charge now. Think about it; when you were applying to colleges every brochure looked the same. Beautiful shots of the campus, people in labcoats pouring liquids into basins, two black guys and an Asian kid studying under a tree; its the template for every one of them. Now what if a college had the brass to put out some media on what college was really about. Pictures of eight people shoved into a Cavalier in line at the drive-thru of Taco Bell at one in the morning, pictures of the latest Whores and Smores party, a drunken note written from one roommate to another about where he went that night that just kind of trails off at the end about Yoda and Twinkees. If colleges were to take one person's Facebook photos and mail them out to prospective students their attendance would triple.

College is over. This is the new Acts of Randomness.