The FYC

We played the stupidest games in grade school.

I will freely admit that my grade school class wasn’t exactly the most refined group of kids to ever grace the halls of St. Philomena’s; We melted crayons in the teachers coffee, urinated in class room corners, and engaged in enormous "book fights" in the library (as a defining testament to our unruliness, on one particular day in eighth grade, both of our homeroom teachers -- our class was split into two homerooms -- would be out attending a conference, so the school decided to just give the entire eighth grade the day off of school to keep them from being forced to use two separate substitute teachers to try to deal with us. Because nobody doubted those subs would have killed themselves and/or all of us after about ten minutes of class.) -– And yes, most of us had criminal records of one kind or another by the time we were 21.

(Of course, our eighth grade teacher left her husband and ten or so kids and ran away with one of the priests from our parish after we graduated, so it’s not like we were the only fucked up people in that school.)

(Plus, there was that whole "priest molestation" thing, but that’s only funny when it happens to people I don’t know, so I can’t really make any jokes about that.)

But one of the less urbane games to grace the blacktop was "the penis game", which consisted of -- well -- punching someone in the dick and saying "penis." (The premise is essentially the same as my favorite playground game ever: "wet butt," which is where you step in a puddle and then kick another kid in the ass and yell "Wet butt!" at them).

Sure they weren’t the most sophisticated of games, but what the fuck do you want from us? We were ten. As Judge Roy Snyder once ruled, "Boys will be boys."

But it’s not just boys who will be boys, sometimes (supposedly) grown men will be boys as well. As was the case when I was in the Marines, where the "penis game" made a brief comeback, the classic "safety-farting game" was a staple, and whenever a new guy would check into our platoon we would make a point of having someone push him into a wall and yell "How’s my dick taste?" at him, just to see how they’d react (the normal reaction? Confusion.)

(Also, those are some of the things I think about whenever someone talks about how proud they are of our nation’s military – dicks and farts. That’s why I giggle so much whenever the topic comes up.)

One of my favorite days in the Marines was a day where we were allowed to have a "recess" and everyone went out onto the lawn next to our office. We taped off a circle about 35 feet in diameter and proceeded to play "bull in the ring," a game which essentially is a battle royal, except there aren’t any ropes and Diesel has never eliminated seven consecutive people in "bull in the ring."

There were about twenty of us in the circle, and eventually all were eliminated except a giant country boy named Andy and myself.

Andy and I had rather different styles – I preferred the "dead bear" style of fighting (where one lies motionless on the ground and screams "DEAD BEAR!" whenever someone tries to move their stock-still , fat ass; eventually they tire of your nonviolent resistance and move on to try to eliminate someone else) while Andy, in fact, was actually a bear and would fucking military press people out of the ring.

It’s probably Douglas needles(s) to say, but Andy won our showdown in about three seconds (as soon as he looked at me I ran away screaming like a irrate chinaman and hid in a tree).

(Just kidding, I don’t know how to climb trees.)

What’s the point of this shit-show of a blohhhg post? Well, as I sit here in my office, blinded by the stale lighting, trying to find something to occupy my time, with the theme from "Sanford and Son" running on the TV in the background, it dawns on me that I could really use a recess break in my day-to-day life. You know, just throw on some sneakers, hit the blacktop and punch a dude in the dick! Who’s with me?

Really? Nobody? That’s cool; I never had any friends, anyway. I’ll be meekly throwing a tennis ball against the wall if you need me.

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I realize this is about a one in a million shot ("So you're saying there's a chance!"), but The Lady Friend and I need some help. We had been planning on going up to Peoria this weekend, but our plans fell through as I have to work late tomorrow (AmerenUE’s electrical service in the St Louis area has been so crackerjack over the last six months that my company needs to plan power outages just to make sure all of our back up generators are working alright. And guess who gets to make sure all of the computery things don’t die during the outage? I’ll give you a hint: He’s 26 years old and kind of wants to punch another man in the dick.)

We were really looking forward to the trip, my grandpa is having his 80th birthday party on Saturday and we were going to get drunk and play shuffleboard with infrequent-drunken-FYC-comment-leaver Tito and his wife.

But it’s not the friends and family we are most disappointed to miss out on (sorry guys), it’s the pizza. Monical’s pizza, actually.

We freaking love Monical’s. And since the nearest one to the StL is over an hour and a half away, it’s not something that we normally have access to, so whenever we make it up to Peoria, we like gorge ourselves on its deliciousness. And it’s this – not our beloved grandfather celebration into octogenarian land, nor hanging out with some of our best friends – that we were most looking forward to.

(Admittedly, that last sentence isn’t 100% true, but there is a dash of truthiness in there.)

So, TLF and I, in our quest for a taste of Central Illinois, will be trying to make a Monicals-esque pie this weekend.

Now, it’s difficult enough to reverse engineer a pizza period, let alone trying to do it from memory alone, so it is my hope (my slight, faint hope) that somebody, somewhere out there reading this now has either worked at a Monical’s or knows someone who has, and can help a brother out into what, exactly, makes that pizza so freaking delectable.

[Of course, it is rather obtuse of me to even assume that anybody, anywhere is still reading this rambling, incoherent 1200 (!) word mess which I have created, but what the hell, huh?]

If you’re of any help, you’ll be in the running for a special mystery prize!*

[have a great weekend, kids. if you get the chance, try pushing a stranger and yell “hows my dick taste” at them. i think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the reaction. it works even better if you’re a girl.]

*It’s a crude pencil drawing of Nancy Pelosi and Anthony Michael Hall naked, riding a unicorn together.

Labels: Al's Dumb Ideas, I Fucking Love Monicals Pizza, Stuff You Probably Don't Care About, The Penis game, Wett Butt