Step Up: I'm ready!

My brother and I used to fight a lot and when I say "fight" I don't mean bickering, I mean Fight Club type fight. You see, we are only 15 months apart so we've always been very close. However, at one point, my brother was about 6'4", 260 lbs and 1% body fat when he was playing football. I, on the other hand, was about 5'6", 90lbs with no body or fat. So, it was hardly ever a real even playing field. One day in elementary school (I was in 2nd, he was in 4th grade) we decided to fight out on the playground before school. Now, understand that kids would gather around and watch as my brother and I squared off. Most of my fans would continue cheering even though I was laying on the ground in crazy pain. I wanted to show them that I could win occassionally. Fun times. Anyway, this cold winter day, we resorted to fighting again, but I decided this was my day. I was set in my mind that I would beat him and all my friends would cheer. I let him throw a few punches and then I socked him right in the mouth with my winter gloves on (the kind that smell funny on the inside when they get wet). He went down instantly! But, I pretty much knew that would happen since I had slipped a handful of cold rocks into the knuckles of my gloves. I think I got a little bruise on my finger when the rocks crushed against his front teeth. Anyway, right as he fell to the ground, the teacher blew the whistle and all the kids lined up to go to class....except my brother laying in the middle of the baseball field face down, covering his face. Maybe he was thinking if he held the spot where his front teeth used to be it might stop bleeding...it's hard to say. Finally, he got up and made some threatening remark to me. I don't know...I really couldn't understand him with his new lisp. Looking back, I should have thought it through a little better and positioned the rocks so they wouldn't hurt my fingers.

Okay, so here it is....CHAD BLEW MY COVER!

Well, after quiting my job and the "unnamed" publishing company, I went to school for real estate. I just finished the class a week ago, and today I took my official national and state exams to be licensed in Colorado....and I PASSED! Yippee! Thanks for all of your who have been encouraging me through this venture - it feels good to have it completed and moving onto the next step (which is actually APPLYING for my license and making sure the FBI doesn't find out anything too serious when they're doing my background check).
Anyway, I still have some days of being unemployed in my future as I work out all the details, but passing the exam was a huge step.

Garden Massacre

When I was young (probably about 5 years old) my brother and I were outside playing in my great grandpa's garden. As he worked the dirt with his hoe, he suddenly stopped and called us over, "Come here boys!" We ran over and saw a small snake - it was the first time I had ever seen a snake and I was pretty excited. Both my brother and I fearlessly crouched down to get a good look at it. As we were mesmerized by the incredible creature, the hoe suddenly came down and chopped its head off followed by, "Those are bad for grandpa's garden". It was fairly traumatizing and playing in the garden wasn't so special after that. Thanks grandpa.

Mary's meat sauce...and other things I wasn't interested in.

When I first moved into my townhouse I was 19 years old and my neighbor next door was a middle-aged woman who was single and looking for a nice young man....much younger. I apparently fit the role well. But it wasn't a mutual interest. You see, I'm too nice sometimes and one day I offered to help her with something. After that, me and my roommate became her "handymen". We hung curtain rods, changed light bulbs, carried in groceries, moved furniture, fixed her computer, etc. Once we had done our chores, she "rewarded" us with a special gift - frozen, homemade spaghetti sauce in ziploc bags. I sort of felt like Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer. We were always a little worried about the contents, so we never actually indulged in our parting gifts. Yeah, they went straight to the trash. Anyway, we continued to help her with various things until she started making comments in her grogly smoker voice, "If I was 30 years younger..." although we never got to hear how that phrase ended because Mary would begin to laugh, and then start a hacking-cough from years of smoking. On the days she wasn't feeling as forward, she'd tell us about her drinking problem and start crying - then (of course) "Come give me a big hug" and she would embrace us like a Katrina victim being air-lifted from their rooftop by a rescue party. Finally, she found a nice live-in-boyfriend (Rafael) at AA and she didn't need our assistance anymore. One Saturday morning, they came over and told us how much they appreciated us as neighbors and asked us if we wanted to have a BBQ that afternoon on the community lawn. It seemed a little strange, but we accepted. He was going to bring the beer (they both left AA after meeting eachother) and we were going to provide the burgers. Anyway, a few hours later, we saw them driving away with a truckload of stuff. We figured they'd be back in time for the BBQ in a few hours, but we never saw them again.

Contradiction?

Does it seem odd to anyone else that when we were kids, we could ride our bikes in the street all day without helments or sunscreen, yet we had to come in when it started getting dark because it wasn't "safe"?