The Book of Awesome (20 page)

Yes, bedhead is a temporary escape from that
Hair Prison
we all live in every day. Freeing your hair is the first step to
freeing your mind
and freeing your life. When you get up and let it go, you sort of let yourself go for a moment too.

Suddenly Juggling Jane relaxes into cool, casual
Leg Stubble n’ Sweatpants Jane,
who’s more fun to cuddle up with under a warm blanket in front of a flickering TV. And Suit n’ Tie Sam chills into our old pal Couch-Dent Sam, who laughs at all our jokes, does great imitations, and doesn’t take anything too seriously.

Bedhead all day long, people.

Because sometimes it’s great to ditch the comb and see what happens.

AWESOME!

Whether you’re rinsing undies in the basement of a downtown apartment building, permanently pressing at the local Laundromat, or just tumble drying at home, one thing’s for certain:
that laundry room floor is filthy.

Dirt tracks and dust balls coat the cracks and crannies of the joint, so it’s always a tense scene when you’re moving those
wet, twisted clothes
from the washer to the dryer.

One false move and your dress shirt gets a
cobweb skid mark
up the sleeve. Two false moves and your black socks turn gray and linty. Three false moves and you’re throwing everything back in the washer again.

No false moves and you’re laughing.

AWESOME!

When it’s a dark, summer night, and you’re cruising around town, bass thumping, head bumping
,
rocking out in the backseat, let me ask you something: What feels nicer than slipping your hand out the window and letting that cool breeze wash right over you?

If you said,
Not much, baby
, then you got it.

Listen up, Auto Industry—to get our summer groove on we need those backseat windows to drop down all the way. None of this halfway,
quarter-way
, all-the-way-but-an-inch business. We won’t have it.
We The People
need that nonstop, all-drop window. Door factories and window makers, you heard it here first: Stop stopping, start dropping
.

Because there’s nothing quite as frustrating as a window that stops short. Have you ever tried to dangle your arm out a stopped-short window? Welcome to a world of cut-off circulation and
cold, blue hands
.

Backseat car windows that go down all the way make life sweeter. They blast us with wind and let us rock out with our elbows out just like the
front seat crew
.

AWESOME!

First of all, getting grass stains means that you were running around at high speeds without proper equipment. Maybe you slid last minute to avoid a
frozen tag
or made an awkward somersault dive at a line-drive Wiffle Ball. Either way, the grass stain symbolizes your large devil-may-care investment in having
balls-out fun
, and that’s something worth r especting.

See, boring people, like myself, rarely get grass stains running around because we’re always doing it in Umbros and shin pads from 7:30 to 8:25 p.m. on Mondays down at the indoor gym.

Now, when you’re just running around full throttle in cords and a sweater until you trip on a rock and fall down a hill, my friend, that is something. Walk home with pants full of grass stains, some
spicy kneeburn
, and mud-caked shoes, and you’ve just had yourself a great day.

AWESOME!

Ever tried to turn on someone else’s TV?

Brother, we both know that’s a
tough gig
.

First, there’s the
Brand-Name Matchup
. You stare at three identical-looking black remotes on their coffee table and play Sherlock by matching brand names. You eye the Panasonic logo in the corner of the TV and search for the Panasonic remote on the table. Elementary, my dear Watson.

If that doesn’t work, you may have to go with
The Walk-Up
. When nothing turns on, you toss the remotes on the couch in a fit of rage and walk up to the front of the TV to search for the Power button. This works until you want to watch a movie and can’t find fancier buttons like TV/Video.

Sometimes you get an
Out of Order Lecture
. Your buddy walks in the room and sees you pushing buttons with Spanish subtitles scrolling across the screen. “What did you press first?” he asks, ripping the remotes out of your hand like puppies you happen to be strangling. “You’re doing it out of order!” He might even throw in some sarcastic jabs at the end like “How could the TV work without the cable box?” or “No, no, no, you have to flip the Input switch on the Universal first!”

If you’ve felt this pain, you know how rewarding it can be when you finally master your TV remote. You don’t see yourself changing, but one day you look in the mirror and notice you’ve become a
Channel Surfing All-Star
.

First you master
the ups and the downs
and then you ace the number pad, even after the
little nipply thing
wears off the
5
. When you get that, there’s no stopping you. Mute, sleep, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to look and your TV watching efficiency zooms through the roof. Nobody flips channels like you. Nobody cranks the volume when Mom starts vacuuming like you. And nobody pushes
Mute
and answers the phone in one ring like you.

Nobody can touch you, baby.

You made it.

AWESOME!

Living in a big city can be lonely.

Friends scatter and splatter in all directions and people dear to your heart fling themselves across state lines,
borders
, and deep dark oceans.

And while calling your friends has gotten a lot cheaper, let’s be honest: It’s still hard to line everything up perfectly for a long phone call. There are time zones, there are answering machines, and there’s the general difficulty of jumping into someone’s life for an hour when they’re in the middle of living it.

Despite these issues, once in a while you land one of those special one- or two-hour phone calls with a close friend far, far away. If you’re lucky, after the first
twenty minutes
of what’s new at work, with the kids, with the folks, and with people both of us know but one of us knows better, it might fall into that healthy back-and-forth banter where it seems like no time has passed.

That’s the best part of the phone call.

Joking like you’re back in the dining hall at college before a long Friday night, chatting like you’re sharing a bunk bed and whispering on
Christmas Eve
, and laughing like you’re still young and still married.

Sometimes if you listen close enough you can hear those smiles shining through the phone like
laser beams
. And they tug on your heart as your brain lapses and enjoys some great times with a loving friend.

AWESOME!

Blind and stumbling, you grunt and scratch your way back to your
wrinkled sheet cave
after an epic journey through the
frozen bathroom wilderness
.

AWESOME!

Some everyday appliances look like they were recovered from a
flying saucer
at the bottom of the ocean.

Complicated bunny-ear wine decorkers, handheld metal grabbers that lift out garden weeds, and of course that
heavy metal device
used to measure your foot at the shoe store.

But I guess there’s a reason for it.

If a
handful of rulers
were just lying around, there would be much less suspense when you moved up a shoe size. Mom would grab a ruler, stick it on your foot, and snag you a new pair of loafers. But with the
Foot-Measuring Machine 2000
from outer space
there is drama
. First the gal at the store has to find one under a chair somewhere, then she brings it over and squats in front of you, then she places your heel in it, twiddles some dials up, takes a breath, looks up, and announces your shoe size.

“Seven.”

AWESOME!

We’ve all been there.

Staring nervously into the microglow at the
fat, puffed-up bag
of popcorn calmly spiraling in the center of the dish like no big deal. But it is a big deal, and you know it’s a big deal, because despite the puffbag’s
straight face
, there’s a minute left, the bag looks full, the pops are slowing down, and you don’t know when to pull the plug.

It’s tense.

Stop too soon
and you’ll enjoy some well-popped corn but be left with handfuls of greasy, unpopped kernels at the bottom of the bag. Your stomach will rumble and you’ll either stay hungry or pop more and overeat.

Stop too late
and you’ll enjoy some well-popped corn but some kernels will be burnt, the bag will be smoky, and your fire alarm could have a fit. We don’t want that either.

Yes, that’s why it’s so great when your microwave pops popcorn perfectly. Either you grow to trust your dependable
Popcorn Button
or you slowly master the timing yourself.

How good does it feel when you pull out that perfect, steaming bag and pour it in a big bowl as the movie starts?

AWESOME!

You know the one.

The cap is long gone,
the end is chewed up
, but that trusty ballpoint, she keeps flowing like Niagara Falls.

Loyal, failsafe, and
inky to the bone
, that one really good pen might be stashed on top of the fridge, deep in a dresser drawer, or down at the bottom of the
pencil case
.

But it’s stashed, and it’s handy, and it does the deed just fine.

Now sure, once in a while you might even think you’ve lost your trusty old pen. You don’t see her for a few weeks, maybe a few months. You figure she accidentally rolled under the stove, mistakenly got garbaged, or worse—was hoodwinked by a callous and immoral
Pen Thief
masquerading as a fiddle-dee-dee, aw-shucks
Pen Borrower
.

There is a
period of grieving
, but one random day you just find her again, sure enough—sleeping soundly in your winter jacket pocket or lounging around carefree in the old Scrabble box. It always seems to happen when you least expect it.

And isn’t there just something about that one really good pen that’s always kicking around? Yes, in these days of kitchen whiteboards, visual voicemail, and text messages, it’s nice having a steady-eddy pen by your side. Because that pen is something real. Something honest.

And something worth loving.

AWESOME!

When it’s late at night on a lonely road and your fuel gauge starts
flirting with the Big E
, it’s gut-check time.

First you enter
Fuel Preservation Mode
and start accelerating really slowly and coasting nonchalantly through stop signs to save your precious remaining fumes. Next maybe you fall into a bit of a
Blame Game
, wondering why you let yourself get to this terrible place and pledging never to do it again. After that it’s time for
Survival Mode
, where you make a mental checklist of all the emergency food and supplies you have in the car, imagining yourself building a napkin blanket to keep warm and eating restaurant mints and ketchup packets to survive.

And then finally, when hope is almost lost, with that fuel light burning brightly,
that steering wheel gripped tightly
, and those hands shaking slightly, you drive up another dark, lonely hill and finally notice some blissful heaven-sent gas station lights appearing just over the horizon.

AWESOME!

Smack dab in the middle of the movie’s big scene it always happens.

Everything gets tense for the courtroom finale or
championship football game
, and then all of a sudden the defense attorney or opposing coach turns out to be
that guy from some other movie
and you just can’t stop thinking about where he’s from.

Wait, was he the prison guard in
Shawshank
? The lawyer from
Miracle on 34th Street
? Or, no, no, no, I got it. He’s the knife guy from
Once Upon a Time in Mexico
.

AWESOME!