The Book of Even More Awesome (12 page)

Of course, an hour later he showed up to the party as Superman. And though he didn't leap any tall buildings in a single bound, he did manage to drink most of the punch bowl faster than a speeding bullet.

More important, his last-minute Halloween costume got us all laughing. The best ones do that:

Okay listen, when somebody puts an amazing amount of time and effort into a
kick-ass costume
, that's worth celebrating. Nobody here denies that. All we're saying is if you manage to scramble around your house at the last minute and get us all laughing with your hilariously creative costume, then that's complete admirable.

It's simply commendable.

It's downright respectable.

And we all know it's just totally

AWESOME!

Thanks, boss.

When you observe the
safe haven
of our evenings and weekends by scheduling company events during company hours, we're loving you lots. Because come on, we all have lots going on after work—clothes need washing, family needs visiting, and the kids have a sports tournament out of town.

So throw that
company picnic
on a sunny Friday afternoon. We'll get the Frisbee going with the assistant manager and gather around the wobbly buffet table to try the secretary's homemade potato-and-egg salad or the vice president's expensive store-bought brownies. Get those
team-building exercises
motoring on Monday morning, when we all need coffee jolts and trust falls to perk us up for the week. And toss your
recognition lunches
in the middle of the week, when a chilled-out Wednesday barbecue helps get us through to the other side.

When company events are scheduled on company time, we get a magical little moment where the photocopier stops,
lines slow down
, and we all relax for a couple chilled-out hours of

AWESOME!

You stand on that side. We'll walk on this side.

AWESOME!

Hands up if you drive on the snowy side of the planet.

If so then you know how your
icebox on wheels
gets sick when the weather dips. Washer fluid smears and freezes on your windshield, windows jam shut, and those nasty rock-hard clumps of dirty frozen slush start
bumper-surfing
on the back of your ride.

Sure, sure, your tires spin in the snowbanks and sand those car boogers into dirty brown icicles. But then they
just hang there proudly
—slushy arms crossed, salty eyebrows raised, and fat icy grins on their faces like they own the place.

Yes, they ride along when the family picks up a
Christmas tree
, sit caboose on the trip to the mall, and hang silently in the shadows of the driveway all night, perfectly still, perfectly quiet ... and waiting.

That's why it's so satisfying when you put the boot to those slushy chunks and show them who's boss. When you drop them to the mat, it feels like yanking a
swollen appendix
out of an eight-year-old in the operating room, tossing garbage bags of old junk out of the basement, or barfing your churning sea of stomach sickness into the toilet.

Kicking those clumps of frozen slush off the back of your car gives us all a big
aw.w.w.w yeah
moment of

AWESOME!

It's what your parents were going to call you
but didn't
.

Flipping through baby books,
chatting at bedtime
, you better believe your folks had alternate identities in mind before you borned out. They thought about nicknames,
short forms
, and tributes. They thought about spelling, rhyming, and meanings. Basically, they thought and hoped and wished all kinds of things for you even before you made it here.

Sometimes when you find out your Almost Name it feels odd and uncomfortable—like putting on an itchy shirt,
clenching your fist after waking up
, or walking out of a movie and realizing your foot's asleep. Maybe you let your mind wander and daydream about a new life where your Almost Name takes top billing and your nicknames, identity, and major life choices are all dramatically affected. You wonder how your life could be different—would you be more confident?
Less passionate?
More artsy? Less annoying?

Nothing's the same when you're Nancy.

Everything changes when you're Chuck.

Now, my Almost Name is Paul. Yes, it was a close call and my parents switched over to Neil at the last minute. I'm pretty sure
Neil Diamond
or
Neil Armstrong
got the name bouncing around their brains like a ping-pong ball. But somehow Paul got tossed in the can before I showed up and my entire Paul Life got tossed with it.

And maybe that's one reason Almost Names are so great:
They remind us how lucky we are we didn't get them.
I mean, it's just fun letting Almost Names add frames and borders to our lives ... because it helps us feel a little more sure of ourselves and a lot more

AWESOME!

Welcome to the throne.

For years you toiled as a lowly pauper under the rule of another castle. Sure, maybe the leaders of your old kingdom ruled with a fair hand but there were times your ideas and their ideas clashed. They wanted quiet, you wanted a
pet jester
, they wanted curfews, you wanted courtyard parties, they wanted bunk beds in the barracks, you wanted your own tower.

Now you've moved out and got yourself your own place. Sure, the moat's in rough shape and the stables are a write-off, but at least it reflects your personality and your taste. You've got a new responsibility and can do anything you want: put
purple tapestries
on the stone walls, hold court with new boyfriends, or skip the castle kitchen to go out for turkey drumsticks and a few glasses of mead.

Long live the king. Long live the queen.

Long live your new kingdom of

AWESOME!

I was on a long flight not too long ago, one where they turn the lights out for most of the trip and everybody is just lying like jelly all over their seats fast asleep. Legs propped up over armrests,
seats reclined into laps
, and headphones, blankets, and eye masks creating cocoon-like defenses against all light, sound, and touch.

Frankly, I don't like flights like this because I feel really uncomfortable. I think I'm going to wake people up and bother them. I feel like
I'm hanging out in a nursery
and I've finally got all the babies asleep, and now I just have to sit in a rocking chair in the corner taking quiet, calculated breaths until the sun rises.

It's very stressful.

I have always been paranoid about waking people up. When I was younger and would come home late, I would take about twenty minutes to get from the driveway into my bed. I tiptoed up the walk, slid my house key in the door very slowly, took my
shoes off outside
, and crept upstairs to the bathroom like a burglar. Often I wouldn't even flush until morning, preferring to
let my business simmer overnight
rather than wake somebody up with the sound of it zooming through walls on its way out of the house.

On the airplane I don't tilt my seat back too far because I think I might crowd the person behind me. I walk down the aisle very carefully, grabbing chairs and overhead compartments for support so that a sudden jolt of turbulence doesn't knock me into a sleeping grandma's lap. I have brief visions of shattering her hip and
sending her dentures flying
into someone's glass of wine.

It is because of my attempts to keep really quiet on these
Voyages of the Subconscious
that I am fascinated by the toilets in the airplane.

First of all, they exist! The fact that you can go to the bathroom on an airplane is pretty novel. I bet nobody expected that a hundred years ago. Can you imagine two sailors looking over the front rails of their massive ocean liner in the early 1900s, one of them pointing way up in the clouds and whispering to the other, “One day a man will take a crap up there.” No, me neither.

Anyway, after we get over the fact that these bathrooms exist, let's talk about
that amazing flush
. You do your thing, close that lid, hit that little plastic button, and a second later there's a full five seconds of giant, full-force, vacuumsucking noises. It's so loud it's unbelievable—like a transport truck full of silverware crashing into a pyramid of wineglasses on the dirt patch between two World War I trenches.

See, apparently airplanes use something called
vacuum toilets
. I guess these big guys are perfect for the job because they don't use much water and are fairly low maintenance. Just one little side effect, though: When you flush them it sounds like the world is exploding.

Personally, I love that beautifully loud airplane toilet flush. And since I can't very well leave a gift bowl for the next passenger, I'm forced to press the button. The noise of that flush undoubtedly
wakes up the last few rows
on the airplane every time, so I have no choice but to confront my fears.

So I say thanks, airplane toilet flush. Your whooshing, vacuum-packed boomflush wakes the whole world up.

AWESOME!

Growing up between streetlights and
neon pizza signs
it was pretty rare to stare up at a dark sky full of sparkly stars.

Now, if we went camping or up to a friend's cottage, that was a different story. That's when we could zip open our tent or lie on the dock and gaze up at the
twinkly beauty
above us all. We'd just tilt our necks, drop our jaws, and wonder how big it was, how far it went, and what the
tentacled, salivacovered aliens
looking back at us were thinking.

It didn't happen too often, but every once in a while somebody would pick out a few bright stars and point out a constellation way up there, light-years away,
worlds apart
, and sparkling for all eternity. We'd hear stories about bulls, belt buckles, and the private affairs of many Greek gods.

Of course, I could only ever see one thing up there myself:
The Big Dipper
aka
The Plough
. Sometimes I thought I'd see something else only to have an older kid tell me I was looking at a plane, a blinking satellite, or occasionally the moon.

That's why when you actually point out a constellation in outer space you feel like a genius with a PhD in
Good Eyesight
. You're no longer the dude responsible for finding marshmallow roasting sticks, grabbing bug spray from the tent, or dumping a pail of water onto the fire before we head to bed. No, now you're a worldly space explorer raising your eyebrows and pointing out the window as we all fly forward through the darkness.

AWESOME!