Lesson Learned

Posted on February 25, 2010 by Chris

Today I went in the school library to study because I’m a nerd. That place is always completely silent, on accounta it’s a library, so I checked my phone to make sure it was on silent mode and then rechecked it a couple more times because I have OCD. Anyhoo, then I had to fart, and due to my constant checking of my phone I had “silent mode” on my brain so, feeling confident that I, like my phone, was on silent mode, I did what any true American would do; I let it fly. Much to my chagrin, I immediately discovered that I was, in fact, NOT on silent mode. Not even close. In fact, not only was my volume at its max, but due to the wooden chair I was sitting on it quickly became apparent that I was also on vibrate mode. Instinctively I turned my head to give the person next to me a dirty look, but there was nobody there. There was nobody within 15 feet of me to blame it on, though sadly the blast radius was much larger than 15 feet. In short, there was no confusion as to who the perpetrator was. So I will now be known to anyone who witnessed the event as the guy who sits all by himself in the library and farts, then can’t stop laughing for the next 15 minutes. Let it be known that just because your phone is on silent mode, that doesn’t mean you are. It could have been worse though; at least my battery didn’t leak.

Retarded Kids, Handball, and My Hair

Posted on June 3, 2009 by Chris

Today I worked at Wildomar Elementary. It was fun kicking the crap out of the retarded class in handball, dismantling them one by one. I’m not sure that is in my job description, but I try to step up and do whatever is needed. On another note though, throughout the day at least four different kids, all running at or near full capacity mentally, came up to me and told me that I have “cool hair.” I’m not sure what to feel about that…

Christmas Fun

Posted on December 29, 2008 by Chris

Christmas was really good this year, if you base your opinion of Christmas on the quality of gifts you receive, which I do. Everyone except Laura made it this year, although it was a close call with Eric. First his flight got canceled because of snow in Portland, but he was able to get another flight on the morning of Christmas Eve, thankfully. He was not at all pleased when he found out his first flight was canceled, making him think he would miss Christmas. He wrote about it at http://www.ericdsnider.com/blog/2008/12/22/an-open-letter-to-mother-nature/ It is definitely worth a read.

But he made it in the end, and we all had a great time. I would like to transcribe a conversation Eric, Lane and I had at Del Taco on Christmas Eve though. A couple days earlier we had been flipping channels and noticed there were a bunch of Jewish-type movies on, such as Fiddler on the Roof and some others. Somehow at Del Taco Hanukkah got brought up, and the following ensued:

Eric: When does Hanukkah start, anway?

Me: I think it started a couple days ago, we noticed that there were a bunch of Jewish movies on.

Lane: And I noticed we were all eating Lentil.

Me: And we were all circumcising our penises.

Lane: Is that what we were doing? I was just whittling.

Anyway, I’m not going to give a play-by-play of the whole week, I figured I would just post a bunch of pictures instead. Oh, except on Christmas evening a piece of one of my front teeth broke off again, a recurring injury. Up mine.

Emily and Lindsay had so much fun together!

Emily with Uncle Eric.

Finally, a liberal who says what he really believes.

Yep, I look fatter than him.

Joy.

The kids on Christmas morning.

Strangely, Lane didn't even know I was taking a picture.

Lane was stoned, and I was aroused by the camera.

Lindsay and me.

Logan doing his famous "crazy eyes."

Logan and his favorite uncle.

I think I look sexy throwing a football.

The old folks on Christmas morning.

The most racist book ever written.

Unshaven and with a chipped front tooth. So hot.

Don’t Help Others

Posted on October 26, 2008 by Chris

Almost 2 weeks ago at my softball game I learned a very important lesson: don’t help others, because you will only end up hurting your wrist. The other team was up, and some fool was on first. The batter hit a single to left, and the guy who had been on first rounded second, then came back. By then my shortstop had taken the throw back in, and he saw the runner wasn’t quite back to the bag yet and he unloaded it to me. He has a very good arm, and I think he threw it as hard as he could. Only it was coming straight at the runner’s head, and the runner was between the ball and me. I yelled at him to get down, but he was choosing not to obey. I wished I was Satan so I could make him obey, as was Satan’s plan, but alas I am not, I don’t care what that freaking judge said. Anywho, I desperately tried to reach around they guy’s head to make the catch, and possibly save his life, but because his fat head was between me and the ball I completely lost sight of it and I wound up taking it directly in the wrist, no glove at all. It hit with a smack, and everyone could hear it had hit flesh and bone and they groaned in sympathy pain. But for some reason I didn’t feel it immediately. I asked him if he was OK, and he replied casually that it didn’t touch him. Using the process of elimination (which I usually do in my pants), I realized it had hit ME, and that was why my wrist was suddenly in a great deal of pain.

This was in the third inning, and we typically play seven. We were already short one player, so I couldn’t come out of the game or we would surely lose. Cousin Nathan taped me up and told me to just be a man, which seemed like a pretty tall order, but he looks a lot like Satan, so I felt compelled to do so. As the game went on, the pain worsened. Before my next at-bat, I realized I couldn’t swing, so I decided to try to take a walk. Fortunately, that plan worked the first time. Unfortunately, though, we wound up tied at the end of the seventh, and also at the end of the eighth, so we ended up playing 9 innings. I wound up having 5 plate appearances after I got hurt. Even though I couldn’t swing properly, I did manage the walk and 2 singles as I would wince and grunt in pain as I just flicked the bat at the ball and was able to dink a couple over the first-baseman’s head. Thank goodness I have a good bat, because what I was doing couldn’t even be called a swing. We wound up winning in the ninth inning, and I claimed all the glory for myself, as was Satan’s plan.

That night I didn’t get any sleep because my wrist was throbbing, and the next morning I went to the illegal alien doctor down the street (the doctor isn’t an illegal alien himself, but it’s the place for those without insurance, meaning illegal aliens and me). Some chick doctor (yeah, a female doctor, like I said I have no insurance) looked at it and said she didn’t think it was broken because of how much I was able to move it still (not much, but a little), but she said they don’t have an x-ray machine there and she recommended I go to the illegal alien doctor in Riverside because they have one. I recommended that I don’t, and after listening to both arguments carefully and weighing both sides, I wound up following my own advice.

I went to the CVS across the street and bought some Motrin and a brace for my wrist, and that was that. Well, I couldn’t work the next 2 days, and here we are 12 days later and it’s still not completely better, and we lost the following week because I was only about 50%, and I had to miss my Friday game entirely, but at least I didn’t do what some girl-doctor thought I should do, right? As I said, that was that.

I’m a Baller, Dawg

Posted on September 1, 2008 by Chris

For Labor Day I went and played softball with some of the boys. After being MVP for the whole day, and world, for that matter, I decided to play around a little at the end. I was playing 3rd at this point and some guy hit a ground ball down the line. I had time to take a quick step and backhand it, but I wanted to look cool so instead I kind of did a slow-motion dive and laid on my belly to get it. Unfortunately, at that instant the ball took a bad hop and jumped over my glove and nailed me right in the mouth. It actually hit my lip directly over my old chipped tooth that I recently had repaired. As soon as it happened, Todd Moran started laughing really loud as I checked to see if my teeth were still there. When I saw that they were, I didn’t want to kill him anymore for laughing. Blood started coming out of my lip pretty good though. Everyone came over to see if I was OK. I’m a gamer, so I played on. Two batters later, a guy hit a hard ground ball right at me. Any one else there would have flinched or played it off to the side after just getting hit like that, but I’m too stubborn so I stayed down and made the play. As I said, I’m a gamer. Anywho, the swelling has gone down a little, but I took some pictures anyway so enjoy my game-face.

The Wait is Over

Posted on July 22, 2008 by Chris

The day we all knew was coming again is finally here.

You know that old saying, “Always a bride’s maid, never a bride”? Well, we all know I’ve been a bride before, but it’s been a while, and with too many near-misses to count since the last real thing. But today it finally happened again: I totally crapped my pants.

The last such incident where I came close involved me driving to my softball game with Dave Gunnell, who was filling in on my team that night. Perhaps not coincidentally, this story starts the same way. This time we had just barely gotten on Railroad Canyon when I first felt it, so we were a good 15 minutes away from getting to the field, more specifically the bathroom, or “Sanctuary” as I prefer to call it. I thought about stopping at a gas station or something on the way, but seriously, how often does this happen to me, and I usually make it just in time, right? So what’s the worst that could happen?

When we were coming down the street that the field was on, it became apparent that this was gonna be a close one. Conditions were deteriorating rapidly, even more so than usual (I blame Mom’s spaghetti). I had to cut a guy off to turn into the parking lot, because there were 5 more cars behind him, and Cinderella was already on her way to the ball. Unfortunately, the speed at which I hit the little dip at the entrance caused much bouncing of the truck, which didn’t help matters. I let out a panicked moan as we bounced, trying to convince myself this was just a dream and I would wake up any second. This induced much laughter from Dave, which was very rude considering this clearly was no laughing matter.

I pulled into my parking spot and jumped out of the truck. Dave asked me what I needed him to carry and I shouted “Don’t worry about it, I’ll come back and get it!” as I started to run toward Sanctuary. He called something else out to me, some question, but I didn’t pay attention, for I had more serious matters to attend to. I was in my baseball pants and my shirt, with just socks on my feet (I usually put my cleats on in the truck when I get there). The bathroom is probably about 150 yards or so from where I was parked, and I was faced with a decision. Let me enlighten you on one of the more advanced strategies of not crapping your pants. You see, the faster you move, the faster the crap builds toward the inevitable explosion, so you can’t just go with all-out speed. But if you go too slow, then it takes too long to get to the bathroom anyway so you can’t win there, either. You have to find the right balance, the happy medium, where you are moving fast enough to beat the dinner rush but not so fast that lunch is being served (in your pants) when you get there. So I settled into a brisk jog, one that I thought would be just right. About fifty yards from the bathroom, though, I realized I had misjudged. I’m still not sure if I had gone too fast or too slow, but at that moment I knew it was time to put the pedal to the metal. I’m pretty sure I broke the sound-barrier those last 50 yards, but I would soon find out that it wasn’t enough, as I was about to break various other barriers that should never be broken.

As I burst through the bathroom door, things were beginning to take place. I’m not talking about a prairie dog poking its head out, for prairie dogs are fairly solid creatures. This was something far more sinister, although similar to a prairie dog in that both are things you NEVER want springing forth from your anus. As I got in the stall, I was trying to unsnap my pants but I couldn’t get them. Part of it was because I was contorting my torso in unnatural ways to try to stop the flow of diarrhea and/or time itself, and partly due to sheer panic because things were literally beginning to spew forth from me already. When I stopped and relaxed long enough to concentrate on getting my pants undone, it set a turn of events in motion that could no longer be stopped. The instant I got my pants unsnapped, all crap broke loose into my draws. Oh sure, I pulled my pants down quickly and tried to sit on the toilet, but by then shrapnel had already filled the stall, some on the floor but most all over the toilet. To borrow a term from Eric, it was liquid evil. And yes, it all happened so fast, within a second or so, that I basically sat right down in it on the seat, too.

Life’s kinda funny, though. Normally you think about sitting down bare-butted in a puddle of your crap, and you think “gross” or something along those lines. But in the heat of battle, you’re just relieved that it didn’t ALL end up in your pants. The moment I hit that toilet I had a feeling of pure bliss. I looked down at my undies and knew right away that they could not be saved, for they had made the ultimate sacrifice. I sat there and began planning the proper funeral and burial, one with full military honors, and the awarding of the purple heart. Then, I simplified it and starting planning how to get them to the trash can without anyone seeing my carrying them.

I got up, took my pants completely off, and started cleaning what I could. This was an uphill battle, to be sure. After all, how do you clean up when you just took The Crap That Dare Not Speak Its Name all over the place? I did my best though. This included flushing the toilet, wiping certain things including but not limited to my freshly-primered butt-cheeks, flushing again, rinsing and repeating, etc. As I was anxiously engaged in this good cause, some guy came in to take a whiz at the urinal next to my stall. When I first heard the door open I quickly stood in position as though I was just sitting on the toilet, hoping he wouldn’t see my feet there with just socks but no shoes or pants around the ankles or anything else. A small part of me also hoped he wouldn’t see any of the crap on the floor next to my feet. When he finally left I put my pants on and exited the stall, undies folded carefully in my hand. Of course someone else came in right then, and I had to hide those brave little troopers behind my back as I walked past him to the trash. I dispensed with them and then washed and dried my hands, making sure to use about a billion paper towels so I could give Private Brown 1st Class a proper burial in a (hopefully) unmarked grave.

Upon return to the field, Dave had kindly carried all my stuff to the dugout, which I thanked him for, then informed him of the sad news. Cousin Nathan walked up right then too, so he got to hear about it. Dave found it funny, but for some reason was trying not to laugh for fear of being rude. Nathan looked at me with the proper disgust, then asked which stall I had been in, for he was about to embark on a similar mission and didn’t want to unwittingly find himself behind enemy lines in that war-torn land.

All in all it was a good game, we won a low-scoring affair 12-8. But on a day like that, we are all winners.

‘Burn Victim

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Chris

My sideburns I had been growing for a couple months were getting a little out of control, so I shaved them. I did NOT, however, shave them because anyone said I should. No, that would only cause me to keep them longer, which I did, because people did, which caused said ‘burns to tickle my ears and make me think there were bees on me after doing bee calls. I look sexy with them though, no? Notice the picture of Dan in the background. I like to think he would have approved of them.

Chris Snider

Layin’ The Smack Down Since 1975

Category Archives: My Beautiful Body