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browns

I am a football fan.  I love my hometown team which is the Cleveland Browns.  The Browns are the laughing stock of the NFL.  Even those that aren’t football fans like to make jokes about my team and that’s okay.  I cheer for them every week and never miss a game.  I also laugh very hard during those three hours as they resemble a Stooge routine minus a pie fight.

Anyone can cheer for a winner but I believe a real winner cheers for a loser.  The Patriots are always in the play offs and probably will win the Super Bowl again this year.  That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun to me.  How can winning a championship be fun when it happens all the time?  Every week the Browns find a new way to lose.  Every week we have a new quarterback.  Every week we have a player get hurt.  Every other week a player gets arrested or goes to rehab.  If the Browns season were made into a Hollywood script no one would buy it because no one would believe it.  They say misery loves company and that company is the Cleveland Browns.

The journey of life is full of disappointments.  The life of a Browns fan is nothing but a disappointment with a side dish of frustration and I love it.  I know that every Monday my hometown will do two things:  bitch and moan.  Being a Browns fan is a great way to relieve stress.  Anything that goes wrong during your week will never match the disgrace that you witness on the football field every Sunday.

The Super Bowl is the ultimate game of the year.  The Browns have never been to the Super Bowl.  I hope, in my lifetime, I will witness the Browns win the Super Bowl but you have to be careful what you wish for.  We would be world champions.  The struggle and disappointment would be over.  There wouldn’t be a reason to bitch and moan.  There would be a parade downtown.  Thousands of people would faint from disbelief.  The four horsemen would appear and the seven seals would begin to open.  Our coach would hoist the trophy in front of the world and I assume he would drop it.  I don’t think I would ever be properly prepared for that day because I would have to be happy.  I don’t want to be a champion and that’s why I am a Browns fan.

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yeller

I used to be a yeller.  I would yell at just about everyone and everything.  Someone would disagree with me and I would raise my voice.  Someone would yell at me and I would be sure to yell back.  Someone would cut me off in traffic and I would be sure to yell in anger (now I just flip them off).  Recently I had an epiphany:  yelling really affects your credibility.

There are three good reasons not to yell:

  • It takes too much energy.  I look at energy as fuel in your tank and yelling just burns too much gas.
  • If someone yells at you and you take a deep breath, pause and respond with “I’m sorry I didn’t realize what you were saying because you were yelling.” That makes them look like what they truly are; an asshole.
  • Yelling leads to anger. Think of all the times you made bad decisions in your life.  Chances are it was preceded by you yelling and then followed by making a bad judgment.  The only exception I can think of is years ago doing too many shots of patron and waking up to see two female tundra twins making ham sandwiches in my kitchen while passing a crack pipe.

When is the last time that yelling lead to a positive result?  Yelling at a loved one makes you feel bad afterwards.  Yelling at your spouse or better half usually leads to a slap in the face or at the very least a slamming of a door.  Yelling at a cop will never get you out of a ticket and yelling at a water park while making balloon animals and wearing clown makeup will get you arrested.  Perhaps the latter was not the best example.

Life is too short.  Realize there are a lot of stupid people in this world and try laughing at them instead of yelling at them.  I may not be the smartest person in the world but it’s amazing how people will suddenly view you as a superior intellectual just because you don’t react to adversity by raising your voice.  So this week try to remain calm, cool and collected or I may just have to yell at you.

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confused

If you listen to my podcast, and I hope you do because I have adopted a chimpanzee named Bongo that needs to eat, then you know my mission statement is:  “85% of the world is stupid, welcome to the 15%.”  As I continue on my journey of life I actually believe I may have underestimated that figure as I am constantly confused on a daily basis.  Could someone please explain to me some of the following observations and questions that hound me?

  • Why is there a man dressed in a cowboy outfit on my TV that wants to send me a lubed catheter for free?
  • Why is it an amazing event that you can prepare your own food? I do it on a daily basis but I have never felt the urge to take a picture of it and post it on Facebook?
  • When people say “Back in the day” are they referring to a particular day of the week? A certain decade?  I like to think of prehistoric times when man discovered fire and the wheel.
  • Why do I look at people that buy lottery tickets and think they don’t “shave down there?”
  • Why do car dealers insist on shouting in their commercials yet when you go to their showroom to buy a car they speak at a normal sound level?
  • George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were great leaders and icons in our nation’s history but I’m sure they would wonder why we celebrate their birthdays by lowering prices on mattresses.
  • Why do atheists say “Bless you” after you sneeze?
  • Why does every guy behind the counter at a tire store always have a toothpick in his mouth?
  • Does the person in front of me that has twenty six items in their shopping cart at the grocery store’s express lane realize I’m thinking they are a jackass?
  • When I go to the dentist does he realize that I am looking to see if he trims his nose hairs?

These are just some of the questions that roar through my mind and perhaps the reason why I need to take pills on a daily basis and never expect to find a Mensa member at the bus station.

 

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sewer pump

When I was a kid (some will argue that I still am) I looked forward to going on class field trips.  You would miss a half a day of school; get to take along a sack lunch filled with junk food and fight to sit in the back seat of the bus.  In elementary school it was fun to sit in the back seat of the bus and make faces at cars that stopped behind you at a red light.  In high school those that sat in the back seat usually smoked Marlboro Reds, carried knives and now are either working as bouncers or have been featured on episodes of “The First 48.”

Most field trips were educational and served a purpose.  We went to the Natural History Museum, the local fire department, the zoo and the art museum.  I’m not saying that being in fifth grade and looking at a Monet was exhilarating but it got me out of playing crab soccer and trying to climb the rope in gym class so I’ll gladly take the former.

There was one field trip, however, that both traumatized and confused me as to what the intended purpose was supposed to be.  One day my fourth grade class piled into the yellow school buses for our trip to the Strongsville Pumping Station.  If you are confused about what a pumping station is and what purpose it serves allow me to enlighten you.  Sewer pumping stations (also called lift stations) are used to move wastewater to higher elevations in order allow transport by gravity flow. Sewage is fed into and stored in a sealed underground pit, commonly known as a wet well.  In common speak we ventured to the spot where all the shit water from the city comes together.

I remember descending down a spiral staircase with my classmates until we were probably five stories beneath street level.  There we were able to view the raw sewage flowing like we were stuck in a tropical storm in a Third World Country.  My conscious mind is still scarred with the indelible tattoo of seeing cigarette butts, toilet paper, turds that looked like Lincoln Logs and a red rubber ball.  Not exactly a Kodak moment or a suggested tourist attraction (although it does parallel a visit to your local water park).

Looking back I did learn two things from our field trip that day.  People in my hometown don’t chew their food and I understand the need and popularity of bottled water.