Oh my god! I just got home from going up town to a local Kum n Go to buy some sweet, sweet nectar, aka Lipton PureLeaf Iced Tea, sweetened of course. I was sort of in a hurry because I also had a severe case of the Taco Bell shakes, I needed my fix.

Well as I’m in the convenience store I started noticing people looking at me funny. They would kind of look me up and down and then kind of turn away. Now I’m not the most self assured person in the world so this made me paranoid as hell. I wanted to just turn around and sprint out the door to my car/safe haven, but I didn’t, in fear that they’d think I stole something. Instead I sprinted to the bathroom to give myself the ol once over.

I get in the restroom, lock the door and stare in the mirror for about 5 minutes. I couldn’t see anything wrong with me, in fact I looked pretty damn sexy if I must say so myself. But I’m so self conscious I just stood there running through things in my mind like “maybe the messy hair look is frowned upon” or “do I have a sign on my forehead that says I just got blown by a tranny in an alleyway?” Don’t judge me.

I couldn’t figure it out! Then since I was in the bathroom I decided to put it to use and partake in the urinal situation. That’s when I realized what they were staring at. My zipper was already unzipped. Totally down and wide friggin open! Oh Noes! So I took care of my business and did what any normally sane, self confident person would do in that situation. I stayed in the bathroom for about 15 more minutes, peeking out of the door every once in a while until all the people who saw me walk in were gone. I’m not a fan of people who silently judge me so I decided to punish them by denying them my presence.

The zipper thing has always been a nightmare of mine. I’m so paranoid about my zipper always being down that no matter where I’m at or how long I’ve been there without using the zipper I always casually swipe my hand across my mid-area to see if my zipper is up. Which makes me look kind of shady, like I’m trying to give myself the jollies, and even creepier when I’m walking outside my apartment, especially since I live next to a middle school.

After the 15 minute waiting game I casually and confidently went about my business, grabbed a couple bottles of tea and made my way to the cashier. This is where it got weird…er.

I place my bottles on the counter and this 300 pound, three times a lady reaches up to grab them, when I noticed there is something seriously wrong with her arms! They are diseased! Her arms and hands are red all over with patches of white skin just hanging off! Double gross eww, eww type situation. I think her arms had super AIDS. It looked as if she dipped her arms in pink corn syrup the rolled them in corn flakes. Not to mention she’s HANDLING MY FUCING TEA BOTTLES!!!!!

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to be an asshole but I also didn’t want to have my hands and arms amputated somewhere down the road. I’m no doctor, but that shit looks pretty friggin contagious.

So what did I do? Simple. When she was done ringing it up I asked her to bag them. Then I put the correct change on the counter so I didn’t have to get any money back from her. Then at the last second I said “Hey, can you also ring me up a Sunday paper?” She obliged. Fucking smooth right? I should be an international spy or something. I took the paper, which she didn’t have to touch, and wrapped it around the bag o’ bottles.

At this point there were about 5 people in line behind me all witnessing me trying to pick the bag up with a Sunday paper. It took a couple minutes but I finally got it wrapped around and ready to go. As I started to walk away from the counter I looked back at the lady standing behind me and gave her the warning eyes but it was to late, she was froze and in fear. I will pray for her arms.

On the way out I dumped my whole paper/bottle contraption into the outside garbage can and immediately drove right across the road to Casey’s, where everything went smoothly. I may have wasted like five dollars but that’s a cheap price to pay to remain good looking and disease free…Ladies…

When I was in junior high I had a very enlightening experience. I went to a Lutheran church in small town Iowa, and also attended their “Confirmation” classes. Confirmation wasn’t so much enlightening as it was fun, trying to say or do things to upset our extremely short tempered pastor/priest/rabbi/whatever-the-fuck-you-call-him. One time he got so extremely mad at two girls talking over his lecture that he slammed down his hands as hard as he could on their table, in the name of the lord and sent their opened Pepsi bottles a-flailin’.

It was the annual church camp that was the most enlightening period of my entire life. First of all, me, outside, in a week long church camp… Not the brightest fucking idea ever known to man. I get separation anxiety from my apartment when I check the mail box downstairs… But I sucked it up, became a man, and decided that I wanted to find Jesus. That and my parents made me go no matter how much I begged and pleaded.

First off, I’m not entirely comfortable sleeping in a room, in bunk-beds, with 10 other kids and one creepy adult. It was all so evident that our creepy counselor that stayed in our cabin that week was desperately trying to fit in with us 13 year olds. He tried so damned hard to jump into our “your mom” verbal spars. Actually, the best “your mom” joke came from him. One of the kids said “I think I’m going to buy some milk at our snack time” to which the counselor wittily replied “I’m going to get milk from your mom’s titties…” Remember, this is a CHURCH camp. Not only did he just own with that line, but he also went around the cabin and advertised it “Hey guys, did you just hear that I’m going to get milk from his mom’s tits? That was awesome.” To which I replied *cough*douche*cough*.

Another thing that put me on the path to our great lord and savior was our dinner and our dinner time entertainment. Apparently this church camp also doubled as a fat fucker camp too because all they gave us for our meals was lettuce. Not only lettuce, but week old lettuce, that had brown spots and only had crispness because it was frozen. Along with this huge feast every night we also had some fine dining entertainment with this 45 year old, balding, overweight, acoustic guitar player, singing about Jesus, crosses, sheep, and all that good stuff. You could also tell he probably liked kids a little too much.

During the day’s we also had all sorts of god praising activities, such as getting in a canoe with one other 13 year old kid and getting shoved into a very deep, leech infested lake with no real supervision. If you know anything about me you know that I am not a huge fan of deep water, especially in a narrow canoe with a kid who moved so much you’d swear he had epilepsy. Another faith based game we had to play was a war game. In this game we got to run around the woods, and hit fake Nazi’s with water-balloons. The only problem with this game was that the fake Nazi’s also had super soakers and could easily dodge our 13 year old meager throw’s so in the end, the Nazi’s won. I think Jesus would have wanted it that way.

What an incredible week! Right when my mom picked me up I told her that I was following the path of righteousness and I was going to become a man of the cloth. To which she replied “That’s good Josh, it’s good to devote your entire life to Christianity and your belief in God.” Then I said “No, by ‘man of the cloth’ I meant I’m going to be a male model. Fuck those creepy church people. Besides, the acoustic guitar player said I could probably really pull off a tube top, so it’s not really like I have a choice…”

The End

Tags: 13_year_olds, annual_church, apparently, box_downstairs, bunk_beds, confirmation_classes, cough, counselor, dinner_time, douche, enlightening, fucking_idea, lord_and_savior, lutheran_church, mail, mom, pepsi_bottles, separation_anxiety, snack_time, time_entertainment