All Over The Place
Something happened this past weekend that, quite simply, cannot paint a better picture that shows how different I am from the other parents at school.
This past weekend was an overnight campout for the cub scouts. Not a campout with tents and stuff. We were in a structure at the official scouting camp for this region. There was electricity, but no heat. There were beds, but with those really thin vinyl mattresses. A good time was had by all who attended.
ANYWAY…after the kids had gone to bed (or at least, into their rooms), we adults were sitting around the campfire. Apparently, I had completely zoned out because one of the guys nudged me and said, “You look like your deep in thought.”
My reply was, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Is it personal?”
“Umm….no, not really.”
“Well, lay it on us then.”
I glanced around, shrugged and said, “OK. I was just sitting here looking at the fire and I started thinking about how people sat around fires hundreds of thousands of years ago, which got me thinking about cavemen, which got me thinking about the movie Quest For Fire. It’s a movie from the early 80’s and I saw it on cable. It was the first movie I saw that depicted sex on the screen. Nothing graphic, ya know. But there was this scene where a cavewoman was squatting by a river or something getting a drink and this caveman came up on her from behind and started humping her. That got me thinking about my dogs because both of them are in heat. Even though they are both female, one of my dogs mounts the other one, and that’s just strange. Thinking about my dogs, I was thinking about how they have different colored collars…one purple and one green. I remember specifically making the decision to have two different colored collars because it would be like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, where each one of the turtles had differently colored bandanas. Leo was blue, Don was purple, Mike was orange, and Raph was red. Thinking about the turtles reminded me of how I used to play with the action figures when I was a teenager. I was a fan of the comics and it was fun to have the action figures. Not the same kind of fun that I had with Star Wars and G.I. Joe action figures. I used to play with those a lot. We’d be outside in the dirt and stuff and we’d set up the G.I. Joe’s like they were assaulting the fortress of the bad guys and stuff. When that kind of thing got boring, we played ‘real-life’ G.I. Joe, where we’d have our toy guns running around the neighborhood shooting each other. Which is kind of what I do now, but on the computer instead. Some guys from work and I play Call of Duty 4, which is a war-game kind of video game where you’re running around in a computer generated arena shooting each other. And then I got to thinking about how advanced video games have come in the last 30 years or so. I had an Atari 2600 when I was a kid and one of my favorite games was Megamania. That was a game where these ships flew across the top of the screen and your ship, at the bottom, had move back and forth shooting the ones at the top. The fast you cleared a lever, the more points you got. I always thought the ship I controlled looked like the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek; the original series, not The Next Generation or anything. That got me thinking about the new Star Trek movie that’s coming out next year and how all new actors are playing the original series characters and I was wondering if it was going to be a more realistic vision of the future or if they were going to have some 60’s throw back stuff, like with the miniskirts and stuff. I always found it strange that girls, like in the old Star Trek and even now in Tennis, have as part of the outfit the portion that looks like underwear. In fact, in the Star Trek technical manual I have, they have patterns for making the uniforms if you want, and that part of the female uniform is actually called the uniform panty. And I was wondering why it’s ok to show that when walking around or playing tennis but take great pains to not display their real underwear when wearing jeans or pants or stuff. That, then got me thinking about the Victoria’s Secret catalog and I was wondering why it’s just ONE bra but a PAIR of panties. That’s when you asked what I was thinking.”
All was quiet for a few seconds, except for the crackling of the fire, and one guy finally said, “Wow.”
Another said, “I was just thinking about a time when I was around a fire when my dad and I were on a fishing trip when I was a kid.”
I said, “I was all over the place.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
And then the talk became about fishing and golf and stuff. I sat there for a while, not joining in because I don’t know the first thing about fishing OR golf. Finally, we all decided to turn in. The fire was put out and we went to bed.
