Someone Really Needs to Feed Bambi

It's 1996 and my wife and I decide to take a summer vacation with our 2 year old daughter. Nothing major but a long weekend at a place called the Wisconsin Dells. The Wisconsin Dells is about 3 hours from Chicago and it's basically Disney World for hillbillies. It has water parks, Go-Carts, Weird attractions(Ripley's Believe It or Not! Museum, Circus World, etc...) and bad food...Oh, almost forgot to mention, due to a lot of people from the Chicago suburbs taking advantage of how close the Wisconsin Dells is, the hotels, attractions and restaurants all jack up their pricing to stupid levels. (Ex. Paying $250 a night for a hotel room that isn't much nicer than a Motel 6 room). So we drive up and get ready for a weekend of fun, food and toothless people. The 1st attraction we decide to go to is a place called Deer Park. Deer Park is a 28 acre enclosed forest where the shtick of this place is that there are deer walking around freely and you can feed them.(Sadly,you know they don't feed the deer that well which makes them approach people) Sounds like a good way to kill an hour. We enter the park( after paying a ridiculous entrance fee) and start walking around. Pushing my toddler in a stroller we see some deer and people feeding them. I go to the place where you can get deer food and purchase a couple of packets of what looks like large graham crackers but for deer. The next thing that happened was nuts. The second I purchased the packet of food, all these deer start coming out of nowhere. I mean all of a sudden there are about 4 deer walking up to me. It's like they had sonar that told them "Some dumbass just bought that $8 packet of food, let's eat!" Now, another 6 deer arrive on the scene and my wife starts pushing my daughter in her stroller away from the deer. Meanwhile, I can't get the packet of food open. I mean, I'm trying my hardest to open this packet and it's not opening. It's not like it was 2011 and all food packaging is safety sealed. Now as I'm attempting to open this packet that is sealed up better than Fort Knox, the 10 deer are starting to surround me. I'm not afraid of animals but this was getting to be a tenuous situation. As I'm continuing to try to open this packet, I'm looking at the deer and they're looking at me like "Dude, we haven't been fed in days and if you don't get that packet open soon, there's going to be trouble" Now, my demented mind is thinking "The 1st deer that approaches me aggressively, I'm going to pop in the mouth" Yes, I'm contemplating getting into a fist fight with a deer!( You know that wouldn't have ended well on my end.) My wife is saying to me(from about 40 yards away), "Just drop the packet and let's go." Now with the deer getting closer to me and my wife figuring out how she makes a claim on my life insurance( "Yes, he couldn't get the food packet open, so the deer killed him"), I finally bust the packet open. The crackers spill on the ground and the deer go at it like a sharks to blood. I back away quickly and tell me wife "Let's get the hell out of here." We leave hoping my 2 year old hasn't been traumatized. The rest of the weekend was fun and to this day we laugh about how I almost got into a fist fight with a deer.

Bad Babysitter

This posting is about 2 of my favorite things. Food and My Nephew Matthew.  Matthew is my brother's oldest son and is just a great person. He's nice, funny and has a huge heart. Love the kid. Matthew is 24 years old but this story takes place in 1989 when he was 18 months old and I was 24. I was a single goofball living in the city and my brother and his wife were living in the suburbs of Chicago.  My brother asked me if I could watch Matthew one Saturday afternoon while he and his wife went out for about 6 hours. Of course, I said no problem. I loved seeing the little man as much as I could. So I arrive at my brother's house and my sister-in- law is going over everything I needed to know for the next 6 hours. What Matthew can eat, drink, when to put him down for a nap and so on.  My brother says to me "Listen, I don't care if you let him smoke cigarettes and drink scotch, just keep him alive until we get home."  They leave and its me and my nephew for the afternoon.  So we're playing and having a great time.  It's time for his nap. I put him down and chill out for the next 2 hours. The 2 hours go by and I hear him waking up. I go to get him and he's looking up at me in his crib just smiling. So cute. We go downstairs and I look at him and say "Should we get a snack?" We go into the kitchen and open the fridge. This fridge was fully stocked with everything you could want. A jar in the back catches my attention. It's a jar of garlic pickles. I really like pickles and love garlic pickles. So I grab the jar and say to Matthew, "Let's find something for you to eat."  I go to the cabinet and pull out some little crackers for him to eat. I hand him a cracker and  bust open the jar of pickles. As I'm enjoying my 1st garlic pickle ( I say 1st because you know that I'm going to be knocking out a few of these babies), Matthew is giving me a look like "Hey, can I have a garlic pickle?"  Hmmm? I'm thinking "Can you give a baby a garlic pickle?".  I figure, he has teeth( a few at least), a pickle is a cucumber ( so it's a vegetable) and I'm only going to give him a little piece of one. What the hell? So I break off a little piece of the pickle and give it to him. He wolfs it down and is pointing to my pickle as to say "More please."  I give him another piece. Love this kid. I'm training him to eat with his uncle in the future. After about 15 minutes, I've eaten 6 pickles and this 18 month old baby has probably eaten the equivalent of 1 whole garlic pickle. Soon after, my brother and sister-in-law arrive home and all is good. I'm hanging with my brother downstairs and my sister-in-law and Matthew go upstairs.  All of a sudden my sister-in-law screams "HOLY ##$*$*#!!!!"  We run upstairs to Matthew's bedroom and there's Matthew on his changing table with a diaper off and my sister-in-law standing about 5 feet away with here fingers plugging her nose. As my brother and I walked into the room, the odor was so bad, it was like getting punched in the face with a dumpster filled with old garbage. Not to mention men in Hazmat suits should have been here to deal with the soiled diaper. My sister-in-law asks me "Did you give Matthew anything to eat today?" I hesitantly say "Well, he had some animal crackers and he tried some garlic pickle."  I might as well have told her that I fed him rat poison. She says pretty angrily "You let him try a garlic pickle! " I replied with probably not the best answer. "Well, actually I think he might have eaten an entire pickle." At that point my brother says "Danny, I think it's best you leave the room now" I leave and proceed to hear my brother get a full on verbal assault from his wife. I didn't hear everything but pretty sure I heard "Is he a total moron?" " What idiot feeds a baby a garlic pickle!" and "He's never babysitting Matthew again" (That one hurt).  My brother comes down and says to me "Listen, thanks for watching Matthew but it's probably a good time for you to hit the road" I said "No problem and I'm sorry about this" He replies "Hey, other than my kid's ass exploding with toxic waste and that I probably have to buy my wife something expensive so she'll talk to me again, I think it went well"  After time, I did end up babysitting my nephew again and to this day, if my brother and I are at a restaurant or store that has garlic pickles we just start laughing.

Mr. Stupid Does The Right Thing

It's 2007 and my family and I are enjoying wonderful vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexcio.  Great weather and so relaxing. It's Christmas Eve, which happens to be my oldest daughter's birthday so we want to make a special night of it. We go out for a really nice dinner and we're walking back to our hotel. Well, along the street with all the cars, buses and taxis is a horse drawn carriage.  Now this isn't the type of carriage you might find in the streets of Chicago or New York but it is a horse drawn carriage. The carriage is pretty open(two padded benches and no doors) with balloons all over it and a nice old Mexican man driving what looks like the horse that came in last in the El Kentuckyio Derby.  We decide what the heck, let's go for it.  So my family gets on this equestrian deathtrap for a little ride. The carriage is going about 3 miles per hour and we couldn't be having more fun taking pictures and laughing the entire time. The carriage gets to our hotel and its time to end this ride. My wife and daughters get off and its time to pay the man. He says 150 pesos(about $15) and I ask if he will take American dollars(That night I happen to only have dollars and no pesos on me). The nice old man said "Si".  So proceed to give him $1.50 (oddly, I can typically figure out my commission on a complex deal at work in my head while I'm talking to a client but for some reason I couldn't figure our that it was $1 for every 10 pesos).  He says "Senor, it's 150 pesos which is $15."  I reply "No, 150 pesos is $1.50"  To his credit the man stayed calm and said again" Senor, 150 pesos is $15" and I again replied "no, it's $1.50" This went on for about 10 minutes until the man finally said very dejectedly "OK, Senor, $1.50. No problemo" and off he went.  I walk into a shop where my wife and daughters where and say to my wife "that guy tried to rip me off. He kept telling me 150 pesos was $15" My wife looks at me and says "You moron! 150 pesos is $15. You ripped him off!"  I felt terrible. I just gave this guy 10% of what I should've paid him. My wife says "What can you do? He's probably 5 blocks away by now" I replied "I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to pay him what I owe him. Hold my sandals." I take off my sandals and take off. I'm running as fast as I can down a busy sidewalk with tourist, locals and whoever else was out that night. I mean I'm flying. My wife must be thinking, he's either going to get hit by a car (Mexican traffic is a cross between New York rush hour and a demolition derby) or he's going to get arrested because he's running like he stole something(I wouldn't do well in a U.S. jail, can you imagine me in a Mexican jail?). I finally catch up to my man on the carriage and out of breath I say "Senor, lo siento, lo siento" (Translation-I'm sorry, I'm sorry)and not only paid him the $15 but I added $5 for his inconvenience and my stupidity. He was shocked but replied" Gracias Senor" and then I replied back "No Senor, lo siento".  I walked back to my family barefoot and dripping in sweat. My wife,never feeling the need to candy coat with me, says "You're really a nice man and you're really an idiot." .

The Miracle of Life

December 23, 1994. My wife is due any day with the birth of our first child. She goes to her ob/gyn that morning and the woman says tells her she's about a centimeter dilated so things are moving along. The rest of the day( I was working as a multi line sales rep in sporting goods so I officed out of our townhouse) we sat there wondering is this the day. My wife throughout is getting more uncomfortable but god bless her, not complaining. Around 5:00 P.M. she's a bit uncomfortable so she calls her gyno who tells her to relax it's probably still a day or two away. So we go to bed around 10:30 P.M.  At 12:30 A.M., I feel a nudge. Then another nudge. That nudge was more like a full palm to my face. My wife says "I think I'm in labor. We have to go to the hospital"  I immediately go into "try to stay calm on outside but freaking out on inside" mode. I ask her " How uncomfortable are you?" She says loudly "F*cking Uncomfortable!"  Good enough for me. We get her stuff and head to the garage. Now mind you, the hospital is in another town and a good 35-40 minutes away. It's the middle of the night on Christmas Eve so I figure if I go 90-110 mph, I should get there in 25 minutes. My wife is now saying "Oh my god, I feel something. Hurry!!" Great, so now my Nissan Pathfinder is got a shot of being a delivery room which will not be good(not to mention how much it's going to cost to get it detailed after childbirth has occurred in it). We get to the hospital and I'm gingerly leading my wife in. I say to the woman at the desk "My wife is in labor we need to get her to a room immediately!" This woman says "Well, you have to fill out and sign some forms first" I reply "Lady, if we don't get her to a room there's going to be 3 signatures!"  We get her into a room in the maternity ward and things start to get more settled. She's hooked up to monitors, there are nurses all over and I have a sense of calm. The nurse pulls me to the side and says "All of her doctors are not around and the one on call is very far away" I said "Far away as in downstairs at the cafeteria or far away as in Guam?" She replies "Far away enough where we will have to deliver the baby." Hey I didn't sign up for that at all. She was laughing and said "Relax the doctor is about 10 minutes away"  Great. My wife is about to give birth to the 1st of my huge debts and I've got a stand-up comedian here.  Also my wife who is now about 9 centimeters dilated wants drugs for the pain(Hey, I wanted drugs too!) . The nurse tells her she's too dilated and drugs can't be administered. Uh oh. Not good. If my wife doesn't get drugs, we may witness the the birth of my child and an exorcism at the same time. Amazingly, at that moment the anesthesiologist walks in and it's my wife's closest friend's brother who she's known forever. (Thank god is was Christmas Eve or this Jewish Doctor wouldn't be there). He tells her he can take care of her and administers an epidural.  Whew! All good in the laborhood. While we're waiting for my wife's doctor, I'm hearing a horrible sound out in the hallway. It sounds like a really sick cow or moose. Bad sounds. I look in the hallway and there's a huge pregnant woman leaning against the wall kind of waddling and making these noises that aren't human. We catch eyes and I say the first thing that pops into my head.  "Hang in there. It will be over soon" She gives me a look like "Yeah,, if over soon means I give birth to the baby elephant inside me in the next 3 days!" OK then. I go back to my wife and she's in heaven. The epidural has kicked in and all is good. Her doctor comes in and after about 3 hours I get to see the birth of new 7 lb 2 oz baby daughter. I actually felt a physiological change in me seeing the birth of my daughter. To this day, the birth of my 2 daughters (#2 Debt was a lot less dramatic) are the two greatest days of my life. Oh, yeah and the one thing I learned after the birth of my first daughter that I will pass on to any expectant fathers is that if you're going to be in the room when the birth occurs, you need to stay North of the Equator when positioning yourself. Trust me. Stay North Young Man, stay North.

Didn't Think She'd Be That Mad

It's the spring of 1983, my senior year in high school.  I'm heading towards graduation, the weather is great and it's the weekend. On this Friday night my friend Rich and I are going to go to a party with 2 girls. One girl, Debbie, is a really good friend of mine and the other girl, Shari I've known forever.  This isn't a date but just the 4 of us going to a party. The party happens to to be at a guy's house who goes to the high school in the town next to us. Rich and I really don't know anyone but hey, it's a party so I'm in. Shari has volunteered to drive which is good with us. We get to the party which is a good 30-40 minutes from where we live and it's rockin. Lot's of people, music and of course, lots of underage drinking. As we walk in with the girls, I get the vibe that the girls are more than welcome( what girl isn't welcome at a party?) but my buddy and I weren't. We're getting a lot of cold stares from all these people we don't know. Debbie and Shari couldn't be having a better time. They've already found some people(I believe 4-5 guys) that they're talking to. Well, after about an hour, Rich and I have had enough. We're ready to go. Debbie and Shari are not. This doesn't bode well because they're our transportation. (This was pre-cell phone days so we couldn't call a buddy to pick us up). Debbie, who's my close friend says "Just hang for a little bit longer and we'll leave soon" Nice. Shari then chimes in "On no, we're not going anywhere. There's a bunch of guys I have yet to meet". Great. Our only way out of this party is going to meet as many male suitors as possible which could take another 3 hours. (This due to the fact that she has to go to a completely different town to meet a male). Rich and I do not want to waste our entire Friday night at a this party. The light bulb goes off in my head(Usually this means something bad is going to happen down the line). I say to Rich "Let's go get your car" He says, "How are we going to get my car?"  I reply, "We'll take Shari's car. Don't worry I'll handle it"  I walk up to Shari and say, "Shari, can I have the keys to your car? Rich told me he actually left a six pack in the back seat" (Yeah, like we would have forgotten that). She reluctantly says, "Fine"  I grab the keys and we go to her car. We get in and I proceed to drive to Rich's house to get his car. Rich says "This isn't good. She's going to know we took her car(which was actually her mother's car) and not be happy about it"  I say "Relax, we'll get your car, get back and she'll never know the difference." We get Rich's car and go back to the party. Well, my internal GPS was just a bit off. We weren't gone for 30 minutes like I thought but more like an hour. No problem. Shari is probably giving her phone number for the 17th time to some random guy. Guess again. We pull up and park both cars. As we're walking back to the party, Debbie and Shari are on the sidewalk in front of the house walking right at us. I could actually see steam coming out of Shari's ears from about 20 feet away. As we get closer, I say "Shari, you won't...." POWWW!!!  Shari punches me right in the face. Whoa! A good shot too!  I shake my head and say "Shari, I totally deserved that" Before I could get another word in, Shari proceeded to call me every name in the book and even names not in the book.  Rich and I left (probably to get ice for my face). Even dumber was that Shari's on again/off again boyfriend( obviously  off again at this time) was Black Belt in Karate. So now for the next 4 months until I go to college, I'm looking over my shoulder waiting to get a round house kick to my head from this guy. Luckily it never happened. Debbie was disappointed in me but we stayed friends. Shari chose not to be friends with me anymore. Shocking.

Big Fish

The year is 1992, I'm 27 years old and my wife and I are going on our first vacation since our honeymoon.  We decide on Ixtapa, Mexico (If you don't know by now, I love Mexico). Ixtapa is a relatively new resort area in Mexico that was dug out of the beach for tourism in 1975. Right next to Ixtapa is an old fishing village called Zihuatanejo. (For Shawshank Redemption fans, that's were Andy and Red finally meet at the end of the movie). Well, my wife and I went there one day to tour the shops and restaurants and I see that you can go deep sea fishing. I've always wanted to go deep sea fishing. The problem is, my wife has absolutely no desire to go deep sea fishing. Oh well, another time. A few days into our trip, we meet a nice older couple( older meaning they were in their early 40's) on a Sunset Booze Cruise. They were from San Francisco and we got to know them a bit. I mentioned that I really would love to go deep sea fishing and the man says, "No Way? We're going tomorrow morning in Zihuatanejo. Come with us!" So I agreed.  I was to meet them at their hotel at 7:00 A.M. and we would go to the harbor. We get to the harbor and the 3 of us board a boat that doesn't look like the deep sea fishing boats I've seen on TV. I'm expecting a huge boat with rods and reels, a little kitchen and all the comforts of a large tour boat. Nope. This boat was about 18 feet long, had a motor that looked like the love child of a snow blower and riding mower. No kitchen and the only bathroom was a funnel. Yes, a funnel. There were 3 chairs and 3 rods. The Captain was a nice Mexican man who had another fellow with him as his 1st mate. I was a bit skeptical. (not as skeptical as my wife who's husband went off in Mexico with 2 strangers on a fishing trip-Sounds like a Lifetime Movie). The Captain says to us, "You will all catch big fish today or I give you your money back." Quite a guarantee. Well, off we go at about 7:30 A.M. and we head out to sea. For the next 3 hours nothing. No bites, no nibbles, no nothing. I can talk to anyone about almost anything but even I was running out of conversation. All of a sudden, we hear ZINGGGGGGGGGG coming off my reel. The next thing I know, I feel a sharp tug and then I see the most amazing thing. A swordfish jumps out of the water, twisting and turning. Everyone on the boat runs to me. The swordfish  dives back into the water and the fight is on. The Captain is giving me instructions on how to pull and reel this huge fish in. I'm pulling and reeling, pulling and reeling. This wasn't easy. I can't believe how strong this fish is. It was the equivalent of trying to reel in a really pissed off refrigerator. I mean I'm working hard. This fight is at the 40 minute mark and I say to the Captain "Turn on the motor!" He says "What?" I now say louder "TURN ON THE MOTOR AND LET'S PULL THIS BASTARD IN!" He says, "No Senor, you must be a man and pull him in yourself" Oh great! I'm my fighting this monster and the Captain is giving me life lessons. Finally, with my arms and back exhausted, I get the swordfish close to the boat. The next scene I was not prepared for. As the swordfish  is up against the boat, the Captain and his 1st mate take out 2 clubs and start giving this fish the wood shampoo. I mean ,I felt like I was watching the fish version of the Rodney King incident. The fish is subdued and they bring him onto the boat. I go to the front of the boat where there are some floatation seat mats and just lay down on them. I'm beat. I stayed there for another 40 minutes half napping, half dying. In the meantime the Captain was a man of his word. The man who invited me caught an Ahi Tuna(which he and his wife ate that night at their hotel) and his wife also caught a swordfish. We get back to the harbor and I took the picture you see I've attached. ( you may also notice the boats in the background. Those are the same boats that  we were just on.). The people at the harbor figured this swordfish was about 8' and 95 lbs. I didn't want to have the swordfish stuffed and mounted because it would have cost over $2,500 and it's basically a fiberglass mold of the fish you caught.(Plus I didn't have that kind of money to blow on a stuffed fish). So the picture would have to do. I did ask what they would do with the swordfish and my new friends said that the Captain and 1st mate would keep it and use it for food. I'm not sure I need to do that again but it was definitely an experience of a lifetime.