First Impressions

I guess I wasn’t surprised that there was blood. I was just surprised at how much blood there actually was.

If I could travel back in time, back to my apartment in October of 2008, I would make a packing list. Hell, I would make two packing lists. One list would be for clothes: t-shirts, underwear, slacks, dress shirts, ties, running shorts, socks, shoes, and sweatshirts. The other list would be for accessories: computer, phone, phone charger, watch, iPod, and toiletry bag. Hindsight being 20/20, I might even add a sub-list to the toiletry bag to include specific hygienic items I’d need to look and feel my best as a representative of the University of Portland. This sub-list would include your basic daily toiletry items like a toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, nail clipper, deodorant and soap. And this time, I would add shaving cream and a razor, and I would put a giant star next to those last two items, underline them, and set a reminder in my phone five minutes before I was set to leave my apartment so that I wouldn’t forget.

I don’t have the ability to travel back in time though, so in October of 2008, my first fall recruiting trip as an Admissions Counselor with the University of Portland, I embarked on an adventure I wouldn’t soon forget without the two items I will never again leave behind.

The first thing I remember about that day was waking to the sound of the most obnoxious alarm clock I had ever heard. Most hotel alarm clocks are set to your basic “beep beep” tone but for some reason the Holiday Inn Express felt like throwing its inhabitants a curveball and freeing us from our slumber with the highest pitched screeching sound actually audible to the human ear. The stale hotel air pierced my nostrils and the flashing lights cast from the television that I had failed to turn off the night before painted the walls and disoriented me. I walked to the bathroom in a daze, brushing against the wall with my hand for guidance until I instinctively found the door handle. I opened the door, flipped the switch, and after enduring that tumultuous period when a rush of blood stabs your temples while your eyes adjust to the light, turned on the faucet and splashed water into my face.

I fumbled through my Dopp kit for my toothbrush and toothpaste because that is the first exercise I do every morning and I wouldn’t dare change my routine on account of new surroundings. Once my pearly whites were fresh and smooth, I reached for the floss and gave my gums a turn. I discarded the used floss, closed the lid on the container, and placed it comfortably next to the nail clipper in the front pouch of my toiletry bag. I then reached for my razor, typically the last item I pack because I always shave before a work trip, but came back empty handed. My eyes darted to the top plastic sleeve of my Dopp kit where I keep my razor. The sleeve was empty. My razor was not there because I did not make a packing list. Shit.

My panic was brief, thankfully, because on the back corner of the countertop to the left of the sink there was a sign notifying occupants that if they had forgotten to make a packing list and needed any number of basic toiletry items, they could simply call the front desk and once the item’s availability was confirmed, run down to the lobby and grab it.

I was surprised to find a quality shaving gel in the small toiletry packet given to me by Vanessa, the morning-shift front desk clerk, and equally surprised by the lack of quality in the single blade razor. The plastic handle could have been snapped in half by a gentle breeze and the metal blade appeared jagged and untrustworthy. Nevertheless, I was a beggar and had to move forward with the not-so-choice offering which was the cheapest way the Holiday Inn Express could afford to appear classy.

I walked back to my room and prepared to shave just as I had done hundreds of times before. When my face was lathered with foam and ready to be smoothed, I took one last hard look at the single blade that was set to exonerate my stubble. Here goes nothing.

The first downward stroke reminded me of the summer day I spent sanding my parents back deck. It was loud, scratchy, and took a good chunk of its surface with it. After a few more terrifying strokes, my rosacea no longer seemed genetic. The clock wasn’t about to stop ticking toward my appointment though, so I powered on.

My neck is chalk full of trouble spots for even the most visually stunning Gillette Mach 5 turbo razors, so needless to say I was a little anxious to see how the Holiday Inn Uni-blade would maneuver around my jaw line and Adam’s apple. I was delighted to see stubble falling off the blade and into the sink as I rushed water over the razor after every pass, but disheartened by the increasingly plum color of the pool of water that collected near the drain. I actually closed my eyes after a few swipes trying to trick my brain into reflecting an unblemished image, but every time I opened them I received a harsh reality check. My neck was scraped and sore, my cheeks were irritated, and my mustache was next.

I remember thinking that if I could just finish the job, I’d have enough time to apply lotion to my face and that the aloe would do just enough to cover up the blood, scrapes, and burns, or at least enough to ensure I wouldn’t look like a complete fool. It was this hurried thought that ultimately proved to be my downfall. With one swift swipe of the cheapest razor blade on the U.S. market, I gave myself the deepest non-fatal cut in the history of modern man.

Initially, there was too much blood to see the actual cut. I continued to apply pressure in increments of thirty seconds, but every time I relented to survey the damage, blood immediately escaped from the wound and ran down my chin. I knew the cut was close to the top of my upper lip, but I still couldn’t make out how long it was or how deep it ran. Luckily, I had awoken early enough to allow a buffer zone for any unforeseen circumstance, but the window of time before my appointment was getting smaller and smaller as the seconds passed by and the cut continued bleeding.

Four tissues into my fiasco, I started to panic. I had scheduled an appointment with JK Mullen High School at 8:30am, my first presentation as an Admissions Counselor with the University of Portland. Had this been a less important feeder school for my employer, I may have decided to reschedule at the last minute, but Mullen is a top school that consistently sends students to the Pacific Northwest so I couldn’t risk straining the relationship between the institutions over something as trivial as a young professional’s cosmetic mishap. I decided to keep tending to the wound in the hopes that at some point either the laws of science would kick in and the wound would scab over or I would bleed to death and forfeit my accountability for a no-show.

Finally, one hour after viciously slicing the most essential body part of any successful verbal presentation, the cut had finally cauterized itself and an ugly scab on my upper lip was my body’s less than subtle reminder that I was, indeed, an idiot. But this idiot had a presentation to give and no more time to waste, so I grabbed my things and headed to the car.

I pulled into a visitor parking spot in front of the main office and took a minute to compose myself. I took three deep breaths, looked into the mirror to confirm this wasn’t a bad dream, and then lied to myself and said, “it’s not that noticeable.” I gathered my materials, placed two just-in-case tissues in my pants pocket, and walked into the main office building.

“Hello. You must be with the University of Portland,” the secretary said.

The very instant I started to respond, a paralyzing panic struck me. I hadn’t spoken to anyone since I cut myself just an hour and a half ago, and hadn’t so much as opened my mouth in the thirty minutes since the wound had scabbed. The inconvenient placement of a large scab on your upper lip, a body part that tends to move around quite a bit when you talk, meant that there was pretty good chance this bad boy would open up the second I introduced myself. I inhibited my vocabulary just enough for the secretary to still be able to understand me, and two minutes later I was being escorted to an empty classroom.

“Thanks again for being here. The students will arrive in just a moment.”

I thanked her with a head nod and a weak smile. Knowing I had less than two minutes before a sea of prospective students flooded the room, I quickly accessed a mirror on the wall of the classroom and practiced a couple of introductory sentences to see how my scab would hold up. I could only imagine that if speaking with as little movement of my lips as possible felt this awkward, it must look downright pathetic. One thought that occurred to me was to scan the closet looking for any type of puppet that might act as a good dummy for the ventriloquism act these students were unknowingly about to witness. I realized I looked ridiculous enough as it was though, so I decided to go ahead with the original presentation.

One by one, enthusiastic prospective students filed into the classroom and eagerly introduced themselves. I was already self-conscious of the giant dried spot of blood on my face, so the students’ double takes provided extra salt in my embarrassingly literal wound.  I was shocked that no one asked me about the obvious cuts all over my face, but I ended up having fun guessing what the students were hypothesizing. I was convinced they either thought that I was attacked by a stray cat in front of the school or had gotten into a disagreement with my last audience. They kept their comments to themselves but their smirks revealed their inner thoughts.

I’ve heard that you use seventeen muscles when you smile, but my guess is that you use seven hundred to deliver a forty minute presentation. I tried to minimize my oral muscle use, which caused my voice to drop an octave and maintain a steady monotone. I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of my improvised Ben Stein impression but I couldn’t risk stretching my lip and opening up a sieve.

The first twenty minutes went surprisingly smooth as my scab help up and the students appeared interested. They listened respectfully but didn’t ask questions, either not knowing what to ask or too embarrassed to ask it. My lips were getting dryer and dryer the longer I spoke so when I licked my lips between topics I made sure to make a pass over the wound, applying just enough moisture to prevent a crack in my natural band-aid.

My presentation is typically divided into three sections, and the length of each section varies on a number of factors including perceived levels of interest. I normally don’t get questions during the sections discussing the city of Portland or the fundamental principles behind a University of Portland education, and this group was no different. These students, not uniquely, reserved their questions for the third and final section of my presentation, which covered admissions policies. Typically, the first two sections would last a bare minimum of 15 minutes each, but considering the circumstances, this day would be a little different. I had made it to the last portion of my presentation in 18 minutes.

When I introduced the last topic, two hands immediately sprung toward the ceiling. I was worried. Giving a rehearsed presentation with a badly cut lip, knowing which words I could rely on to minimize stretching, isn’t as difficult as you may think. Fielding unique questions and the animated expressions that come with them is another story. When the questions have to do with one of your biggest passions? Gamechanger.

“Do you guys have a soccer team?”

Shit.

I was just posed the easiest question to answer. It is also the question that elicits the most emotion because our tiny little school is a national power. I couldn’t hold back. My reaction was prideful and immediate.

“Yes!” I exclaimed.

17 muscles shot skyward in unison as my face lit up like a Christmas tree. It wasn’t until the inquisitor’s eyes bulged out of his sockets that I realized my facial tree was now adorned with red tinsel. The corners of my mouth had stretched outward as if pulled by strings and blood began flowing freely down my chin.

My mind immediately brought me back to my own high school days. How would I react if a college counselor, with a face already scraped to high hell, started bleeding uncontrollably and without warning in the middle of their presentation? A famous Adam Sandler skit is the only thing that came to mind. They’re all gonna laugh at you!

I figured I had two choices to combat, or just temporarily deflect, humiliation at the hands of high school students. I could stop my presentation, apologize to my guests, take the tissues out of my pocket and use them to wipe the blood, and then excuse myself briefly to use the restroom and finish cleaning up. I describe this choice first because it is the one that makes the most sense. It also the tactic I chose NOT to employ. No, my brilliant idea was to pretend that there was nothing wrong, that there wasn’t a mass quantity of blood streaming down my face, and to just go on with the presentation. I pulled a reserve tissue out of my pocket, raised it to my lip to apply pressure, and calmly answered the student’s question.

“As a matter of fact, despite being one of the smallest Division-I schools in the country, our student athletes are routinely represented on the U.S. men’s and women’s national soccer teams,” I said in a garbled voice that most likely wasn’t understood by students who were now for the first time hanging on my every word.

The last five minutes of my presentation were spent speaking through a Kleenex tissue to students who couldn’t wait for me to finish so that they could tell their friends what they had just seen. I was actually surprised at how respectful they were in spite of the meatball I threw them right over the plate that they could have, and frankly should have, hit out of the park. Instead, they let it sail straight through the strike zone without even taking a swing. In fact, my favorite part of this whole episode was observing the different strategies the students used to distract their brains from the expected and involuntary point-and-laugh system employed by most hormone riddled adolescents.

The student who had asked me the very literal hard hitting question and then subsequently nearly had his eyeballs jump across the room ended up fighting back a smirk, looking down at his notebook, and scribbling circles over and over again. His friend that was sitting right next to him was looking right at me the minute my scab broke. He simply shifted his focus to the wall behind me, stopped breathing for few seconds, and his shoulders bounced up and down ever so slightly as if every ounce of his strength was now being used to prevent himself from laughing. The emo girl at the end of the table just stared at me, but the girl next to her alternated between looking at me until I looked at her and then staring at the ceiling. My biggest regret of this whole scenario is that, unless a student had caught the footage on their iPhone, this epic high school visit wasn’t making it to YouTube.

I remember wondering what the ramifications of my clumsy visit would be. I knew there wouldn’t be any immediate consequences because I at least I had shown up and given the presentation. The true test would come on deposit day. How many students would we enroll from JK Mullen? I felt like I had just taken a final and now had to sweat it out for a long period of time before I got the results.

Thankfully I didn’t have to wait too long after all. Eighty percent of enrollment confirmation deposits come in the month of April when students have heard back from all of their schools and know where they stand financially at each institution. Occasionally, you get a few deposits pretty early for any number of reasons, from money not being an issue for the family to a special circumstance like an athlete or special scholarship recipient. I soon found out that there was one more exception to that trend – pity.

In November of 2008, one month after the Debacle in Denver, a male student that was present at my high school visit decided that the University of Portland would be his home for the next four years. He was our very first deposit of the year. We were still months away from even mailing him instructions on how to deposit. Not only that, he had attached a check for $20k to be applied to his tuition approximately nine months before we would even come asking for it.

I can only assume that he was so impressed with my steadfast determination to finish the job that he could hardly wait to become the next Portland Pilot. Maybe I should be surprised that the next question after I answered his first one through a Kleenex wasn’t “Where do I sign?”

I’ve been back to Denver about 15 times since that first visit. Every morning I’m there I wake up, walk to the bathroom, open my Dopp kit, and grab my razor. It always makes me laugh. I lather my face up in foam and begin to shave. After all, you only get one chance to make a first impression.

NOLA

They say to be learned you should seek what you've yearned,

And not stand with your feet resting still.

To stare at a map means that you're just a sap,

So stop standing and go seek your thrill.

It's the south for I've longed so I'll right all I've wronged,

And head to a place I ain't been.

NOLA's food is her niche, from her grits to crawfish,

Yes I've dreamt of her since I was ten.

I boarded the plane, said goodbye to mundane,

Took my seat and relaxed with a drink.

Have a blast I needn't try to, after all it's the bayou,

A thrill despite how much I blink.

When we landed at sundown the day had been rundown,

The cup of the night had been spilt.

The cab to the culture gave birth to my vulture,

I'd drink up what past men had built.

Hurricanes red went straight to my head,

Huge ass beers went for six bucks a pop,

The street entertainers, to-do-list no brainers,

I got beads without losing my top.

I drank and I ate and the dancing was great,

Cut a rug 'til the sun said hello.

The darkness gave way to a groundhog-esque day,

Repeated all as would any fellow.

NOLA came back for more so I opened her door

Took her in as if she were my own.

She reciprocated, a birthday belated,

Could stay here 'til old I have grown.

But alas I must leave, heading west I shall weave,

Though my heart will now always be where

The humidity and heat tap in synch with the beat,

Bourbon Street and I make a great pair.

I Want the Tooth!

The following is a story I wrote for a Writer's Digest Contest a few years back. I procrastinated until the 12th hour, and ultimately submitted it after the deadline. The instructions were to write a short story that began with the sentence "When I first told my family about ___, they didn't believe me." The story had to end with "And that's how I ended up with dentures." Here's what I came up with. Purely fictional, except my mother's intelligence of course. If only the folks at Writer's Digest would have seen this...well, I'm sure nothing would have happened. Enjoy!

When I first told my family about the real identity of the Tooth Fairy, they didn't believe me. For years they had naively perpetuated the idea of a mystical, yet unmistakably real winged angel bringing fortune and good luck in the absence of molars and incisors. Child after child, tooth after tooth, and dollar after dollar, the legend grew and everyone believed. Oh Granny was good. Granny was really good. But Granny slipped up one hot summer night, and I was never the same.

My mother is a very intelligent person. She was college educated and ran her own consulting business from home. She was fiercely independent and revered by many. However, at the ripe old age of 43, she still believed in the Tooth Fairy. You see, my grandma has a bit of a power complex. She revels in the idea of knowing something that others don't. When my mother reached the age of twelve and still hadn't figured out that it was her mom dropping off the cash while she was counting sheep, my grandma made a decision that she could never reverse. From that day on, she became the Tooth Fairy. Permanently.

My grandma Dotty was an active woman. She had a healthy diet. She did the daily crossword and took long walks every day, keeping herself in great mental and physical shape. Maybe that's just something Tooth Fairies do to stay sharp. First sign of a wobbly tooth, she was there on cue with a crisp dollar bill to maintain the illusion. But she never told anybody. Not even my mother. So my mother never assumed that role because she never knew it was hers to assume.

There were a few close calls throughout the years, like that time Granny was in Florida when I lost a tooth. She had to call her friend Betty who owed her a favor and ask her to sneak into the house. Betty climbed through a window, hid under my bed until I fell asleep, and then put a flattened dollar under my pillow and escaped the same way she came. She was 85 years old, and we were none the wiser.

Or there was that time my sister lost a tooth when she fell camping.

"The Tooth Fairy is everywhere," my mother reassured her.

When the dollar didn't come, my grandma, absent from the campsite that night, reminded her that the curled up sweatshirt she used as a pillow made her ineligible for tooth reimbursement. It was genius. Later the next night, with the family back at home and in full snore, she fulfilled her obligation and the fairy tale continued. Until the summer of 1991.

I was ten years old when I caught her. We had recently moved into an old refurbished home. The combination of creaky wood floors and a restless summer night proved enough to restle me from my slumber just as Granny's hand had found the underside of my pillow. Catching someone in such a precarious situation while you sleep would normally be enough to trigger a scream, but I remained calm. Maybe deep down I had known all along. Santa Clause? Fake. Easter Bunny? Fake. Tooth Fairy? It couldn't be, could it?

The night I caught Granny red handed is the night I decided that her secret must be revealed. I immediately told my mother, against my granny's wishes, but she laughed at me. I guess 43 years of classical conditioning can't be reversed by a 10 year old boy with a midnight revelation. I had to prove it. I had to catch her in the act. And that meant I had to start losing teeth. Problem was, I had already lost them. So I was on to plan B. As painful and ridiculous as it sounded, I became my own dentist and started extracting teeth by any means necessary.

My attempts to frame Granny were quite pathetic. I tried staying awake but Granny stayed up longer. I tried faking it and leaving a rolled up wad of tissue but she left a note that read, "No tooth, no dollar." I tried setting my alarm clock in the middle of the night but Granny unplugged it. And then unplugged every other appliance in the house. The next morning she eloquently described the non-existant winds that must have knocked over a power line. My hockey smile was developed in vain. Apparently over the course of 40 years she had learned to sidestep all possible traps. I proceeded to lose all 32 adult teeth in my quest for the truth. 32 dollars later, it was never uncovered.

And that's how I ended up with dentures.

The Literal Patient

I read people. I think I do it quite well. I can pick up on sarcasm and I'm keen to complisults. I know when it's time to laugh, time to listen, and time to shut the hell up. So when I get a good read on someone, and they ask me to do something, I do it. I do it with conviction because any less would be an insult to my literacy. You see, when I meet people, I tend to cut straight to their childhood and forego their tales of the previous weekend. I don't want to know what they did last weekend, I want to know why they did it. I prefer diving boards and deep ends to running through sprinklers. When you run through the sprinklers, you can't drown. The lessons you gain when fighting to stay afloat make drowning worth the risk. You drown when you don't seek the truth. You drown when you make assumptions. You drown when the nurse at your doctor's office has more patients than time to see them and provides the Cliff Note's version on what to expect from your first visit to a family clinic in the better part of a decade.

As she took my vitals and described the next 10 minutes of my life, Nurse Vague skipped key bullet points of the house rules. "Take off your clothes," she said. "Dr. Chang will be with you in a moment." When the door shut behind her, I realized that we'd been standing in the shallow end. I didn't read her. I didn't ask questions. I didn't know if the good doctor and I would be running through sprinklers or swimming in the ocean. As we stood in the knee-deep baby blue cesspool called pleasantries, my eyes darted toward the other end of the tank and I've never since felt a longing so strong.

But maybe I did read her. She was direct and to the point. She didn't waste time. If I waited for Dr. Chang to repeat those crucial instructions, I would be wasting everyone's time. 'The nurse was direct,' I kept telling myself. 'She spoke with conviction.' Those words ran through my mind for two minutes before I moved a muscle. 'I'm in a doctor's office. She's a doctor. She's going to do a full examination anyway. Sure, a nude introduction wasn't what I had envisioned when I booked the appointment, but the nurse told you to take off your clothes. So take off your clothes.'

If Dr. Chang's appointments were a novel, then Nurse Vague had written the medical equivalent of a prologue. I had an idea what was about to go down but the devil is in the details. "Take off your clothes," she had said. I briefly pondered the idea of running down the hall to ask some follow up questions. "Excuse me, nurse? Hi. Thomas here, we met just a second ago. Nice to see you again. Listen, if you don't mind, I'd like to clear a few things up. Just how many articles of clothing is the doctor expecting to see on the floor when she comes in? Are boxers considered naked or do I have to be naked naked? How sterile is that linoluem? Should I keep my socks on?"

I knew Dr. Chang would be ready to evaluate me any second now, so I decided to stop being indecisive and start stripping. The hand that had adorned the bottom of my chin in a quizzical trance for the last two minutes now held my shirt, pants, and dignity. I looked around the room. I found it quite standard. A bed. A chair. Some medical magazines. A lamenated picture of a funny looking skeleton with arrows indicating key body parts. The familiarity comforted me. I could relax. I put my clothes on the chair and worked on my stance. Should my hands be on my hips? Should I sit on the bed? Do I cup myself? Are these socks tacky?

The slight knock on the door preceded it's opening by a millisecond. For all intents and purposes, they were simultaneous. A wikiHow forum on how to get dressed reveals seven simple steps in the art of robing, but even the best swimmer on the starting block took longer than a millisecond to rock that speedo. The same time frame holds true for jumping out of a window. So I stood there, naked (minus the socks, of course), hopeful that I had correctly interpreted the nurse's directive to kick it au naturale. Of the hundreds of scenarios that played through my head in the minutes leading up to our introduction, Dr. Chang's actual reaction was not among them.

"Hi, you must be Tho...OH MY GOD!"

The door shuts. Dr. Chang is on the other side. One thought runs through my head. 'That...nurse...is.....a....BITCH!'

I don't know where Dr. Chang earned her M.D. or completed her undergrad, but my best guess is that she received a liberal arts foundation that taught her the value of compassion and understanding. She immediately returned to the room I clumsily occupied and, while justifiably tentative, managed to graciously sidestep her way across the room with her head down to shake my hand.

"Hi there. Good afternoon, I'm Dr. Chang and there is robe in the drawer underneath the bed behind you."

"I did not know that."

"Yeah, why don't you go ahead and put that on."

"The robe! Yes. Of course."

I'll never be a nurse, but if I was, I'm pretty sure I'd tell my patients to take their clothes off and then PUT ON THAT ROBE YOU'LL FIND IN THE DRAWER UNDERNEATH THE BED BEHIND YOU!

When my examination was completed and I was given a clean bill of health and a story to tell, I walked out to my car, opened the door, and laughed until a flotation device magically stitched itself around my waist. I had drowned in the Sea of Chang, only to be rescued by a sense of humor.

We all need humility. We don't have all the answers. They say you need to crawl before you can walk. I think you need to sink before you can swim.

Sweet Christine

We spoke today, through the wind. You whispered sweet memories in my ears while the leaves on the trees eavesdropped with jealousy. Your words created ripples on my shirt that moved across my chest and into my heart. You told me that you were alive and you were happy. I tried to answer you, did you hear me? I blew a kiss that floated into the breeze and up through the clouds. Seconds later the sun peeked out and lit the sky, so I know it reached your cheek.

I know why it rained today. You were sad that you left us so soon, sad that we were sad. Your tears brought me comfort and washed away the pain, if only for a short while. The air was fresh this morning, did you smell it? It reminded me of home. I'm glad I live in the northwest. I'll never complain about the rain again.

I tried to pull you out of your pictures today, could you feel me tugging on your arm? I wanted to take you out to lunch again and try to make you laugh. I'd let you take me back to that store, the one where you forced me to get a girly hand scrub, just so I could hear you say "um, yeah, I just made you do that" one more time. But in those same hands, on your card - May you never want for more. I will cherish the times we shared.

I said goodbye to you today. I carried the casket to your grave, but it was weightless because you weren't in it. That wasn't you. You exist not in the ground but in my memory, and you always will. I gave you one last flower at the cemetery, did you see it? It was beautiful and peaceful like your new home. It brings me comfort that you are watching over us.

We gathered today to mourn and to celebrate you. It was so hard to say goodbye to someone who had touched so many lives. Your sudden departure is bittersweet, can you taste it? Something tells me that you can. I'm so sad that you are gone but happy that you are safe and feel no pain.

Grieve not...nor speak of me with tears...but laugh and talk of me as though I were beside you. I loved you so...'twas heaven here with you.

Beloved daughter, sister, niece, cousin, friend.
Christine Nichole Macken
November 5, 1985
July 5, 2010

The Dirtiest Bird

The man staring at me through the bathroom mirror in room 317 of the Cliff Lodge at Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort could have been my twin. He looked just like me. He had the same hair, the same rosy cheeks, and he was wearing half of the same fashionable tuxedo I had worn to my sister's wedding earlier that day.

But his eyes were different. His eyes looked nothing like mine. They were blood-shot red and as glassy as Lake Tahoe on a calm summer morning. Before I could ask him who he was and why he was staring at me as if his mind was racing with the same questions, he collapsed. His eyes rolled to the back of his head, his shoulders dipped toward his hips, and his skull catapulted backwards into the hotel tub as if there was an industrial strength magnet in his brain longing to find the metal drain at the bottom of the porcelain bath.

The splitting headache that greeted me the following morning was like nothing I had ever experienced. My vision was blurry. The sheets that had kept me warm through the night seemed as though they were sewn to my body. My pillow was an extension of my misery; the soft down feathers I felt with every toss and turn acted more like a hummingbird pecking at my eyeballs than the sea of comfort they were intended to provide.

My first emotion was relief that I was still alive. My next emotion was regret for the same reason.

I closed my eyes to dull the pain. When I opened them a few minutes later, they came to focus at the foot of my bed. There stood Steve Hamilton, staring at me with a grin as wide as the mountainous landscape outside the window.

"Have you sat up yet?" he asked sarcastically. Steve was a friend of my brother and sister from college. I knew him better than any of their other friends, enough not to be bothered by his sarcastic comments that would irritate me had they come from anyone else.

"No," I managed to mumble.

"Good. I'm not too late," he laughed. "Make sure I'm around when you do. It's the vertical that will get you."

'Oh God,' I thought. 'It gets worse?'

Steve turned his attention to my brother, just coming to life in the bed next to me.

“Mike, get up. You don’t want to miss this,” he said before turning his attention back to me. "So, that dance floor was pretty wild, huh?”

“I'm glad I'm too shy to dan..." I stopped myself from finishing that sentence. The memories were now slowly creeping in.

'There were laughs,' I thought. 'Laughs I hadn't requested. But what had caused them? Did I not get "a little bit softer now"? Was my "shout" out of sequence? No way. That wasn't it. I didn't interrupt my new brother-in-law and his mother's traditional first dance, did I? Nah, that doesn't sound like me. Why are images of a dirt hill ripping through my mind? Oh God....oh God no....why am I remembering ants?'

If my panicked expressions of remembrance were actors, then my face was a dramatic Broadway play. Steve and Michael were enjoying the show and couldn't contain their laughter when they realized I had solved the first clue of the "what the hell happened to me last night?" puzzle.

Recounting my unforgettable "African Ant Eater" dance that had caught the eyes of most reception goers put my sore neck into perspective. The violent, seizure like movements the dance required would certainly take its toll, even on a reasonably fit 16 year old body, for days to come. But judging from the looks and the laughs I was enduring that morning, my ego had sustained a much more serious injury that, at that moment, I figured would take weeks to heal. As more memories started to creep into my mind, I realized I had underestimated the rehabilitation my ego was set to undergo.

I wanted to laugh at myself but I couldn't. I was hurting in every sense of the word.

"So, Jamal, that was some Super Bowl last year, eh?" Michael continued in his quest to cure my short term memory loss.

"You're obviously going somewhere with that jackass," I snapped back. "Why don't you get there a little faster?"

"This way is more fun," Steve interjected.

My thoughts temporarily flashed back to room 317. The after party. I remembered walking into a crowded room but everything after that was a blur. How did I get there? I wanted to solve this mystery badly so I decided to retrace my steps back to my last memory - the dance floor.

I remember exiting stage left after what was, in my mind, a picture perfect reenactment of Patrick Dempsey's popularity enhancing performance from Can't Buy Me Love. Although an outdated movie and a ridiculous dance, I decided to entertain anyone willing to keep their eyes on my train wreck of an evening with an all left foot version that scarcely resembled the original.

The supportive laughs energized me. I was naïve.

I grabbed my fourth beer from the ignorant bartender and followed the wedding party to the deck for a celebratory cigar and champagne toast. Mike and I played hot potato with a bottle of Mumm’s before I noticed a commotion coming from the side of the deck. The groomsmen had magically turned into Chippendales with a slight wardrobe adjustment and were headed upstairs to continue the celebration. My head was swimming in alcohol at this point, so the answer to the question “is following these maniacs upstairs a good idea?” was an emphatic “yes!”

“It’s too bad your night ended a little early,” Mike said to me as he sat up from his bed. “You got the party started all right, but you were about 3 hours shy of seeing it finish.”

“I got the party started?”

Mike and Steve looked at each other and with a slight we’re-on-the-same-page nod of the head, declared in unison while fighting through uncontrollable laughter, “Let’s get this party started!!!”

‘Those laughs,’ I thought. ‘Those goddamn laughs. I remember those. They were from last night. But there were more of them…and they were louder. What the hell happened to me?!’

“Here’s another hint,” Steve said as he noticed the play on my face was back from intermission. “Think…whiskey.”

My mind immediately transported me back to room 317. The after party. I was standing next to my sister Jeannie, her friend Sarah, and some random stranger with only a bottle of whiskey and awkward silences between us. I passed the bottle to Jeannie. She took a pull. At least I thought she took a pull. (To any 16 year old wedding crashers out there reading my blog: if you plug the top of the bottle with your tongue when you tilt it back, you can fool a lot of people). She passed the bottle to the stranger. He took a pull. The stranger passed me the bottle. I took a pull. Unfortunately, this game had more rounds than a heavyweight title fight.

Remembering how much whiskey you drank the night before almost always kick starts your gag reflex, but remembering what the whiskey made you do can have the same effect.

“You there yet, Dirty Bird?” Steve asked.

“Oh please no. I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t have. I didn’t.”

“You did.”

The Dirty Bird was a touchdown celebration dance popularized by Jamal Anderson of the Atlanta Falcons. As you take a wide stance and shift your weight from side to side, you bring your right fist down to chest level and then swing your arm out as if you’re elbowing someone. Then, while still bouncing your weight from your left foot to your right foot, you repeat the arm motion with your left arm. When the second motion is complete, you move both elbows up and down while jumping up and down as if you were mimicking a chicken.

The Dirty Bird is best saved for the football field.

Hindsight is twenty-twenty of course, but I didn’t realize this at the time. So I hopped up onto the bed in room 317, bottle of whiskey in one hand, pride in the other, and got everyone’s attention.

“Excuse me. EXCUSE ME. Thank you. My name is Thomas Stuyvesant. Some of you might not know me but I am the brother of the bride. Now…..let’s get this party started!!”

Had I been able to see straight, I may have noticed my sister’s eyes nearly pop out of their sockets and taken the less than subtle hint that I should get off the bed, put the bottle down, and lay low for awhile. Instead, I seized the opportunity to let everyone know that I watch Sportscenter. So I danced the Dirty Bird. It was the Dirtiest of Birds, and it was legendary.

“Oh shit. Do you think anyone will remember?” I asked sheepishly.

“We remember,” Mike said. “And I spent half the night running around with a bowtie on my forehead.”

“You gotta own this, Dirty Bird,” Steve said.

I knew this story wasn’t going anywhere. And 11 years later, it hasn’t. But I’ve finally come to grips with what happened that night. I guess, more than anything, I’m thankful that I didn’t lose patience and choose to unveil the Dirty Bird while the happy couple were exchanging vows. It happened in room 317, where it was supposed to happen.

You know, I wish I could say that that was the end of my animal-themed wedding dances, but then I’d be lying to you and I don’t want to do that. The Mattecheck wedding saw the African Ant Eater dance. The O’Connell wedding saw the Worm. The Corcoran wedding saw the Rottweiler (okay, so I made that last one up).

In spite of, or maybe because of, my youthful foolishness, I did learn a lot of things that Memorial Day weekend in 1999. I learned that sixteen years isn’t quite enough emotional or physical preparation for as much alcohol as I drank that night. I learned that dances you see in 80’s movies should either stay in the 80’s or in the movies. I learned that the Chippendales look is not a good look for anybody. And I learned that if you’re going to make an ass of yourself at your sister’s wedding, you might as well go for a touchdown.

Instant Karma

The dull thud of the empty pint glass striking the oak patio table was drowned out by laughter. I had just hung up the phone with the owner of Jasmine Restaurant, a Chinese bistro with a sushi bar in Salt Lake City, which had served as my gainful employer for the past two years. I had successfully negotiated my way out of a slow shift of minimal tips with my tall tale of a faulty scooter and a jammed shoulder.

Our laughs encapsulated the improbable shift in plans that fateful Friday afternoon. Two hours earlier I was bidding my friends farewell for the evening and expressing my jealousy of their adventurous trip up Little Cottonwood Canyon.

"You sure you can't join?" Sam asked.

"Dinner rush is in two hours. Not quite enough time to make it up and back," I replied.

"Half hour up, hour of play, half hour down, and you're golden," Shawn pleaded.

I chewed on that for a second. 'I know how to take a drink order,' I thought. 'Don't need mental preparation for that. As long as I'm clocked in on time, I could show up in a full body cast for all I care and still make more tips than some of my socially inept coworkers.'

"I'll drive." The adrenaline rushed through my head and down to my limbs. "Hop in."

I made quick work of the long, winding, uphill road to Snowbird with youthful determination and a lead foot. The Mercury Tracer I had been driving for five years knew my good intentions as well as anyone, so when I requested extra juice around the corners it happily obliged. An improbable front parking spot and a quick jaunt up to the second floor of the Iron Blossom Lodge later, and I was placing an order for a cold pint of St. Provo Girl.

The view of the newly installed thrill-ride from the patio we occupied was unmatched.

"Well, what do you think?" Shawn asked after a trip down memory lane to the summer when we had gleefully whisked down the Alpine Slide in Park City. "Does it measure up?"

"Only one way to find out," Sam said. "How we looking on time?"

"We have all night," I replied. "Let me make a quick phone call."

The irony is that my excuse for not being able to ensure the safety of the restaurant's patrons due to the uncertainty of my tray holding capabilities wasn't completely untrue. One night prior, at approximately 2:30 am in Park City, my slightly inebriated self had inadvertently concluded that the shortest distance between the Canyons Mountain Resort parking lot and the condo I inhabited was a straight line over the handle bars of a motorized scooter. Sure, my shoulder was sore and scarred, but the phone call was placed because a ride on Snowbird's Alpine Slide had finagled its way up the queue of "things I wanted to do that night," not because I couldn't capably perform my brainless physical workload.

Sam and Shawn supported my last minute change of heart.

"Last one down buys the next round?" Sam wagered.

My smile in the reflection of his sunglasses said more than words ever could.

Five minutes later I was holding a 20 pound sled at the top of a twisting fiberglass course and the smile on my face had stuck as if the wind had changed at just the right moment like my mother had predicted when I was a kid.

"Johnny, we clear?" the slide operator asked the mid-mountain guide.

"Clear!" he responded.

"We're next Sammy. Last chance to head back to the bar with your tail between your legs." Actually, I knew I was going to lose the race. And I knew that Sam knew it too. I hadn't taken Physics in high school but something told me that the fifty pounds I was giving up to him might affect the outcome of our afternoon glide down the mountain.

"You guys done this before?" the slide operator asked.

"Pro's," we responded in unison.

"Alrighty, you're clear. Whenever you're ready."

"See you at the bottom," Sam declared confidently. "I'll be the guy halfway done with a pint of Guinness."

We jerked forward on the handle of our sleds at the same time, raising our seat bottoms just high enough to reveal the wheels underneath that would allow gravity to pull us down the mountain. Our tracks were identical, never more than two feet apart, which in a leisurely ride would enable us to carry on a casual conversation. But this was no leisurely ride.

The first thirty yards were pretty standard - a steep but steady slope leading us toward the first of a series of switchback turns. We stayed close to each other down the opening stretch, neither of us wanting to risk a brake check and the ensuing separation of space that would inevitably ensue. The first curve, as suspected, did little to intimidate us. The second curve was same as the first. But as we approached the third curve, I could sense myself losing ground. At that point, we were one hundred yards deep into our battle and our speed was increasing by the foot. As we negotiated the third turn and sped toward the fourth, I sensed an opportunity.

As the wind slipped over the sled, through my crouched position, and evaporated in the thin mountain air behind me, I came to the conclusion that the next twenty yards would determine the winner of our gentleman's bet. We were rapidly approaching a sharp right turn that would thrust us high onto the wall of the track and catapult us toward the bottom and ever closer to the lifelong pride that awaited us at the bottom. The only problem was that the wall we were about to scale wasn't high at all. We would have to decrease our speed just to stay on the track.

I was three yards behind at this point and found myself at a crossroad. I could lower my sled to the track and create the appropriate friction to ensure enough deceleration to safely navigate the turn, or I could trust that my lightweight frame could withstand the thrust created by a sudden shift in direction at a high speed. The latter, I thought, was my only option to catch Sam, who at this point was fully visible in my peripheral vision.

I had to make a quick decision. A decision between safety and glory. I consulted the daredevil in my head for a second opinion. He chose glory.

The next 4 seconds were the most horrifying of my life.

I pushed every ounce of my body weight onto the handle of my sled to ensure maximum speed through the turn, which was now too close to change my mind. Sam wisely pulled up on his brake, two feet to my left on the same track on which he had started. The first inch of track that veered to the right was the same inch that I knew I had made a mistake.

My shoulders were the first body parts to lose control - they immediately darted off center toward Sam's track. My hips soon followed and the inertia began to lift my butt off the smooth plastic seat I had hoped to call home until the bottom of the track. My hands, once tightly draping the rubber handle that, in turn, held my life in its own single hand, began to slip eastward toward the towering peaks of Alta. The wind that had aided me in my journey toward immortality up until that point suddenly sliced between my body and the sled I was sailing on and catapulted me skyward as if I had been shot out of a cannon.

The first thought that came to mind when I was airborne above Sam's sled was that I had lost the race. The second thought that came to mind was the glorious day that the Salt Lake City Fire Department had visited Mrs. Best's kindergarten class and taught an impressionable group of five year olds the invaluable lesson of the stop, drop, and roll philosophy. I was neither on fire nor capable of stopping at that point, but I sure as hell was dropping and knew that a series of rolls were in my immediate future.

My left shoulder was first to find the earth. The muscles wrapping its delicate socket acted as coils to cushion the blow, not too dissimilar to those mattress commercials showcasing the energy absorption of a Posturepedic bed catching a bowling ball and deflecting the force away from the source of impact. But my shoulder wasn't created by Sealy. It took the force head on and spun my helpless flailing body end over end like a lab rat spinning its wheel.

I vividly remember completing my first revolution. I knew I was in for a second spin but was simultaneously grateful for my consciousness and fearful of my next rotation. As the milliseconds passed I couldn't help but think of my parents. The images that raced through my mind weren't of the disappointed grimaces that would adorn their faces when they learned of my as-yet-to-be-determined-fate, rather the memories of them pouring my mandatory glass-of-milk-with-dinner that had assuredly built strong bones inside the youngest of their five children. If anyone was built to sustain this irresponsible freefall of epic proportion, it was their second son made from Irish Catholic love and heavy doses of 2% milk.

My back ended up taking the majority of the beating, as it was the body part touching down first after every flip down the mountain. The rocky terrain took more and more skin with each passing tumble, but made sure to replace it with dirt and pebbles that embedded deep into my back. I was extremely fearful that my head would crash onto one of the bigger rocks and crush my skull, but with everything happening so fast and my momentum so strong, I was unable to create a natural helmet of hands and forearms. So I waited.

When the unintentional acrobatic show finally subsided, I felt like the luckiest man in the world to still just have one head. But the nightmare wasn't over. I was still on a steep mountain. I was still moving fast. And I was still collecting dirt like Pig-Pen from Peanuts.

The last twenty feet of the disaster were spent solely on my back as I slid down the mountain like Tom Cruise sliding across the freshly waxed floor in Risky Business. When my body came to a halt, I took inventory.

One head? Check. Two arms? Check. Two legs? Check. Shoes? Amazingly, check. Full body of skin? Not so much. I left enough DNA on that mountain to make another me.

Upon realizing I was in one piece, embarrassment began to set in when I noticed the witnesses. There were people on the balcony, people waiting in line, people at the bottom, employees, foreigners, skaters, businessmen - all wide eyed, jaw dropped, hand-to-the-mouth horrified at what they had just seen. I heard a woman scream.

The only way to save face now was to pretend like I was alright.

I hopped to my feet, located my sled roughly 70 yards down the track, and decided to make a run for it. I gave thumbs up to the concerned father on the chair lift above, who was obviously mortified of the thought his 10 year old could share the same fate. When I arrived at my sled, I made the mistake of rushing to sit down, not realizing that I was missing a chunk of my ass, and the sting of open flesh on hot plastic was unmerciful.

When the tip of my sled finally touched the rubber tires at the end of the track, I had successfully taken second place. Sam was waiting for me with a look of concern and amazement. After all, he had just watched me exit my sled, fly over the gap between the tracks, over his head, land on my shoulder, complete four unintentional back flips on rocky terrain, slide on my back an additional twenty feet, sprint down to my sled, take a seat, and finish the course.

The first aid team hurried to my side to begin the Q&A. Where does it hurt? Do you think you broke any bones? Did you hit your head? How many fingers am I holding up?

I let them know that I was fine, but I wasn’t dumb. They had seen my crash. They knew I couldn’t have been fine. But I played the part despite fighting through the shock. I was shaking almost uncontrollably but not enough to turn heads. I implored them to believe my lie; I was fine, I just wanted to get the hell off the mountain.

Shawn had taken the next run and, after a lengthy delay at the top to determine whether or not the previous rider still had a heartbeat, finally made it down as Sam and I were walking to the bathroom to assess the damage.

I didn’t want to look in the mirror. I knew it was bad. I could feel it was bad. The shock was wearing off and the pain was setting in. Sam had grabbed alcohol pads from the first aid lady who had inaccurately assessed me as ‘okay’, and began to clean the wounds that I couldn’t reach. The alcohol stung like a swarm of bees. It wasn’t until my first yelp of pain that Shawn and Sam realized I was hurt but not injured. And that’s when they knew it was okay to laugh. And I laughed too. It was an awkward laugh combining a sense of humor with pain, but it was a laugh nonetheless.

“Damn,” Sam said. “Instant karma.”

And the laughter continued.