Young and Stupid

Sometimes I think back to who I was and realize what a fucking dumbass I was. Be it six months or six years, I am almost appalled at how dumb I used to be. Granted, I think I am smart as whip right now, but I am sure in a few months, I will look back at a couple things I did this month and think, wow, how fucking stupid was I.*

I generally try to keep my emotions in check, walk around with the poker face. However, one of the instances this does not work is when I play video games. Specifically, when the video game is obviously cheating. Video games do cheat sometimes, particuallry sports game, though sometimes I just play poorly and I get fucking pissed off. When I was young and stupid, I would have to keep my emotions in check, usually. Lots of times my parents would be around somewhere, or I would be playing late. In those cases, I would not swear like a sailor or throw things or pound my fist on the desk.

If my folks were not around, it was pretty much anything goes. Cursing, throwing controllers, yelling, all that shit. I cannot remember how old I was during one particular instance, but I was probably in high school, playing Madden on the computer when I truley acted dumbly.

It was the summer time, or a vacation day, but I know that it was during the day and my parents were both at work. I was playing Madden and the game began to obviously cheat and try to ruin my perfect record. When the final gun sounded, I had lost, and I was pissed. I stormed around yelling whatever obscenity popped into my head. And then, needing a way to really, really show the Madden game how pissed I was at it, I punched the wall.

It was a pretty good punch, though not conventional. It was not a jab, more like a swing. Essentially, I was walking down the hall, arms at my side, and just flung my right hand behind me, as though I was on a bike and emphatically stating that I was making a left turn. My punch was true, and hit the wall in a perfect spot, right between the studs. Drywall of course, is not that strong. I did not break through the wall, but I dented it pretty good. It really is quite amazing how you can be so pissed off you punch a wall, but then once you acheive the desired result, breakage, your mood switches pretty quick to holy fuck, my dad is gonna kill me.

But that is not the worst part of the story.

With a dented wall, I was young and stupid enough to think I could fix it and no one would be the wiser. In theory, it was a good plan. In theory, communism works. But being young and stupid, theory was all I needed. I headed to the basement, secured some spackle, and went about patching the dent. I spackeled the dent, smoothed it out as best I could and prepared to move to the second phase of the plan.

Had I been smarter, I would have realized that the first part of the plan doomed me to failure. Spackle takes about 24 hours to dry. After it drys, you need to sand it. And regardless, one can always tell the where dry wall has been spackled. But I threw caution into the wind, and set about finding the paint to cover up the white spackle.

And this might be the worst part.

I could not find the paint. But I found white paint and a paint that was just a little bit darker than the paint on the hallway wall. So, I mixed them. Seemed like a good idea. Mix dark paint with light paint, you get the right colored paint. Course, I am color blind so there really was never a chance for me to tell that the colors matched. Not to mention the fact that wet paint is always a slightly different shade than dry paint.

But I had gotten this far, so I painted the damn wall with my mixed paint. Cleaned everything up, turned all the lights off in the hallway and hid in my room.

Eventually, my dad got home. It took about two hours, but it happened. I was laying on my bed trying to read, when I heard "what the hell is this?" come through my bedroom door. He was asking my little sis, but I knew I would soon have a knock on my door. There was nothing I could do. I had to tell the truth.

"Yeah, so I kinda punched the wall, and it made a little hole, so I got the spackle and patched the hole, but then I could not find the right color paint, so I mixed a couple paint buckets that I found in the basement and painted the wall."

I think my dad was shocked at my combined ingenuity and stupidity. I mean really, after hearing that story, what are you suppossed to say? He did not say much, and if I recall correctly, I did not even get in trouble. Just a few head shakes and a couple incredulous "Wow"s. My mom was thrilled I had fucked up her wall, and not just because I am her only son who can do no wrong. She had been pestering my dad to repaint the hallway. This gave him a good reason to do it.

I am still shocked that I thought that this was the best course of action. But I was young and stupid. Now when I get frustrated at video games, I just bottle the anger, and get some lumps on my neck.

image from: http://simpsonsviewertop8.blogspot.com/

*I went out with my paralegal friend a couple weeks ok, and he lives an hour out of DC (he has a shitty commute), so I would go out in his town and pass out at his place. It was a pretty standard night, drinking and shit, but when I woke up, I put on my shirt and pants and went out to smoke. My friend showed up and was like, what the fuck happened to your shirt? I look at my shirt, and there is this nasty stain on my shirt and the crotch of my pants. Based on the visual evidence, it looked like I threw up on myself. I had no recollection of me throwing up and nor did he. We went down to the basement where I slept and found no further traces of vomit. We were flummoxed, but came to the conclusion that I vomited on my shirt and pants at some point, and that was that. Cut to Monday morning, and paralegal friend informs me that it indeed was not vomit on my shirt. Instead, I decided to reheat some spaghetti and meatballs that I found in his fridge and eat it on his deck. In my drunken stupor, my aim was poor, and much of the spaghetti and meatballs I tried to shove in my mouth missed, rolled down my shirt and pants and onto his deck. My friend discovered this because of the mess I left on his deck. So yeah, should not have bought myself a shot that night. Stick to beer.