The Emotions of a Hairdryer

My mom has a very emotional hairdryer and it has three distinct moods.

Happy!

Perplexed!

Really ANGRY!!!!

Come to think of it, my ex-girlfriends have three distinct moods...

Hello Peaches!

One of the great icons of Highview, Ky, is still around!

I went up to the store to get some cream cheese and I remembered a conversation from a few days ago about the nieces and nephews occasionally asking mom how Peaches was doing.

I popped into the store and there, in the same spot, suspended from the ceiling was Peaches!

I was talking with the lady and I was stunned to learn after these years that Peaches is a boy! All these years, we referred to Peaches as a girl.

He's a very large and beautiful cockatoo that has been around since the store opened in 1979. They can only estimate his age at 31, but he may live to be 75 or 100!

The lady working the store mentioned what a curmudgeon he was being this morning as he would not allow her into the cage to clean it out. That's surprising to me as he adored the attention from kids and would always lean his feathery top against the bars so kids could scratch his head.

I tried to prompt him to talk. "Hello Peaches," I said to him. He stared at me blankly.

Back in the day, you could not shut him up. I swear to this day, in 8th grade as I stood there with Mike Baker and either my sister or his sister, Peaches fell off his perch, hit the bottom of the cage and said "God Damn!"

He's a very intelligent bird.

I told her the store had changed a lot. At one time, there were metal shelves that had holes in the back, similar to peg board, and Peaches would stretch his claw and grab it. With the other claw on the perch, he could pull the suspended cage over a few inches until it touched the shelves and then he'd let go so the entire cage would swing!

Apparently they have to have everything out of reach because if Peaches gets ahold of it at night, he'll go nuts and have it shredded by morning. Peaches is the original party animal.

Peaches was not very talkative until I was leaving. After losing my attention, he called out "Hi Peaches," four or five times as I was walking out the door.

Auto-correct amuses me

After watching the Louisville Cardinals destroy St. John's tonight, I headed home and had text messages at the red lights with Dan who attended the game. This is my conversation with Dan over a 20 minute span. Matt pointed me to a site with these type of autocorrects, but I didn't know how to submit it.

Autocorrect amuses me.

Dan: "I think we covered the spread! Old Chicago Time!"

Bryon: "U heading there now?"

Dan: "Yea, but it'll take forever to get there from here with traffic. Richard is going after work I think."

Bryon: "I am heading home."

Dan: "Cmon old man almost there. Richard comin around 11 and 2 friends with me now."

Bryon: "Richard replied with a question. If he's coming, it's news to him. :)"

Dan: "I've been texting he is coming for a couple"

Bryon: "He said, tonight?"

Dan: "Yessir! Pullin in now"

Bryon: "When the f*** else did I mean? 5/17/2016?"

Dan: "Polio"
Dan: "Kikoi"

Bryon: "Autocorrect?"

Dan: "Yes to lolol twice"

The Ghost of New Year's Eve Past

There I was, one night, just a normal guy. And then, there I was the next night, I was banned from all future New Year's Eve parties.

A few years ago, I believe it was 2001, I was invited to a New Year's Eve party at Bill and Erin's house to usher in 2002. I had known Bill for 8 years at that point, ever since I moved to Columbus. He was the first friend I made after moving there from Dayton.

This party was the first New Year's Eve party at his and Erin's new house in Gahanna.

We drank a lot of beer that night and I really didn't know Erin. Most of that night was fuzzy nine years ago much less today and when I left the party at 2:00 or 3:00 am, but I recall it was a long New Year's Day recovery.

Later that summer I had lunch with Cheryl and Larry. Larry was Bill's roomate for several years before Bill and Erin moved in together and I had worked with Cheryl at two companies.

I asked Larry about Bill and Erin, Cheryl innocently asks, "Is Bill the one whose wife hates Bryon?"

"What?" I asked. That came out of nowhere.

I could read Larry's face. I don't think he meant for Cheryl to repeat the story. "Well, you apparently said something that really upset her at the New Years Eve party."

I was stumped and wondered for a few months what I could have said. I am prone to being obnoxious sometimes and I also have a tendancy to tease the shit out people having been the oldest of three siblings and one of the oldest cousins out of sixteen on my mom's side of the family.

That September was Larry's pig roast and I ran into Bill as soon as I came around the garage. Erin was not around, so I had an opportunity to find out what horrible thing I said to alienate her.

"Hey Bill, I know I had a lot to drink at your New Year's party, but what did I say that upset Erin?"

Bill started laughing and explained. "She announced she was going to bed as we were playing cards and your comment was 'Wow, Erin, you're no fun. I can't see why Bill is dating you.'"

I stood there for a moment puzzled.

"That's it?"

He laughed again. "That's it."

"That's .... nothing. I thought it was something bad. I tease people like that all the time when I am sober much less like I was that night."

"Yeah, but she hardly mentions it any more."

"Any more?!?!?! She still mentions it? That was ten months ago and it was harmless."

"I know," said Bill. "We told her, 'It's Bryon. It's no big deal. You just don't know him.'"

I remember retelling this story to some friends the next week and they just looked at me in disbelief. One person asked me if she was Amish.

My sister asked me, "What does she do for a living; teach oversensitivity training?"

Even my mom joked, "Was she an only child? Had she never been teased in her life? Were you the first one ever to tease her?"

I didn't know the answers to these questions. She barely spoke to me after that.

Bill and Erin were married the next month. I contemplated asking Bill's ex-girlfriend to go to the wedding with me. I figured if Erin was going to hate me, I should give her a real reason.

Instead, I let it go.... except for when I looked for a Hallmark card that said. "Lighten up Princess." Hallmark does not really have a card for every occasion.

Amazingly, I was not invited back to New Year's Eve that year.

I did get invited the following year and I asked Bill how that happened when he and I were alone, standing at the keg. He laughed and said it was because HE sent out the invitations and included me.

Ever since that second night, I think Erin's been making that list and checking it twice.

Bryon's 2010 Christmas Memories

10. Despite the weather we've had the past month, it was nice having a white Christmas.

9. My cousin Paul was unfortunate enough to draw the fruitcake from the gift exchange game. We draw numbers and can steal gifts from each other. This actual fruitcake and T-shirt have been passed around the last five years.

8. My cousin Kent went over to my Aunt Edith's and got this pink concrete poodle that once belonged to his mom, my Aunt Brenda, and dressed it up for Christmas night. It was the first time we'd seen the monstrosity in 15 years. There's a story behind it from several summers ago that involved whiskey, our quiet cousin Frank whom I've never met and the idea to go to K-Mart and buy florescent pink paint. Legend has it that it's on video tape and my Aunt Brenda walked in and started watching the tape with them. When she went to the front door upon realizing it was her concrete poodle that was being vandalized, she opened the door and saw it on the front porch where the pink monster was greeting her.

7. Before all that happened, my Aunt Brenda drew a pink poodle from the Christmas exchange which brought a round of laughter.

6. I accidentally stole my Aunt Debbie's thunder when I commented that cousin Samantha was pregnant Christmas night at my uncle's house. I happened to serendipitously check my Crackberry and see the post. Two minutes later we got a call from Roger and Debbie that they were coming over. Turns out it was to make the announcement.

5. My cousin Ashley is pregnant and due in May. She has two boys already (my cousin Vinny and my cousin Tony) and I asked her what she's going to do if she has twins. Our grandmother gave birth to two sets and it passes down through the females (her mom Jeanne) and skips a generation which means she is one of three that could have twins (Alise, Ashley, Stacy.) She looked at me with a scared look and said, "Oh my god, that's not funny." [Interesting side note, Tonya and Christy are daughters of a twin which means they also carry the gene, but not from our grandmother.]

4. Getting to see how scared my little cousins were on Santa's lap was amusing. Ryan at the age of two was the bravest of the bunch as he was fine with mommy or daddy there. Isabelle, Tony and Vincent were a mess. Isabelle literally shook in fear of the Fatman.

3. My mom telling my Aunt Brenda, that "I'd kill you dog to Brenda!" Brenda has this yorkie named Ally that she said my Uncle Billy would've killed a long time ago if she weren't around. Mom just felt the need to tease Brenda and was sounding like a character from "The Wizard of Oz."

2. The last two times I saw my two year old nephew, I worked the phrase "This guy" into his vocabulary. "Who has two thumbs and years a diaper?" "This guy!" (with him pointing both thumbs back at himself.)

Dylan, upon opening his gift, was asked by my sister, "Who's car? Who does that belong to?" He pointed at himself with both thumbs and yelled, "This guy!" It was the first time he had used the phrase since he saw me at Thanksgiving and it was exactly how Uncle Bryon taught him.



1. I was actually told I could not print this one. If you email me, I can tell it to you privately. It was wildly funny, completely inappropriate and extremely awkward.

Bring a Sports Coat...

On the Wednesday before Memorial Day in 1997, I got a call at 7:30 in the morning from my mom. She was calling to tell me her brother, my Uncle Earl, died that morning.

Most of my early memories with Earl surround the 1980 World Series when I stayed with him and my aunt while my mom and dad were in Vegas. I remember just a little before that, such as when he broke his arm on his motorcycle. And I swear I remember him putting me on the bleachers and telling me not to move at the age of 4 or 5 so he could go place a bet at a window for a horse race.

I was already planning on returning home for the weekend and I was scheduled off for Friday, but when I went into work, I told my client manager Nancy what had happened and I was going to leave a day earlier.

Later that morning, my phone at the client site rang and it was my sister.

"I looked all over and could not find your client site number, so I called your office and talked to the girl there, then mom found the number."

"Mom talked to [our Aunt] Debbie. They are making arrangements and she wanted to know if you would be a pall bearer."

"Yeah," I said. My brother Brandon and cousin Casey were also amongst the pall bearers.

"OK, mom says to make sure you have a sports coat."

"I don't have one, but dad might have one I can borrow." The entire world had gone business casual, so it was not surprising I didn't have a sports coat back then.

During the conversation, my voicemail light came on and I knew it was Jennifer from the office calling to tell me my sister had called. It was about a five minute conversation with Stacy before I hung up.

After the conversation, I listened to my voicemail.

"Hi Bryon, this is Jennifer from the office. Your sister called. She wants you to bring a sportscoat home this weekend because it's going to be really cold."

That was ... weird.

I listened to the message again. I was not hallucinating, that was what she said.

I sat there and thought about it for a few minutes.

***

I came home the next morning and my sister and mom were home.

After I sat down, I asked, "Stacy, what did you tell Jennifer when you called the office?"

"I told her 'Hi. My name is Stacy Jordan. I'm Bryon Jordan's sister. We don't know how to get ahold of him, so we were wondering if you could get a message to him. He's coming home this weekend and he needs to bring a sports coat because he's going to be a pall bearer at his uncle's funeral.'"

"OK," I said. "When I listened to my voicemail, she said to bring home a sports coat because it's going to be really cold."

Stacy and my mom had a funny look and laughed a little until they put it together.

Jen didn't know I already knew. For all she knew, she was breaking the news to me!

In a voicemail!

Instead of breaking the news to me in a message, she created a different reason I needed a sports coat that might make sense.

"Seriously", I said. "My initial reaction was it's the end of May and Louisville is hot and humid!"

As can happen during a time like this, this just struck us as extremely funny and my mom and sister could not stop laughing. We laughed ourselves to the point we had to wipe our eyes.

The phrase "Bring a sports coat, it's going to be really cold," would become a running joke amongst my mom, my sister and myself.

***

About a year and a half later, our pet cockatiel, Killer, died at the age of ten or eleven. She had passed several eggs and when part of her reproductive system ended up outside her body, my sister took her to the vet. Killer had surgery and seemed to respond well when Stacy took her up some crackers, but she didn't last the night.

Brandon called and told Stacy that Killer had died.

Saddened by the news, Stacy then called mom and said, "So I guess you heard about Killer?"

"No? How is she?"

Stacy could've strangled Brandon. He had not called mom to tell her.

"She died."

Mom was sad to hear about it and Stacy called my brother back.

"Why didn't you tell mom?"

"I was going to buy another cockatiel and slip it in the cage," he told her. "She'll never figure it out."

Like this was an episode of "Different Strokes!" I don't know what he was thinking, but he didn't have to buy a new cockatiel now because Stacy told mom what happened.

Stacy called me and relayed the whole story and what Brandon thought he was going to do to get it past our mom.

"Stacy, when mom asked how Killer was, you should've said, 'Mom, bring a sports coat. It's going to be really cold.'"

I heard a loud thump from my sister dropping the phone and gasping in the background as she could not breathe. About 15 seconds went by and all I could hear was an occasional gasp between the laughing fits.

"Oh my God! Oh my God!" she said getting back on the phone. "I have to go." She was hyperventilating and she had to hang up.

I eventually told mom the same response over the phone and after she got done laughing she said I was a sick, sick person.

Cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne

I have a friend named Chris Wettle with whom I've probably seen about 60 concerts since high school.  I got a call one afternoon in 1989 or 1990 from him while I was interning at NCR in Dayton.

"Hey Bryon.  Want to go to a concert tonight?"

I thought for a moment and responded, "The Jimmy Buffett concert in Cincinnati?"

"No," he replied, "The Jackson Browne concert in Columbus."

Two hours later we were driving East on I-70 to Columbus in his piece of shit Mercury Bobcat, without a map to guide us, on our quest to find the Ohio Theater.

It took us a while, but we found it eventually.  We had never been to Columbus before and I had never seen a theater like Ohio theater.  It was beautiful.  Years later, I would see Mary-Chapin Carpenter perform there and it has wonderful acoustics.

We walked into the auditorium and looked around to see if anyone was trying to sell tickets.  After a few minutes of seeing the crowd and no one selling any, we walked up to this ticket window.  I asked what tickets they had left and he showed me a map of the auditorium.

Chris tapped me on the shoulder.

"This guy has tickets."

I excused myself from the gentleman at the window and we stepped over to talk with the guy.

"You need tickets?" he asked.

"Yes, two," we answered.

"I have two.  You want them?"

"Sure," one of us answered.

"How much?"

"No charge."

"Nah, let us pay you something for them."

"No.  No charge.  I was waiting for these girls I met in Cincinnati last night, but they are not here and I have to go in."

He then put them in our hands and we thanked him.

After he walked away, a gentleman walked up and asked, "Do you know who that was?"

We answered, "No."

"He's in the opening band."

His name was Jorge.  He had played on Jackson's 1986 album "Lives in the Balance."  I am not sure to this day if it was Jorge Calderon or Jorge Strunz as I read the liner notes of the album on Wikipedia today.

I walked to the bathroom while the lady seated Chris.  When I came out Chris came walking back shaking his head.  "Oh my God," was all he could say.  She walked me down the aisle and we got closer and closer to the stage.  We stopped at the ninth row and we were dead center.

The show was amazing.  We watched the opening band Sangre Machehual and we were mesmerized by their guitar play.  Jackson also came out and played "Lawless Avenues" with them.

After Jackson blew us away with his acoustic show, this was the "World in Motion" tour, the lights came up and we saw Jorge.  We walked up to the stage and thanked him over and over again for the tickets and told him how awesome his band was.

Jorge offered us tickets and back stage passes for the show the next night in Indy, but we knew we could not make it.  We decided to take the time after the show and wait by the tour bus with only about a dozen people.  Jackson came out of the theater and seemed kind of blown away people were standing there hoping to greet him.  We basically all shook his hand, told him we loved the show and then Chris and I were on the road back to Dayton.

The next day, I am walking across campus and I bump into Mike Ferrari.  He stopped me and said, "I heard about last night; that was so cool!"

"Yeah it was," I replied.

"Can't believe you went to a bar and had beers with Jackson Browne!"

I was struck speechless.  That didn't happen, but Mike had walked off before could say anything.

Later that day I ran into Ted, Mike's house mate.

"Dude, heard about last night.  Holy shit that is unbelievable!  I can't believe you had cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne!"

"What?"

"Jeff told me about you and Chris going out after the show because Jackson invited the two of you to have cheeseburgers with him."

I called Chris when I got home.

"So did you tell Jeff about our trip to the show?"

"Yeah."

"Did you tell him he had cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne?"

"What?"

"Ted walked up and was in disbelief and told me he could not believe we had cheeseburgers with Jackson Browne."

Chris just laughed.  He called me later and told me Jeff wanted to make the story more exciting each time he told it, so he embellished it each time.  We all had a laugh about it.  It was actually quite funny.

Last I heard, Chris and I were supposed to join Jackson Browne on tour for the next leg, but that never materialized.