Trivia night at St. Joe's

My mom's family should have a reality show. I was hanging out with them last night at St. Joe's for a trivia night that included a near riot when there was a wrong answer and several beers consumed at our table.

Just the drive up was exciting on East Washington Street as five police cars apparently went into a house with guns drawn to pull out a perp. We just missed it by a few minutes judging from the scene.

We were only two beers into the night and had not even started the contest when my aunt started talking about a dolly which led into a discussion about blow up dolls somehow. I think if people met my family, they would see how a lot of my stories lead into other stories. Everyone in the family might have A.D.D. when it comes to story telling.

It led to a misunderstanding of someone thinking the church had a blow up doll over in the other corner.

"Why would they have a blow up doll at a Catholic church?" my Aunt Fifi asked.

"I don't know," answered Jeanne, "unless they like to dress her up as an altar boy."

***

The first riot of the night almost broke out in the third round because one of the questions had a wrong answer. The question was "What is the Eastern most Great Lakes State?" They said it was Ohio, but apparently Buffalo and their 500 inches of lake effect snow are not on a lake.

Oops. :)

***

"What is the lowest place in the Western Hemisphere?"

My aunt yelled out the name of the liquor store here in town owned by another aunt and uncle and that became a running joke the rest of the night.

***

"What is the tallest mammal in the world?"

"Not the Hanka's," yelled out Jeanne, referring to her husband's family.

"Where does Casey get his height?" I asked. My younger cousin Casey is about six foot two inches tall.

"From his real dad," she shot back without hesitation, cracking everyone up.

***

The second riot of the night occurred when the question asked "Who server two terms as both vice-president and then president from the Republican party?" The answer given was Richard Nixon, but the researcher apparently forgot about Watergate ending his second term as president short.

***

The big contest of the night though was which table in our family would win. We crushed the other table 62-42 out of 100 questions total in 10 categories.

Must be Tuesday

One of the things I disliked most about grad school was that participation was mandatory in class discussions. I'm a huge introvert to begin with and I can become flustered quite easily and it can be difficult to recover from.

In one of my early classes, participation was 10% of my grade. When the professor asked us who did their project a certain way, I did not actually expect her to ask me to come up and present to everyone in the class. I froze and went blank. I even displayed the wrong part of our project to begin with when I was up there and became quite flustered.

I mean, geez, I only raised my hand because I thought it was a poll. :/

Later in class she asked who did another aspect of their project in a certain way, I raised my hand not expecting the next question to be "Why?" Again, I was sitting there like a deer in headlights.

If not for that participation grade, I would have looked like much less of an idiot.

Later that night, I came home and removed my sweatshirt. To my surprise, my fly was down and I could only wonder if the rest of class noticed when I was in front of them or if my sweatshirt effectively covered it up.

I know ... TMI.

Some people would label this as their most embarrassing day ever.

I called it Tuesday.

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.