Shorts II

Because you knew I'd have more funny stories to tell

Jun 22, 2023

Hey, readers! It’s Shorts time again. Take a break from the real world for a moment to chuckle.

Your Job: the movie

Years ago, a few work friends and I had a great conversation. We compared several coworkers to famous actors, and out of that hilarity emerged the game we called Your Job: the Movie. It could apply to home life, school, or just about any organization with lots of people. Here are the only rules:

Rule #1, you cannot pick your own actor. Someone else must pick it for you.

Rule #2, actors are not required to be a physical match, but they must have the ability to portray that person accurately.

Within weeks I had four other workgroups playing. And some of the results were fantastic. Nobody was upset at who was picked to play them, everybody got a good laugh, and some people even felt flattered. We had fun. We had a lot of fun.

I bet you didn’t know that I’ve worked with Alan Alda, Denise Richards, Tommy Lee Jones, Dan Haggerty, Gal Gadot, Neil Patrick Harris, and Felonious Gru (because cartoons shouldn’t have to be off-limits).

You’re wondering who was selected to portray me now, aren’t you. Well, a good friend thought long and hard about it, and his result was to choose Elliot Page.1 But this was years and years before Elliot transitioned or made his announcement about being transgender. Even back then it was a great fit. I was flattered. Ironic, sarcastic, understated, perfect. And then Elliot made his announcement to the world, and some part of it felt intensely personal. That work friend caught up with me not long after, and he asked me about it, about how I felt and if I needed to be re-cast for the movie. “No,” I said, “I don’t mind. Elliot’s cool.” And, well, here we are. I guess it really was a good fit.

Now I am a Brony

My Little Pony was a big toy when I was a kid in the 1980s. I had a big collection of them. Please note that MLP back in the day actually looked like horses. They’re not like what my kids play with now, which looks more like teenage girls with hooves. These toys are created with plastic strand hair, which tangles when left overnight, and so I was on a very regimented schedule to comb and braid them regularly. On one such occasion, me sitting crisscross-applesauce on the floor, I realized that all of my ponies were girls. And that suddenly seemed strange and unrealistic. And realism was very important to me, even at age 7. So I picked the one blue pony, which had a horseshoe cutie mark, and I gave its mane a very short haircut. Probably a flattop mohawk. And it felt AMAZING. Like yes, this pony is gonna be a boy, and he is so happy!

My mother walked in, and things didn’t go well. I had a habit of stealing scissors and creating a bit of mayhem (my children have also done this, and I laugh about it way more than my mom did), but her reaction to me “boying up” a pony showed me that you don’t just get to pick whatever gender you want. Not even if you’re made of plastic. I certainly DID NOT tell her that my blanket was still nonbinary at that point. Nope. Not a word.

a raccoon standing on top of a metal bowl — Photo by Jennifer Uppendahl on Unsplash

A Torturous Death

I used to ride my bicycle everywhere, but especially to commute to and from work. One night, very late, when it was very dark outside, I rounded a corner on a busy suburban Seattle street not too far from home, and I came upon a sight that made me screech to a sudden stop. In the middle of the road before me I saw a collection of moving, furry bodies, all low to the ground. There were no cars around, no traffic to speak of, and minimal illumination from streetlights. I crept closer, senses heightened by the sounds emanating from that seething lump of creatures, fascinated and needing to know what they were. And once I was near enough, I saw that they were all racoons.

You may have seen a racoon in the wild somewhere. It might have been in a city. But you haven’t seen anything like a Ballard racoon. These things are a minimum of 35 pounds each, and those are the young ones. They’re wild, dangerous, and muscle-bound. The way they round their shoulders and own the road as they walk across, you know better than to get in their way.

In the midst of the pile of bodies was a single racoon, laying on its side, dying. It was crying out in pain, having been hit by a car, and the rest were gathered around it either in mourning for their dying fellow or taking bets on who would take his sneakers first once he was gone. The sound of that dying animal hit me right in the gut, and I knew I would not make it down that road without incident. Surreal as it was, a car approached from the other side and made the same decision. We both turned around and went a block out of our way to get where we were going.

That Volvo

My dad owned a green Volvo sedan when I was really little. I don’t recall much about that car, but I know that we were road tripping in it on the way to the Rocky Mountains and Yellowstone National Park when I was about four years old. It was a memorable trip because of the scratch-and-sniff hardback book I got in one of the park gift stores. That book had a page with a skunk on it, and the whole car smelled like that skunk by the next day. I loved it.

Skunks aside, the car was a problem. And at one point in the trip, it up and died on the side of the road in a blaze of glory. There was smoke (or possibly steam), horrid smells, and no forward movement, which resulted in a ride in a tow truck and a new car from a dealership in Bismarck, North Dakota. But before the tow truck arrived, two very important things happened.

My father yelled in a furious tone that the Volvo was “a lemon.” And I knew right then and there that the fumes had gotten to him, because a green car could clearly only be a lime.
The fumes definitely got to my big brother who promptly vomited all over the side of the road, an act my mother said was him “throwing up his socks.” And really, eating your socks should come with consequences.

A note about deadnaming – You won’t catch me using someone’s birth name if it is their choice to be known by their true name instead. This is a courtesy we can all do for transpeople, and it should be the standard of conduct.