The Fisher of Stories

Just a note to the reader here: If you want the full experience, read the entire blog of course. However, if you are keen to get on with your day or just don’t have time to laugh a lot, just sort of skim the first two parts and get down to part three, which contains a lot of Paint pictures of nipples and a good deal of awkward. 


Part OneThe Introduction
I think we all know from previous posts that I am not in any way, shape, or form a hunter. I got very lucky in the blog I’m referencing, but that luck was helped by a very skilled hunter and a very nice location.

I’ve also made mention before that my Sunday School class is full of the “hunter/gatherer” type.

This is actually my Sunday School teacher. Image Credit

Suffice it to say, I often get text messages in the following form:

“Hey, do you guys want to go kill *animal currently in season*“YES””OKAY””CAN WE USE THE REALLY BIG GUNS?”
And then I send a text back that usually goes something like this.
“Guys can I borrow a gun/bullets/gear/courage and do I need a license?””YES TRAVIS GEEZ.”
So when I got a text message a few days ago asking if I wanted to go wild hog hunting, I asked the above questions, made the requisite plans with The Missus, and went to purchase a hunting license.
Part TwoThe Hunt
Here’s the message I got.
“They’re mean, so if one comes at you, make sure you kill it.”
So here’s what I expected.

Someone get me a basketball sized apple. Image Credit

Slavering fangs, sharp pointy tusks, blazing speed, and a Sharknado-esque abundance. Basically Pumba on steroids and acid, without Timon there to calm him down and remind him about the Hakuna Matata and all that.

Three of us went, armed to the teeth and ready to kill pigs. Yours truly, the gentleman who invited me who I will call The Facilitator, and a gentleman who I will call The Snake Whisperer, because he had a particular set of skills.
We all loaded up on an ATV and headed out into what I thought were going to be flat fields of grass easily traversed, and stopped at something like this.

The tiger obviously was missing. Otherwise we’d be eating tiger meat and heading to prison. Image Credit

So we hacked our way into the Oklahoma jungle and got more spiderwebs in our faces than anyone should ever have to deal with.

I hate spiderwebs. I am no Gwen Stefani, and I have a mini panic attack every single time one touches my face. You see I think if a web has touched me, a spider is on me, ready to bite, kill, and feast on my moldering corpse, while my younger brothers tell stories about how I “never really should have been hunting.”
I thought briefly about shooting the spiderwebs when I encountered them, but figured that would have been counterproductive to the moderate stealth we were achieving while hunting our quarry.
To make a long walk into a short story, I will tell you now we didn’t see a dang thing, with the exception of snakes. This is where having The Snake Whisperer was a very good thing, because he would spot them, and then naturally, since we were a bit trigger happy, we would shoot them.
But to set up the last part of the story, I need to tell you me and The Snake Whisperer were dropped off in a clearing, and The Facilitator said he would drive the ATV through the brush from the other side, chasing anything in said clearing out into the open for us to shoot at.
Again, here is what I envisioned:

You know, with slavering fangs. Image Credit

And this is what we saw:

Like a Dixie Chicks song. Image Credit

But The Snake Whisperer said he heard the ATV stop, then start again, but it sounded like it was not going very fast.

And then The Facilitator came driving back to us, only he was driving in reverse.
Part ThreeThe Nipple
Apparently the ATV had suffered a crippling injury. It was stuck in reverse. Naturally, this made for a rather strained driving experience for The Facilitator, and to make things worse we were about three miles away from the truck.
After some discussion and kicking of the gear shift, it was determined that we would ride back in reverse, and seating arrangements were worked out.
I was to sit in the driver’s seat, while The Facilitator would climb on the front, face me, and use the steering mechanism backwards. Meanwhile, The Snake Whisperer would sit with his back to me and face the rear of the vehicle, which was now actually the front.
I really didn’t think facing backwards would be that big of a deal.
I was wrong.
You see, The Facilitator was wearing a sleeveless shirt. Not a normal sleeveless shirt either. This shirt had extra large sleeve holes cut out of it, so a lot of skin was exposed.
I will now give you an example of the view I had.

He was somewhat perturbed about the condition of his ATV, hence the frown. And yes that’s a nipple.

His nipple was RIGHT THERE.
I didn’t know how to politely ask a man who invited you on a hunting trip and provided you with transportation which just broke to put his nipple up, and after staring at it for about a mile I realized any chance I had in the beginning was now gone, because of the intense concentration it was taking for him to pilot us safely backwards.
So this happened.

My world was slowly reduced to this man’s nipple.

It was RIGHT THERE guys. In my eyeball.

There was really nothing wrong with the nipple. It was a fine specimen, peaking proudly in the cool breeze, the healthy pink hue offset by the pattern of the camo gun strap slung across his shoulder.
But I have what you might call a vivid imagination, so it wasn’t very long before I saw this.

The nipple spoke to me.

You know what I just now realized? The nose is the nipple of the face.

Did that just blow your mind?
Anyway, the nipple was there, it had a face, and it was speaking to me. My entire world, the entire trip, had now been shrunken down to a talking nipple.
I was faced with a choice. I could shut my eyes tightly and suffer the motion sickness, or I could introduce myself to the man’s nipple, talk to it, find out if it had kids, and provide you, the reader, with much more information about it, sort of a sneak “peak” into the life of a nipple. Just sort of let my imagination do some really weird things, and risk actually saying something out loud to the nipple that would guarantee a solitary walk back to the truck and surefire humiliation once the story got out that I talk to nipples. I had a choice to make, and I had to make it quickly before things got even worse.

My view for the rest of the ride.

Sorry guys.

When I woke up this morning, I saw the news. The news said it was 11 degrees outside with a wind chill of -5. For starters, and I know this has been beaten to death, but why don’t they just say it’s -5? If that’s what it feels like, that’s what it is. That would be like me walking up to you and saying, here’s 50 cents, but in my mind I feel like I’m giving you $20. “Hey everyone, I just gave John $20! Aren’t I generous?” Or maybe a midget walks up to you and says, “Boy, I feel like I’m 6 feet tall today!” and then you list him on your basketball roster as 6 feet tall because he feels like it. I really don’t see how that helps make my point, but you’re a basketball coach, and you should know better than to be bringing in midgets for any position other than mascot, and that’s only if you are the Leprechauns or the…well, never mind.

“We can hoop, coach. For realsies.” Photo credit

So anyway, I have this thought. I think, “Dude. There should totally already be something called “Personalized Climate Zones” where you just have the kind of weather you want in your personal space all the time. If you want it to be 75 and sunny, you can press a button, BAM, you’ve got it. Anytime. Genius, right? Then I start thinking about how it can be done. You’d need to manipulate atoms and electrons and positrons and Decepticons and what not, swirl em all together, get some sort of high tech blow dryer to pump them all out of, and then get sort of a force field type thing to hold them all in. You’d of course need a way to get fresh air in, but hey, I’m not a scientist, let them figure it out.
On a side note, could we not make that force field have sort of an “anti-rape” setting? I’m really thinking that might help out the world a bit. You see? I should get the Nobel for this folks, and that’s exactly what I was thinking when I figured this whole thing up. I was about halfway through my acceptance speech when I realized this:

“Warm moist air shoots upward meeting colder, dryer air.  Warm moist air is lighter than the cold dry air making for a strong updraft within the thunderstorm. As the warm moist air rises, it may meet varying wind directions at different altitudes. If these varying winds are staggered in just the right manner with sufficient speed, they will act on the upward rising air, spinning it like a top.” -taken from here

You see, say I liked it warm and moist. I think most men do. I’ll leave that alone and just continue making my other point. I like it warm and moist. The Missus might like it cold and dry. (again, this is not in any way representative of our relationship) So we wake up in the morning and we go about our business, set up our climate zones, and then we decide to have a good-bye kiss before heading off to work. Let’s say we get excited about this kiss and start running towards each other. I don’t think my wife has ever been that excited about kissing me, but I imagine it might happen if I won the lottery. Anyway, she’s running at me, I’m running at her, and then lets say I jump to meet her, she stays on the ground, and aside from all the damage to her person I’m going to do by landing on her, boom, we just made a tornado.

All our possessions gone, for the sake of one good-bye kiss. The neighbors would be beyond pissed I’m sure, and we’d be banished from towns forever. Especially small towns in Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, both Dakotas, and Arkansas.

Also, what happens if SHE jumps? I’ll catch her, sure, but what about the ensuing microburst? I can’t afford new furniture, y’all. I’m saving up for an iPad. What if we’re near a lake or ocean when our excited yet deadly embrace of passion takes place? That’s a hurricane. At the very least, we’d cause some sort of thunderstorm, and someone in the room would get struck by lightning, and that’s not a good way to make and/or keep friends.

Then you have to go on and try to figure out all the other natural disasters that occur from two opposite or same climates hitting each other. What if Kid Funk liked it rainy and I liked windy? If we ever met up for a game of golf, we’d be ostracized from the golfing community faster than someone not as talented as Tiger cheating on his wife. What if we both liked it rainy? That’s a tidal wave, and in all seriousness, I think we’ve learned from Indonesia that those are really bad. Was it Indonesia or India? Or was it Haiti? That was an earthquake I think. All I know is that I texted about $600 worth of donations to something or other completely by accident. “Hello, customer service? Yeah, I need to take some of that money back and apply to my bill instead…yeah, I’m aware that I’m an ass.”

The moral of the story here folks is that I should never be allowed to invent anything at all. Ever. So if I come to you with an idea for anything at all, just give me a hug, pat me on the back lovingly and tell me that you love me and everything will be alright. I might act mad at first, I may even squeeze too hard on the hug, but at least we hugged without sending the state we’re in running to the White House with cries of needing emergency funding.

“Hello, FEMA? Yeah, we’ve got this problem down here…I hugged someone.”

And that’s the story of most of my mornings, and may or may not be the cause of why I’m constantly late for work.

P.S. Stacy, if you’re reading this, I’m NEVER late for work. Ever. I exaggerate for the fans. Swear. Please stop reading.


P.P.S. If you’re a fan, I’m late for work almost always. I have to tell my boss I’m not so I can keep my job. Swear.