Media Mail, Pathetic Ninjas, and People Getting Hurt at School
I bought two books online, on March 15, and both supposedly shipped on March 16 — via Media Mail. And today, ten days later, they haven’t arrived.
One shipped from Philadelphia, only a few miles down the turnpike, and the other is coming from New York. So, you see, neither is originating in Singapore or the Australian outback, or anyplace like that.
And it’s really starting to agitate me. I know it’s only been ten days, but the shipping notifications cause the problem. I could understand someone taking a little too long to get a book packaged and mailed. Not a big deal. But after they go to the trouble of sending a shipping confirmation…
On March 18 I started anticipating the deliveries, and every day since then I’ve been disappointed. The last couple of days I began edging past disappointment, toward anger.
Media Mail is the culprit, I’m convinced. As far as I know, it’s the cheapest service the post office offers. It’s for printed materials and sound recordings, or somesuch, and is as slow as a Wisconsin dump.
Seriously. How could a package take a week and a half to get from Philadelphia to Scranton? A four year old on a Big Wheel could’ve delivered it by now.
I’d be very interested to know how Media Mail is processed. Clearly it’s the lowest of low priorities, and the parcels are likely used as step stools and traction-aids for mail trucks stuck in the mud. I’m picturing my book wedged up underneath the leg of a table right now, to stop it from rocking.
Or maybe they have a team of psychics and spoon-benders, who will the stuff to be delivered?
Yeah, I might be getting a little carried away. But where are my freaking books? Ten days with the US Postal Service is too long. At least five days too long.
And yes, I know. Some people have serious problems. And if this is all I have to worry about, I’m doing pretty well. I get it, Mr. Well-Adjusted Centered Zen Adult.
But I still want my fucking books!
Yesterday morning Toney called and told me our oldest boy had been hurt at school. She didn’t have all the details, but the nurse said he’s been poked in the eye “while roughhousing.”
She thought his eye should be looked-at by a doctor, ’cause it was a pretty serious jab. So Toney called the eye doc, and they said they could see him at 1:30. In the meantime she wanted me to pick him up, and bring him home.
So, I returned to the middle school (it sometimes feels like I live at that place), and collected the oldest Secret. And he said he’d been sitting in homeroom, when some idiot zit-spangled obese nerd-boy comes running up, yells “I’M A NINJA!” and pokes him in the eye.
WTF? What kind of ninja announces himself via hollering? And then starts poking eyeballs like Moe? Worst ninja ever…
Everything checked out, though; his eye is fine. It cost us a twenty-five dollar co-pay, not to mention the unnecessary pain, etc. And I have a small issue with the vice principal that I probably shouldn’t get into…
But the episode is over (for the most part), and the injury was nothing serious. Which is a relief… I had, um, visions of a detached retina, or something that might require surgery. So, it had a happy ending.
It got me to thinking, though, about people who were seriously injured during my checkered and highly-questionable public school career. And briefly, these are the events that jumped immediately to mind:
In Junior High some kid was jumping on the trampoline in gym class, landed chin-first, and bit a big hunk of his tongue off. He went sprinting outside, with blood pouring out of his mouth like Gene Simmons. It was fantastic!
Also during Junior High gym we were forced to wrestle by some “coach” who probably enjoyed watching 14 year old boys sweat and roll around and grab each others’ asses.
Anyway, some kid named Mike broke his arm during one of those homoerotic displays. There was a loud SNAP! like a tree limb breaking, and he stood up with a horrified look on his face and one extra elbow. His right arm was bent at the middle, then again between elbow and wrist.
Shit! It still gives me the heebie-jeebies, even now.
Another Junior High casualty was a kid name Craig, who got shoved into a bush of bees. We were outside playing touch football, or something equally horrible, when one of our classmates thought it would be funny to body-check Craig into buzzing, pulsating foliage.
Yeah, Junior High sucked on so many levels… But especially for guys like Craig. He also got shoved down once while using a urinal, his wiener retracted, and he peed straight down the right leg of his jeans. Heh.
And in High School (or was it the Junior High again?) some kids were jumping off the top of the bleachers, onto big pieces of foam. They were like giant loaves of bread, and they’d shoved a bunch of them together and were jumping on them.
Unfortunately, however, one kid landed between two of the loaves, tailbone-first. And when he hit the floor (THUD!) he started jerking and convulsing. Scary stuff, but somehow he wasn’t seriously hurt. He was back to doing stupid shit within days.
And now it’s your turn. Please use the comments link below to tell us about People Getting Hurt at School. Do you have any stories to tell on that subject? We’d love to hear (read) ‘em!
Before I call it a day here, I’d like to alert you to two full pages of new Smoking Fish sightings. They’re especially good, I think, so please don’t miss them. Here and here.
Also, the Surf Report was discussed at length in a recent podcast, titled Viva LaZimmer. You can check it out here (episode 2). They even read an excerpt from the Rocky Stories. Very cool. Thanks guys, I enjoyed it!
And that’s all for now. Until next time…
Have a great day, my friends.
Filed under: Daily
Yeah, that’s right.
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Hooty-hoot! Number toot!
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I saw a kid in high school running full tilt down the hallway, made a sharp right turn and ran straight into a bank of lockers at about 90% speed. That was one of the strangest sounds I’ve ever heard. I think all the supportive laughter from the witnesses to his idiocy really helped ease the pain, though.
In elementary school, the big thing for the boys was to kick back on two legs of your chair and hover. The other sport was for other boys to kick out the remaining legs. It happened to me (see how I avoid responsibility there?) and I went straight down, head to linoleum. The sound was deafening in my own head and I guess it was pretty impressive to others as well. I remember the look on my teacher’s face. I think she was waiting for brains to come spilling out. While I couldn’t see the know on my head, it was described to me variously as a goose egg, apple and cantaloupe. Hmm, now I’m hungry.
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Good Afternoon Surf Reporters…..
Oh, tons of stories of high school injuries. Mostly fights after school. Busted noses, cuts all around the face & head area. One gruesome incident in particular, after school fight, the one kid gets clocked right below the eye which instantly swells to the size of a golf ball, closes the eye shut and turns a deep shade of purple.
Everyone standing around begged him to quit but he wouldn’t hear of it. Sure enough, the next punch landed square on that hematoma and the resulting blood loss was horrific to say the least. It made an audible “pop” & I believe he took about 30 stitches in the E.R. to close it up.
One year during the football season, our star full back was running to the outside, stuck out his arm to fend of the tackler. The defenseman wound up twisting the arm at an angle and landed on it. That too made an audible, only this time it was “crack”. Boys and girls, can you say compound fracture?
But the one that I remember most happened right in front of me. We were in between classes and going up to the second floor. Mike S. had be tormenting Billy S. and as we went up the stairs, Mike reached and grabbed Billy’s foot mid step and pulled. Bill was carrying his books in both arms and never had a chance to stop his fall. His mouth came down right on the edge of the step and knocked out both front teeth, a few lower teeth and damn near bit his lip off. Amazingly enough, there was no expulsion for Mike, but he was suspended for 2 weeks.
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In first grade, after school, I was sitting on the playground fence made of steel pipes about 3 inches in diameter. I lost my balance, went over backwards, and clunked my head on the crosspipe, just exactly at my head level. I walked around silly for a few minutes. I was surprised I didn’t split my head open, or something worse.
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My friend, Brian. Jr. High School. Technically after school. We rode home from school on our bikes and on the way found a large mound of dirt at a building site. Jumped it, jumped it again. Brian had to have the longest jump. Landed IN an apple tree. Fell to the ground like Wile E. Broken collar bone.
Yes, we rode our bikes to school. What of it?
Brian is long dead from other unnatural causes and I’m here typing. I think he won.
best….jtb
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Great, had a whole gaggle of hurt at school stories and the darn report freezes up on me… Wadda rip off as they say. =-)
So just one now: Had a classmate in grade school that had a tendency to break bones. I think at first child abuse was suspected, but then he started snapping bones at school. One of the more memorable was playing baseball during recess, he is outfield and starts running, and twisting to see the ball when his foot gets caught in a divot or hole and while twisting we all hear a snap and an enourmous howl of pain as he collapses on the ground…
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I mail CDs and DVDs sometimes, and found that while I could ship via media mail using first class was quicker and actually cheaper. Obviously Jeff’s 900-page Physics 101 textbook is cheaper using the media rate but for light stuff even if it qualifies there’s no reason to use it.
Injuries? In middle school a girl got poked in the eye with a pencil. Like, really poked. Oh, and my friend injured both knees on consecutive hurdles at elementary school field day, so much so that he had to have several surgeries. Now his kneecaps stick out like Mac Tonight’s chin.
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too many fingers on keyboard…
…with his leg all akimbo. We get shooed off the field and the ambulance carts him away. Another time, he is litterally just walking across the school yard, trips, and breaks an arm… and the ambulance carts him away. Turns out the guy had some sort of bone issue and from then on he was always on pins and needles while moving. Poor guy.
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In high school, I dislocated my left ring finger during football practice. Although not a devastating injury, it was gruesome looking. If you hold your left hand in front of you and look at the back of it, imagine the ring finger pointing back at your face and to the left. The day after it was reset, it swelled up like a big black and blue knockwurst and throbbed like it had a rubber band tightened around the base. Yay memories!
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A few years ago, I sent something by Media Mail, and it took forever to get delivered. Never again. I’ll just pay more to get something delivered on time.
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I still have a scar on my nose from sliding down a cinder pile in the third grade. The good old days.
I seem to recall someone freaking out after being made to climb the rope (why did we have to do that?) in gym class, and sliding down in a hurry. This of course made for some nasty burns.
I don’t know why, but speaking of stories, I thought of this one today:
A friend of mine’s wife once went to one of those biker deals, and she ended up doing what the ladies do there.
There was a photo take of her lifting up her shirt (no bra).
She showed it around to people. Some were shocked. Others wanted to view the photo more than once.
Her husband was not to happy. He actually ripped up the photo.
He was a pretty straight laced dude, and she was not.
This took place during the pre-internet days. Of course, now you can just go to Flickr and find such things.
But back then it was not so common.
Amazon amazes me. Last year, they told me they were unable to deliver a cd to me. I had just got another package from them the day before.
A book I ordered never showed up. Would someone really want to steal a book based on the show Earth 2? Maybe there was a roving band of SCI-FI thieves in my hood.
And recently, I pre-ordered a cd a few weeks before the release date. It arrived a week after the release date.
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What’s worse than slow delivery is when the website says the items are in stock, but when you get the order confirmation it they are on backorder for the next 17 million years.
My siblings and I used to shoot an arrow up in the air and however caught it on the way down would get to shoot it next. Your mom was laways yelling that we would put and eye out. Not that a arrow would skewer our skull or perforate our heart, just that we would put an eye out.
I don’t really have any painful school stories. Although, in preschool and kindergarten our classes were held in a building that had skunks living under it. Everyone else thought it was horrible, but to this day, the people in my class aren’t really bothered by lingering skunk smell. Its like we became immune to the smell after two years of development living above their hovel.
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“whoever caught i”t, the booze again
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Broken nose not once but three times playing half-court basketball at the neighborhood fistfight pad, er, “playground”, whoops, sorry. No padded surfaces in those days – you were on your own. Was I taken to the doctor? Of course not. “Here, put some ice on it.”
But, was I allowed to go out for high school football, baseball or basketball? Noooooo. Why? “You might get hurt, put your eye out or something.” Don’t worry though, I gave as good as I got, heh, heh.
Today’s quote: “Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink – under any circumstances” Mark Twain
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Nice smoking fish piccies. I guess the one I sent you with my kids out front of Stephen King’s house a Year or so ago doesn’t rate tho cuz you never posted it.
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Sorry I just have to comment on something first…For some reason it really irritates me when someone annouces they are the first comment…nobody cares, seriously. I highly doubt you win anything for that, so what’s the big triumph?
Anyway, yeah when I was in Jr. High, we had a lot of abnormally small little girls that all the guys liked to torment and push around at recess for shits and giggles. One day they all decided they wanted to play Red Rover, but they were actually playing a trick on a girl named Nichole (who is ironically a best friend of mine now), and as she went to pummel through the ‘wall’ of guys, they moved out of her way, and she went sailing arm first into an actual brick wall behind them. There was a loud snap, and from her elbow to her wrist was the shape of a rainbow. She didn’t realize it at first, so she turned around giggling and everyone was pointing and going ‘OHHH!’, and finally she looked down and fainted into the arms of a nearby teacher who carried her to the office.
After it healed, she fell off a trampoline and broke it again.
I don’t have a whole lot of bone breaker stories, but I sure have a lot of puke stories…
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18th!!!!
No one was ever injured at any school that I ever went to, as far as I know. Maybe I missed something.
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Junior year in high school I was taking woodshop for the easy credits. My buddy who wasn’t the most graceful was in my class. Of course the teacher gave all the standard safety lectures and BS. The first day we were turned loose in the shop, within 10 minutes, my buddy had run his hand across the blade on the table saw and was now missing parts of two fingers with another 1 or 2 dangling. Blood on the floor, on the saw, and severed fingers on the table saw were more than enough for me to witness.
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Fist…
Brittney-It’s a humor blog, so it’s bound to attract a few juveniles.
I think it was six or seventh grade when Jenny lost her grip on the monkey bars and landed teeth first on the asphalt playground. Knocked out her two front teeth. Normally I don’t think I would have remembered this except when she was a freshman we all got hammered prior to the Homecoming dance and Jenny got sick and flushed her teeth down the toilet.
Then there was Krista who also lost her front teeth. We were playing softball in 8th grade gym class. Krista was catching, Cletus who was not the most popular kid was batting. The bat slipped out of his hands and drilled poor Krista in the mouth. In Cletus’s defense the knob was completely gone from the piece of crap bat but that didn’t keep the girls from giving him a rough time.
I punched a classmate of mine square in the junk cause I was tired of taking crap off him. I was sitting at my desk and he was standing in front of me just giving me grief for no good reason. I dropped him like a stone. I got a couple of detentions and he got his junk looked at by the school nurse.
That is all for now…
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The fish sightings at the “A Christmas Story” house are spectacular!
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there was a fight at the junior high and a punk got his head slammed through one of the doors. a glass door with chicken wire between the panes. his whole ear was ripped off. gruesome shit right there!
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I shot a kid at Reno High just to watch him…no…wait…that wasn’t me…it was that kid that always dressed in black.
Man the after-school fights at PHS in the late 60′s were horrific. One kid got hit so hard that his eye popped out on his cheek. Another got knocked down and hit his head on the curb and died. Other kid did some jail time for that. There were some really huge kids with anger issues in school then. But I don’t recall any shootings or stabbings…just memorable beat downs.
One kid in junior high on the basketball team was really big and clumsy and ran full speed under the basket and into the cinder block wall face first. Kinda bloody scene, but kinda cool to see too.
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The class of 1980 had the highest mortality rate in our high school’s history. By the time we graduated, we were down 11 students. I didn’t witness any of the carnage, but the stories were sad and many.
For some reason, though, the story that came to my mind first was the kid in grammar school (we were probably in 3rd grade) named Troy who got his arm stuck between a pipe and a wall. The pipe was about a foot and a half in diameter and was about 4″ from the wall. Troy thought it would be neat if he stuck his entire arm back there. I remember seeing him with his arm stuck, crying, waiting for the fire department to get him out. Wuss.
Brittney – you must be new here.
Happy Thursday, Surfers!
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A clumsy friend of mine was goofing around and showing off for some girls when he tripped and hit his chin on the curb, breaking a few teeth and leaving a gash on the underside of his chin (30 stitches and a sexy scar).
A friend of mine fell on her face during PE and peeled her lip off her face from the corner of her mouth down to her jawline. Lots of plastic surgery later, the scar was still visible but since she was amazingly beautiful, no one cared.
A girl at my high school was out late one night with some friends when they got the bright idea to climb the water tower. To get there, she had to go over a chain link fence. When she got to the top, she hopped over, not realizing that her ring was caught on the twisted wires at the top. Her finger popped off and no one could find it in the dark, so the docs simply removed the remaining bone in her palm and sewed the rest of her hand closer together. She wears her wedding ring on what used to be her middle finger. We nicknamed her ET.
The worst is the story about a nerd at my school who died from head injuries sustained when he failed to duck under a big pipe while running to escape some bullies. No one was ever prosecuted, though if it happened now, they most certainly would be.
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Scarcely related, but I used to work directly upstairs from the Wisconsin Cheese Mart (the Wisconsin link). We’d go there for pretty good sammiches and soup.
Carry on injuring each other!
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Nothing happened at school that I remember but I worked at a skating ring so I have seen my share of broken teefs and arms with extra joints. One poor kid must have been in shock as he had no idea that his arm was bending the wrong way because it was broken. He wanted to continue to skate rather than have us call 911 and his mom.
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8th grade, 1970, broke my collarbone wrestling in gym class. i got changed from gym clothes to street clothes, even though it hurt like a bastard.
That was a bad month. A week later I’m in the woods across from my house, breaking bottles. I decide to do one like a barroom fighter, and split my middle finger open. So now I’ve got my right arm trussed to my body with a sling and ace bandage, and a huge wad of gauze on my left hand.
How could it get worse? A few days later, I got a massive case of the shits and pukes that lasted a week. Try wiping your bottom with your off hand which is encased in three yards of gauze.
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Saw a big fella say something nasty to a quiet, unassuming girl in my class at school once. She leapt up, threw him to the floor and gave him a proper shoeing.
Funnily enough everyone was really nice to the girl afterwards, while the poor lad has had to go through life being remembered only for being the big nance who got whupped by a girl.
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The WORST one I remember was when I was in 3rd grade. The monkey bars at the school playground had blacktop under them….Nice and soft to fall into right?
Well one girl fell, and landed on her face….Somehow pushed all of her 4 front teeth back into the gums. Had to go to Philly (2+hr away) to the only childrens hospital that would operate to fix her teeth. I just remember the blood EVERYWHERE….UGH.
That same set of money bars was responsible for many broken arms & legs when I was there. However no one did anything about it. Finally sometime in the mid 80′s the school was threatened w/a lawsuit if they didn’t move it to make it more ‘safe’. So they dug it up, and moved it about 8 feet away into the grass. Yeha, still real safe….UGH!
When I was in HS, my gym teacher couldn’t find the tennis ball for us to play lacrosse. Regulations required that we use the tennis ball, because the wooden lacrosse ball wasn’t ‘safe’. Sure enough the one princess of our class took it straight in the face and broke her nose. That too was quite a blood fest. The teacher almost got suspended because of that. If that happened today, she probably would have been fired.
That same gym class also saw someone get a golf club in the mouth. That’s what happens when you are fooling around behind someone swinging a golf club! I think the girl ended up losing at least 1 tooth.
Gym….what a bloody class!
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Holy Crap!! you people are surrounded by some brutal shit. In gym, I only remember running around the gym, running running and BAM down I go, with that smeared screecy skin noise. I did this like three times in one day. No real damage but for real. Wtf…maybe they had just waxed the damn thing.
I was also in gymnastics(yes, I was athletic) and was doing some shit on a beam you couldn’t pay me to do now and came down” missed my landing” as they like to say, but the outside of my knee took the brunt.
Didn’t do doctors or such nonsense then, but It still tingles to the touch in that spot..nerves?? and it is now known at the tender age of 33…as my trick knee. Hurts today, might I add.
damn it, my youthful self!!!
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You know…waxed the floor…not me. Gosh!! Get your minds out of the gutter..
Oh, If First bothers you don’t worry, right now I am
LAST!!!!!hahahahahahha
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1) In grade 8 a kid in my class was riding his bike home from school and his front wheel came off (apparently someone had loosened it). He went face first into the pavement and gut first into the handle bars. When all the crying was over he was missing a couple of teeth and one spleen.
2) When I was about 12 I was in Boy Scouts. There was an older kid named Whitney in my troop who was on the large side (an understatement). I can’t fault him, he wasn’t a couch spud: he was very active and I never saw him eat junk food, but he must have been close to 300 pounds when he was 13. One night the whole troop was outside working on our physical fitness badges and against all odds, and with a lot of hard work, Whitney got his. The kid was beaming. When we were done the scout masters herded us all back into the gym of the school where we met. Whitney, obviously still caught up in the moment, ran straight for the climbing rope hanging from the gym ceiling. Displaying a tragic ignorance of simple physics Whitney made a dive about 5 feet out. To his credit he did catch the rope, but there was just too much Whitney for his meaty arms to hold and he sailed past the rope and went teeth first into the floor. Both upper central incisors snapped off just above the gums and Whitney ran around in circles screaming with blood pouring down his chest and a couple of exposed nerves where teeth should have been. The worst part was that despite Whitney’s pain the whole scene was funny. Even the scout masters couldn’t stop laughing.
3) Growing up I had a lot of time outdoors without parental supervision. I also lived close to an abandoned gravel pit which served as my primary playground. Opportunity and geography often combined to tragic effect. One weekend (circa 8 years old) we found an old bucket of tar and decided to burn that sucker in a bonfire. When the tar was boiling my buddy stuck a stick to stir the tar. He pulled it out too fast and a big glob of tar flew out and landed on my inside wrist and forearm. My mom, a nurse, let the tar harden before she ripped it out (sans local anaesthetic I might add). It left a nasty burn scar that took years to fade.
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Reading others tales of woe and physical misfortune only reminded me of more traumas witnessed first hand.
gym class was a given.
Concussions, a broken collarbone & broken arm…
Didn’t everyone have Co-ed class? it was brutal
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Good Morning Surf Reporters………
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In 8th grade, the baseball coach was warming up one of the star pitchers before the big game. Another player said something to the pitcher, who turned his head, and got hit in the temple with a baseball and died.
After school injury: Sledding down an icy street after a rare Seattle snowfall. A girl in my 6th grade class collided face first with a car coming up the hill. Recovery took years. Man, that really sucked.
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The monkey bars made me think of what was called a Maypole. It was a metal deal on the end of a chain. I don’t think you find those around these days.
I am sure there are folks here who recall those.
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Last!!! sorry…couldn’t help myself.
Wow!! You guys had some fucked up shit happen in your yoot! I honestly cannot not think of anything other than the usual fights between the “heads” and the “reds” (rednecks) and sports injuries.
Carry on…I got nuttin…
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Our mail was just delivered. Still no books. It’s incredible. I’m shaking my tiny Duke head as I type… It’s swiveling from side to side, in astonishment.
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Ahhh…Ninja episode with happy ending….vewy nice.
My tongue is just as long as Gene Simmons if not longer. I believe I’ll be famous just like him, except that I haven’t been discovered yet and I refuse to bite the heads off living creatures.
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After school injury, a friend was fooling around on the diving board of the local HS they used to open up on Friday nights. Jumped up but not out into the water and cracked his head on the end of the baord. Pool turned red and everyobe had to get out. of the deep end.
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PS – sorry about the typos. My eyes are burning like a mo fo today from allergeis.
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c’mon Jeff, time to get into this century and get an e-reader. Instant books!
In school the greasers were hanging out at Smokers Corner and a girl thought it would be wise to sit on the back of a car, driver of the car gassed it, girl goes on the pavement and splits her head open. talk of the school for days!
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Hey Bill………………Are you the one who knocked the guy down whilehe was taking a leak? I seem to remember that story for some reason.
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I feel your pain Jeff I remember waiting for someone to ship a t-shi…nevermind.
The USPS tracking sucks as well, fortunately I’ve never had a book take more than a week to arrive after I received notification that it has shipped.
On a side note, for some reason my “i before e ‘cept after c…” filter is broke, or I’m just more concious of it? Anyway going back a few weeks we talked about simplified spelling and I submit the following.
receeving
thare
acheeve
frend
frate
conceeted
allergeez (lol)
That’s enough I think you see where I’m going here, rid the world of confusing ie/ei words, thank you.
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I’m drawing a blank from middle school and high school, maybe because I was too busy being thrown into insect-ridden bushes to notice the hardships of anyone else.
However when I was in grad school, the class fairy and myself were watching some students playing coed football. Some clod forgot that the whole purpose of coed football is for “accidental” boob grabs and full-on nailed the girl with the ball. The snap of her tibia was probably heard around the campus, as was the horrible scream that followed. My sassy friend dramatically exhaled the smoke from his Virginia Slim and snapped, “That’s what you get when you play with the big boys, honey!“
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My elementary school was surrounded by a relatively small ring of blacktop. We had zero grass. The back side was flat and housed two basketball hoops with metal pole uprights. One morning before school Dave D. was running down court, looking up at the net, and ran face first into the metal pole at full speed. He went down flat on his back with blood on his face. On the plus side, because the whole playground was one big parking lot, the ambulance was able to back right up to him!
When I started there we acutally played kickball during every recess. Eventually due to the regular injuries the principal made us switch to “punchball” (which still led to injuries but fewer ambulance visits).
In junior high we still had wood shop with access to live power tools. One kid in the year behind me cut off the end of one of his “twinkies”, as the teacher called them.
I took “Farm Carpentry” for credit in college, and personally slipped and had the band saw cut about 4mm into my pinky tip. The teacher drove me to the student clinic and regaled me with a lifetime of amazing construction injury stories the whole way. The greatest involved him getting his finger smashed between two metal pipes. He was by himself, “my finger was starting to blow up like a balloon, so I picked up the drill with my other hand and drilled a hole through the fingernail to release the pressure!”
I felt a little guilty for not having cut off my whole finger after that…
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I was in kindergarten or first grade (1969 or 1970, if you must know…..) and our playground had one of those old-fashioned (that’s what we call them now anyway) jungle gyms: a bunch of parallel and perpendicular steel bars arranged in a sort of min-skyscraper. You could either climb up to the top or stay underneath and look up girls’ dresses (heh – yeah, even at that age…..).
Anyway, the whole thing was assembled with nuts and bolts with the thread ends of the bolts TOTALLY EXPOSED. I didn’t see it personally but one day we were kept off the playground because some kid slipped on the jungle gym and slit his arm open from elbow to wrist. I don’t know whatever happened to him; I don’t think he was in my class. But he’s probably one of the reasons those things got taken out of a lot of schools.
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Jeff – someone once described media mail as the “if-it-fits-on-the-truck” option, as in if it fits on the truck out of the original post office, if it fits on the truck at the transfer station, if it fits on the truck out of the local post office, if it fits on the mail carrier’s truck, and finally if the mail carrier feels like picking it up and putting it in your box on any particular day. It is also known as non-committal mail. If-we-feel-like-it mail.
JCIII – PE was co-ed before and after puberty, but not during. (They separated us in junior high.)
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Greg wrote: “I walked around silly for a few minutes. I was surprised I didn’t split my head open, or something worse.”
Heh. Well years later you wound up here at the Surf Report. There has to be a connection!
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That is the whole point of Media Mail – it is dirt cheap. If you want if faster you gotta pay for it.
My cousin in IA and me in CA swap books all the time via Media mail and pay PENNIES for pounds of books that do sometimes take 3 weeks to get there.
A Post Office slave explained it to me – Media Mail gets the last spot on the truck and if more Priority mail comes in before the truck leaves, the Media Mail comes OFF the truck and is back waiting. This can go on for as long as there is higher priority mail.
So suck it up if you want the cheap service!!
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Cousin and I. Not Cousin and me.
SORRY
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Suck it up? I didn’t mail the books, somebody else did. I paid $3.99 postage, for each. The seller probably paid 62 cents. And somehow I’m being unreasonable? I love that.
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Warning: Long post ahead….
Jeff – The USPS doesn’t take responsibility for anything! That is one of the reasons I stopped selling on Ebay (besides exorbident fee’s).
For instance..and I will NEVER agree with this and it is a great source for an arguement of Ebay lovers… If you mail a package and the contents arrive damaged, not only do you have to refund the buyer the cost of the item, you have to refund THEIR shipping charges as well. “Insurance” is only for lost/stolen packages. Ebay claims it is the sellers fault the item was damaged and didn’t get the it’s destination safely due to poor packaging….no matter if the USPS used it as a step stool, crushed it under weight of heaver items, ran it over…whatever. It’s the seller’s fault…fuck you…no matter what.
If the buyer is nice enough to take the damaged package with its contents and packing material to the PO for you in accordance with the insurance claim…the PO will deny any wrong doing… fuck you…claim lost. If the buyer gets the item an smashes with a hammer…fuck you..refund their money w/shipping charges. Buyers have no responsiblity whatsoever and will give negative feedback if you don’t comply to their demands. Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there that do this quite often.
Now, as a seller, you can request and, Ebay suggests, the buyer sends the item back at their cost…but trust me, it is a battle.
So don’t tear your hair out…just remember it’s the USPS and they do what they want when they want.
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you should have told me me you were ordering from Philly, I could have hired a bum down the street to hitchhike it up to you faster for a buck or two….
ahhh YES!!! a new million dollar idea…”B.U.M.S”
“Bums United Mailing Service”
I’ll give all my bum delivery guys a cheap cell phone and send the person that ordered the number. You can call up and get a status whenever you want. Talk about real time tracking!
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Jeff “I paid $3.99 postage, for each.”
There are a ton of used and remaindered books on Amazon I’d love to buy were it not for these folks charging $3.99 shipping for a $5.00 used book. I’ve been pampered by Amazon 2 day express. Cue Homer Simpson standing in front of the microwave oven, “A miiiiiinuuuuuute? Aw, why does everything take so long?”
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Ognir,
A girl was killed on the Maypole at my elementary school the year before I started. They took the chains off, but left the pole there taunting us for years afterward. I always hated clumsy kids who got hurt all the time. They ruined the fun for everyone else. Same applies to lawn darts.
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58th! Yay! I’m a juvenile again!
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Sniff. . . .heartbroken
I offended Jeff …
Was trying to be funny ….. . . (but then again I GOT A RESPONSE!
)
most of the books I have purchased on ebay charge this: ” $2.38US Postal Service Media Mail”
For $2.38 I’ll wait for awhile. And $3.99 is better than priority mail.. ..
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Ha Ha 60th suckers!
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Tyrosene, you mention old gravel pit, the old Pond Mills pit? My friends and I spent many an hour biking through the trails there. I took my 10speed through there a couple times, had a blast, surprised I didn’t go sprawling through the underbrush on some of those trails.
So we’re out riding one day and one of the “other” groups of guys has a street bike turned dirt bike, or at least what an early teens idea of turning a street bike into a dirt bike is, he is blasting up from the pit face along a trail full throttle and takes one of the hills… We’re on an ajoining trail and keeping an eye open for him… bike is still wide open, and then its suddenly really wide open and just as suddenly really quiet… we see this bike sailing through the air starting to tumble, gas tank separating and this guy in a backward superman posistion (back to the ground, feet going first) sailing through the air behind the bike… and theres the thud and crash of bike hitting the ground and a muffled thud as he touches down. We go looking for him and he’s lying on the ground with a stupid grin staring at the sky….
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Jerry, yep that’d be me. Poor guy was UNDER the urinal.
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Alex,
The pit I’m referring to is out in Lambeth behind Copp’s Buildall and the Olco station. I lived across from McEachren Public School.
I did go to Laurier for high school, so I’m familiar with Pond Mills. Where was the pit you are talking about? Near the end of Southdale by the tracks, or north of Commissioners on Shelborne?
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End of Shelborne. Had to look at a map for that one, the entire area bounded by the river, Pond Mills, Highbury and Commisioners was brush/bush/pit as I prefer to remember it (You know your getting old when…)
McEachren’s days are numbered, I think this school year is the last for it. Dufield is getting expanded to accommodate the area kids.
I grew up within sight of St. Sebastions. (block away from the Pond Mills pit as the crow flies).
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I went to a rough middle school. One day, two eighth grade girls started fighting. One was a petite little scrapper and one was a tall, fat over-developed girl. Big girl was getting the raw end of it so she starts fighting dirty. She grabbed the front of short girl’s sweater and ripped it off of her, taking the bra as she went. The short girl looks down at her bare chest, says, “Bitch, I loved that sweater” and proceeds to WHALE on that big ol girl. My buddy Joel was sharing my bus seat and he stopped breathing completely in complete & utter bliss. After the big girl is motionless & bloodied on the floor, short girl turns to Joel and demands his jacket. He tore it off as fast as he could & she calmly covered up. She walked up & got off at the next bus stop, a full 3 miles before her proper stop. I think that bus driver retired at the end of the year.
I hated that school. I saw more fights there in 3 years than in ALL the years combined since then.
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Some comments on the comments at 0200 on a rainy Pacific Northwest night. Haven’t had a drink in 13 or 14 years, but about two more days of rain and I’ll likely rip into my guest bar.
1) I think the Reporters were a little hard on Brittney. She seems nice, and it’s not like she was wrong. She couldn’t know that Jeff buys a case of golden elixir at the end of each year for the Reporter who logs the most firsts.
2) WB, you were nice to Brittney, but accused Jeff of writing a blog. This place is far too cool to be a blog and not cool enough for Jeff to get parcel service.
3) JCIII, when I went to school P.E. was strictly gender-separated. I still think those Imams were too fucking stodgy.
4) If you’d like to enjoy a really good piece of writing, re-read Gretchen’s comment. In fewer than 100 words she told a story that could fill a 22-minute sitcom; she used only two adverbs and one was “full-on”; and using Virginia Slim as the singular of Virginia Slims was inspired. It was nearly elegant enough to warm the cockles of Brynhildr’s heart.
I’m not Gretchen’s father, although I qualify by age; based on this and previous comments, her father is Jor-El.
If I could write that well I’d be a happier man.
jtb
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Hey Brittney, one thing that really irritates me is the phrase “shits and giggles.” That’s about the dumbest phrase I’ve ever heard, and for some odd reason it became semi-popular about two years ago. Its time for it to end. Please. No more.
Oh, and … 67th!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I saw a kid fall off the top of the old fashion ‘griddle’ stainless steel slide and snap his wrist. At first they tried to blame me since I was the closest to the incident. Luckily when the kid stopped wailing; he fessed up.
In high school wrestling; I grabbed a teammates arm and his elbow dislocated. I felt bad but my cousin heard it and thought it was the greatest thing. He kept telling everyone how it ‘SNAPPED’. He would snap his fingers really loud while telling the story.
At age 12 or 13 we thought it would be fun to duck our heads below our handle bars and drift under the back end of parked 18 wheelers at a paper plant. One of the stooges lifted his head too early and busted his head wide open. he looked like a ‘losing octogon fighter’ with blood pouring down his face. I think he got 40 or 50 stiches and half his head shaved.
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69th!!!!
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Awwwww….I wanted the 69! dammit!
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Alex,
I manage a couple of social housing projects on Shelborne. FYI: What remains of your childhood playground has now been approved for subdivision. Apparently the whole area from Highbury to Pond Mills, right down to the river is involved. I don’t know when they are planning on starting, but if you want one last look around before it turns into a sea of cookie cutter homes I suggest you don’t delay.
My great grandfather build McEachren. The place was falling apart when I went there 30+ years ago. Closing it is the right decision.
St. Sebastions eh? Do you know Domenic Anello?
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You snooze you lose Sidney…
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Well thanks, JTB. You’re going to swell my head into believing that I could complete the world with a blog of my own. Unfortunately the Dark Force in the Universe Known as My Mother is finally taking the plunge and getting online, so that’s an impossibility now. In any event, the fine peeps around here are going to start throwing me into the bug bushes if you keep up all this flattery. There were many fine entries on the topic at hand, my current favorite being Amanda Leigh’s (though your reference to Wile E. Coyote was much appreciated). Please spread your accolades around!
In other news, if I go to hell I expect the very first thing I’ll encounter is an obstacle course set up like my 70s era gym class. Clamber up a three story high rope, with nothing but a thin blue pad to “break” the inevitable fall? What do I look like, the missing link? I don’t think so!
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did the would be ninja get punished? or was that the fight with the principal.
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Tyrosene, whats left of my childhood playground vanished with the first street that got pulled in. I went to take my truck out back via the Cleavland St. “easy way in” way back when before any houses started getting built for one last go around, and as I’m going up the drive, I notice its all been cleaned up, manicured and fenced. Go further to find “Private Drive” signs all over (guess I’m not the only one who was being nostalgic) and ended with a fence and trees blocking my way and a driveway veering off to some McMansion. That killed it for me. F’ing progress…
The name sounds familiar. But I havn’t kept in contact with any of the old school folks. Different directions, moving, lost contact, the typical way things go.
GrandFathers name chiseled into any of the bricks? Or your own? =-)
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JTB-You’re right I called it a blog. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. Jeff just happens to have the coolest duck. If you come up with a cool alternitive to blog, I’m all ears but chances are that the new term will just be stolen by everyone else anyway.
Oh, and who won the case of beer last year for the most 1st comments?
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My report on media mail…I placed two orders through the wvsr link to Amazon. One order on the 21st and then another on 22nd. Estimated date of arrivel March 30…all items in stock. Cds and DVDs. Checked back on order satus and saw they shipped on the 25th. Checked back today and it said “delivery attempted”. I get no door delivery here so I drove to the Post Office (1.5 miles). Jim locks up at noon on Saturdays but he was there and when he saw me walk in he headed to the back and came back with a box from Amazon. They combined both orders (both qualified for free shipping…$5.95 & $4.96) and there they were. The box shipped media mail from Phoenix, about 650 miles from there and everything stops about 175 miles from here before it’s sent up. So…650 miles with one stop and here in two days (actually less than 48 hours) via media mail. Just sayn’…not to piss you know who off. (that too was a joke Jeffery).
Oh….the ninja wannabe and Secert 1 roughhousing…I’m just paraphrasing but here’s my take:
Zit kid…………..”I’m a ninja warrior!”
Secrete 1…….”You’re a stupid fat faggot!”
Eye poking follows proving Secret 1′s assertion.
I know ninjas. My grandmother was a ninja…I swear.
I could be alone and fifty yards out back and throwing rocks at rocks and she would appear out of nowhere.
Her ninja ear twist was a reminder The Gates of Hell are open 24 hrs. a day and she new the maitre D’.
Ok…back to the third floor. Spring training games and opening day in two weeks.
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I think it was Shiny Rod…
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yeah I know……knew….crap!!
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You killed Mockable! You Bastard!
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Good Morning Surf Reporters…
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0630 on a rainy Northwest morning.
I’ve been doing my “comments on comments” for the last six or seven months. I just spent two hours reading 25 random days from the last six months. That’s only a sample rate of about 20%, but I have to get to bed. Here’s what I found…
I wrote extended comments admiring comment posts by kristin, Tyrosine and Chuck in Belpre. I wrote shorter posts noting particularly pithy comments by AngryWhiteGuy, kenju, Pagan, White Trash Barbie, RNK, Knucklehead, Melissa, Jason, Ian and clintcurtis. I assume the other 80% of the days would extend that list materially.
I like fine writing and there’s plenty of it on this site. Jeff sets the tone. I thought Gretchen offered a great comment today and also about three days ago. However, I embarrassed her with my flowery praise. I apologize for the embarrassment and will do my best not to repeat it.
The world needs all the elegant prose it can get its mitts on, and I appreciate all the great writing that appears on this site — by Jeff and by the Reporters.
Good night and good luck,
jtb
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I’ve never seen anyone comment on their commenting on comments. Interresting! No big deal… as I just commented about someone commenting on their commenting on comments. Actually…there was more of a complimenting of comments going on during all the commenting of comments rather than just commenting on comments…wasn’t there? I believe this commenting on comments is exactly how Bennent Cerf got his start.
Crap…I came down from the third floor to answer the phone. It just kept ringing. I hang up after six if the answering hadn’t kicked in by then. I got a long day today. Three ball games and PBA bowling to watch. And I’m supposed to do an interview with our local ‘Paper’. People around here call it “The Charmin” so I’ll think I’ll just answer all their questions with…”No comment”.
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You killed Mockable! Yawwwnnnn.
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And before the bullets start flying — hey, I was trying to be funny. So all you Mockable lovers (and especially Metten and Jeff), no barbs of retribution, please.
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Tyrosine,
I had lawn darts.
We use to throw them up in the air, just to see where they would land.
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dto,
Stop that before you cause a rip in the Space/Time Continuum.
Or something.
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And what the hell is up with Guy Fieri? Frikkin dude is everywhere. I don’t get it.
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Crap…I don’t know who the fuck keeps calling at this hour on a Sunday. People should be in fucking church at this hour of the the goddamn morning. This shit is starting to piss me off. Whoever you are…knock it the fuck off and go pray I don’t fucking find out who the fuck you are.
Wow…kinda got away from me there! So……
Swami…I like what Jeff and Metten were doing over there. They actually opened the airways to wannanbe, think-I-am, I can do that folks who would want to write something. Somehow…something like mockable would languish when all the while it was open to the www of the wvsr readers and more. I don’t get it and I’m sure Jeff and Metten don’t either. I had six or so things go up over there. Maybe not all gems…but the producers liked them. I put up a couple comments over there (fucking phone) today while it’s still wezzing and before they pull the plug. Click on mockables down there at the bottom. (no barb intended here Swami. Just my $.02)…-d
“Life is short. Shorter for some than others.”…Augustus McRae
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dto…
I have a brief comment on your comments about my comments about my comments about comments. At first I thought I had invoked a Fibonacci sequence, but upon reflection realized I had descended into the world of fractals. I think this deep dive into a Mandelbrot set will explain my thinking…jtb
http://vimeo.com/1908224?hd=1
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Thanks there jtb…I lasted 10 seconds. Not much into pink I guess. And that’s junior year high school stuff where I come from. Thanks anyway…-d
Twins and Sox on MLB at 1pm eastern. Gotta go back to the third floor. I unpluged the phone…duh?!
Chuck….I Laughed Out Loud.
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Can’t talk….being hypnotized by fractals.
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I’m just here for shits and giggles
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Injuries at school? Wow – where to begin…
Well, there was one day at P.E. when we played baseball on the city tennis courts (with the nets up – go figure – P.E. teachers aren’t always so bright I guess). Some kid is trying to score and the first baseman rifles a throw to home that nails the kid flush in the jaw as he crosses the plate (but the run counted!!). Now we’re talking a real baseball here (again – P.E. teachers weren’t so smart in the 1970′s) so the blood starts spewing immediately, along with a few teeth I’m sure – although the blood has stayed in my nightmares far longer. The kid ate lunch through a straw for the rest of the year.
Around that same year, some kids started shaking the pole that held up the basketball goal because the other kids wouldn’t let them play. Apparently, the years of neglect and significant rust didn’t provide enough tensile strength and the pole eventually came crashing down on the kids who were playing. Hit one kid in the head, and he wore glasses for the of his life. Another kid took it on the leg and came back to school in wheelchair – surprisingly enough, there were no further injuries from the Wheelchair 500 that took place through the hallways until he healed.
There were more, but all of this brings back a glorious/painful kickball moment. I’m playing outfield and some kid kicks a monster over my head. I finally get to the ball and – being all of 4′ 6″ – don’t have the strength to throw ball all the way to the infield so I kick it instead as the grade-school Henry Aaron is approaching 3rd base. As fate would have it, my laser-guided cruise missile lands on Hank’s back about 2 steps before he crosses the plate, and all hell breaks loose. Is he out, or is he safe because you have to “throw” the ball to get someone out? The playground riot went on for 10 minutes! Surf Reporters – you make the call.
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