Living in the Moment

Van Wilder: You shouldn't take life to seriously. You'll never get out alive. 

Sometimes we take those happy go lucky , funny people in our lives less seriously. It's an easy mistake to think that the guy/girl who seems to be always shooting the shit [a phrase that's fun to say but not nearly as fun to visualize.. unless you're one of those monkeys at the zoo... but that's more like flinging the poo] as not being ambitious or driven. 

Fact is, they don't forget that we don't know if we have tomorrow.. but by definition, we have now.  So that's my segue into some of my less serious moments in my past (you remember those Good Idea, Bad Idea  clips from Animaniacs? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8PhzrmBgMI)

The Bread Cart

So I worked at Publix at the end of high school and the end of college and it's just a  gold mine for "good ideas." One of the best was the bread cart incident. You see bread comes in bread carts , tall steel carts that you can place trays of bread into. All that's important to know about them is that they're metal and hollow in the inside forming a sort of cage. So Ricky, my frequent co conspirator (who shares my very same birthday, incidentally) and I decide that I'll  get into the middle of the bread cart and he'll push/roll me down the ramp off the loading dock. Ideally, I'd stay on path between the wall of the store and the rail the leads to the bottom. It was all fun and games until I  sped up and the rack slammed into the side of the wall. I almost hurled from the impact. There's probably still a dent in the duct that runs outside that took a blow from the cart.  However, I imagine seeing me going down a ramp in the middle of a bread cart must have been quite amusing.

The Volcano

During my second year at UGA, I worked through a program called FOCUS and basically, they placed undergrad science majors into various schools in Athens-Clarke county and Oconee and had us work with science teachers and their students. My teacher let me take over science class on the days I visited. So, I decided we'd do the volcano experiment. I had all the students fashion playdough volcanos and used little candle jars to form the magma chambers. Then I dyed a bunch of vinegar bottles and gave each group a bottle and baking soda. The goal was try to see what mixture gave the best eruptions. It was quite enjoyable and the kids loved doing this. So I had left over baking soda and dyed vinegar and I decided I'd show them how to make little baking soda rockets with the bottles. So the teacher had them get their lunches and join me outside on the blacktop. Simply, you add baking soda to the plastic bottles and shake it vigorously and flip it over on its lid. The CO2 formed will shoot out the back and the bottle will go flying into the air with a stream of red foam behind it. So on my last bottle, I shook the bottle a little too long... and it exploded in my face, it was amazing. The students all ran up and were concerned something bad had happened. The teacher asked the same.  I was, but it was priceless seeing my stained  khakis, face and shirt. 

**dedicated to my brother who reminds me that it always feels good to laugh, even when you're hunched over with abdominal pain and hyperventilating