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Monday, July 16, 2007

Happy Birthday to Me!!!


Well it’s July 16th and you know what that means, I’ve gone another 365 days without dying. Sorry to be a morbid but that’s actually quite an accomplishment when you think about it. The Darwin Awards, a website that keeps track of the myriad ways people find to cut their lives short, tells the tale of a man who tried to thaw a frozen car battery by sticking it in his oven. It didn’t quite turn out the way he hoped…meaning instead of his car starting his house exploded. It’s easy to look down on these people but truth be told I’ve done plenty of perfectly stupid things in my life, it’s essentially only a matter of luck they weren’t fatal. In all honesty I’m not as far from sticking a car battery in the oven as I’d like to believe…far enough to never do it, but not that far. All this is an extraordinarily long-winded way of saying as I look back on my quarter-century on Earth I feel, more than anything else, pretty damn lucky. Though beyond just sheer chance I have done some things to improve my chances; I don’t smoke, I’ve never been to Iraq, and I haven’t make any prison jokes during two conversations with Mike Tyson. Not so bad.
25 years is a real landmark moment, and today I sat down to reflect on my life up until now. It’s often impossible to recognize the moments that change out lives when they happen, only in hindsight does the lasting impact of certain events become clear. There have certainly been some momentous moments in my life, but I think one has truly shaped the way I see the world:
I was just a young Slovak, we’ll say 10 years for simplicities sake. On a vacation my dad takes me, my brother, and my cousins to Sea World. (Shamu, the acrobatic killer whale, was huge at the time. Not just physically but culturally. We stake out our seats for the show and during the audience participation portion of the program none other than yours truly gets picked to come down as a guest orca trainer. I make a jump gesture and Shamu jumps, I whirl my arms and he spins. People are clapping and I have control over an enormous mammal. I was feeling good. The trainer thanked me, had me turn to the audience and bow, and then secretly signaled Shamu to splash the bejeezus out of me. In the span of a few seconds I went from feeling as cool as I ever had in my short life to soaking wet and listening to a few hundred people laugh at me. What kind of satanic Sea World employee does that to a kid? Not only was it embarrassing but I was drenched in “algae/bacteria/killer whale poo” water. I swear to God if I ever meet that trainer I’m gonna make him drink a gallon of that stuff. And as for Shamu, let’s just say that at lunch I was scanning the menu hoping I could order orca burgers. I will hate Shamu forever, it’s pretty much a Moby Dick situation at this point. I would straight up wrestle that whale, no holds barred. I hear that in the wild dolphins sometimes kill orcas so I figure I got a fighting chance.
I’ve done a lot in my 25 years; traveled across the country, had some crazy jobs, tattooed entire body parts, and that’s the memory that sticks with me the most. It’s my Rosebud. I learned a valuable lesson that day: no matter how well things seem to be going, there’s always a giant whale waiting in the shadows to screw you. You have to be ready to battle anytime. I’ll let you decide what that says about me, but no one who knows me should really be surprised. If you really want to wish me a happy birthday get me Shamu’s number. It’d be the best present of my life.