The Simple DudeA Simple Dude in a Complex World

I hope all you Americans had a good long Memorial Day weekend.  And if you’re like me, even though it’s a short work week you’re still bitter about having to actually go back to work.  Some of those long holiday weekends seem to go faster than normal ones.  And now, here we are back in the regular day to day grind.  What a bunch of bullshit.

A couple good things came out of my weekend though.  I went for a nice run and a long bike ride.  I ate a ton of excellent food right off the grill.  Burgers, brats, ribs.  If it once had a face, I ate the hell out of it.  Yeah, I know that sounds gross but that’s the straight dope – some people just choose to forget where their food comes from.

The Lady Friend and I spent some time at her aunt and uncles house who have a great place on a lake.  As much fun as the boating, grilling and beers were – the best part of our time spent at their place was a story they told us.  First of all you have to picture them…  he’s a little retired older dude who loves his life at their lake house – and who the hell wouldn’t?  She’s still working but probably near retirement herself.  They’re grandparents and have that combination of kindness and wackiness with a great sense of humor that makes their grand kids lucky.

So as the story goes, the woman was outside the kitchen window working in the yard when she hears her husband yelling for her.  She looks up and sees him in the window pointing at the side of his head, which is red and looks like he’s bleeding.

She rushes into the house to see the side of his head and ear completely covered in what looked a little like blood – but I think she quickly realized it was not blood at all.  Apparently he was making a burger and grabbed the bottle of ketchup out of the fridge.  It was one of those flip top squeeze bottles.  As he’s squeezing the thing he’s not getting anything to come out.  As we all know, ketchup can be finicky at times particularly for those of us who who remember the old glass bottles.  You could bang the shit out of those before getting anything.

Like any dude would do he starts squeezing it harder and shaking it up and down.  Little did he know it was a brand new bottle and still had that annoying safety seal under the cap.  After squeezing and squeezing he starts to wonder if there is any air coming out at all.  Now here is where most people would probably look into the little hole to see what was going on.  Not this guy.  He holds it up to his ear to try to hear the air.  While doing this he gives it one more squeeze.

After all the pressure and abuse that poor seal had taken from the shaking and squeezing, it was at it’s breaking point.  So it didn’t take much to break open during this one last squeeze – sending all that bright red condimental goodness into his ear.  And not just into his ear, but all over the side of his head.

She said she thought he had been shot in the head when he first was yelling for her.  He said the way it felt and sounded having that explode into his ear, he kinda thought he had been too!

They told a couple of other really funny stories too…  I’m just not sure I could tell them here since they’re very specific to them and I am sure they’ve told LOTS of people over the years and there would be a chance it could somehow get back to them – which would blow my whole anonymity thing…  shoot!

SD

P.S. Whatever happened to the “Catsup” spelling?  You pretty much only see Ketchup these days.. which makes sense. I mean, what the hell is Catsup anyway??