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Being a man is delightfully disgusting fun. We really are nasty creatures, and I can’t wait to tell you this tale about that. This true story took place in an ancient time known as “Late 2007.”

Times were different in late 2007. For example, I didn’t work at the lovely Topsail Advertiser, I worked at a Wilmington television station as a production assistant. My job consisted of me making graphics to go with the mug shots from the criminals that were arrested that day. I also picked out the kids’ art for the weatherman to display on the news; and I ran the teleprompter for the news anchors. It was an OK job, but nothing I wanted to do the rest of my life.

My favorite time of my work day routine was at 3 p.m. That’s when my friend Stephano the Audio Guy would come into work. (By the way, no audio guy wants to be an audio guy, they are all plotting for a better job than turning microphones on and off all day.) Since my shift always ended at four me and Stephano only got to work together for an hour each day. And by “work together” I mean “drank coffee and bad-mouthed deserving co-workers.”

Before I continue the story, I wanna tell you a quick thing I’ve picked up in my 6 years working in various media jobs. This is what I’ve learned: The person that ignores you most on your first day at a new media job usually turns out to be the most genuine one in the building. You should beware of the people that smile and introduce themselves to you to quickly - they usually turn out to just want stuff from you. The one who ignores you is often a cautious person that will finally turn out to be a good friend; once they feel like they can trust you. It’s so backwards. Stephano was this guy. He was the only guy to ignore me on my first day; so I knew he’d end up being my friend. He did.

So back to the story. Once particular day, Stephano came in and filled up his personal coffee cup like he always did. He said to me, “I just realized today that I’ve been working here exactly a year. You know what else that means? I haven’t washed or even rinsed out this coffee cup in exactly a year. Never. Not once. And I’ve drank out of it 5 days a week, every week for that entire year. Maybe I should wash it out now.”

What kind of crazy talk was this? He was saying sane stuff like a woman would. I had to stop him.

“No, Stephano! What are you thinking? You haven’t washed that cup out in a year. That might be the most daring and impressive thing I’ve ever heard. And in the same breath you tell me this awesome thing about yourself, you ruin it by telling me you’re going to end your streak and wash out that cup? Heck no! You gotta keep not washing it, and keep using it.”

Stephano countered, “I dunno, Cory. I’m pretty sure that if I keep this up, eventually it will kill me. It was a good run, but I think I should quit while I’m ahead and wash out this cup.”

I pleaded further with him.

“Stephano, this is bigger than you. It’s bigger than us. You need to keep doing this for every man who’s ever wondered how long he could go without washing out a cup. Sure, it might kill you. But it might not! And if it doesn’t, you will be the pioneer that let all the men of earth know that they no longer have to ever wash a dish again! You will be on the Mt. Rushmore of coolness. We’ll enshrine you in the Dude Hall of Fame. You can’t wash that cup.”

He didn’t wash the cup. And he’s still alive. So now that we’re all the way into May 2008, I can tell you with mild certainty: You can go without washing a dish for at least a year and a half without it killing you. If Stephano ever dies from a case of Coffee Cup Poisoning, I will tell you, but until that day - I’m going to save so much money on dish-soap. Thanks for your continued daring experiment, Stephano. You are more of a man than most.

Whenever it starts to warm up this time of year and I see people flying kites on the beach, it makes me think back to a to an incident of when I was a stupid kid. Of course there were several incidents of me being a stupid kid, but kites make me think of a specific one.

I was about 5 years old when my family took us for a week long trip to the beach. I don’t know what beach it was, because when you’re a kid, there’s only one beach - THA beach. It’s all the same place to an undeveloped mind. Tospsail is Wrightsville and Wrightsville is Topsail.

 The first day of the trip my parents took from what little money they had and bought me one of those lowest-quality kites. I remember it today. It had white plastic with a mean looking bird painted on it. It was a red bird with yellow and black eyes. I flew it off of the roof of our rented beach house before dinner. I loved it.

 The second day on the beach, I forgot to bring my kite with me. Well low and behold! There was a middle-aged couple walking along the beach in front of me - flying my kite! It was my red bird with yellow and black eyes; and these old people had it. I started crying my eyes out.

 I was too upset to tell my mom why, but she finally got it out of me. She started laughing at me and told me that they make more than one of each type of kite. I didn’t believe her. Although I was usually a quiet and undemanding kid, I made her take me back to our beach house and show me that my kite was still there.

As we walked back towards our cottage, I had these wildly disturbing images in my head of that middle-aged couple breaking into our house with ski-masks, for the sole purpose of taking my kite. I could see them rummaging through our downstairs shower, with the old wife whispering to the old husband, “Be very quiet! I just can’t wait to get my hands on that little boy’s kite, so I can fly it myself right in front of him on the beach tomorrow. We are so delightfully evil! Heh heh!”

My mom and I finally got to the cottage and of course my kite was right where I left it. I felt really stupid. But still to this day, when I see old people flying kites, I can’t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, that old couple did steal my kite; and when they saw me they were afraid of getting arrested, so they ran back ahead of us and put it back where they had found it. It’s either that, or I was a very stupid kid.

I get excited and then let down every time I turn off of Highway 17 and on to 210 over by the Lowe’s. You wanna know why? Because on the side of the road, out of the corner of my eye, I always think I see a midget in a raincoat. Then it turns out to just be a fire hydrant covered in plastic. It makes me so mad.

A lot of people want to get offended by me saying “midget.” Well it’s a real word. I looked it up in the dictionary just before I wrote this to be sure. It means a person that is smaller but proportional to an average-sized human. Using “dwarf” would’ve been incorrect, because they are smaller, but disproportional to average sized humans - and that fire-hydrant doesn’t look disproportional to a human, so what I’m seeing is a midget.

So people may find what I wrote about midgets to be offensive. I don’t know how. All I said was that I always think I see one, and then I get upset when it’s just a fire hydrant. So in a way, my disappointment with not seeing one of our little friends, means that I like them and wish they were on the side of the road. And how can liking someone be offensive towards them? Maybe it’s the people who were offended by me who deep down really have a problem with midgets. I love’em! I just wish they didn’t look so much like fire hydrants.

P.S. You may think I’m crazy now, but the next time you’re driving by Lowe’s, I guarantee you’re going to notice that  exact plastic-covered fire-hydrant and think about what I wrote.

My company e-mail seems to be down right now. If you sent me a message today, I probably didn’t get it. So just call me for all things paper-related or even non-paper related. We can even talk about frogs if you feel like it. I told you this was boring. I also don’t know much about frogs.

This time of year always reminds me of a springtime gag that me and my sisters used to play on my dad on an annual basis. Here’s how it would go:

I would walk in the room with my hands behind my back and say, “Hey girls, guess what time it is!”

My sisters would always forget the answer from the year before and I’d say, “It’s watermelon time!”

Then we would go into my dad’s yard and throw watermelon seeds all over the mulch that doubled as our lawn. Each kid had a different species of watermelon to throw everywhere. Then we played the waiting game!

We always made a pact not to tell Dad what we had done.

About 6 weeks later, Dad would come to me and say, “Real funny, Eddie Haskell! I know those are watermelon plants growing all over the yard, and I know you were the mastermind behind it. Joke’s on you, because now I’m gonna make you take care of them!”

I never once took care of them. I didn’t have to. My dad loved watermelons more than I did. I knew that he couldn’t resist keeping them alive while they were growing and picking them when they were ripe. And I knew he couldn’t eat all of them, so the rest of us reaped the rewards of Dad’s reluctant gardening. He lives in an apartment complex now. I’m not sure how I can pull it off, but I’ll find a way.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. It’s that I’m afraid of what they’ll find when they clean out my room after I die.People would see my room and think I’m way more interesting and bizarre than I really am.You see, I was looking around my room today, and I realized, “If someone else had to go through my stuff, they would get a completely inaccurate picture of who I was - an embarrassingly inaccurate idea of the man that is me.”If I died today, and someone cleaned out my room, they would notice that I have four toothbrushes in my sink - and I live alone. That would lead them to think that I was some sort of toothbrush enthusiast or someone who is obsessive about his dental hygiene. I’m neither. What happens is, every time I go on a trip, I forget to bring my toothbrush; so I have to buy new one and then I find it in my suitcase when I return home and another Oral B ends up in my sink. It’s really rather boring.If someone cleaned out my room today, they would also find some corny love letter I wrote to a girlfriend in high school in 1993. They would think, “Wow, he was still hung up on her? How pathetic!” In reality, that note fell out of a dresser drawer I was cleaning out today, but that’s not what people would think if I wasn’t around to explain it.If I left Earth early, people would also find a stack of Topsail Advertisers in the corner of my room by my bed. I can see it now; they’ll say “What a narcissist! This guy liked to take home the newspaper he worked for and read stuff he wrote himself. That’s like watching your favorite rock star sitting in his car listening to his own song. Who does that?” In reality, there’s nothing I hate more than reading my own articles. However, the real reason I bring home the paper I work for is so I can see what I did wrong and try to make the next articles better. So if anything, I read my own articles to find reasons to hate myself, not because I love my own words. But that’s not how it would look if I was dead and couldn’t be here to explain the contents of my bedroom.Among other things people would find in my room would be a bottle of gin and a pack of Winstons. I don’t smoke Winstons and I have know idea why that gin is in my bookshelf. I would also be posthumously ashamed when they noticed that although my bookshelf had liquor and tobacco in it, the one thing it lacked was actual books!I know what your thinking. “Cory, the obvious thing to do would be to clean your room or at least make it more reflective of your personality.” You would say that. But that’s the way that requires effort and maturity. That’s not my way. Instead, I’m going to do this. I’m going to designate one trusted friend as my official “If I Die - Room Cleaner Outer Guy.”I think I’ll bestow my friend Brian with that title. There’s nothing he knows about me that could scare him. As my official “If I Die Room Cleaner Outer Guy,” in the event of my untimely death, it will be Brian’s job to put off his grieving and race to my house and clean out my room before my mother or anyone else who still has any mildly decent opinion of me gets anywhere near my stuff. It will be his job to make me appear normal to the rest of the world. Otherwise, you’d forever wonder why I had one dirty girl’s size 7 flip flop sitting beside a bottle of nyquil. (The reason isn’t nearly as interesting as you would think.)We’re all supposed to prepare for our inevitable last days by making sure our last wishes are known to loved ones, but I think it’s equally important to make our previous interests just as concealed. Don’t forget to designate a trusted friend as your official “If I Die Room Cleaner Outer Guy.” Otherwise, your family might think they never really knew you.

I love to watch women parallel park. I know it’s not socially acceptable behavior, but I do it anyway. I can’t help it, it’s just good wholesome entertainment to watch the fairer sex attempt the impossible. I know it’s going to be especially good if they try to pull forward into the space, as opposed to backing the car in the way every driver’s ed teacher tells them to do it.

If I’m walking down the street and I see a girl trying to squeeze her car in between two other cars on a public street, I know there’s a good chance that I might get some free entertainment. I don’t even try to be sly and act like I’m doing something else - I just stop walking and laugh at these strangers during their biggest moment of frustration. My favorite time to watch women parallel park is when I walk up on them in the middle of the attempt. Then I try to guess whether they are backing in or backing out. It’s harder to tell than you’d think. Often, they get mad at me and just give up and drive off. I know it’s wrong of me to do this, but it’s just so funny.

Here’s where I’ve noticed a difference in reactions towards me when I rudely watch parallel parking women. If the woman is alone in her car, she will not find me amusing at all and she will glare at me. But if she has a friend in the car with her, they will usually laugh with me at their failed attempt to get the car into a tight spot. That’s the part I don’t understand. Why are women amused by me being amused by them only if they have a friend with them? But if they are alone, I am the worst guy in the world. I wish I could say I’m sorry for watching, but it’s too much fun. And besides, I know that women laugh at men when we try to put on Chapstick. For some reason, they wait for us to rub our finger all over our lips after we apply it, and then they giggle at us. I guess we’re even.

I traveled to Statesville this week to wish my grandfather a happy birthday in the assisted living center where he resides. I hadn’t seen him in five years, and decided that it was time to change that. Right before I got to the home, I stopped at a gas station to get Granddaddy a present.

When I went inside, I saw a guy roaming around with a camera asking people questions. I quickly realized that he was a newspaper reporter roaming asking people what they would do if they won the 173 million dollar lottery. In the paper business, we call this a “man on the street” story, since you go up to just anybody on the street, ask them one question, take their picture and put it in the paper. By the way, if you’ve ever noticed why there are more men featured than women in these features, I can tell you why. Women don’t want you to take their picture without at least six weeks notice of your intention to do so. I have gotten so many great answers from women for MOTS interviews, only to be told, “No way in hell you’re taking my picture, little boy!” I then have to explain to them how I can’t publish their answers in the paper if I don’t have a picture to go along with it. They then tell me how they will hunt me down and kill me if I even think of snapping the shutter on my Nikon in their general direction. So we end up with more men in the paper because they will let you take their picture even if things are hanging out of their noses. Trust me, I used the “man on the street” interview as an excuse to talk to as many pretty girls as possible - I’m a guy. But most of them wouldn’t let me take their picture if they were even in their wedding gown.

The newspaper guy at the gas station asked me what I would do if I won the lottery. I told him I’d travel to exotic islands when I had time, but I would also keep working, because otherwise I’d just drink all the time and get fat. The newspaper guy then followed up by asking me if I would also travel to regular places like Michigan; to which I responded, “Apparently you haven’t been to Michigan. If you had, you wouldn’t ask me that.” He laughed. Then I told him that even though I was a newspaper reporter, that was my first time being interviewed for a newspaper story.

After trading paper stories with my newly met colleague, I told him I had to go buy some chewing tobacco to smuggle into the nursing home for my grandpa. Naturally, he encouraged me. Most media people have a rebellious streak - a streak that makes them tell strangers that giving a carcinogen to a 90 year old man is a good thing, just because it’s against the rules. So I bought a pack of Red Man and went to the home.

After sitting across from Granddaddy in his wheelchair in his private room for about five minutes, I pointed to the zipped-up pocket inside my leather jacket. I said, “I think I got some stuff you’ll like.” I looked out into the hall to make sure the coast was clear, and started unzipping my pocket to pull out the contraband.

Right then, a nurse walked in, and I awkwardly tried to stuff the bag of chew back in my jacket. However, it wouldn’t go back in; so I weirdly kept my hand covering the pocket so the nurse couldn’t see the “drugs” I was smuggling.

The nurse turned to Granddaddy and said, “Bill, it’s about time for one of your beers.” Surprised, I said, “He gets beer in here?” The nurse said, “Honey, he is PRESCRIBED beer! The doctor makes him drink two a day. You don’t make a 90 year old quit drinking! That would be bad for him.”

I then dared to ask her if he was allowed to chew tobacco, and she said “He can chew all he wants… and he does!”

Relieved, I let the Red Man fall out of my pocket and said to her, “Well, I guess I don’t have to smuggle this in now. And I also guess you now know what kind of person I am: a man willing to break the rules and try to smuggle things past you. Hi, I’m Cory. Nice to meet you.”

She laughed a pointed to a big drawer and said, “That’s his tobacco drawer, you can put it in there.”

After the nurse left, I sat beside Granddaddy in his wheelchair and tried to understand what he was saying. It was difficult to watch a man who still had a sharp mind, but had developed very dull teeth. Actually, he had very few teeth left at all. He knew what he wanted to tell me, but he couldn’t say most of it clearly enough for me to understand. Oddly, it wasn’t as much sad as it was frustrating. I just know he wanted me to know what he was saying, and so did I.

After a few minutes, I learned to lead the conversation with yes or no questions and to watch his nonverbal cues. By the way, my grandfather is a scientific genius. He spent his whole life reading scientific books and building scientific gadgets. We laughed about how I used to always get mildly electrocuted through the lawn mower when I would cut his grass, because he had all these bizarre devices hidden in the yard to stun squirrels when they tried to pillage his bird feeder. He is a real life Uncle Fester if there ever was one.

I learned a few things on my trip to the assisted living center. People in those types of homes like visitors, but they also like their dignity. My grandfather seemed happy that I surprised him with my visit, but he also seemed happy when I told him I’d call him ahead of time to make sure he’s not too busy for me. Sure, the odds of him being busy aren’t that great, but who am I to assume that he’s just sitting around waiting for me to show up whenever it suits me? He might be having a day where he wants to be by himself, and it’s not right for me to assume he doesn’t.

On the other hand, I also saw how lonely it can get in the home. As I was about to leave, I typed my grandfather’s personal phone number into my cellphone. Then I accidentally dialed it while he was in the bathroom. When he heard the phone ringing, he went from having the speed of a 90-year-old to one with the energy of a 20-year-old. He rolled out of the bathroom before the first ring was complete, and eagerly pointed at the phone for me to answer it. I felt so bad. I realized I had accidentally got him excited and made him think someone else was calling to talk to him. I saw how let down he was when he realized it was just my mis-dial and that there wasn’t really someone on the other end waiting to talk to him.

After I told him goodbye, one of the nurses walked me towards the door. She told me Granddaddy was her favorite patient even if he was sometimes overly expressive with his opinions on his care. I told her, “If you get time, sit down and have him tell you about the hovercraft lawnmower he claims he once built.” That’s right, he used to swear that for a short time he had a floating mower that he designed and built himself. I don’t know if he did, but he’s so smart I can’t honestly say he didn’t. Whether or not he built a grass-chopper that flies, I don’t know; but I do know that next chance I get, I’m going to fly down the highway to see him at the home.

Many people have two jobs. Few people have two jobs as disparate as I do. I spend my days working for a publication known as the Topsail Advertiser. You may know this since you are reading an article published on a the website of THE TOPSAIL ADVERTISER. But that’s just a guess. And I spend my nights working at a pizza place.Most days of the week, I will be doing very cool things for the newspaper like taking pictures at a press conference or interviewing a very interesting famous or non-famous person. Then less than an hour later, I am in a shameful pizza boy outfit being yelled at by some hungry/angry guy on his doorstep who says I took too long to get his pizza to his house during rush hour. I could explain to him that I actually sped the whole way there and that we actually got there sooner than we promised, but what’s the point? He wants to be mad and I want to be anywhere else, so I let him win and I leave.I go from being treated so respectfully by people I don’t know when I’m working at the Advertiser to being treated like the world’s biggest underachiever by other people I also don’t know when I’m Pizza Boy - all in a day. But I’m not complaining about this.I think everyone should have two jobs; a passion job and any other job. I love writing articles. I love conducting interviews. I love pitching new paper ideas to Carrie the Editrix, even if she pitches them over to the trashcan. I like this job so much, that I would feel guilty if it were my only job. However, I don’t have to worry about that, because anytime I’m sitting in in The Topsail Advertiser’s Secret Headquarters (the modular home near the stoplight that everyone can see) and I’m starting to have a good time, that self-hating little corner of my brain speaks up and says “Enjoy this now little buddy, because in about 90 minutes you’re going to be getting cursed out by a group of nurses at the hospital because you forgot to bring them extra garlic sauce with their order. Ha! Ha! Joke’s on you, sucker!”And that’s why I love working at the paper …because it’s not the pizza place.

I have noticed a lot of these high profile criminal trials on cable news always lead up to the inevitable moment where the defendant’s mom addresses the cameras and tells everyone that her sweet little baby couldn’t have done the terrible things the prosecutor says he did, even though the rest of us totally know he did it. The crime could be videotaped with the defendant holding up a sign that says “I did it” and some of these moms would still swear he didn’t do it. Not my mom. She would rat me out in a heartbeat if she thought I did it.

A lot of mothers, particularly Southern mothers, will only defend their children if their children really didn’t do anything wrong. In the case of my Mom, she always told her kids that we were her second priority next to God. So if it come down to us or him, she would side with him and do the right thing- which translates into “I will tattle on you little brats in a heartbeat!” If I told my mom I killed someone, she would call the cops. The most I could expect from her was that maybe, just maybe, she would argue the judge down from a death penalty to just life in prison without parole. She would possibly be harder on me than my victim’s mother. Which brings me to a story about my old roommate, Mike.

I haven’t seen Mike in ten years, and I don’t particularly care if I ever do. (He stole my stuff and sold it to a pawn shop. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.) However, I will always remember this hilarious story he told me.

One time when Mike was about 18 years old and still living with his mother, he woke up with a couple of police officers standing over his bed. His mother was standing behind them with her arms crossed. “OK, son. Where’s the body?,” said an officer.

“What body?,” said a suddenly awoken Mike.

His mother chimed in, “Look, I know you hit someone with your car. And I know they’re probably dead. So I called the police to come take you in.”

Mike tried to explain that he hadn’t hit anyone, but they weren’t buying it.

He just couldn’t explain why there was blood all over the hood of the car and a dent in the shape of a human body right in the middle of it.

Finally Mike confessed.

“All right. All right. I’ll show you what really happened.”

So Mike, his mom and a police officer rode up the street to a stop sign that had been knocked over. Mike explained to them that he was driving drunk the night before and plowed into the sign. With a stroke of terribly bad, but totally deserved, luck — the stop sign had fallen over on the hood of Mike’s car. Much of the red paint from the sign smeared into the hood of the car on collision. And it just happened to make a dent that was shaped much like a human body. At the time, Mike thought it was a good idea to just drive home and go to bed.

He thought wrong. Luckily for Mike, the paint and the dent marks lined up with the damage to the stop sign; and the police  didn’t charge Mike with murder of an unknown person; but he did get charged with DUI and a few other things.

So what’s the moral of the story? Hopefully, you already knew not to drink and drive. You didn’t need me to tell you that. The other moral of the story is, “If you get in trouble, don’t tell it to your mama. She might tell on you.”