The weekend before last, I had to give a speech in front of an auditorium full of people. At the beginning of my speech, I was supposed to give the audience my name, my marital status, what church I attend, and other tidbits of information. Because I’m me, this is how I began my speech:

“Hello. My name is Kevin (last name omitted). And yes ladies…I’m single.”

As recently as five years ago, like a majority of people, I suffered from stage fright. Public speaking ranked in the top two or three of things I loathed to do.

God, in his infinite wisdom, decided, “Kevin, thou shalt become a high school teacher.”

And so I did.

People, nothing will cure you of a fear of public speaking quicker than a job that requires you to get in front of a room full of people who hate your guts day after day and talk to them. And not just any people, but teenagers. And not just talk to them, but teach them. It’s a tough job even for an experienced public speaker.

I equate teaching for the purpose of getting over a fear of public speaking to jumping into a tank of sharks for the purpose of getting over a fear of water. Yes, it’s effective, but you’re probably going to get eaten alive. But if you somehow survive, you’ll be cured.

Well, I survived. And apparently, I’m cured.

Fast forward a few years and I find myself behind a microphone in front of an auditorium announcing to all ladies in attendance that I’m single. And even though the talk was serious in nature and filled with sentimentality, I continued to interject comedic elements throughout the speech.

In five years, I have gone from someone who loathed speaking in public to one that gives a 5-minute speech even though I was asked to only speak for 2 minutes.

I think God’s created a monster. And yes ladies…it’s a single monster.

Look, I’m not a high-maintenance person. Really, I’m not.

There are just certain…expectations I have in my day-to-day life. For example, if I’m at a restaurant, thirty minutes shouldn’t go by between the time I ask the waitress for my bill and her actually bringing it to me. That’s perfectly reasonable, right?

And if I’m at the grocery store, it’s reasonable for me to expect not see unsupervised children running and screaming down the aisles as they knock over food, right?

And if a movie called Beautiful Girls comes on TV, it’s reasonable for me to expect Rosie O’Donnell not to be in it, right? Right?

So why is it unreasonable for me to expect one of my co-workers to drop what they are doing and go buy some more French Vanilla coffee creamer for the break room?!

I am sure there are coffee purists out there who are steadfast in their belief that coffee should only be drunk black with no creamer, sugar or sugar substitute.

I am not one of those purists.

Coffee is not coffee without two essential items: a giant handful of Splenda and French Vanilla coffee creamer – the liquid kind, not that crappy powder stuff.

Coffee without either of these two items is unacceptable, and my employers are aware of this fact. How do they know?

For one, I remind them of it daily. “I think we’re getting low on Splenda,” I’ll tell them. “When is the backup case of French Vanilla creamer due to arrive,” I’ll ask at least once a week. (I go through a lot of coffee creamer)

Two, I had it written into my contract during the last performance review that the break room must be stocked with Splenda and French Vanilla coffee creamer at all times. Failure to do so would result in a $1,000,000 fine, three boxes of Splenda, two large bottles of coffee creamer and 28 grape jelly beans. (I am an excellent negotiator)

“There is no more French Vanilla coffee creamer in the entire Southeast of the United States,” they tell me. “You’ve used it all.”

Excuses.

I wasn’t a geography major, but I do know there are other areas of the United States besides the Southeast. Have they tried up North? West? You can’t tell me there isn’t French Vanilla coffee creamer in Seattle. Make a call and get some down here.

If I was a diabetic or had some kind of foot fungus or something, and the break room ran out of my medicine, wouldn’t someone go out and get me some more? No matter what it took?

Call me crazy, but I fail to see how this coffee creamer issue is any different.

My long weekend was amazing. I feel refreshed, rejuvenated, born again, alive and any other cool word you want to throw into the mix. However, I am a tad sleep deprived. My weekend required me to share a room with a few individuals who snore.

Loudly.

All night long.

Sometime around four o’clock in the morning Friday, after I had been lying awake in bed for several hours due to snoring I swear could break the sound barrier, I mentally jotted down in my head a quality that I need to look for in a wife: she needs to be a non-snorer.

I am not a full-fledged insomniac, but sometimes I might as well be. Whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, I have a three minute window to fall back asleep. If I need to go to the restroom, I have three minutes to do my business, get back to bed, close my eyes and fall asleep. Otherwise, I stay awake.

For the rest of the night.

No matter how tired I am.

As a single guy, this isn’t a problem. I’m alone. There’s nothing and no one around to disturb my slumber. But of course, whenever I get married, this will no longer be the case. With this in mind, I know there is a wife-quality checklist I need to stick to if I ever want to get a good night’s sleep once I’m married.

Here’s what I have so far:

1. Does not snore. And if she does snore, it needs to be at a volume that can be easily muffled by ear plugs or duct tape.

2. No night terrors. If she randomly screams in her sleep, we’re unlikely to be a very good match. Unless she’s screaming because a burglar is breaking into the house, of course. But you know, even then…

3. Doesn’t wet the bed. I once had a cat that urinated on my feet when I was asleep. That cat quickly became an “outside cat.” Although I would be perfectly comfortable with the arrangement, I doubt my wife would appreciate the same treatment after an accident. Best to avoid this possibility at all costs.

4. No Jimmy legs. If she kicks her feet while sleeping, it’s a deal breaker. I don’t kick you when we’re awake, you don’t kick me when we’re asleep. That’s the deal.

5. Not possessed by a demon. I’ve never met one, but I imagine demons to be pretty loud. Also, I bet demons eat cookies in bed.

Have I missed anything, guys and gals? What else should be added to my “sleep” list?

I will be out of town the next four days. Sadly, this means I will be unable to give all of you, my faithful readers/fans/stalkers, your daily dose dry, pointless wit.

Now, now, do not cry. I have devised a little something to (hopefully) keep you entertained while I am away.

There are a few writing techniques I use over and over in my stories. One of my favorites goes something like this:

• I give a completely normal and sane scenario (Example: my socks keep disappearing).
• I write: “Naturally, I have come to the only logical conclusion one could make in such a situation.”
• I come up with a completely illogical conclusion (Example: an alien is breaking into my home and stealing my socks).

I then proceed to take that illogical conclusion and run with it. You’ve seen me do it in The Haunting, Identical Twins Reunited by Awesome Dude and Awesome Dude’s Brother, Do Aliens Have Feet, and most recently in I Have a Stalker (and Ants in My Car).

Yeah, I know. Comic gold.

It occurred to me recently that it’s unfair for me to have all the fun. Oh sure, you all have the pleasure of reading these gold nuggets of comedic magic, but you don’t get to experience the exhilaration that goes along with writing them. Well, that’s about to change.

Below, I will write a normal, sane setup to a story. Then I will add the line, “naturally, I have come to the only logical conclusion one could make in such a situation.” And then the story will end.

The punchline will be determined by all of you. Just leave a comment with your best punchline. Leave several punchlines if you want. And when I get back, I will steal take a page out of Diesel’s Caption Contests over at his site, Mattress Police, and pick the punchlines I like best. I will then either set up a poll letting you vote for the punchline you like best, or just pick the one I like best and be done with it. Either way, I will take the winning punchline and use it to complete the story at a later date.

At my job, we have had several new employees come on board the past few months. Most of them are genuinely pleasant, but one in particular takes pleasantness to a whole new level. She always smiles when she passes me in the building. When walking by my office on her way to the break room, she will peek her head in the door and ask if I need a coffee refill. I always say yes, of course. A few times a week, she will stop by my office to chat. The entire time we’re chatting, she smiles nonstop.

In short, she’s nice. Almost too nice.

Naturally, I have come to the only logical conclusion one could make in such a situation:

Okay, folks. Leave a comment with your best punchline. Just keep it clean. My mom reads these.

10/16 Update: Thanks guys. Keep ‘em comin’.

I have ants in my car.

How the ants got inside my car is a mystery. I do not have food in my car. There are no empty bottles or cans. With the exception of some books, a couple envelopes and lots of dust, the inside of my car is clean.

In short, there is simply no reason for ants to want to go inside my car.

Naturally, I have come to the only logical conclusion one could make in such a situation:

I have a stalker, and he or she put the ants inside my car as some sort of psychotic gesture of love.

Having stalkers is nothing new to me. Last year, when my old blog was getting dozens and dozens of daily hits from someone in California, I put a stop to it by writing a post asking the stalker (i.e. Jessica Alba) to move on with her life. Now I will try to do the same with this unbalanced, ant-loving stalker.

Crazy stalker person,

Thank you for your gift. However, I must politely decline and state that I do not want ants in my car. I am sure in your crazy little brain, ants are creatures to be revered. Maybe as a child you became lost in the woods and were adopted by ants. I’m not sure how that would’ve worked, but for the life of me I can’t think of any other reason someone would give ants as a gift. I hope the two that crawled on my hand as I drove to work this morning weren’t your parents. “Make someone an orphan” wasn’t on my agenda for today.

In time, the ants in my car will slowly die out move away and retire to Florida. But please do not replace them with more ants. There are acceptable stalker-to-stalkee gifts and there are unacceptable stalker-to-stalkee gifts.

Ants in my car are unacceptable.

A box of chocolates to go along with a two-hundred page, hand-written letter that says “i luv kev” over and over is acceptable.

Ants in my bed are unacceptable.

My prom photo with my date’s head replaced with yours, to go along with a box of chocolates, is acceptable.

Ants, smothered in chocolate, are unacceptable.

A box of chocolates with “i luv ants” written on the box is acceptable.

Pretty simple, right? If you want to be my stalker, you need to abide by these. Otherwise, I will have to shun you just like I did Jessica Alba. That girl is a millionaire, but she didn’t send me even one box of chocolates the entire time she stalked me. You get two chances, crazy ant person. This was strike one.

Sincerely,

kev

P.S. Sorry about killing your parents.

Well, that should take care of that. My ant problem will soon go away, and if I’m lucky I will be the recipient of many boxes of chocolate. For the record, I don’t eat the boxes of chocolate. I just hold onto them and give them away as gifts to people on birthdays and Christmas. This saves me quite a bit of money on gifts. Pretty smart, right?

This (points to head) isn’t just a hat rack, my friend.

I have a love/appreciate/hate relationship with the school I went to for my undergrad degree. I loved the reasonably-low in-state tuition. I appreciated the underrated, quality education it gave me. I hated the head-scratching, brain-cell killing, sometimes moronic administration and staff.

Cue the back story:

1. This school once told me I had lost an academic scholarship my freshman year, only to tell me a semester later it made a mistake and I still had it.

2. This school once sent me a nice, polite, congratulatory letter. Why were they congratulating me? Because I had just graduated from their college. Two problems: One, I was only a sophomore. Two, I wasn’t even enrolled at their school at the time. I had transferred five months earlier.

3. This school once assigned me to an adviser who I question whether or not had any knowledge of the school, its courses, my major, what classes I needed, or who the heck I was. As such, he enrolled me in classes I later found out I did not need.

In the time since these above incidents, I have graduated from that school, gone on to another school for my graduate degree, and entered the work force. This school and its occasional acts of incompetence had not popped into my head for some time.

Until last week, that is.

Last week, I received a letter from the school. What did it say? Why, it thanked for me for inquiring about financial aid assistance for the 2007-2008 school year. To clarify: they sent me, an alumnus who graduated from the school years ago and has no reason whatsoever to re-enroll, a letter about financial aid for the upcoming semester.

That’s my school. And it gets worse.

At the top-left of the letter is my name and mailing address. At the top right is a social security number with all but the last four digits hidden. These last four numbers were not mine.

“Wonderful,” I thought to myself. “What have they done to me this time?”

With their offices closed during the weekend and on Monday (Columbus Day), I wasn’t able to call their financial aid office until this morning. Knowing the school’s history, I prepared myself for something truly stupid. The school did not disappoint.

Staff Worker: Good afternoon. May I please have your social security number or student ID?

Me: That’s actually why I’m calling. I graduated from the school in 20–, but I received a letter in the mail from your office last week thanking me for inquiring about financial aid assistance for the upcoming semester…

Staff Worker: …

Me: …also, even though the letter has my correct name and mailing address on it, it has someone else’s social security number.

Staff Worker: I understand. The number at the top of the letter is your student ID number, not your social security number.

Me: Then why is the number three digits, dash, two digits, dash, four digits – the same format a social security number would have?

Staff Worker: That’s just the format we use. Originally, your student ID and social security number were one and the same. Once we changed it, we thought it best to keep the same format for our systems.

Me: Okay. But why does it say “social security number” and not “student ID” next to the number?

Staff Worker: It should say “SSN” next to the number.

Me: Um, yeah…it does. Doesn’t “SSN” stand for social security number?

Staff Worker: No, it stands for “student ID number.”

(I thought about pointing out that this acronym didn’t fit, but moved on)

Me: Okay, just to be clear. The letter was intended for me?

Staff Worker: Yes.

Me: And even though “SSN” is universally known as social security number, (the school) uses the acronym for its student IDs?

Staff Worker: Correct.

Me: And the layout for student IDs is the same as that of a social security number, even though that’s likely to confuse people?

Staff Worker: I can see how that could be confusing, but yes.

Me: Okay. And even though I am a graduate of the school and had not applied for financial aid, I received the letter from your office…why?

Staff Worker: It is a form letter we send out periodically to former students in case they are thinking about coming back to school.

Me: Okay, that’s all I needed to know. Thank you for your help.

My head hurts. There’s not enough Advil in the world to help someone endure a phone conversation like this one. Are any other colleges like this?

Like everyone else in the world who was blessed with the power of awesomeness by God, I possess several unique gifts.

I have the gift – some would call it a curse – of being a reservoir of pop culture and sports knowledge.

I am wise with money.

I can chop onions, more times than not, without cutting one of my fingers. Also, onions do not make me cry.

I am very observant. In the late 90s, I correctly surmised the band Hanson was three dudes when everyone else I knew swore they were three girls. I also correctly surmised that their music was annoying. True story.

However, for all my strengths, I have one super, glaring, huge weakness…

I am directionally challenged. Actually, that’s not fair. I don’t deserve to be grouped with your typical directionally-challenged individual. I am worse. Much, much worse. If I had been Frodo in Lord of the Rings, the movies would have been ten hours longer because I would have gotten lost two dozen times.

Allow me to produce evidence of my ineptness:

In high school, my date and I got lost after the prom. This was despite the fact we were driving around the town I grew up in as a child.

Last year, when I was going to be flying for the first time, I asked my dad to draw me a map to the airport. I also asked him to draw me a map for the inside of the airport.

When I know someone is going to need directions to my house, I get on Google Maps and print the information ahead of time. When I am caught off guard by someone in need of directions, I pretend to lose my phone signal.

When I need directions from someone, I ask for landmarks instead of street names. “Take a right onto Elm off of Green, and then take a left at Jefferson” might be adequate directions for most, but it’s useless to me. I need directions like, “take a right at the Burger King.” Or even better, “take a right at the third red light…it’s the one where that crazy guy with an eye patch sits on the corner.”

To give an all-encompassing list of examples of my ineptness when it comes to this area, I would have to quit my job and devote several months to the project. Seriously.

I have no explanation as to why I am so bad with directions. How can I chop an onion without crying or cutting my finger, but not be able to find my way to a grocery store on the far side of town to buy said onion?

Maybe this is God’s way of making sure people do not feel too intimated by my awesomeness?

Good one, God. You got me.

Alternate titles for this post were “Every Achilles Has His Heel” and “Every Donald Trump Has His Toupee?” So what’s your kryptonite? Leave a comment!

In my adult life, I have gone entire calendar years without having a single cup of coffee.

I didn’t dislike coffee. I liked it okay, I suppose. I just never understood the huge appeal (much less why so many people were flat-out addicted to it).

That was until two years ago.

Two years ago, I began working at my current place of employment. There was three beverage options in the break room: sodas, water and coffee. Sodas cost 50 cents each. Water and coffee were free.

Free coffee. A frugal guy like me didn’t stand a chance.

Suddenly, I went from drinking maybe two or three cups of coffee a year (usually during the Winter around the holidays) to drinking two or three cups a day. Soon, that number was increased to four cups a day. Then the cups doubled in size. And then I began throat punching co-workers who got between me and the coffee machine.

When the large paper cups in the kitchen didn’t cut it for me anymore, I borrowed one of my dad’s large coffee mugs. He doesn’t drink coffee, but over the years he had been given numerous mugs as gifts. I took one of his “#1 Dad” mugs (he had three of them) because it was the largest.

The fact I was single, had no children, and would be asked repeatedly by co-workers about my non-existent children as a result of carrying around such a coffee mug did not deter me. It was large and could hold mass quantities of coffee. That is all that mattered.

I knew my addiction was getting out of hand a couple months ago when the large coffee maker in the break room broke and a small coffee pot temporarily replaced it. Not wanting to compete with 100 coffee-hungry co-workers, I stole the small coffee pot and hid it under the desk in my office. To mask the delicious coffee aroma, I brought in a bucket of paint and “accidentally” spilled it on the floor. Sure, the paint fumes caused me to hallucinate a little. My stapler came alive and threatened to tell my boss that I stole the coffee pot. But I took care of that. He won’t be talking to anyone now…

Sometimes, late at night, when I am lying in bed wide awake and shaking, I pray to God that He will help me break my coffee addiction. Getting me off the juice will be no easy task, though. It will take an act of God. It will take a miracle.

Short of that, it will take the coffee in the break room no longer being free.

As many of you know, web design is a hobby of mine.

As such, you might be wondering why I chose to take an already existing Wordpress template and turn it upside down on its head rather that just create one of my own from scratch? Well, one, I’m lazy. Two, it gave me the opportunity to both create and destroy. I destroyed the old template as I breathed life into a new one. I’m like a taxidermist who runs over squirrels in his car.

Anyway, even though I have designed web pages “on the side” for people for a number of years, I’m just now requiring clients to sign legal contracts. Up to this point, I’ve always designed websites for people I know. No legal mumbo jumbo necessary.

But now, as I slowly take on clients who are strangers to me, I need legally-binding contracts.

As a lawyer, which I will be with four more years of school and a passing bar exam grade, I sat down in front of my computer and began drawing up a website design contract. Two minutes later, I fell asleep.

Legaleeze is boring. And if it puts me to sleep writing it, surely it would put to asleep a prospective client who reads it. And since it is difficult to get sleeping clients to sign contracts, I knew I had to mix it up a little.

For every paragraph like the following…

The above-named CLIENT is engaging the above-named DEVELOPER as an independent contractor for the specific purpose of developing a website for the CLIENT’S company.

…you need a paragraph like this one:

Upon completion of project, DEVELOPER demands 27 grape jelly beans. If CLIENT delivers grape jelly beans in a number that does not equal 27, or if CLIENT delivers any number of jelly bean that is not grape in flavor, CLIENT will owe DEVELOPER $1,000,000,000 and 28 grape jelly beans.

Is it professional? Well, no.

Is it funny? Absolutely.

And if I’m lucky, I’ll cross paths with a client who does not read the fine print. And you know what that means…

I could soon be enjoying 28 grape jelly beans.

Time is what turns kittens into cats.

A polite “nod in your general direction” to the first person to correctly site cite the source.