The Book of Awesome (21 page)

While traveling on a road trip across the States a couple years ago, my friends Ty, Chris, and I ended up staying at a hotel that had two beautiful double beds cordoned off in private rooms, and one
thin piece of felt
spread over a hard metal frame in the middle of the common area. Clearly, there were two good places to sleep and one joke of a pull-out bed that came with a free
Day Full of Back Pain
at no extra charge. So we stood in the front hallway and surveyed the situation, bags in hand, stern looks on our faces. We knew decisions needed to be made, and quick. After sleeping in basements and on motel floors for a week, we all finally had a chance of getting a good night’s sleep. We had to settle it.

Well, first of all, we ended up giving Chris one of the rooms, since he actually found the place and we were driving his car. It was a gift and Chris took it immediately, without a word, leaving Ty and I to fight over the remaining room. Well, we were through being nice guys. We both wanted that room bad. So we agreed to settle it the only way we knew how—with a
long, drawn-out best-of-seven Rock-Paper-Scissors war
.

Quickly, we took care of logistics. We agreed to shoot on the count of three instead of right after it. Any double clutching would be interpreted as a rock, no questions asked. We ruled out celebrating each win with the ceremonial
action move
, where you snip your scissor-fingers across their palm-paper or smash their scissor-fingers with your rock-fist. No need for any gloating. And lastly, we made doubly sure that it was a best of seven. Nothing more, nothing less,
no extensions
. Whoever got four wins first got the good bed because it was game over.

With that we dropped our bags, steadied our fists in front of us, and sized each other up, cracking our necks and loosening our shoulders for the big game.

And so it began.

I opened with rock, soundly shattering Ty’s flimsy scissors. Ty then countered with scissors again, falling once more to my sturdy rock. Then Ty switched gears to paper, but I was ready, this time employing his very own scissors to slice him to bits. Down 3-0 in a flash, Ty called for a quick pause. “I need to think,” he said.
And I’ll never forget it.
He looked me square in the eye for a moment, squinted a bit, laughed, and then said, “All right, I’m ready.” The next three rounds were a nightmarish blur—his paper smothered my rock, his scissors snipped my paper, there were a couple of draws, and then he completed the comeback with a fateful suffocating of my once-sturdy rock with his murderous sheet of
airtight paper
.

He quickly tied it up with that move, and so it all came down to the final toss. Before we threw our fists I peeked behind me at the open bedroom door, the setting sun casting warm shadows across the shiny silk bedspread, a flat-screen TV propped up on the wood dresser, a little loot bag of mini toiletries lying across the fluffy pillows. I looked and I dreamed and I drew . . .

“And a one, two, three!”

Ty took it with a quick slice of the scissors.

I was left holding my open palm in my hands, wondering why I didn’t go back to my faithful old rock. I could have
shattered his scissors to smithereens
, and I would have, too. I should have, too. But it never happened.

Ty retreated gleefully to the private bedroom, slamming the door shut hard, sealing my mind-boggling loss with a brain-piercing bang. And so it was. Of course, I couldn’t sleep that night. And it wasn’t just because of the metal prongs stabbing my kidneys. It was because of the way I went down.

But I can’t blame the game. No, Rock-Paper-Scissors was there, settling an undebatable debate. It answered our big question, shutting the lid, closing the door, sealing the deal.
You can’t argue with Rock-Paper-Scissors.
When it’s over, it’s really over. Sure, you can beg for that extension, but the victor never needs to take your bait. They played by the rules and they won.

Rock-Paper-Scissors helps you decide between pepperoni or sausage, the freeway or the back roads, the drive home or the sleep home. It answers the little daily decisions that freeze us up. Who showers first? Who’s paying for pizza? Who gets to change baby’s diaper?

These are all tough questions. And they are all easily settled with a quick game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. But if you do enter the arena, then take my advice.

Just go for two out of three.

AWESOME!

Cola, Diet, RB, or Other.

When we were kids, my sister and I carefully pushed those
little plastic buttons
every time we scored a meal at McDonald’s. We pushed Cola if we had cola, RB if we had root beer, and Other if we were sucking back some McDonald’s orange drink, which was our usual.

Honestly, we thought there was a big
Garbage Survey
at the end of the day and every customer had to punch their button to send in feedback. We figured some poor sap stuck his arm shoulder-deep in that bag of
lettuce scraps drenched in Big Mac sauce
, hollow ice cream cone bottoms, and greasy french fry containers and pulled out all the cup lids. We imagined he arranged them in
tipsy, drippy piles
and counted how many sold that day, adding the results up on a clipboard and calling them into the head office so they knew how many batches to make for tomorrow.

Kids, huh?

These days every time I enjoy a
fine dine
at a fast food joint, I make sure I still take lots of napkins, swivel in my chair, and press those little buttons on the drink cup lid.

There’s just something about the way they give, the way they turn white, the way they’re permanently transformed for all eternity that just makes me itch for it.

It’s just compulsive. It’s just instinct.

It’s just

AWESOME!

Have you ever run the last leg of the relay?

If you have then you know it’s a stressful experience, because you either
make it or break it
. I mean, you’re either ahead and
it’s up to you
to hold the lead, or you’re behind and
it’s up to you
to catch up. Everyone else is done, so they stand behind you relaxing and catching their breath while you give everything you’ve got to sprint for the finish. And of course, because you’re last you’re dealing with a sweaty baton, a trampled path, and cold muscles.

It’s not easy.

Well, guess who’s running the last leg of the relay
in your body
? Guess who’s anchoring the team? Guess who’s picking up the slack? Guess who’s taking the baton for the final leg of the race?

Dude, it’s your colon. Or Cole for short.

Now, Cole’s a humble guy. I mean, call him colon, call him large intestine, call him big snakey, call him whatever you want.
He doesn’t care.
He just shows up to work, all five feet of him, day after day, week after week, year after year. He punches his time clock and starts working in the dark, tight recesses of your abdomen from the day you’re born, twisting himself up into all kinds of positions, kicking it into high gear from the get-go.

Now, Cole does a lot of work:

Now, Cole the Colon is a huge player in your body, but you’d never know that from talking to him. If you try, he’ll ignore you and you’ll just hear the deep, quiet sound of chyme processing. And that’s sort of the point. He’s always there, always grinding, always working the gears, always helping the younger guys along, and most important, always getting the job done. And just try getting him to take a vacation!

So this one’s for Cole. Pat yourself on the belly today and thank your colon for being a true servant leader, a humble team player, and a bona fide nice guy.

AWESOME!

When I was sixteen, the local Driver’s Ed course was offered on a muggy, unbearably humid week in the dead of summer. The classroom was on the top floor of an
old downtown building
housing a mixed bag of dentists, lawyers, and travel agencies with faded posters in the windows.

The room had no air conditioning, just windows propped open with rulers, pleading with Ma Nature for some heavenly breeze to keep us awake. We panted and dripped and it reeked like a pack of chalk crumbled like saltines in a big
soup bowl of sweat.

I don’t know about you, but for me Driver’s Ed classes were torture. Learning how to drive in a classroom is like learning to ride a bike in a swimming pool. It just makes no sense. Overheads were thrown up on screen, with the instructor drawing triangles to show us our blind spots. We would discuss the
history of seatbelts
and watch gory videos to scare us straight.

It’s fair to say most of Driver’s Ed class is pretty foggy to me. My notes are long gone and there’s no way I could draw you a picture of my blind spot. But there is one thing that I do remember from those classes. One bit of one lecture on one afternoon that stuck in my head. It was when the instructor said that
every driver goes through four steps
on their way to learning how to drive. Rapping his chalk on the blackboard to get our attention, he continued, “It’s just a matter of knowing what step you’re in.”

But this isn’t about Step 4. It’s about Step 3. It’s about the great joy of realizing you’ve learned something new, something massively new, and can feel proud that your effort, practice, and determination has finally paid off. That first day you first realize you can drive is a wicked high.

And isn’t it a great sense of freedom when the road hockey rinks and street chalkboards of your childhood transform into highways to drive-ins and out-of-town parties? The world seems to suddenly shrink and open up. It’s cool thinking how many cities and places connect to the street you live on and all the places you’ll eventually go. . . .

AWESOME!