How to Explain Your Profound Personal Triumph
The only details I left out of the meal plan described above are that I would cut open the box and turn it inside out so that the hot pizza wasn’t resting on the waxed, potentially dirty outer surface of the box, and that I timed the cooking so that the pizza would be ready for me to eat as I watched the nightly Simpsons rerun.
I’ll describe my home at the time so you can get the full picture of an evening at twenty-something Scott Meyer’s bachelor pad. We’re talking about a one-bedroom apartment with bare walls, a rickety desk, a single white resin chair, a TV on a small stand, a futon used as a couch, and in the bedroom, a slightly newer futon used as a bed.
Missy described my apartment as “spartan.”
I think she married me in an effort to rescue me. All in all, it wasn’t a bad strategy on my part.
Note from Missy: As they say on the home improvement shows, he had good bones. I don’t think Scott was a total gut job, but the pink tile and peeling wallpaper had to go. 🤣
As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).
How to Discuss a TV Show When You Haven't Seen All the Episodes
If memory serves, this was inspired by a conversation with a coworker about the game Uncharted 3. I had just started playing the game, while he had completed it.
I said, “Please don’t tell me anything. I don’t want any part of the game spoiled.”
He said. “Of course. I wouldn’t do that. Oh man, it’s such a great game. Have you gotten to the place where you get drugged and the world goes all weird?”
A work-appropriate amount of yelling and insults ensued.
As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).
How to Write a Contest Winner Into Your Comic Strip, Like You Promised
It never occurred to me that a teenage girl might win the contest. I made a point of contacting her parents to make sure they knew what was going on and why some guy (who lived in Florida at the time; that can’t have helped) wanted pictures of their daughter.
I ended up asking for pictures of her father as well . . . which, in retrospect, didn’t make it any less weird.
As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).
How to React When Someone's Beliefs Sound Crazy to You
The world and the observable universe around it are so amazing, surprising, and mind-bendingly weird that any set of beliefs that tries explain how it all works can be made to sound crazy, simply by stating those beliefs simply.
To prove it, I will now state something that I believe in such a way that they will sound crazy:
Solid matter is mostly empty space.
See? If you know how the atom is constructed, and the scale of the protons, neutrons, and electrons, then you know what I said is true. But to someone who doesn’t know those things, or doesn’t believe in atoms, telling them a solid chunk of granite mostly isn’t there at all will get you written off as a nut.
As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).
How to Help a Friend Answer Deep, Troubling Questions
I don’t have a plan for Ric’s remains, or his funeral in general. I do have one for my own that involves Ric. For years I joked that I was going to be cremated in secret, then have my ashes caked into a giant, vaudeville-sized powder puff. Then, as a stipulation of my will, Ric would made to say “Make-up!” and hilarity would ensue.
I’m not going to do that. I am thinking about requesting that in place of a eulogy, someone (Ric, if available) read, as if it were a poem, this slightly reworded version of the lyrics to the theme from Thunderball:
He’d always run while others walked;
He’d act while other men just talked.
They called him the winner who took all;
And he’d strike like Thunderball
He knew the meaning of success;
His needs were more so he gave less.
He’d look at this world and want it all;
Then he’d strike like Thunderball
Any woman he’d want, he'd get;
He’d break any heart without regret
His days of asking are all gone;
His fight goes on, and on, and on.
But he thought that the fight was worth it all;
So he strikes like Thunderball
Extra points if whoever reads it cries at the last line.
As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).
How to Tell a Tale of Suspense
The only difference between the story as presented and the story as it happened is that I’m the one who spilled the grease, forgot I had a screen protector, and gouged it with a razor blade.
The only reason I can think of that I would have switched it to Ric is that I was embarrassed, which was clearly more than reason enough.
As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).
How to Judge
In high school, I worked at a Pizza Hut. I don’t know how it works at Pizza Huts today, but back then the only equipment in the kitchen for cooking food was a hotplate for boiling huge batches of pasta, a microwave for defrosting things in a pinch, and a huge oven the size of a minivan where food rode past the heating elements on a treadmill. Every item on the menu—pizza, calzone, lasagna, pasta, sandwiches—all of it was prepared for the guests in that one oven. I have no problem with that. I actually admired the efficiency of it. There were markings on the side telling you where to insert various items so they would get enough heat, and it was impossible to burn anything.
Years later, when I was a stand-up comic, I played a comedy club where they offered a menu of hot sandwiches and nachos. When I went into the kitchen, I found a much smaller treadmill oven, this one about the size of a large microwave.
I’m kind of surprised we don’t all have treadmill ovens in our homes by now.
As always, thanks for using my Amazon Affiliate links (US, UK, Canada).