Monty's Money-Back Guarantee
As millions of both of my fans have pointed out, Monty has been a very naughty globber. Truly, I have failed to deliver the product you have come to expect; verily, I have failed to deliver any product lately. This shall no more be the case, not no more, no.
You see, sometimes, even when I have enough time on my hands, I think: I don't have anything interesting to say. Or I think about posting something, and then decide not to. But after all, it is not my job to decide what is worth writing or not; it is my job to deliver the finest product I can offer and let the readers decide, dammit. Perhaps I judge myself by too high a standard, having been introduced to gobbling by the brilliant Julie Powell, who always wrote engagingly and always had something to write about because of her inspired experimental adventure. I remember her, towards the end of her project, saying something about the likelihood that she would stop blogging now to avoid turning it into one of those "navel-gazing" logs. I do not want to be a navel-gazer... or a naval geezer... I am a novel grazer ... sometimes a nasal groomer... but that is beside the point. The point is
The Guarantee
From this day forward I pledge the following: I shall add something to the blog every day I come in to work, which is almost always Monday - Friday. Should I fail to do so on ANY day, you will get your money back. All of it. All you have to do is fill out the proper claim form showing proof of my failure to update the blog on a specified date, fax it to me at an undisclosed location, and I will pay back your membership dues in full. (Speaking of which, it occurs to me that some of you have yet to send in your annual dues -- please do so ASAP, after all, wine is not free!) That's right, ALL of your money back. But that's not all; there's more. If Monty should fail to satisfy his obligations, he will personally give to you, in addition to your money, one large keilbasa from an authentic Polish-owned meat shoppe. Simple pop by Monty's office to pick up your sausage. Please remember to bring your claim form, four forms of photo ID, a suitcase full of sauerkraut and a urine sample (if you don't have any urine someone else's is fine, ditto the sauerkraut)
Now that that's out of the way, here are
Certain Things Which, for Inexplicable Reasons, are Ever-Present in my Memory
In fourth grade I had a friend named Savid. He had a sleepover birthday party, and his Mom rented a VCR and some kind of terrible teenie movie with boobs in it. I didn't really know how to react to the boobs. (Now I would get up and start petting the TV set) What stands out in my mind more vividly is riding to and from the grocery store with Savid and his mother, and passing around a bag of trail mix, and his Mom saying, "Savid, you're picking out only the choicest morsels." It's true, he was ruining the balance. I hate trail mix, usually.
In second grade, our class was combined with a third grade class. There was a snotty third grade girl named Karen who wore a fur coat to school. I found out her last name was "Rice." That seemed strange to me: I thought, rice is a thing, and people's names aren't usually things. I said to her, "Your name is 'Rice', like the food? How come your name is a thing?" She thought I was making fun of her and threatened to slap me. I was small, shy, and wimpy. My friend Lashana promised she would protect me. Throughout elementary school I benefitted from the friendship of a couple really cool and smart and tough black girls, who liked me because I was, among other things, a good speller. It sounds silly but my elementary school was pretty rough. There were some scary customers (the very least of which was Karen Rice). There were fifth graders who had failed so many times they must have been 16.
When I was very very young, I knew that girls were different from boys, but I did not know how. I knew they didn't have penises, and I knew they peed sitting down, so I concluded that they must pee from their butts.
When I was in fourth grade, there was a fifth grade girl who asked some of us if we knew what fucking was. I said I did. She gave me a pencil and eraser and told me to demonstrate. I stuck the pencil in the eraser. She said No, you don't just stick it in there and leave it. She took the pencil and eraser back, and showed me how the pencil goes in, out, in, out.
My parents never said a word about sex to me until after I'd already been having sex for a year. Not that I think they needed to tell me anything.
I had a girlfriend in college who was very domineering. One time I was taking a roadtrip with her and her best friend. For one leg of the trip, I sat in back, with my girlfriend driving and her friend riding shotgun. I sat in the seat behind the passenger's seat. My girlfriend told me that when three people sit in a car, the passenger in the back should always sit behind the driver, because from that seat you can look directly at the person in the passenger seat, and you can look at the driver in the rear-view mirror. Since then, not once have I gotten in the back of a car with two people in the front and not thought about that rule. It's one of the most tangible lasting things I took from a four year relationship.
One time in elementary school my friend Lashana said something about "knickers," a word I had never heard. I said "Knickers? What are knickers." Lashana thought I was making a mean joke, saying "niggers." She said, Don't say that. I said, No, I said "knickers" like you said. She still thought I was saying "niggers." I felt terrible but I didn't know what to say.
One time my friend Jake told his father he wanted to see a horror movie. His father thought he said "whore movie" and he slapped him.
~Monty
11:11:19 AM 
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