1. When I was about twelve or thirteen, my parents took me and my friend Sean to Six Flags Great Adventure, a decent (as far as I can recall) amusement park. We had fun, I'm sure, but I don't remember much specific about the trip. We were leaving for the day, walking toward the parking lot. Out of the corner of his eye, Sean saw some hot young thing bending over to tie her shoe or something. He said, "Whoa!" and turned to look. He kept walking and staring, as did I, for about five seconds, until "CLANG!" he walked face-first into a big-ass metal pole. His head was to the side, or he surely would have broken his nose, but in the moment, it was the height of comedy, and I about wet myself. My parents, being parents (and responsible for Sean's well-being) were less-amused.
2. In high school, I wasn't the fattest kid. Oh, I was a fat kid, don't you worry your pretty little head about that, just not the fattest kid. I don't remember his name, but he was very big, probably 350-400 pounds. One year, we had gym class together. Class was held in the basketball gym, which had retractable bleachers lining the sidelines. Before class one day, some random classmate and I were sitting on the bleachers, not interacting at all, just waiting for the rest of the class to finish changing into their gym clothes. Volleyball was scheduled for that day, as there were nets set up. Fattest Kid came out of the locker room, and for whatever reason, was doing karate-type moves - "Hiiii-YA!" with a karate chop or kick, that type of stuff. That was plenty amusing in itself. He saw the volleyball nets, and approached one. He started to do his karate moves toward the net, like it was a floppy sparring partner or something. He stood back and said "Hiiii-YA!", launched a kick at the net, tangled his foot in the bottom, did a couple of desperate one-leg hops, and plopped to the floor. I thought I was going to pass out with laughter. The other guy watching was laughing so hard he rolled down the bleachers a few steps. Fattest Kid picked himself up, brushed himself off, and went to sit in the corner like nothing had happened. Probably the best response.
3. My friend Doug and I used to write reviews of zines for his Zine World. People sent them to his mail drop, and the staff would review them. One day probably about fifteen years ago, we went to the mail drop and picked up a few days worth of deliveries. On the way home, we stopped at a donut shop. As we were eating, we read. He picked a random zine from his backpack. I forget the name, but it was poetry. Neither of us were big fans of poetry, but we can review it objectively. He opened the zine at random and started reading out loud. I can't say I remember the poem exactly, but it was a serious one, and went something like:
The beauty of life
Is soon to be gone
Replaced by death
Sandwich Sandwich Sandwich
I thought the donut guy was going to call the cops on us, we laughed so long and loud. It was a random passage from a random poem from a random zine, and it so fully represented what I hate about some poetry, that to this day, I can make myself laugh out loud by saying "Sandwich Sandwich Sandwich."
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