The Spud and Dude Show

Back in the day, when I was at the ripe old age of 15 and still walking uphill to and from school, I made some interesting friends.

Two of these friends were Allan and Cory. Allan was the best friend of a guy that I dated for a month, and Cory was a friend that crashed at his place a lot. Subsequently, Cory did not have a wide variety of clothing, so he wore a work shirt all the time. The name on the work shirt was supposed to say "Steve", but it was in that curly ass girl font, and he became known as "Stove".

I could not remember Allan's name the first 5 times I met him, so I constantly called him "Dude", as that was the thing to call people in the 90's. Ahh the 90's.

I was nicknamed "Spud", for my lack of wanting to get off the couch. Seriously.

So I hung out with Allan for at least a year almost every day. It was like we were separated at birth. We liked similar everything. We spent our time doing all kinds of random stuff.

I met Asa on the bus home from school. He always had this beat to shit Walkman (hey, remember those?), and the only person he talked to was his best friend Derek. In the winter, they would walk over to my house and catch a ride to school with me. Asa started coming over after school, and later in the year after wrestling practice. I'm pretty sure he liked my house because I had a mom. Because he didn't. But that's ok, because it's, like, a million years later, and now we share my mom. :)

So summer rolls around, and my mom and step-dad get married, and everybody goes off for a week and comes home. Asa is on my front porch, and his asshole father has kicked him out. So he moves into the basement. Allan, seeing an opportunity to be lazy, also moves into the basement.

This turns out to be a summer like something out of a movie. Asa is obsessed with making things explode, so he frequents the hardware store for things like fuses and gunpowder. He spent three weeks cutting the heads off matches and stuffing them into a tennis ball. That was disappointing.

Allan also likes to blow things up, but in different ways. We spent an entire day filling old coke bottles with vinegar and baking soda. We'd put the cap back on really fast, and then run out to the street and toss the whole thing in the air. It made a nice messy BANG when it hit the ground. It was a total pain in the ass to clean up too.

They also introduced me to my first Chat room. I can't even remember where it was, but I know it was music chat, and I would sit on there for hours.

Allan could clear a room with a fart, even on the internet. He could also burp the entire alphabet, and the phrase "Oreo Cookie" after some practice. He said the hardest part was the K sound.

One day, Asa came home with a half gallon jug of chocolate milk, and a box of Raisin Bran. He drank half the milk and left the rest next to his bed. He then proceeded to eat the ENTIRE box of Raisin Bran. Allan and I were laughing our asses off. That night, before I went to bed, Asa finished off that last quart of chocolate milk. The one he had brought home and left out all day.

The next day he had the worst stomach ache ever and couldn't understand why. My mom still talks about that.

Both of these guys cared about me in their own way, and the best example of this that I can think of is a storm. I am sofucking scared of thunder it makes me want to cry. I do not like being alone during a thunderstorm, and if I am, I will turn the TV up and try my best to ignore it.

So one night, we are having this storm. It's late, and I am in bed, trying to fall asleep. The rain is nice, and I am at that point of almost sleep. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM THUNDAR. It is so loud that my window panes are rattling. Thirty seconds later, Allan and Asa show up in my room. No knocking, just run in and make sure I am ok. They stayed through the storm, entertaining me and keeping me distracted, until the thunder stopped. I made a tape recording (blast from the past!) and called it The Spud and Dude show, guest starring Asa. Allan even stayed until I fell asleep.

We constructed many things that summer. Not all of them were combustible. Take, for instance, The Anarchopoly Table.

Sorry, lemme explain. We had an old Monopoly set that didn't have all the pieces. Why we still had it, I have no clue. So when I found a Sharpie in the basement, I decided we were going to remake Monopoly. We changed almost every space on the board. "Jail" became "School", the one place we didn't want to go. There was Oriental- no Chinese, The Pennsyltucky Train, Reading Rainbow, Leaky Faucet, Free Hand Job. Our ideas were insane and there was no sense of order to it AT ALL. This game was entitled: Anarchopoly.

Anywho, the table. So I told Allan that he totally needed to build a table so we had a place to put drinks, and an ash tray. This coming after I spilled my drink into the ash tray for the 3rd time that day. So we went into my step-dad's wood shop and found a bunch of wood. We found 2 pieces that were the same size, and thin and flat, and glued those together for a table top. Then we found 4 pieces of long skinny wood that were approximately the same length. We nailed those on, and PRETSO! We had a table.

It looked so plain, with it's half white, half turquoise top and really old colored wood legs. Then I found my markers. We doodled and scribbled all over this table. It was chaotic. It was poetic. It was the most awesome freaking table to ever be a table. I wish I had a picture of this thing, it was EPIC.

It was called The Anarchopoly Table, and we used it for everything. If we played a game, it was on The Anarchopoly Table. If we were making stuff to blow up, it was on The Anarchopoly Table. When the guys moved out, and I moved down into the basement, I inherited The Anarchopoly Table. I put it in the middle of the room. I did my homework on it, I ate my dinner on it. I sorted my laundry on it. I burned pictures of exes on it.

When I moved out, I was 19. I did not have a place for The Anarchopoly Table. So I left it in the basement, thinking that it would stay there like everything else I put in the basement anyway.

When I moved back 3 months later,The Anarchopoly Table was gone. It turns out that my mom totally hated it, and had wanted to throw it away for YEARS. I was totally mad at her. >:$