My bite is worse than my roar.

When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch that much TV, which was a good thing; it forced me to actually go outside and play, something I loved to do. Nowadays, I sit in my room with my curtains drawn, swaddled in blankets and a hoodie regardless of the weather. Not nearly as healthy as my childhood activities.


My family was also in a much different situation: we only had one television in the house, much simpler than our current three. So if I wanted to watch something, not only did I need to have "TV time" left for the day, but the TV itself needed to be free. Being the youngest member of the family, I was at the bottom of the food chain, so to speak; if my sister wanted to watch something, she had the power to take over the living room by force. We never really fought when we were younger, and we're as close as a brother and sister can be to this day, but I choose to believe that she enjoyed tormenting me as a child. The major weapon that was employed against me was tickling, but she sometimes branched out into the classic physically-move-me-to-another-room-and-lock-me-in-there-despite-my-constant-blood-curdling-screams-and-begging-for-mercy technique. I tried to fight back as best I could, but it's hard to defend yourself when you're five and a 13-year-old's tickling is bringing your bladder closer and closer to emergency release.


So my tiny, single-digit-year-old self wasn't strong enough to outright overpower her. Maybe this is how I became more of an introverted, planning-type person; my attacks needed to be covert and unexpected. After what was probably a couple days, but what felt like years, I had created some semblance of a plan in my underdeveloped mind. What I was specifically going to do, I wasn't sure; but I knew I needed to strike when she wasn't expecting it. One day, the opportunity presented itself. 


She was lying on the couch on her back, and since it was the 90s, she was wearing some form of a belly shirt; this was exacerbated by the fact that her arms were behind her head, pulling it up a little bit farther. I was off in a corner playing with my dinosaurs, silently watching, waiting for her attention to shift from how annoying my guttural growls and roars were to the new Boyz II Men video playing on MTV. I thought to myself how ironic it was that she was the one watching TV this time around, unaware of my imminent attack. Except MTV was way more boring than The Busy World of Richard Scarry, so her multiple affronts on me were worse than my simple plot for revenge. I was more than justified.


Noticing her revealed stomach, the plan that had been floating around in my mind suddenly became grounded; I knew what I had to do. With a devious smile on my face and a charging shout that would put Braveheart to shame, I ran forward and bit down on her stomach with such vigor that my attack was more effective than I ever thought it would be; almost immediately upon contact, the skin of her stomach broke open, creating a sizable wound that I was sure my dinosaurs would be proud of. Her screams of pain brought me back to reality and out of my state of euphoria, followed by a quick flurry of arms hitting me in retaliation. Minutes later, she was on the way to the hospital with my dad while my mom spent a gratuitous chunk of time explaining to me that it was not okay to bite people on the stomach, something that I did not understand or agree with, followed by cries of wondering where she had gone wrong with me.


I don't really know when or how I decided it would be fun to start biting people, but this is my best guess as to when it began. After having broken the skin of my sister's stomach and subjecting her to a very painful tetanus shot, I got the taste for blood and began to seek out any opportunity to strike again. More than convinced my razor sharp fangs were more than a match for my sister' brute strength, I spent hours stalking her, pretending I was a velociraptor hunting down my wounded prey. I pounced only when I was sure her guard was down and I had a chance to rip a generous portion of flesh from my unsuspecting victim. Much to her benefit, the same opportunity never presented itself and a short decade later, I realized that biting people was not a socially accepted behavior and decided to grow out of my "LOL I'M SO RANDOM AND WEIRD" phase, something that I have come to loathe and pretend never existed. 


But it was all worth it. After my mom was done lecturing me about how I can't bite people and that, for the thousandth time, I'm not a dinosaur, the living room was empty; the television was mine. My sister has forgotten the lesson I taught her that day, or maybe she never understood why I thought it was a good idea to bite her stomach and send her to the hospital, but I knew. You don't get between me and something I want. And five year old me wanted to watch Sesame Street.

So happy together.

Sometimes, you find things that are super cool. And then you find other things that are super cool. Then, every once in a while, you get the idea that these two super cool things should be one super cool thing. If you're me, however, then you get these ideas constantly. Here's some stuff that I think should be considered package deals.

Cake and cake

Cake is awesome on its own. Moist and delicious with creamy frosting, there's almost nothing better on this earth. The only way to improve cake? More cake. "More cake" should be our national motto; everybody would be happier, and think of all the problems we could fix. The answer to war? More cake! The answer to hunger? More cake! The answer to eliminating dangerous drug cartels? More cake! The answer to unwed, teenage mothers? More cake! And condoms! Hurray!

Sleep and exercise

Since "more cake" probably isn't the answer to obesity, this is the perfect solution. If scientists or nutritionists or personal trainers or something can find some way to get our bodies to exercise while we're asleep, BAM, problem solved. I understand there might be difficulties in making this dream a reality, and I'm willing to wait for science to catch up to the inner mechanics of my mind. I'll learn to be patient, I really will. Seriously, Stephen Hawking, call me up. I'm sure this is probably outside your typical realm of interest, but maybe we can work on something together. I'm an idea guy.

Microwaves and television

Sometimes, when I'm microwaving something, I think, "You know, I hate waiting, but I don't want to walk away and have the microwave beep before I can stop it when there's one second left. I wish there was some way to entertain myself rather than pace back and forth in the kitchen, looking at food because I'm bored, then remembering that I'm waiting for food to finish cooking." One day, it dawned on me; we need a TV installed in the microwave. Then I would never have to stop staring at a screen. My life would be complete.

Zombies and dinosaurs

Two of my favorite things. There needs to be a movie or TV show or book or something about these two subjects. Think of all the zombie movies that would have been improved with the inclusion of dinosaurs: 28 Days Later, Day of the Dead, Zombieland, the list goes on. Just imagine, Mark Zuckerberg and Abigail Breslin fight off a horde of zombies, only to turn around and see a velociraptor staring them down. Lord help them if they come across zombie dinosaurs. Facebook would never be the same.

I'm Like a Hot, Dinosaur Bath.

If you were to meet me in person, you'd realize a couple things pretty quickly. Well, maybe not quickly; I might have to explain things in a totally roundabout and confusing way first. But eventually, you'd come to at least one realization. Maybe.

When I was a kid, I loved baths. Especially bubble baths. Something about turning myself into a tiny, naked Santa Claus was too awesome to turn down. In a manner lacking any coordination, I would simultaneously throw my favorite bath toys into the tub, and then almost immediately after, throw myself in like I was an Olympic diver trying to beat out Soviet Russia for the gold, potentially furthering Cold War tensions but giving the folks back home something to cheer about. I never discovered the correlation between flooding the bottom two inches of the bathroom and my mother's inexplicable frustration that was directed at me the rest of the day after my baths.

Somewhere between my feet leaving the ground and my body breaking the surface of the water, I would realize that I was about to land on a bunch of pointy, plastic dinosaurs. And these dinosaurs were prepared to stab me like a bunch of knives, still pissed off at the universe for their meteoric demise. Looking back on it, this was really a dramatic reenactment of the dinosaurs' actual extinction. Or a really bad movie sequel, something called "Extinction 2: Revenge of the Velociraptors."

I did this more than once. I never learned. Every time I landed on the dinosaurs, I cried. My repeated insistence on impaling myself would truly be a wonderful case study in behavioral conditioning; more specifically, the fact that behavioral conditioning didn't seem to apply to me. But I was a resilient kid when it came to enjoying bath time; it didn't take me long to stop crying and start making hats and beards out of the bubbles.

Now, stick with me here. This analogy is going to make almost no sense, but it's the best way(questionable) I can describe myself and my sense of humor. I'm a lot like this bath scenario; at first glance, I seem really nice and calm beneath the surface. I am the bubbles that my six year old self coveted so highly, the bubbles that made me rip my Batman pajamas off at a rate that thankfully did not result in a career of stripping. As you get to know me, you realize...wow, his sense of humor is kind of mean. Ow. Wait, why does this hurt. Crap, did I seriously just land on an ankylosaur? You understand that, much like the toys, my sense of humor is all in fun, but it still sucks when your ass comes down full-force on a t-rex tail.

But the bite of my humor is quick, and you get used to it after a while. You get used to accidentally shifting onto a stegosaurus spike every now and then, and for the most part, the capacity to frolic amongst the bubbles and transform into some kind of weird, reptile-obsessed Benjamin Button is no longer hampered.

If that story did not help you understand my personality at all, then we're both having the same issue. I feel like I know myself worse now than I did before I started this post. 

On a side note, looking back on my time spent with inanimate animal-shaped objects, a lot of things make sense now; for example, I have a series of drawings of myself with my imaginary t-rex companion, Dante. 

Why I chose to name him after a lunar crater is some kind of unforeseen irony that I didn't anticipate at the time of Dante's inception, but it's too late now to change his name to something potentially less insulting to the history of his species.

On a slightly unrelated but completely astonishing note, check out a drawing I did of one of my best friends Johana riding a giant catfish:

She has an irrational fear of catfish, because apparently some of them get big enough to eat people or something, so I named it Spock after her favorite Star Trek character. I don't know if it made the catfish less frightening to her, but I thought the concept was worthy of some kind of Nobel Peace Prize for human-catfish relations. Though the reality of that idea is absurd, because from what Johana has told me, catfish are entirely opposed to rational discussion. But if they ever have a change of hear, I feel like my drawing has opened the door.

My Cloven Hoof Problem

Everyone has at least one thing they struggle with. For many, it's smoking or overeating. For others, it's an addiction to zombie dinosaur fan fiction or living in a gas station bathroom because you found a spider in your apartment and it disappeared, and there's no way you can go back there until you know that thing is dead and isn't breeding thousands of children that are going to crawl on you when you fall asleep.. Whatever the severity of your problem is, we all wake up and face a certain challenge every day.


While I have a whole host of issues to choose from, my most crippling debilitation is writing zombie dinosaur fan fiction social anxiety. For those of you that don't suffer from this delightful condition, let me paint you a picture. Imagine everything you do in your daily life, such as talking to people or leaving your house, and then add a thick layer of lipid fear to those scenarios. Think you're gonna go to the store today? HA, no, there's someone there waiting to judge you for walking around in penguin pajamas because taking a shower requires too much effort, and the towels are all the way over there.

That phone's ringing? Well, it's about to go to voice mail, because the moment you answer, you're going to start babbling like an idiot, sputtering one incoherent sentence after another, until the person on the other line realizes they've just reached some sort of invalid who should not be allowed to answer the phone. 

Personally, the main things that I find terrifying are phones and jobs. Which is not exactly what I would consider convenient things to be afraid of. You need a job to afford things like food and new computers, and phones to communicate with the world outside of your four-walled safety blanket.

Why are phones scary? I have no clue. There's something about answering a phone and talking to a total stranger that gives me a combination of indigestion and flop sweat. Caller ID helps, but if the number is blocked or I don't recognize it, I go through a complete and total rundown of every possible outcome as I decide whether or not to answer the phone. What if it's a Nigerian prince calling to tell me I just inherited millions of dollars? Then I should probably answer it, I've always wanted millions of dollars. But on the other hand, what if it's someone just waiting on the other line to insult and judge me for daring to answer the phone?

In my mind, it's usually the latter. In reality, it's never the former. My aversion to phones might be explained when I realize that answering it is in no way beneficial to me, and in an attempt to keep my 20-year laziness streak running, I have now formed a spine-chilling fear of doing anything I don't absolutely have to do.

At 20 years old, I have only had one job. I worked at a grocery store called Trader Joe's for about nine months, and while I plan on dedicating at least one post to the things I encountered there, it deserves mention in this post in particular.

Have you noticed a lot of alliteration so far? It's bothering me, but not enough to go back and change anything. Laziness has defeated my self criticism this round.

So while I worked there, I had what I would call daily panic attacks as I woke up and realized I had work that day. I would spend hours hyperventilating and sweating profusely as I mentally prepared myself for customers asking if the corned beef had any pork in it, and in case you're wondering, no, it did not. 

Something about working with a combination of managers potentially judging me for not working hard enough and customers judging me for trying my hardest to appear unafraid of them, even though my uncontrollable nervousness and deer-in-the-headlights look every time one of them approached me probably gave it away, had me in a state of panic on a regular basis.

If that poorly drawn deer does not permanently welcome me into your heart out of adoration and sympathy, then I don't know what will.

I won't get into the details of what led to my quitting that job, since I might be saving that for a future post, but the above is a very detailed reenactment of what happened on an almost daily basis. Now that I no longer have a job, I'm left with a very small amount of constantly-dwindling funds in my bank account. Finding another job terrifies me more than I'm comfortable to admit, but it has allowed me to waste even more time doodling for you.

So now, I'm left with either living a life of dependency and hoboism, or facing my fears and finding a new job at some point. For the time being, I'm trying to find ways to get paid for being a recluse. I'm wondering if it's possible to put "hermit" on a job application. It would most likely hurt me more than help me, because I doubt a potential employer would find me very appealing once I started to explain the likenesses between myself and Boo Radley, minus the dendrophilia and penchant for children.