I would like to share a story about my first apartment, harboring a felon, and those seeds on the coffee table. I hope you enjoy!

I was a 21 year old who was living alone for the first time. Although I was technically “out on my own” since I was 19, this was new ground. Before I was staying with friends, living with roommates and with my cousin Melanie and I even spent some time as the “guy on the couch”. And now, after two years, I had my own apartment.

My first apartment was the private attic of a house with a separate entrance on Stoney Beach in Pasadena. My landladies were an elderly mother, and her daughter named Edith and Rose, and they were about 86 and 66 years old, respectively. And they still lived in the downstairs level of the house.

My rent was only $400 dollars a month with all utilities included, which was an absolute steal for the year 2000, and I was able to pay that rent out of the tips I earned only working doubles on Wednesdays and Sundays as a waiter at a pizza restaurant in Severna Park. I always earned great tips, usually around $100 each day, which more than paid for my rent with money left over to party. It also left me with plenty of room for partying with my friends when I only worked 8 days a month.

Of course all of my partying took place elsewhere because my cheap living situation above two elderly ladies meant that I couldn’t have any wild parties, and the “privacy” of my private attic apartment was about as much as if I were living in the upstairs of my grandmother’s house.

To further illustrate my “privacy”, Edith was of advanced years and her health was failing, so they were constantly refinancing the house in order to draw out the equity to cover the medical bills. That meant that the appraisers always had to walk through the whole house, my half included. Rose was good about giving me heads up so I could make sure to pick my underwear up off of the floor and do the dishes. Usually, that would mean I would call my sister Liz and pay her to do it.

My sister Liz would always come over and clean my apartment for me. The arrangement was $20 cash and also she got to keep whatever change she would find in my pockets or on the floor. And I, being a waiter, used to keep all the quarters I got every shift in order to go to the Laundromat and also to track down the new state quarters for my Mom’s new collection. So if I forgot to take my quarters out of my pockets or apron, let’s just say sometimes Liz cleaned house in more ways than one.

Honestly though, the deal was the deal, and I respected that.

The scariest moment in my “private attic apartment” came the time Rose didn’t give me any notice of her and the appraisers going into my apartment. I wasn’t home at the time, and when Rose called me to tell me after the fact, I remember being a little upset. Though I quickly got over it after remembering that I had just had a date the weekend before, and Liz had come over and cleaned the apartment for me before said date. So I guess it was really no big deal.

That was, until I got home and saw the marijuana seeds sitting on my coffee table.

I was panicked. I thought I was getting evicted for sure. And the worst part, the seeds weren’t even mine, they belonged to my cousin.

I know that sounds like the classic “I was holding it for a friend” excuse, but it’s the truth.

The night before, my cousin Anton had gotten into an argument with his wife at his in-laws house, and when her father stepped up to intervene my cousin decided it would be a good idea to punch him in the face before he could get a word in.

Of course, after her mother called the police, that was when he came over to my house to hide out.

The seeds on my table were from him cleaning up his 1/8 of pot, before “having to smoke a bowl” because his “nerves were shot, I swear, that crazy bitch”.

But how could I explain that to a set of women who were at least over 35 years old when Woodstock happened?

“Uh, Rose, Edith, I wasn’t smoking pot. I was just harboring a felon who brought illegal drugs into your house.”

The phone rings. After looking at the caller ID, I see that it is Rose. She must have heard me walk up the steps. I’m totally expecting to pick up the phone, and hearing Rose’s voice give no greeting, only simply saying, “Pack your stuff, and get out.”

A bead of sweat rolls down the side of my face as I answer the phone.

“Hello?” I nervously answer.

“Hi Ben, I am sorry again about not calling you, but he kind of just stopped by.”

“It’s okay.”

“I also wanted to tell you I really like what you’ve done with the place, with your movie posters all over the walls and all. The appraiser really liked it too.”

“Thank you.”

“And thank you for deciding to do something with that flower bed on the side of the house at the bottom of your steps. I bet whatever you are planting there will look very pretty.”

“No problem, I, uhh, thought it could use it.”

It would appear that she had noticed the seeds, and said something about them, and that’s when the appraiser, a man I had never met in my life and would never meet since, told her that they were flower seeds.

This complete stranger covered for me and didn’t even know me. Maybe he saw the posters all over my walls for movies like Pulp Fiction, Clerks, and Half Baked, and shared my taste in movies. Maybe after he saw those posters and seeds he figured I was a stoner, and maybe he was a stoner, and respected some code I wasn’t aware of. For years I wished I could have met him and thanked him. Who knows? One day he may read this story, and this will all ring a bell, and he’ll get in touch with me. I will definitely buy him a beer or two. Or if he needed, maybe I can hide him from the police for the night.

In the week that followed, I went to the nursery and crafts store and bought packs of different kinds of seeds. I think I bought tulip seeds, daisy seeds, and a pack of Black-Eyed Susan seeds. As you can tell by my purchase, bouquet arranging was not a possible career for me, and I knew nothing about the planting of or arranging of plants or flowers.

This was made even more evident in my application of the seeds to the flower bed outside of my door. I simply ripped the packets open and dumped their contents onto the dirt as I walked to my friend Sam’s van one night. There was no tilling and no watering. I more or less just sprinkled the seeds atop the soil like jimmies on top of ice cream.

A few months later I moved out of that apartment, and I can’t remember if the seeds took or not. Although after my haphazard dumping of them, I’m sure that if they did take, they were probably growing in the grass of the lawn after the wind blew them around the front yard.

As for the marijuana seeds, I’m really glad the situation turned out the way it did and that after 10 years the only thing I have from it is this story. Also I’m glad Rose didn’t get overzealous and decide to plant those seeds she found on the coffee table into the flower bed herself. I would have come home and never knew anything about it. Well, that is until stalks of marijuana began growing next to my entrance way.

And as much as it would have been hilarious to see the looks on people’s faces as they wondered if those plants growing on the side of this elderly woman’s house were what they thought they were, I wouldn’t have wanted to see Rose and Edith plastered all over the front page of the Maryland Gazette with the headline: “DEA Busts Pasadena Mother-Daughter Marijuana Ring”.

Okay, that probably would have been pretty hilarious too, Edith with a shocked look on her face while sporting her nasal cannula, but damn I would have just felt so responsible.

During the investigation, I’m sure the DEA would have come for me too, but I would’ve just hid out at my Cousin Anton’s house. After all, I’d say he really owed me one, wouldn’t you?

Today I would like to share a true story about being young, having a crush and how I got the scar on my eyebrow. I hope you enjoy!

“You have two really crazy eyebrows!” my wife exclaims as she readies a pair of tweezers.

Every now and again, I get a couple of eyebrow hairs that are overachievers. They grow longer than the others at a much faster rate than the others, and they also grow up and out from the rest of my eyebrow. It almost looks like what could be the antennae of something living in my eyebrow.

As my wife moves in closer to pluck the non-conformist super cilium from my brow, she stops.

“Where did you get that scar?” she asks, noticing a small scar in my right eyebrow.

It was Halloween night 1997 in Glen Burnie. I was walking around my favorite haunt, Marley Station Mall, visiting acquaintances and admiring costumes. Having been employed by multiple stores in the mall over a couple of years, and loitering there whenever I was off, I knew people within every inch of the place.

That was, except for one girl. We knew each other, but labeling her just another acquaintance was not possible or remotely my goal. She worked at a little smoothie shop, and at first sight, I was smitten with her. Her hair was dark, her skin was naturally tan. Her eyes were filled with brown irises. I purchased 5 dollar peanut butter and banana smoothies from her everyday for two months straight. Sure, the smoothies were overpriced, but neither I nor my wallet felt any pain over the chance to talk with her for a four minute transaction of shouting over blenders.

Here on Halloween night, the mall was advertised and utilized as a safe trick-or-treating alternative for kids. Each store was supplied their own stash of candy to dispense to the wee savages, and other than children in costumes, business otherwise was very slow. The mall’s normal closing hour was nine o’clock, but most everyone, aside from employees, evacuated the mall by 8 o’clock. That meant that for that last hour on Halloween night, the mall was an outright ghost town.

As I made my way around the mall, I walked past the smoothie shop, and there she was. She was standing there, looking just as beautiful as ever. She was using the lack of business during the last hour on Halloween night to get a jump start on cleaning for the night’s closing. As I approached the counter, time slowed down, and Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away” played in my head.

“Happy Halloween!” I blurted out.

She looked up from her cleaning, surprisingly not startled, and replied, “Hey, you too!”

“So, are you going to a party after here tonight?”

“Nah, probably not. You?”

“I’m kind of walking around right now to find out if there’s anything going on.”

Looking back on it now, that was my opportunity to continue with something to the effect of, “But if you’re not doing anything after work, I would love to take you out for a bite to eat or a late movie or to shoot pool.” But instead, I let her say, “Well good luck with that.”

Not quite sure where to take the conversation after that, I made a slick little backwards exit that I must’ve picked up from Luke Perry’s character on 90210, complete with my hands in my pockets, as I said, “And good luck with your cleaning.”

She looked back up at me with a confused smile and said, “Thanks.”

As she went back to her cleaning, I turned to walk away, and was met face first with a temp wall next door.

When the mall lost a store or a new store was being built, instead of having a vacant space or visible construction, they covered the space with a temporary wall. And it usually said, “Coming Soon, ‘New Store Name Here’”. The one next to the smoothie shop jutted out about 3 feet from the wall that I slickly backed over to during my Luke Perry Dylan-like exit. By explaining that, I’ll now tell you that when I was “met face first with a temp wall next door”, it was more like “my right eyebrow met the very corner of the temp wall next door.”

That thud against the temp wall was so loud that she looked up from her cleaning to find me holding my right eye. I kept my hand on my eye and mustered out a laugh and an embarrassed, “Duh.” before very quickly walking away.

Five feet from of her sight, I took my hand away from my eye to find a pool of blood in my palm that was now running down my wrist.

My mind was an adrenaline filled blur of thoughts like, “Did I really hit the wall that hard?”, and “Why do head wounds always bleed so much? I hope I don‘t need stitches”. But ultimately, every thought went back to “Well, I guess I’m never going back there again.”

I ducked into the coffee shop on the other side of the offending temp wall and asked one of my friends working inside for some napkins. I was immediately met with a sarcastic, “Very funny Big Ben.”

“Of course on a night where fake blood was a staple, I would be truly bleeding from the eye.” I thought to myself as they finally gave me some napkins. After a few minutes of interrogation, I reluctantly gave up the story of my injury, which resulted in me walking away to the empty mall’s echoing sounds of their laughter.

Still embarrassed, I decided it was time to make my way to the pretzel place where my ex-girlfriend worked. My mind was on one thing: sympathy. I seriously needed some, and maybe some ice. During my walk through the mall, I would seem to pass everyone I ever knew. As my fellow mallrats and former co-workers converge on me, I couldn’t help but think, “Where did all of you come from?”

I was looking around for secret portals or used zip lines dangling from the ceiling, when the group came to the conclusion, without a single word from me mind you, that I had been in a fight. They asked me questions like, “Who did this?” and “Which way did they go?” but at this point I was still so embarrassed, especially after the coffee shop confession, that I didn’t answer them. I just walked into the food court, eyes fixed forward, as my fellow mallrats scattered to launch an offensive.

I didn’t care about the impending war, or the calling off of a war carried out in my name, all I wanted was some ice for my eye, and some sympathy from my ex-girlfriend.

Walking up to the pretzel place, I once again had to explain my injury to her and her co-workers, complete with more disbelief, and of course, more laughter. “Halloween is the perfect day to get injured, isn’t it?” I thought. “Glad I wasn’t shot, or I’d be dead by now.”

After the laughter subsided, I got some ice for my eye, and walked outside to smoke a cigarette with my ex-girlfriend. And just as I had hoped for, I not only got a little sympathy, but a couple of smooches too.

Only that night instead of any parties or ex sex, I, embarrassed and slightly battered, just went home.

Later that night I’m laying in my bed, replaying the events of the night, when my pager went off. Certain that the story had made it through the mallrat network, and the voicemail would simply be one of those ear piece overloading bursts of laughter, I begrudgingly checked it anyway. When I called to listen to the message, I’m met with a guy’s voice that I recognize as a fellow mallrat, saying, “Dude, we never found the guys, but we found blood on a temp wall.”

“Great. The girl from the smoothie shop saw it too I bet.” was my last thought before drifting to sleep and escaping this horribly embarrassing Halloween.

The temp wall was removed the next morning, for the November 1st opening of a store that specialized in those goofy flags people have outside of their front doors and kites and products of that material. I never got to see my bloody aftermath, though I would’ve loved to have seen the looks on the workers faces as they took down the wall. Then again, if that night before had taught me anything about people’s perceptions on Halloween, the workers probably thought it was fake blood too. But it didn’t matter. Nothing about that area of the mall would matter anymore, because I never went anywhere near the smoothie shop again.

Five years later and it’s now the winter of 2002. I was doing a stand-up comedy show at a dive bar in a neighboring town of Glen Burnie called Pasadena. As I looked around at the crowd during my set, guess who was sitting at the bar? You guessed it; it was the girl from the smoothie shop. My heart skipped a beat, and in an instant I was that same nervous teenager all over again. As I watched her watching me during one of my jokes, it didn’t appear that she recognized me. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make her recognize me, or if I just wanted to make the audience laugh, or simply my nervousness, but for some reason, I told her and the whole crowd this very same tale of that Halloween night.

It was almost like I had been possessed. My mouth just started going, telling the very story I just told you, a story that I tried for over a year after that Halloween to forget. Blowing past any embarrassment or humility, I spilled it all, on the microphone, for her and for the patrons of the bar. Everyone laughed, especially her, and I finally found myself having a great laugh over that night too.

After the show, I showed her my scar from that night as we shot a couple of games of pool and talked about life and relationships. She was now a mom, and was still as beautiful as I remembered. Maybe that’s why I was surprised that she was single. Now I know that anyone else would have called this encounter “fate”, but I couldn’t stop talking to her about the long distance relationship I was in with this woman I had met in South Carolina.

As for “fate”, well, I guess there might have still been some in play. You see, I didn’t get to take the girl from the smoothie shop out that Halloween night in 1997, and after an embarrassing moment, even made a point to never see her again. However, fate saw that I would see her again and even got that chance to shoot pool with her. Top it all off with the big hug and the kiss on the cheek I got from her at the end of the night, and it was everything I had imagined it to be 5 years earlier.

For today’s post I’d like to share another true story about a moment from my childhood. I hope you enjoy!

It was a lovely Saturday afternoon. I had just finished a morning of some of my favorite cartoons like, “Ritchie Rich”, “Pac-Man”, “The Dukes”, “Incredible Hulk”, and “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends”. That’s when I, and my stomach full of Smurf Berry Crunch cereal, headed for the basement to play with my toys.

It was a simpler time; the days when cartoons, sugar, and toys were all that truly mattered.

Hopped up on the good stuff, I made my way to the basement and was playing alongside my little sister Liz. I had my toy car, and Liz had her doll, or book, or whatever. Being a 5 year old boy, I could have cared less what a 3 year old was into, let alone a little girl. This was especially the case when I had my little Tonka car.

At 5 years old, it was my favorite toy of the moment. You would wind it up a bunch of times, sit it on the floor, and the press the yellow button on top, and it would go! As I sit here, I can easily remember the noise of it winding up; it was a high-pitched plastic zip tie sound, and when you pressed the button, it didn’t get much quieter.

Being a father now of a 5 year old myself, I completely understand why we were made to play in the basement.

After playing with the toy for a while, I began to get bored, and as a 5 year old will do, I started to stray from the directed way to use the toy. After a big wind-up, I propped it up on the wall before hitting the button. It had no wall-climbing ability like my hero Spider-Man. I made a ramp out of some of my Little Golden Books, and as it flipped off the edge, I saw that it didn’t have the speed to give me that big “Duke Boys” jump I was looking for. I gave it one more wind-up, and as I’m looking around for its next stunt to attempt, I accidentally pressed the button. The noise of the tires spinning free sounded so familiar. Then it hit me.

As a child, I was the recipient of Mommy Cuts. That was the name for haircuts performed by my mother. While this may have been more traumatic to some, in our family it wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, Mom gave haircuts to just about every man in the family from her brothers, to me, and even my Dad. She was very good at it, although she never did it professionally or even tried to make a profession out of it. Many in the family wondered why, but at the same time, who wants her to go pro and lose out on free haircuts? She knew her way with a comb and scissors, and very recently in my 5 year old life, she began to expand her skills with the use of electric clippers. As a child, I wasn’t too comfortable with them just yet. Mom’s clippers kind of scratched you up and every now and again they would pull a hair out. And that noise, that buzzing, humming noise, sounded a lot like… the… toy in my hand!

“Hey Liz, come here for a sec.”

My little sister walked over.

“Have a seat in the chair.” I instructed, to which she gladly obliged.

I wound up the toy on the floor. It was a good, hard, and fast wind-up. And as I hit the button, it sounded exactly like Mom’s clippers! My imagination and my actions were fully together in this moment.

I lovingly tell my sister as I bring the toy down on her head of beautiful blond hair, “Now hold still, I’m just going to clean up the…”

In an instant I’m snapped back to reality as the toy made a locking, crack of a sound, and my sister screamed out! I looked down at the toy, its wheels all entangled in my sister’s hair, and the only thing I could think to do was to pull it out of her hair. As her head snapped back with the force of my tugging, she cried out, and I let go.

Liz then took off running for our parents upstairs, and before she left the basement, I could see the weight of the toy was pulling her head down to the one side. After the toy swung out and hit the door jamb, and her 3 year old body stumbled back, I started to run after her. I wanted to try and fix it before she found our mother and father, of course, to spare my backside, but I also at the very least wanted to try and hold the toy up for her so she didn’t hurt herself further. Liz, on the other hand, was probably thinking that I was going to pull at the toy again and cause her more pain, so she was running so fast that I could barely keep up.

As soon as she reached the top of the steps I stopped in my tracks back at the bottom. When she startled Mom in the kitchen, looking nothing less than a screaming, crying mess with her brother’s favorite toy stuck in her hair, it didn’t take but an instant for me to hear, “Ben! What the hell did you do?!”

“I was trying to clean up her haircut!” I yelled up the steps.

By now Dad has joined my Mom and Liz in the kitchen and now came his bellowing voice, “Benjamin! In here, now!”

I slowly made my way into the kitchen, and everyone was furious with me. I was full-on ready to be dragged off to the bedroom for a beating, when instead, Dad simply said, “Stand there, and don’t move.”

It would appear that my date with the belt would be postponed to deal with the situation at hand. This had to be one of the worst feelings as a child. You knew that the whipping with the belt was inevitable, just not when. Not only that, but the situation your parents had to deal with first would have given you more than enough time to hide, call a cab, or if you were really good, fashion a disguise and legally change your name. Only you couldn’t. Because you knew that in the end that it would all just make it worse. My only choice, and the best choice, was to stand there in silence.

Mom and Dad were trying their best to figure out an approach to the situation they found themselves entangled in. Mom, our family barber, was ready to go for what she knew best and said, “I guess I’ll have to cut it out.” Only she didn’t want to do that, because after what seemed like forever, a bald toddler Liz finally got this head of hair. After a few minutes of Mom battling over whether or not to cut the toy out of her daughter’s hair, with a “Dammit Benjamin!” thrown in there for good measure, Dad stepped up to the plate.

Dad’s first approach was the surefire to never work method of reversing what was done. Every second of this only served to tangle her hair into the wheels further. Also, let us keep in mind that the toy’s gears were still engaged, so as he manually turned the wheels backwards they were giving an awful crack. Each crack sent chills down my little spine. “He’s going to break my toy!” I thought. After a few more cracks, it was as if someone else was talking when I blurted out, “You’re going to break it!”

Dad looked over at me with a face that was at first angry over my outburst, but then gave way to a look of inspiration mixed with a mischievous Irish grin.

“I guess we’ll have to take the toy apart.” He happily stated.

As Mom turned around for our “junk drawer”, that catch-all drawer in most kitchens, to look for the screwdriver, I let out a, “Nooooooo!!!” and fell to the floor in heart-broken agony.

The scene that followed was one that I care not to relive, not here, not now. Actually, I’m over it, but I honestly can’t recall much of it since my eyes were either closed or filled with tears for the majority of it. I will say that I remember the final release of my toy’s clutch on Liz’s hair came at the use of a butter knife. And that final whir of the gears inside is a sound I will never forget.

“Tonka Tough”? Apparently Tonka was not tougher than my father.

I remember crying out, and my parents telling me, “You should’ve thought about this before you did that to your sister’s hair.”

To be fair, I did. Except that I was in a totally different moment, holding a pair of clippers. To this day, I partially blame the sugary intoxication of Smurf Berry Crunch.

In the end, Liz’s beautiful hair was spared, and in a shocking twist of events, so was my backside. It turned out that Dad decided that losing my favorite toy was punishment enough, and that I had learned to never do anything like that again.

And had I learned my lesson? Well, I will admit, maybe I should have gotten beat with the belt.