What Tim Chose

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name Tim C Hose
sex male
birthday 03.27.81

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After Ten Billion Years Down the fat! Spring Break: Hands and Feet End of the Break BREAK POINT End of the Break CONTINUED End of the Break Biloxi Blue My Kryptonite Accidental Perversion Work, it turns out, is hard work.

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Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Apparently, I have nice hair. It's not really something I think about, well, ever, but people comment about it to me. I was sitting at work one night at the front desk of my residence hall, and a pizza delivery lady came in and asked me for her customer's number. While I was looking for it, we were chatting, because I'm just chatty like that, and she said to me, "Wow! You have perfect hair! I mean really, perfect!"
It kind of made me nervous, but mom raised a polite boy, so I just said thanks, gave her the number and she was on her way. The only thing that made it not be just weird was that she said it in an honest way, not a creepy way. It put me in a better mood than I was already in (Which was good anyways), and I almost strained my neck trying to look at my hair in the windows. Looked normal.
Another thing that it did was remind me of other "hair incidents" that have happened. There are a lot of little ones and one pretty funny one.
The little ones are just that every single time that I've ever gone to a barber to get my hair cut, they have always said something about how thick my hair is.
"Oh my goodness! You've got some thick hair!"
"Jeez kid! Your hair is so thick!"
"Wanda, get me the weedwhacker!"
And so on.
The other one was a couple of semesters ago. My friend Brian and I were washing our clothes at the laundrymat because the washers in the basement of Twin Towers were all being used. In the laundrymat there was this black family washing their clothes. This means that the poor woman's kids were running around like free range chickens, and she apparently didn't care what they did, or how close to death they came. These kids were just like me when I was their age. Jumping from table to table, screaming... It was hilarious.
Two of the brothers who were a little bit older, maybe six at the most, climbed atop the washers in front of me and Brian and proceeded to give us a how-to on sumo wrestling. While one kid stomped his feet and screamed "Ahh SHO!" at the top of his lungs, the other one stomped his feet and screamed "Hui!" back at him. Then, after their opening ceremony was over, they started to kick the crud out of each other sumo-style.
While this was happening, their little brother, who vaguely reminded me of Fat Albert, only tiny, became my fast friend. This kid was hilarious in everything he did. For one thing, I only understood one sentence that he said the entire time I was there.
He came up to me at first, pointed to my hand, and said, "Aauga arrrgaa mrmph frowl!"
I nodded at him and said, "Yes sir!"
Apparently this was the reaction he wanted, because he grinned and said, "Murphle." in a satisfied tone, then decided that I was his jungle gym.
So there I was, watching these two kids thrash around on top of the washers like a freaky midget WWF show while their little brother was stomping on my head in order to get to where he could sit on the table above me, and Brian and I were both laughing so hard that I thought I would pass out and my stomach hurt the next day.
When the kid had finally gotten up on top of the table, he said the only thing that I understood that night.
He grabbed my hair in both hands, started yanking my head from side to side, and bellowed down at me, "I like your hair!"
Then, he resorted to his babblings again.
Ahh, college.
Ahh, kids.
And ahh, hair.
We left the laundrymat with three new friends and sore tummies that night, and I called it a good day. Any time you go home actually tired from laughing is a day that should shine in your memory, I think. It made me feel good, the kind of good feeling you get when a friend writes or calls just to say hi, the kind of good you get from reading the Beatitudes, and you know that everything's going great in America.
Just thought I'd share with you guys.

TimChose [ 6:38 PM ]

This story is about a night. It's about something that I want to remember and I wrote it down as well as I could so hey, it's my story, live with it.
I went swimming one day with my best friend Peter and his family. My brother came along too, which was awesome. We drove out in the woods in their family's Jeeps to a swimming hole only we know about that was surrounded with shale rocks and the national forest. We swam in the river, scrounged large hunks of the shale to take home for a walkway, and roasted weenies on a fire. The sun was warm, but there were clouds enough to keep us from burning. We had rock skipping Olympics, rock throwing Olympics, and I pulled an entire tree out of the ground with my bare hands for firewood. No joke. I felt strong, I felt good, I felt loved. It was a good day.
Anyways, after a while of goofing around, tossing the little kids in the water, we cooked some weenies, drank some cokes, and ate watermelon. We swam a little more (I know, I know, you're supposed to wait 30 minutes, but we're irresponsible.) and then packed up all the rocks and headed for home.
The ride home is really the memory that I want to write down here tonight, it made a perfect end to a wonderful day. On the ride home, we had a lot of big flat rocks in the back of the Jeep, not to mention Peter's little sister, so I had to sit up on the top of the seat and grip the crossbar, which was cool. This took me out of most of the conversation, so I just sat and enjoyed the ride. At first, I just closed my eyes and listened to the wind rushing in my ears, and that was great in itself. There I was with it's pressure on my face, the sound all around me, and I could imagine that I was flying. Then, though, I opened my ears a little farther, and also opened my eyes.
Things got better.
The first thing that I saw was the moon. That night, the moon was in it's cresent shape, and it was a light orange. I thought of the little logo from Dreamworks, where there is a little boy fishing off of the moon, and I could easily imagine that that yellow-orange moon was God's throne. The next thing that I noticed was the other sounds. There were two of them. One, the loudest besides the wind, was the sound of all the night creatures in the woods as we passed. It was as if, as we were driving towards them, all of the little things that chirp or croak were calling out to us in greeting, and as we passed, they just faded away, being replaced by new hails for attention up ahead. It made me feel in touch with the entire world, us driving along, God on His throne in the sky watching over us, the stars in the dark sky above, and all of the tiny things shouting with one voice around us.
The other noise that I began to hear was the voices of my best friend and my brother talking about something. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I didn't need to. They were happy, I could tell that by the tone, and by the sound of laughter that floated up to me from where I was sitting with my head above the Jeep canopy.
I sat back, listening to the wind, watching the stars while the creatures of the night sang to me, with my Lord watching me from above, and the happy voices of the people I love most in this world floating up to me, and I was content. I wanted to tell someone about what I was feeling, I wanted someone to be there with me, so that I could show them how to listen.
It was one of my best days, and that's the truth. I just wanted to write it down so that I could remember it, keep it.

TimChose [ 6:10 PM ]

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Hey, I only say things like that because they're true. Well, mostly true. I'm not THE Smokey Bear, that's my mom, but I'll get to all of that. This is just a record of a day I had a couple of years back. Thus it went, sirrah.
I'd been staying up reeeally late recently, either on the computer or driving, or running, whatever. I rarely had gotten to bed before three am that summer, which is okay, because my job didn't start until the evening. Waitering was fun! Anyways, as fun as waitering was, I love to have more cash on hand for college. To this point, I did this little odd job for my friend's dad.
No, not lap dances, not donating blood or plasma, not even training rabid dogs. My job was nastier than any of those. I cleaned out those pits underneath the carwash, where all that... goo... that you people wash off of your car collects. Let me tell you, it's icky. Icky in the way that a garbage collector would turn his nose at. The thing is, though, it's darned good money. Evens out to about twenty dollars an hour, and I did two hours worth, so I didn't complain about the need for a shower.
That started off my day, covered in stinky muck, at six thirty in the morning. No, I'm not a morning person, at least, not voulntarily. You can pay me to be one, though.
After that, I went home and sand-blasted myself clean, napped for a few hours, and then I went to be Smokey.
You see, my mother is the real Smokey Bear. My mother answers every single letter that any kid in America writes to Smokey Bear. Isn't that cool? For some reason, "they" chose this little podunk town in Arkansas to be the Smokey base camp.
It's also my priveleage to say that I've begged her, and yes, she's going to let me write a letter. This has got me completely psyched out, for some reason.
Well, since she works at the ranger station in town, she has me voulnteer for things she needs done, and since I have some spare time during the summer, I do it, and gladly. So she had me dress up in the Smokey Bear costume one day for the kids at this kind of mockup of a career day. It was flat awesome in some ways, terribly distressful in others. As a note, Smokey does not talk, ever, just so you can keep that in mind, when I tell you about what happened. It was bad in two different ways.
First, the bad.
The costume is hot. I had an ice pack strapped to me under it, but that didn't help my head, which cooked. So there I was, looking through the eyes and nose and mouth of this gigantic microwave oven that I had on my head while trying not to step on children. To hinder me further, sweat was pouring into my eyes, and then... my nose started to itch.
People would come up and talk to Smokey, and there was one horrible scene I cound out about later from my brother, who watched it happen. It went like this.
Man walks up grinning with his daughter in tow. The child looks a little bit apprehensive.
"Hey Smokey!"
Silence. No response from Smokey. The big bear just stands there, and the only motion it makes is that his head is shifting around slightly.
"Hey... Smokey?"
The child is now getting worried. Does Smokey not like her? Does he know that she played with her daddy's matches three weeks ago? Worry sets in. Why does his head keep shifting like that?
"Ummm. Everything okay there big fella? Yeah well, it was nice seeing you... bye."
The little girl is now white faced and close to crying. Never again will she touch matches. Never, she promises to herself!
*INSIDE THE SMOKEY BEAR COSTUME*
I'm frantic. My nose itches so badly now that I'm hunkering my head down and supporting the mask with my shoulders while I try to rake my nose across the inside of the head. I didn't even hear the man try to talk to me, I'm focused on balancing the head so that it doesn't topple off of my shoulders while at the same time, I'm tossing my head around inside the thing like a man possessed. Finally, I look up in time to see a frightened looking girl and her dad back away from me.
Huh. I think. She must be scared of bears.
So that was most of the bad part. The only other bad part was that I couldn't talk to tell anybody anything. It's a good thing that I used creative hand signals.
On to the good part! I was so happy today, no matter how much my nosed itched. The kids loved me, for the most part. One kid in particular, I remembered. He looked to be about fourteen, which is too old to believe that Smokey is real, but he was also slightly retarded. Not so much, though. I think he was in public school, just slower, that's all. He'd hung around me for fifteen minutes, at a distance. I think he was deciding what to say. He finally came up to me kind of shyly and got up close. For all the shyness, though, he had this determined look in his eye that told me he was serious about something.
"Smokey," he started, "I've been reading your comic, about how I shouldn't smoke. I don't smoke, it ment a bunch to me. I love you, Smokey."
Ok, so I'm a big baby. That touched my heart, that's for sure. I wasn't supposed to talk, but when he hugged me with that smile on his face, I broke the rules and whispered, "I love you, too."
None of the other kid's hugs ment as much as that one did.
The rest of the day was a blur, and I rushed through work that night, just waiting until I could come home and write it down.

TimChose [ 8:58 PM ]

One day I was hit by a huge fit of no sense, and I went to Wal-Mart and bought a little Coleman TM two man inflatable boat. I got the two man because the one person was too small to hold my two hundred and ten pound frame, sadly enough. The box looked pretty great, it made it look like I and somebody else could easily sit in the thing and just have a ball. Well, the boat turned out to be big enough for yours truly, but that's okay, I didn't really have anyone else to go with me, nor did I really want anybody else along.
So, I took my new yacht to our local lake, hooked the paddles in it, and tossed it out there. It was beautiful. I think I'll paint a name on the bow, just to be me. Something like "Destroyer," or "Scourge of the pond."
Yes sir.
Anyways, once I had my little boat all afloat on the lake, I threw in a box of Cheeze-Its, a bottle of Dasani (Yeah, sissy water, I know, but it's good!), my Bible, a book, and my sketch pad and charcoals. I'm an art student to the core, and I felt like drawing. Once I'd loaded up, being very careful not to get water in my precious barge, I headed out to the middle of the lake, passing by some kids who were swimming by the boat loading zone.
I was an instant role model.
"Daddy! I want to grow up to be like that guy! He has everything!" A little boy shrieked at his father. I kind of waved an apology to the poor guy because I know he probably still hasn't heard the child's fervant wishes for a boat like mine. As well he should want one. I love my sexy party barge. Oh yes. Ok, so party barge isn't the word, I didn't even have room to keep my feet in the thing with all of my stuff in there with me, but hey, it's my first boat, darn it!
So there I was, finally tied off to one of the many tree trunks sticking out of the water in the middle of the lake, reading and drawing, the sun slowly sinking over the mountains while I drank my sissy water and I realized, this is it, man. This is one of those priceless moments that are just for me. Having someone else there would have totally spoiled it, so I milked it for all it was worth, baby.
I binged on my Cheeze-Its.
I drew the sunset, it was a good one, and somehow still looked great in black and white.
I read.
I napped.
On the way back, a couple of old guys were getting ready to go fishing in their motor boat when I paddled by in my dinghy. We talked for a little while because it's Arkansas, and people are friendly, even strangers. I said something about how this was the silliest thing I'd done in a while, and one of them confessed that he was a little jealous. I told him where I'd bought the boat, and I seriously think the went and got one.
One day made brighter. I wonder what he'll name his?
When I left, I let that little kid help me take the boat out of the water. He swelled up in pride and told me that once, when he was little (He's little now) that he found an alligator in his own boat. His dad told me that it was back when the kid was twenty, to which I said, "Oh, right, back in Vietnam, when he helped Napoleon sign the Magna Carta?" We laughed, and the kid just agreed with it all. Who knows, maybe he's just the shortest time traveler there ever was.
In all, it was a dang fun day, and I don't regret it at all. There were more productive things I could have been doing, sure, but nothing better.
Nothing at all.

TimChose [ 8:17 PM ]