You da homey

“The Dahomey amazon was an all female military regiment of the Fon people of the Kingdom of Dahomey in the present day republic of Benin. They existed from the 17th century to the end of the 19th.”

Or did they?

There’s nothing I love more than a found object. Surprising, unpredictable, amusing; sometimes personal, sometimes utterly nonsensical; a found object is a window on another existence that you were never meant to see. Like staring at your always shirtless, hairy chested neighbor sitting in front of his TV eating a piece of fried chicken with his bare hands. It’s not meant for your eyes, but of course you look. Okay, you stare.

So, when I came upon this little note crumpled up on the counter in the coffee shop, I quickly opened it (briefly flashing on the Unabomber, but moving on). What was it? Who left it behind (the answer was likely the patron before me, but why not take the opportunity to obsess on a deeper level?)? Was it a student trying to remember a soon-to-be-tested fact? Was it a history buff fixated on memorization? Was it someone suffering from memory loss trying to get back some semblance of the details they once knew? What, people, what?

Please note the seven question marks used in the last paragraph. If my mom was writing this, they would have been seven question mark/exclamation combos. You know what I mean?!

Back to the subject at hand. Or was this mysterious note not a fact at all? Was this note the direct product of nothing more than a deliberate effort to make something up? An effort to defraud anyone so foolish (or anyone so nosey… hint) as to take it at face value and except it as truth, thereby gaining completely false knowledge and moving forward with life assuming they had one more keen factoid in their arsenal to pull out at parties or impress a date.

“That’s right ladies, I’m talking about Dahomey.”

More importantly, my now full-tilt note obsession set amongst the quaint backdrop of the deli’s meat counter begged the question, what other falsehoods were out there circulating in society? Where else were potential lies being left out in the open for anyone to find, giving future readers an inflated sense of “knowledge?”

“Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in May 1821.” Um, no.

“Albert Einstein’s father was a prominent German architect and oboe player who encouraged his son to follow a path not in mathematics, but in feng shui based gardening design.” Wait, Albert Einstein’s dad played the oboe?

“Mother Teresa was forced to leave her childhood home in Albania and flee to India after the underground poker syndicate she presided over was busted for tax evasion and racketeering.” So many things make sense now.

My mind raced. Frustrated and increasingly worried that I’d been defrauded in the deli, I fled. I just had to know the truth about Dahomey (hey, we all need to know the truth about our homey.).

Arriving home, I threw the note and my now soggy ham sandwich on the counter. Another meal ruined in the search for truth. Typing as fast as my fingers could carry me, which is not saying much, I went to the source.

And then, there it was, smack dab on my beloved Wikipedia. It seemed the information I had been given about this mythical, all female, Amazon regiment was indeed correct.

Well, alright. Go humanity. All was right with the world. I think I’ll sleep a little better with the warmth of bonified knowledge to keep me cozy.

Another day, another ridiculous mystery solved.

Deep down, I knew da homey wouldn’t lie to me.

New Year. New You.

“New year. New you,” the advertisement read. In a testament to the absurdity of the statement, the sign’s lower right hand corner was peeling off and someone had drawn a small penis in the blank, white space that remained.

“New year. New me,” George said aloud. It sounded so simple. This was the year, his year. He would take life by storm, grab his existence from the anonymous universe and march stoically toward the dizzying heights of great success in life, love and looking fabulous, of course. But, thirty-six days into the new year, George didn’t feel like a new him, he felt like an old, out of shape, tired, same old him with a hole in the bottom of his left sock.

What would it take to be the new him? A new job? Joining the Soul Cycle cult? A juicing regimen and a series of exfoliating herbal facials? That all sounded like work and anything herbal always made him sneeze. Well, not exactly anything herbal per se.

His stomach rumbled. The old him was hungry. Approaching Second Avenue, George spied a new “froyo” outpost. The name froyo was so dumb. Besides, frozen yogurt was for single girls on their way home from the gym not hip, cool guys with a life. No, hip, cool guys with a life chose to forgo froyo and dragged themselves into the same pizza place that the same old them had been going to for ten years and ordered two regular slices and a beer.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would be the new him. A total overhaul. He took a sip of his beer. Okay, not a total overhaul, just some key positive changes. Nothing rash though. Maybe a few solid improvements. Well, more like a couple of good, achievable modifications… Or one, yeah, one thing he could really accomplish.

George bit into a piece of crust and looked out the window. That was it. Tomorrow he’d get new socks.

PSPTRAP

According to my extensively researched sources (thank you Slang.org. If ever there was an organization with a true, world-improving purpose, this is it), I am the last one to find out that the phrase, “on the other hand,” has been reduced to acronym form: OTOH. Of all the phrases that scream out for an acronym, is this one of them? Is there really enough use of “on the other hand” in the universe to warrant this? As I write the word “universe” I am momentarily flashing on little green men seated at a round table having a philosophical discussion as one causally puts his hand in the air and says, “Well, on the other hand…”

Apparently, for us and for little green men, saying “on the other hand” has become so arduous that it needs to be shortened. OMG, BTW, that’s ridiculous. On this hand and that one.

Please stop perpetuating these ridiculous acronyms people. Wait, I meant: PSPTRAP.