Man (frustrated): "The problem with everything these days is that media companies are only hiring 16 and 18-year-old kids to decide what counts as news and what gets made into TV shows and movies!"
Me: "What do you mean by '16 and 18-year-old kids'?"
Man: "Anyone under 50."
Me: "!"
The only things I really remember from my short time in Cub Scouts are dressing as a monkey for a play, answering “dandelion” when they asked for flower names (and getting laughed at), and the pinewood derby.
For the derby, you got a block of wood and some wheels to make a car and raced it downhill. My dad, still drinking back then, was very into it. One Saturday night, while I was watching SNL, he was in the basement melting lead fishing sinkers with a few beers. He drilled holes in the front of my car, poured in the molten lead to make it heavier, sealed the holes with wood putty, and painted them yellow like headlights. When that looked too obvious, he slathered the whole front of the car in thick yellow paint.
I got the date of the race wrong and missed it, which turned out to be a blessing. Another kid told me they weighed the cars, so my lead-filled masterpiece would’ve gotten me busted and humiliated.
Between that and “dandelion,” Cub Scouts was not my shining moment.
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| "You is cursed," says Mr. VooDoo. |
We'd slip these notes into students' textbooks, teachers' grade books, people's lockers, under staff coffee cups, and inside teachers' office mailboxes. All over the place.
Luckily, our 8th-grade teacher found it amusing and gave us a special mention at graduation for making something entertaining out of nothing. She said she’d crack up whenever she opened a book and one of those notes fell out.
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| Me & Brother Todd in the 1970s. |
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| My mother, age 3; with Santa Claus, 1950s. |
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| 1 year old Jonnie, 1970. |
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| My first knife ever. |
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| Ulysses' Death Knife. |
In 1981, Pepsi launched a bottle cap collecting game to ignite the "Pepsi Spirit" in their customers. The idea was simple: collect the letters printed on the inside of each bottle cap to spell "Pepsi Spirit." This was before plastic twist-off caps were common, and you had to pop open a Pepsi with a bottle opener. Here’s the original commercial.
As a kid, I didn't realize that the rarest letter was the elusive R. I thought the distribution of letters was even, and I would excitedly tell people that we had all the letters except for the R. Little did I know, everyone was in the same boat.
One day, while stopping at a gas station, my friend and I thought we had struck gold. The gas station owner had altered a P into an R with a marker and had the caps displayed next to the register. We were ecstatic and thought our dream of completing the Pepsi Spirit was finally coming true.
"We have the E! You have the R! Let's go in together and split the money!" we exclaimed.
But then, the gas station owner laughed and pointed out that it was a fake R—one of the fifth ones he'd made because people kept stealing them!
Pretty good prank.
The first burritos I ever ate were frozen ones from the supermarket.
Our supermarket’s frozen brand offered three varieties:
I loved the first two, but Chili Dog was introduced later, and I was unfamiliar with it the first (and only) time I tried one. I assumed it would be filled with beefy chili dog-style chili or something.
I'll never forget my shock the first time I bit into it – the burrito had a whole hot dog in it! It was a hot dog wrapped in beans, then encased in a tortilla and frozen. You would bite into it and pull the whole hot dog out.
It seemed very unnatural and wrong. I was probably 12 or 13 years old, and I think I shrieked out loud when I bit into it and pulled out a hot dog. It was messed up. I'm glad it never caught on.
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| Ho Ho Ho. |
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| Meemeek.. |
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| Grandpa John, Son of Orel and father of Nancy, Jon, and Rick. |
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| John, Jon, Nancy, and Hazel Gilliom. |
In high school, Saturdays meant speech and debate tournaments—equal parts competitive glory and chaotic downtime. After one meet, while waiting for awards, I wandered the host school with two teammates, Yoder and Baker. Naturally, we ended up in the men’s restroom. That’s where it all began.
We noticed the ceiling was made of those flimsy foam tiles in a metal grid—the kind that dares you to climb into it. So Yoder and I, driven by the brain rot only teenage boys possess, each hopped onto a toilet, popped a tile, and hoisted ourselves into the abyss.
The plan? Peek into the girls’ bathroom. The reality? Bullshit!
As soon as we got up there, voices exploded outside the door—an incoming crowd. Yoder bailed immediately. I, the bold (idiotic) one, stayed, shoving the panel back into place like some kind of espionage mole.
Inside the ceiling, I fumbled for a place to sit and found something that felt vaguely stable. Baker whispered that it was clear. Yoder said he'd check the hall. Just as I went to shift my weight—
CRACK.
My leg punched straight through the foam. I froze, heart pounding. Then came a chorus of snaps, and before I could scream, the ceiling disintegrated beneath me.
I fell through the ceiling like an angel cast from heaven—if that angel slammed into a toilet, pants up, surrounded by a blizzard of foam and shame. I landed perfectly seated, arms stinging, ass throbbing, with aluminum framing curling down like post-apocalyptic confetti.
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| Falling through the bathroom ceiling. |
The stall door creaked open.
Baker stood there, tears streaming down his face from laughter. “Get up! We have to go!”
As I rose in pain, the toilet seat snapped in half and clattered to the floor like a final insult. I stepped out, covered in white dust, looking like a coke-dealing ghost in a suit and tie. Baker collapsed, wheezing. I checked the mirror. Long hair. White powder. Haunted eyes. I looked like a disgraced magician who'd lost a fight with drywall.
We bolted.
The hallway was packed. Turns out, a massive sports event had just let out. Yoder stood at a locker, faking a combination, trying not to pass out from laughter. When he saw me, powdery and limping, he dropped to the floor.
Back in the cafeteria, we entered the awards ceremony one by one to avoid suspicion. It didn’t work.
Yoder walked in first, beet-red and grinning like a lunatic. Baker followed, trembling with suppressed laughter. Then me—grim, broken, and clearly dusted in the residue of poor decisions. People asked what happened.
I said, “Nothing.”
Later, on the bus, we pieced it together.
Yoder had heard the crash from the hallway and peeked into the bathroom just in time to see a hole in the ceiling and a dust cloud straight out of a Michael Bay film. He quietly shut the door and slinked off like a CIA agent abandoning a failed op.
Baker had seen my leg burst through the tile and thought, oh no. Then he saw the rest of me come through like a human wrecking ball, arms flailing. When he opened the stall and saw me on the toilet like some dazed bathroom deity, he claims I mumbled, “My butt hurts,” before whispering, “We have to get out of here.”
And as I stood, the toilet seat gave up on life.
Somehow, we never got caught. Maybe they blamed the sports kids. Maybe they thought the ceiling spontaneously combusted. Either way, I never climbed into a ceiling again.
I learned my lesson.
And that lesson is: foam ceilings are a lie.
Our family’s lineage can be traced back to Adam Gilliom, who emigrated from Switzerland to Indiana in the 1800s. At that time, we were Apostolic. A few generations later, my father became the first member of our family to leave the church entirely—a decision he made on his own. He’s mentioned that it was a tough time because none of his friends were allowed to talk to him anymore, and he deeply missed hunting and fishing with one of his cousins.
According to my parents, when I was a little kid, I had a memorable encounter with an Amish buggy. One passed by our house, and I took off chasing after it without a word. My mom was frantic when she realized I was missing; she even called the police.
Eventually, someone reported seeing a little kid running down the road after a buggy, yelling, "Horsey! Horsey!" The police found me and brought me home. When my mom asked what I was doing, I told her with great determination that I wanted to be “an Amish” when I grew up.
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| Recreating the Fork Fangs experience as an adult.. |
The best Presto Magix kits included a large variety of characters, but there were some duds like Superman's Fortress of Solitude that didn't give you much to work with. The only way to entertain yourself with these duds was to make inappropriate half-assed creations like this one that I found in a box of old personal items some years ago.
