That's Inappropriate

Sometimes, when you reach a certain age, and you don't have kids, you develop some bad habits.

And I'm not talking about the fact that you will resort to eating microwave pizza for breakfast.

But sometimes you say stuff that, well... you probably shouldn't.

That doesn't stop you.

• One of my favorite phrases is "I will fight you." However, I just like to say it, I never have any intention of following up on it. Mostly because I have a really long track record of losing fights.
• All throughout elementary school, I got in a continuous series of scuffles with my classmate Lance. He had a notoriously short temper and liked to pick on me. I do a good job of playing the victim and I knew I could plead self-defense if he hit me first, so I'd egg him on verbally.
• At some point, my teacher caught on to this strategy and we were BOTH in trouble.
• The only real stinging verbal rebuke I actually remember landing with Lance was just after we had been studying genetics. I told him to "Go f*ck a mule and become a hybrid."
• Feel free to question my science, there. I was only in fifth grade.
• On the other hand, aren't you impressed that a Catholic elementary school was teaching genetics?
• FACT: Jesus was mostly Jewish.
• Somehow that wasn't a strongly-featured part of our science or religion classes. But I can tell you that if you cross a donkey and a horse, you get a mule.
• Don't ask me, I didn't set up the curriculum.
• For the record: I am not comparing Jesus to a horse, donkey, or interbreeding thereof.
• I do know he would have been smart enough not to pick fights with his classmate Lance when he was eleven.
• I think the *last* time I got in a fight was 7th or 8th grade. I can't say I really won that fight, but I did backhand (i.e. "pimpslap") the guy so hard he was momentarily stunned.
• I used those moments to yell so loud the football coach came out of his office and broke it up.
• I like to think that's smart, but mostly it makes me a weasel.
• It would be surprising if you hadn't noticed, but I use the word "jackass" a lot as an adjective -- usually in conjunction with "opinion."
• I feel like my opinions are fairly insightful, but they often involve stepping on someone else's toes.
• Plus, I'm a little too in love with my own opinion.
• Hence: jackass.
• According to Merriam-Webster, "jackass" = male donkey.
• Somewhere there's a lesson in here.
• I have a donkey fetish?
• That's not true either.
• Here's another handy one you shouldn't be using at the dinner table: "dickhole."
• It's not as coarse as calling someone an a-hole, but there's something distinctly unpleasant in how specific it is.
• If you want to go that extra mile (and if you're a jackass like me, how can you NOT want to go that extra mile?) you curl your hand up into a fist and, as you say the word in a melodious, drawn-out falsetto, you make a stabbing motion with your outstretched pinkie.
• Basically, you re-enact a Robert Mapplethorpe photo.
• There goes my NEA grant.

-Tom, who suggests you turn safe-search off if you're going to google that one. ...Actually, I do not recommend googling that one.