July 21, 2004 by editingevan.

I took diving lessons when I was a child. I was able to walk down the narrow turquoise board with the perfect stepping and get the right inertia required for the bounce that catapulted me into the pool – head first, arms out – while making the smallest splash possible. I wasn’t Olympics-bound, but at least my bathing suit never slid off when I hit the water.

The lessons took place in what was called the “diving tank.” It was deeper than the ocean, so big, in fact, that Shamu could’ve lived at the pool I belonged to. The water was chlorinated, however, so the killer whale would’ve been killed. But the “tank” was that big – at least, when I was small, 18 feet was vast.

Now, 18 feet is just another challenge to hold my breath, push down and try to touch the bottom of the pool.

Before I began structured dives and little splashes, I was an avid diving board enthusiast. I jumped in straight and tall and did “the pencil” (or in some areas in the country, perhaps eastern and southern, “the stick”). I jumped on the board to give me enough spring to do a front flip (which sometimes had so much spring I smacked my face and stomach on the water). I ran off the board and did a spin-jump-type-thing that was 360 degrees and “dangerous” according to the lifeguards because they blew the whistle screaming something about running on the diving board. I was even quite adventurous to do back flips. They weren’t extraordinary because I was afraid to get any bounce – our bodies, unless trained, do not enjoy going backwards. Our first instincts are to lose all flexibility, become brittle, yet still have the ability to flail our arms and await immediate death since we don’t have eyes in the back of our head to see where it is we are going.

I was able to become a ball and land in the water feet-first. To me, I defied gravity and death on some small level – like the level a bird defies death and gravity when a car comes rushing toward it as it totters along the yellow lines on the road before it gets up, and flies off to join its friends for a crap-drop competition at the closest power line.

There I was, in the air, turning in an unnatural direction and hitting the water like bird poop hitting a car. I wasn’t graceful enough to make the water feel like a down comforter, it always felt like concrete on my little sun-browned body.

So, my experience on the diving board was like any other childhood diving board history: I came, I jumped, I hit the water in cold panic, and I swam to the ladder and did it all over again. It was invigorating. It was what summer was all about, especially the long lines I had to wait in before I had my go again, where all the kids stood water-logged and shivered like we were just saved from the Titanic waiting their turn to smack the bright aqua water like suicidal maniacs hitting concrete from a ten-story jump.

Really, the diving lessons made me better friends with the water, unlike most of the kids that did belly flops that lit up their white little bodies like bad sunburns. Regardless of the pain, they swallowed it like William Wallace and climbed the ladders to the high-dive and the low-dive like little warriors.

Unlike other children, my mission wasn’t to come out of the water looking like I had acquired a rash the size of my chest area, and so I continued to work on my front flips and my back flips. I was a slender, flexible little sprite because I was enrolled in gymnastics at the time and, by golly, if I could do back flips on the ground, what could stop me from doing them in the air and in the water?

Well, I’ll tell you what stopped me – the diving board.

The diving board thought I was quite crass for hitting the water with ease, without the jagged, contorted, torturous maneuvers my co-divers attempted. I climbed out on the ladder with a toothpaste commercial smile and headed back in line to freeze my little red trunks off in order to wow whoever was watching all over again. What a magnificent feeling, I must say, but the diving board thought differently.

The diving board said “no.” The diving board noticed how the water wasn’t hitting me, so the diving board hit back. It was my turn again and I climbed the short ladder, walked down the narrow, sun-faded turquoise path, and positioned myself for another back flip. I balanced my toes on the edge of the diving board, took a breath, and threw myself up and backwards. I floated, I had superpowers, I felt like an Olympic diver, and then the diving board bitch-slapped me.

“Nuh-uh,” it said. “You ain’t some Olympic diver no mo’.”

I hit the water like the other kids, contorted, miserable and hard. I floated, dazed, in the water and I remember, through foggy vision at least two or three red-bodied lifeguards leaping into the pool as I doggy-paddled to the edge of the pool with the effectiveness of a three-legged dog. I got to the edge when a grown-up pulled me out, sat me down and asked how I was doing.

I can’t remember if I responded. Stunned, I sat there, not really sure what happened. My friends dragged me to the first-aid station while someone retrieved my mom. They sat me down on the table, looked at me, and after ten minutes of heart-stopping terror, I was deemed okay, but we left the pool and drove to my grandma’s house (I know this part makes no sense, but keep reading).

For some reason, since grandma volunteered at the hospital, it was like having free medical advice. At that point, the area where I hit my head on the diving board began to swell and my mom and grandma were in shock to see that it was a “goose egg.” I must’ve seemed okay, but they mentioned whether or not I should go to the hospital, and it was the mention of the word “hospital” did I begin to cry. Sob, actually.

Trauma is odd.

The accident didn’t stop me from defying concrete splashes off the diving board, but it did stop me from doing anymore back flips. I did take diving lessons after the accident, but I was fine with diving head-first into the water with my arms out in front of me, instead of wildly flailing my body backwards and killing myself.

I was lucky in the end, but at least it answers the question to why I’m so weird.

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July 15, 2004 by editingevan.

Any morning, working with my boss, there are always interesting things said between the two of us. Granted, for most, reciting conversations are acts of malicious boredom when it comes to entertaining others – unless it’s crucial gossip. This, however, is not crucial, instead, these are things my boss says:

“It’s called Canadian falls,” Ron said, trying to convince me that it isn’t Niagara Falls. Captured video aired on CNN showed gushing falls and I mentioned someone being rescued from Niagara Falls – I checked CNN.com, and apparently, the last time someone was saved from Niagara Falls was this past February.

“Don’t you take coffee in with you when you go to the bathroom?”
“No,” I said.
“It goes in one end and out the other.”
“I take smoothies in with me,” I said.
“Those will make you grimace. You remember grimace from McDonalds?”
“Yes, but what did he symbolize? Cancer?”
“Big Macs.”

“I don’t like (Diane Sawyer),” he said. “She tries to act too young.”
“How old is she?”
“She’s gotta be pushing sixty.”
“Maybe she feels young,” I said.
“I’m going to start acting young when I’m sixty.”
“Why don’t you start now?”

“Do you think you’ll make it all day?” He asked, knowing I had another six hours of the coffee shop ahead of me.
“No,” I said, and pretended to act tired, he put his mug of coffee to his lips and I fake-kicked him in the croch with sound effects.

Talking about taxes on cell phones and plane tickets, I said, “All I have to say is…well, actually I have nothing to say.”
“Good, then be quiet.”

“A woman asked for a small Jamaican Me Nuts and I told her I was gonna give her French Vanilla instead,” I said.
He gave me a look.
“She was cool,” I said, “and she thought it was funny.”
“And she gave you the finger when you turned around,” he said.

“You’ve got anotha, sista,” he said when someone was next in line at the drive thru. I stuck my head out the window to double check.
“No I don’t.”
“So, you believed me, huh?”
Three minutes later.
He randomly said, “sista,” outloud and the power went out for a few seconds.

Paul, the mailman, comes in on hot days to fill a jug of ice and water. He asked to borrow it. My boss asked if he could have it back. The mailman corrected himself and asked if he could steal some.
“If you steal it, I’ll have to call my police buddies.”
“Police buddies? That sounds sexual,” I said.

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July 7, 2004 by editingevan.

“Thought provoking, delicious (even without the caviar it recommends) and it doesn’t fail. My Bucket of Parts stops at nothing to tell stories about everyday life without the traditional yammering other online blogs seem to get lost in. This may be ordinary life and stupid mistakes, but stupid mistakes have never sounded so smart. Blogs like this are almost impossible to come by these days.” –Newsweek

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“11110100010101010101111111110000010101010111010010101010100111110101010101111101010101111111000000000000000000011000000000111100000000000000011111111110101010111010110101011111111111111111100111111111110001111111.” –A cyborg that can only communicate in binary code

“My Bucket of Parts encompasses all that is ‘now,’ all that is tiresome, all that is jovial, all that is sadistic. It is the zeitgeist blog of our time.” –Wired

“I find it poorly written with typos that are uncalled for, My Bucket of Parts does nothing but insult the human mind, making life nothing but a nonstop rollercoaster ride of ridiculous antics that people could possibly care less about.” –Ann Landers

“I need to visit My Bucket of Parts more often because there are days I am just running low on humor and need inspiration for my own prop-chests.” –Carrot Top

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“Instead of My Bucket of Parts paying for space on the Internet, the web service provider should pay for My Bucket of Parts.” –Henry O’ Rear, founder of the Bloggers Unite Today and Tomorrow

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