Category: True Stories

Several years ago, I was in the locker room of a gym where I had been working out.  A friend that I had not seen for several months came in and said hi when he saw me.  His name is not Bill but that’s what I’ll call him.  While Bill was changing into his workout clothes, put bandages over his nipples.  I had heard of people doing this to protect their nipples from getting irritated by rubbing against their shirt, but I had never seen anyone do it.  I didn’t think that much about it and sort of filed this away in my memory bank. 

A few days later, I was back in the locker room of the same gym.  While I was changing, I noticed a used bandage on the floor.  I wondered if this was one of Bill’s bandages…

I was in Cub Scouts when I was in 5^th grade.  Our scout troop met in the gymnasium at the county elementary school located in Alamo, TN where I grew up.  Because I lived in the city limits, I didn’t attend the county school, but I was familiar with the building because of various events I had attended there over the years.  The gym had a stage at one end.  Our meetings would usually start with some free play time in the gym while we were waiting for everyone to get there.  There would be basketballs available so several of us would usually shoot if not organize teams and play.  There were also kids just sitting around talking, running around, or doing any number of things to entertain ourselves.  During one meeting early in the fall, I was with a group of guys playing around on the stage. I don’t remember what we were doing but I think we decided to move to the basketball court. I was lying down on the stage and decided to roll over to the edge, then ease off onto the court.  As I put my legs over the edge of the stage, I noticed a hole in the left knee of my red jeans. For some reason, the stage in this gym had several bolts sticking up in what seemed to be random places.  I had rolled over one of them and ripped a hole in my pants at the knee.  Then I looked inside the hole and saw that there was a matching hole in my knee. 

On April 4, 2019, I was about 3 days late with one of my best April Fool’s pranks.  I made a post on Facebook that said, “Asking for your prayers today as I go to the doctor later to be checked for windmill noise cancer. TIA.” Donald Trump had been in the news earlier that week making false claims that noise from windmills cause cancer.  Obviously, this is BS.  So, my request for prayers was intended as a joke, making fun of a stupid statement from a dumb politician whose dumbness is so dumb, the likes of which we have never seen.  This post received comments from 31 people. It also received 18 thumbs up, 10 laughs, 5 hearts and 2 shocked faces. About 9 of the people that commented got that it was a joke.  The rest of the people were seriously concerned. I’m convinced that most of them didn’t read the post that close.  When they saw the words doctor and cancer, they were ready to share their sympathy.  I really appreciate their intentions and concern for me.  Some probably hadn’t even heard the news about Trump’s dumb statement and assumed that it was a real thing.  Most of the responses in the comments were statements like “Praying” or “Prayers”.  A couple of people that I knew got the joke offered “thoughts and prayers” in the style of the empty concerns express by politicians reluctant to do anything else relating to mass shootings. One of my friends had a long prayer for me asking for complete healing of my body.  My response was to say nothing and let this play out.  I was enjoying watching the reactions.  

Several years ago, during a meeting at church, I had to go to the restroom.  As usual, I planned to wash my hands before I returned to the meeting.  A bottle of green apple scented hand soap was sitting next to the sink in the restroom. When I pressed the pump of the dispenser, a glob of soap shot past the open palm of my hand, hitting the front of my khaki pants, next to the bottom part of the zipper.  This is an embarrassing place to have a wet spot on your pants.  Because it was soap, it wasn’t going to fade was it dried like it would have if I had just splashed water on my pants.  Soap also has a thicker consistency.  This suggested that I had done something in my pants other than just wetting myself. Additionally, this soap had a strong, Jolly Rancher type green apple scent.  Attempting to return to the meeting as quickly as possible, I untucked my shirt trying to cover the spot on my pants. I couldn’t do anything about the smell.  I also sat at the back of the meeting room to draw less attention.  I was sitting next to a good friend.  I told him I had an accident.  I lifted my shirt to show him the spot.  He restrained a laugh.  I explained what happened.  Then I told him I felt like a green apple pervert.

I know I’m not the only person in the world that has their names mispronounced.  When I’m introducing myself, there have been countless times people have replied, “Nice to meet you, Mark!” or “Nice to meet you, Mr. Weaver!” Sometimes it both.  Years ago, I received a call at work from a salesman. When I answered my phone, he asked, “How are you today Mr. Weiner?” I thought to myself, “A lot better than you are! I don’t care what you are selling!”

I am a fan of Laurel and Hardy movies.  One of their more popular films is called Sons of the Desert.  In this film, they are members of a fraternal lodge called the Sons of the Desert.  Part of their uniform is Fez with the name of the organization on the front.  The official Laurel and Hardy fan club is named after this film.  A few years ago, I was wondering if I might be able to purchase a Sons of the Desert fez.  I discovered a company called Fez-O-Rama that makes them, but they don’t keep them in stock all the time.  They have made limited runs of them in the past but were never available when I had checked.  In mid-January of 2024 (this month as I write this), I was watching the movie Casablanca. When I saw Sidney Greenstreet’s character wearing a fez, it made me want to check to see if Fez-O-Rama had made anymore.  I just happened to check it during the one week out of the year that they took orders for this fez. They limit their orders to a run of 50.  On January 15, I got my wife to measure my head and I placed my order for a Sons of the Desert fez. 

I recently shared a story about losing 100 pounds.  In that post I shared that Slimfast was the main tool that I used for my weigh loss.  This was not the first time that I have lost a significant amount of weight although it is the most that I’ve ever lost at one time (Its probably worth noting that this was a time when I had the most to potentially lose). It was the first time that I had used Slimfast. During previous diets I’ve lost 40-60 pounds depending on what I weighed at the time.  On those earlier diets, I had a consistent plan that had me losing weight at about 2.5 pounds a week, the same that I saw on Slimfast.  I thought I would share the details of that diet plan here as an alternative to my most recent success.

Dream about heaven

Andrea and I were in heaven. I’m assuming we died and went to heaven. It wasn’t like we got a free pass to preview heaven.  We were there under what would be normal circumstances.  I don’t know how we died.  If I dreamed that part, I don’t remember it.  And I assume that we died at the same time.  Anyway, we were in a room that appeared to be like the lobby of a church but was about the same size as our living room.  There were people milling around in that room and we could see people in a hallway outside of the room we were in.  I didn’t recognize anyone there. We were sitting on the floor against a half wall.  There were no chairs in the room.  Apparently, there are no chairs in heaven. The walls were a grey color.  And they were playing contemporary praise and worship style music.  I don’t really care for most praise and worship music.  I was not enjoying the music I heard. I was thinking “Who programs the music in heaven?” 

I have lost over 100 pounds.  I weigh over 100 pounds less than what I weighed in January of 2022.  The weight loss was intentional. A lot of friends have been curious about what I’ve done to lose weight, especially those that are interested in dropping a few pounds.  Below I will take you on my weight loss journey, sharing changes to my behaviors and what motivated me to commit to this task.

January of 2022 was a time to consider New Year’s resolutions, which almost always include a weight loss goal.  While I wanted to lose some weight, I hadn’t committed to any plan of attack. At that point, my strategy was to weigh myself every morning and hope that my weight was less than the day before.  Since I was recording my weight regularly in my phone, I was able to look back and see that my highest recorded weight was 296.5.  But I know that there were some days that my weight was higher than this, but I didn’t have the heart to record the actual weight.  There could have been some days where I was pushing 300 pounds.  My routine then is like it is now where I weigh myself in the morning with no clothes on, right before I take a shower.  I do this hoping to catch myself when I am at the lowest weight of the day.  I’m sure I was over 300 pounds at this time with clothes on and a full belly when I was asked to step on the scale at the hospital on the evening of January 18, when I broke my arm. 

During my senior year of high school, someone decided that the basketball team needed someone to dress as the team mascot and join the cheerleaders at courtside during the games. I enjoyed going to basketball games and was known for my antics in the crowd during games.  I was open to carrying out my high jinks in a more official capacity.  I auditioned for the part and won.  I was the Alamo Red Devil.