HUMP DAY PUMP UP ABOUT LEONARD.

Jeezus, I haven't PUMPED (much less blogged AT ALL) since before Thanksgiving?!?!

Ouch.

My bad, sorry dudes! So what is new? How if life? Is your job still going well? No? Aw shit man, sorry to hear that. Are you still workin' at... oh. Whoops, sore subject, sorry I didn't mean...ah, alright, we'll talk about something else...

Actually no we won't, nevermind. So you think your job sucks balls, eh? You think you've got it bad? YOU THINK IT COULDN'T GET ANY WORSE THAN YOUR SHITTY 9 to 5 HORSESHIT JOB??!?!? IS YOUR JOB HORSESHIT??!!


Ok, sit down, get comfortable, I'm a gunna tell ya a little tale. No frills this week, no stupid pics, just a tale from the vault.


There's this family friend, who... well, I wouldn't even consider a friend, but maybe he's somehow related to my family? I don't know, whatever, but anyway, there's this guy, let's call him Leonard, who was always at some of the bigger family get-togethers when I was a child. Leonard was about 50 or 60 years old (which reminds me, I'm really bad at judging old people's ages...AND young people's... is that kid 5 or 2??? I dunno, I'm bad at that shit!) and to me seemed a few bricks short of a load, if ya know what I'm saying? Like, Leonard wasn't all there. But a nice fellow nonetheless. Always smiling, always seeming to take whatever life threw at him. I distinctly remember that he was missing a few of his teeth, so you'd see these black holes in his grin every time one of the grandparents told a joke. I think he wore suspenders too, but I might have made that up. But not the teeth part, that is absolutely true.


Anyhoo, every year where Leonard lived, there is a little towny parade during the summer. And I'm talking SMALL TOWN here. If you know where I'M from, (small town Wisconsin), think SMALLER. And if you know Wisconsin, it's AUGUSTA. Fuck that town. Anyway yeah, they have this little parade in Augusta every summer, during the BEAN AND BACON DAYS celebration (How Wisconsin is THAT?! But other than the naming of the towny fest after the two best food groups, that town seriously does SUCK) and EVERY YEAR that I could remember when I was a kid, say from like age 5 to...age 10? (I told you I'm bad with kid numbers) this guy would be IN the Augusta parade. Why was Leonard in the Bean and Bacon Days Parade you may ask? And what does this have to do with YOUR SHITTY HORSESHIT JOB??? YOU DID SAY YOUR JOB WAS HORSESHIT, DIDN'T YOU?!?!


Well my friends, every year for the parade Leonard was honored with the celebrated job of dressing in a full clown costume, carrying around a giant shovel, and following the horses around all day, scooping up their feces. Yes. Not only did he have the lowly honor of picking up horse shit all day, but the parade committee had the nerve to take measures and absolutely make sure Leonard could be differentiated from the town's other common-folk by dressing him in full CLOWN attire. Red nose. Big shoes. Big shovel. I shit you not.

(Possible overheard conversation at parade) "Leonard? Who's Leonar...OH, YOU MEAN THE OLD GUY WITH THE MISSING TEETH, DRESSED IN THE CLOWN SUIT, SCOOPING FUCKING HORSESHIT ALL DAY. Yeah, I know Leonard. For a minute there I thought you were talking about someone else..."


Now THAT my friends, is a truly, completely, absolutely HORSESHIT JOB.


This memory from my childhood seems burned into my brain. Every year we'd check out the parade, and every year Leonard would be there, in the parade, doing his thing. I even think he received some sort of small pride from this deed. Yeah, now that I think about it, he had to be getting SOMETHING out of it, right? This guy did it like 3 or 4 years that I can remember!


So years and years pass by since... it's probably been about 15 years since I last attended the Augusta Bean and Bacon Days parade (yes, a link! To prove the validity of this shitty event. And yes, that shitty website is a good summary of shitty Augusta). I come back home to Wisconsin to attend my Grandma's 80th B-day Par-tay at the golf club. We eat, have cake, then after the usual small talk with old relatives and friends I haven't seen in a while, I decide to head to the club bar with a few of my cousins to have a beer. As we're all sitting there, reminiscing at the bar, WHO sits down next to us?? Well it just happened to be our dear old friend, the shit-scooping clown guy, Leonard.

Haha, he has a beer and we do the awkward small-talk thing (Where do ya live now? How bout that weather? I mean, what the hell do you talk about with someone who you only recall as a dude who cleaned up horse waste in full clown garb when you were a kid?). Then the inevitable topic pops up. My cousin blurts out, "Remember when we were kids Leonard, and you were in the parade as the clown with the shovel???" And wouldn't ya know it? With a chuckle, Leonard responds...

"Oh yeah of course I remember! I still do that every year!"



Wow.





EVERY YEAR.








STILL.

CLEANING.

SHIT.


















IN A GODDAMN CLOWN SUIT.













So my dear friends, the moral of the story is, no matter HOW BAD you've got it, no matter HOW MANY times you've put on the same tie or sent the same email or pounded the same nail or stood behind the same gas station counter or had the same meeting or kissed the same ass or WHATEVER... please keep in mind,


YOU ARE NOT DRESSED UP LIKE A COMPLETE JACKASS, MINDLESSLY CLEANING UP SOMEONE ELSE'S SHIT FOR YEARS.



(Or ARE you??)



Here's to makin' it through one more Wednesday! Sometimes you have to see the negative, opposite side of being pumped to actually get pumped. Sometimes you have to take some shit in order to see the bliss in life. And I hope all of you can appreciate the shit-scoopers out there. I encourage you all to hug a Leonard today. Good luck to you all!