Nathanael Rowe

When I was in college I owned piranhas.  I started with 7 of them, but eventually they

ate the smallest one and I was down to 6.  Shortly after I lost number 7, I walked by my tank only to see 5 piranhas.  I had walked by the tank just minutes before and could have sworn I saw 6, so I didn’t think they ate another one so quickly, especially since I had fed them recently.  So I started thinking, where could this piranha have gone?  I started to look around the tank to see if maybe it had jumped out on accident, and sure enough one of the guys was laying on the dusty carpet behind the tank stand.

I picked it up with my net, and placed him back in the water in hopes that was all he needed to be resuscitated.  However he just sat there floating at the top of the tank sideways with all the dust and hair still stuck to his half dry body.  So I pushed him under water a little in hopes that some fresh water in his system would help rejuvenate him, but that seemed futile as well.

Then I started thinking about the TV shows and movies I had seen where someone is near death, and the hero starts pounding on the victims chest in an effort to beat them back to life.  I thought, if they can do this for people, maybe I can do this for my piranha.  So I took my little wire net, and I whipped the metal part into the side of the fish, near his gills.  Nothing happened, but then I remembered that these heroes in the film always pound on the chest a few times before they start coughing up water or gasping for air.  So I hit the fish a second time.  This was immediately followed by a slight twitch in the tail fin of the fish.  I had done it!  I had brought my piranha back to life!  I pushed him under the water to get some water flowing through his gills again, and sure enough he was back to swimming like normal in just a couple minutes.

I know that sounds unbelievable, but the whole story is true.  I think some of my old roommates might have been around to verify it.

My first car was a 1986 Dodge Caravan.  This is not a picture of my car, but this is what it looked like.  It was a fun car, with a lot of stories, some of which I will share here at another time.  Today I want to share a specific story that resulted from a unique feature on my van.

See the hose that connected my wiper blade to the wiper fluid reservoir was broken in a very specific way.  It is important to point out that I did not break this part on purpose, but that instead it was simply a natural deterioration of the clearly superb Dodge Caravan.  This convenient break caused my wipers to squirt out a solid stream of liquid to the right of the car each time I pressed the fluid button from the inside of the car.  The stream was so perfect that if there was a car directly to my right it would go right into that car’s driver side window, and if their window was down, it would go right into their face.  So needless to say, I went through my wiper fluid reservoir pretty frequently.

I would often pull up to friends and sometimes even strangers, ask them to roll their window down, and then squirt them right in the face.  It was so fun, and people would want to ride in my van just so they could be a part of this hilarious prank.  I remember one time pulling up to an elderly lady at a light.  My buddy was sitting shotgun, so he promptly signaled to her that he would like her to roll her window down to ask her something.  As soon as he did, I squirted, and it hit her right in the face.  Now in retrospect I admit this is pretty cruel, but that lady’s reaction was simply, “Wow, you got me, that was pretty good.”

One time while in High School, I was driving to the beach with some classmates.  Along the way we noticed our science teacher was driving next to us.  So we of course signaled her to roll her window down, and as soon as she did, I soaked her.  The interesting thing about this, is that she was not a teacher I had any grudge against, her name was Mrs. Brown, and if anything she was one of our favorite teachers, but something about that vehicle just made you take advantage of the opportunity to squirt your teacher in the face.

The next day at school I was terrified to see her, but eventually I slowly walked into her classroom with my head down.  She just stared at me and shook her head.  I apologized immediately, and she had come up with some devious plan of humiliating me for revenge.  I willfully took her punishment, although I no longer remember what it was exactly.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun in that van, and squirted a lot of unexpecting victims, If you can mod your car in this way, I highly reccomend it.

Here is another funny story from almost 10 years ago.

When I was in high school I worked at Hollywood Video on Spring st in East Long Beach.  For some reason we had a plethera of expired sodas, specifically Pepsi product.  Now I don’t know exactly how the whole legalities work when it comes to selling expired sodas, but we did.  So many of the sodas that sat in that fridge were actually expired.  Well I knew this, and so I justified to my self, stealing the sodas since they were expired anyways.  I would also occasionally hook my friends up with an expired soda as well, cause who really cares right?

Well one day Ron Delaney comes into Hollywood Video while I am working, and if you know anything about Ron it that he is quite the stickler when it comes to spending, so anything that is free he is excited about, as am I on many occasions.  So Ron asks if there are any expired Pepsis and if there is could he have one for free.  I say sure if you can find an expired soda, go ahead and just have it.  He of course promptly found some expired Pepsi One, and proceeded to open it up and drink it.  Meanwhile he is hanging out in the store and just talking to me while I have another boring day at work.

After a few minutes go by, Ron says his stomach is hurting him, and that he thinks its from the Pepsi being bad.  Almost immediately, as if he had planned it, he lays down on his back on the floor right in the front of the store.  Remember customers are going in and out this whole time, and he is on the floor grabbing his stomach and screaming, “Don’t drink the Pepsi, The Pepsi is bad!”

I was furious, the nerve of this guy to complain about the free soda I gave him.  I promptly kicked him out of the store, and never gave away free expired soda again, especially to some one so ungrateful.

Speaking of damaging other people’s properties, I am reminded of a pair of events that happened in High School.  While the goal may have been for these two events to be unrelated, I believe they were.

One day Justin, Ian, and I were riding back home from surfing at the beach.  We were in Ian’s hatchback, Justin was sitting shotgun, and I was sitting behind him.  I did not have my own window, but I had to spit so I asked Justin to scoot forward so I could spit out his window.  Ian instantly advised against this as he thought the spit would just backfire and go all over his rear window, I of course disagreed and proceeded to spit out the window.  Well just like Ian thought, a nasty loog instantly splattered all over his window.  He was furious at the fact that I had done exactly what he told me not to do.

A few weeks later, Ian was riding shotgun in my 1986 Dodge Caravan.  Somehow he found a razor blade and started cutting my inner upholstery and ceiling as I drove.  I looked over at him and noticed what he was doing, all I could say is, “What are you doing?”  He calmly put the razor blade down, and stopped destroying my car, but he showed no remorse.  I am pretty sure he was getting his revenge on me for spitting all over his car, but only he really knows.

I decided that as I remember them I am going to write down funny stories from my past so that they will be officially recorded somewhere.  This one happens in junior high, 8th grade I think so around 1996, though I can not be sure.

I am sitting outside in a row of seats in the parking lot of Parkcrest Christian Church.  It is an event called START at my church, where there is something going on every night of the week.  Tonight we played some game and we are now listening to a worship band.  I am wearing my favorite white corduroy shorts, and my green pullover Kanvas by Katin hooded sweatshirt.

I notice a beautiful girl sit down behind me, so of course I start to talk to her.  I am probably coming on way to strong and giving her to much attention, but what do I know I am in middle school.  Anyway, I would turn around talk, she would even laugh, and so I think this is going great.  Now many times during worship services the leader will have you stand up and sit down at different times, and this event was no different.  Well in the process of standing up, sitting down, and talking to this girl, I eventually notice that I am now sticking to the chair.  I turn around to see that this girl who was chewing gum, isn’t any longer, and that that very piece of gum had been strategically placed on my seat while I was standing, so that I would sit right on it in my corduroy shorts.  As soon as I am conscious of what just happened I turn and look at her, I don’t remember saying a word, but I know my face shouted a desperate “Why?”.   She said nothing, and to my memory she pretended like nothing even happened.

A couple of things were damaged that evening, my ego for one, my favorite white corduroy shorts for another, and any presupposition I had about females being sweet innocent things.  I learned that night the potential of their cruelty, and I have lived in that shadow ever since.