Oh you goofy people. We used to think you were so sharp. Now we know just how foolish ye mortals be.
We thought it would be fun to ask our readers to embarrass themselves in honor of April Fools’ Day. Three didn’t mind sharing their least-proud moments, and I tossed my own into the mix. What follows is an anthology of Clark County foolishness — just in time for April Fools’ Day.
Well, not quite. Whoops.
Hey, never be ashamed of playing the fool. Shakespeare’s fools are the wisest guys in the room. Dolled up in face paints, gaudy colors and belled hats, they’re the only ones who can get away with telling kings the unflattering truth. “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise,” King Lear’s fool taunts him, and when the shamed ex-monarch demands to know if he’s being called a fool, the answer is: “All thy other titles thou hast given away; that thou wast born with.”
In other words: wise up and get over yourself, you silly old king!
Red wine with that?
It was Valentine’s Day. Tom and I had been dating for a little over a year, and he planned a special dinner to celebrate. His brother flew in with a new girlfriend, and they joined us at a downtown restaurant, one of Tom’s favorites. The four of us, all dressed up, got a table in the middle with white tablecloth and fresh flowers in a little vase. We were in a celebratory mood.
Tom and his brother ordered wine, first taste-testing several samples by taking little sips and sloshing those around in their mouths, lips pursed, concentration on their foreheads. I thought they looked pretty funny. If it had been anyone else but those two guys, I would have considered it incredibly pretentious. But they were having a good time pretending being upscale. It was all in good fun: although they did understand wine, they didn’t normally take it to that level.
I, however, didn’t know a thing about wine and didn’t really care. There was red wine and white wine. Whatever type and year they chose didn’t mean a thing to me. But I grasped that they had finally chosen a red wine; that was pretty obvious. And it tasted fine, as we all raised our glasses and toasted Valentine’s Day and one another.
This was a Spanish restaurant, so we ordered tapas. Lots of little dishes arrived, filling up the table. We were having a fine time sampling the dishes, sipping our wine, chatting and laughing. Then — I don’t know how this happened — somehow I knocked over my glass of wine.
Pandemonium: The glass tipped toward Tom’s brother and his lady friend, and they instantly backed up in their chairs to escape the red flowing river running toward them. They looked shocked, staring at the spill as it reached the floor.
I rose from my chair and yelled, “Oh, I’m so sorry!” Tom jumped up and ran to the other side of the table to help. During the hubbub, the vase of flowers spilled and some of the food dishes got knocked over as well. It was a mess.
Tom and I used napkins in a vain attempt to sop up some of the spill when the waiter arrived, having seen what happened, and insisted on cleaning it up himself. He was the embodiment of decorum. He assured us that everything was fine as he expertly cleaned it up with a rag. He took the dishes and glasses off the table, folded up the wet tablecloth, and came back with a new one. He spread this out, reset the flowers and deftly replaced all the dishes on the table. Finally, with everything in place, he came back and re-filled our glasses. I continued to apologize profusely while he insisted that it was fine; accidents happen.
We all settled back in our seats and began gingerly sampling the tapas again. At first we were subdued, but after a while we relaxed and started amiably talking and laughing, having a great time again. Then — I don’t know how this happened — I knocked over my drink a second time.
I sat there speechless, in a daze: how could this have happened again? The rest of the evening was just a blur: I have lost my memory of it, that’s how embarrassed I was. Somehow, we got through the dinner and the rest of the evening.
To his credit and my everlasting appreciation, Tom did not break up with me over this incident. We dated for about six more months and broke up amicably. We are still friends.
But I’ve never gone back to that restaurant.
–Angie Lindquist, Rose Village
Friendly fire
When I was about 11, my best friend, Jim, introduced me to the Golden Gate Casting Club in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. The club had three large, shallow ponds with floating colored rings, and the game was to cast your “plug” into the ring. You could do it just for practice, but there were also competitions where hits and misses were scored and prizes given.
Jim loaned me his casting rod and I practiced casting a 5/8-ounce plastic “plug” into the rings. I was completely enthralled. The next day, I started to put together my own rod and equipment. Hidden in the rafters of the garage, I found an old bamboo fly rod that my father had apparently used when he was a boy. It had a reel and some line attached. I was almost there. What could I substitute for the 5/8-ounce plug? Of course I had no idea what 5/8 of an ounce was, but in the same junk box, I found a brass spring that had been used to hang up a parrot cage. It was sort of the right shape and size, so it would have to do.
I went out onto our front lawn and put the fly rod together. I tied the brass spring to the end of the line. I stepped to the edge of our lawn and got ready to launch the plug across the street onto the neighbors’ front lawn. I wound up and let ‘er rip. I really put some steam on it; I wanted to see how far I could cast the “5/8-ounce plug.”
But I hadn’t take a couple of things into account. First, what I had wasn’t a casting rod; it was a light, bendy, bamboo fly rod. Second, the spring wasn’t a light plastic plug — it was a solid, metal, 4- or 5-ounce object.
As I put all my muscle into the cast, the flimsy fly rod bent almost double; then, as I whipped it forward with all my might, it failed to lift the heavy spring delicately over the rod tip and into the air the way it was supposed to. Instead it shot straight forward and, with unerring accuracy, hit me in the head, right behind my right ear.
I woke up face down on the lawn, the rod still in my hand. The brass missile was beside me. I had become, as far as I know, the first person, maybe in the history of the world, to blackjack himself unconscious.
–Jim Moody, Lake Shore
Just quadruple it
In 1972, I felt especially blessed. How blessed? Magnificent wife, gainful employment, first home and the makings of a great chef — because a major portion of my taste was in my mouth.
How bad? Permed hair, Fu-Manchu moustache, nylon shirt, puka-shell necklace, double-knit slacks and white belt kind of bad. Picture me in that ensemble escorting a tanned and fit supermodel resembling Cher on my arm … a patient and long-suffering Cher.
One warm summer evening, we strolled into Huber’s, one of Portland’s oldest restaurants. White linen, waiters in tuxedos, roast tom turkey dinners — and magnificent Spanish coffee. I was enraptured as our waiter went through each step with theatrical flourishes: the lime on the glass rim with a twist of the wrist; the coating of sugar; the drizzle of triple sec; ignition of same with a match lit with one hand; the addition of Kahlua, strong coffee, whipped cream and the dainty dusting of chocolate.
It was so wonderful, I wrote down the procedure to the last detail and suggested to my wife that we prepare these for our dinner guests next weekend. She agreed.
We were ready for our guests that next Saturday evening. After a wonderful dinner, to everyone’s delight, I announced my Spanish coffee surprise. I asked my wife, “Where are the parfait glasses?”
“Oh, we donated those to Goodwill when we moved.”
“Not a problem! We’ll just use that set of goblets.”
Now the difference in volume between a simple parfait glass and a goblet is about quadruple. Computing the normal volume of alcohol in the recipe and multiplying by four should do the trick. The lime around the rim and addition of the sugar drew appreciative nods. Then came the triple sec and ignition.
Know how much fire you can get from that much alcohol? Can you imagine the self-control it took to make this look deliberate, as I swirled a flaming torch with one eyebrow arched in an affectation of casual insouciance — while the other brow was singed and smoking?
The guests smiled politely as I placed before them what they must have thought were whipped-cream-covered hand grenades. A few sips later, we agreed the volume was a bit much but the drink was tasty. The evening was quite hot, so to salvage potential embarrassment, I pulled a gallon of vanilla ice cream from the freezer: “Spanish coffee milkshakes! Yay!”
That evening we learned that with good company and a level of tolerance, you can be slightly inebriated, wide awake and have diarrhea all at the same time — but when good friends are good company, it matters not.
–Dick Lee, Ridgefield
Harrowing hike
My wife and I were visiting a tropical island in the Indian Ocean called La Reunion. Sue is a historian, long at work on a book about slavery and freedom in French colonies, and I posed as her qualified assistant; we divided our time between digging crumbly documents (shipping manifests, lawsuits, census records) out of the national archive and enjoying some actual vacation.
The latter was problematic, though, because Sue was suffering a serious bout of plantar fasciitis. Walking was uncomfortable for her. Hiking was painful. Clambering up mountains just wasn’t going to happen.
I was so frustrated. The longer our trip lasted, the hungrier I became to get out of doors and up into some exotic, high-altitude nature. Finally, we drove up a winding road to a mountaintop town that’s a mecca for hikers, climbers and sightseers. Sue’s feet still hurt, and she knew how eager I was to launch myself up the trail, so in the morning she drove me to my selected trailhead and wished me a great day hike. She also pointed out a cloudy sky, but I couldn’t be bothered with that.
Released at last! I pounded up the trail, gleefully exchanging greetings of “bonjour, bonjour,” with other hikers. The way was rocky and severely steep. The sun peeped out and started baking me to a crisp. I shed everything but shorts and running shoes, stuffed it all into my day pack and kept sweating my way skyward — not noticing that the sun was gone again and clouds were rolling in.
Then the sky opened up and hard rain engulfed me. The steep path quickly transformed into a rolling, rising river of mud and tumbling rocks and sticks that washed over my feet. It took about two minutes for me to go from giddy and glorious to chilled and soaked and scared. I’d been too excited about my big ascent to consider anything as practical as rain gear; now I was totally exposed — in fact nearly naked — with the narrow cliffside path eroding out from under my feet. It was a long, steep way down. Thunder rumbled and the rain increased.
There I was, totally terrified, clinging to a mountain on a strange side of the globe, grasping at rocks and roots, praying my path wouldn’t simply dissolve down the cliff. “Body of moronic American tourist found at bottom of mountain,” the headline would read. Continuing up seemed insane. But going down seemed no better. I was frozen.
When along came a whole party of hikers, all laughter and energy, zooming up, up, up. Having the time of their lives. “Bonjour,” they all smiled at me. Darn it, if they were still ascending — and treating this emergency like a picnic in the park — then so would I!
Wet and worried and wondering just how stupid this might prove, I made it to the mountaintop. I perched under a tree and ate my soggy banana and granola bar, shivering. Then I started back down — an equally scary saga of wading and clinging and worrying. Somehow, I made it. Singing endless choruses of “Here Comes the Sun” helped.
Sue seemed glad I hadn’t died, and I like to believe her.
–Scott Hewitt, Columbian staff writer
