Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Here comes Matt, the Ice Cream Man!!!

This picture of Matt has nothing to do with what I'm about to say, I just wanted to have a picture of Matt. In our last post, the one featuring Matt as Jack Nicholson from the shining, I presented you with the opportunity to hear an awesomely amazing story in our next post. All you had to do was comment "yes" on the post. Due to the overwhelming affirmative responses we've received (4, the most we've ever had for 1 post), I'm going to tell you the story. All of you that read the post but didn't leave a comment better thank those that did (me being one of them) because this story will enrich the quality of your lives. Just knowing that events like are even possible, and that they happened to Matt will fill your souls with wonder and amazement. With no further adew (don't know how to spell it, and my spell check doesn't know what I'm trying to say) adoodle, I give you the story of Matt Hart, the ice cream man...

Our story takes place during the winter of 2001 in St. George, although it began on September 10, 1982. That's Matt's birthday (it's my sister Ginger's birthday next week, just to let you know), and that's when this story began... Ok, I'll just fast forward 19 years to 2001. So Matt was 19, and he had never had a job. Ok, I'll just say it, Matt was lazy. Like when we were in middle school, he'd tell me how he was going to fail his classes unless he did his homework. Then we'd come home and Matt would lie on the floor and stare at the wall for like an hour. I'd tell him, "dude, just work on your stuff, get it done, then let's go skate." He'd keep staring at the wall like he didn't hear me, then he'd say something like, "yeah... I guess I could do it... But I don't want to... Let's just go skate...." Not wanting him to fail his classes, I'd ask him to do his homework, he would refuse, then I'd end up doing it for him real quick so we could go skate. This didn't happen every day, but I remember quite a few times that it did. Pretty much verbatim what I just described... (Just for the record, I want you all to know that my boy Matt's a hard worker these days. His mission straightened him up and straightened him up good. But the honest truth, he was quite lazy when it came to school work and jobs when he was a kid.) So this went on for years, and Matt successfully avoided having to get a job until a month or so before he went on his mission.... School started in late August, and I was still in high school, so Matt didn't have much to do during the day when I was at school. Seeing as everyone else was in school or at work, it was just Matt and my Mom that were at home during the day. When I'd get out of school, I'd go straight to the skate park, and Matt would be there with a pitcher of water and some food for me, then he'd tell me, "Man, mom wants me to get a job... I had to pretend I was asleep all afternoon so that she wouldn't bug me about getting a job..." This went on for quite a while. Matt's best defense against work was to pretend he was asleep or try and hide from my mom in our small house. He pulled this off for quite some time and didn't get a job for a couple months, which is quite a feat considering our house was small with few places to hide and pretending to be asleep for 4 hours straight requires extreme amounts of discipline and mind control. That's my gauge to know if one is truly lazy or not: do you work harder to be lazy than you would work to get a job? If yes, you are lazy. If not, work harder, but you ain't lazy yet. Over the course of a couple months, the harassment increased for Matt to get a job, and Matt was finally backed up against a wall and forced to get a job... Matt reached to the nearest source he knew of to find a job, the "Wanted" adds in the paper. He circled a couple job openings, but one especially caught his eye. It was the position on a "vending route". "Sweet! I'm going to stock vending machines full of Candy! Maybe I could get my hands on some of that candy for myself..." So Matt called the place and set up an interview with them. Matt came home pretty excited after his interview because he got the job and would have training the next day. All these other white collared yes-men are complaining about their portfolios not being finished and their clients suing for malpractice, but Matt would have the opportunity to develop an intimate relationship with candy, as had always been his dream... So I asked Matt what his job was, and he paused for a minute and said, "I don't know. They didn't tell me. I was just excited to get hired, I didn't ask.... I think it's stocking candy. I hope it's stocking candy..." So the next day Matt went to his training for his new job, and I remember quite vividly when he came home. He walked in with an expressionless face, walked straight to the couch, then kind of flopped down on his back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. We all looked at him surprised because we didn't know what was up. We asked him a couple times what was wrong, then he said in a very disappointed tone, "I'm an ice cream man..." I can't remember another time that I've seen my dad laugh so hard. Matt cracked a little smile because he too knew that this was quite a funny turn of events for him. This is what happens when you avoid work all your lives kids, you become the ice cream man... This was especially ironic because growing up, we had tormented the ice cream man. We'd hide behind garbage cans and yell "STOP!" when he'd come by, but then duck behind the garbage cans. He'd stop and look around for a minute, then start to drive off. Then we'd yell it again and repeat the cycle a couple times. He'd finally get super pissed at us and drive off. I remember following an ice cream man around for a couple streets with a friend on our bikes, we got the guy to stop probably 5 times, and we hid each time. I was only 6 or so, and I had no reason to do this other than I found human suffering amusing. I guess I still do when I laugh at the thought of Matt being the ice cream man. So it was karma coming back to bite Matt for all the ice cream man heists we had pulled in our day. And another irony to this whole thing was that my mom used to tell us growing up never to trust the ice cream man because he used to be in jail. I remember hearing this several times, although my mom denies it now. But I remember thinking, "how do you know? do you know the ice cream man personally? if so, think you could hook us up with some of that ice cream?" So here was Matt, the ice cream man, lying on the couch in total and utter disappointment with his entire family laughing at this turn of events...

Man, this story is just getting really good, but I have to end. Sorry people, but this is going to be a to be continued story. You can blame school for that. Thanks a lot school for getting in the way of this story... But I promise to return and finish this story as soon as possible, so stay tuned. Trust me, things only get better from here... Leave any comments you have about the story so far, I'm curious to know what the public's response is.

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