I have a confession to make.

Friday I about committed mass homicide. I'm pretty sure my lesson plans involving the death penalty would be far more interesting had I actually murdered someone, but now students will just have to deal with my hypothetical scenario, a "What-if" that could/should/would have occured if my wife and my daughter weren't with me.

You see, yesterday I nearly killed about twenty "Blue-Hairs."

What is a Blue Hair you may ask?

A Blue Hair is a person who is so old that their hair no longer fits into mainstream categories of silver, gray, black, or any other natural color. Instead, their hair is a mottled collection of various colors that render their hair, for lack of a better term, blue as a Smurf's hiney.

Let me set the premise for this near tragedy. This entire week we have been out of school because of the tremendous ice storm that struck the entire region last weekend. Normally I curse Mother Nature for not providing us with any snow days, but this is our second 4 day snow-induced break of the Winter Season. And quite honestly, being stuck at home for that many days in a row had already set my nerves on edge. Combining that with the prospect of another couple of snow-induced days at home with the forecast of more snow this weekend, I was ready to pop.

I love my wife. I love my daughter. We have spent a lot of quality time together. But I needed OUT.

So like a fool I thought Wal-Mart would be a good place to go. We needed to pick up some food for Audrey, and some food for ourselves.

Too bad the entire free world was shopping at the Webb City Supercenter at the same time I was.

Oh wait, let me clarify that statement. Every BLUEHAIR in the free world was shopping at the Webb City Supercenter at the same time I was.

Here is the moment in time where my life could have dramatically changed:

Aisle 13. The tomato sauce/soup/mexican/chinese/ethnic food aisle. My wife and I wanted some fajita mix. Every single blue hair in the world was trying to get into that particular aisle at the same time. The traffic was overwhelming, as 1.4 million Blue Hairs, each with that carts filled with Depends and Ensure Energy Drinks, trudged along at a staggeringly slow .5 mph. Natalie and Audrey went first- Nat's daring dash across the double aisle left my heart in my throat, but she made it just fine until she hit traffic. She looked back at me and waited for me to come....but I was trapped. No way could I cross without getting hit.

There were just too many Blue Hairs, all of them trying to go in the same little spot at the same time. Natalie and Audrey got swept up in the tide, struggling in a futile effort to fight their way back to me with about as much chance for success as a salmon swimming UP Niagara Falls.

"Chad!" She called out to me, her fingers outstretched to me in a panic. I could hear Audrey howl as a group of Blue-Hairs brushed against her little face....the Blue-Hairs seemingly moved as one...a silent wrinkled tide....all of them heading for the same cans of Tomato sauce, ravenously scooping them up as though Saturday's predicted snowstorm would be the end of all life on this earth.

I had had enough. In my mind, I quickly imagined my best chance of reaching them....I had to act fast...they were being pushed further and further away from me...and what's worse, they had passed the fajita sauce....which was the entire purpose of their dangerous journey down that aisle!

I could not let their sacrifice be in vain!

Thoughts of grabbing a frozen turkey and clubbing these geezers out of my way danced across my mind, but I dismissed that idea when I saw how much hairspray some of these women used in their blue-beehive hair-dos. Frozen poultry would be rendered ineffective against their dos.

I also imagined grabbing a box of corn dogs and stabbing them in their tiny, ancient, withered hearts, but that would have been too slow.

So instead I did the best thing possible.

I back tracked about twenty feet, trusting Natalie's strong survival instinct to keep them long enough for my plan to work.

I ran to the nearest price checking computer and grabbed the microphone marked "employees only." I cleared my throat and calmly said over the speakers

"Attention all Senior Citizens. There is a 40 percent sale on all diet, sugar free, fat free Metamucil in aisle 443."

Fiber. Laxatives.

YES!

As one, the blue-hair zombies turned and silently left the fajita aisle. Natalie and Audrey were saved, and just in the nick of time, too.....a particularly ancient old geezer, Oldy McCorpse was his name, I believe, had mistaken Audrey's sippy cup for his denture jar and had placed his false teeth on top of Audrey's cup.

I hurdled across the frozen burrito case and scooped up my two girls in my arms. A disaster had been averted thanks to my quick thinking, Natalie's bravery, and my unyielding belief in the thought that no matter how old a person becomes, they can't turn down a big savings on fiber laxatives.

Proudly my family and I marched to the fajita mix and grabbed not one but TWO packets. We didn't really need to, but screw it.

It was our day.



PS I completely made up about 90 percent of this story. The names of the principle actors have been changed to protect the innocent.

Boy, the Chiefs were horrible on Saturday. Just horrible. But think how horrible Dallas Cowboy fans feel! (I'm talking to YOU, Uncle Lennie!)

OUCH. Tony Romo choked the game away BIG time in that affair. Wow-ee. That was simply devastating. I mean, the Chiefs were bombed from the start. But the Cowboys had their fans believing that they were going to the next round, only to literally bobble it away!

The National Championship game is tonight. Hoop-tee-dang-doo. I just can't get that worked up over Division I football. The BCS is a joke. Once a team loses, every other game they play for the rest of the season is meaningless. They are just expensive exhibitions. Give me a playoff system, baby!

As of right now, I'm going into a sports hibernation. I really don't have a college basketball team that I'm really jacked up about this year. I'll continue to root for my Oklahoma Sooners, but this is the Mother of All Rebuilding Seasons down in Norman. So Yikes! Not looking good right now.

Here are the teams that I'm willing to follow this season:

1. OU
2. Oklahoma State: They've always been my second favorite Big 12 team, and this year they are playing pretty doggone good.
3. Wichita State: They have already lost 3 conference games after an absolutely GREAT non-conference schedule. Either they were over-rated to begin with, OR (more likely) they thought they were going to trounce the MVC OR (even more likely) the Missouri Valley Conference is just that good.
4. Missouri State: Just Because
5. KU. I hate KU. But I like to watch them play in the off-chance that they'll lose. You know why I hate them? Two words: Danny Manning. 1988, Kemper Arena, Kansas City, Missouri. Kansas 83, Oklahoma 79. I will always hate KU for those two reasons.

In other news, I sold my projector to the school. I'm replacing it with a nother one, but I have to wait until I get paid at the end of the month. So that means no Xbox 360, no HD College Basketball, no HD DVD movies........argh. I'm going to start having the shakes by the 20th, I think.

In still other news, Audrey is crawling all over the place .Last night we had to drop a load of money on a baby fence system that can taken apart, broken into little pieces, and placed around important things that we don't want her to get into. Right now, Audrey is just fascinated with our vents and, of all things, our magazines. But that is ending soon. Last night she pulled her self up to the couch and let go. She stood for nearly 10 seconds all by herself. It is so amazing to watch each new thing she can do on her own! Makes me smile each time I think about it.

Tomorrow night I'm taking her to her first ever basketball game. The CUHS Titans play at Carl Junction tomorrow night, literally across the street from my house. So I'm gonna try to make home-made hushpuppies (Natalie LOVES them) and then going to the game. Hope we win both the boys and the girls! Go Titans!

Finally, I have some sad news to report. (Always love ending a post on a downer.)

Church Basketball starts again tonight.

Another season of futility. We are older, slower, and yet again, we have not gotten any infusion of new talent whatsoever. I went jogging and ran the stars some last week, and my legs are just now beginning to recover from the sheer agony I put them through. Now that I have my legs finally starting to gel, it's time to work on the lungs.

Here's to cardiovascular fitness!

I'll post a photograph of tonight's action in a post sometime this week.

PEACe, homies!

Finally, I'm back! Woo Hoo!

I've had several opportunities to blog over Christmas Break, but everytime I sat down at the keyboard I simply stared at my blank screen and never typed a thing.

This post is essentially just an attempt to put something down on "paper" (as it were).

Five months until Summer Break!

:)