It seems like you either land on the “love” or “hate” side of the Valentine’s Day spectrum.

I don’t believe that opinion is based solely on whether you have a significant other or not. You can have a significant other and despise the day. There’s so much pressure to get something good, while not being too cheesy or hokey, yet still making sure it has some sort of emotional thought behind it.

If you don’t have a significant other, you can either spend the day dwelling on that or celebrating that. When I was a single man, I believe I dwelled on it under the guise of celebration. It was complicated.

But now I have a wife (a lovely, magnificent, beautiful, kind, caring woman who puts up with me) and what’s even better, this year we agreed not to get anything for each other. We agreed money was better spent on other things we need. Although now that I’m typing this, I only have thought pounding in my head like a horrible EDM jam that gets faster and faster as the bass is about to drop and then… It hits me:

Great. Guess I better stop by and grab some flowers or something on my way home.

Anyway, this morning on Good Day, I was let out of the studio to go hand out roses at a local coffee shop. I make fun of The Bachelor all the time, but this morning I got to feel what many other men on the show have felt as they handed out roses (minus the 20+ women aggressively competing for my affection in a desperate attempt to find fake love on a scripted reality TV show). It was scary.

Here you go:

The first John Wick caught me (and everyone) by surprise. I’m not sure anyone expected it to be the smash hit that it became.

A retired assassin, who just lost his wife, has the puppy she left for him killed and his car stolen in a home invasion. The fire ignites. So he goes and hunts down anyone who may have had any contact with the gang responsible and kills them all. A lot. He kills them a lot. Not just regular killing where they die, but extreme killing where they really die. Head shots. Head shots for days.

It is, without a doubt, one of my favorite movies of all time. That’s a lot to live up to when you talk about doing a sequel. There’s no way they could capture that lightning in a bottle again, right? Wrong.

John Wick Chapter 2 is beyond incredible.

Essentially the plot is the same (minus the dog murder). Wick is forced back into the assassin life he thought he left behind. But this time, you get a greater look into the scope of the secret world of the planet’s most deadly assassins.

There’s still an extremely high body count and many people are shot in the head. It’s. Incredible.

To quote one of the greatest actors of all-time, Mr. Keanu Reeves, I left the theater and could only say, “Whoa.”

Here’s how many Kurt Russell’s I gave it on Good Day.

I love going to the gym. Actually, let me rephrase that. I realize that with my family history of heart disease, that if I live the life I truly want, I will become fat and die from a heart attack, so I go to the gym and go on runs as often as I can so I can at least slow down the inevitability of an early death caused by clogged arteries and a pickled liver. Working out counters excessive bourbon drinking, right? Thought so.

Anyway, I mostly just show up with nothing more than the workout clothes I’m wearing. But recently, I’ve become addicted to the sauna and steam room. The actual act of sitting awkwardly in a tiny hot room with five other sweaty people trying to avoid eye contact is not enjoyable, but I do love the cleansing feeling. So I’ve had to bring a bag to the gym with me. Which means I’ve had to venture into the dreaded locker room.

We all know what public gym locker rooms are like: Naked old people everywhere. I can say “people” because my wife has confirmed there are just as many free-wheeling older ladies on the ladies’ side as there are on the men’s side.  Again, the key is to just look straight ahead or straight down at the ground. You won’t entirely avoid seeing old dongs and buttocks, but it helps. I’m not to that age where I’m entirely comfortable walking around naked in front of strangers. I’m just now getting over the emotional abuse I endured showering in high school. I don’t think I actually fully completed puberty until I was 25. This did not make for good times in high school. I could hear them snickering. I still can. Late at night.

But enough about shameless nudity. While fun to discuss, that’s not what this is about. This is about rude people.

While navigating my way through the valley of old balls (last one, I promise), I found my way to my locker in the back. I sat down on the bench with my earphones in, still playing music. I grabbed my phone and saw my wife had texted me a question. I texted her back, and while I was waiting for her to respond, I played my brother back in a game of battleship. Honestly, I’m not sure how long I was sitting there on my phone, but it was probably 3-5 minutes.

I admit I was in my own world. I was 100% oblivious to everything around me. Normally, I’m quite aware of my surroundings. To me, it is annoying when someone isn’t aware of others around them. The majority of the time, most people aren’t aware they are doing it. This was me.

Apparently, there was a gentleman (I use that term loosely) sitting behind me waiting to get into his locker. I was blocking his access. I get that. I was being unintentionally inconsiderate.

However, a normal person, a sane person, a kind person, would’ve simply seen based off of the evidence that I was not intentionally trying to hang anybody up. A normal person would’ve simply tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, I need to get into my locker,” the same way you gently tap on your car horn when someone doesn’t realize the light has turned green. It’s not meant to be rude, simply a polite way making a person aware. I simply would’ve apologized and said, “Absolutely! I’m so sorry, I was in my own little world.”

I was not dealing with a normal, kind, sane or polite person. Again, I’m not sure how long he’d been behind me, but I had no idea he was there. If it was prison, I would’ve been in big trouble. Instead of a kind, “Excuse me,” I get, “Hey, can we move it along here!?” in a very aggressive tone.

This caught me off guard and frankly, annoyed me. I looked around with a look of amazement wondering if anyone else had just witnessed this. It didn’t appear so. I turned to the guy and said, “All you had to do was ask, man. No need to be like that.”

“Well, you’re on your phone and playing games and… *incoherent aggressive mumbling,*” he replied.

He looked like this:

Ok, maybe he didn’t have the horns. The rest is pretty accurate.

After an exchange of two highly sarcastic “Have a good day,” I grabbed my stuff and left. But the confrontation bothered me. To quote George Costanza, “We’re living in a society!”

It’s a society where you should be kind and understanding to people around you. To live by that Golden Rule: Treat others as you want to be treated.

But, “Some men you just can’t reach.” This guy was unreachable.

I’m not sure what happened to that guy to make him such a rude, sad, unhappy man, but I hope it gets better. I truly do. At the time, I admit my natural reaction was to be snippy right back to him, but it only helps to fuel his unaccounted for rage.

The whole encounter bothered me, but the bigger point here is no matter what is going on in your life, just be kind to people. Be nice. Simple as that. There’s a lot of unnecessary conflict happening these days and at the end of the day, it helps to just remember we’re all on the same team.

In case that’s not your style, here’s that story again with three of my favorite insults of all time.

I don’t know where this photo is from. I found it on social media. I don’t know the context of it… but it might be one of my favorite photos of all time. I like to imagine the little raccoon busted into a small town drug store, drunk as a skunk… err… raccoon and just started trying to steal Pringles and 40 oz bottles of cheap malt liquor to keep his wild bender going.

Things haven’t been the same for him since he caught his wife cheating on him with a house cat up the street who sneaks her Friskies from his nightly dinner. How can he compete with Friskies? He’ll show up with an old fish that is nothing but the head and pure bones below that (like in cartoons), every now and then. But Friskies? The wet kind? He can’t keep up. He’s ok with it. He measures his life not by the things he has, but by the animals he surrounds himself with, and his wife was simply a material girl living in a material world. If there was such a thing, she would’ve most definitely been on The Real Raccoon Housewives of (insert superficial city here). He enjoys being single. So he spends his time partying, rocking n rolling, and stealing potato crisps and Olde English.

But someone called the raccoon cops today. They showed up and said, “Gene! Not you again? How many times are we gonna have to do this?” To which Gene the raccoon feverishly replied, “You won’t catch me this time Officer Diaz!”. Diaz doesn’t really even mind. He likes Gene. He gets his situation, being in a similar one himself, but the law is the law and Officer Diaz took an oath: to uphold it. It’s a fun back and forth they have. It provides Diaz the much-welcomed break of having to notify families of deer that their loved ones were just hit by a Peterbuilt and scraped off of I-90. For Diaz, these Gene calls are what keep him sane.

On this day, Gene runs around the store screaming about his right to party. He’s fought for it and he’ll be damned if someone like Officer Diaz is gonna take it away from him. As he rounds the banana cream-filled Twinkie display at the end of aisle 7, by the old lady hair rollers, he sees daylight coming from the front door. He smells freedom and makes a final leap. As he reaches the crest of his valiant raccoon vault, Officer Diaz snags the rope around his head. He’s caught. Gene knows it.

But this photo was snapped at the split second before he does realize it. It is snapped just as the cool breeze from the automatic front doors open at the rapid-fire motion of his jump from justice. He almost made it. His escapade has ended early. He may have left empty-handed that day, and spent a night in the drunk raccoon tank, but Gene is not discouraged. For it was the brief blink of time this photo encapsulates that he remembers. He sits in his cell, with nothing but that feeling coating his mind, the same way good red wine coats a glass and forms legs that slowly run back down after a good swirling.

Gene shakes his head to re-live that feeling, the memory of freedom continuing to coat his raccoon mind, knowing as soon as someone pays his $425 bail, his first stop is to go catch that feeling one more time. To live that feeling again. And again. And again. Gene will be back. And I hope I’m there to share his joy. Keep flying, Gene. Keep flying.

I’m 33-years-old. Let me just say that first. On Tuesday, I managed to add to a long list of stupid, self-inflicted injuries to my resume by trying to make a dancing montage similar to Kevin Bacon’s warehouse scene in Footloose.

In the movie, while feeling stressed out, Kevin grabs a beer and a smoke, drives his VW Beetle to an empty barn/warehouse and proceeds to give the most emotional, passionate, and greatest dance of his life.

Why did I feel the need to replicate this some 30 years later? Because when I get stressed, just like Kevin I dance. I just decided to make a tribute montage to one of the greatest actors/dancers of our time.

It was going well until I leaped what must’ve been 8 feet into the air, landed and felt my knee pop. Like a true Bacon brother, I kept performing. However, when it happened, I knew something was wrong. Did I sprain it? Tear something? I’m gonna give it a few days to see if it gets better, but right now I can walk on it, but can’t really cut, turn sharply or fold it. I think it’s messed up. See if you can spot the exact moment when it happened:

So I texted my wife and said:

 

She expects this. She is cautious of when I attempt any physical activity and for good reason: I’m extremely injury prone.

Last year, I ruptured my Achilles tendon playing flag football. I’ve cracked my ribs multiple times and my tailbone once while snowboarding. And those are just the injuries you’d expect. But looking back on my life, I always seem to injure myself in ways that no other person on earth could.

When I was in 2nd grade, I cracked my tailbone while trying to skateboard.

“That’s not unusual Cory. Lots of people do that while skateboarding,” you might say. I was wearing cowboy boots.

When I was in 3rd grade, I thought it was a great idea to climb up on our washer and dryer in an attempt to grab some candy. My foot got stuck in between the two and I tumbled off. Broke my wrist.

When I was a freshman in high school, I was trying to bulk up so the bullies would stop picking on me and the jocks would quit using me as a highlight reel tackling dummy during practice. While attempting to incline bench press 95 lbs., my wrist broke again. My frail little wrist collapsed under the bulky weight of 95 pounds.

Perhaps my greatest injury, however (to date), was when I broke both bones in my forearm in half during college. I’ve told this story a thousand times, but it never gets old to me. It happened in college, so you can be sure that alcohol was involved.

At some point during college, I was talked into being Eastern Washington’s mascot. At the time his name was Victor E. Eagle (Victory Eagle, get it?). Whatever I did, they liked it and asked me to keep doing it. The outfit at the time was about as cheesy and uncomfortable as you could get, so I told them if they got a new outfit and gave me a book scholarship, I was in. Surprisingly, both “demands” were met. They changed the name and I was now “Swoop.” The first Swoop at EWU. The pioneer.

Like any good pioneer, however, I found myself most productive when I had a few cocktails in me. This is how I was so great, or so bad at times, depending on how many cocktails I had. That’s where this story is heading.

So on the first home football game of the year, I was ready. At the time, Southern Comfort was my drink of choice. I haven’t been able to drink it since this incident.

My roommate and I decided to pre-funk before the game by drinking the comforting southern drink while simultaneously syncing all three of our apartment’s radios to “Sweet Home Alabama”. As loud as they could possibly go. Sorry downstairs neighbor.

After “turning it up” to some Skynryd, I for some reason decided it was a good idea to go rollerblading. Rollerblading is never a good idea, but drinking Southern Comfort while rollerblading is a recipe for disaster. Outside of town, there is a trail by Turnbull that heads out to Fish Lake. I strapped on my blades, grabbed my little bottle of So. Co. and hit the trail.

“You broke your forearm in half while drunk rollerblading?” you might be asking. No. Surprisingly, I survived that. The Gods of Fate had bigger plans for me and my arm that day and they involved thousands of people.

So as I’m out shirtless blading on the trail, I quickly realize that I’m going to be late for the game. My first major football mascoting gig as the new eagle. I went home and grabbed my stuff. I was 20 minutes late.

I missed the team running out on the field. I missed the Star Spangle Banner. I missed all of that.

But I came stumbling out of the locker room, full of southern courage, and began doing my schtick. I immediately walked over to the student section of the field and began messing with them. I found a few guys I knew, jumped on them, they threw in a few punches (as I had become accustomed to in the past. People feel that it’s ok to physically abuse mascots. It’s not. Stop it. There are people inside those suits!)

Just then, I spotted some ROTC guys making a lap on the track and decided to go mess with them. I strutted up to them, a la Vince McMahon when he’s peacocking, tapped them on the shoulder and thought, “We’re on a track, let’s race.” I conveyed all of this nonverbally of course. Mascots don’t talk. This is important to remember for later in this story.

The ROTC guys didn’t seem into it and I’m surprised they didn’t just slap my beak. But I got down in my runner’s stance, heard a gun go off in my head and took off down the track.

The track was made of that rubber substance. The bottom of my eagle feet were also rubber. The traction and stopping ability was excellent. Too excellent. Suddenly, my eagle claw caught the rubber on the track and with all of the force of my running behind me, my left leg came to a dead stop and popped out of socket. I immediately began falling to my left and put my leg arm out to catch me because my leg was useless at this point. When my arm hit the track, I heard and felt it. Both bones snapped.

So there I am. On the ground, in front of thousands of football fans who had just witnessed that. Or at least had the chance to. I’m sure only a handful actually saw it happen.

My leg wasn’t working. and I knew my arm was done. But I also knew that despite an ambulance being right next to where I fell, I couldn’t go seek help from them. So I popped my leg back into its socket and picked myself up.

My leg hurt, but was still functional. My arm on the other hand (ha!) was just dangling there. Unable to move. Ok. What now? My only hope was to go seek help from an outside source. Someone who wouldn’t think it was inappropriate to be drunk in an eagle costume.

My sister.

So I began limping back to the locker room (probably a good 1/2 mile away.) I passed the same ROTC guys I thought I was racing, who simply gave me a smile and a thumbs up like, “That’s what you get, you idiot.” Deserved.

While they weren’t concerned with my well-being, some little kids most definitely were, and came to check on my status. By pulling on my broken arm and saying, “Are you Ok, eagle?” Sweet. Very sweet. But very painful. Remember the mascot code of silence, though? I never broke it. And while it’s hard to be proud of anything in this story, I am proud of that. I take that (imaginary) oath seriously.

So I gave the kids a thumbs up and kept limping along. I passed by the student section and was immediately yelled at and berated by a bunch of drunk 20-somethings. Understandable.

Surprisingly, the folks at the ambulance just kept leaning on their boxed car that contained all of the medical help I could need for the time being. No matter. I couldn’t let them see me in this condition anyway. So I trekked on.

I made it to the locker room. My own locker room. The mascot and players had separate locker rooms. I was thankful for that because I’m sure had I been in there, it would’ve been high school all over again and they would’ve just whipped me with rolled up, wet towels.

Once in the locker room, I quickly realized that I was not going to be able to get out of my suit on my own. The head was secured by two straps that tucked under my armpits. With the weight of my useless, dangling arm, coupled with not being able to move it, there was no way I was getting my giant eagle head off. So I had to improvise.

So I began my journey on foot to my sister’s house, which was close to campus. I definitely didn’t walk up to my car and drive to her house with the eagle head on. Drinking and driving is bad. Don’t do it.

But I eventually made it to my sister’s house and knocked on the door. She opened it to find a giant eagle with a broken wing, finally able to release the reservoir of tears that had built up behind my eyes, held back only by sheer survivalist instinct.

She cut the head off and drove me to the doctor. The doctor played with my arm for a while as if it weren’t broken, then said I would need to go to the ER. After putting a splint around it with the force of a cowboy roping a calf, he sent me off to the ER, where I was immediately put on the fast track to surgery.

I now have two giant scars on my left forearm to remind me never to drink and mascot again. Hopefully, my knee gets better and I don’t have yet another surgery scar to remind me that I am not Kevin Bacon, and I cannot in fact dance.