So my dad pretty much hates everyone and doesn’t have many friends outside of the staff at a bar he frequents on the weekends. His brother Carl is the polar opposite—a really amicable and gregarious guy who loves to chat with anyone and everyone about anything. They run a business together, so you can easily imagine the weird dynamic they have as partners. On top of their unholy union, every time one of them has a birthday, my grandmother buys the same horrid cologne for them year after year because they lie to her and say they like it (still, Carl probably likes it more than what my dad actually got him this year). This cologne though, it smells like mothballs that have been fermenting in a vat full of a year’s worth of John Madden’s leftover Tinactin scraped from his toe cleavage. Last year she made the mistake of giving her annual bottle of cologne to my uncle, who preceded to squirt three-quarters of its contents all over my dad’s office effects with the door closed after he had left for the night. Needless to say, my father refused to work inside his office the next day. Today was my uncle’s birthday and my dad, being the enterprising guy that he is, decided a special treat was in order: a kiddy pool full of fresh horse shit collected from a buddy’s ranch. It had been sitting in there for a good 12 hours before my uncle opened the door this morning, and next to it he found a shovel and a brand-new bottle of the aforementioned cologne. No word as of yet on how he got it out of there, but I have to say: Good one, old man. I didn’t think you still had it in you.