Best Dancer In High School.

There was a point in high school where I was drinking a ton and was really depressed. I didn't really know at the time that I was depressed, but I wasn't in a good place. I hated going to school, just hated it. I was showing up to school hung over every Thursday. Me and some friends called Wednesday 'Wasted Wednesday'. I was going to improv classes, then meeting up with friends at a place we called 'The Bar.' The Bar was a flipped over fridge we found in the woods. Every single Wednesday, we'd meet at 'The Bar' and drink. I'd drink a full quart of rum to myself, then go to school the next day. I was going to school every Thursday like I had lost my job at the plant. 

"Nathan, you okay? You look terrible. The factory shut down?"

"No. 'Wasted' and 'Wednesday' sort of go together. That's it."

Every Thursday, the first class I had was english. At 9 am. I would basically be crawling in there. One day after class my teacher stopped me. 

"Nathan, I know you're showing up to class drunk."

"I'm not drunk. I'm hung over. And can you be little quieter? My head is going to explode."

I was in a bad way. One time in this class, I had my head on a desk trying not to spin or whatever the hell was happening, and a girl looked at me and said 'You're hot'. Now, had I not been hung over, my head pounding and this girls voice not destroying my fibre, I might have responded differently. But all of that happening, I said 'Fuck you.' That was my response. 'Fuck you.' Just awful. 

I was really down, and on a path to nothing good. I decided after grade 10 that I wasn't going to go to school for the first semester of grade 11. Just wasn't going to do it. Everyone told me that I'd never go back to school. Every single person told me that I'd never go back and finish high school. I knew that I would. I knew I would go back and finish school, I just needed to change some things. I took the time off of school, got a job, and quit drinking every single week. 

"Nathan, you okay? You look alright. The factory open back up?"

"No. I just decided to stop drinking like my wife passed away in a car accident."

I started to be in a better mood. I started to hang out with people who were fun, didn't need to drink and do drugs, and were into the same things I was. I started to think more positively. And I started to think about going back to school the next semester. Also started to think that I wanted to go back in a different way. I wanted to be that dude at dances. You know, THAT dude, the guy that had people circling him. The guy that was crushing it on the floor. Wanted to go back and be that guy. I remember walking around the dances before I stopped going to school, and I felt weird and out of place. I didn't like it. I would only try to dance with girls that I was friends with, and pretty much only slow dances. Then, 'the dude' would just start tearing it up. People would be excited. People would circle around, jump around and smile. 

So, I set out to do that. At the time I had started to really love Michael Jackson. I don't remember why, or really how it started, but I loved the man. I bought everything, and I'd come home after work and learn the moves in my mirror. I would dance to Michael Jackson, staring at the mirror, thinking of being the dude in school. This went on for months. Me working a fast food job, coming home, tossing on Michael and power dancing in my mirror. 

"Nathan, you okay? You look greasy and tired. The music factory start up again?"

"I'm started not to know what these comments mean. Please stop them."

After that full semester of working and dancing alone, I went back to school. Before a dance rolled around, there was a karaoke contest in the school. I signed up. Could I sing? Not at all. I hadn't come home after working a fast food job and sang in the mirror. So what did I do? I danced. I danced to Billy Jean. Had all the moves down. I was up there feeling great. I knew I didn't sing so I didn't think I was going to win, but I just wanted to perform. The contest winner was based on audience applause, and I won. I won a t-shirt I'm pretty sure. I was so excited. People were telling me how great it was. Dancing in my mirror alone like a nut paid off. 

"Nathan, you okay? You dance at night alone for the future enjoyment of others. You want a job at a factory instead?'

"I swear to christ, stop this."

Dances came around, and I became that dude. Well, one of the guys. There was another dude in my school who break danced. He was great. We would be the dudes at dances. People wanted me at dances. They'd come around, and people would ask me if I was going. Lots of people. I put on shows at school with another friend of mine who was a pop locker. I had a bunch of confidence and was having fun. I wasn't hurting anybody, mostly myself. Wasn't drinking or doing drugs. I was doing good in school. Having fun with just life. This went on for a couple years, and I was voted best dancer in my high school. Was I that good? No, but I was known. And I mean, how many people are even dancing in high school? 

Now, I didn't think that was thing that would upset anyone, but it did. There was someone in my school who hated that I was voted best dancer. They thought they could dance better than me. When they would see me in the hall, they would start dancing. Just stop mid conversation, and start dancing. 

"Yeah, you know, I'm probably going to go to that par..."

Then he'd see me and just start crushing. I knew he was mad at me, but I didn't get it. He wasn't dancing at school. I asked him once if he wanted to put on a show with me. We could both dance, entertain people. He just stared at me, then was like 'naw, man. I ain't into that.' Okay, well I tried. I thought that would be the end of it, but one time while walking home from the store, a guy came out of nowhere.

"Yo, you think you can dance better than my dude?"

It was winter time. I had a big coat on, was holding some gummy bears I had bought. 

"What? Who is your dude?"

"Yo, you serious? Yo, man, he don't know who you are!"

Then, also out of nowhere, came the guy who was mad I was voted best dancer. 

"You don't know who I am?"

"Yeah, I do man. I didn't know he met you. What's up?"

The other dude jumped back in.

"You think you can dance better than him?"

"Man, I never said that."

"Let's go around the corner and have a dance off."

This was actually said. This guy wanted me to have a dance off with his friend in the winter behind a bar. I'm guessing he'd be the judge? And this was exactly what I'd come up to him about in school! But do something like this in front of an audience, not in the snow behind a bar I used to go watch drunks fight in front of.

"No, man. I'm not doing that."

"Ahhh, look at that. He's scared to go around the corner with us because we're black and he thinks we'll rob him."

Not in anyway was that what I thinking. I was thinking 'it's cold. This is ridiculous. I'm going back to my friends house. Can I just eat these gummy bears.' Thought I'd run the show thing by him again.

"Dude, why don't we do this at school?"

"Naw, man. You scared."

Then, they walked away, and I walked away. We never had an interaction again, and I graduated soon after that. After school, pretty much quit dancing all together, and started doing comedy. In a lot of ways, should have kept dancing. Comedy does not NEARLY make women run like dancing does, and nobody has ever asked me to go behind a bar with them and have a joke off. There's no 'Step Up' movie about punchlines. 

"Yo, he can tell a joke? I bet he's good in bed."

None of that. But either way, for a little while, I was that dude.

Twitter @nathanmacintosh

Sibling Day.

I know. Sibling day is not a real day. It's an internet thing. But still, it made me think of some things. I have a younger brother. We look very similar. Same father. Same mother. Both of us have red hair and skin pale enough to use as wax paper. My brother is two and a half years younger than me. I was around for a couple of years before he showed up. I was the only child for awhile. I don't remember too much about it, but I'm pretty sure it was great. 

The Dust Buster - One day my brother showed up. I wasn't a fan. Now there were two of us? How the hell was this gonna work. I wanted all the attention. One night my mom was downstairs. I went to his crib, and took a dust buster to his head like an ECW match. The dust buster was sucking up his tiny hair, and he was balling. I don't know what I was trying to do, I just wasn't a fan of him. My mom came running upstairs to see why he was crying, and I hid the dust buster. 

The Reese Cups - I was in grade two, and my brother wasn't in school yet. I got off the bus home, and my mom said, 'Hey. I got you guys some reese cups. Alex has them in the room.' I went into our room, and my brother couldn't be found. No brother. I looked around, then opened up the closet. There was my brother, on the floor, eating all six reese cups. Weird look on his face. He was probably sick from all the chocolate. I'm pretty sure I started to cry. No reese cups for me. 

The Dinky Car - My mom drove us to the library once to drop off a book. I was five, brother was almost three. I had a little dinky car that I was driving on the door. A dinky car from the 80's. Just a pure piece of metal. My mom goes into the library, and my brother starts calling me a bum. I told him, 'Say it again, and I'm throwing this dinky car at your head.' He looks around super coy, then looks at me, 'you're a bum.' I hauled back and whipped this thing at his head. Bam! Hits him above the eye, and he bursts open. Blood is running down his face, and he's screaming. He's bleeding bad. Bleeding like he's in an ECW match. I run into the library. I tell mom that something happened. She gets to the car, and sees this complete mess, and I tell her that Alex was jumping around, fell, and hit his head on the door. We drive to the emergency room, and instead of stitches, the doctor glues his head back together. This surgical glue or something. As he's gluing the wound back together, the doctor glues his glove to my brothers head. My brother is screaming as this doctor is pulling on a glove that is stuck to his forehead. 

The Chin Explosion - When I was little, I had superman pajamas. They were great. They had a little cape attached to them. My mom asked me to take some towels up to the linen closet. I get to the bottom of the stairs, and start thinking superman in these sweet as pajamas. I tear up these wooden steps, wearing socks, and slipped. I come down directly on my chin. Bam! Opens right the hell up. Opens up like I'm in an ECW match. My mom rushes me to the emergency with my brother. We get there, and have to wait. I'm holding one of the towels I had been taking upstairs to my chin, bleeding everywhere. My mom asks my brother to take a dollar and get a ginger ale. He puts the dollar in, and no ginger ale comes out. So, my brother starts kicking the machine. Just booting it. Other people in the emergency room are cheering him on. 

"Yeah! Get it! Kick it!"

Ginger ale falls out. The emergency room cheers. My brother brings it over to me. 

"You need it, Nath."

The urine - My brother and I were really into video games growing up. Had just about every system over the years and spent countless hours playing and beating games. Majoras Mask came out for Nintendo 64, and my brother pretty much locked himself in a room for three straight days. Came out of the room, looking like he'd been to Nam or involved in an ECW match, and went 'beat it.' I was in there a day or so later with my girlfriend at the time. We were fifteen so it was pretty innocent. The room was dark, and there was a bottle of coke on the floor. I took a sip of it, and it was the strongest tasting thing ever. I thought, 'Maaaaan this is flat!' Because I'm stupid, I took another sip. Just another blast of hell to the mouth. THIS time I figure out what had happened. My brother, while beating this game, DID NOT leave the room to piss. Instead, just right into this coke bottle. My girlfriend is going, 'it's that bad? Let me try it!' 'No! No! It's awful. I'm getting rid of it.' I assume this was my brothers way of paying me back for the dinky car. 

The Clothesline - My brother and I hung out a lot when we were very little. By the time I was about twelve, I thought it was kind of stupid to hang out with my younger brother. Thought kids would make fun of me. Really stupid thought, but I was little. One time we were at my grand parents house. I'm pretty sure that we had been arguing a bit about some stupid brother thing. I went outside to get our clothes off the line, and my brother locked me out. I took his clothes, and through them on the ground. He let me back in. 

"Why did you do that? I was just getting out clothes?"

"You were? I thought you were going to do something bad to them."

Then he started to cry and said, 'we could have been friends again.' Kept crying. I felt bad about that at the time, and honestly, still hits me a bit now. He just wanted us to hang out again. Really dumb that I thought hanging with my little brother was stupid. 

The Porn - Rogers used to have a cable box. On that cable box, you could order porn. My brother and I were both in the age for porn. When I would order it, I would try to find things that sounded like actual shows or movies. 'Sopornos.' 'Forrest Hump.' That sort of thing. So that if I did get questioned, I could say 'I messed up! Was trying to get something else.' My brother? Not the same. Would just get ANYthing. 'Whores.' 'Super Whores.' 'You won't BELIEVE what these Whores are doing.' One day we were in our room, and our mom kicked in the door. 

'I just got a bill for four hundred dollars! Which one of have been ordering these dirty movies?!'

Me and my brother both say, 'wasn't me.' Our mom is LOSING it.

'None of you, huh? NEITHER of you ordered these skin flicks?'

To this day, 'skin flicks' said by my mom is the most disgusting thing I've heard. Both of us still did not own up to it. Our mom went on to call Rogers, ask them if there was anyway there was a mistake, was told that those movies were ordered from that our house, by our remote. No mistakes. My brother and I never talked about it, because we both knew we were wrong, and both thought we were the only ones ordering them. 

The brother - There are many other stories about many other things, but basically I love my brother. He's always been an inspiration to me even though he's younger. He's hilarious, an amazing writer, interesting, and speaks his mind. People think that I may be loud at times and talk a bunch, but I was always the quiet one between the two of us. I love my brother.

How I Brought Down FutureShop.

Today, FutureShop, Canada's Best Buy which was bought by Best Buy in 2001, closed it's doors to either disappear into the night or, become Best Buy. I worked at FutureShop for about four months when I was 18. Honestly, I really wanted to work at this place. I thought at the time that it would be so cool to work around TV's and video games and such. It was for awhile, and then I started to single handedly bring the company down. How did I do this? Here's a list. 

Executive Lunches

Ah, the executive lunch. Took a whole hell of a lot of these. What is an executive lunch? It's what me and a few people working at FutureShop assumed the CEO's and such of the company were taking. Two, two and a half hour lunches. just brazen lunches in the middle of the day. There's was one guy specifically who always wanted to take these. We'd see each other at around 11am, walking the floor. One of us would always drop it.

"Executive?"

"Oh, buddy. I need an executive today. This place is kicking my ass."

We'd go for lunch at Pizza Delight across the street for their lunch buffet. That thing ran from noon to two. We'd crush the whole thing, then get dessert. Our lunches were supposed to be a half hour. If we took a peasant lunch, we'd get to pizza delight, order, and have to walk back across a highway and parking lot eating pizza like stupids. The executive allowed us to REALLY stretch out. 

I'm assuming the executive lunches cost the couple around ten grand. We took in enough lunches in four months that if broken down in half hours would last a year. 

Calling a guy named Dwayne 'Dwaaaaaaayyyynnnneee!' like Garth from Waynes World

I worked in the Home Theatre department with a guy named Dwayne. I would always say, "Dwaaaaaaayyyynne!" like Garth Algar. 

"Don't say my name like that."

"Okay.... Dwaaaayyyyynnnnneee!"

He really didn't like this, and it really made me laugh. Doing this on a daily basis probably cost the company at least ten bucks. Not exactly sure how, but it had to. 

Showing up late, leaving early

After awhile, I wasn't a fan of this place. I wasn't really into selling TV's and the full manager told me a couple times that I was an idiot. I was also 18, and didn't care at all about making a bunch of money. So, I started coming in late. Like, an hour here, two here. If I had an eight hour shift, sometimes I might actually be in the building for three hours then leave. One day I came in late, found out a TV that I sold the day before had been returned. You could check your numbers, and because of that TV return, I actually owed the company $2.36. OWED them money. I went home. Played Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. I was called once when doing this.

"Nathan, where are you?"

"Uhhh, I'm in the back. What's up?"

"Oh. Do you know where this thing is?"

And that was that. I hung up, and went back to Grand Theft Auto. Showing up late and leaving early probably cost the company seventy thousand dollars. These are all just projections. The same ones that they placed on us. 

Costing The Company Twenty Five Grand

I was at work one day, and the assistant manager came up to me. 

"Nathan, can I talk to you? Your numbers are down. You are supposed to have thirty thousand dollars worth of sales by this time in the month. You have five. That means you've cost the company twenty five thousand dollars. What are you going to do about it?"

I didn't really have an answer. I think I told her I would try harder? She told me to make TV stands. Instead of walking the floor, talking to the hero's that would come through, I sat in the home theatre department banging a hammer into some wood. 

Costing the company twenty five grand probably cost the company twenty five grand. 

Not selling big enough TV's

As I stated, I wasn't the best at selling TV's. Why? Honestly, I didn't really want to. I liked talking to people, so that's what I would do. 

"Hey, how are you?"

"Just looking."

"I'm just asking. What's up?"

Then we might talk about movies or whatever. I would tell people what they wanted to know about TV's, but I didn't want to pull the grease of pretending I cared, then talking them into the service plan, which was the only way I could really make money. One day someone came in, and asked how much the TV's on the wall cost. The TV's that were always on. The ones that were placed there the day the store opened and only shut off at night.

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah. How much?"

So, I go in the back where the manager was. He is back there, throwing a whistle Nerf ball back and forth with another manager. 

"Why do you want to know how much those cost? You're seriously selling that? Wow. What do you bring to this company, Nathan?"

(Whistle From The Nerf Ball)

Once he was done making a SWEET catch over a trash can, he, with his wisdom and expertise and everything else he brought to the company, told me the TV would be fifty bucks. I go back out and tell the customer, who says they'll take it. So I have to get a ladder, climb the top, unplug and dust off a tube TV that was on for at least five years straight, and struggle to bring it back down. Get it on the floor, and this criminal asks me something I'll never forget.

"Do you have the box for it?"

"Buddy, for fuck sake, of course not. I almost died getting this. Please just die." What I wanted to say. But didn't. I went and made this animal a box.

Getting this TV down, making a box and bothering the Nerf throwing Czar with a question probably cost the company a million dollars. THIS was the big one.

Obeying managers 'Don't Give Deals' slogans.

Managers always told us not to give deals to people. At first I thought this would never come up. But EVERYday. EVERY single day, people would come in and want deals. A lot of times over stupid thing.

"I'm buying this pack of gum. What can you do for me on this TV?"

I would tell people that we couldn't give deals. Wasn't allowed to happen. People would ask for my manager. I'd go cool, they're going to say the same thing I just said. I'd get my manager, and they would come over. 

"How can I help you, sir?"

"I'm buying this pack of Trident. I want a deal on this two thousand dollar TV."

"Hmmm. Tell you what. You buy two packs of gum, I'll give you the TV."

"Deal!"

So, in getting the manager to do something they told me not to do, I cost the company here at least a couple bucks. 

Raising My Arms Like A Winner Each Day I Was On The 'Lowest Sales' List

Every day that we would come in, the manager would read out who had the most sales the day before and who had the least. Every day, I was on the list of the least. 

"Okay, and again, for the LEAST amount of sales, is Nathan. Way to go, Nathan. Way to help the company."

I would raise my arms like I'd won the Intercontinental Title. Doing this made it look awesome to make the lowest sales list, so I'm sure some others did it. This would have cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

My Last Day

My last day at FutureShop was on New Years Eve. I was a seasonal worker, and at the end of this day they were going to let us know if they were keeping us on. I had been called an idiot, not that smart for a red head, I was always at the bottom of the sales list, and was executive lunch advocate. I wasn't going to be asked to stay on. I decided to take an executive walk out, and leave during the day. Before that, I was asking people what they wanted to pay for things. 

"Ah, man. I really want this DVD player. But it costs a bit much."

"How much you want to pay for it?"

"Eighty bucks?"

"Done."

"Really?! What about sixty?"

"Come on, man. Let's not get greedy."

I did that for a couple of hours, charged people what they wanted to pay for things. Then another guy and I decided to walk out and hit the casino. This day probably made the company money. Once I left, it might have been looking up except for today. Goodbye, old friend. 

Twitter @nathanmacintosh