I've been lucky enough to own some of these animal kingdom gems.
My albino hamster, Zittle, used to escape at night and scurry up entire staircases, freak out our two cats, and would be routinely rescued from behind the fridge by my dad. I had an enormous bowl of pet tadpoles for about an hour, when I got to take them home from preschool. Knowing they were actually frogs, I poured the bowl out into the backyard, and a pile of tadpoles passed away before they got to develop. I raised ducks in my college dorm room, Zanzabar and the Little Lady, and they started off as tiny little yellow ducks and grew into majestic white feathered life companions. I drove a seagull to the ocean once. He had a broken wing and was covered in crude oil, so my brother and I put it up in shotgun and drove it to the waterfront in Anacortes, and set it free.

I think about this a lot, because people say things like "Oh yeah, we learned all about how to raise sea monkeys in 5th grade," and I know I must have missed that unit, because all of mine died after 4 days in the plastic tank.

Maybe it was when I got food poisoning from a KFC chicken pot pie.  Or that one time I got a nose bleed from playing tetherball at recess, and had to stay home while my head bled for two days. Maybe. Just maybe.

I have problems counting which WrestleMania or Superbowl we are up to now, and I blame the Brister family vacation to Florida to visit our blonde relatives who live on the beach (no joke) for my inability to read and/or write in Roman Numerals.
I'm pretty sure Mrs. Day (who had a gray parrot named Long John Silver at home and would talk about it all the time) used that week to explain to all my peers what V and I mean, and that MXXVIII means something to a lot of people.

More things I don't remember from elementary school:
-The rules on how many syllables and lines are in a haiku
-How to boil and egg
-the history and theory behind the Recorder, the great "gateway instrument"
-how to play Hot Cross Buns on the Recorder
-operating a yo-yo
-"Slamming" techniques for Pog play
-ever watching Fraggle Rock.
-F.L.A.S.H. (the sex-ed program. Family Life And Sexual Health. Nice one.)


But staying home for a "sick day" when my siblings and I were in elementary school was anything but bed rest and re-runs of Hangin' With Mr. Cooper.

Whenever one of us kids got sick and stayed home from school (due to pink eye, relentless vomiting, or a high fever confirmation on her old timey glass thermometer) and it was either a Tuesday or Thursday, our mom would take us on a little field trip to Cascade Lanes.

Nance was the best bowler in the entire league, and had records up on the wall for my entire childhood. I remember laying down on the plastic benches overlooking the lanes and all the townspeople chain smoking, and in between bouts of nausea and vomiting - being so proud of my mom.  

Her bowling team needed her, and the alley had a day care room. Yes, a child monitoring room right there in the bowling alley slash casino. It was basically an all-inclusive resort for negligent parents. I'm kidding.

Cascade Lanes also had vending machines, with those Peter Pan neon orange crackers with peanut butter inside. Those were my absolute favorite.

But the day care room was a plainly decorated room near the bathrooms, that an old, batty woman named Grandma Nelly would watch over, and anytime we came along with my mom, we had to check in with this Grandma Nelly. She yelled a lot. And had this translucent wrinkly skin and a smoker's cough. But if I watched people's kids at the bowling alley, I'd yell a lot too probably.

Besides being fixtures on the hip hop scene, lil wayne and I have more in common that you (and I, before today) may realize. No, I'm not going to jail on Feb. 7th (for a whole year) on a weapons possession charge from 2007 after his concert at The Beacon Theatre, but I did see Pearl Jam perform at the Beacon that same summer.
Looks like we'd have a lot to talk about:

1.  We both have tattoos.
Lil Wayne has "more than a hundred" of them that cover his entire body, including neck and face, and has stopped counting. 
I have two. A tiny fish on my ankle, and the Hebrew symbol for Bravery on my ribcage.

2. We both had something stab through our chests and miss puncturing our hearts by a centimeter.
When nine year old Dwayne Carter was playing around with his mom's boyfriends 9mm handgun, he accidentally shot himself in the chest, and the bullet missed his heart by a mere centimeter.
When I was just 2 years old, I was playing with my mom's sewing scissors, and took off running through my childhood home, fell on them, and they stabbed into my chest, missing my heart by a centimeter.
I got one stitch, and lost a lot of goo from my cardiac sack (the sack of liquid that surrounds/insulates the heart).
Lil wayne, did you lose a lot of goo also?

3. We are both 3 inches shorter than the average height of our respective gender.
Lil Wayne is 5'6" with shoes on, which is 3 inches shorter than the average man-height of 5'9".
And I am 5'1" (and have been since peaking at age 13), and stand 3 inches shorter than the average 5'4" woman.

4. We are both fans of SNL, and have been on the stage at 8H in 30 Rock.
He was the musical guest for last season's opening show, and sang this sweet remix of Lollipop and Got Money, that I instantly purchased legally on itunes (you're welcome, Wayne) and still run to.
I am going to be on SNL, and will meet at 30 Rock when I'm in the cast and he's doing a reunion musical guest spot after he's released from jail.
How 'bout it, Lorne?

It's been a longtime battle royale of slang terms, East Coast vs West Coast, and everyday conversation can be confusing for a Seattle-lite trying to express that she is not only "down" with that, but thinks it's "tight" and is "stoked out of her mind."
Why don't these people understand me?

The classic case of Soda v. Pop will continue to divide the nation, and diner patrons will be quickly singled out and scrutinized for their mis-use of the regional-appropriate beverage slang.

The weirdest one I've heard so far is that here in New England, they call sprinkles (think: ice-cream sundae slash cupcake topping) by an entire different name, that is the plural of MY DAD'S nickname in college: JIMMIES.  Strange!

A creepy snack I have never tried but heard ordered at a deli in Little Italy is an Egg Cream.  On the west coast, if you asked for this, someone would whip milk and egg lightly with a whisk and then watch in horror as you tried to eat it (Gaston!) but here, it's a mixture of chocolate syrup, milk and seltzer water.  Mmmmmboy.

Now: let's talk about sandwiches, because I am hungry, and they have more nicknames than Richard Nixon (I don't know what that means but I like how it sounds).

On the west coast, it's just a sub sandwich, named after the underwater sea craft that our nation's finest use to spy on people.

Here in New York City, it can change even between the BOROUGHS, between Hero, Grinder and Hoagie. This is unsettling, because I often go to two or even three of them on the regular. But in the dirrrrty South, it's a straight up po'boy or in some small community that has a very intense cuisine blogger named Peggy, it's called a "Dagwood," but just among those 700 people.    Do I smell an annexation?
 
No, I smell a MEATBALL SUB SANDWICH and a POP.

Come by any and every Thursday night for live storytelling and/or stand-up comedy, with hot and hilarious hosts...

EVERY THURSDAY NIGHT ON THE LUNAR CALENDAR!

7:30pm - 9ish    and it's FREE

Belleville is at 330-332 5th Street (Corner of 5th Street and 5th Ave)
Park Slope

FIRST + THIRD Thursdays:  "The Third Wheel" Stand-up and Storytelling
Hosted by Brendan Fitzgibbons and Jenna Brister

SECOND Thursday:  "My Bad" (Embarrassing stories!)
Hosted by Becky Flaum and I will be like an Andy Richter sidekick

FOURTH Thursday: "Fireside" Storytelling show
Hosted by Ash Harrell and Jenna Brister
(check out www.firesidestoriesnyc.com for updates and lineups also)


Post-show, a sweet N'awlins jazz band called Tin Pan Blues Band will take the stage and keep the jams going, and will be the soundtrack for all of the reminiscing, the "oh man that was a crazy story!" exclamations, the front-hugs, the phone number exchanges, and the "I'll just have one more." They are seriously amazing, and a fun way to keep the rave going into the night!

Check back for performer lineups on "the schedge of shows" tab on the upper right, but let's be honest it's probably already your homepage :)
haha SIKE!

But really, the city's most hilarious and captivating performers have brought the pain and will continue to as we set up shop in Park Slope.

So bring your friends, colleagues, roommates, pet-sitters, therapists, family members, loved ones, amigos, ex-husbands, townspeople, and come join us for these sweet shows!

First show dates are:
Thurs March 11th: "My Bad"
Thurs March 25th: "Fireside"
Thurs April 1st: "The Third Wheel"
Thurs April 8th: "My Bad"
Thurs April 15th: "The Third Wheel"

and beyond!

Much love,

Jenna

and by cut-throat, I mean doing donuts in a giant field and going super fast while power-laughing as we fly around the snow banks and cruise across the woods, past waterfalls that are frozen mid-flow. Then stopping for a photoshoot with our lumberjack guide, Rusty, and reminiscing about bear attacks and the perfect storm.

Best time ever. And it is called Sledventures! It's this old lodge run by former (or current... who really knows) members of the KGB, and is decorated with very large, furry bear skins that STILL HAVE THEIR HEADS, PAWS AND CLAWS!

There are a lot of weird winter sports that make no sense to me, but only because I have never tried them.  Such as:

* Snowshoeing
* Ice-Sculpting (non-chainsaw division. It exists!)
* Sasquatch wrestling (if you don't understand the danger in this, watch Harry and the Henderson and just imagine what it would be like if Harry was not friendly and so family-oriented.)
* Ice dancing
* Ice fishing
* Skeleton racing (not the kind that happens in graveyards after-hours)
* Curling
* Ice sailing (taking your sailboat over ice. Nice one.)

This little sidebar somehow made it into the AMNY paper this morning, and even though they only have 22 precious sheets to utilize with the most important, pertinent, newsworthy, and intelligent reporting, THIS little gem shows up to let us readers know that a mass murder MAY have mental problems, BUT IT IS NOT CERTAIN.

REALLY!?!? Come on! Of course anyone, even a 39 year-old Mr. Speight, who was employed as a SECURITY GUARD of all things, would admit that someone who has the bloodthirst to actually massacre a bunch of people is in fact harboring some MENTAL PROBLEMS. Wtf, reporter.

Good luck, Virginians. If they aren't certain this guy's got mental problems already, he'll be back on the streets shortly (living out his hallucination that he was kicked out of his sister's house) and they'll probably arm him with a security guard's rifle and badge.