Hookie McSkipper

All of the cool kids are gearing up for the Blog World & New Media Expo in Las Vegas this week and I won't be attending. I didn't think that I'd be nominated, so I didn't bother requesting time off from work. At this point it's pretty much out of the question unless I come up with a dire emergency that requires my absence from the illustrious world of interior design, but I've had enough past experiences to know not to lie about stuff when I want to play hookie.

Fifteen years ago, all of the cool kids were playing a little arcade game called Street Fighter 2. I never got a chance to practice in the afternoon because all of the other kids would be there waiting to play it, so I got out of going to school by sticking my finger down my throat and vomiting in the living room to fake a stomach flu. After my grandparents left for work, I poured all of the coins out of my coin jar to get all of the quarters and I made my way to the arcade.

Things were going well until I received an intense tap on the shoulder from my grandfather, who had come home during his lunch break to bring me soup. He'd seen the coins on my bed and realized that I'd gone to the arcade because the quarters were gone. As he scolded me, the game kept going and I heard the machine say: GAME OVER! Game over, indeed!

Years later, during my time working as an operations coordinator at a movie theatre in Houston, I got word that all of the cool kids were taking the weekend off to drive to Mexico. I quickly told my boss that I won tickets to the Vans Warped Tour and that my favorite band, Less Than Jake, would be performing there. I'd never heard of Less Than Jake, but I did remember that one of my emo friends was going there to see them, so I just went with it. Before I had time to bask in the warm glow of the perfect lie that I wove on the spot, my boss remarked that he was sad that he would be missing it this year because he'd just seen them open for Blink 182 and he really enjoyed them.

He went on to tell me about the history of the Vans Warped Tour and later asked me how I was able to snag tickets, but what he was really doing was attempting to unravel my seemingly perfect lie. I made up another lie to cover it up and before I knew it, I was telling him an intricate tale about how I was frat friends with the son of one of the guys who works at a radio station. The final nail in my coffin would be his request for me to sing anything that Less Than Jake ever performed. Needless to say, I didn't get to go to Mexico and my dishonesty was met with two months worth of night shifts and long weekends.

It's cute when you're a pre-teen wanting to get his game on or a young adult who wants to party with his friends, but I'm 28 and now there really isn't a clever and sophisticated way for me to get out of working just to attend this blogging convention... which is just my luck because Southwest Airlines is having a great deal on flights to Las Vegas. Before anyone calls me out for calling in sick the day after gay pride weekend and Labor Day weekend, let me just say that those are compulsory gay holidays. We're supposed to take those days off.