Keytarded

So I coined a new word today. It is a combination of "key" and "retarded." Let me tell you the story.

At 9:00 this morning I was contemplating getting out of bed (since I work from home on Thursdays and Fridays). My cell phone rang. It was my friend who we will call Ron Burgundy. Ron and I go back several years. We've played in a band together. Been on road trips together. Dated a few of the same girls (but not at the same time). I consider him to be one of my best friends in these parts.

So Ron calls me up. "Max! Are you still in bed? You lazy sack of crap! Check out what a gorgeous day it is outside. Let's go surf for an hour before I go to work."

I sleepily replied, "Sweet! I'd much rather surf than walk into my living room and start working."

"Okay. I'll be there in 15 minutes."

I roll out of bed, eat some breakfast, take a deuce, put on my board shorts, pull The Ark (that is the name/title of my surfboard) out of the garage and wait for Ron to show up. He shows up. I throw my stuff in his truck and we head down to 9th Street to surf. He called Gidget and Paco on the way, and they were already at the beach changing into their wetsuits.

The waves were virtually non-existent, so we spent the better part of an hour just chatting and trying to stand up and balance on our stationary boards. A few waves would roll in every couple of minutes, but they weren't anything to talk about. The break was really close to shore, so that you were faced with only about 18" of water between you and the sand when you are sliding down the face of the wave. Scary. I know a guy who broke his neck doing that and is now confined to a wheelchair.

We called it a day and headed back in to shore. We walked up to the truck, and I waited for Ron to open the door. I waited some more. I waited a little bit more and said, "Hey, can you open the door for me? I need to change back into my shorts."

"Um, I would open the doors if I could find the key."

"You lost the key?"

"I never lose the key. I always stick it in the same place in my wetsuit before I zip up, but it's not there."

So he spent the next several minutes digging through his wetsuit trying to find the key. It wasn't there. Now, for those who don't know, when you go surfing you don't wear anything under your wetsuit. So, he couldn't just take his suit off and shake it out - his clothes were in the truck. It was kind of funny to sit there and watch him digging through his wetsuit trying to find the key.

It turns out that the truck was a rental while his was in the shop. I stayed with the boards at the truck and he went walking down the street to find a phone to call the rental shop. I sat at the truck for about an hour before he finally came back. It turns out that people don't like to loan their phones to you even in an emergency - stupid Mexicans, Armenians and other random White people! Thankfully there was a really nice Chinese guy that runs a donut shop that let him use the phone. Hooray for the Chinese! They are nice and he makes good donuts.

He calls up the rental shop and they arrange to send out a AAA locksmith to let us into the car. We wait another hour or so before he finally shows up. Within 2 minutes he has a new key made and we are ready to roll. I change into my shorts and load everything up in the truck. Ron starts pulling off his wetsuit to change into his shorts and guess what falls out of the very bottom of his right pant leg? Yep. The key.

So after wasting 2 hours, getting a locksmith to come cut a new key on site, and it all cost him about $150, he finds the key in his wetsuit. I couldn't do anything but laugh. He was so mad about the whole thing and I was just laughing away. Then after a little while he decided it was really funny too and we both were laughing at it.

He took me home to drop my stuff off. I also needed him to drop me off to pick up my truck from the shop. So I run into my house, grab my wallet and cell phone, change clothes, and then run back out to have him drive me to the repair shop. I hop in his car, look into my hands and realized I had grabbed the wrong set of keys - and those keys don't have a house key on them.

"Dammit! I just grabbed the wrong set of keys. Your bad key mojo rubbed off on me. This is the most key-tarded thing that has ever happened."

And that is how I invented the word keytarded.

It's always an adventure when I hang out with Ron. I should avoid him a little bit more.