something funny happened on the way to the hospital some 12,045 days ago

first, i must apologize to all the dentists out there who may have been offended by the less than flattering treatment i gave dentists in my previous post. i admit that dentists are doctors and they have a piece of paper to prove it. no hard feelings my dentist friends? each of you who were offended can tell yourselves your lawyer joke of choice to get even with me. it wasn't meant to be personal for anyone besides bryson.

second, i would like to announce that i passed the bar examination. yes, i am relieved. yes, i am off suicide watch. yes, i can get on with my life as a working professional. it's about flippin' time. i'd love to share more since i nearly had three heart attacks the day the results came out, but that's a post for another day as well as my swearing in yesterday. it's official... which makes today a good day, but not because of anything i did, rather today marks the begining of my good friend johnny miller's 34th year.

it is late and i am tired, but i could not let today pass without sharing one of many favorite johnny miller moments in honor of his 33rd birthday. johnny is probably my oldest friend. i don't have any friends that are over 33. actually, i have known john since we were in diapers. we probably hung out with each other almost every day over a period spanning 1988 to 1995. so, as you can guess, i know a lot about johnny and he knows just as much about me. most of what we know about each other will never leave the walls of our immature minds, but that shouldn't worry anyone... we're good kids for the most part.

of the many light-hearted memories i could share of my good friend johnny miller, i have chosen a classic that will go down in annals of johnny j. miller's official anthology: the fat lip. thing is, i've got to type the account out before the clock strikes midnight so as to not miss his actual birthday and as most of you know, i am succinct challenged.

on with it then...

the fat lip took place some 20 years ago during the magical week of camp del webb. johnny and i were avid scouters who anxiously anticipated the advent of boy scout camp every year and by avid scouters and anxious anticipation i mean we weren't big fans of camping at all. but, we did it and we tried to make the best of it and as the old addage goes: misery loves company. to give you an idea, i would always get homesick and cry or ask to share a tent with the scout leaders during the trips and john would always brag about being able to leave early to go play on the little league all-star team just to make us all feel like we were going to be stuck in tent and outhouse land while he got to go be a superstar baseball player; thing is he never actually left early he just liked to make us think he might. most of us didn't want to be at scout camp and camp del webb was no exception.

a few days into camp del webb and all its glory things were shaping up nicely: one scout had managed to get a peanut stuck up his nose, another was threatening to go awol and leave, i was afraid of sleeping in my own tent, and an overall feeling of gloom and extreme boredom permeated the crisp mountain air. think the alamo the day before it was taken out except that we didn't have any cool knives, guns, or coon skin caps. morale was down but that didn't keep us from trying to find ways to entertain ourselves.

one particularly boring/depressing afternoon while we were sitting around looking for something to do, my friend johnny meandered off to an area were a bunch of fire wood had been gathered. i haven't a clue what he was doing since firewood is outside john's areas of general interest,those being: things with motors (ask him about the time he accidentally started a big old construction vehicle near my parent's place without having any idea how to turn it off), heights (ask him about the footsteps on the roof we'd regularly hear during early morning seminary back in ninth grade), and fire (maybe he thought the firewood would lead him to fire). anyway, john had left the rest of the group and was off quietly doing his own thing, forgotten by the rest of us widdling scouts until we heard some weeping coming from the general direction of the firewood area.

the weeping subsequently caught our attention and we all slowly gravitated towards johnny. the weeping quickly crescendoed into outright panic and audacious crying. we wondered what could possibly have happened to the boy who had lived through a black widow bite, appendicitis, a hernia, independence alternative high school and john muschong (alright, he'd only lived through two of those up to that point, but, seriously, what did fire wood have on him?), when all of a sudden a somewhat hysterical johnny miller emerged from the firewood area with gushing tears and the fattest top lip i have ever seen in my life. and i mean big, like polish sausage big.

apparently, a bee had tried to kiss john while he was rummaging around in the fire wood (or visa versa, point is the bee left in stinger in john's top lip). this bee must have been on steriods or dosed up on the same juice that the spider who bit peter parker was pounding because it had an extremely potent effect (something akin to a nuclear reaction). if i didn't know any better i would have thought that john had received a collagen injection gone bad from an overzealous physician. it was pretty swollen and judging by john's reaction, i don't think he though it was ever going away.

as for me, i wasn't sure how to react... before me stood my best friend who was obviously in pain, scared, sobbing, and requesting help. make no mistake, i felt sorry for him and wanted to help him, but i was a bit shell-shocked... the kid looked like a mutant. scarlett johanson, mick jagger and fat albert's lips had nothing on johnny... maybe all three of them together may have stood a chance, but that is debatbale since johnny's lip was FAT(with an "f", not a "ph"; and when was the last time i used caps?). think will smith in hitch when he had that bad allergic reaction and his face got all swollen. that was johnny except that all the swelling had taken place in his lip and it was exponentially worse.

john's lip was literally three to three and a half times its normal size. i was not only shocked to see this gross abnormality, but on the brink of bursting into uncontrollable laughter. but, i exercised an extreme amount of self control and refrained. it's unfortunate, though, that john was having such a tough time with it all, because a photo of john and his lip at that very moment would provide his, mine and your posterity with more laughter and joy than humans should be allowed to experience for generations to come. it would likely have solved the hostilities in the middle east, cured cancer and inspired all politicians to be honest. however, no one had the heart to bask in poor johnny's pain right in front of his face (which could barely be seen at this point what with the swollen lip covering it up), instead we laughed about it behind his back.

my dad, who was present at the time, actually wanted to and almost took a picture, but johnny was so distraught, he opted not to risk making the situation worse than it was by exploiting the poor kid's misery (i think he feared his lip may actually explode if johnny got anymore excitement). in hindsight, big jeff should have snapped a shot regardless of johnny's feelings at the time since the pic would be well worth any added pain lil' john might have experienced. believe me, he would have gotten over it, but now, like bigfoot, nessi and yetti, johnny's fat lip is a mere undocumented legend that will be tossed around campfires for generatios to come.

but i was there, i saw the thing, and i will never deny it nor cease to proclaim it so long as i have bones in my fingers to type. someday, with a long white beard and a bit of a limp in my walk, i will gather my grandchildren around the campfire in the thick of a full moon and recount the tale of how i personally witnessed johnny miller and his cursed lip. i expect that my grandkids will never play with fire wood again from that moment on.

i think even johnny wishes someone would have taken a picture since he never actually got to see the swollen mostrosity for himself as there were no immediately accessilbe mirrors. in fact, i have heard him say on more than one occassion that one of his first requests in heaven will be to see a flashback of fat lip johnny. i'm sure heaven has a 32 x 40 portrait of this instance right next to michael jackson in its hallway of "wow, can you believe what our creations have managed to do to themselves down there."

so, in closing, i would ask all of you on this the 33rd birthday of johnny miller to take a moment of silence and close your eyes to imagine him some 20 years younger, teeth a little bucker, voice a litlle higher and tears a'flowing down onto a fat lip the size of his dad's afro. pay the boy his due respect... he has earned it for pete's sake.

the fat lip is just one of the many images/memories of my friend john i currently feel compelled to share with the rest of you. this is the johnny i know... and should he live to see the grand old age of 34, i will share another similar, but equally embarassing (if not more) moment of my life with john j. miller.

done with one minute to spare. happy birthday, jonus!