The Many Names of Toninho

Reading Chase's Interactions with People post made me remember how much I didn't like him when I first met him, but not really. Having known him for the past five and a half years or so, I enjoyed reading about some of his awkward interactions, after all, awkwardness makes for some good stories. What I really found entertaining was the mention of his former place of employment, Market Basket (The MB). When I was looking for a summer job a few years ago, the MB was the place that all my friends told me to avoid at all costs. So I did and it worked out well for me because the MB is a silly place. I was in the MB with JQ and Clydesdale Johannis (another good friend of mine who is currently employed by the MB, though he was not working at this particular instance) at the beginning of the summer. We went in to purchase a gallon of water at the tantalizing low MB price of one half dollar, or fifty cents, or $0.50. Still in the aisle, JQ and Clydesdale began tossing the gallon of water back and forth. I stood and watched. Clydesdale dropped one of the return tosses and the container hit the floor and broke open, thus getting the gallon of water all over the aisle. Some random kid was walking by the aisle when it happened and assured us he would get help, but the way he said it you would think a somewhat severe emergency need taking care of.

We weren't about to wait for that random kid, so we summoned a nearby MB employee who told us he would take care of the spill. So we walked back down the aisle and picked up another gallon of water to replace the now broken and empty one. What happened next I thought, and still think, was very funny. The MB employee who told us he would take care of the incident came to the aisle with a mop and bucket. He proceeded to clean up the water spill with more water. Maybe it's just me, but isn't that exacerbating the problem? There's a water spill on the floor, so let's put more water there and increase the slipping hazard! He probably put one of those "piso mojado" signs in the aisle afterward, too, but I didn't think to check. Couldn't they have just put one of those signs there in the first place? But that's the MB, I'm glad I took the advice all those years ago.

Mention of the MB just reminded me of the wet floor debacle. Chase's post focused on the awkward interactions he has had with various people and I'm going to play off of that idea. I'm not going to take his idea and reflect on my awkward situations, rather I will discuss my ability to keep a straight face. Generally I can keep a straight face even if I'm saying something that is either completely untrue or partially untrue. If you know me too well then I probably won't be able to get away with it, but I like to have a little fun sometimes. To present my point I will take you back to the summer between freshman and sophomore year of college, one of my all time favorite summers! At this point my whole direct family, with the exception of me, were living in California. My friends knew this, but only the friends I hung out with and talked to all the time knew my living situation for the summer. One day we went down to a local field to have some sporting fun. One of my friends, I'll call him Jimbo, was there. Jimbo was a friend of mine, but I only saw/spoke with him on occasion. He asked me where I was living for the summer. I guess I was in the mood to have a little fun so I lied about it. Now here's the key, I told him something absolutely unbelievable, that I was living in a cardboard box. Now obviously that's not true. So I shook it off and told him smoothly that I was just kidding, I'm living in my car. He just looked at me, I don't remember exactly what he said, but the whole situation greatly amused me. I don't know if he really believed me, but eventually I told him that I was living at my grandma's house for the summer. I actually lived there for that summer and the majority of the next, what an experience that was. Maybe another potential blogging topic, but who knows. I should have seen how long I could keep the "I'm living in my car" joke going. I call it a joke, but I guess some people would call it a lie.

Actually, when I come to think of it, I probably pulled off an even better one senior year of high school when I told two of my friends that I was gay. I already recounted that story on our largely unsuccessful conjoined friend blog, Retentive Gibberish (I didn't think I would ever mention that again), but feel free to read the story by clicking here. The short version goes like this. Senior year of high school I had gym class with two friends, Chase was one of them, and the rest of the class was vastly Puerto Ricans. So the three of us usually had sweet conversations during class. One gym class we were talking about girlfriends, actually it was mainly the other two, I was mostly listening at the time. Then they asked me if I had ever had a girlfriend to which I replied, "Nah, I'm pretty gay." The presentation was flawless, Chase can back me up on this, too. I let it sink in for a few moments before I laughed and told them I was just kidding. I really should see what happens if I carry out something like this, see how far I can go with it. I'll have to get presented with the right opportunity, but maybe one day. Sometimes when I tell people the truth, but the answer wasn't what they expected, they aren't sure if I'm joking or not. I've had extensive experience with those types of situations.

This should have been my next play

I even got to put my straight-facing skill to use in school! Sophomore year of college my marketing group and I were making a commercial for a project we were doing on AT&T. For some reason when we wrote the script for it we decided to make it one huge sexual innuendo. I have no idea why we stuck with that idea either. I cannot recall exactly the content of the commercial, but there we had two roles, one was an AT&T person, or at least someone who was an AT&T customer who was recommending signing up with AT&T. The other was the person who had the issue, which was related to phones in some way, but we made it seem like this guy had erectile dysfunction. I was nominated to play the latter role because the group thought I could keep a straight face saying the lines. So I accepted and we made that commercial. I really wish I had a copy of it for viewing pleasure. I still remember when we showed the commercial in class, the class and the professor definitely recognized what we did there, and the professor was smirking. What a great year sophomore year was.

Going back to Retentive Gibberish to find the post I wrote about a great day in gym class back in high school made me curious. I haven't looked at Retentive Gibberish since last December when I finished the article about getting to know me, Toninho, better. That was an excellent post idea, all credit given to Chase who had the idea and penned the questions for me to answer. I went on to peruse Retentive Gibberish since it has been months and I came across Chase's article about his name. Now it's my turn, why I use the name Toninho on blogger. My name is Anthony and I've typically gone by this name throughout the course of my life. When I was a little guy growing up I still went by Anthony because of my dad. My father's name is Antonio, so he was always Tony. Two Tonys in the same house all the time could cause some confusion (Is your name not Tony? That's going to cause some confusion). But as I have gotten older I have come to know people from different activities, situations, etc. I find it interesting and amusing that you can probably accurately guess how people know me just by the name they use for me.

I almost always introduce myself as Anthony, but not everyone calls me that. The people that call me Anthony are people I know from the collegiate track team I was on, coworkers, and adults for the most part. High school was when some of my closer friends started calling me Tony, which I have no problem with. Junior year of high school, my English teacher (another of my favorite teachers of all time), gave me the nickname A-Train. He came up with the name because he didn't like the nickname of T-Bone that one of my other friends in the class gave to me. Only an exclusive group of people refer to me as the A-Train, including the man who came up with it and a very small group of other people. Or you could be like Chase and call me the Gay-Train. I liked making the horrible joke that the nickname A-Train made sense because I was on track (get it, on the track team!).




Through the high school track team, our upper class teammates began calling me by my last name. This stuck and to this day people who I ran track with in high school, or that I met through people I knew on the track team, call me by my last name. I distinctly remember one day at work a few years ago when one of my former teammates came in and called me by my last name. After they continued on with their business my coworker looked at me and said "what did they just call you?" So if someone calls me by my last name, you would probably be right if you guessed that I ran track with them in high school. Most of my friends from college, except for my track team friends, call me Tony. So depending on where I am and/or who I'm with I get called Anthony, Tony, or A-Train. I have gotten accustomed to responding to all three. I think it's kind of funny that you can usually accurately tell how I know someone just by the name they use for me.

I chose the name Toninho as an alias for this blog mainly thanks to Seanahue. When Seanahue was signing our intramural soccer team up Sophomore year of college, he entered my name on the roster as Tondinho. My favorite soccer player of all time is Ronaldo, formerly known as Ronaldinho (before the Ronaldinho that played for Barcelona in the mid 2000s), which stands for little Ronaldo because he was very young when he was coming up the ranks in soccer. I took out the "d" since there is no "d" in Tony like there is in Ronaldo, but I did like the name and it also makes sense for me. I'm technically "Little Tony" and I really like Brazilian soccer players. So intramural soccer and Seanahue deserve the credit for the name Toninho. Maybe people will start calling me that, making four different names for me. Only time will tell.

Since Retentive Gibberish has, for the most part, died (it's mostly dead, I got the diagnosis), there's one more thing I'm going to share from that blog: my two rules of success.

Two Rules of Success

1. Never tell everything you know
2. 
   

Not so Long Ago in a Building Not so Far Away

The silence has been broken, Chase Robertson has posted to his blog last night for the first time since February 28 of this year. It has been almost four months and a decent amount has happened in that time period. This post, Things I Hate (That Everyone Else Seems to Love), sounds like something I would pen myself. George Carlin said it best, "I don't have pet peeves, I have major psychotic f**kin' hatreds." But no, I am not going off on a rant, rather I found it interesting that Chase brought up high school in this post as something he didn't find very enjoyable. I don't blame him for that because let's be serious, high school was rather stupid when you look back on it. There were some things I liked about high school, but there were also things I didn't like. I'm not sure if I feel this way just because of where I went to high school, but I'm sure there have to be similarities about high school life no matter where you go to school in the U.S.

The first thing that comes to mind about high school is how clownish the teachers are. Sometime this past April I found out that my former English teacher from high school was arrested for possessing large amounts of cocaine with the intent to distribute. Apparently she told the police they couldn't arrest her because she is a school teacher. I'm sure if that was the case a lot more people would get into teaching. I also had this guy for geometry who was only at the school for one year and I was lucky enough to experience his class. Two of my friends were given detentions by this guy almost daily, but after going to the first one they never went to another one. But the guy continued to serve them detentions day after day and didn't do anything, at least not to my knowledge because it certainly didn't seem like he was, about them not showing up.

By far the most entertaining class I had was an economics class senior year with D-Chucks. This guy was the epitome of a clown teacher. He just didn't care what anyone did, maybe because he was retiring once the year was finished, but the stuff that went down in that class was like nothing I've seen before. My same friend who would get detentions daily in geometry would sit there and say "hey, D-Chucks, f**k you," while he was teaching and he wouldn't do a thing. He would continue to read from the book at the front of the class like nothing happened. I still can't bring myself to believe that he was that oblivious. D-Chucks would also make these really strange noises in lieu of saying actual words. So many great memories from that class, it should have been called comic relief.

So in my experience most high school teachers are quite clownish. There were a couple good ones, but they were definitely in the vast minority. The long days of high school are something I'm glad I'll never go back to. Spending practically all day inside classrooms getting taught by the suspect teachers made each day feel like an eternity. One thing about high school that I completely agree with Chase on is school spirit. I could care less and I didn't have any in high school. I would go to the football games, but I would go to see friends, not watch the game. In fact I wouldn't even pay sometimes and chose to hop the fence to get in because I didn't want to support the football team. I don't get the big deal with being a senior either. Senior status is something that's going to happen unless you drop out of school. Senior year was my favorite year of high school by far, but it was not because I was a senior, it was merely because it was a good year.

I think my lack of school spirit has something to do with the town I went to high school in. The town I live in is one of those places where it seems like everyone knows everyone else. And if someone doesn't know who someone is in particular, then they know someone who's related to them. Honestly, I think it's kind of strange and I don't really like it. Of course I like having friends and acquaintances and seeing people I know, but at the same time it's nice to have some anonymity. The emphasis that the people in my town put on high school sports is sickening, too. I don't have anything against high school sports, I participated in them, too. What annoyed me is that some people's high school sport prowess was like the highlight of their life. Playing in the Thanksgiving day football game was the best it got for some people. I just think that's sad, but if it helps them sleep at night, then keep believing that.

 Unfortunately I do remember that people in my class were not completely academically honest. You would have to be extremely naive to think that people weren't cheating, even the "smart" people. I think that sucks because it does hurt other peoples' class rank. The cheaters and all the people that dropped out, too. I remember going to check my class rank while I was in the process of applying to colleges. Each time I went my percentile rank in the class was usually different even if my spot didn't change because people kept dropping out. That was something that I made a light situation of because at least I did know that I was going to graduate. As for those other people ranking high in the class due to cheating, well, that's an annoying thing that I'll just have to live with. I guess in the end it didn't make much difference anyway, I still went to a good college.


I wasn't one of the popular people in school either, I just did my own thing. That's just my style, I was basically the same way in college, too. I would go to school, do the required work, go to practice, and go home. Nothing out of the ordinary. I didn't go to prom, I wasn't really interested in that whole thing. I can't say that prom sucks because I don't know, but that type of thing just wasn't my bag. Sure most of my friends went, but I took that night easy, as I do many nights. I got enough entertainment from the stories afterword.


In my estimation, high school was a place to bide your time before leaving for college. Once you get into college all your accomplishments from high school don't really matter anymore. The same can be said of college, once you get your first job and don't screw it up, what you accomplished in college is of lesser value. I don't really know what to make of high school, some of it was fun, a lot of it was lame, like busy work and really long and boring days. Interestingly enough, I find that my closest friends are the ones I had during my time in high school, though. Maybe that's because we went through that crap together and spent many fun filled nights in the basement of wonder and many nice days playing frisbee. At some point I came to the realization that a Bruce Springsteen song fits high school very well, at least in my case. Maybe you can relate, too.

I tend to remember particular people and experiences I had with them in high school as opposed to high school in general. This doesn't surprise me because of how bland high school actually is and I often remember a great deal about people I have interaction with. I've found that I can often remember what people said to me in certain situations and what body language they use. People fascinate me so that's probably why.


Basically (to me) high school was a place full of clowns "teaching" the youth for far too many hours each day with many optional activities that add to or subtract from each individuals' popularity. On another note, I'm glad that my good blogging buddy, Chase Robertson, posted some new material. I hope he continues to do so because it is so much more interesting to read a blog post than a status update or tweet. The elaboration of blogs make them my favorite type of social media.


On second thought, high school was a silly place and I'm glad I do not have to go back there.

The Time Has Come

I came across my high school yearbook the other day and merely tossed it aside, but then I decided to take a glance at what was once my life. My initial thoughts on high school mainly consisted of how I was glad I won't have to go through that experience again. I don't think I could handle the six hour days of monotony. Sitting in various classrooms five days each week forced to do busy work or risk the label of a slacker who will not succeed in life. But then I remembered all the good times that occurred within the walls of that failing building that gracious enough to provide me with secondary education.

Personally, each year of high school was better than the last, ending with a senior year that was by far my favorite of the four years. I always need a little time to get adjusted to new settings, but I'm probably mostly going to relate to senior year here because it was great! Maybe at some point I will come back to the whole high school thing and create a timeline of some sort to document what I can remember from that time in my life, but no promises. Anyways, one of the first thoughts that comes to mind when reminiscing about high school is all the people I met. Some were great and I still keep in touch with them, while others I could care less that I haven't spoken to them since graduation.

The first thing I noticed when beginning the journey through the year book was obviously the cover. The title of the book reads: The Time Has Come. I think that means that the time has come to graduate, but we all know that it really means the time has come to get the hell out of this shitty place and go on to better, much more meaningful things. Well, at least that's what it's supposed to mean, but I'm quite certain that where I went to high school, those years were the highlight of many of my classmates lives. I know it sounds very sad, but it's true. My high school is a classic example of the big fish in a small pond saying. But enough with the negatives, at least for now. I just think the title of our yearbook is comical. The next thing I noticed was the messages from classmates who signed my yearbook. Thankfully I can say that people only had good things to say to me, unless they were lying of course, but I'll never know, so I don't give a shit. It's funny to read the messages and comments now because it puts me back to that time of my life.

There are lots of comments that revolve around the fact that my family was moving out to California for a while. In the end, I only ended up actually going there for two winter breaks, but I guess that means I barely ever came back to my hometown for about eight or nine months for those first two years away at college. Now I'm back home writing this stupid shit. Some other comments mention seeing me in the Olympics someday. Those are classic because I'm not really that good at track, I just ran against a bunch of people who were much worse than me. Don't get me wrong, I had a phenomenal time doing it, but there are just lots of other athletes who are much better than me. Other comments remind me of all the good times we had in high school, such as the nonstop fun my friends and I had in "economics" senior year. There are also some about physics class, I remember spending countless hours trying to do that stuff. My advice for anyone taking advanced physics courses: don't forget to divide by the mass of the earth! (inside joke)

I had one person give me their phone number........it was from a guy, and no he is not gay, at least as far as I know..... I just think that is funny on many different levels and deserves to be shared with the plethora of readers I have. I proceeded onto the pages at the beginning of the yearbook dedicated to the seniors. My favorite part of the biographies to look at is the future ambitions section. Most of my classmates wrote serious things about being happy and successful. My future ambition was a complete joke. Obviously everyone wants happiness, success, and all those wonderful things, but what else do you want? One person did say that they had no goals in life, I give that ambition props because it's funny! Oh yeah, I almost forgot, one of the best things about looking through yearbooks is laughing at all the hideous photos that are in it! Some people take horrible pictures and I love it! I also didn't realize how many people in my graduating class I don't know. I guess I just won't feel as bad if I laugh at them.

Then came the class celebrities, those are always fun to look at. I still remember when my dad was looking at this part and he came across the best dressed section. He looked at it and said to me, "best dressed, do they vote for whoever dresses most like a gang member?" Besides that, I don't have much to say about this section, it's mostly a popularity contest, but then again, what isn't in high school? I actually don't have much else to say about the yearbook in general. Although it is funny to experience the affinity for the shitty high school football program that we have. I still have no idea why everyone cares so much if our team beats our rival each Thanksgiving, it's not like it actually means anything. I should be ashamed to say that, after all, it is the highlight of some people's lives. Shame on me.

The rest of the book is filled with pictures captioned with very generic, unimaginative phrases. The sports section highlights what is the pinnacle of most student's athletic careers, culminating in the glory of participating on the varsity squad. I guess the rest of the yearbook just flat out bores me until I get to the end to read the last few messages written by friends. Looking back on my high school years, it was the people that surrounded me that defined my experience. I did have a lot of great friends and was fortunate enough to meet many great people. While I did come in contact with many sleazeballs and sketchy people, I have to say that at least 25% of the people I went to school with were great! I'm also probably never going to a class reunion, simply because I don't really care. I'm in contact with the important people and I'm not interested in which of my classmates are getting married to each other. I don't even understand why reunions are even necessary anymore with today's social media and the fact that practically everyone goes to the same state college. But then again, I don't understand a lot of things. What goes around comes around. Holy shit this blog post is dragging on, I do understand why no one reads my crap!