O P I N I O N
By Keith Howard
The Guinness Book is full of lunatics chasing immortality.
Men who dunk their heads for apples until their lungs give out. Women who crochet scarves so long they could strangle Rhode Island. One guy painted the same baseball eighteen thousand times until it ballooned into a yoga ball. Another piled up 8,226 Batman trinkets, because apparently Gotham didn’t need his help.
Guinness never called me.
But I still hold records.
Not noble ones. Not repeatable ones. Mine are personal, pitiful, and undefeated because no one else has been dumb enough to try.
- First Boy to Kiss Sheila While Talking to Kitty Carlisle on a Wooden Walkie-Talkie
Age: seven.
Equipment: a splintered two-by-four, held like a radio.
Participants: Sheila, my neighbor for a brief period, and Kitty Carlisle—who wasn’t really there, but lived rent-free in my head. I kissed Sheila while reporting into the “walkie-talkie.” We never spoke again. Sheila, I mean. Kitty and I stayed on good terms. - Fastest Known Ascent of the Crabapple Tree at the End of Beard’s Landing
No stopwatch. No witnesses. Just me, bark, blood, and the song Mr. Dunderbeck spilling out of my throat. Two verses and a chorus got me to the top. My palms looked like hamburger, my shins like evidence photos. The tree’s gone now. Cut down years ago. Which means the record is mine forever. A crown of thorns no one else can wear. - Shortest Time Between “Most Improved” and “Most Fired”
At Camp Mi-Te-Na, I went from quiet and twitchy to loud and obnoxious in a single summer. They handed me a plaque: Most Improved Camper. Two years later I came back as a counselor. Organized an “expedition” that included hitchhiking, beer runs, and lake-jumping off a pier with no ladder. The police boat wrapped things up. The director’s verdict: no longer a good fit; infectious anarchist. Translation: fastest speed from plaque to plague. - First Employee Fired from Orange Julius for Philosophical Reasons
Yes, I dropped acid before my shift. No, that wasn’t the main problem. The problem was I refused to serve anyone. I just stood there, staring at the absurdity of people lining up for orange juice topped with foam. Security dragged me out. My ’68 Malibu laughed when I started it. I drove slowly, so I wouldn’t scare it. - Most Miles Driven While Tripping in a 1968 Chevy Malibu
The Malibu—cousin to the Chevelle, sworn enemy of reality. On LSD, it ballooned into a Greyhound bus, then shrank to a Matchbox car that wrapped around me like a coffin. The vinyl smelled like melting crayons. My teeth buzzed like power lines. Birds overhead had knives for beaks. Potholes opened into alternate universes. With Brain Salad Surgery on 8-track, the car wasn’t transportation. It was a portal. Depending on the lane: heaven, or hell.
The Records That Matter
Every record I hold is selfish or destructive. Usually both.
I never held the door for the most people in a day. Never set the record for patience. Never earned recognition for bringing joy to anyone. If I could, I’d trade every Malibu mile, every Orange Julius firing, every bloody shin, for just one title:
Most Times Saying the Right Thing When Someone Needed It.
Guinness doesn’t track that. Too ordinary. Too human. Too close to grace.
And that’s the only record worth holding.
Publisher’s Note: This is a new series of columns by Keith Howard – you know him from his Tiny White Box series, and as former Executive Director of The Liberty House and Hope for NH Recovery. You can read his previous column here. His new memoir, Unclaimed, But Loud: The Memoir of a Shy and Retiring Boy Who Was Neither, is available for purchase on Amazon.