Defining the Sketch-o-meter, 2020 style

It all started out when all good stuff starts out: Back in the Day. More specifically, it was 1995 or so. Even more specifically, it was probably the start of Fall semester at CU, and I had just finished lofting my bed. The bed had served me well in the closet, and the time had finally come to kick Ad-rock out of the big room, and to live in a room bigger than a VW microbus. (Details on these and many more stories about the place known simply as 2020 will be coming soon... cut me some frickin' slack, it is my first day on the blog.)

Anyway, for whatever reason, it seemed neccesary to loft the bed up to about 5 feet or so. I think I wanted to jam a crappy couch underneath, but that part of the story is a little fuzzy. Anyway, lo and behold, 12 cinderblocks after I began, the bed was airborne. It seemed relatively stable, certainly stable enough. To me, that is... not so much to my roommates, who decided it was perhaps the sketchiest thing they had ever seen. Simply ridiculing me verbally wasn't appropriate, of course, so the situation was elevated to white-board status. A sketchometer was hastilly drawn, ranging from 0-10, with 0 defining a situation that was not even slightly sketchy, while 10 would define ultra-sketchy affairs.

According to the 2020 Sketchometer of 1995, this loft bed ranked in as a 12, via unanimous decision. Various other things were ranked immediately, including the Goocher's jailbait girlfriend, Wilson's suspension-less full suspension bike, folding cardboard furniture, and one former roommate's current legal status.

Through the years, the sketchometer keeps popping up... as our lives have changed, the range of events has migrated from bizarre college situations through the hectic post-college reality check to the complete and utter sketchiness of changing a fully-loaded diaper in an airplane bathroom during heavy turbulence. (Oddly enough, that ranks as only a 9.7 or so, coming in well below the sketchy bed.) This blog will rely on the sketchometer from time to time as I skillfully avoid the shrink's couch through the therapeutic use of this blog, Newcastle Brown Ale, and motorcycles.

By the way, it is pronounced "skeh-chom-eh-ter", with the emphasis on the "omm" sound. If you insist on reading this word as "Sketch-oh-meeeter", I will have no choice but to reprogram all your car radio stations to the same crappy country station.

buckle up, this might get sketchy...