Funny Memories

We may only have a few days left and I want to offer my sincerest apologies to everyone because it is all my fault. You see, Farm Boy and I are scheduled to leave for Kauai on September 12th.

SEPTEMBER 12TH FOR GOD'S SAKE!

The day after September 11th, which is certainly going to be the day they will choose if they can for their HUGE terrorist attack on US soil. Of course I am perfectly aware if it DOES actually happen, we won't be going to Hawaii...but just the fact that we've scheduled the trip, and with the way my luck is, I will have personally caused an historic terrorist hit. I'll go to my grave knowing it was all my fault.

Shit.

But at least we will be here...on this side of the pond...where our kids and family are. Probably the ONLY reason I would NOT want to get stranded in Paradise would be under such circumstances. Think of the craptastic luck to be stranded in Hawaii and only want desperately to get home.

Of course, I'm assuming that I survive the attack. My luck, while crappy, isn't usually flat out shitty, so I'm counting on being around in the aftermath.  Whatever that might mean.

But...on the outside chance that my crappy luck has actually run completely out and I'm a goner because of barbarians and madmen (including our president), I feel nostalgic.

So here's a story out of my memory banks. 

Years ago, when I was working for Braniff and living in Boston, a girlfriend and I went out dancing and drinking. Michelle was a lot of fun -- a LOT of fun. WAAAAAAAY more fun than I ever was. So being around her was like being suddenly dragged onto a stage at a wild concert where you don't even know who is playing. Anyway, we shut down the place and were out in the parking lot in the wee hours...along with a bar full of others who had just been pitched out into the streets, and were stumbling drunk. So drunk, in fact, Michelle insisted that we stick around for the entertainment of watching drunks navigate their way to their cars. As the bar was especially popular and quite large, it had it's own parking lot, and it was packed full. Obviously some revelers had arrived late to the party that night and now needed to find their way through rows of cars to the very edge of the parking lot where it dead-ended into a frontage road that ran along the far side, rising above the lot by about 10 to 15 feet. It was a steep slope from the road down to the lot below and then the slope dipped below the level of the parking lot into a fairly deep ditch.

 

Oh...and don't mock the artwork. I can't draw any better than I can write...and you're here, aren't you? Standards, my dear. Standards.

One particularly loud group of stumbling drunks were headed for a car. Michelle had a knack for always picking out teh funny, and she quickly slapped me on the arm. "Look! Look! Look! This is going to be funny!"

Puzzled, I turned. "What?"

"Fuck, yes. These guys are waaaaay too drunk. This is going to be good."

"Dangerous, maybe. Good?"

She laughed. "Watch."

Within moments of her prediction the drunks were piling into a car. They quickly revved the engine and simply drove it -- right into the ditch. They just surged forward...right off the edge. We were hysterical, sitting on the hood of our car. They had dumped the car into the ditch so deeply that the rear tires were completely off the pavement and the front end was buried out of sight. The car burst open to spew forth all the drunks who were now staggering around with wild, loose, windmill arms, swearing and punching the car, which, in my opinion, was an innocent player in the whole mess.

The car was stuck. With its rear tires in the air, there was no way it was going anywhere. Period. They pounded on it for a little while, before deciding that they could figure this out. Okie. Dokie. Have at it, dudes.

Not surprisingly, their idea was worse than their driving. With a curious mixture of horror and side-splitting hilarity, we watched them get into a truck and drive it around to the frontage road, turning it to point down the hill right above the stuck car. We watched, but couldn't anticipate. We saw, but didn't believe.

They drove that truck, with all the conviction of drunken Pattons waging war, right down that slope and squarely on top of the stuck sedan. The force of the impact was so hard that it jack-knifed the hood, bending it into a "V" and driving the car even further into the soft dirt of the ditch. Its rear tires lifted ever so slightly higher in the air. I think Michelle and I were actually screaming at this point, we were laughing so hard.

Later, Michelle and I decided that they must have been trying to shove the car out of the ditch with the truck, but being drunk and stupid, had completely misjudged the speed, angle...well...frankly the whole damn thing.

I still laugh at the picture of that truck hurtling down on top of that poor, ditched car.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Okay...now I can die with a smile on my face.