So before I begin, my post title once again
reminds me of a song. This is probably my favorite Kanye West beat, you know when he was just blowing up as a producer before becoming the arrogant douche bag entertainer we love to hate. I still listen to his stuff though.
I apologize for the gap. Work ramped up again. I try not to complain because it could be worse, as in I could be unemployed. Somewhere in the vicintity of a couple months, I may not be online for work 16 hours a day. That'll be nice.
You probably noticed that "iPhone" isn't in the blog title. I figure I can still talk about it without it being the focal point. I'm only going to give you a brief update on it as I have something better in store for this post. Phone is fine. It's now in an Otterbox because Amazon had it for the low-low. Battery life is fine. Reception is fine. I'm still annoyed at its ability to only do one thing at a time (other than music, that doesn't count), and I've found a new pet peeve. It's the year 2012, why on earth is Apple still using a proprietary connector???
I'm also putting in a plug for a
friend's blog. His name is Lee, we went to junior high and part of high school together, and he's a pretty cool dude. He does things you and I wouldn't do, like antagonize people sending phishing emails and critiquing blogs written by people who obviously live under a rock. He cusses about as much as I do so this was your warning. He is also the inspiration for this post since he tells crazy (but true) stories about his life. I know I've had an adventure or two with him.
So onto the story. I recently recounted this story and figured that it could be a funny story. Some may not find it funny due to the nature of what happened, but it had me laughing again, so I'll let you be the judge. Some of the names have been changed to protect the innocent. The star of the story is a guy I went to school with. We'll call him Joe. It was my then fiancée's parents' anniversary, a milestone one I assume, because she and her siblings scraped together money to buy them a new bed. So we are getting ready to go to Suwannee or Gainsville to pick up the bed when I get a call from Joe. Joe sounds a little frantic, and can only manage to say "You have to come get me" over and over again. So me being the friend I am, go to get him. I explain to him that we have to go get this furniture and he's fine with coming along. Mind you, this was truck number 2, which was a '98 Nissan Frontier single cab 5-speed. So we drive all squished up way out to wherever, get the bed and head back. Every now and again Joe gets a call on his cell, yells almost incoherently and hangs up abruptly. We make a stop for a bit and he walks off, I only assume so he could yell for a longer period of time.
We make it to my fiancée's parents' house (there is a little funny backstory involving my mom having to get her parents out of the house, but it's not important) and Joe helps us unload the furniture and then declares "I'm going to work in the backyard," asks us for some gardening tools, and proceeds to do probably the best weeding job that acre in Decatur has ever seen. We put the bed together, her parents come back, are sort of surprised (they knew something was up due to the backstory I'm not including), but very appreciative. I unfortunately have to tell Joe that I have stuff to do and I have to take him home. He seems to understand, and he and I head off from Decatur to downtown (where his apartment was) in the most roundabout way I can think of to give him more time not to be alone. Part of the route has me going down Spring St near Tech. As I'm approaching 4th St, a white Chevy Cavalier BLOWS the stop sign and plows into my driver's side quarter panel. I describe this as my Matrix moment, because I see her blow the stop sign, know she's about to run into me, and I can see the world slow down. I can hear myself saying "OH SHIT!" like it was being played back at half speed. I swerve just enough (I assume she swerved too) and she missed plowing directly into my door by mere inches. At the corner of Spring and 4th there is an Arby's restaurant. There is a telephone pole with a guide wire and the Arby's sign is a truck's width away from the guide wire. There are also some small hedges in the landscaping around the sign and telephone pole. Why did I describe it as a truck's width worth? Because she hits me hard enough to point me toward telephone pole and Arby's sign. I hit the curb, go airbone high enough to clear the bushes, and fit between the guide wire and the Arby's sign. If you're bored, go to
Google Maps and you can see the space for yourself. There appear to be more bushes there now though. Airbags deploy, my brakes have failed but fortunately my parking brake still worked so I pulled that. Joe and I go into this yelling match of "Are you ok???" and determine that we are both fine. The manager at Arby's was outside smoking, and there were some people hanging outside a club a few doors down that came running up afterwards. Joe and I hop out of the truck to see the other car. There are three young women and a little girl in the car. We're pretty sure no one was wearing a seatbelt, and there was no car seat or booster seat for the little girl. Everyone in the Cavalier is ok except the front passenger, who somehow missed the airbag and hit her head on the windshield. I am pacing through the Arby's parking lot cussing up a storm while Joe goes to check on the ladies.
So we call 911, I call my fiancée who shows up with her mom, and my mom and sister show soon there after. A tow truck is the first non family member on the scene and he proceeds to try and take the girl's car away and give them advice on what to do. I don't recall them being attractive, but I do remember one of them had a thong on because it showed every time she sat down. I'm sure that is why every male official that showed up listened to their story more than mine. An ambulance shows up and proceeds to start treating the head injury. Next some Fulton County sheriffs pass by and seem to think I was at fault even after hearing what happened. Worse part was they were just checking to see if everyone was ok since they can't really do anything. We happen to catch Atlanta PD on a shift change so no cop shows up for 2 hours. My tow truck driver comes and ironically is the same tow truck driver that towed my sister's car when she got into an accident on North near Boulevard a year or two before. So he sees me and is like, "You're from Panama right? Panamanians love their liquor!" Funny guy. So anywho, the cop processes the scene, gives the girl a ticket and we're on our merry way. Or so I thought. The women in my life insist we go to the ER and get checked out. Joe, my fiancée and I go right there to Crawford Long and spend 8 hours of our lives we will never get back for the doctor to tell us to take some Advil and get some rest. It is daytime the next day now, so we stop at the Kroger across the street from my fiancée's apartment to get some food, and while we're in the store, Joe shows me a piece of paper. The paper is a blood test for a marriage license with his girlfriend's name on it. Georgia hasn't required a blood test for marriages for some time now, so that will give you a clue as to how old this story is. We'll call the girlfriend "O." I guess she should be ex-girlfriend O at this point since Joe wasn't the dude she was about to marry. So we get some food and head to my fiancée's apartment, and just before we get to the gate, Joe says "Let me out." We try to convince him to come get some rest but he insists, so we let him go. A few hours later he shows up at the apartment, makes some calls on my fiancée's home phone while we are still sleeping and then heads out again.
Later that evening we're sitting there with my fiancée's roommate telling the story when she gets a phone call on the home phone by a very upset individual. The individual identifies herself as O's sister. We'll call her "P" so I don't have to keep typing "O's sister." P proceeds to rant for what had to be 20 minutes, all the while my fiancée is trying to get me to hang up while her roommate and I are laughing our asses off. The reason I didn't hang up was because I got a synopsis of what all had happened before I picked Joe up. Joe figured out she was dating this other dude, goes to her job, causes a scene, and steals her purse and cell phone (the phone he was getting calls at when we went to get the bed? Yeah, that was hers). The hours that he disappeared after the accident, he called everyone in her phone book to say what a whore she was, he confronted the other guy, assaulted him and slashed his tires, and threw a rock through O & P's apartment window. P finished off her rant with a plea to turn him in to the police.
I hear from Joe a week or two later, asking me to take him to the Greyhound station. He needs me to buy his ticket, gives me his TV and DVD player as collateral, and asks me to keep a few of his things until he can send for them. I get him to the bus station and I never see him again. A friend of ours ran into him a couple years back and we talked on the phone but we never got together in person. I found him on Facebook a year ago but he ignored my friend request. I guess he wants to keep the past in the past, which is no problem. I just figured since I actually helped during his time of crisis and I never got his side of the story, I would reach out. I have also seen O, and she saw my trail of dust as I ran the other way. She used to work at the Macy's at Perimeter, and even though I told my fiancée this, we seemed to end up there all the time out of all the stores in the mall looking at shoes, and of course O worked in the shoe department. Fortunately I don't think she works there anymore as even to this day I'm ready to dart if I even think see her.
The End. Crazy huh? I'll see what other stories I can dig up that won't offend or embarrass people I'm still friends with. Until then...
