Drunky Drunkerson from Drunktown

Thanks to a vague reference by one of my best friends on a facebook post, I have been fielding messages regarding one of the most ridiculously stupid, humiliating nights of my life. So here it is, laid out there for everyone to see. The whole story. The story of the night I beat the living hell out of myself.

It happened a while back, maybe 7 or 8 years ago. My good friend Wendy and someone else we worked with at the time whose name is also Wendy, and I left work and headed off to a hole in the wall bar where the drinks are strong and cheap. It was hot that day and I gulped down three screw drivers right off the bat. I admit, this was stupid, but I was thirsty and it was happy hour. This means that the drinks that were normally $2.50, already an amazing deal, especially since the drinks were heavy on cheap vodka and light on orange juice were now $1.25. I mean the drinks are so strong they’re translucent.  After my initial thirst quenching binge, I was averaging about four an hour. The price was right and I was just in the mood to drink. Feeling that I was nearing the point of no return, I handed Wendy my wallet for safe keeping. You may be wondering why I did this. Let me explain. Apparently when my brain is swimming in liquor it believes that I am a very wealthy person and everyone is my friend. I am a bartender’s dream. Being the good friend that she is, when it appears that I am channeling my imaginary trust fund, Wendy holds my wallet. She’s awesome like that.

After several hours, I noticed that Wendy is missing. Apparently the party was moving to a different bar and I was riding with fake Wendy, but I was unaware of this. I turn to fake Wendy and ask her where Wendy went. She looks confused.

“Umm. I’m right here.”

“Noooooooo, fake Wendy. Where’s MY Wendy.”

“Oh, we’re heading over to Rodeo. She just left.”

Here’s where I panic. I know she has my wallet and I also know that if I arrive home without it, Dewie is going to murder me. I run out of the bar just in time to see Real Wendy getting into her car. As I step down out of the doorway my flip flop gets caught on the metal grate door mat thingy and I fall face first into the concrete. I actually knock myself unconscious. When I come to, the owner of the bar is kneeling over me. He was a biker type fellow with long, gray, wavy hair, and the porch light was shining through his hair creating kind glowing halo around his face. In my barely conscious, drunken state I looked him in the eye and muttered, “Oh my God, was I wrong? Are you Jesus? Am I dead?” To which he laughed hysterically and continued to hold a wet towel to my bleeding mouth. Meanwhile, fake Wendy is horrified and real Wendy who is barely visible behind Weegie (the bar owner) has fallen to her knees with frenzied laughter. My head slowly clears and I realize what just happened.

Fake Wendy says, “Maybe we should just take her home.”

To which I stupidly reply, “Nah, I’m fine. Who’s driving me?”

To which real Wendy says, “Go get in my car. I got this.”

 I slowly get up and head in that direction.  On the ride over to Rodeo it suddenly dawns on me that I can’t feel my teeth. Thinking I left them on the front stoop of the bar, I turn to real Wendy, smile really big and ask her if I still have all my teeth. She recoils, which scares me until she says, “Don’t bleed in my car.” And I realize that the face was a reaction to my BLOODY teeth, not missing ones.  We arrive at the new bar and real Wendy turns to me before we get out, hands me a napkin and says through giggles, “You still have blood on your face. Oh and fix your hair.”

As we walk up to the door, real Wendy is walking a few steps behind me. The door is glass, but blacked out with some sort of tinting which my stupid swimming brain registers as “open.” It was not. I walked right into the door. I don’t mean I bumped it. I walked into it with all the confidence of simply walking over a threshold. With my face. I vaguely remember the bouncer snorting with laughter before I once again, you guessed it, lost consciousness. I had managed to knock myself out twice in one night. Real Wendy is actually shaking with laughter and can barely stand as she “helps” me into the bar and parks me at a table.

 I remember very little from that night after that point, other than there was a strange step up into the bathroom that once again caused me to bite it, but that time was physically unharmed, not that I would have noticed an extra bruise or two. 

**RIP Weegie. We miss you.**

Drive Me Crazy

I drive like an old lady. I totally get how that’s irritating to a lot of people. I’m cautious… very cautious. I rarely take yellow lights. I always leave at least a cars length between me and the car in front of me, well, truthfully much more than a car’s length. I change lanes blocks before I actually need to just in case I can’t get over. I rarely go more than 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. I’ve been in a lot of car accidents, but only one of which was my fault. I am all too aware that I cannot control what others do, so I hyper-control myself. I’m afraid of stupid drivers and I’m annoyed with inconsiderate drivers. I know I’m not a perfect driver, or even a good driver, but compared to a lot of people I should be teaching a national class or something. It amazes me that people complain about other drivers doing exactly the same thing they’re doing.

For example, I have ridden with a particular person (who I will not embarrass with mentioning names, but it starts with a “D” and rhymes with chewy) who has complained about being tailgated while leaving approximately three feet between her car and the car in front of her. Really? You find that rude and dangerous? Hmmm. Interesting. It occurred to me that maybe some people don’t realize that they’re being douche bags. I feel it’s my civic duty to educate. So here they are:

Molly’s Rules of Non-Douchey Driving.

1.       Driving ridiculously fast in residential areas or downtown.

 Residential neighborhoods are full of oblivious children and pets and the streets are fairly short.   Unless you’re driving a DeLorean with Michael J Fox riding shot gun, there’s no reason to attempt to generate one point twenty-one jiggawatts between stop signs. It should also be noted that this produces no results in a city environment either; the most obvious clue being when I pull up beside your “badass” self at the next red light. No matter what the movies tell you, driving fast does not make you cool.

2.       Shopping Center Entrance Etiquette

When entering or exiting a shopping center or mall parking lot, the people entering the parking lot always have the right of way. If you look really closely, they do not have a stop sign. However, the people exiting do have a stop sign. Do not turn into the entrance and stop. Keep going. It is not a four way stop. You don’t take turns. If you are exiting the parking lot, you wait until the light changes and people stop coming in to exit. Yes, you might have to wait a few minutes, but that’s why we put music in cars. Chill.

3.       The turn lane is not a parking space

This one is specifically for truck drivers. Don’t get me wrong, I know they’re doing a job and I’m down with that. As a matter of fact, I often go out of my way to help them on the highway. I move so they don’t have to slow down and I slow down to hold up traffic when they need to get over. I've got no beef with the big rigs in general, BUT it is never ok, not for any reason at all, to park your giant vehicle in the turn lane and “run in” to anywhere. Especially a Waffle House. Those emergency flashers don’t create a parking space and your immediate need for smothered, covered and scattered hash browns does not constitute an emergency. If you don’t fit in the parking lot, go somewhere else. Which brings me to my next point:

4.       If you don’t fit in the parking lot, go somewhere else

This problem may be unique to Florida. Huge, bigger-than-a-Greyhound Winnebago’s, driven by people who clearly have no special driving skills, just rolling through town, crushing everything in their wake like King Kong on wheels. Your insatiable craving for some chicken McNuggets or a stuffed crust pizza is not reason enough to park your rig sideways in 8 parking spots or worse, in the middle of the parking lot, completely blocking the drive thru. I’m sorry that those parking lots do not accommodate your vehicle, but you know those wobbly things that catch you when you finally exit your fortress? They’re called legs and they can carry you for more than 10 feet. Park somewhere else and walk. Also it is never acceptable to pull across and block three lanes of traffic when making a left hand turn and wait for the traffic to clear in the other direction. You’re the one driving that ridiculously huge vehicle. You get to be accommodating, not the other way around.

5.       When merging, slow down, don’t speed up.

If two lanes suddenly turn into one, the world will not implode on itself if the person beside you merges ahead of you. It would just be horrifying if that person goes slower than you would like and causes you reach your destination 3 minutes later. Small children may suddenly take ill, puppies and kittens will die, and rain forests will burn brighter and hotter. All because that guy in the other lane pulled in front of you when you merged back there. Bad things happen when you’re not first. You. Must. Be. First…because you’re a douchebag with control issues.

6.       GET! OFF! MY! ASS!

I brake suddenly for squirrels. Real and imaginary. Back off. 

UGH!

I knew something was wrong when I took a three hour nap two days in a row. I don’t sleep during the day. I make fun of people that sleep during the day. My favorite game is something I call “nappin’ stack.” The object of this game is to stack as many handy things on top of the napper as possible without waking them. A good session provides 10-15 minutes of hilarious amusement. My point is that I’m just not a napper. Then the very slight nausea started. It was barely there at first. I wasn’t even sure if I was just hungry or my stomach was upset. Maybe it was just stress.

I soon found that the addition of solid food eased the nausea… and added excruciating stomach cramps. A very generous dinner of smoked ribs at my favorite barbeque joint courtesy of my visiting parents resulted in an evening of feeling like my stomach was trying to strangle itself. The next morning I felt a little better but didn’t chance anything more than coffee and water. When Dewie got up a little before noon (she worked the night before) she talked me into drinking some Ovaltine. I was nervous, but it settled surprisingly well, so she talked me into some toast. Mistake. I headed for the bed, holding my stomach where I proceeded to roll around and whine expletives. I hear Dewie come in.

“Your belly hurting again?”

“YESSSSSSSSS.”

“Maybe it’s your gall bladder. You remember that gall stone you passed a couple of years ago. You thought you were dying.”

“Owwwwwwwww. I didn’t think I was dying, I thought I was going to give birth to something. This is different. Bloody hell!…I may be dying this time.”

“Maybe it’s your appendix.”

“Son of a…  motherfu… owwww… it’s not my damn appendix. It’s not my gall bladder. It’s not my intestines. I don’t have to poop. It’s not some vague pain in my general abdominal area. It’s my actual stomach.”

“Well, you have to eat.”

“I got this from TOAST! What the hell is lighter than toast? Little capsules of air?!?! It feels like my food stirring monkeys are trying wring out my stomach. UGGGGHHHHH. ”

“Maybe some broth.”

“Gaaaaaaah! I’m not drinking hot water. It’s dumb. I think I can afford to go a couple of JESUSSSSSS! days without food. I’ll just drink plenty of water. Like a new diet program.”

“What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, probably some kind of HOLY SHITBALLS!! OWWWW stomach virus … with an unfortunate Tourette’s side effect. “

“If you don’t eat, how will you know when it’s over?”

“I’ll know I can eat when the HOLY HELL! UHHHHH! water gives me diarrhea. I just hope my immune system knows that this is not a job for the rabid moneky squad. It better break out the pirates.”