This morning I ended up having breakfast with an old friend I hadn’t seen in a long time. He told me this wild storyabout the bad break up he was going through with his soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend and how they ended up having a half-assed fist fight in their car and his belt was hung up on the emergency parking break and he was mad about that because he couldn’t slap his soon-to-be-ex on the back of the head the way he had intended to.
And when it came to the part about his belt being hung up and not being able to act as violently as he wished he could have
I laughed out loud
because it reminded me of a time when I was completely enraged and threw a pair of shrub trimmers across the yard and they ended up sticking so deeply into the ground that I could barely get them out.
When I laughed out loud my friend had a look on his face for a split second that caused me to think he was going to slap me in the back of the head.
Then he laughed out loud as well.
And in the process of walking through the restaurant to find the restroom I ran into one of our neighbors and her husband and pre-teen daughter.
And I felt a little guilty the moment I saw them because yesterday she told me one of her dogs had been run over and killed by someone who had attended their house blessing party and I had laughed about it as soon as I knew she wouldn’t hear me do so.
Ben and I had been invited to attend the house blessing party but could not go because we were attending the annual pig roast where we were chased around the state park by a tornado.
And I really need to admit I was grateful for the opportunity to run from a tornado as an excuse not to go to the house blessing party because our neighbors claim to be fundamentalist Christians.
Fundamentalist Christian neighbors are fine by me except the part where I keep hearing them say things to their pre-teen daughter such as,
-
Why don’t you mind your own fuckin’ business?
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Get your ass to the shower in 10 minutes or you’re not doin’ shit tonight!
and
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What’s your fuckin’ problem?
Somehow I just don’t think that kind of language is what comes back as an answer about child rearing when those people ask,
W.W.J.D?
Unless I’ve been terribly mistaken the entire time and W.W.J.D. really means
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What Would Jekyll Do if
-
he had turned into Mr. Hyde
-
who had decided to drink a fifth of Jim Beam and a case of Milwaukee’s Best
-
and start blaming his pre-teen daughter for how depressing his life was?
And later that day I told Ben’s dad I thought I was kind of weird for laughing about some dog getting run over and killed.
He helped me out by saying,
You’re not weird. You’re laughing at the irony of some ass holes who call themselves Christians ending up with a dead dog on the same day they had some fake party to get their house blessed.
And then he said,
Plus, that dog needed to be dead a long time ago. She was blind and deaf and could barely hobble into the yard to take a piss.
He’s always saying true things like that. And I’m always grateful for it. Right after I get past my crap about thinking he should be nice and not say things like that. Mostly because it makes me uncomfortable at first.
But that’s pretty much the way I always am just seconds after hearing the bare naked truth about something.
And then I can laugh out loud.
And today when I saw my neighbor and her husband and pre-teen daughter at the restaurant I said ‘hi’ and she started yelling at me about not having time to talk and was pointing at her watch and loudly blabbering about how busy her life is and then saying she was sorry because she was all jacked up and off the hook about her dog being run over and killed and she hadn’t slept and blah blah blah…
…and I just stood there and listened until she was done and then said,
I need to pee,
and went to the restroom where I sat there and thought,
I wish I would have slapped her on the back of the head and said – What’s your fuckin’ problem? – and then laughed out loud.
