Stranger Danger

Today was an average Saturday for me. I’m home for fall break from college, and have been suffering since Thursday, and I’m taking a much needed reprieve from my crazy mother at my grandmother’s house. But before I can even get there, my Pay It Forward sense of morality was tested.

I was headed to Wal-Mart at around  9:40 this evening. Driving down my street, things were normal. It was dark, and I was plugging right on along. Until I passed this street called Forest Drive (names changed for coolness). Now Forest Drive is like….a 45 degree angle hill. To the left is the VDOT sanctuary of the surrounding counties and to the right is a 45 degree ascent into heaven.

As I’m passing by Forest Drive and the VDOT yard, I see a figure in the middle of the road. The figure swayed and attempted to flag me down, and on a split second decision I stopped.

The alarm bells are going off in my head as I crack my window ,and I’m looking to make sure my phone and something bludgeon-worthy are within reach as the figure approaches my drivers’ side window.

Now, I’m sure you’re thinking: STRANGER DANGER!!! STRANGER DANGER, DAMMIT!!!111

Yeah. I wish I’d told myself that too.

So I crack my window, and this guy clad in brown (we’ll call him Jay, which is short for Jackass) appears, the left side of his face bloodied. His eye is already swollen shut, his face is a mess, and the first words out of his mouth were: “I’m drunk, I crashed my bike, and I need a ride to 7-11. Can you help me?”

Being the resourceful platypus that I am, I had already prepared an answer.
“What?”

“Seriously, man, I am so drunk. I crashed my bike, and I really need a ride.”

I consider his proposal. He’s bleeding. How do I say no to that? How do I even begin to justify telling this poor, bleeding jackass no?

Looking around my car, I look back at him and cut him a deal.
“Promise not to kill me or anything, and I’ll give you a ride.”

Great deal. Or anything.

Jesus.

So I unlock the door to my car. Because after all, it’s less than a mile to 7-11. What’s the harm?

He gets in the back, and I drive on. I can smell the booze on his breath, and I make the remark of: “Dude, you really are drunk.”
“Yeeeaahh….I’m really drunk…I wrecked my bike. My face hurts.”

“Well…you’re bleeding pretty badly. It looks like it hurts.”
“I hit my face…my head hurts. Fuck.”

Jay is so coherent, I’m falling in love with his slurs and his cussing in the back seat. No. I'm not. I'm really not.

“Hey…hey,” Jay says, leaning forward slightly.

I glance at him in the rearview mirror, an eyebrow raised. “Yeah?”

“Do you think I’ll need stitches?” He asks, utterly serious.
I think about it for a moment.

“Well…it depends. It looks pretty bad.”
“FUCK!” He yells, throwing himself back against the seat. “I can’t go to my girlfriend’s like this!”

Quick to appease his outburst, I continue.

“Well…head wounds tend to bleed a lot, you see. So it could look really bad, but not be all that bad. It could be worse than it really is,” I reply, the epitome of encouragement.

“Whaaaaat?!?! Worse than it really is?!” He cries, incredulous.

“No, no! I meant that it’s probably not as bad as it looks! My bad, my bad.”

“Maaan…..fuck. I was so drunk…I probably blacked out…”

The stoplight across from the 7-11 was gloriously short, and as I rolled into the parking lot Jay leans forward again. “Aw, man. I’m sorry. I totally meant the other 7-11.”

THE OTHER 7-11

I look over my shoulder at him in disbelief, though my voice is nothing but confidence and full of ‘go-with-the-flow’ vibes. “Really? Huh. Well, I’m heading that way anyways, so it’s chill.”

We pull out of the parking lot, and go across the bridge. His booze-breath is stinking up the back of my car, but I’m still cheerful and optimistic. I’m doing a good deed! I’m saving a bleeding drunk from the likes of something much more terrible, like death or the human trafficking network of my hometown. (It totally exists…I know it does…)

So we drive across the bridge when I hear him mutter expletives in the back seat.

“I’m sorry, man,” he begins. “My bud’s driving down from Burg Road…you know? So he’ll probably go to the 7-11 at the bottom of the hill…man, I’m sorry.”

I begin to feel as though the laws of Good Samaritanism are turning against me, and that Chaos is playing into this somehow, but I remain cheerful. I am Job, I am unshakeable, unmoveable. I will get Jay’s ass to 7-11, dammit!

I make a turnaround at a nearby road that leads down to the dark boat landing, reminiscing about sketchier times as the cop that I had been following drives on, unknowing of my plight.

Jay is still bleeding, and I’m praying that he doesn’t decide halfway through that his turn of good luck has been all for naught and that I’d be better off with a bullet in my head or my throat slit.

He had made a call to his friend earlier, which had let me know of his benign intentions.

I recalled the conversation, trying to let it comfort me as we crossed the bridge yet again.

Jay:  Hey, man. I need you to come pick me up.

….

Jay: Yeah, man. I crashed my damn bike. I’m so fucking drunk. Yeah…yeah…I got wasted, then tried to ride my bike.

….

I don't know what it really looked like.

Jay: The bike? Man, I left that mothafucka’ there. We’re going to have to get the damned thing. Fuck, man, I’m fucked up.

….

Jay: Yeah, 7-11. I need a ride.

He then hung up the phone and cussed again.

“I’m sorry, man. Fuck, my head hurts.”

Yeah. Jay is eloquent.

SO.

We make it to the 7-11, finally. I had spent most of the ride consoling him, letting him know that it wasn’t that bad (though he looked pretty effed up.)

“Yeah , yeah…it’s probably not that bad. Clean yourself up in 7-11…you know, if they’ll let you in,” I told him.

I was met with silence.

“But…I bet if you clean yourself up, it won’t look so bad!” I continued on a cheery note.

“Thanks so much for giving me a ride, man. Like…you actually stopped. I was so surprised. Why’d you stop?” He asked.

I had been preparing for this moment. I had been waiting for it with eager anticipation. This was going to be it. The moment that I changed this mofo’s life. Damn it, I was going to effing PAY IT FORWARD. YEAH!

GO GO GO! PAY IT FORWARD!!!

But I fell flat on my face. This punk had no idea what was going on. He had blacked out and crashed his damned bike. I wasn’t going to suddenly instil morals in him. Pffft.

“Well…sometimes you just have to do something nice,” I replied.

“Hmm…yeah,” he muttered. “Aggh…my head hurts,” he groaned once more, flailing in my back seat.

I prayed he didn’t get blood everywhere, and considered the application of peroxide to the upholstery in my Ford Taurus.

As we waited in the parking lot, he looked up groggily. “Heeeey….can I see how bad it is?”

I nod, reiterating how shitty he really looked.
“It looks pretty damn bad,”  I say as I angle the sun visor mirror towards him.

He squints through the dim light of my car, cursing once more.

Jay gets out, and I think that it’s all over. I’m free, I can go to Walmart and pick up the 2% milk I had originally set out for, and that will be that.

But no.

He lingers, then shuts the back door to my car, opening the front door instead.

I look over in alarm, eyes wide as he jerks the sun visor around with a bloodied hand. In this light, Jay looks really effing bad. Blacktop is embedded in his cheeks and temples, the entire left side is covered in blood, while there’s more matted in his hair. I can’t quite detect the source of the bleeding, but I’m pretty sure he lost part of his eyebrow.

With his eye swollen shut, he looks like he just got jumped by the local gang.

But no. He was drunk. And he wrecked his BICYCLE. Not even a motorcycle. A bike.

Damn.

He cussed a bit more, but just as he was settling into my front seat, Jay’s friend rolls up, looking much more sober than he.

I wave to Jay as he leans in the doorway, smiling slightly. “You look familiar,” he says with a grin.

I shrug, leaning back nonchalantly. “Well, I do live around here.”

He nods, digesting that information as he thanks me again, slamming the door and stumbling over to his buddy’s car.

They take about half a minute to turn on his buddy’s light and assess the damage and then pull out as I continue my journey to Walmart.

I reflected upon my experience, decided that my mentor and anyone I’ve ever talked to would probably thrash me for letting the drunk into my car.

But I drove off with a profound sense of doing something right.

And besides, who leaves a bleeding guy?!

Someone smarter than me.

Impulsivity : A Love Story

As a college student, it would be safe to assume that self-control isn't one of my strong points. I am a repeated victim and facilitator of impulsivity.

I find my ventures with impulsivity as a beautiful story of love and hate, success and failure, good choices and some that are...not so good.


There are some days that I love my impulsivity. Some of the greatest things in my life are products of impulsivity and a low attention span. (And not thinking through my decisions xD)

My Zune, Toshirou (when he works), brings me much joy, and was a product of a bank card and an ebay spree. So. Effing. Dangerous.

There are plenty of regrets there, to be sure. Dear God, there are regrets. I have wasted so much money on my impulsive conquests. Without fail, not long after I've made the purchase or ill-fated decision, my brain screams: FAIL!!!! BUYER'S REMORSE OMFG!!!111!!

RANDOM SIDE STORY ALERT!

 Buyer's Remorse is a driving force in my life. We are well acquainted, and have been good friends since my elementary school years.
As a kid in a relatively small (not relatively, really, we were TINY) elementary school, the bi-annual book fair was the SHIT. I'm not talking about, oh yay, a little book fair.

No.
This was fucking huge. This was on a level that only deities attain. This was the book fair.

Look at that. It looks EPIC. Those children are engaged in reading. Holy hell.

With the book fair came ridiculous amounts of competition for the little trinkets and toys that were sold. Namely, erasers.
These erasers came in all shapes and forms, but namely I remember the frog erasers, which everyone wanted because they were so damned cool.

I remember getting into a piggy bank that my mom had been keeping for me since my birth. I knew that this piggy bank (it was actually a bear in a sunhat) was meant for greatness. But my impulsivity and id were saying: GO, ROO, GO FORTH AND BUY YOURSELF THOSE FROG ERASERS.

And I did. I scrounged for change everywhere I could. I brought PENNIES to my poor librarians, who patiently counted them out. It was magic.
Though I regretted my purchases almost instantly, I had frog erasers. 

At the time, my impulsivity could be attributed to childlike wonder and innocence.
Today it marks the beginning of the end where my bad decisions come back to haunt me daily. (Namely college. J/K. Maybe.)

I came to later find out that my sun bear piggy bank had held like...$100 in change. To this day my mother has no idea what happened to it and is convinced the delinquent down the street took it. 

It really isn't pretty.
I like to think that I have some class with my impulsivity. Buying a car, a house? NAH! Screw that, those are useless investments. My education? Ehhh, whatevs. Maybe.

But me, I buy cool stuff. Like FISH.

-DIGRESSION!-
My goal my freshman year of college had been to have a happy tank full of fish, guppies and cute neon tetras that would swim around and keep me company in my pathetic existence.

That dream never came true, because my asshole of a cat broke the free aquarium I had found. I cussed him. And chased him for awhile. Then cussed him some more.

^Asshole cat

SO....I was pissed.
I had a random Jimmy Buffet reference lined up, but we don't always get what we want, do we?




WELL THEN.
Back to the topic at hand. Fish.

A trip to Walmart in the next town over yielded various results last Friday night.

1. I bought $30 more than I intended to. 
2. I walked out with a fish.
3. I walked out with a fish tank, colorful gravel, and bloodworms WTH.
4. I regretted it almost instantly, but my glee was too great to be overcome by that bitch Regret.
5. I set up the tank and realized that my fish is brain damaged. 

My fish is a wonderful little guy. But again, brain damaged. 

This is Asher! Isn't he pretty?! 

I love him. He's so awesome. Just having a fish has made me ridiculously happy. 

He is one of my most impulsive decisions ever. I was in Walmart, and I wanted him, and that was the end of it. I picked him out, fell in love, and named him there in the aisle after some prodding by my roommate.

His Irish name is Saoirse, which is a feminine form of "freedom". I call him my transgenderal fish <3

AND TONIGHT I AM GOING TO GET ASHER A FRIEND.

And yes, I am fully aware that you don't mix male betta fish. Jeebus. People keep effing telling me this, and I'm just like wtf?! SRSLY?!

No. Just no. Stfu. 

Asher's friend is going to be named Khalil. (Kah-leel). His Irish name has already been picked out by my awesome authentic-Irish friend, Caza. I fucking love this girl. 

She named Khalil after the Irish mythical hero, Cuchulainn. I'm so excited :D

Yeah. 

Impulsivity is a bitch. 

But I love it. 

 This post has been sponsored in part by Attention Deficit Disorder and Pretend Catholic Guilt.