He Makes Me Tired

As it turns out, my dearest brother had quite the little adventure. 

After a night of heavy drinking he hailed a cab (one of the total FIVE cabs that reside in that mid-size Texan town) back to the hotel where he planned on crashing for the night.  The hotel is owned by the family of one of his drinking buddies, a boy who once dated a close friend of mine in high school.  They broke up fairly quickly but in the circle of life that is small town America, he became friends with my younger brother a few years later.  I hold no ill will against him.  He’s just a regular guy whose maturity I question at times.  Though I will maintain that when life and the material objects it can hold are bestowed upon you, daily and with much pomp and circumstance, it changes your perception of responsibility.

Translation: His daddy’s got money.     

So Matthew takes his cab, crammed full of his equally drunk friends, back to the hotel.  He walks in the room and falls asleep on the bed. 

HERE’S WERE THE STORY GETS FESTIVE SO PAY ATTENTION.

The first time we heard Matthew’s version of events, he claimed he’d not been drinking that heavily and had stopped by midnight.  At 4:30am he decided to head over to his friend Robert’s house and on the way came across a kamikaze giant black dog who decided to run across the highway, directly in front of his car. 

Personally, I called Bullshit as soon as Dad related that version. 

The second version, and one more likely to have happened because IT’S HAPPENED BEFORE, is that Matthew collapsed on the hotel bed only to wake up in a ditch some time later.  Meaning he blacked out but was still physically able to function.  And got in a car.  And drove it.  Straight into a godamn ditch.

I HOPE YOU’RE STILL PAYING ATTENTION BECAUSE THIS SHIT GETS EVEN BETTER.

So after waking up nose first in a ditch (the car, not his actual person) he decides the following:

1)       He will ignore his cell phone sitting on the passenger seat beside him and not make any calls to any one single person that might possibly be able to remove his ignorant ass from the ditch.

2)       He leaves his guitar, DVD player and stereo on the back seat.

3)       He ignores the seven dollars in quarters resting in his console.  Because that would mean one could use a pay phone later.  But that takes effort.

4)       He exits the vehicle, leaving it unlocked. 

5)       Then, ignoring the open and well-lit gas station a quarter of a mile away, proceeds to jog, yes, JOG, down a deserted highway at 4:30am. 

 

You can only imagine the kind of forethought that had to go into this little escapade.

Matthew gets roughly two miles (TWO MILES!) down the road.  His destination was my parent’s house, roughly eight miles (EIGHT MILES!) away.  About that time, the county popo notices a scraggly white boy running down the side of the road.  Obviously curious as to why ANYONE, much less a booted and scraggly ass white boy, would be running sans running clothes and oh, in the wee small hours of the morning, he turns on his pretty flashy blue lights and comes to a stop in front of him.

One sobriety test later and Matthew is firmly placed on the side of the vehicle partition that you really don’t want to be on.  The side without door locks and window controls. 

Bummer, huh?

He’s placed in a cell.  A cell in the jail. 

DO YOU LIKE JAIL?  DID YOU HAVE A GOOD TIME?

Asshole.

At 2pm he’s allowed to make a phone call.  And of course he calls his buddy, the one with the hotel in his pocket. But all to no avail. 

Voicemail’s a bitch, ain’t it.

At 5:30pm his buddy shows up.  Matthew is released.  But does his father get a phone call? His sister? His mother? Nope.  They drive across town to see about the car, left in the ditch.  BUT LO AND BEHOLD his shit is gone.  They call the police, thinking it’s been stolen or towed away, not yet aware that my father picked it up at 7:30am.  The police have nothing on their impound lots but take his information.  He then goes back to the hotel.  Showers.  Changes clothes.  Probably scratches his ass once or twice. 

THEN HE CALLS.  THEN.  NOT BEFORE.    THEN.

*************************************************

 

So I find out my brother is alive.  Good deal.  I’m ready for him to head back to Little Rock so I can break his fucking knees. 

I get a phone call on Sunday evening, it’s Matthew.  Mid-way through the conversation he makes a joke about jail, telling me how much it sucked.  I inform him I have not one ounce of sympathy and that I’d have left his ass in there.  He immediately gets defensive, telling me he did everything right, he took a cab, he didn’t drive, it wasn’t HIS fault, he had NO INTENTION of getting in his car and putting it in a ditch.  HE DID EVERYTHING RIGHT AND HE DOESN’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO ME BITCH. *click

 

Yep. I got hung up on.  Because it’s not his fault, is it?