How I Almost Died Several Times Last Thursday

Have you ever passed someone that was broken down in the middle of a busy freeway and thought “woah. I bet that sucks”?

It does.

And have you ever said something to someone and afterwards thought, “that may come back to bite me in the ass later”?

It will. I imagine this is what ran through the Native American’s minds after they said “hey, why don’t you guys join us for dinner”.

Fig. 1.1

Why women want you to ask before you invite people to dinner.

Thursday night, I was driving home from work.  It was about 6 p.m., so traffic on the major freeway I use to get home was pretty bad. Did I say pretty bad? I mean “the only way it could have been worse was if people had gotten out of their cars, set themselves on fire, and run around in circles blocking all six lanes of traffic”. Those of you from Houston understand how 290 works. For those of you who don’t know what 290 looks like during rush hour, below you’ll find a rough estimation.

Fig. 1.2

US 290: Where people in Smart Cars go to die.

So I’m driving along, cheerfully listening to the Huey Lewis and the News playlist on my iPod and I see a car in one of the center lanes broken down. The driver’s eyes have completely glossed over and he looks like Rain Man.

Fig. 1.3

"I get to drive slow on the drive way"

I assume this is because 90 million people want to kill him and his car is stuck in one of the center lanes.  Did I mention that his car is stuck in one of the center lanes? And also, 90 million people want to kill him? I know I said that already, but I mean, come on. That’s got to be a really horrible feeling. I hope Kanye West feels like this all the time, but I doubt it.

And I think to myself, “Woah. I bet that sucks”.

So I continue driving for about one more mile in one of the center lanes, when the following happens: my car is fine. my car is fine. my car is fine. my car is fine. MY CAR IS NOT FINE.

Fig. 1.4

Don't even pretend that you don't like Huey Lewis.

Everything died. My lights. My flashers. Huey Lewis. Everything. I couldn’t put the car in gear. I couldn’t coast to another lane. I couldn’t will it back to life with The Force. So I did what any normal person would do. I stared listlessly out the window like Rain Man and then freaked out.

Cars, already pissed off beyond all possible belief that they had to be stuck behind one stalled car a mile back, were driving past me at approximately 87 million miles an hour.  It very quickly occurred to me that if I didn’t get out of the car, at 18-wheeler would careen into the back of my little PT Cruiser convertible and smash me into a very tiny, but very adorable, Jennie sandwich.

Now I have to figure out how to 1) open the door and get out 2) move to the front of my car and then 3) cross two lanes of traffic 4) without dying.

Did I mention that I was wearing a dress? Did I mention that I was in six-inch stiletto heels?

So now, I’m teetering in front of my car in six inch stilettos with a needle-thin heel. About to cross one of the busiest freeways in Houston. At rush hour.

Fig. 1.5

Stilettos: Not cross trainers.

Have you ever run in stilettos across a busy freeway? Let me put it into perspective for you.  Put yourself on some stilts. Now get on a unicycle. Now juggle three grizzly bears. That should do it. Congratulations. You’ve just accomplished the equivalent of running in stilettos across 290.

This next part has a lot to do with the goodness of people and why I’m so thankful that I live in Houston because Texans are so friendly, so it’s basically boring and I’ll run through it pretty fast.

-Random lady offers me a cell phone, asks if I want her to stay with me. I do not want to be responsible for her death

-Very, very nice man who doesn’t speak any English pulls his car in front of mine, hooks up a tow chain, pulls my car off the road, pops the hood, points at a battery connector that is clearly not supposed to be covered in corrosion, fixed it, makes a very wide steering wheel motion that looks like a person playing the Daytona USA arcade game at Sports Page Skating Rink (if you don’t know about that, trust me, it’s cool), indicating that I can drive it

-I tell very, very nice man who doesn’t speak any English “Te Amo” and throw my arms around him

-Very, very nice man I’ve just pledged my love to drives away

-Car dies again

-Metropolitan Transit Authority guy knocks on my window

And I’ll pick up here.

MTA guy: What’s the problem?

Me: This is what I do on Thursday’s. I sit in my car on the shoulder of 290. You’re bothering me.

MTA guy (whose sense of humor is clearly not like mine): …

Me: I’m kidding.

MTA guy: Pop the hood.

He looks at the battery, tells me it’s a bad connector, then tells me that IT COULD CATCH ON FIRE and then calls a tow truck for me. He stays behind me until the tow truck driver gets there.

I’ll pause here to let you know that he stayed with me for a couple of reasons, the first of those being that it’s probably his job, the last of those being that the area that my car stopped in isn’t exactly the best area of 290. It’s not horrible. But it’s not great. I mean, chances are you could get raped there, but probably not murdered. This plays a part in the conversation I’ll have with the tow truck driver in a little bit.  Another quick bit of information, Houston has the Safe and Clear program. If you break down on a freeway, a tow truck will come and take you to a safe place for free. Tow truck drivers apparently hate this.

And back to the story.

So the tow truck driver gets there, and he is very clearly not happy.

Tow Truck Guy: What’s wrong? It don’t work no more?

Me: It works fine. I just wanted to see you.

Tow Truck Guy (whose sense of humor, like the MTA guy, is not like mine): …

Me: I’m kidding.

He tells me to get in the cab of the truck, hooks my car up, gets back in and asks where I want him to take me.

Me: I don’t know. Some place less rapey.

Tow Truck Guy (and I’m serious about this response): … that may be hard around here.

Me: …

Tow Truck Guy: …

Me: How much to take me to my apartment (which isn’t very far, by the way)

Tow Truck Guy: $100 cash. $145 if It’s a check.

Me: Apparently, you planned on raping me anyway.

And I immediately thought "that's probably going to bite me in the ass later." This is where I learned an important lesson: you never pop off to a tow truck guy responsible for taking you somewhere safe. Because apparently, “safe” is a relative word.

In the five minutes it took for him to get me to the gas station in the middle of murder town, I found out three things:

1)Tow Truck Guy hates doing  Safe and Clear tows.

Tow Truck Guy: I hate doing these safe and clear’s. We don’t make any money on them.

Me: Yeah. Sorry that my car died in the middle of one of the busiest freeways in Houston. And that I had to run across that freeway. And that I could have died. This must really be ruining your night.

2)Tow Truck Guy was fighting with his girlfriend.

Cell Phone: ::RING RING RING RING::

Tow Truck Guy: Hello!

Cell Phone: ::Shrill screaming that can only be described as a noise that sounded like Rosie Perez had sex with Fran Drescher and they made a mutant baby that screamed all the time::

Tow Truck Guy: You know what?! Ima call you BACK. (and then he hangs up)

3) Tow Truck Guy stares at boobs. A lot.

I can’t really do any dialog for this. But here’s what it looked like.

Fig. 1.6

When in doubt, stare openly at a strange woman's boobs.

Then Tow Truck Guy dropped me off at TC Jester and 610 (not from Houston? TC Jester and 610 is less rapey than where I was. But more murdery. In his defense, he did exactly what I asked.)

My family came shortly after that and my father fixed my car.

Did you think this story was over? No. Almost. But not yet.

After my dad fixed the car, my family wanted to follow me home because they inexplicably love me. I wanted to go all the way down TC Jester, because it connects with a cross street near my apartment, and that way, if it died, I wouldn’t be on a freeway.

Here’s a very important fact: I am horrible with directions. I get lost all the time. I have left work, driven two blocks and accidentally gotten on a freeway that took me 20 miles away. I’ve been to my best friend’s house roughly eleventy-billion times. And 90 percent of the time I turn down the wrong street and it takes me fifteen minutes to figure it out. This kind of thing happens all the time. The really bad thing about this, is that I don’t usually think I’m wrong. So while I can admit that I’m bad with directions, (very, very bad. Like Moses leading folks through the desert for 40 years bad), I usually think I’m going the right way. That being said, I was very, very confident that I was supposed to turn left on TC Jester. So I did.

In my defense, my family knows better than to let me lead. Seriously. One of you guys needs to get me a GPS. Why hasn’t this happened yet?

We get about 20 minutes down the road (by the way, it should have taken about ten minutes, but I’m still 100 percent confident that I’ve made the right decision) and my brother says “where are we? I’m pretty sure those 15 year olds are doing a drug deal right there.”

Long story short, I took my family to Acres Home. Not from here? I Googled “Acres Home” to show you what comes up.

Fig. 1.7

Murdertown and Rapeville: 1, Jennie: 0

That’s right. I took my family to the most rapey and murdery part of Houston. With a car that had been randomly breaking down. Because let’s face it. If you want to test someone’s workmanship on a touch-and-go battery connecter, don’t you want to do that in one of the most dangerous parts of the city? At 9 at night? When there’s something at stake?

I know I do.

The Worst date of All Time, Part 3: the Final Chapter

Part 3: Excuse me ma’am, but you have a marine creature on your face.

If you’ve missed the first or second part of the worst date of all time, you can read the first part here and the second part here.

If you want the short, short version, I was out on the worst date of all time with a man named Bodie (do not let his awesome name fool you into thinking he is actually awesome. that’s where I went horribly, horribly wrong) who lied about being blind, hated Digital Underground, didn’t know what the word ‘collection’ meant, forced me to see Harry Potter, texted his mother for four hours during our date, thinks Freemasons are a race of people, and still had time to judge me because I’m Catholic. Did I mention that he talked about samurai swords for an hour? Or that his favorite books were "elven novels"? Or that I was pretty sure that his mother was dead in his basement and he just talked to her anyway? By this point in the date, I was looking for a serial murderer who only serial murdered 34-year-old guys that lied about legally blind and collected samurai swords.

Fig. 1.1
"...and also, my mom's dead in the basement!"



















That actually catches you up pretty accurately.

After Bodie told me that we would probably not be able to date very long because I was Catholic and “he was Freemason” (which is not a race) and Catholics hated Freemasons (they don’t), he asked me if I could drive him to Freebirds for dinner because he didn’t want to have to ask his mother when he got home. Which, I’m sure, is very thoughtful of him if you were his mother. But I wasn’t. And I was trying to make his head explode with mind waves like those things from the movie Scanners.

Mind explosions: Not as easy as they look

So I tell him that I’m not hungry, but I’ll drive him to get a burrito (which, by the way, is where he wanted to go even if I was hungry. If you are a dude and you are reading this right now, please listen to me when I say, unless under mutual consent, DO NOT TAKE YOUR FIRST DATE TO A BURRITO PLACE. UNLESS THAT BURRITO PLACE IS CONSIDERABLY MORE AWESOME THAN FREEBIRDS).

So we’re in the car, driving to Freebirds; I clearly have nothing else to say to him because he functions on a totally separate plane of existence than me. Like the plane of existence that George Clooney was operating on when he read the Batman and Robin script and said “it’s PERFECT!”

Fig. 1.2
"No really. It's PERFECT."

What I DO know, however, is that he is attempting to use the armrest in my car as a leveraging point to assault my hand.

So I’m driving with my left arm and my right arm crossed over my chest like I’m hand-delivering a leprosy patient to a leper colony when he thinks that now is as good a time as any to ask why I’m thwarting his romantic advances. (I assume that taking me to see a movie I didn’t want to see, talking about things I didn’t want to talk about, explaining that I hate a made up race of people because I’m Catholic and attempting to force me against my will on numerous occasions to hold his hand was Bodie’s attempt at a romantic advance.)

Bodie: Man, I’ve never had this much trouble getting someone to hold my hand.
Me: …
Bodie: ...
Radio: (faintly) …Alright stop what you’re doin’ ‘cause I’m about to ruin the image and the style that you’re used to…
Bodie: …
Me: …
Bodie: I mean you haven’t held my hand all night!
Me: Heh. Heh heh. Heh heh heh heh. Yeah.

Yes. I sounded like a sickly lawnmower turning over. That’s what I sound like when I get nervous. Sue me. At least I don’t talk about fairies and elves and swords. And also, the best thing I could come up with was “yeah”. And regarding his claim that would lead a rational person to believe that he has been rewarded with much hand-holding on previous dates, my belief is that he either he tricked me on the serial murderer test and just cut hands off to hold them after he serial murdered short blond girls, or dated people that must have looked and acted something a little like Margaret McPoyle from It’s Always Sunny.

Fig. 1.3
People Bodie must normally date if he is not, in fact, a serial murderer.

Thankfully, we got to Freebirds in time for me to avoid another horrible question.

Bodie: Hey, mind if we eat here? I know you said you weren’t hungry, but maybe you can get a soda or something.
Me: Sounds awesome. (Note-this did not sound awesome. And my voice conveyed this sentiment)

So we’re standing in line. I decided to go ahead and get something while we were out, and that I would just pay for my own (because the very, very last thing I want is for him to have any false pretenses of possible future dates). He’s in front of me (of course he is. Because he’s a gentleman). He orders his food while I’m trying to decide what I want. When I get to the cashier to pay for mine, the sum seems too much. Like double.

I’ll break here to explain that I’m not a chemist or geophysicist or mathematician. When someone starts talking in numbers, I either just agree or fall into a narcoleptic coma because of the stress it requires to add and subtract. My math is actually pretty shaky, but one burrito bowl and one water does not equal almost $19.

Are you guessing what happened here? Have you been following the chain of events on his horrible, horrible date that, without fail, would have, of course, inevitably led me to pay for not only my meal, but the meal of my legally blind, unemployed, 34-year-old date who likes samurai swords, elven novels and Harry Potter and hates Digital Underground and Catholics?

When I realized what had just happened, I felt like someone had set me on imaginary fire. I wanted to run around violently, just punching and kicking and screaming and rolling.

Yes. Just like this.

I’m going to skip over the disgusting way he ate (it was like he just opened his mouth, threw burrito in that general direction and hoped he landed a good shot). I’m going to skip over the part where he begged me to meet his mother (and I had to say “I don’t meet moms on the first date, Bodie, sorry”). I’m going to skip the part where he was blatantly racist (and here I thought I was a bad person for being a Catholic that didn’t hate anyone at all). I’m just going to skip straight to the part where he assaulted my face with his face.

Somehow, after a very awkward 15 minute car ride (awkward on my part, not his. He was apparently completely comfortable), we made it to his mother’s. My purse was in the trunk of my car and, because I get pulled over with a fair amount of regularity, I like to have everything handy. So I got out of the car to retrieve said purse.

Bodie: Can I get a kiss?
Me: Nope.
Bodie: Really?
Me: Yep.
Bodie: Well can I at least have a hug?
Me: …If I give you a hug will you stop asking for physical contact?
Bodie: Promise.

Ok. Remember how in Part 2, I said that Bodie taught me two things, and that the first was to never worry about hurting the feelings of someone who lied to you about being legally blind?

The second thing I learned was never to trust that the person you’ve avoided contact with all night understands that you do not want their mouth anywhere near your face.

Bodie is tall, maybe 6’2” or so, and I’m about a foot shorter than that, so I was going in for a face-down-my-arms-under-his-quick-and-painless hug. I was even going to throw in a vigorous pat on the back like you do with people you don’t actually want to hug. This, to me, seemed to be an incognito way of throwing in some disguised violence.

Wrong.

I’m not a mean person. I don’t try to hurt people’s feelings. Actually, I tend to put myself out and have even been known to put myself in very uncomfortable situations (for me) to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. I once thought about marrying someone because I didn’t want to hurt their feelings with a break up. See? That level of crazy. So when I tell you this next part, I want you to keep all of that in mind.

I go in for the quick I-never-want-to-see-you-again hug, and that’s when my life flashed before my eyes and everything began to happen in slow motion.

His face was coming toward me. I was trying to duck out of the way. He has very long arms and I was definitely stuck in a weird wrestling (maybe samurai?) paralysis move that did not allow me to escape. In a brief flash, every atrocious moment of the previous four hours played in a terrible sepia-toned, horror movie strobe light in front of my eyes. Also in this movie, the walls are covered with blood and tears and spiders and clown faces.

We’ve all kissed someone that wasn’t necessarily a good kisser. This was beyond that. This was like someone threw a hot, wet octopus at my face. And then that octopus got stuck with all his little octopus suckers and refused to let go.

Fig. 1.4
Nightmarish creature of epic proportions attached to my face.

I summoned all of my strength (I had been working out. No big deal.) and pried his face off of my face, pushed him away and threatened to pepper spray him if he came within five feet of me ever again.

The next day I got a text that said “Hey hun. Sry about lst nite—ur just 2 cute! Maybe we can try agn sat?”

I did not try again Saturday.

The Great Cell Phone Disaster of 2011

Before I even start on this story about the most horrible, epic fail of all time, I have to explain a handful of things.

First, I am the tiniest bit crazy. Not cut-you-up-and-make-you-into-a-lamp-shade crazy. Not refuse-to-trust-you-when-you-go-out-without-me crazy. Not even check-your-phone-or-email crazy. I’m crazy in a way that is probably endearing when we first meet and then is not so endearing later. Like I fall down a lot. I’m afraid to sit in recliners because I’m 99 percent positive they’re going to fall backwards. I count the wheels on 18-wheelers (to myself. I don’t force other people to participate in this particular slice of crazy). I have a sense of direction that’s so horrible, I was once an hour late coming back from lunch because I got lost getting back from the restaurant that was two blocks down the street. (I ended up on a scary freeway near downtown. I worked off Monroe. How does this happen?) I line up my French fries in size order and then eat them large to small. Are any of these things certifiable? No! So stop judging me. I’m not Gary-Busy crazy!

Fig. 1.1
Gary Busey: Bat-shit crazy.

Second, I live alone and I have two dogs, so I talk to my dogs like they’re people. Stop it right there. I don’t dress them up. I don’t carry them around in ridiculous dog-holders. I do not treat them like accessories. I don’t discuss important topics with them, like Darfur or the recession or Tyra. But when I speak to them, it’s in complete sentences. Also, because I am the slightest bit narcissistic, I believe that when they misbehave, it is with the express purpose of ruining my life and has little to do with the fact that they’re just dogs. I believe that this is a side effect of watching the film Homeward Bound when I was little. Those dogs had purpose. I guess the cat did, too. But he was a cat so I don’t care.

Fig. 1.2
Reasons I hate cats almost as much as dolphins

Third, I would hate for someone I thought was attractive, funny and interesting to know these things about me all at once. I feel like it’s best to dole out the crazy a little bit at a time so that by the time it’s all out there, the escalating dose of crazy has been so gradual that the attractive, funny and interesting person doesn’t really notice that I’m a full-fledged maniac.

That being said, last Friday, the Guy I Think is Attractive, Funny and Interesting got a 100 percent concentrated dose of full-fledged crazy. And it was because my cell phone betrayed me.

Like so many people who are totally normal, I have made regrettable mistakes involving my cell phone in the past. I’ve dropped it in a glass of Malibu because it was dirty (I was also very drunk on Malibu). I’ve texted one particular friend every time I drunkenly hear the song Cupid Shuffle. I use it to update my Facebook status to “Drizzunk at Tizzaco Bell” when I’m drunk at Taco Bell. I’ve even used it to attempt to drunkenly extort Emeril Lagasse for $5 million.

Fig. 1.3
We still have business, you and I, Emeril

And here’s my next point: If you do something stupid with your cell phone because you are drunk, the person on the other end of that call writes it off as a drunk dial. (Let’s hope that Mr. Lagasse realizes that, “Dear Emrl, U still owe me $5 million for stealing ‘BAM’ from me or ELS!” was a drunk email. I also sent it to emrl@emeril.com, so it’s possible that he never received it). If you’re not drunk and your ass dials someone because it’s in your pocket, whatever you say has to be taken at face value. So I decided a long time ago to not keep my cell phone near any part of my body that can dial people at random. Because I sit on my ass and I do not sit anywhere near my exquisite, near-perfect breasts (didn’t I tell you I was a crazy narcissist? Get off my case already!) I keep my phone in my bra, because I am also very, very classy. I will also tell you that the only time my boobs accidentally called one of my friends, I was about to make a poor dating decision. My friend called me back and the poor dating decision was averted. That’s right. My boobs recognized the situation, problem solved and then phoned for help.

I told you all of that so that I could get to the actual story.

Friday morning, I was getting ready for work. Did I say morning? It was 10 a.m., which, in all fairness, is morning to me. The night before my basset hound was crying for roughly 100 hours straight because she wanted to sleep on my bed. When she sleeps on my bed, she sleeps on top of me. Literally on top of me. I wake up and she’s curled up in a heavy, spiteful ball on my back. This is not a good night’s sleep. So despite her cries, I leave her in her kennel so I can sleep. This obviously doesn’t work, because when she cries, it sounds like a cross between a bird that got hit with a car, a woman falling off of a cliff and a werewolf.

This is pretty much what it sounds and looks like:

Needless to say, we were not on speaking terms when I woke up. I let her out of her kennel, groggy and irritated, and let her run around the apartment like a dog who has never before tasted the sweet flavor of freedom. She’s extremely dramatic. At this point I was half dressed. Skirt on, bra on, phone in its correct position, when the basset sneaks into my closet and runs out with my one of my favorite shoes. Have you ever had a pair of shoes that were not only the cutest shoes in the whole wide world, but also actually fit? That was this pair of shoes. So I screamed. She dropped the shoe and jumped on my bed. She jumped up, put her paws on my chest and pushed off of me like a gymnast trying to use a pommel horse. About that time, my neighbor came over to ask me a question. I threw a shirt on, went to the door, answered her question, and came back just in time to see the Dog Sent From Hell to Ruin My Life devouring my shoe.

Me: LOVIE! (her name is Lovie)
Lovie: chompchompchompchomp

I got closer to her and she did that thing dogs do where she stuck her ass in the air and started to wiggle like this was a hilarious game. (note: this was not a hilarious game). I screamed at her like some sort of banshee that was just run through the heart with a joust. She ran, chewing and slobbering as she went.

Remember how I said I talk to my dogs like they’re people? This was no exception. The only difference was that this time, I was screaming like a maniac.

Me: YOU ARE RUINING MY LIFE! YOU ARE THE WORST DOG IN AMERICA! I AM LITERALLY GOING TO KILL YOU WITH MY BARE HANDS! WHEN I CATCH YOU I WILL RIP OUT ALL OF YOUR TEETH AND MAKE THEM INTO A NECKLACE AND YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO DESTROY ANYTHING AGAIN! I’M GOING TO FEED YOU TO GIL! I WILL NEVER LET YOU OUT OF YOUR KENNEL FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE! IF YOU WERE IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY YOU’D BE A COAT BY NOW! YOU'RE CRAZY! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!
Lovie: chompchompchompchomp

She clearly didn’t understand any of this because in response, she just ran around the apartment with my shoe in her mouth.

Fig. 1.4
What my dog looks like when she thinks she's playing a hilarious game.

In my hurry to remove the shoe, my phone fell out of my bra. Classy. The screen looked weird, so I picked it up to investigate. I had apparently been leaving a very long message for The Guy I Think is Attractive, Funny and Interesting.

Has a realization so awful hit you that you lose time and then find yourself alone, rocking in a corner under your desk crying, eating yogurt with the wrong end of a spoon and listening to More Than Words by Extreme? Because I was half a panic attack away from that. I scrambled to remember what I had said, what I had done, what had happened (because so, so many times I’m alone in my apartment singing Kanye West or Paula Abdul. Badly.) and realized that I had threatened the life of a 30-pound basset hound while screaming maniacally. I had also accused her of being the worst dog in America, and suggested that she was purposefully trying to ruin my life. I assume the visual of what I looked like was a little like this:

Fig. 1.5
I did NOT look like this, if you're reading, Guy Who I Think is Attractive and Interesting

I sent a quick text, attempting to not sound crazy, apologizing for the call and telling him that he could just disregard the message.

Then I panicked again. He lives in California. It’s 10 here, but it’s 8 there. And he’s probably sleeping. So not only did I call and leave a four hour message of myself screaming, I machine gun texted directly after that. Nope. I’m not crazy.

When I heard from him later that night (after hours of thinking “I am the biggest idiot alive and he will never want to talk to me again because I am full-on-Gary-Busey crazy and why do I even OWN a cell phone) he laughed and promised it was ok (whenever The Guy I Think is Attractive, Funny and Interesting tells me something is ok, I just assume that it’s not).

I’m pretty sure he’ll never talk to me again.