The Death of Superman

Well, me and my black eye (from the Jeff and Jack fiasco) were back in Canada for Christmas. Actually I wasn't 'home' which would be Manitoba. I was in Calgary (where my brother was living). My brother had to work through Christmas so couldn't go home. The parents decided to visit him for Christmas because they were in Columbus a few years earlier (also when my brother had to work at Christmas). Originally me and my wife were supposed to spend a nice quiet Christmas alone together. We were looking forward to it. Well, obviously that was no longer the case, so I flew to Calgary also.

It was also obvious that Melanie was no longer going to pick me up at the airport when I returned to Columbus, and that we weren't going to spend New Year's together as originally planned. Oh well. So Bill picked me up at the airport (in a borrowed car). After we got my car and dropped the borrowed one off, we went to the VIP which was having a huge New Year's Eve celebration. It was a friday night. Not a karoke night, but it was PACKED with fun patrons and a huge party none-the-less. What a good time!

The first of the karoke crowd that I had met playing pool was a guy named Sean. I'll write a separate post about him in more detail later. Sean was 26 years old, was a career professional (like me) whos life was in the process of spinning out of control. So we had a connection right away. I can't say that he was an attractive man. In fact, I found him somewhat unattractive. He was soft and a little fat, and had a baby face. He was VERY outgoing though and could sing fairly well. I think that was the attraction for women. I think the baby face and roundly softness invoked some sort of 'maternal instinct' in the ladies at these bars too. That's just a theory though. BUT for whatever reason, most of the ladies were widely attracted to him. In fact, he was there that night with Smiley, who he was 'sort of' seeing. They called themselves girlfriend/ boyfriend, but I think it was more of a f#ck buddy relationship actually. They did date for a couple of weeks though and she was his date this particular evening. We all sat and partied together that night. We were all having a ball!

Bill was getting hammered, but seeing I was driving I had only about one pitcher of beer for the entire evening. One amusing thing about this night that I remember was that Mark (YoBoy) had a pot luck type spread of food at the back table. It was quite good. In a large crock pot was some sort of sausage-stew type of concoction that he had personally made. It was quite good. At one point, Mark goes over to Bill and says, "Hey Bill! Try some of this food that I made. It's really quite tasty!" As usual, talking to him like they were old best buddies. The funny thing is that Bill, though would talk to him, usually talked fairly down to him. He's really the one that continued to give Mark a hard time after our initial encounter. Mind you, I found it all funny, and did my share of disrespecting him as well. Mostly with just going along with, or laughing about the things Bill would say about Mark. But mostly, I was trying to 'smooth over' the relationship between me and Mark, given the fact that he owned the bar, and it was our absolutely FAVOURITE bar (for good reason). Anyway, I was sitting next to Bill when Mark made the food comment to him. He didn't even acknowledge my presence. Later I went and had some food, and whatever that stuff Mark made was, it was really good! Trying to be nice, I said to Mark, "Hey Mark. This stuff is really good! What's in it?" He looks at me with complete disdain, and replies in a grumpy tone, "Sausage." I say, "Oh,.....Just sausage?" He says back in the same grumpy tone, "Yes, sausage. Just sausage!" Whatever. At least I tried. I went back to my seat and told Bill and we laughed about that as well. Then made more fun of Mark while laughing. GFX looked pretty damned HOT that night I may add, and I did do my fair share of fraternizing with her as well. I always had to subtly flirt with her. That was a given.

Anyway the night was total fun. Great times were had by all. Near the end of the night me and Bill were heading out of there. Like I say, I was pretty sober but Bill was completely smashed. We headed South on High street (which is a major road that the bar was on). We went two blocks and I noticed when we went through a greeen light that the green glow of the light showed that my windshield was starting to fog up. So I reached down and put on the front defogger. In the two or three seconds it took me to do that, whilst I had my eyes of the road, Bill all-of-a-suddenly yelled, "Car! Car!" I quickly looked up, and at the EXACT moment I took my eyes of the road, the car a little ahead of us came to a very sudden stop due to the fact a car in front of them was waiting to turn left into the Huntington bank ATM drive through. I SLAMMED on my brakes! But it was too late. We nailed them from behind still travelling about 20 mph. They were in an older (solidly built) car. The bumper of my neon was lower to the ground than the back of their car. My front end hit and crumpled in like paper. We came to a VERY sudden stop into the rear bumper of their car.

We got out of my car. Out of the car that we hit emerged two cute little college-aged chickadees wearing their little fancy party dresses. They were both drunk. Bill walked over to them all drunk and his usual 'drooley', meanwhile I called him to 'step back'. Then, before I could address them, the chicky that was the driver said to me, "We don't have to report this or anything!" Knowing that I rear-ended them and would automatically be at fault, replied, "No. I don't see a need to report this." They were drunk and I was sober, but even a pitcher or so of beer would probably been enough to put me over the 'legal driving under the influence' limit. So I didn't want police involvement any more that they did.

As soon as I replied, they immediately jumped (I mean jumped) into their car and sped off. I didn't even have a chance to exchange any driver, insurance, or vehicle information. I couldn't see any visible damage to their car what-so-ever. Meanwhile my car was a crumpled mess stuck in the middle of the road. One headlight was smashed, the other was pointing at a 45 degree angle to the road. The car wouldn't even start. So we pushed the car off the road and into the gas station to our right. After a few minutes of looking under the hood (which was wadded up in the shape of a paper ball), we had realized that one battery cable had been knocked off. We reattached that, tried the ignition and the car started back up to life.

I was in a pretty pissed off mood. We both were. Actually Bill probably just used it as an excuse, but said, "F#ck this! That's it, we're going down to the hood and getting some stuff!" I agreed. This isn't how my night was going to end. So we took my crumpled heap of a car with one headlight smashed and one headlight facing directly into the pavement on New Year's Eve (or more like the morning of the New Year) into the North Hood to buy some crack. Fuck the tiny amounts. We bought a whole eight-ball. Which is 1/8 of an once (hence the name). (8-ball = 1/8 of an once, Teenager = 1/16 of an once, a Bill is $100 worth., everything esle is pretty much sold in multiples of $10.) We went to Pork's house. He's a dealer that works with Dave. (Him and Dave grew up together.) I said, "F#ck it! I'm not waiting in the car. I'm going in there and doing this deal myself!" Bill says, "Okay, G, let's go in and do it then!" Pork had never seen me before, and seeing I still had that corporate image about me, it made a lot of people from the hood that didn't know me think I may be a cop. So Pork pulls out this automatic weapon and points it at me. I didn't even care. I was still pissed off about my car. Pork says, "I'm not trusting him until I see him do a hit." I look around and say, "Well I'm not going to waste my time with a pop can, I need a real stem then." Pork hands me one loaded with a small hit and I do it. I'm not even paying attention to the gun he's pointing at me. He puts his weapon down and spreads out $150 worth. (Incidently, in Columbus the going rate for an 8-ball is $150. From what I understand it costs about $240 in Canada. Not that I care anyway. I haven't had any desire to use for years now. Just found the price difference noteable.)

So we drove my car all the way into the North Hood, then drove it all the way back to my part of town where we started from, and blazed this 8-ball of crack until about 7:00am. It was the first time that I had ever done a quantity more than about $20 at a time. No big deal though. We still only did small hits at a time and therefore didn't have any of the 'weird' side effects. On Sunday afternoon I called my insurance company and reported that I had hit a guardrail. After all, I didn't have any information at all to give them about the other vehicle or driver anyway.

That worked out pretty good. Later that week the insurance company wrote off my vehicle and gave me a $5,000 cheque for my 1996 (black) dodge neon with 80,000 miles on it. They appraised it at $5,500, but it cost $500 for them to haul it away for me. I could have kept it and got the full $5,500, but didn't want to bother with the hassle of getting rid of the car myself. A friend at work had just bought a new Toyota, and said there were used trade-ins for sale at the dealership. I called them, told them I had $5,000 in cash to spend and inquired what was available. They had just got a 1997 dodge neon (purplish grey) with 40,000 miles on it as a trade in, and would sell it as-is for $5,000. Bill got a friend of his to drive us there. We gave it a quick test drive. It was nice. I handed them $5,000 and the car was mine. So I ended up getting a neon (same as I had), that was one year newer, had 40,000 less miles on it, and was a nicer color for the same as I was given for my neon. Sweet deal. I was back in business!

The following Saturday morning at 7:00a, I got a telephone call from some lady detective. I at first thought it was looking for donations as I often got those phone calls and was kind of irritated that they would be calling me so early on a Saturday. Then she asked me if my car was in an accident the following week. I said, "yes". Then they asked why I didn't report another car involved in the accident. I originally said, "Well, there wasn't another car. I hit a guard rail." Then she stated, "That's not what so-and-so, the driver of the other vehicle, is reporting." Then she proceded to tell me that the other driver reported that we were intimidating them and then sped off in our vehicle before we could exchange information. With that, I told the detective, "Okay. There was another vehicle. But that's notat all what happened..." Then proceded to tell them the real story. The detective said, "Hang on. I'll call you back." Then called back a few minutes later saying that the other party has admitted that your details are correct. What had happened, is that this wasn't the 'little girl's car'. It was her father's car. A couple days after the accident, the father noticed some undercarriage damage (apparently $1,200 worth) and interrogated his daughter about it. She made up the story about us intimidating them, and taking off on them so that her father wouldn't get mad about not exchanging information. When the police questioned her about my story, she caved and told the truth. So all I had to do in the end was call my insurance company, explain the details, and the additional $1,200 to fix their car was included on the claim.

Now the whole story is over. Rest in peace, Superman. Rest in Peace.....