Thursday, September 16, 2010

When I Was Young and Dumb

I had a crazy, reject boyfriend who was the lowest of the low. (I was in my rebellious, I can save the world stage) One night he put a knife to my throat. I really don't remember the reason why, but of course there is really no reason something like that should happen. As I stared into his eyes with all the hate and fight in me. (there was no fear - I wouldn't allow it) I told him, "to either use it or put it down." He looked into my eyes and after long seconds put the knife down. Which was a relief but there was no way I was going to let him know how scared I was.

We started to argue. I was ending the relationship on the spot. The arguement spilled into the street (nothing physical) with an audience of all our friends. Then a man says, "there's the cops!" Oscar took off running. We all scattered. I jumped into my car with James and picked up Oscar about 2 blocks away. I drove off like a maniac (which is how I used to handle stress). We were also drinking maddog 20/20 which probably caused the whole situation to begin with.

I drove from Logan to Man in 8 minutes. This is usually a 20 to 30 minute drive on a road that is barely there on the side of a cliff in WV. To wreck would have meant I would have plunged several hundred feet to land on a railroad track in the valley. So if I would have survived such a wreck (nobody ever has) then a train would come along and finish me off. I remember going around some of those "kiss your ass" curves sideways.

When we got to Man, Oscar got out of the car. We fought the whole way. I tried to run over him. He dove over an embankment and I stopped short of wrecking my car. Things settled down and he got back in the car and I drove back to Logan. I was taking him home to drop him off and never see him again. We were sitting at a red light.

Suddenly my car door was flung open and standing beside me was a policeman with his gun drawn in my face. There were also 2 more policeman dragging Oscar and James out of the passenger side of the car. The policeman told me to just sit there and they would keep me out of things. (I had a rich, powerful daddy)

They searched my car and found the bottle of maddog 20/20. They assumed it was Oscar's, which was fine with me. Then they told me they were arresting him for armed robbery. That he had robbed a man at gunpoint about an hour before they stopped us. I knew this was wrong because we had been fighting for hours and had not been apart.

This brought out the crusader in me. They took Oscar to jail. I started to rally evidence that he was innocent. I got statements from all the people who had been around our fight which covered the entire afternoon and evening. I accounted for all his time. After three days they had to release him because of the evidence I had collected.

Unfortunately this also meant that little, ole 18 year old me who was fighting for the underdog forgot about breaking up with this worthless, human being and all of a sudden I was in love with my jailhouse boyfriend. If I could have just dropped him off at his house that night I would have avoided a rather predictable downturn in my life after that. Instead we reunited as young lovers who have fought the system and won will do.

Maybe I'll write about the rest of it later.

video of the drive from Man to Rum Creek. 1/2 the distance I drove that night

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUiD6zy5T14

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