Self fulfilling Prophecies

You know how some of the most horribly awesome schadenfreude filled stories start out like this:

"There I was, minding my own business...."

This is a story about a self fulfilling prophesy

I recently said something in the comments section about huniliating myself, and then corrected it and made a joke out of the typo...Yeah, well last night was so filled with huniliation it's not even funny....

No, it's fucking hilarious.

Ok.
So there I was, minding my own business.
I was sitting outside my apartment reading a book. Never has reading a book caused me so much pain.
Up rolls a woman who used to live upstairs from me and finds me very attractive and to be frank this chick is several miles of bad road.

(I'm not sure about the proper nomenclature here. I know that a woman that is nothin' but trouble is some certain set of miles of "bad road" but I don't know the proper number...but trust me she's at the very least Several Miles.)

SO up rolls Ms. Thang and I try very hard to convince her I have several pressing engagements and cannot possibly leave.
The fact that I am hanging out in front of my apartment with my feet up reading a book doesn't really sell my story and so I finally agree to go see her new apartment and am assured that I will be returned home in an hour or less. She lives very close to me, so it's no big deal right?

Sigh.
We get to the apartment and somebody slaps a beer in my hand and my day goes officially and conclusively off the rails.
Then Ms. Thang gets into a huge door slamming-yelling "mutherfucker!"-throwing shit kind of fight with her boyfriend...and then they get engaged...I think..

but that's not the point.

The point is the baby.

Inside the apartment I could hear a baby crying....
I can't stand the sound of a crying baby.
But not why you think...
It's not that I'm intolerant, it's quite the opposite.
Before Calvin was Turbo, and before Turbo was Hopper he was just a little colicky smidge.
He cried for hours on end. And i held him and sang to him and patted his butt and ....I cried too.
Sometimes he would cry for so many hours in a row that I would be holding and rocking and singing and dancing ...and crying right alongside him.
He seemed to like this one particular Blues Traveler song...if i hear that song ...to this day I can't help but feel a little bunched up, a little sniffly.

SO there is a crying baby. I say something brilliant along the lines of "what's with the crying baby?"
They bring her out, I say let me see her, and somebody throws me the baby like a shovel pass....I hold her for a minute and bounce her a little and sing a little ...and she stops crying.
I think this is where it officially went from being Weird to Fucked Up.

(hang with me it's a long story but the good news, for you, dear reader, is that later on it's going to go from Fucked Up to Totally Fucked Up)

So...I'm going to estimate the next part of this story at about 4-6 hours. I sit in a chair on a balcony with this sweet little 6 month old and I break out my super high tech phone. The memory chip I happen to have in at the moment is loaded pretty heavily (like 2 gigs?) with 80's-90's punk and ska.
So I spend a big ole' chunk of time listening to Husker Du and Suicidal Tendencies and Goldfinger and Common Rider and Bad Religion and Bad Brains.
With every song I tell Sierra a story about the song...where I was the first time I heard it, the meaning of the song, the time I saw them play the song live, why this band or song is significant in the history of punk...
Whatever comes to mind.
I have the most captive of captive audiences. Every once in a while somebody slaps a beer in my hand or slams a door or shoots a BB gun off the balcony. (I'm serious. I was all, "not around the baby!")

Off and on a woman comes to talk to me.
She is a little hot...a little not. She looks like a cross between Christina Ricci and Susan Sarandon....so... cute, but...maybe not from every angle?
Ok, this woman bounces in and out of the scene...I want to go home at some point...I almost stole the baby, I swear. It was such a fucked up scene and here is this sweet little innocent thing....
Then I find out, the woman who may or may not be attractive, is actually the babies mother.

What. The. Fuck?
I'm a pretty perceptive guy and I had no fucking clue this was the mother of the baby?

She left, for hours at a time, some random fucking man holding her baby.

Jesus Fucking Christ how did I wind up here....

So I finally have had enough and demand somebody take me home ...and I realize that there isn't a single sober soul available to drive me anyplace....
Tony, the new boyfriend of the cute/not cute babymomma is supposed to show up and give me a ride...this frankly, does not seem like a great idea to me.
I happen to wander by their apartment because I'm just going to walk home, fuck all y'all!'
(realize now that I was more intoxicated than I thought and walking anywhere was probably one of the poorer ideas of the night)
and a guy sort of snaps at me from behind the screen door "hey, are you the guy?"
I'll be honest....at this point in my day I was fixin' for a fight. It would have taken very little to provoke me into violence. I just spent hours holding and caring for a tiny little thing that has much chance of having a good life and I as very very mad to have been exposed to that. I know it exists, but I don't want to fall in love with it and know about it
I told my friend Cindy the whole insane story and I told her I kind of had this idea that I would volunteer to watch the baby a couple days a week and she pointed out that I would just wind up loving the kid and getting my heart broken and in the end I wouldn't be able to do any good anyway..
so...
Tony (as it turns out) says from behind the screen door "you the guy needs a ride?" I say something along the lines of "yeah, I'm the guy that got kidnapped, I'm the fucking guy that watched the baby all night"
And he kicks the screen door open and I square off to fight this guy who frankly was much larger than me...and he hands me a bill.
It's folded lengthwise, I don't look at it, I stuff it in my pocket, and say goodnight. Or fuck off, or peace out or whatever.

I began to walk. I have no answer for why I didn't just call a cab.
It wasn't all that far from my house. Right? I'll fucking walk home. Fuck all y'all
I am making good time and cutting through yards....
then I come to a bit of a thick piece, some bushes, some trees..
I break out of the trees and there is a ditch. A culvert, a cement river.... a drainage ditch...

45 degrees of cement on one side 45 degrees on the other.

I'm pretty sure my house is a less than a mile on the other side of this ditch...
So. I run down one side jump the little mucky river and run halfway up the other side........
and then I slide on my forearms and knees and feet down 15 or something feet of cement.
I'm not kidding, I tried a dozen different ways to get up and out of this fucking ditch. There was no purchase. I could not for the life of me climb out of this thing!
I tried every trick in the book.
I got a running start...nothing. I came at it from an angle...nothing. I tried to get all weird and crab-walk backwards up this fucking thing...not happening.

And?! it was twisty! so here I am walking along in a fucking cement ditch towards my house.....admittedly, I don't have the best sense of direction...but I know I'm going the right way. But at any given time I could only see a hundred yards or less and then it would bend again so I had no way of knowing if there was an actual way out or just more freakin impassible walls
And then i realize that up ahead it goes from being 2 feet of cement on either side of the mucky water to ...well..... just mucky water...Fuck That! I am not walking in the mucky water.
so I reverse direction...
I am looking for a way out, a fucking choice in life...because really, I am starting to think I may have to call 911 to get me out of this fucking ditch.

Really.

I was picturing first trying to figure out how in the hell I could even point them in my general direction....then I'm picturing firemen with ropes or maybe a helicopter and a little basket...
There is no way in hell I am going to be that guy. I will not be on the news.

So, I keep walking and around each bend I hope to see some way out of this mess and around every bend I have my hopes crushed.
On one side of the ditch I can see the back of a shopping center that I happen to know is pretty damn close to my house on the other side are peoples back yards.

Then I see it like a ray of hope up ahead. 2 branches hanging down from this overgrown tree in somebodies backyard.
I get a running start, I leap up grab onto the lowest hanging branch ....and it comes off in my hand!
I take that branch and use it to pull the other branch down to where I can reach it and then I begin to haul myself up hand over hand...I swear I felt like Bruce Willis in one of those die hard movies.

I stumble through the bushes and come to a backyard. I climb straight over the fence and walk through somebodies backyard.
Trespassing?
Whatever, I just survived The Ditch.

I pass through a gate, walk down a driveway and lay down at the foot of the driveway. I call the cab .
The cab ride costs me $5.00 that's how close I was to home. I'm pretty sure it costs $3.00 just to get in the fucking cab. I pull out the bill Tony gave me. $20.00. Well hot damn, Tony is a stand up guy at least. So I tip the cabbie %100 and go home.

The next day I tell My friend Cindy the story. When I get done she says, "and what did we learn from this experience?"
"Stay away from fucking ditches?"
she laughs, "ok that too, but what could we have done to prevent all of this? What did we learn?"
I pause for a second....

"OH! Don't get in the car!"
"That's right sweetie, don't get in the car."