Maybe One Of The Funniest Things I've Ever Seen. But Then, I Tend To Laugh At The Inappropriate.

Years and years ago, The Man, my friend (The Kid) and I went to a concert at an outdoor music center.  It is a great venue (if the weather's good) and people fill up a hillside with blankets or beach chairs and watch live music in the open night air.  It's a pretty cool place. And a pretty steep hillside.

I cannot, for the life of me, remember the band that we were seeing.  I do remember feeling vaguely uncool going to it, so, The Sundays?  Something?  I don't remember.  What I DO remember was the insanely, hugely, incredibly fucked-up guy who was sitting near us.  To the left and down the hill a bit.  He was a tall, scraggly, lanky, guy, wearing head to toe denim.  (So, John Cougar Mellencamp?) He was WHOOPING! and HOLLERING! and YEEEEEEEAAAAAHHH MANNING! louder and longer than anyone around him and to this he was OBLIVIOUS.  His friends, the fuckers, knew that he was too wasted to be there but they were too wasted to care a whole lot and so they turned away from him in his hour of need[ing someone to yank him out of there and drive his sorry, drunk ass home.]

Friends don't let friends make TOTAL drunk asses of themselves.

Anyway.

We (along with most people in his vicinity) watched him for a better part of the opening act, sitting in his spot, making a huge scene.  The highlight was when he pulled out his concealed bottle of whiskey (a fifth,) took the lid off and sat it on the grass, promptly knocked it over, and watched as it glug-glug-glugged out onto the ground. He responded so slowly, reflexes almost nil, that other onlookers were shouting cat-calls at him to up-end his bottle.

And then, he went MOBILE.

At some point, he grew weary of sitting near his so-called friends and began to meander.  His gait was reminiscent of someone on a small watercraft, say, or a crowded moon-bounce.  As he tried his best to negotiate the challenging task of defying gravity, he also had to contend with the GRADE.  It was like something out of a slap-stick movie, I shit you not.  Where someone is stumbling or threatening to fall or drop a 30-tier cake or whatever and there's the WwwhhhhooOooaaaaAAAAHHHH!! WwwhhhhooOOooaaaaAAAAHHHH!!! soundtrack.  Just like that.  On and on it went, with lots of restless standers-by.  People getting irritated by him and his close brushes with their personal belongings/space.

'Hey BUDDY!'

'Watch it, guy!'

'Yooooo, DUUUUDE.' (That one might've been us.  He came close a number of times.)

So, there he was, pinging around the joint like a goddam pinball and we all (like, EVERYONE THERE) know it's only a matter of time before something really fucked up happens. 

You know it's coming, right?  You can FEEL it.

So, there he goes, careening around and he trips and he falls on this woman directly in front of us and knocks her clean out of her chair. Only?  She's in one of those crazy camping chairs that have no legs, really, so at the time he takes her out, she's about 6inches off the ground.  If you can picture it, he is coming in almost parallel to mother Earth, right? And so, when he knocks her out of the chair, she kind of goes flat and he's, well...he's right on top of her.  On the ground. And she's screaming and cursing and wriggling around, trying to get up but she's tangled in the chair and the guy and he's so fucked up he has NO IDEA what the hell just happened and who is that doing all the screaming anyway? And he looks up, confused as hell, to the woman's husband who had gotten back from the bar and just sat down in his chair with no legs (still holding both big paper cups of beer) when the drunk guy out of nowhere fell onto his wife, somewhat like the House in the Wizard of Oz and the wife is still shrieking and the man and the husband are eyeball to eyeball and just as a reflex (I imagine) the husband flicks his hand out, super fast and tosses the whole beer he's holding into the face of the drunken man who is on top of his still-cursing wife, soaking them both.

Yes. Yes-yes. Let that picture sink in.

And although I LAUGHED and LAUGHED and LAAAAUGHED, I felt bad for the wife, having a strange, drunken man fall atop her.  And I felt bad for the drunk guy who picked the WRONG people to party with.  And I felt the worst, probably for the husband. Because how BAD would it suck to have a drunk-ass guy fall on your wife and then to realize that, not only did you bring the wrong chairs but that in your anger, you also dashed your brand new, never-been-sipped, $13. beer into his face?

RIGHT?

Comments

[Julie @ The Mom Slant]

I think I want to go to a concert with you.

[Lori]

Nice new look! I have heard this story before and I am still laughing my ass off.

[Jayme]

Love the new look!

[jean]

I like the new look.

[Shelly]

GREAT story, perfectly told! Fantastic!

I would have been WICKED PISSED.

[sam]

I read this in the car, and as I started to cackle TB and Chicken requested that I read it aloud to them. Tears were pouring down my face, my legs pressed together so I don't pee mahself I read it through peals of uncontrollable laughter, all the while wondering if we were going to die via laughter while TB is trying to drive down the freeway. We are alive and well, my panties are dry, and now they know why I love your writing. You rock.

[Shelly]

OMG I needed a laugh today. Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing this hilarious bit of assholery.

[Secret Mom Thoughts]

I'd be upset by the $13 beer being splashed in drunk guys face too.

[BOSSY]

Bossy is still laughing at the crowded moon bounce imagery. Lord this was a funny one, New Girl.

[Suzy Voices]

You have THE BEST stories!!

[Kelly at Student of the Year]

Oh, the perils of being that shitfaced!

[The Domestic Goddess]

Damn. That's funny. Although I'm hoping my husband would have shoved the drunk guy and then dumped $26 of never-sipped, crappy, watered-down beer on 'im. That'll learn him.

[Manic Mommy]

And he got drive home with his beer-soaked, trampled (I'm guessing) *very* pissed wife.

Awesome story! I needed a laugh this morning.