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March 16, 2008
The Broken Hand: Part I
I'd thought I'd blogged about this before. If I have I can't find it. So, here's the story of the broken hand.
On January 27, 1986, some buddies and I made a trip to Oxford, Ohio to visit and run around. There were four of us altogether and, as designated driver, I was not drinking.
We'd parked on one of the side streets and walked to a couple of the bars — Oxford wasn't all that big at the time; it may still be not all that big.
It wasn't terribly late when we decided to drive the 30 or so miles back to Franklin. As we approached my White 1977 VW Rabbit, a college-aged girl came up to me and asked if I could give her and her friends a ride home. [One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small…]
At the time I had a car full of guys but I was pretty sure they wouldn't mind having a couple of girls in their laps. Even if it made things tight.
"Sure," I said.
As I said that I noticed some guys across the street. What caught my eye was that one of them, a normal-sized human being, was grabbed by the shirt and thrown upon and pinned to a car hood by a gigantic guy who could have only been a Miami University football player.
At the sign of the commotion the college-aged girl ran across the street yelling, "Bob! Bob! Let him go."
That, I thought, is not a good sign.
College-aged girl came across the street with Bob (not his real name, though I remember it), another girl and another big guy. These were the friends she'd been talking about.
There was no way these people were going to fit in my car. Bob would have had trouble on his own.
As I stood there considering our situation I was happy to note that Bob, who seemed very volatile just seconds before, had calmed considerably.
I was standing in the V that is formed by an open car door and a car's body. My back was to the driver-side door hinge as I'd been looking in the car so see what kind of geometry magic would be needed to get everybody in. As it was a VW Rabbit and not a Sleestak Pylon (which, as I recall were a lot larger on the inside than the outside would suggest), it didn't look good.
"Del, there's no way we're going to fit in that car," said Joe, one of my friends and at 6'2" and 230 pounds a large person in his own right.
And he was right. And really, I'd known that even before he said it.
So, there I was, with my back to open door's hinge. I was hemmed in on three sides with College-aged girl in front of me and a fairly pleasant Bob behind her.
"There's no way I'm going to be able to get everybody in there," I said apologetically and then added, with a subtle point toward Bob, "Are you going to be able to handle him."
Unfortunately, suggesting Bob might become unhandleable was enough to create an unhandleable-Bob situation.
I'll tell you how unhandleable tomorrow.
Posted by delmer at March 16, 2008 7:45 PM