A One-Eyed Meth-Addled Monkey

*** continued from previous post ***


Before I describe what happened after we entered the Lodge, it would be best to step back and take an objective examination of how we must have appeared to the outside world.

They say that people's opinions are formed in the first 2 seconds of meeting. If so, we were screwed. Mom was a soggy, muddy, bulbous, pale version of her regular self with the added attraction of dark circles and eyes that were open wayyyyyyy too wide.

I looked way better than she did. I was a soggy, muddy, bald-headed and goateed man on a cane, wearing leather chaps and bulky upper garments.

Protip: A guy that is fairly large and muscular, in his late forties, bald, wearing leather, riding a motorcycle, and walking with a cane garners mad props. Mad props I say! I highly recommend the look. It might be tough for you to pull off, being 22, blond, and a girl, but I think you could manage. No one ever comes up to me and asks what happened, but you can tell they assume it to be a motorcycle-related injury. As I walk past, or pogo-cane-hobble to be more accurate, they cast furtive glances, and try not to make eye contact. I can read their faces. Their expressions say, "How hard-core do you have to be to crawl back on one of those murder-machines once it's crippled you?"

Ha! Works for me. Think they would have the same attitude were they to discover that whomever writes the sorry scripts for this thing we call life had decided I didn't need cartilage in my spine? Arthritis is not a party story. Well, not a fun one at least. Fleeing police at crazy speeds on your bike with a bottle of Rum in one hand, a saber clamped twixt your teeth and a one-eyed mangy meth-addled monkey riding on the sissy-bar flinging poo and flipping off everyone we pass - that is a party story. Discussing the nuances of arthritis is - well, just so damn pedestrian.

*** the journey continues ***