A LONG STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING, A SAD ENDING AND THEN A REALLY REALLY SAD ENDING

Words cannot describe yesterday.

I mean ... you could try. You could throw words together like "toasterific" or "checkbookable" but then you'd stand there all smug while everyone around you got that whole "escaped mental patient" vibe about you.

Yesterday morning was Andrew's very first dental appointment.

Like all three year-olds, Andrew doesn't like anybody's hands in his mouth. He's borderline freaky about it. If you even SAY "Andrew, I'd like to place my index finger on your tongue," he will cover his mouth and run from the room.

Long story short, he did okay. One nurse had to hold him in her lap while the other brushed his teeth and checked for cavities. Nobody's digits were chewed off and very little blood was shed.

(Andrew did try the always efficient "Drop to the knees like a dead flounder" move in order to get out of having his teeth cleaned and scraped his knee on the industrial-like carpet. This action did require a Shrek band-aid.)

So after the dentist appointment, I decide to go by the club and get these two humongous speakers that we've removed from the dance floor.

Y'see, my boss resigned on Wednesday and called to tell me Wednesday morning. When I asked him what I should do with these two humongous speakers he said "Dude, they're yours. I don't care."

Plus, there's two OTHER speakers there that had all the insides gutted out and they were basically speaker boxes that a guy has wanted to buy for several days now.

Following me?

I'm getting two speakers for myself and selling two other speakers that aren't really speakers, just the giant sturdy speakers without anything inside them.

So I get over to the club and put the two humongous speakers in the van and ask around for the guy who wants to buy the boxes.

He's going to be back at 12.

It's now 10:30.

So I have 90 minutes to kill since I don't want to drive the 20 miles back home.

I hadn't talked to my old buddy Will in about a month or so and I was in the neighborhood so I go to talk to him.

I pull up to his house and he has a "For Rent" sign in his front yard.

I knock on the door and all his stuff's packed up in boxes.

Will informs me that he was offered a job in San Diego last week and that he jumped at the opportunity to go.

He was finishing up the last couple of boxes to pack and as soon as they were done, he was outta there and on the road for a four day road trip to San Diego.

I was kinda shocked but I got over it quickly. Had I been "really shocked", it may have taken longer to get over. "Kinda shocked" is usually no problem and I can shake it off like a lethargic mosquito.

Before I go, Will gives me $200 cash to give to Edweird for some graphic design work that Edweird did for him a few weeks ago.

This was good because he wasn't returning Edweird's calls lately for some unknown reason and now I was going to be the man because I could call Edweird and say "Edweird, I got that money Will owed you" and Edweird would go "Dude! You are SO da man!" and I could go "Yes, yes ... I know" and maybe Edweird would be so excited that he'd blow me or something of equal value. Like buy me lunch.

So I call Edweird and get his voice mail and left him a message to call me.

I go to this pizza place for lunch and before I leave the van, I take the two $100 bills and shove them in my pocket.

Not really paying attention which pocket I shoved them in.

Don't get ahead of me here.

I go in, eat and Edweird calls me while I'm eating.

My cell phone is in my front left pocket with a bunch of other things.

I stand up and fish through my front left pocket to retrieve the cell phone.

I tell Edweird I got his money and he's overjoyed.

No mention of a blow job though. I can't say I'm disappointed because Edweird's pretty straight and something tells me he's a lousy cocksucker.

Plus I'm straight and it'd just be kinda weird to look down and see a buddy of ten years staring me in the eye while snuffing my weiner.

So I get up after I'm finished, get in the van and drive back to the club because it's now noon and I can meet the guy who's going to buy the messed-up speakers.

I get to the club, get out of the car and decide "Hey! Here's an idea! Why don't I take Edweird's $200 and put it in my wallet to protect it?"

Sounds like a logical thing to do, right?

Reach into my right front pocket.

Hmmm. It's not therrre.

Reach into my left front pocket.

Hmmm. Not there either.

Reach into my shirt pocket.

Hmmmm. This is weird. It's not there either.

Well, I must have put it in my wallet, right? That's it. I put it in my wallet and forgot I did it because I'm getting old and I smoked way more pot than any human should ever smoke in a 20 year-long haze and my memory's about as reliable as a commitment of marriage from Jennifer Lopez.

Nope.

Not.

In.

My.

Wallet.

At this point, let's be honest, I felt like vomiting buckets.

I had no idea where that cash went.

Now then ... how do I explain to an old buddy that yes ... I got your money that was owed to you ... but I lost it ten minutes after I talked to you?

I've got to say, if the shoe was on the other foot, I'd think he was lying and would most likely procede straight to the "Beating The Shit Out Of The Guy" level of our friendship in order to get the money out of him.

So I'm sweating bullet and am sick to my stomach as I make yet another call to Edweird.

Voice mail again.

I tell him to call me and hang up.

The guy who wants the speakerless speakers is there.

We go to look at the speakers and he's confused because he thought he was buying the nice speakers that I already nabbed for myself.

I explain to him that those speakers weren't gutted.

And after we checked, the speakers I thought he wanted weren't gutted either. So technically, he got two very good speakers for $100.

He was a little disappointed but said he'd buy and take these other speakers home and gut them himself.

But first, he had to go get the cash.

Well just fucking great.

That was going to be another half hour that I had to wait for him to get the cash.

I told him how sick I was that I had just lost $200 and he said "While I go to the bank, why don't you go back to the pizza place to try and find the money."

Not a bad idea.

I hopped in the car and dialed the number of the pizza place since I had it in my cell phone phone book. The thing holds like 500 numbers so I'm constantly adding every business in town's phone number into it.

Don't look at me as if I'm pathetic because I have pizza places on speed dial.

Fucker.

So I call the place up and talk to the waitress that had waited on me.

I explained my situation and that I had lost some money while I had ate lunch there.

She said she'd go to my table and check around it to see if she could find it.

She gets back on the phone a minute later and asks how much money I lost.

This was a good sign! All she needed to hear me say was "Two one hundred dollar bills" and she'd say "I've got them right here, come get 'em!" and I could go give her a blow job or something of equal value like a subscription to Family Circle.

"It was $200," I said all excited.

"Wow," she said. "Wow. Nope. I don't see any money. Sorry."

Now then.

When you're talking about a teenage waitress in a pizza place who might make $20 tips on a Thursday, $200 is a shitload of money.

And if it comes in the form of cash found under a table and all she has to do is keep a straight face until her shift ends and she's got more money than she'd make in two weeks, a waitress will do ANYTHING for $200.

Probably even blow you.

I don't know this for a fact. Some women out there have hangups about blowing strangers for money. Don't ask me why. It's just a penis in your mouth for a few minutes for chrissakes. No big whoop, whore.

Automatically, as I weave in and out of traffic, I think "That little bitch found it and she's lying to me."

I don't know why I'm driving so fast across town to retrieve something that's not there. Maybe she'll agree to let me frisk her in order to satisfy my need for resolution in this matter.

I pull up to the pizza place and I'm waiting to cross over traffic to enter its parking lot.

I glance over to the parking space I had occupied 45 minutes earlier.

From a distance, I could see something in the parking space that looked like paper.

A work truck was parked in the space now and this paper was right by the driver side door.

Traffic was at a standstill as I kept my eye on that paper, totally freak-fucking out because if it WAS the $200 and the guy came out of the pizza place and looked down and saw $200 and picked it up, was he REALLY going to believe some maniac screeching into the parking lot screaming "THAT'S MY MONEY! THAT'S MY MONEY! WELL ... IT'S NOT REALLY MINE, IT'S MY FRIEND'S MONEY! BUT I WANT IT BACK!"

The answer, pinhead, is "No".

So my courage got the better of me and I decided my life was worth the chance at possibly getting Edweird's $200 back and I swung into oncoming traffic to cross into the parking lot.

Horns honked.

People screamed.

I almost shit my pants as an 18 wheeler almost slammed into me.

I sped into the parking lot and got out of the van.

I jogged to the parking space.

Muuuuutherrrrrfuuuuuuck.

I swear to you, there were the two $100 bills folded up on the ground just waiting for me.

Had there been the slightest breeze, the story would have been different.

Had the guy who took my space bothered to look down to make sure he wasn't stepping in a puddle or oil spill, the story would have been different.

Had the countless people that walked in there bothered to look down to shield their eyes from the bright sun and saw it , the story would have been different.

Thank God the story had a happy ending.

I was so ecstatic and delerious that I ran inside the pizza place which was crowded with lunch customers.

The teenage waitress saw me and looked at me.

"I found it!" I yelled over the din of the people eating. "It was right in the parking lot!"

I was waving the money around like an idiot while people stared at me.

The work truck that had parked in my space and totally missed the money ... the two workers from that truck were sitting at a table in the middle of the restaurant.

"Thank you!" I said to them for no reason in particular.

They obviously thought I was an escaped mental patient. With my freshly shorn misshapen head and my poor sense of style, they must have thought Sparky the Human Lobotomy had just robbed an ice cream truck and ran into the pizza place to celebrate.

As I was leaving, Edweird finally returned my call.

I was all giggly like a school girl giving her first blowjob as I told him the story. He's just glad I'm not a total fucktard and he still has his money.

I go back to the club, I get the money from the guy buying these good speakers, I take my BETTER speakers home with me and unload them into the garage.

I look closely at these speakers that are going to kick some ass at my next DJ gig.

...They've been gutted.

Somewhere, this guy is loving the bargain he just got.

Two kick ass speakers for $100.

Basically, because I know this is getting confusing, I sold two speakers that the club uses on occasion for big parties that are held outside.

Oops.

I guess, in a nutshell, that I AM a total fucktard.