A Tale of Two Donnies

My brother had two friends named Chris: good Chris and bad Chris.  Good Chris was a regular kid, played sports, spoke normally, ate large amounts of pizza and played video games with my brother.  Bad Chris wore lederhosen.  You read that right, he was a thirteen year old kid, living in Queens in the twentieth century, and he wore lederhosen.  Frequently.  He also mumbled a lot, looked moist, had a vacant stare, and seemed to stumble around the streets while playing roller hockey with the other kids.  He was a nice enough kid, if you could get him to speak coherently, but he was a grade A goof, ergo Bad Chris.  Fortunately, for me, my brother spent a lot more time with Good Chris as he got older because he was allowed out after dark and didn't bring headgear to sleepovers.

Since my experience with bad Chris, it seems that I have a preternatural sense for goofballs and losers; people I refer to as strays.  I lose patience easily with these societal castoffs and tend to steer clear.  This is not true of the rest of my family who is decidedly nicer and more patient than I.  Members of my family have been known to drag around with whomever they find out in the streets, inviting them to dinner, holiday celebrations and to live in the basement in some cases.  I remember visiting my parents for the first time after their move to Colorado, when a guy I'd never seen before ambled down the stairs (from the bedrooms above) to fix himself a garden burger.  No one seemed to notice this guy but myself and I watched incredulously as he sat down at the dining room table to eat his meal.  I had to finally ask who the hell he was.  While my immediate family is ridiculous in their stray pickup, no one can beat my husband for his uncanny ability to attract and become entangled with the sorriest of human creatures. 

Years ago my husband worked for UPS in the middle of the night.  He drove every night to and fro by himself and put up a notice on the work bulletin board to see if there was anyone interested in carpooling.  This innocuous notice brought a couple into our lives who I came to refer to as the Chubbs.  I don't know what their actual names were, but they were a young couple who approached my husband about the carpool.  They asked if he would mind driving every other week, with him beginning the rotation.  The first week of his driving went without a hitch, they lived close by and he didn't mind the company.  When their turn came around, it was revealed that they didn't have a car.  THEY DIDN'T HAVE A CAR.  What they really wanted was someone to drive them to work and later someone to drive them to work after waking them up by flashing his headlights at their window.  Sometimes he had to bang on the window because they were in too much of a stupor after partying all day long to get up with just a flash and a horn toot.  Most people, and by most people I mean me, would've washed their hands of these meth addicted messes as soon as their end of driving fell through.  Not only did he continue to drive them, but he had them to our house for Christmas Eve one time.  They brought us a really nice bottle of scotch as a gift, which the male Chubb proceeded to drink until it was empty.  The female Chubb also got extremely intoxicated and they had some sort of disagreement during which the female fled and the male had to  be carried home.  My husband stuck by them until he no longer worked for UPS and checked in on them every once in a while afterwards.  We haven't seen them in years, but if you ask my husband, he will refer to them as his friends.

While the Chubbs are part of our history, my husband has more recently acquired a man we call Ron-Don.  On either side of our house, their are men named Donnie.  There is a good Donnie who lives with his girlfriend, tells funny stories and is nice to my kids when they're out playing in the yard.  Bad Donnie reminds my husband of Sally Struthers, if Sally Struthers were strung out on heroin and aimlessly roamed the streets talking to herself.  I think he looks more like an old, white version of the disadvantaged children Ms. Struthers works to raise money for.  My husband mistakenly called this Donnie Ron once, a mistake for which he has been verbally abused going on three years now.  Ron-Don is a drunken, mumbly mess who likes to stop by, holler at my husband and borrow money.  My husband has driven this man to the store, to see his father in the hospital, loaned him money and invited him in for vodka and Pepsi cocktails (this combination alone offends me on many levels).  On one such visit, Ron-Don insulted our paint choices and commented that our fishbowl was dirty.  This from a man who wears his hair in bobby pins.  Ron-Don had moved away for a about a year, but has recently returned to his family home (he is in his fifties).  I think I saw him and my husband out for a joy ride last night.

This weeks tip: Changing your phone number is free if you tell the phone company that you are receiving a lot of solicitor calls or calls from creditors that are not yours.