1pm Saturday afternoon I receive a call from a friend of mine who was considering going to Alabama later that afternoon to visit a friend of his (a female). He didn’t want to make the drive alone and invited me to tag along with him; promising me that I WOULD NOT be the fifth wheel, just tagging along with him and his newfound female friend. He assured me that her friends would also be hanging out with us and that we would have a few drinks and then go out later that evening. Now, mind you this, this associate of mine is notorious for lying, telling half-truths, and generally not knowing flipping one percent of anything he is talking about. So, for that reason alone, I share the blame for the events that would occur later in the evening, because I agreed to his terms and signed away my evening with full knowledge of how unreliable my friend was. So, first things first, two and half hours into a three and half hour drive, we get a flat tire. Never a good start to a trip. It takes us about an hour total to fix it and get it to the gas station where we realize it is punctured. So we fix it and head on over the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. We arrive there in about another hour, hour and half and my friend calls his friend and she tells him that she actually attends the University of Alabama-Birmingham, or UAB.

So, we drove an hour in the wrong direction, and to make matters worse, the exact area where we got our flat tire, was where we should have stopped. What a cruel friggin’ coincidence! So, my moronic friend didn’t even know the right campus to go to, but I shrugged it off and turned the car around towards Birmingham.

As if this story wasn’t bootleg and odd enough, I find out that that my friend’s plan was to stay at his friend’s house, who lived with her PARENTS. He said that they work at night and would be back in the morning. What kind of plan is that??? Are you kidding me?? After discussing this matter further with my friend, we decided that if push comes to shove, we would get a hotel (definitely not in the original plan – I was duped, I was bamboozled I tell you!!!). But I figured that the saving grace of the evening would be the fact that my friend’s female acquaintance had a sister, who I was told by my friend, was at least 18 or 19 years of age, sounded cute over the phone, and was relatively cool.

When I arrive at the house, I find out her sister is 16!! Man, absolutely nothing that my friend told me was true. Like I had feared prior to departing the A, it was only the 3 of us. So I sat there, had a few drinks, and chatted up the now infamous acquaintance of his (I have to give it to him though, she was cute). We then went to some banging club/bar downtown (apparently, they stay open past 4am there) and we had a good time. I babysat both of them a little, even witnessing some early morning comedy along the way. I offered to give the girl a piggyback ride seeing that she had her shoes off and was walking on the street, and my friend insisted on being the one giving her a lift, so I let him. Now, my friend was already wobbling, and the girl was slizzed outside of her mind, so I knew that I would soon be amused. He attempted to lift her up, I turned my head and walked towards the car, and then all I heard was a thump on the concrete. I turned around and saw them both on the gravel, my friend groaning about his elbow and ankle while the girl was slowly realizing that her ass just got dropped on the pavement. Now that’s comedy!!! So, the night basically involved me babysitting two inebriated brown folks. I dropped the girl home and then me and my friend (who on that evening was the ultimate hybrid of Armando Benitez/Dirk Nowitzki/Bill Buckner because his attempts to seal the deal were rendered futile, ineffective, and pointless) stayed at a relatively quaint La Quinta Inn. The next day we spent 3 hours getting new tires and headed back to the A. I can’t say that I regretted my trip, I didn’t have shit to do, went to Alabama (where I had never previously been), and got back in one piece. But man, what a 24 hours!!! The lesson from all this that can be learned for myself is to, as Smokey says in Friday, “never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever” trust my friend again. What a wacky weekend it was….