Wonderful Weapons

When my brother was younger he liked to buy or make old fashioned fighting weapons. His fancy for fantasy and his brief venture into Dungeons and Dragons saw all kinds of things born into our otherwise *cough* normal household.

This being the case, it was not uncommon to see him and a bunch of his friends wandering around the great outdoors (also known as our backyard) carrying swords, knifes, hatchets, machetes, numchucks, and those big round spike ridden things on the end of chains.

One Autumn night a rather hideous wailing woke my brother and three of his cronies. Since it was close to three a.m. they donned their bought/homemade weapons and made their way outside to investigate. The keening screeching blend drew them to bridge at the bottom of our driveway, and to the drunk man crying atop it.

My brother recognized the fellow, and with a bit of kind verbal prodding, was made to understand that he was bemoaning the loss of his girlfriend, as well as the loss of his own life, which he was getting ready to end.

Now, the best the man could hope for, by jumping off the bridge in question, was to maybe hit his head and knock himself out, thereby drowning in the foot of water the river offered. I mean, the six foot drop may get in a few good bruises and perhaps a broken bone, if his relaxed inebriated body didn't curtail even that, but not much more.

As it was, my brother felt it would be best not to let him take the chance and eventually talked him down. Since buddy was a talker he was ecstatic that he now had people to listen to him so he began a distorted monologue of other possible ways he could end his currently horrible life. While he rambled, one of the other boys came to the house to get our car so they could give the guy a lift home.

It seemed safest to put him in the middle of the back seat, so he didn't on purpose, or more likely accidentally, open a back door and go rolling out, so there he was put. Our car was small and all four of those helping were big, so it was a rather squished affair. The only way to fit in fact was to put all weapons of choice on their knees.

By the time they were all settled and driving the rambling had fallen to frequent spurts and it was about five minutes in that they cut off mid-sentence. My brother assumed buddy had passed out till he glanced in the rear-view mirror.

There sat a man- wide-eyed, with a mouth just as large. The eyes moved to the right, then to the left, without the head moving at all. Shock made its way to fear. Then, very clearly, with no rambling in sight, a rather sober voice asked.

"Sooo, guys. You know all that stuff I was saying, about wanting to die... You know I was just kidding right?"This was followed by a short bout of hysterical laughter and then, "Uh, what's with the arsenal? Did I happen to interrupt something? I mean, it's fine, whatever you were doing. And I don't really need to know, in fact, it's none of my business at all. Yes, you can probably let me out here so you can get back to it you know. Whatever it is. Not that I need to know. I'm fine now. Perfectly fine. Really. I'm sorry I took up your time."

It took a moment for the four boys to figure out what buddy was talking about, but I am sure their own hysterical whoops of laughter didn't make him feel any better.

A'course he got back at them when he wet himself.

But, on the bright side, he realized just how much he liked living after all.

This story reminds me of another fellow at home who tried to kill himself by laying on the train tracks. This brilliant plan resulted in him spending the rest of his long life without legs. Probably the best example of irony I have ever come across.

Where this post came from I do not know. But that is the beauty of blogging.