Post 2: Story Time

Now for our second post of the day. If you missed it, don't forget to check out the first post of the day (posted around 5:00).

It’s story time, boys and girls. I have been asked over and over again to tell a few different stories on here. I thought about breaking them up into multiple posts, but decided to just put them all in one post. The reason I decided to do just one post is that I’m not sure I’ll be around after Saturday. You see, Saturday morning/afternoon I’ll be floating down the Edisto River (which, as you know, is the subject of many great songs like Old Man River, Proud Mary, and Moon River) with a group of friends. As you know, the Edisto River (which inspired the name of the group Little River, best known for their hit song Lonesome Loser) has 4 things I’m not a big fan of (alligators, snakes, water and rednecks… Haha, just kidding… I love rednecks). My only hope is that urine will keep snakes and alligators away because if I see one I know I’m going to wet myself. Anyway, by the time you wake up late Saturday morning I’ll be floating down the mighty Edisto River sipping on a PBR (in honor of my Aunt Yvonne, who asked that I not post her name on here). Anyway, I have a float and I was thinking it would be a great “bonding moment” for me and Donkey if he came with me but The Wife said no. The Wife, by the way, is seriously thinking about going too. It seems her fear of the Edisto might be less than her fear of me having fun without her there to roll her eyes and assure everyone she does not condone my behavior.

Anyway, here are the stories you have been asking for.

1. The Sonny and Greg Almost Died in Atlanta Story: The date was Thursday, July 6, 1995. Sonny was living in Peach Tree City with my sister-in-law (who, coincidently, happened to be his wife) and I went to spend a couple of weeks with them. For most of the time there, we went to Braves games. On the night in question, we went to good ol’ Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to watch the Braves play the Dodgers (Greg Maddux was on the mound for the Braves). It was a great game and Maddux was outstanding. Traffic after the game was backed up for miles and miles and miles and it looked like we would be waiting for hours and hours. Of course, we were parked in a bad part of Atlanta (because that’s where the stadium was located). Anyway, it was dark and there were a lot of big bad looking guys standing around where we were (I know they say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover… but those people also tell you it’s important to make a good first impression). Now, I don’t know how many of them it would have taken to steal our money and beat us up… but I know how many were there. Sonny motioned for a guy to come over and said “Hey, excuse me holmes. Haha uh huh, what it is bro. We’re from out of town” (ok, he didn’t say that). What really happened was from out of nowhere a man came up to my window, which was down, and said that for a dollar he would show us a short cut. Sonny gave the man two dollars (as you can tell, Sonny isn’t a professional negotiator) and, just as he had promised, the man showed us a short cut. The looks on the faces of the men standing on the side of the streets we went down did nothing but convince us we were about to get ambushed. We did, of course, make it out of the area alive and as we got on a familiar road I turned up the radio. Pearl Jam’s “Alive” was playing and it could not have been more appropriate (looking back, thank God we didn’t hear AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” when we first started leaving… maybe I should add that to an otherwise surprisingly truthful story).

2. The Pastor in the Japanese Steakhouse Story: The date was Monday, January 21, 2008 (my 29th birthday). I decided to invite some friends out to dinner at the YOKOSO Japanese Steak & Seafood House in North Charleston. So we’re sitting there and the cook (let’s call him Cookie, because I don’t want to keep calling him the cook or chef or whatever he is) is doing his thing. He’s cooking and telling jokes and everyone is having a great time. The people there with me were The Wife, Jeremy, Rebecca, Danny & Jen, and a female preacher whose name I promised not to post on here (let’s call her She-Who-Must-N0t-Be-Named). So Cookie seems to be having as much fun as us and he’s flirting like crazy with She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named since she was the only “single” person there (her husband was at play practice, I think). She, of course, isn’t flirting back... but she is playing along. I can’t overstate how much fun we were having. It was GREAT. At one point, Cookie hands me the spatula (or the spatula-like utensil that they use, I’m not 100% sure what it’s called) and tells me to spank the rice and yell “Who’s your Daddy?!” I wanted to, but I couldn’t because I was laughing so hard. Everyone was laughing. Again, it was a GREAT time. Cookie then asked his new “girlfriend” (She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named) if she wanted to do it. Well she was (very) eager to give it a shot. So there she is spanking the rice (a little too eagerly, if you ask me... but I’m not judging) and yelling “Who’s your Momma!?” By now we were all ROLLING on the floor laughing with tears running down our faces. Have I told you yet how GREAT of a time we were having? This could have been the BEST birthday party EVER... we were at least having enough fun to put this party around the top of the list. Cookie was still doing his thing and he’s having a great time helping us have a great time and he starts to ask us questions. “So, what do you guys do? Where do you work?” Nobody really says anything because we’re all having a GREAT time. So he said, “Let’s start with my girlfriend... where do you work?” Now we had another big laugh building up because we all knew the answer to this question. She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named caught her breath and said, “I work at a church” hoping that that answer would be enough to make him move on. So Cookie said, “Really? What do you do there?” She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named replied, “I’m a pastor”. And BOOM went the dynamite... THAT, friends, is what people call a “Game Changing” answer. Cookie lost all color in his face. He looked like he was either going to cry or be very sick (or both). I think he choked out an “I’m so sorry” before he quickly finished cooking our food. Needless to say, the mood of the party took a nose dive from the GREAT time we had been having. I think we spent the rest of the party giving She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named a hard time for killing the mood (which, to be honest, was pretty fun in itself).

3. The PET/Pay-It story: I don’t remember at all what the date was for this one. I remember Sonny was in college at the time (Clemson... he couldn’t get in to Winthrop) so it had to have been before May of 1992. I was in middle school (6th or 7th grade) at the time. Sonny brought his girlfriend home with him for the family to meet her for the first time. She was from Spartanburg and had a lovely country accent. At the time, I was not as fluent in country as I am now. Also, at that time in my life I was known to make fun of people (something I don’t really do these days... Haha). So there we were sitting in the dining room (a room that no longer exists) at my parents James Island estate. Everyone is kind of “meeting someone for the first time” nervous. We’re all sitting there making small talk and, honestly, I’m not really listening all that much. Sonny’s girlfriend is talking to my Mom about teaching type stuff because my Mom was a teacher and her Mom was a teacher. So Sonny’s girlfriend is talking and she says something about her Mom doing PET (some teacher thing that I don’t know anything about). Here’s the thing, she SAID “pet” but I HEARD “pay-it”. So I did what anyone in my position would have done and interrupted the conversation and said, “What?! What’s pay-it?” as I started laughing because really her Mom being in pay-it made absolutely no sense to me. Everyone then got a good laugh at how Sonny’s girlfriend sounded (or maybe they were laughing at me... I don’t know... but I was laughing at her). Sonny ended up marrying her (because when you find someone that you and your brother can make fun of, you don’t let them get away... that’s why I’m with The Wife... Haha just kidding about all of that). But really, it seemed at the time that I was being mean to her but in all honesty I really thought she said pay-it and not pet.

So there you have it, the top 3 most requested stories. If all goes well tomorrow, maybe I’ll have another story to tell. If not... well... I'm just sayin...