scrytch: how my parents met

by Darren Bauler

Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 00:40:18 -0600 (CST)

so anyway right after my dad got out of the navy and right before he totalled his convertable (long story, another time) he was hanging out in Jim's, local waterloo down-by-the-Cedar bar some saturday night playing a drunken game of what probably started out as darts but by this time had become Stick Larry In The Ass, a local Jim's tradition ever since Larry Heinus made it "his place". So in walks this guy who has that used to be a biker but sobered up and now is doing AA and making god's eyes and bad hippie art but tonight he's gonna drink every last motherfucker in the place beneath the floorboards look to him, and so no big deal 'cept there's a flock of waitresses from over at the local Bishops giggling and passing around some piece of paper, and Big Biker Motherfucker goes over and looks at the paper and starts laughing like there's nothing funny at all and so my dad (who's nothing if not a gentleman, see) who's been drinking like everclear/cuervo/jaegermeister/purple kool-aid mixers since about eleven that morning staggers up and tells BBMF to go peddle his apples on some other street and BBMF looks him dead in the eye (that's the exact phrase my dad uses when he tells this story, "dead in the eye") and says, no, belches "man, don't you know who i am, sailor-boy?" -- see, pops still had his crew cut and his big ol' heavy shoremans jacket which he gave to my couin brian who promptly lost it ensuring it would never reach my father's progeny and first-born heir, me, but so anyway my uncle kenny comes up behind him and spits out "'makes you think we give two red shits who the fuck you are?" and BBMF bellows out "man, I'm Satan, you fucks! the king of all evil hisself!" and there isn't a person in Jim's who thinks this guy is kidding, i mean everyone there knows that this is Satan who had nothing better to do on a slow night than pick up waitresses in some midwest straight-from-boilermakers "you want an umbrella in your drink? man, you keep that shit up and you're gonna have your balls floating in that fucking drink" hayseed bar, maybe he's a local, who even knows. So my dad, right, he looks the prince of darkness right in the eye and says "Listen, Satan, how about you and me step outside." Now my dad isn't always the prightest guy but common logic would pretty much hold that you gotta be dumber than me to go fight satan, i mean he's got unholy powers and he's got legions of demons and arch-demons and all kindsa ghastly dante' shit to back him up and plus he cheats. but when it comes down to a mono e mono bare-knuckle streetfight, satan ain't really no jackie chan; hell, he ain't even no chow yun fat. Satan hasn't had to kick any serious ass in a while and is really out of practice, and he'd had a few shots before hassling the waitresses, and unlike my dad, whose reflexes and raw tooth-and-claw fighting skills only improved w/alcohol, satan got kinda sloppy and left himself open for a few really wicked kidney punches. so they're out there in the back parking lot mixing it up and the cops show up w/a priest in tow because apparently satan has been pulling this bit quite a bit lately and so father martin hops out of the car and goes into his bad exorcist spiel and satan does the full b-movie jack chick bit and points at my dad, saying "i'llget you, man, i'll get you but bad, mister sailor hot-rod boy!" and disappears in a cloud of sulfur and toads. So one of the waitresses comes out and starts talking to my dad, and they hit it off, and they got hitched, and you don't need to be paul harvey to know the rest of the story.

the point here is that this saturday, when i took a header down a flight of stairs and fucked up my knee, i swear i could hear satan laughing. now you may think i'm paranoid, and you'd be right; i am. but you'd be paranoid too if your dad was on Lucifer's bad side.