law

When I read about the recent Supreme Court decision in Morse v. Frederick, it made think back to something kind of unrelated…

A few weeks ago Handsome Mike and I made a trip to Florida to visit Hansen and Dirk.

For those of you who don’t know these guys, Handsome Mike is a lot like me, Hansen is too (except that he is a few years older, and looks even older than he is), and Dirk, well, you know how scientists believe that man evolved from monkeys? If they met Dirk, they’d explore the possibility that some men may have evolved from Grizzly Bears. (I mean that in a good way)

On our last night in Miami, Dirk took us to arguably the dirtiest bar in the city, and immediately left to hang out with his parents. We weren’t upset that he left us. His parents were in town for the night, so naturally he should have spent some time with them. (Although he did say he’d be right back, and then proceeded to turn off his cell phone and not come back. But that’s beside the point.) Instead of staying inside that nauseating bar, we hung outside and did some people watching, which in Miami was particularly entertaining because we got to see some walks of life that guys like us rarely get to see.

3:30 am rolled around, the crowd began to thin, rain began to fall, but still no word from Dirk, so we decided to take a cab back to Dirk’s apartment.

Sitting in Dirk’s lobby was also quite entertaining. Looking at all of the pastel colors and tropical themed art -- it’s funny to think that of all of the buildings in all of the cities in America, Dirk chose to live in this one. (this is a 300-pound, gun owning, cut-off t-shirt to the bar wearing, two pounds of steak eating and still hungry type of mother fucker)

It wasn’t long before we noticed a couple getting out of a cab and entering the building through the back door. And it didn’t take long for the man to become the star of the show.

He could barely stand up -- let alone walk -- and his girlfriend was trying desperately to get him inside. She opened the back door and tried to walk him in, but he abruptly turned around and threw up in the bushes. She waited outside with him for a minute or two before once again trying to make the 50 foot trek to the elevator.

Once he appeared to be as ready as he was going to be, she put his arm over her shoulder and resumed their ill fated walk. They couldn’t have been more than five steps into the building before he began falling forward. She tried as hard as she could to keep him up, but he was just too heavy for her to control. She lost her grip.

He took a couple of steps forward, and then his feet stopped. The problem was that his upper body was still moving forward. Just when it seemed that a collapse was imminent, he made a last ditch effort to keep it together.

He was leaning dangerously far forward, about to fall over, and then as if summoned by an unknown force, his legs started moving and he began to step forward. He was trying to get his legs back under his body to regain his balance. However, the problem with this method was that his upper body didn’t stop falling forward. So essentially he was running into the building, with his legs churning full speed chasing his upper body to prevent the fall. But to those of us watching, the fall was inevitable. Fortunately for him, he slammed into the garbage, draped his arms around the can, fell to his knees, and resumed his vomiting.

His girlfriend, obviously, was not happy. Not only was the task of getting him up to his apartment still looming, but she probably also had to get him cleaned up and into a bed. For all we knew, they could be on their way back to her place (or their place.) And lest we forget that she was probably going to have deal with what was likely to be an epic hangover for him the next day.

Hansen and I tried not to laugh out loud, but it wasn’t easy. We had to laugh. We weren’t laughing because this guy was drunk and completely helpless, or that his unfortunate and relatively sober girlfriend was going to have to take care of him. I’ve been there before, I’m sure a lot of us have. That is no laughing matter.

And it certainly wasn't funny to imagine if he didn’t have a girlfriend and didn’t live in a city so rife with taxi cabs. In a sparsely populated town, a guy like that might have gotten himself behind the wheel of a car! That’s downright scary. We were definitely not laughing at that.

But we were laughing.

We were laughing because there were three men in the lobby. And we were laughing because the man who couldn’t stand up on his own two feet, who couldn’t control his vomiting, and who was likely going to have an considerable headache and feel sick to his stomach for the next day or two, was also the only one who had been taking legal drugs.