Do You Ever

drink half a bottle of wine by yourself on a weeknight and just simmer in your own tingly feelings of pleasure as you watch cheesy VH1 reality shows? An empty bottle of Shiraz is currently keeping me company and the long stemmed Merlot colored orb on my right is full of the source of my current liquid of choice.

Flipped a few channels up and now I'm watching The Hills. Every time I turn on this show I feel like it's exactly where it left off the last time I saw it, even though the viewing is often times spaced out by weeks at a time. The premise of the show is so stupid as most MTV reality shows are, but I still sit here night after night wide eyed and numb due to the idiocy of the characters and show itself, opting to waste the precious few hours of free time in my day rotting my mind with images of Heidi, LC, Brody, Whitney, Audrina and Spencer as they pontificate on their mature grown-up lives and the perils and hardships of being 21. Oh please, you're all pathetic, but still I can't seem to look away and I kind of hate them for it.

Ahhh, two more quick but rather large gulps of Shiraz to steady my nerves.

My stupid gas tank is currently three ticks above "E". Is that enough for me to drive 30 or so miles from Chicago to work tomorrow morning? I literally have no idea but I'm imagining I'll make it. Wait, of course I will. Since I'm so neurotic about things I never let my car get a few lines below the halfway mark. I get too nervous. Yeah, I know live a little, right? Be a rebel and see what happens, right? Well fine you all got your way tonight because of my cell phone. I called Kat the minute I exited my place of employment tonight and talked to her until I was almost on Lake Shore Drive. Upon hanging up I casually glanced down at my instrument lights and suddenly remembered what I was supposed to do after work. Crap. So Honda Civic, please don't fail me tomorrow. If I don't show up to work you can assume the worst. Just hope that I don't break down in a sketchy part of town, or that I don't have to exit off the highway in a place that can be shady and unsafe.

That happened to me in the summer of 2004, in August to be exact. I was picking up my cousin from Midway Airport with my brother manning the wheel and me riding shotgun in the aforementioned Civic. Pickup was uneventful, and we were in the left turn lane on Central underneath the snaking viaducts, waiting to rejoin the masses on I-55. A woman then comes shuffling up to the driver's window and motioned for Steve to roll it down. "Steve, no, don't do it" I hissed. As I desperately whisper this comment my brother proceeded to roll down the damn window. I sat up a bit straighter in my seat as I now focused on the shuffling characters on the nearby corner, skulking among bits of trash, eyes trained on us and the mystery woman who now had full access to my brother's throat and whatever else she could get her mangy paws on.

"Can you spare $5, sir? I have three kids with me and we need to catch the bus home." I craned my neck but as hard as I tried I saw zero kids huddling outside. Unless they were waiting in some den somewhere, or if "kids" referred to the group of guys drinking out of a flask on the side of the road, these referenced individuals were no where to be seen.

My brother being the kind hearted soul that he is pulls out his wallet in prime snatching location and pulls out a few bucks. I'm now within 10 seconds of sweating and losing it and screaming at Steve to book it. Something didn't feel right. Maybe it was the holes in this looney's story, that conniving look that her eye, or seeing my Utah-dwelling sheltered cousin's silent but freaked out face in the rear view mirror but I had a bad feeling that we had a little surprise in store for us.

Suspicious woman leaned over on the open window frame and accepted my brother's money, hanging on for a few seconds too long, with the other hand out of sight.

Steve quickly rolled up the window and the light turned green. We entered the highway and all was well. Well, not really.

One mile from home my brother quizzically asked "Does it seem like we have a flat tire?" to which my idiot self replied "No, we'd totally know if we did. We're almost home we'll check it at the gas station after we ex..."

There was no time for me to finish my sentence when the front driver's side tire literally blew off of our car, and as my head snapped towards my brother, I was just in time to see our tire rolling away from us across the remaining lane of traffic. Suddenly the middle lane of I-55 was full of red orange sparks, and my brother clenched the wheel and yelled a string of unmentionables as he hung on for dear life at 10 and 2 and the car decelerated from a speedy 75 to 40 in a span of mere seconds.

Couple this with the sudden appearance of two semis on either side of our car. Luckily we slowed down so quickly that by the time Steve wrenched the steering wheel to the right, we barely missed clipping the side of one of the semis. Our car came to rest just past the overpass of County Line Road, and the round shred of tire rolled up under said overpass and spun around in a maddening circle until it collapsed in its final resting place, a smoldering shell of burning rubber.

I know that woman slashed our tire, or messed with it. It's too much of a coincidence. All I want to know is why, why did she do it?

Ok it's not worth contemplating the "why this why that" right now. The point is it happened, and I'd rather enjoy my gluttonous glass of wine then ponder some of the stranger mysteries of the universe. But the story is indeed true. If there's a moral to this tale I'm not really sure, because it's good to help people but I guess sometimes the people you help out really don't give two you-know-whats and try to stab you (literally?) in the front anyway.

I'm currently getting a slight wine headache and I'm not sure if it's from the amount of alcohol I've consumed as opposed to the need to consume more. I think I'm on the cusp of that really uncomfortable spot where you either need to drink more or cool it. However cooling it always leads to really crappy feelings, like you are unsatisfied and guilty for some reason.

Looks like it's time to look for more wine.