So about a year ago Brian gets engaged.

To a woman.

An ACTUAL woman.

We checked.

I mean, we met her. We didn't give her a physical or anything.

But like I was saying, it wasn't too long after we met Andrea that they got engaged and shortly after that I was asked to be the best man.

I didn't think about it too much till about a month before.

Then I realized that I would have to give a toast.

I'd been a best man three times before, but I'd never given a toast. I'd intended to, but at the first two weddings I never had everyone in the reception room at the same time and the third wedding was very informal and it just would have seemed out of place.

Besides, that third wedding was my brother's wedding and I didn't want to fuck things up because in some cultures the best man (or failing that the next male sibling, which was also me) would then have to marry (or be responsible for) the bride.

You're familiar with her. She's the one I call 'Der Fuhrer'.

Yeah, fuck a whole bunch of that.

I mean, I don't know a lot about her wierd-ass foriegner culture, but I know my kinda luck...

So I'd been mulling over what I was going to say in the toast the whole week before the wedding. Problem is, I was driving out to my Mom's every day to help out my Grandma. Grandma actually doesn't need much help, she just likes to have someone in the house ever since she fell three months ago and dislocated her shoulder.

You heard me. Dislocated her shoulder. She actually popped it out the front, which the doctors said was unusual and very painful though Grandma acted like it didn't hurt. She just gritted her teeth and got through it. Those of us that know her thought know that for her to show that much meant it hurt a whole fucking lot. They gave her a minimal sedative ('Twilight Sleep' I believe they called it) and put it back in. Apart from needing to be given a pint of blood because the massive bruising took so much blood out of her system, she seemed fine. Just had to stay in the rehab place for a couple weeks.

And she'll be 98 the end of this month.

That shit had happened to me and you'd still be hearing about it.

Anyhow, helping Grandma out is no problem, in fact, I like spending time with her as she's the one relative that comes the closest to understanding me. What was problematic was that I had to be out there by 8:30 AM every day. Now I've never been a morning person, always preferring to go to bed at dawn than wake at it, but since starting on my regimen of Phentermine (doctor prescribed) my sleep is dictated by the drugs and the drugs alone. Phentermine is a great drug if you need to lose weight. I've lost about 35 lbs since I started on it (only 15 more till I can get my surgery done kids!), but it does play merry hell with any kind of sleep scheduling. So I didn't sleep a lot that week.

On top of that, the week before some stupid bitch hit me in the Kroger parking lot. Fortunately I was driving my sister's car at the time and not my Bad-assmobile, but it still isn't any fun. It was about two in the afternoon (I usually like to do my shopping after midnight) and I was rounding the end of the row of parked cars. I was going maybe 5 miles an hour as there were pedestrians around and I hear a honk. Since I was already riding the brake and honking horns in a parking lot usually mean 'stop' I pressed the brake. I'm not sure if I had completely stopped or not, but a black SUV (presumably the one who honked) struck the front quarter pannel of the car and ran it's bumper clear to the middle of my driver's side door.

She looked down at me (as our windows were now parallel to one another) and said:

“It's your fault. You hit ME.”

Emphasis on the 'me'.

Yeah.

So I, being trapped in the car, say to her: “We need to exchange information.”

Stupid Bitch: “I need to get out of here, I'm going to be late for work.”

Me: “All the same, we need to exchange information and maybe call the police.”

I wasn't sure about calling the police as it was on Kroger property and the police have limited involvement in parking lot stuff. I know this because I was hit in the same parking lot 5, almost 6 years ago. The bitch of it is, I wasn't moving then either (I was actually in fucking PARK that time) and I was told that it was my fault on that occasion too. What's really funny is that I was in my car that time and the other guy's car was (from an insurance/repair standpoint) totaled whereas my car, built in the 70's when they still built goddamn cars, got only a quarter-inch scratch on the rear bumper

That scratch still bothers me.

Stupid Bitch: “Back up your car, I'm going to be late for work.”

Me: “I don't know if that's a good idea.” (I'm being polite at this point because hell, as far as I knew maybe it was my fault. I was a little dazed and feeling a little stupid.)

So against my better judgment (YES, I have better judgment. I just usually go against it) I back the car up, deftly catching my rear view mirror as it fell from between the cars. She jumps out, stamps down the rubber on her running board, declares that there's no damage to her car and gets back in her SUV assault-vehicle, I assume to get her insurance info.

She drives away.

Since I was digging in the glove compartment for the info of the car I was driving I never had a chance to get the license plate of her car.

But this is where the story gets really good.

Several witnesses came over to me in the wake of the stupid bitch leaving and said how she was driving like an asshole even before she hit me and I shouldn't have let her go. I explained that I didn't let her go, she just left. This is known as “Fleeing the scene of an accident” and if it was done on a public street as opposed to a private parking lot it would have been a crime. But it wasn't a public street and I had no way of knowing who the hell she was.

But one of the witnesses did.

Stupid bitch had a sticker on the back of her SUV deathmobile WITH THE NAME OF THE PLACE WHERE SHE WORKS.

That's right. The job she was so worried about being late for was the thing that was going to nail her ass.

It seems that the stupid bitch works at, well, let's just say she works somewhere where one could reasonably assume she should know better than to leave the scene of an accident. This is also a place that might very well fire her stupid bitch ass over this.

Keep yer fingers crossed.

Vengeful? Me? Maybe a tad...

So the witness that saw the sticker lets me call the police on her cellphone. I don't own a cellphone and I dread the day when I'll have no choice other than getting one, but I can rant about that later. The cop shows up, I tell him the story as I have here and he calls the stupid bitch at work and gets her insurance info for me. Now if that isn't a legal slam-dunk I don't know what is.

And of course, I can hear her voice coming from the cop's cellphone: “Well I don't know what he's telling you, but he hit ME.”

Anyhow, though the damage is minor (the biggest part of it being the missing mirror) I spent quite a bit of time on the phone with her insurance company that week. As you might well imagine, the woman at the insurance office has “an entirely different story”, but I'd think that the fleeing the scene of the accident should be the fucking trump card here. If it's not then I may well move to another freaking country as this one is far more broken than I care for.

So very little sleep, lots of driving, a car accident (minor though it was) and haggling with insurance agents. And that's the week leading up to the wedding trip.

Stay tuned for the next chapter...