Til Death Do Us Part

There are few times in life when you have a friend that is not only loyal, beautiful and caring, but also can hold his breath for hours.

In March of 2011 I was visiting a pet shop with my co-worker Amy. We walked around browsing the puppies and kittens, small rodents, and reptiles. Nothing particular caught my eye until I rounded a corner and saw a fish so beautiful, it made me reflect on myself as a person. I immediately bought him and proudly displayed him on my desk for the world to enjoy.

Brian was not just a fish. Brian was a proud member of my cubicle. Every day I was greeted warmly by Brian as he waited for his daily ration of three Betta Bites.After eating he would retire to his leaf hammock and enjoy watching me work at my computer nearby.

Our relationship blossomed for nearly a year until last week disaster struck. As had become our routine, when his bowl became dirty I took him to the kitchen and put him in an old butter container while he awaited his quarters to be cleaned. The cleaning was fairly simple. I would pour bleach and dish soap into his water, after about an hour I would rinse the bowl thoroughly, add new water, and return him to his suite.

This particular day I was very busy so I put him in his butter bowl, added bleach to his glass bowl, and went back to my office to finish up some work before it was time to go home for the day.  Having much on my mind, I went home that evening having left Brian in the kitchen. Feeling bad about it I sent a text to Amy telling her what I had done. Amy offered to drive over and save Brian from the kitchen, and that's when things went terribly wrong.

Ten minutes after texting Amy, she sent back a reply that read, "I put him back in his bowl and on your desk".
She had no idea that I had left the bowl full of liquid death. By the time the weight of what her text message meant had hit me....it was too late.

As soon as Brian hit the water, the bleach began to kill him. Burning his gills, it became very difficult for Brian to breathe. It then attacked his scales making it hard for him to swim the surface for much needed oxygen. Although Brian remained strong as he always had, the chemicals in his bowl were too much for him to overcome. He gathered his strength, took one last lap around the bowl, and died.

I like to think that the last thing that went through his mind were thoughts of the day I brought him home from the pet store. Or perhaps the day Beau Ford brought him sea shells from his vacation to Florida.

The next day, people from offices all over the building came by for a private viewing of Brian. We said our goodbyes, and to a recording of Taps played on Amy's Iphone, we buried Brian at sea via the toilet in the reception room.

Goodbye Brian. We will miss you always.

"Terrel" and the Dirty, Used Underwear

I spent one year of my college career at the University of Kansas. Academically I've had better years, however socially, I excelled.  There is probably more than one story I could tell from these two semesters alone, but one tale stands out above the rest.

Ben Goodison and I lived in a tiny apartment on 6th street in Lawrence called Graystone Apartments, although better known by the people who lived there as "Ghettostone".  We had lots of friends in the complex.  There was John and Christi next door. John and Christi were the true incarnation of the modern hippie.  From their dreadlocks and Ty died clothes, right on to their authentic VW Van.  My sister Amber lived at the complex with her three roommates, and my (now) brother in law Brad and his roommates lived next to her. We all hung out quite a bit, and there was no shortage of partying on any given night of the week.

September 19, 2002 was my 20th birthday and I celebrated with enthusiasm. Like typical college kids we were drinking and partying until early the next morning.  When I finally got home I was plenty drunk and wanting nothing better than to go to bed and pass out for about twelve hours. I made it to bed, but about an hour into my slumber, there was a loud knock at the front door. I crawled out of bed and stumbled over to the front door and opened it, only to find there was nobody there. I said a few choice words and went to slam the door shut when I noticed a piece of paper taped to the door. I tore the paper off the door, flipped on the light and read:

"I will give you a case of beer for your dirty, used underwear. Leave them in a bag outside your door with a note that says what kind of beer you would like, and the beer is yours."

I threw the note down on the counter and went back to bed, not thinking much about it.

The next morning I found the note again and took it down to where some of my buddies were hanging out in their yard.  I asked around to see who the joker was that put the note on my door, but unsurprisingly nobody claimed it. Chalking it up as a joke, I threw the note away and didn't think much more about it.

Two weeks went by and not another word was spoken about the note. Ben and I had gone over to hang out with some friends and once again got home late. After a long evening we both went to bed and were asleep when BAM BAM BAM! This time I awoke to find a note taped to the outside of my bedroom window. Because there was no back door to our apartment, I had to walk clear around the building to retrieve the note. I ripped it off the window and took it inside to read:

"I will give you $20 and a case of beer for your dirty, used underwear. Put them in a bag and leave them outside your front door with a note saying what kind of beer you want, and the money and beer is yours!"

My curiosity had been peaked and I decided to find out once and for all who was playing these games in the middle of the night. I grabbed a pair of boxers out of my drawer, threw them in a bag, and wrote "Bud Light" on the bag.  However, this time instead of going back to bed, I waited by the window to see who would come back for the bag.

It was about 3:00a.m. and I had been waiting for about fifteen minutes, and was about to give up and go back to bed when I saw someone walking down the road under the street lamps. The person walked on by, stopped, turned around, and started creeping toward my door like they were trying to be sneaky. As they rounded the corner I knew that this was no longer a joke, and it was no longer funny.  In the street light there was a middle age black man, with filthy rags for clothes, complete with gloves with the fingers cut out. He looked like Ice T on the movie Surviving The Game.

The man ran up to the door, grabbed the bag, and ran off. About a minute later, he returned with the bag in his hand. He dropped it, taped a note on the door, and ran away. This time the note read:

"I see you came through. But, I asked for "dirty" underwear and these are clean. Take them and ........................................[use your imagination].............................and the money and beer are yours."

At this point I was not only creeped out, but very angry.  I ran in, woke up Ben and explained to him the situation. He jumped out of bed and we devised a plan.  I would put another bag outside, and wait for the guy to come back. When he came back, I would open the door, and Ben would give the guy a Louisville Slugger forehead tattoo.

We waited probably another thirty minutes, but the guy must have gotten a bad feeling, because he never came back to our door. We did see him one more time. He was running around looking in people's windows. The next day we showed the notes to everyone and told them the story.  After much debate, we finally called the police to file a report. When the officer got there he assured us that there was nothing he could do, and that the guy was probably a homeless man looking for "a way to pass the time". Well, needless to say, that made us feel better.

We told everyone we knew to keep an eye out for the guy that we code named "Terrel". Soon, everyone was talking about "Terrel" and our little incident. Even people we didn't know would ask us "Aren't you the guys that had that run in with 'Terrel'?" We luckily never had any more encounters with "Terrel", but we certainly had a story we would never forget.

Trains, Gloves and Automobiles

I used to play basketball on Sunday nights at the elementary school in Garnett, KS. You could set your watch to it, if it was 7:00p.m. on a  Sunday evening September-May, we were playing. The only downside to this routine was  that i never got to watch the Simpsons, but it my opinion it was well worth it.

One week just like any other, I was on my way to play basketball. It was my freshman year in high school and I could not drive yet, so Wells Unruh would always give me a ride to the gym. It must of been January or February because it was very cold outside and snowing a little. The gym was just across town and the drive only takes about four minutes so you wouldn't think that anything interesting could happen in that short amount of time.....wrong.

At the end of the street we lived on, there was a railroad track intersected by our road, and parallel to the Prairie Spirit Rail Trail, which is an old railroad track converted into a biking/walking trail. As we approached the railroad crossing we noticed through the darkness, and snow falling, a strange object on the Trail.  As we got closer we saw that it was a car sitting on the rail trail directly in front of the intersecting railroad track. Although we were a little confused at why there would be a car on the jogging trail, we decided to stop and take a closer look.

The first thing I noted about the car was that its tires were missing. There was nothing left, but aluminum wheels which the car was sitting on. The next thing I noticed was that the car had seemingly lost its shape. It looked as though someone had smashed every curved angle of the car flat until is resembled the shape of a box. Much like if you were to dent a round pop can on four sides until it was square. Other than the strange damage there was nothing else. No lights, no movement, nothing at all.

The scene was a little spooky. It was dark, cold, snowing, and there was this strange car smashed into a square. Wells was in favor of leaving and going back to my parent's house to call the police, but I insisted we go in for a closer look. Not the first mistake I had ever made, and definitely not the last, but a mistake nonetheless.

I approached the vehicle from the driver's side. The windows were covered in snow so I could not see inside the car. I tried the handle but the smashed door would not come open. So I decided to try the passenger side door. Although this was was bent up as well, with a little effort I was able to pry it open, and thats when I saw him.

Sitting there hunched over the steering wheel was a small Mexican man with a long gray pony tail, a mustache, and the longest goatee I have ever seen. This thing was was down to his center chest, braided, with beads intermingled throughout. I think it was safe to say that this was one of the greatest displays of facial hair I had ever seen.

"Hey man, you OK?" I said shaking the guy's arm.

"Hey, wake up!" I yelled a little louder hoping the guy wasn't dead. And that moment I found out...he wasn't!

"Arrrrhhudhgdaohsdodiosallllllllllllllllladfodidia" The guy groaned as he tried to wiggle out from under the steering wheel that had been bent over the top of him. 

"Get me the F#%K out of here now!" slurred the guy who judging by his breath, had sought much comfort from a bottle of Southern Comfort.

"Hold on" I said trying to get the guy out of the car, by pulling on his coat.

I finally got him out of the car against his best efforts. This guy was so trashed he could barely stand. He basically hung on my shoulder. After a couple of seconds he screamed

"It's too god damned hot out here!"

He then tore off his gloves and coat and threw them on the ground. I was trying to get him to hold still in case he was hurt, but he was having none of that. He kept flailing around trying to stand up but couldn't because of his alcohol induced vertigo.

Luckily about this time, the police and an ambulance had arrived, and they carried the guy off to wherever they take drunk old Mexican guys with sweet goatees, after they have wrecked their cars on the Prairie Spirit Rail Trail.

After giving a statement to the police it was determined that the guy had ran his car into the side of a moving train, which had evidently caused said damage to the vehicle.

The next day I took a walk up to the railroad tracks to see where everything had gone down in the daylight. There was big marks in the ground from the car being forced off the road sideways, and there was glass and other chucks of debris that always seems to accompany a car wreck. The car had been towed away, but laying there on the ground among the grass and car chunks was the drunk guys gloves. These weren't just old crappy gloves. These babies where wool Thinsulate gloves with the little flap thing over the fingers that can be pulled back to grab things. To put it in more simple terms, they were the most amazing gloves I had ever seen! I still wear those gloves to this day, and I still call them my drunk Mexican gloves.

The Bounty Hunters

Ashley and I were living in a 'less than awesome house', in a 'less than awesome' neighborhood in Pittsburg, Kansas. It was on the corner of Kansas and Locust streets just behind Domino's Pizza. When I say that the neighborhood was 'less than awesome' I mean to say that it was horrible. I was pretty sure that the neighbors on both sides of me were drug dealers, there was a kidnapping down the street, there was an alleged 'crack house' down the street. To top things off my house was directly across the street from where Pitt State students Waylon Boots and Stephen Hays were murdered in an arson fire (although that event didn't happen until about a month later).

One night, about one in the morning, there was a loud knock at the front door. Ashley woke me up and informed me that I needed to get up and see who it was, and find out what they wanted. With the usual groans from having been awakened in the middle of the night, I stumbled out of bed and into the living room. I chose not to turn on the light, if it was some shady character out there, I didn't want him to know anyone was up. I crept towards the window in an attempt to glimpse of whoever was at the door.

We were no stranger to shady characters showing up at the door. There was once a woman who said she would give me half a thirty pack of beer if I gave her and her husband a ride to Walmart. Another guy showed up knocking on the door at six o'clock one morning in the rain. When I didn't answer the door, he continued to the house across the street. At which point he begin to strip off his clothes. When the people answered the door, the guy began to scream and proceeded to run down the street naked.

BANG, BANG BANG! This time the knock was so hard I thought that they might break down the door.  I did not creep, but ran to the door to make sure that the dead bolt was locked. Luckily it was, because before I got there I saw the handle turning as the person on my porch tried to open the door.

"What do you want?" I yelled from my living room.

"Harold Williams, I have a warrant for your arrest!" Screamed a female voice from the porch.

"There's nobody here by that name!"

"Just come out and there won't be any trouble"

"Who are you?"

"Bounty Hunters, and we're here to serve you a warrant, Harold!"

Soon there were flashlights shining in every window of the house. There were people beating on the backdoor demanding us to open it. By this point Ashley and our six month old daughter were awake.

"I'm calling the police" I yelled through the door.

"I'm calling the police, and telling them I have a felon with a warrant that won't cooperate!" challenged the
 Bounty Hunter lady.

"knock yourself out" I thought as I dialed 911.

Things calmed down for about twenty minutes as we waited for the police to show up and sort things out. I on my side of the door, and her on her's. There continued to be lights occasionally shining in the windows but at least the banging on the doors had stopped.

By the time the cops arrived, I had time to reflect on the situation and had become extremely irritated at the entire thing. These people had obviously found bunk information, because as far as I knew there was nobody named Harold living with us. Not to mention that they decided to throw their little party at 1:00a.m.

About the time the cops got to the front steps I went out on the porch to confront these idiots who had disturbed us in the middle of the night.

"Congratulations on waking my baby up by banging on her bedroom window in the middle of the night" I barked at the lady with a badge around her neck that could've been bought in the toy aisle at Walmart.

"This time of night is the best time to catch criminals" she yelled.

"Yes I know, I've seen 'Dog the Bounty Hunter'" I said in my most sarcastic voice (a.k.a. my normal voice)

"Look buddy, these papers say-"

I cut her off. "They better say to get the hell off my porch"

The lady looked over at the officer who simply replied, "I'd be mad too."

The lady began to say something else but there was a loud whistle. At this point out of nowhere, a white ford explorer pulled up in front of the house, and no less than nine people came climbing out of the bushes, from behind the house, and off the roof,..... yes, off the roof. They all piled in and sped away, ending yet another chapter in the book of weird stuff that I have come to regard as normal in my life of random events.

Text from the unknown creeper...

One night I got a text message from an unknown number. I almost dismissed it, but thought, "What the hell?" and decided to play along for a little bit. Below is the conversation that took place. Please keep track of the time stamp, and also keep in mind that I was in bed asleep from the first message, I would wake up every so often, reply, then go back to sleep.

The conversation went something like this:

11:01 p.m. Unknown: Hey girl what up? What you dont talk to me anymore?

11:03 p.m. Brandon: Not after that whole "Seinfeld" incident...eww!

11:04 p.m. Unknown: What you mean?

11:06 p.m. Brandon: Can you just come over? I need u.

11:08 p.m. Unknown: Where you at beautiful?

11:09 p.m. Brandon: Where we first met:)

11:09 p.m. Unknown: Where was that?

11:10 p.m. Brandon: You better be jokin

11:11 p.m. Unknown: First met you at Candis right?

11:12 p.m. Brandon: Can you be here in thirty minutes?

11:13 p.m. Unknown: Just tell me where you need me to go ill be there in 10.

11:14 p.m. Unknown: Where. Ill come now.

11:16 p.m. Unknown: Leslies?

11:16 p.m. Unknown: Tell me where you are?

11:16 p.m. Brandon: Yes. Come on over. Just come on in the back door.

11:18 p.m. Unknown: ok.Everything ok?

11:21 p.m. Unknown: Are you ok?

11:21 p.m. Brandon: Yes fine. See u when u get here.

11:22 p.m. Unknown: Ok be there soon.

12:00 a.m. Unknown: Been waiting on ride walking now.

12:20 a.m. Unknown: Hey you still there i hope? Almost there.

12:33 a.m. Unknown: Im at leslies walked here? Thought you was there?

12:36 a.m. Unknown: Hey whats up?

1:12 a.m. Unknown: So what is up who is this?

Life In The Fast Lane..

While deer hunting at the family farm in Linn County, Kansas, I noticed something very strange sticking up in the road ditch out on the main road. As I approached I saw an overturned vehicle in a 10' deep ravine. It must have wrecked the night before, beings how it was out on the main road, and nobody had reported it yet. My cousin Taylor and I were a little nervous about approaching the vehicle. We were pretty sure it was too early in the morning to discover any dead bodies. Luckily the ford explorer was abandoned. After a brief search around the area to make sure that nobody had been ejected from the vehicle which had evidently rolled about three times judging by the marks in the ditch. This is all that came of the incident besides finding a full, unopened liter of Coke Classic, which I drank because I was thirsty...