The rain began coming down in sheets, so we decided to move the food and twelve or so guests into the enclosed deck area behind his house to make it easier for people to move in and out without having to run through the rain.
As the evening went on, we all found a seat. and told jokes and stories about school. and the old days. It seemed to be another late summer gathering until someone walked around the corner from the front of the house. We heard a voice, and turned to see a little old lady in a dress that was soaked completely through. She walked over to where we were sitting and politely stood there waiting for us to finish our story. Needless to say, we were done with the story we were telling.
"Can I help you?" I asked the lady who was easily in her upper eighties.
"Could you call me a taxi? I really need to be getting back home."
"Sure." I said as Burf ran inside to grab a phone book. "Did your car break down?"
"No, I just walked." was her response.
Burf came back out with a phone book, and we looked up the number for the one cab company in the area. After a couple attempts, we got nothing more than a recording. So being the upstanding gentleman that I am, I offered to give the sweet little old lady a ride home.
I pulled up the car, and with a little help from Burf we helped the lady into the front seat. As I backed out of the driveway, I asked the lady where she needed to go. That's when things got a little bit strange.
"I need to go home." The lady repeated.
"Where do you live?"
"Over by the hospital."
"Wow, that's a long ways, did you walk all the way here?"
"That sure was a nice little party you boys were having."
"Yeah, it's my buddy's birthday. So what street do you live on?"
"It's just right over by the hospital."
"Ok?"
So I started driving toward the hospital which happened to be on the complete, opposite end of town. The only hospital in the area was a good six miles from where Burf's house was located. We got about half way across town and I still had not heard an actual address of where this lady was wanting to go. Furthermore, she did not want to talk about anything but the lovely party we had left. That's when I started to have suspicions about where it was that we actually needed to go. About three blocks from Burf's house was a nursing home called Sunset Manor. So I decided to ask her if that was the "hospital" she needed to go to...This was a mistake.
When I mentioned the name Sunset Manor the sweet little old lady turned into a twenty year old diva.
"If that's where I wanted you to take me, don't you think I would have told you that? Now take me to my house by the damn hospital!"
I know you're normally not supposed to give strangers rides, and for obvious reasons. I thought surely it was safe enough to give a ninety pound senior citizen a ride, but maybe this particular rule applied to everybody?
Despite her best efforts to keep me from turning around, I drove around a few blocks, took some back streets, and numerous other tactical maneuvers to confuse her on where we were going. The problem was to pull into the parking lot of the nursing home without this lady turning into Hannibal Lector. So I can up with a conversation topic that was sure to win her approval. I told her that this was indeed NOT the nursing home, but a restaurant at which my mother was a waitress, and it just so happened that it was my mother's birthday and I had failed to tell her 'happy birthday' up to that point. Not only did the old lady think that this was a good idea, and that she should wait in the car while I went inside, but she insisted I wish her the best from her as well.
As the bipolar senior waited in my car, I went into the nursing home to see if I could confirm my suspicion that she had indeed escaped from there. The problem was that I wasn't real sure how to explain to the people working there how I had ended up with her in my car without them thinking I was some kind of reverse pedophile.
Luckily the nurse listened to my story without judgement, and was happy to find out that the lady was alright. It turned out that she had indeed escaped, and that they had been looking for her for about and hour and a half.
I returned to the party minus my passenger, and a new story to tell everybody over a cold beer on a rainy summer evening.
-For Julie
