MY SON, THE ROGUE

The Rogue Speaks:

I am so happy that I have such brilliant and gifted children! They must have gotten their brains from their father, because I still have mine.

I called Joey yesterday to ask him if I could post something about him on my blog. "I know you, Mom. You're going to write about the time we were in the car, driving to Atlanta, and I yelled out, "My penis is strong!" and then pulled my pants down to show everyone a little woody."

"Well?" I asked him. "Can I use that story?"

"Just as long as you tell them I was not 18 at the time."

I decided instead to treat you to one of his stories from his blog, WRITE,RIGHT?
(http://mauhaus529.blogspot.com/) so here's what I picked--

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THIS REALLY HAPPENED:

We thought that Larry was gone. We were told that Sheriff Doodle Peel had come to take him to Eastern State for an evaluation after his mother was moved to a home. This is not the case. The following is a true story. Nothing has been embellished or changed. I swear to the gods.

I am out digging post holes for the deck extension that is my spring break project. I hear a screen door open behind me, followed by, “Adding on to your house?”
I turn slowly, thinking maybe I am hallucinating. Standing at the top of the wheelchair ramp wearing a full-length tan Inspector Gadget trench coat, ratty beard blowing ever-so-gently in the breeze, is Larry. Larry, who lost his job, his wife, his kids, and later his memory to alcohol. Larry, who was told once by his octogenarian father not to use the upstairs bathroom while it was being remodeled and who has urinated in coffee cups and glasses ever since. Larry, whose bedroom was so full of empty beer cans that it took two full truckloads to the dump to clean it up.

I tell him I am adding on to the deck.

“I used to be in construction. When I needed a concrete deck in my backyard, I had a concrete guy I knew pour it for me. You doing concrete or wood?”

I tell him wood.

“You using Quickcrete?” he asks. I tell him I am. “I’m not telling you how to do it, but I used to just pour it in the hole and add water.” I tell him that’s what I am doing. He tells me about the time he had a friend in the construction business pour a concrete slab in his backyard.

“If you need any help, Joey, just holler.” He goes inside. I keep working. He knows my name.

Five minutes later (not embellishing) Larry comes out again. “Building a deck?” he asks.

“I had a concrete deck…” he says. “Had a friend…” he says. “You using Quickcrete?” he asks. “If you need any help…” he offers. He goes back inside.

Five minutes later—now at this point, you must think I am lying. I’m not—out comes Larry again. We have the exact same conversation. Let me back up and bit and tell you that an hour later, L.B. ran off somewhere. I had been calling for her and whistling every few minutes.

Larry—who, in his late fifties, has not bathed or changed his clothes in months—looks off into the distance. “That your dog?” he asks. He is pointing about two hundred yards away. I go to look. Sure enough, there she is. I call her. She comes home.

“You know, I used to raise dogs. Saint Bernards and English Bulldogs.” He then goes into a story about how he traded a Saint Bernard for an English Bulldog with a brown nose. “The brown nose is a defect,” he says. “I didn’t know that. L.B. I bet she’s the only dog in the world named L.B.” He knows my dog’s name. “If you need any help, just holler.”

He goes inside.

He comes out again five minutes later. Same conversation without the raising dogs part. He goes back in. He comes back out. He goes back in.

A car drives by with the trunk popped and a man in the trunk with a video camera. Running after the car is a clown. Yes, a clown. Giant yellow shoes. Red nose. Big hair. A clown running after a car with a man in the trunk.
All of this was 100% true.