Wow, that was an oldie. So, some of the things I took out of that:
1. I thought it was both interesting and sad that I quoted the stats for how many people are killed in the US through gun violence and compared them to how many were killed in a warzone. I just did that again recently in a post to Mick but instead of Iraq the warzone was Israel. So, nothing has changed 20 years later. I think in 2021 we killed nearly 49,000 people in the US through gun violence. This year we already surpassed 35,000. This is why Mick does not want to come here to visit us in person.
2. The guy in the story about the fight with his wife, you met him. He bought you a drink. He hit on the woman that opened for you. He was a drummer. She played solo acoustic and she came back with her friend and sat in the two chairs right behind us when you were going on and he said to her "Hi, I'm Bob the drummer. You need a drummer." and I said "Like a fish needs a bicycle." and she and her friend laughed. We're not friends anymore because during his brawls with his wife he developed a bad cocaine habit and acquired a really sleazy drug dealer pal that he kept wanting to bring to my house. The drugs and marital problems were keeping him up all night and he would drive into my yard on his Harley at 6 in the morning or call me from some swimming pool on a weekday morning as the sun was coming up and ask me to come down and party. I would tell him "It's fucking Tuesday and I have to work, and I don't want to meet your drug dealer."
His friendship with his drug dealer ended when leaving a bar one night they got in an argument and the drug dealer kicked over his Harley. Bob had warned him not to do that and so the payback was, he pulled out a big knife and buried it in the drug dealer's gut. People witnessed them arguing outside the bar and had called the cops. When they arrived Bob was struggling to get his bike started and the drug dealer was sitting on the ground, knife still hanging out of him, swearing at Bob. Needless to say, they arrested the two of them, one going straight to the hospital the other straight to the lockup. When the trial came up for the stabbing, the drug dealer had already gone to jail on previous charges and so did not show up. So, the judge let Bob walk and dismissed the charges. He remembered during several late night/early morning calls with me that I had threatened to meet him on my front lawn with a baseball bat if he brought the drug dealer to my house. He said that was a cruel thing to say and that he was not sure I was his friend. He and his wife got a divorce and we have not spoken since.
3. I was trying for humor in that post, I wonder how many people actually laughed. I knew Marc wouldn't.
