I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

I could NOT sleep the other night. At 3:00 a.m. I was wide awake, lost in memories from my far past.

At one point, I picked up my phone and was scrolling.

I saw a post, and it reminded me of a friend I had in Lexington back in the early 1990’s. I’ve thought about him often, but that night I went down a rabbit hole of Google trying to find him.

It took a bit, but about halfway down the second page, I found his obituary. He died in 2003 and from the sounds of tributes on the page, he had not been well mentally or physically.

I had the breath knocked out of me. We had been buddies.

Which reminded me of something that happened, when I stopped by his work one day.

He cut hair for a living. I knew he got off around 5:00 and I met him at his shop. We went down the street to get ice cream and then walked back and sat on a bench in front.

We were chatting minding our own business when a man in a jeep drove by and called us f*gs.

I didn’t know what to say, but my friend was having no part of it.

He watched the man park a couple of stores down and go inside.

I sat there, as he went down to the jeep, pulled out his keys and etched f*g on the side of the man’s jeep.

He was almost back to the bench when the man started yelling.

We both ran into the shop, out the back door and hid.

We thought we’d escaped.

Except the next day, the police show up and they ask if he was involved. He assured them it was not him. A few days later, he is served with papers. The man whose jeep he keyed has decided to sue him.

When you cut hair, you know a lot of people.

In fact. Some of the people whose hair you cut might just be attorneys. Some of them might be very good attorneys who, tell my friend that they’ll take care of it.

The attorney, does a little investigation and discovers that the jeep driver is about as pure as you’d expect him to be. He has an outstanding warrant for his arrest, AND he owes several years back child support.

When all was said and done, jeep driver ended up in jail, the lawsuit was dismissed and hopefully jeep driver learned not to be a bully when your friend has a good attorney.

And as because it never ceases to amaze me, I was called a f*g today while driving, because I tapped my horn behind someone who was sitting in an intersection they had the light in.

It certainly told me all I needed to know about him.