Episode 11-15-2002: Where I Pick Up Hitchhikers

I was living in Springfield, Mo., at the time, working the evening shift at the News-Leader.
I get off work one night just as the bars downtown are closing, and as I'm driving home, two men carrying cups (of what I assume was, well, alcohol) stumble into the street in front of my car. So I stop to let them pass, not realizing that the path they are intent on following was still on the road.
At the point they finally get off to the side of the road, they have their thumbs out in the classic "hey, give us a ride -- we're drunk, dammit" position, and I pull up even with them.
I roll down my window, which they take as a sign that I'm going to help them, and crowd around my window, much like animals at a drive-through park waiting to get fed.
"Hey, we need a rrrrrrride. Can you give us a rrrrrrrrrrrrrride?"
This is the taller, bigger and swarthier of the two talking. When I'd first spotted them, in fact, my first thought was that he looked like my brother.
He puts his arm around his slighter friend, a guy who looked, now that I think of it, like a miniature version of a guy I'd gone to high school with, all freckles-on-pasty-skin and red hair and oddly bulbous features.
"I's his 21st birthday ... and i's COLD!"
(Author's note 1: He really did pronounce "it's" as "i's")
(Author's note 2: It WAS cold. In fact, I think the low was to be maybe 28 degrees that night.)
"I'd really like to help you out," I sayid, "but I don't have enough room for both of you."
I gesture to my back seat, which is full of bags from a recent visit home, a box of food my nana who starved herself to death a month later had insisted we take with us the last time we had visited her, and the ubiquitous generic crap that never makes it from my car to the house.
"Oh, c'mon," Swarthy Boy says. "I's his BIRTHDAY."
"An' I'm drunk," Mini-Carrot Top pipes up.
Swarthy Boy chimes in again: "An' i's not that far ... an' I can sit in back."
This is funny and not at all scary, just weird in a Bermuda Triangle-in-downtown-Springfield kind of way.
What the hell ...
"Sure, fine," I say, "but one of you" - I point to the smaller one -- "is going to have to sit on the other one's lap" -- and I point to the bigger one.
They grin and run around to the passenger side of the car.
Swarthy Boy opens the back door and looks a the massive amount of crap there, and says what shall resound through the ages as one of the Ultimate Truths, one of the declarative statements that echoes through philosophy books that are studied for eons:
"You got a lot of crap in your car."
Yes, well ...
"That's why one of you's gonna have to sit on the other's lap."
SO Swarthy Boy sits in the passenger seat, and Mini-Carrot Top gets in on top of him.
They get situated and shut the door, at which point Mini-Carrot Top looks over at me: "I's my birthday. I'm 21 today."
So off we go, them giving me directions, me thinking what I'll do if they suddenly say, "Hey, by the way, we live in Arkansas."
I turn up the heat.
Swarthy Boy: "Thank you, thank you. I's his birthday and i's cold and we're druuuuunk."
Me: "Hey, no problem. Besides, the last thing you want on a birthday is to get hypothermia."
Swarthy Boy: "That's right. You don' wanna get hypothermia on your birthday."
That's Mini-Carrot Top's cue. "I's my birthday. I'm 21 an' my head's in a windshield."
(Author's note 3: His head was indeed in the windshield.)
(Author's note 4: At this point, I'm hoping against hope that Mini-Carrot Top won't puke in my car.)
Me: "So, how are you now?"
Swarthy Boy: "We're druuuuuuuuuuuuunk, and we were walking home, an' i's cold, did you know i's cold, and we were hopin' we'd get a ride from some sweet woman, an' here you are."
Awwww ...
The radio is tuned to the regional Old Tyme Music station, one that usually plays standards from the '40s through the '70s, but right now, it's the jazz hour. I don't remember exactly what's playing, but it's definitely jazz.
Swarthy Boy: "Do you like jazz?"
Me: "Who doesn't?"
Swarthy Boy: "I like jazz." (long pause) "I like whacking off to it."
Mini-Carrot Top: "He whacks off the jazz music."
Me: "I can understand that. It has a good beat, but it's kind of sassy at the same time."
Swarthy Boy: "I wanna whack off now."
Mini-Carrot Top: "Dude, I'm on your lap."
And indeed, he is.
Swarthy Boy looks around the car and into the back seat.
"You should clean your car."
I'll take that under advisement, since we're all such buddies now. God forbid my car not meet the oh-so-high-and-lofty standards of a couple of downtown Springfield hitchhikers.
Mini-Carrot Top: "I's my birthday."
(Author's note 5: Nov. 15 is the birthday of some random miniature version of Carrot Top who lives in Springfield, Mo.)
Swarthy Boy: "You should blow him."
Me: "Maybe not, but thanks all the same."
Swarthy Boy: "But i's his birthday."
Me: "Yeah, but all the same, not quite thinking that's going to happen. Besides" -- I gesture toward a stain at the crotch of Mini-Carrot Top's shirt -- "judging by that stain, it looks like someone already got there."
Mini-Carrot Top (looking down in wonder): "There's somethin' on my shir'!"
Swarthy Boy: "Dude, that's where I spilled beer on you." (to me) "C'mon, blow him."
Me: "Judging by the state you're in, I think it'd be a case of the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
(Author's note 6: At this point, I'm thinking, If you guys were sober, you'd be thinking this was one hell of a funny conversation.")
By this point, we're closing in on their home.
They point me down a one-way street (going the wrong way, of course, kind of symbolic of the whole trip, actually), point at a house that's all lit up and has the front door open, and I pull up to it and stop.
Whatever, I think.
Even if it's not a house they know, or even belong to, once they get out of my car, I figure my Karmic Credit Plan's paid up for awhile.
Mini-Carrot Top opens the passenger door and gets out.
Mini-Carrot Top: "Than' you."
Me: "Have a happy rest of your birthday."
Mini-Carrot Top flutters his fingers and goes to the house.
I look at Swarthy Boy.
Swarthy Boy: "He'd have a better birthday if you blow him."
Me: "Yeah, no, not so much that's going to happen."
Swarthy Boy: "OK."
He gets out of the car, the leans back in, his hands on the seat. Then he bends down even further and picks up an empty Diet Coke bottle that's on the floor.
He looks at it, turning it a little, then drops it.
"You gotta clean your car. I's a fuckin' pigsty."
And with that, he shuts the door and walks into the night, leaving behind nothing but the astounding truth of his final statement lingering in the air as any proof that he'd been there at all.