HIS BITE is WORSE than HIS BARK
Life is full of surprises & it's funny how often what we've assumed to be true isn't: I have an big-hearted bearded old friend of Russian descent named Alex who I don't see very much but who was like a brother to me when we were kids. Some people call him "Crazy Alex" and he frequently has, um, "problems" with the Authorities. Once it took six State Troopers to subdue him over a dumb highway marijuana misunderstanding... Anyway, he lived alone deep in the pines in a hundred-year-old farmhouse surrounded by run-down chicken-coops full of rusting motor-cycle parts. One day a sketchy guy who owed Alex a lot of money for a long time dropped by to visit (without the money, of course) and afterward the guy told me that Alex was so pissed he bit him in the leg & I replied, not all that surprised given the circumstances, "Well, that's Alex for ya, don't piss him off!" ~ A few years go by and I run into Alex in a boondocks biker-bar and jokingly referred to the incident while we were shooting pool. Alex laughed his ass off! Turns out I had somehow mis-heard the original story and that it was his psycho mongrel DOG that bit the guy in the leg, not Alex! For a long time though, I had just assumed the incident to be true because, well, it sort of sounded like something Alex MIGHT do if provoked ~ but he was very pleased that I had believed the tall-tale! ~ In a similar vein, I recently got an e-mail from my High School Class Reunion Committee informing me, among other things, that my old pal and class-mate Alfredo, a notorious burn-out, was now listed under "R.I.P" and no longer under "M.I.A." ~ Once, when he was a Freshman and hitch-hiking drunk one night to a party with a fifth of Jack Daniels under his jacket, he happily accepted a ride from a local cop-car, and as he climbed into the back-seat, Officer Joe, who knew him well, inquired curiously "So, what you got under your jacket, Alfredo?" ~ Anyway, I felt kind of bad hearing he was no longer amongst us and fondly recalled that I'd bought him a shot of Jose Cuervo one night only a month before. You never know, you know? Then one Sunday morning while strolling into 7/11 at 3am, I run into Alfredo, who was stumbling out and bummed a Camel from me. Slightly buzzed and reacting with shock, if not horror, at his ghastly Zombie-like Resurrection, I gravely stuttered "I have some very bad news for you..." ~ and filled him in on the Class Reunion e-mail. "Well, tell them I can't make it," Alfredo muttered, somewhat amused. "I may LOOK dead but I'm not!" he choked, coughing on my Camel, as he danced off into the darkness.