Chilly Willy

I just realized I never posted this. The following occurred a little over two months ago.

My sister recently visited a doctor’s office in Charlotte. Being the only one with a working car at the time, I offered to drive her to her appointment. My mom was along, as well, and when Ariel went in and the practitioner said it would take a little while, we went out in search of brunch. Luckily, the McDonald’s up the road was still serving breakfast, even at 10:48AM. We each ordered a breakfast burrito.

“Sauce?”

“Yes, may I please have some syrup?”

The lady behind the counter looked simultaneously confused and incredulous, as though her face was trying to decide first whether to believe me, and second whether, had I been honest about wanting syrup, it was really a very delectable idea.

“I get that every time. Trust me, it’s good. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”

I took our tray, my syrup, and proceeded to an empty table for two. Mom retrieved her coffee and I took my empty cup to fill it with sweet tea. Then I returned to our table and took my seat across from my mother.

I opened the wrapper around my burrito and began to peel back the cover on my syrup. She raised her eyebrows.

“What? Don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it,” I insisted to the same expression I had just seen at the counter.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” she assured me. I wasn’t sure if I believed her, but I was hungry and didn’t care much.

A McDonald’s associate, who seemed to be a twenty-something Chicano woman, swept by us with her broom and dust-pan, smiling and gracefully cleaning the floor without disturbing anyone.

Enter Chilly Willy. I turned around to look in the direction the sweeping associate had gone and noticed that an old, unkempt man who looked to be in his late fifties had plopped down at a table for four, firmly planting his chicken nuggets and cup of soda on the surface. Not thirty seconds after opening his nugget-package, he addressed the hostess, “Do you have to do that now? Do you have to do that here, around me? You’re gettin’ all of your fucking dirt up on my food! They only give you four nuggets to start out with, what a rip-off…”

I raised an eyebrow at mom, mouthing the words, “What the HELL?” but she had no idea, either.

The old man with the gray, scraggly hair trailed off. He sported a few scattered (but curiously neat) braids in his shoulder-length storm-cloud gray hair. He was probably about six feet tall, but he seemed very relaxed in his McDonald’s chair, bent and sort of spilling over the table as though he was drunk.

Slowly the Mickey-Dee’s filled. Early lunchers showed up. Construction workers, painters, a dad and his little boy. The father and son took a seat in the booth behind us. As the old man raised his voice brashly berating the hostess, peppering his admonitions with expletives, we commented on his proximity to the toddler. We had no intention of engaging the old geezer in conversation.

“Thank God I got a mo-TEL room and three hundred bucks. Sweep your trash, I don’t give a shit! Just don’t sweep around me and mah food.” At first I was perplexed by his audacity, but now I was growing more and more certain that his righteous indignation came from one of two pools of ultimate self-confidence: insanity or a glass bottle.

The dad pulled his young son onto his lap and put him nearer the window, away from the old man.

The hostess swept around him, pretending not to notice, even as he stopped chiding her for a moment to say, “Ooh, you’re a pretty Mexican lady… cool cat! Chilly Willy, look out!” He had a southern drawl and an interesting cadence to his speech pattern. His voice was gruff, and it made for a really cool contrast. Not that I would want to emulate the guy in any way, shape, or form. But it does almost explain the compulsion to sit and listen to him go off like a misfiring AK-47 found in the dumpster.

Once she made it around the old man’s table and back to the front of the store, I watched as she exchanged a few words with a manager at the front. My guess was that she was complaining and the manager was debating whether or not to call the police. Since Chilly Willy stuck around, I figured they decided not to make the call.

We tried to ignore him and focus on our burritos – at first. I began preparing my breakfast, unwrapping my burrito to drizzle syrup over its contents, then reclosing the shell so I could enjoy my wonderful sweet-and-savory creation. Syrup, I assured my mother, would be delicious on the burrito. She finally caved, admitting that she will try almost anything once. Especially in food land. So she poured some into her first bite. The sweet syrup mixed with the egg and spicy sausage was familiar, but when the salsa mixed in, she’d had enough of that. She smiled and noted, “It was worth trying. I like syrup on my sausage – just not on my salsa.” I shrugged. To each, his own, as the saying goes. Then I licked my lips and dug back into my meal. Mmmmm.

The old man piped up. “Oh, yeah, three hundred bucks and a motel room!” he shouted happily. “Chilly Willy!!”

By then, we were sucked in as if it was a bad television show we couldn’t stop watching. “I wish we could surreptitiously get a picture of him,” mom thought out loud. I obligingly got out my cell phone and started angling for a photo of Chilly Willy. The father and son left. I couldn’t blame them, but since I don’t have a toddler, this was just too amusing for me to take off.

“I’m used to havin’ nothin’ – what the hell I need it for now? I don’t need SHIT. The more people do for you the worse it gets. Four frickin’ nuggets.” Chilly Willy ranted. What was this guy’s problem? I wondered. He bought nuggets at McDonald’s, telling the whole world exactly how much money he has and where he’s staying tonight, expecting to be treated like he was in a palace and he owned it. It made little to no sense and basically announced “HEY I’M NUTS!” but his boldness had everyone’s peripheral vision rapt.

A scruffy painter shuffled toward the booth behind us. He smiled at us and took his seat as Chilly Willy again shouted, “Chilleh Willeehhh!!!!” The painter nodded at him and began to open his lunch. Chilly Willy seemed to acknowledge the painter as a friendly equal, a comrade even. “Hey, buddy. I got a mo-TEL room! You’re welcome to stay in my mo-tel room. I may not be there, but you can sleep there! Oh, yeah, I am SET!”

“Is that a good shot?” asked mom as she patted me on the shoulder.
“It’s decent. Wish I could use my digital camera, but I think that would be somewhat… conspicuous. Anyway, I’ll get another shot in a minute. I’m trying to get this down.” I had been frantically writing down every direct quote I could from this guy. All I had on me at the time was a small blue Sharpie, and the only paper available was the sheet that McDonald’s uses to cover their eat-in trays. I must have looked rather silly, except that I was far from the center of attention thanks to everyone’s favorite hobo.

“I know where I’m goin’; I’m goin’ ta the crack house!” exclaimed Chilly Willy. “Oh, yeah, Chilleh WILLEHHH!” As I jotted down some more notes, he leaned over his table towards the painter. He was consistently loud enough that anyone in the store could hear him, but he may have wanted to assure the painter, Yes, I am talking to you. “Hey, buddy, you want a smoke? I got some smokes, now that I got some three hundred bucks. Never believe it! Cops wanted to put me somewhere, but some nice family got me a mo-tel room and three big ones. I am sittin’ pretty! Chilly Willy, indeed!” As he explained all of this, he was nodding emphatically and his five or six random braids shook over his face.

I took another picture with my cell, again not looking over my shoulder so as not to give myself away.

“Chilly Willy…” the painter agreed, cautiously nodding in feigned enthusiasm. Mom poked me again to get my attention. By this time I had two clear shots of Mr. Chilly Willy, a bunch of quotations and was well on my way to writing a song about him.
I went to use the restroom and left my mother with my Sharpie. By the time I came back out she had written down several lines of her own, also in verse. Needless to say, we were thoroughly amused and determined to write this song. She had also jotted down the words “Got my liquor bottle, got my money, got my room. What more I need? Nothin!” Turns out I was right; he was totally drunk. Go figure. I wish I hadn’t missed that one, though it doesn’t overwork my brain to imagine it. I looked over her shoulder, read the lines she had filled in, and quickly collapsed into my seat while stifling my laughter.

The painter walked outside with the old man, presumably to finally join him for that free cigarette. But alas, we could not sit around to see what would happen when Chilly Willy reentered the restaurant; my sister had called to say her appointment was over. Obligingly, we discarded our garbage, gathered our belongings and our writings, and headed to my car, laughing the whole way.

Pulling onto the street and into the turning lane, I watched with amusement as a police van labeled “Crime Scene Investigation” drove past us into the McDonald’s parking lot. Mom mused, “Wow. Guess they actually called the cops on Chilly Willy.”

“Wouldn’t it be funny if the officer was just here for a drive-thru run?” I wondered aloud. “I mean, it’s quite possible that that’s the case.” I glanced at her while our light was still red, then past her to try to see the police van; it was out of view. So were Chilly Willy and his new, um, friend.

The words launched themselves out of mom’s mouth: “OKAY WE HAVE TO FIND OUT! TURN AROUND!”

I checked around me – there was no one else at the light trying to squeeze a right on red, and traffic was clear – and I turned right, and right again, back into the Mickey-Dee’s parking lot. Sure enough, the paddy wagon was sitting at the drive-thru menu, and the officer was leaning out his window calling out his order. Past him I could see the hostess and the manager discussing something in hushed urgency – again, probably Chilly Willy’s fate.

The kicker, though, was better than syrup on a breakfast burrito: Driving further along my circle around the building, we caught a glimpse of Chilly Willy and his buddy. They had been joined by two other random disheveled men between forty-five and sixty, and the group was strolling across the lot toward the back and away from the restaurant, in full rear view of the policeman, had he wanted to check his mirror.

Chilly Willy, indeed.

The Infamous Car Accident Story

The following is a recounting of events that resulted in the x-rays you may see in my pictures posted here.

On Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at around 3:50 pm, Amanda Andreyev and I were headed back to her house to drop off her CDs, and then to 7-11 to grab some Slurpees. We got to the northern corner of 16th St. and Straight Path when I looked left (south) to see a silver Ford sedan heading a long line of traffic, impeding our ability to cross the street just yet. As the driver of the Ford passed 16th street, she suddenly cut the wheel to the right without looking, sending the car straight in our direction. We were about a second and a half from our untimely (and untidy) deaths.

I barely got the words, "What the hell is she doing?" out of my mouth when my body instinctively moved me to the right, trying to get me out of the way as fast as humanly possible, though at that moment I would have settled for inhumanly and not asked questions. I noticed Amanda hadn't been watching, and in a flash moment of fear and desperation I pushed her ahead of me. Then, realizing that while she should be clear of the car I wasn't yet, I saw that the woman behind the wheel was not attempting to get back onto the street!

In horror, I began dashing in left to avoid being hit. Unfortunately, I only got MOST of my body out of the way in time. The right side of her front bumper knocked into my shin, sweeping my leg back and out from under me, and I fell forward and to the side of her car, catching myself on the pavement with my hands and my left foot.

I got up, having suffered only minor road rash on my left wrist, thinking, "She must not have been going that fast; it didn't hurt too much and I only got knocked down.” Then I tried to walk. I heard this weird, dull grinding inside my body, and when my right leg gave out I looked down. I had suddenly grown a second knee. My leg was bent in not one, but two places, the second joint located about halfway between ankle and shin. It was only about ten to fifteen seconds from the time I saw the car to the time I looked at my leg, though it felt like ten to fifteen minutes of shock.

Basically, both the tibia and fibula were broken clean in two. Neither was protruding through the skin, but the effect was still that the bottom half of my lower leg was hanging from the rest of the leg. Needless to say, I was a bit freaked out by this.

My next thoughts were, "Well, this is going to hurt soon. A lot. I need to get help. I'd better get over to check on Amanda while I still don't feel pain." So as I used the car to support myself and hopped back towards the curb where we had been standing, I started screaming for help: "Help! We got hit by a car! Help!" Then I dialed my house number, figuring my family would be there faster and more coherently than the ambulances, and Jackie picked up. I told her that my leg was smashed by a car and that she needed to get someone's ass down to the corner fast, in just so many words.

Before I could get over to Amanda, a man's voice said, "You'd better sit down now; you're gonna make it worse if you don’t." I calmly replied, "No, sir, I've gotta go check on Amanda, she was with me and I don't know if she got hit too." He informed me that he was a retired firefighter and repeated with urgency that I needed to get my leg elevated or I would be in serious trouble, so I obliged, sitting down on the curb with my back against the pole of a road sign, facing the street. I had repeated about six times that he should stop worrying about me and go check on Amanda when I finally found out that Amanda had been knocked unconscious and sent into the bushes. She was alive, talking, and apparently able to move, though, so that made me feel a bit better. Not much.

Meanwhile, the girl who hit us eventually got out of her car and began arguing with some guy. According to her, the guy cut her off, and they were fighting about whose fault the accident was. Neither of them seemed to care about the two teenagers that had been struck and left in anguish. I had begun dialing 9-1-1 when I heard a witness on another phone doing that very thing. I hung up and started dialing my mom's number at work, instead. I waited for the answering service to start rattling off nonsense. Then I dialed her extension.

"Hello?"
"Hi mom, it's Garrett. I got hit by a car, my leg is pretty broken, but I'm alright otherwise. I'm at the corner of 16th and Straight Path. There's an officer here trying to talk to me; I've got to go."
"Wait! What hospital are you going to?"
"I don't know yet. I'll call you back." I hung up.
Then the officer started asking me for all my information while the stretcher was loaded out of the ambulance and the EMTs all debated on how best to get me up there. By now, the pain had started to sink in, and it was BAD, so I braced myself for worse while they plotted my torture method.

A car pulled up, and out of it spilled my sister Jackie, her boyfriend (my awesome friend Alex), and my stepdad, Herby. Herby singled out the girl who had hit us and began a barrage of expletive-laced tongue lashings. Even though he has a terrible back and walks/hobbles with a cane, a spitting-mad 300 lbs. angry stepfather is NOT someone you want to piss off by hitting his son with your vehicle. I, of course, could look into his future and see jail if he continued on this path. I started yelling over his Tazmanian-Devil-spatter: "Dad, calm down! Just calm down or go home because you're only gonna make this situation more difficult!”

Guess what.

He ignored me. As I began repeating myself, the officer that was talking to me began telling my stepdad that if he didn’t calm down he was going to be in a bit of trouble – especially after the difficult-to-discern-through-the-angry-spew threats he was making. Finally, with the officer's and Alex's help, he relaxed from caged bull into seething stepfather.

It's a good thing Alex and Herby both showed up. If it was just Herby, no one would have been able to stop him from actually shoving this girl into her own tailpipe (I mean the Ford's tailpipe; I’m trying to keep this manuscript clean). If it was just Alex, he wouldn't have felt the compulsion to restrain Herby and would have landed himself in jail instead by beating the Ford driver to death. Jackie couldn't have stopped him; she was trying to help me out by calling my worried-sick mother back with the details.

When Jackie finished with my cell, I called Laura (my girlfriend at the time) to let her know my leg was broken and I was going to the hospital, and then I got off the phone before they lifted me onto the stretcher. I tried to help by using my arms and one good leg to lift my body up and slide onto the board. Then they strapped me down.

Every time I was moved, it was excruciating. It was like a little ninja was inside my leg, moving at lightning speed, having the time of his life with a shuriken.

They cut my shirt off in the ambulance.
I glared at the EMT. "I could have gotten that off for you. I liked that shirt."
"No you couldn't have. You're strapped down." He pointed to the straps.
"Good point,” I ceded. “You're not cutting my shorts off, are you?"
He shook his head. Then they removed my remaining shoe. They showed me the one that was on my right foot: the heel had been torn from top to bottom.
I gaped at it. "How did that happen?”

“You tell me."
"I'm guessing it caught on her bumper or something. I'm glad I didn't wear my new sneakers when we left the house. If you still feel like cutting, go nuts on that other shoe. There’s no way I'm wearing these again."

The EMTs took all my vitals and kept checking for a pulse in my foot. I wondered at this; I could move my toes still, so I figured I should be all right.
He noticed me trying to see better despite my inhibited range of motion. "Are you comfortable? I mean, as comfortable as you can be, anyway? Can we do anything for you?"
"Got any whiskey? I could use some of that right about now."

“How old are you?” he asked.

“…Nineteen.” I gave him the most awkward shrug in history from my pinned shoulders.
"Haha... no,” he laughed. “We don’t carry it here, anyway.”
Nevertheless, asking for alcohol quickly became my version of "Are we there yet?" And we all know that NEVER works.

Jackie had followed me into the ambulance and kept checking on me to make sure I was still doing okay. The EMT was saying something about how lucky I am to have a sister like her. Then he told me not to move my head.
I nodded and said "Ok, gotcha."
He repeated himself.
“Sorry,” I said.

This exchange happened again when I tried to look at the devices they were using. After I apologized again, he said, "If you keep moving your head we're going to have to pinch your sister every time you do, and she won't be happy about that."
"Listen, man, you lay a finger on my sister and, broken leg or not, I'll kick your ass."
He looked at Jackie. "You're lucky to have a big brother like that."
I said to him, "Damn right."

She smiled and nodded.
After that, I clenched my teeth and concentrated on not passing out from the pain during the rest of the ride to the hospital.

Finally, we got there, and I was painfully transferred to a hospital bed. There was more stupidity that followed on the part of the hospital, but that's a story for another time.