the benefits of walking straight into oncoming traffic

 

A few days went by without hearing from Fanny. I’m sure everything was fine.

By now my head was healed, I got rid of that God-awful hat, and I was checking my mail first three, four, then five times a day, hoping maybe somehow I might run into her. Checking my mail. You know what that meant, right? That meant having to suffer through Salty Hubbard for hours on end. It was a helluva price, but one I was willing to pay if it meant eventually running into Fanny.

According to Salty—oh Lord—according to Salty, there’s a new trend in town and it’s called Froggering.

Froggering is the art of dodging oncoming traffic on any busy freeway, expressway, or thruway, all in an attempt to get from one side to the other, purely for the thrill of it. Sound familiar?

In short, it’s traffic dodging. High-speed, traffic dodging. Salty claims the kids named it after the popular video game of the 1980s.

Dumbass.

Then, Salty went into this whole thing about smoking. Apparently, while smoking cigarettes is out, smoking Smarties is in. That’s right. Seems kids these days have taken to smoking Smarties (the little SweeTARTS) like candies. They simply crush up the tiny candies in their wrappers, open one end, slowly inhale the fine, candy dust, and it comes out looking just like smoke. No incendiary required.

Why? No one really knows. There’s no known high that comes from it. But seeing these kids as they blow Smarties’ smoke rings and even exhale the dust through their nose, one possible explanation might be that they just enjoy simulating cigarettes. Who knows why they do it; they’re teenagers, after all. Some have even been seen snorting the stuff.

Whatever.

Sometimes, however, the most interesting things come from the dullest minds, especially if those minds are simply regurgitating information they’ve taken in somewhere else. This was one of those times.

In this case, it was something Salty said about hand sanitizer that caught my attention. Salty claims that the kids these days are not just rubbing hand sanitizer all over their bodies, they’re drinking it too.

Seems kids, especially teens, have taken to drinking popular brands like Purell and Germ-X because they know something their parents don’t: these germ-fighting liquids are high octane. That’s right. The typical hand-sanitizing gel contains as much as 60-percent ethanol, the same intoxicating chemical also found in wine, beer, even hard liquor. According to experts, drinking one whole bottle of hand sanitizer is the equivalent of five shots of hard liquor.

While all this sounds like fun, acute ethanol intoxication can lead to seizures, cardiac arrest, even land some kids into comas. What will they think of next?

When I wasn’t being cornered by Salty down by the mailboxes, I was hanging outside my door pretending to be waiting for someone. I was. Still, I didn’t see her. Not even once.

And then one day I was standing out on Santa Monica Boulevard, doing my whole agyrophobia thing while watching this homeless guy talking to himself. He seemed to be angry, shouting and flailing his arms about. I thought: this guy must be completely out of his mind. Then he turned, and I could see he had a Bluetooth in his ear.

Bluetooth or not, there are still plenty of crazy people walking the streets these days. For some reason, a lot of them seem to be brandishing machetes. That’s right. In one case, a man in Oakland, California, went on a machete-wielding rampage attacking cars, that is until those same cars started attacking him back, running him over several times until police finally broke it up.

Another man in New Orleans went on a machete-swiping spree at the airport there until police shot him dead. In Manizales, Columbia, a madman with a machete went on a tear through the town square, swinging at everyone and everything in sight before police finally brought him down. Why all the machetes? No one really knows. Perhaps gun control laws really do work, after all.

My favorite crazy tale from the street, however, is the story of the infamous Alhambra, California, lunatic Dennis Fife. This story, by the way, does not involve a machete.

Dennis Fife is something of a legend in Alhambra. Alhambra is located, if you don’t know already, right in the heart of Los Angeles, just a few miles east of downtown and directly south of Pasadena. Alhambra was also home to legendary record producer Phil Spector, who died in prison for the murder of actress and fashion model Lana Clarkson. Spector was as famous for wearing bad wigs and being crazy as he was for making hit records. He was also famous for brandishing a gun. Alhambra is a favorite hangout for all sorts of crazies in Los Angeles, and Fife, along with Spector, is one of the town’s most well-known.

Fife, forty-seven years old, announced that on Oct. 8 he would stand in the doorway of an office building at 2600 Kenilworth Avenue and yell at passing cars all day. The best part was, he didn’t just make an announcement, he held a press conference. Not only is LA the one place where someone would hold a press conference announcing they’re crazy, it’s the one place people would actually show up for it too.

“At approximately 9:30AM on the day in question,” said Fife, “shortly after I finish lunging at dogs, I will proceed to the front steps of the Simmons Building and yell loudly for nine hours. The screaming will be broken by a 15-minute fit of rigid catatonia, most likely in the late afternoon.”

Fife even prepared a list of topics to be covered for the day, like the ace of diamonds, bookshelves, the man trying to kill him, those goddamn bananas, people from St. Louis, and Trapper John MD. Trapper John MD, the TV show from the 80s starring none other than Pernell Roberts, himself. You know, Adam Cartwright from Bonanza.

“I may briefly stray from my agenda to urinate into the revolving door at the building’s entrance,” said Fife, “but, for the most part, I will focus on the task at hand and spend the bulk of the day yelling at the various passing cars.”

While the day-long, scream-a-thon was not limited to any one model vehicle in particular, Fife said he would focus primarily on Volkswagen Beetles, pick-up trucks, and late-1980s Mitsubishi Galants.

To keep his energy up during the event, Fife said he would load up on pasta. Like Neil Young. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese would be his fuel of choice, and he’d have plenty of it so he could throw it into the street as well.

Alhambra police chief George Jaeger, citing past experience, said he believed Fife would be successful in his venture. “When Mr. Fife sets his mind to something, he does it,” said Jaeger. “Whether it’s tearing pages out of a phone book, swallowing metal washers, or selling a discarded Roxette CD to an imaginary friend for $600, every project he undertakes is a bona-fide success. This truly is one focused loon.”

There was nothing quite so exciting going on here today, however. This homeless guy currently screaming into his Bluetooth, whom I’d seen I don’t know how many times before, really didn’t have much to say. There was no real entertainment value to his rantings at all. As far as I was concerned, he might as well go back to Kansas, or Oklahoma, or whichever BFE place he came from. These kind of lowbrow antics might play well in the sticks, but here in La La Land they get about as much traction as a triple homicide. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that George Bush wasn’t even president anymore.

That was enough of that, and I was about to finally give up on crossing Santa Monica Boulevard and head home when I heard something. It sounded like someone calling my name.

I looked around. It was Fanny. She was standing across the street, waving to me. No woman ever waved to me before, much less shouted out my name.

I waved back and started crossing the street without even looking at all. Honest mistake, but literally in the blink of an eye there was a car bearing down on me. I hate to admit it, but three steps ago would have been a good time for my agyrophobia to kick in.

Thing is, when you’ve got a woman on your mind, nothing else gets through. And in the time I realized that, it was too late. It was just instinct for me to roll into a ball like some doodle bug. The bad thing was, in doing so I lowered my head right to the same height as that car’s bumper. Dumb, and dumber.

Next thing I knew, there was the sound of gunfire. No gunfire. It was TJ. He was standing over me, saying “Dude! WTF? I almost killed you.” It’s the last thing I remember.