August 29th, 2007 by Jemaleddin Cole

Many years ago, we rented a car and drove out to Wis­con­sin to get mar­ried, which is a story in itself. But an appro­pri­ate story, given the goings-​on in the senate, is about the drive back.

We had been dri­ving all day and into the night. Kellie and Sierra were asleep, and I was finally able to achieve what all men strive for: making good time. My wife and daugh­ter are won­der­ful dri­ving com­pan­ions, and they make the hours fly by with their sweet voices and witty con­ver­sa­tion. But they’re not good for making time.

Some time after 1 in the morn­ing we crossed into Mary­land from Penn­syl­va­nia and I decided that I was going to have to stop for a bath­room break. For those of you unfa­mil­iar with West­ern Mary­land, I should point out that there isn’t much out there but trees and mile mark­ers, and after 1 in the morn­ing, there aren’t even any cars on the road. Spooky dri­ving con­di­tions, and not a lot of places to relieve oneself.

But I was in luck, and pretty soon I pulled into the first rest area in Mary­land, and noticed a few things. First of all, while there were a whole bunch of tractor-​trailers idling near the road, there were no cars in the park­ing lot. The lights were on in restrooms though, so I parked the car, locked the doors, and wan­dered bleary-​eyed into the restroom.

I’ve lov­ingly recre­ated the restroom below:

Now, as you can see, my illus­tra­tion skills are pretty meager, but they’ll suf­fice. The entrance is at the bottom right, and the room was divided into sep­a­rate areas for reliev­ing your­self and wash­ing up.

Anyway, there were two guys that I assumed were truck­ers (by the lack of cars in the park­ing lot) hang­ing out by the sinks fur­thest from the door. I think one was comb­ing his hair, and the other was wash­ing his hands. I was head­ing for a urinal, and as any Amer­i­can man could guess, I headed for number 3.

For the women read­ing this that don’t under­stand why, the first strat­egy of urinal pro­to­col is to pick the urinal that offers other guys the most choices that don’t involve stand­ing next to you. So if I was at number 3, the next log­i­cal choice would be either 4, 6, or 1. Once those were filled, con­sci­en­tious guys would con­sider the toi­lets, or if they were in a hurry, move on to 2 or 5. But you’d feel pretty hinky doing it. So as I was doing my busi­ness, I was shocked to notice that one of the sink-​guys was now unzip­ping in front of number 2.

I use the word notice because, again, as any Amer­i­can man would tell you, my eyes were locked at a point directly in front of me and I was per­ceiv­ing his pres­ence entirely through my periph­eral vision. Even though the guy next to me was clearly in vio­la­tion of the urinal pro­to­col, I was intent on giving him all the pri­vacy I could by exam­in­ing the grout between the bricks.

But as I was trying to decide whether the grout was “sand” or “beige,” my periph­eral vision noticed some­thing else: a great deal of motion from the direc­tion of urinal number 2. And while I was still won­der­ing what size of tiles they had used on the wall, I real­ized that the motion was at groin level.

And now we come to the embar­rass­ing part of the story: I broke urinal pro­to­col. I had to know what was going on with sink-​guy, if only because I’d never had some­thing like this happen. So I peeked.

What I saw was some­thing that will haunt me for­ever. Not only was this guy star­ing straight at me, but he was plea­sur­ing him­self. And not only that, but “himself” was as big as a baby’s arm, and easily the most ter­ri­fy­ing old man penis I’d ever seen. Veiny, ropy, and huge. Worse yet, it was aimed in my direction.

So put your­self in my posi­tion: you’re alone in a bath­room in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, and a creepy old man is aiming him­self at you. I don’t know what you’d do, but I zipped up and ran.

As I’m bolt­ing out the door (and no, I didn’t wash my hands, and yes, I was prob­a­bly piss­ing my pants), I see that Kellie is stand­ing out­side the car smok­ing a cig­a­rette. So I half-​whisper, half-​yell, “Get in the car!”

Now is a good time to tell you some things about my wife. First of all, her favorite movies are horror movies. In fact, almost all the movies she likes have some sort of horror ele­ment. I’d go so far as to say that she’s a horror expert. After we watch a horror movie, Kellie and I go over every­thing that the vic­tims did wrong that led to their deaths: run­ning upstairs when they should be head­ing to the neighbor’s house, ignor­ing the strange sounds coming from the cellar, or worse yet, explor­ing the cellar alone to figure out what’s making the noise. These mis­takes are really all the same thing: not get­ting the hell out of what­ever sit­u­a­tion they’re in. So I have every reason to think that Kellie should be able to rec­og­nize when she’s in a horror movie sit­u­a­tion, and what to do.

But for some reason, whether it was exhaus­tion or con­fu­sion or what­ever, Kellie didn’t get in the car.

“I’m smoking.”

“Get. In. The car!” I hissed.

“I just lit this cigare…”

“GET IN THE FUCK­ING CAR!”

At this point I’m get­ting into the car, and Kellie is look­ing at me like I’m crazy. She doesn’t know that there’s a penis-​wielding old man behind me. So I tell her, “Get in the car, or I’m leav­ing you.”

She gets in the car.

As I’m dri­ving away, Kellie starts ques­tion­ing me: what’s my prob­lem, what’s wrong, why am I dri­ving so fast? And as I tell her the story, the ques­tion becomes, “Why aren’t you going faster?”

We sped off into the dark­ness won­der­ing if some crazy old coot with the world’s largest penis was fol­low­ing us with love on his mind and murder in his heart. Was he on his CB warn­ing other sex-​crazed truck­ers of fresh meat headed their way? I don’t know. Obvi­ously we made it home alive. And we learned some­thing: when one of us says to get in the car, you get in the car.

3 Responses to “Untold Tales, Part 2”

1. What a tale.

   Now if you were Tucker Carl­son you would have grabbed a friend and pounded the old man’s head against the wall.

   Next time you’re in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion you may want to recon­sider your choice of #4. Notice that #6 is closer to the entrance and that a stall is behind you and that is easier to mon­i­tor. It’s the best choice unless you decide to use the sink by the door. But with those guys wash­ing up that’s a road best not taken.

   Or, from now on you can just flash a fake badge when­ever you use a public rest room and announce loudly, “Even an off duty cop has to relieve him­self once in a while. I love to arrest people while I’m off the clock.”

   — skank August 30th, 2007 at 8:31 am #

2. “Man, I hope this .44 magnum doesn’t drag my pants down when I loosen my belt. This nickel-​plated perp-​killer is an amaz­ing gun for blow­ing heads off of shoul­ders, but it is so heavy! Maybe I should have left it in the car with my trigger-​happy part­ner and those 14 rabid Rot­tweil­ers we picked up yes­ter­day after­noon but haven’t had time to feed. Nah, he’s got his hands full with that arse­nal of street-​sweeper shot­guns and surface-​to-​air mis­siles we con­fis­cated from the gang of Russ­ian mob­sters and the Saudi ter­ror­ists they were sell­ing to. It sure was a lot of work taking them down with our bare hands, but after 20 years of inten­sive Ninja train­ing, it wouldn’t be fair to fight a mere 30 guys with weapons. ”

   Yeah, Tucker’s a bad-​ass. He wears that bow-​tie as an excuse to get into fights. Really, the guy is a com­plete bad-​ass. BAD. ASS.

   — Jemaleddin August 30th, 2007 at 9:35 am #

3. See. That’s the spirit! Go with it.

   — skank August 30th, 2007 at 10:35 am #