#ithappenedtome

dallas: why don't you guys own a blender?

He started out by telling me little things about himself. Just random tidbits. Ordinary by any barometer. The old man sitting beside me in the car dealership waiting room just wanted to ‘chat’. I got the feeling it was cathartic for him to share his miscellaneous wit and wisdom. He seemed harmless enough. I even smiled in modest encouragement. It seemed like the polite thing to do.

The customer lounge was filled with the same old boring magazines as every other car waiting room in the world. As an extrovert, I didn’t mind hearing his voluntary ‘confession’. It was bound to be more interesting than a three year old dog-eared copy of ‘Road and Driver’.

The old man had a matter-of-fact, conspiratorial air about him. Frankly it made me feel a little uneasy but I thought I was imagining things. He spoke as if we’d been friends for thirty years, yet I’d never met him before. His eyes remained wide open and he rarely blinked. Each of his new, white-knuckle admissions submerged me into another level of his very disturbing personal life. What started out as run-of-the-mill bland set of his daily occurrences, rapidly devolved into a series of diabolical tales.

I tried to maintain the pretense of neutrality in my expressions but the act was largely unnecessary. The old man would have unloaded his jaw-dropping bombshells to Bozo the clown. He kept dishing out his unbelievable stories in rapid-fire succession. My participation level was minimal and counterproductive. If I dared to request clarification, the interruption distracted him. Finally I learned to just shut up and listen. Like a train wreck, the details were horrifying but I couldn’t seem to look away from the visceral carnage.

He explained early on in the gripping saga that his former spouse was a prostitute. At the time he accepted how she earned her money but he couldn’t bear to witness it in person. Their household rule was that she was to have all business conducted and completed while he was away at work. One day an appointment ran long and he walked in on his wife servicing a customer. His eyes grew wide with menace as he described the fury in his heart. His voice grew noticeably louder. It was chock full of raw emotion. The entire waiting room was in rapt attention as we waited breathlessly as he described what happened next.

The old man mentioned he was a carpenter by trade. As is often the case in crimes of passion, we select an instrument of vengeance that we are intimately familiar with. He grabbed his hammer and proceeded to batter the ‘John’s’ cranium with a series of death blows. He described copious amounts of blood flying with each furious swing.

Try to imagine the stunned reaction of hearing this pulse-pounding story by a roomful of startled housewives waiting on an oil change! The hair on my neck stood on end. The old man seemed kind of oblivious to how his tale was affecting those around him. He was reliving the moment. He was right back there. In his mind he was still swinging that bloody hammer. He’d stood up near the end and was vigorously pantomiming the story.

I didn’t doubt the veracity of his tale for a moment but anyone admitting to attempted murder would surely be in prison, right? Here he was (a free man), regaling his homicidal frenzy to a roomful of captivated folks at the local Ford dealership.