April 23, 2007

"I walk outside to find Rusty with a girl..."

Rusty and Chris went to high school with my husband Dave. They've become quite good friends of mine as well, but friends or not, you are not safe from some sort of revenge if you fuck up royally.

Rusty and Chris are huge screw-ups when it comes to girls.

Chris is always honest and up-front with his intentions when it comes to the ladies. However, that is why in the two years that I've known him, he has not had a girlfriend. He has had plenty a sordid one night stand, but I believe that is because of the laws of probability. If you hit on every girl you see in one night, your chances are much better than if you hit on just three.

Rusty is one of those guys who was born good-looking, because he's always been good-looking he's relied on this for getting himself into and out of sticky situations. Let's just say he doesn't use his brain much and when you're blue-eyed, blond longish-haired, of fairly good physique and all-around handsome, you don't need to rely on charm, intelligence and sincerity.

So Chris and Rusty are visiting us for a week. They're in new surroundings in our pretty small, country town. The perfect setting for hitting the nightclub scene and picking up chicks. We give the boys one rule and one rule alone: no bringing home girls.

Maybe this sounds harsh, but it's not. We live in a small town, I'm a journalist at the local paper and my husband is a high school teacher. When you meet people here, they either know my name, or they're a student—or related to a student—who knows my husband. This isn't the best company you want to have at the house if say you want to smoke a "university cigarette" or if one of your friends wants to have a one-night stand with said company.

So the boys go out to hit the town and later into the night a taxi pulls up out front. Chris stumbles drunkenly into the house bearing gifts: a cocktail tray, two ash trays and a cue ball from a billiard table. (Something else about Chris, he's an excellent thief.) The cocktail tray and ash trays will come in handy, so we thank him and wonder where Rusty is. Chris goes quiet and somber, he shakes his head and nods that Rusty’s outside, and then exits to the living room to fall asleep on the couch.

I walk outside to find Rusty with a girl. Not any girl, but a double-whammy girl: what I mean by this is that she is the newest and youngest journalist in my newsroom, and also her younger sister is a student at my husband's school. It was almost as if he’d arranged this, but if you know Rusty, you'd know that this would have been impossible. He's just not that quick on the uptake.

Rusty is standing in the yard with the girl and they're both pretty drunk. Then Rusty asks, "Hey Ange, can Georgia stay over?" Alright, how am I supposed to say no in this situation? Georgia is standing right there, and if I said no she would have to walk a serious distance in the middle of canefields to get home. I lividly mumble, "Sure," and walk back to the house, slam the screen door, and relay the message to Chris and Dave, who are equally livid.

So Georgia stays the night. The whole painful 16 hours she was in our house, she didn't breathe one word to any of us except Rusty. They were in the guest room for most of that 16 hours, but there were moments that she could have said “Good morning,” (on the way to the toilet) or “Thanks for the coffee,” (when Rusty made her a cappucino) but no, she said not one word. Not even, “Thanks for letting me stay,” when she left.

Being so angry with both them both, I decided to act aloof and silent. At work I just ignored Georgia, and since Rusty did eventually go home it was easy to ignore him as well. But then one day we visited Rusty and the story got worse: turns out he was still talking to Georgia and she was even planning to visit him. Meanwhile, he was also dating another girl who had a kid. We were at his house, sitting outside drinking beers, and he relayed the message so easily, without any guilt, that I just filled up with anger. He had to pay for this somehow.

I excused myself from the group and let myself into Rusty's house. I went straight for the kitchen, to his pantry and grabbed a mostly full box of cereal. I then found a pair of scissors in a drawer and got my revenge.

First I made sure the top lid was securely closed and I held the box of cereal upside-down. I then carefully opened the bottom of the box and cut a clean horizontal line in the plastic packaging that holds the cereal. I then closed the bottom of the box, but did not seal it in anyway, just placed it back in the pantry.

When he picked up the cereal the box would empty its contents onto the kitchen floor.

I know this little act of karma doesn't seem too involved or cruel—but it did allow me to forget about Rusty's transgressions. Immediately, in fact. This trick works like a charm and I suggest you try it next time you need to deliver some revenge of your own!


Contributed by Angela Wick


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