He's troubled ... but I can save him : The Case of the Mixed Up Lawn Gnomes

There comes a point when a man looks back on his life and tries to justify his existence.
He thinks back about the people he has touched - both literally and figuratively. He tries to weigh the good he's done against the harm he has caused. He wonders whether he truly deserved ...

... Wait. You knew that 'touched literally and figuratively' line was a sex joke, right? Of course you did, Gentle Reader. I was wrong to underestimate you ...

... the gift of life that he was, well, gifted with.

In short - Has he gotten up to enough drunken mischief?

The answer is : No.
Of course not. Never enough.

My philosophy is that we were made in the image of our Creator - who happens to be a drunken ne'er-do-well with an odd sense of humour.

So I present to you the first of a monthly feature : My Drunken Shenanigans.

This is partly intended as a monument to a lifestyle that ain't easy. I'm like the Jesus of drinking - I get loaded so you don't have to wear that lampshade any way but vicariously.
Part of this is just trying to explain myself to my two future children, Blind Lemon and Innocent Bystander (isn't that sweet? A boy and a girl).
Truthfully? Most of this is just bragging.

This Month: Whose Fucking Pink Flamingo Is This?
One night. my friend and I who I will call ... (Neal hates it when I use his real name) ... Slappy drank quite a lot of either tequila or saki. I forget. It was twenty years ago but I think we were in our pretentious saki phase when Ne ,,, umm ... Slappy lived in the Crappiest House in Suburbia.
Slappy didn't even know the people who lived upstairs from him ... let alone the people who lived next door who would eventually call the cops ... but that is a lawn ornament-related story for another day.
We came to the conclusion that neighborhoods ain't what they used to be. Do you know the people who live next door to you? Would you be comfortable having them get your mail while away on vacation? Could you borrow a cup of sugar from them without feeling weird?
I thought not.

The only common trait the residents of the street had was an almost fetishistic love of yard decoration.
So we got to ... for lack of a better word ... thinking -- What if we traded everyone's lawn ornaments?
One garden gnome for one harp-playing cherub here ... One pink flamingo for one lawn jockey there ... I still feel kinda guilty about the Disneyfied Snow White we dropped and broke in the middle of the street. Still, as the saying goes, if you're gonna make an omelete you have to break a few Snow Whites.

We never meant mindless vandalism - we had a higher purpose. We wanted people to knock on their neighbors' door and trade their newly acquired concrete cat for their old ornate birdbath. We wanted street-mates to meet each other. We wanted friendships born under odd circumstances.

Okay, we were just loaded and we thought it would be funny.

I'd like to think we did just a little good that night. I really hope one person on that street made a friend the next morning because two drunken fuckwits were bored.