My Friday the 13th

People are funny when you get the rawness of them. That pain. That oddity. Those things which make us whole or nearly rip us apart.

Friday the 13th is something I would have never considered as bizarre as it ended up being yesterday. Everything coming together, tearing open, or just at a stand-still where you stand by and shake your head.

It was like The Hangover but hopefully without the greedy attempt at a sequel.

I've never been one for superstition. The idea that something happens because you do a specific thing or avoid another never has spoken to me. I didn't shave and kept a beard from September, 2010 to January, 2011 in order to help a football team win (which they did with an incredible 11 game win streak and got a ring out of the deal). But as far as anything else, I can't believe that certain things make strange stuff happening.

But after yesterday, I am beginning to believe otherwise.

Friday the 13th, baby, it's scary.

I ate a good Bison ribeye steak at the casino, using a fifty dollar gift card. The spoils of war after finishing second in the casino's trivia contest on Taco Tuesday. I was the only entrant with one person who finished in the top 3. Everyone else had 4-6 team members. Yes, my team name of Slippery Pickles rides onto glory next week for another chance at another gift certificate.

While eating the fine steak, I had a crazy person sit down, drink 3 shots and a beer in 10 minutes, then accuse me of being a republican who hated unions. I was shocked by this, and then the guy called me a 'dick' and wished cancer on me. After the bartender 86'd him, the guy stood outside the bar and eyed me. Security sent him up to his hotel room. He came down a few minutes later with nothing on but his boxer shorts.

Yes, Friday the 13th was getting started.

I spent some time with friends, got to meet some new people, and everything seemed to calm down.

I took a friend home after his show, listening to him lay out the entire comic book universe in terms of what it means. That still doesn't make Thor a good movie, although my friend liked the message that 'all you want to do is go home.' He broke down different scenarios what Captain America and Spiderman meant as we ate Jack-In-The-Box (no one ordered extra cheese so they didn't screw up our order or spit in our food, which may have happened last week).

I said to him, "If you're going to have cross-over Avengers stuff, then make the characters you cross over interesting or make them have a point in film that I am watching now. Not just twelve movies down the line."

The Friday the 13th adventure only gets weirder from there.

I was heading back to town when I had a gold car whip around me, race up to the stop light. I stopped behind the car, I saw that the trunk was wide open, bouncing up and down. I looked closer, I noticed that there was a hole through the back seat, large enough for someone to crawl through.

I stopped by one of the bars on Division while the gold car kept riding on and saw two bicycle cops, told them what I had witnessed, and tried to give them the license plate because the vehicle was heading down Division in Spokane (longest straight street there is, goes for a few miles).

One of the cops leaned into me, interested, asked "was he black?"

My response: "I didn't see."

The cops shrugged it off, barely took the license plate, said there was nothing they could do until it was reported stolen.

My response: "But he's going down the longest street in Spokane. You could use a radio, call another patrol car a few blocks down, stop him and check. There has to be SOME reason why the trunk door is wide open and there is a hole PUNCHED through it."

The cops told me to calm down before I got myself in trouble.

Yes, welcome to Spokane, city where it's only important if the cops can shoot you or you happen to be black.

Racism is interesting, because it is one of the few things in which if you experience first hand, you deny. Much like a UFO sighting.

Because you can't believe that something that blatant can happen.

With the city of Spokane, everything is alleged. Because the city is similar to Scientology. The facts are what they allegedly make them out to be.

The alleged city of Spokane has a ton of alleged cops who allegedly like to use their weapons.

Last week, they shot a pig running loose in the Spokane Valley.

I guess they only get half a donut for that, instead of the preacher Creach who they allegedly shot last summer while they sat in an unmarked police car in his private parking lot. Because, I guess, when you're allegedly doing paperwork there is no need to allegedly find out why a person is coming up to your car.

Spokane has the incident with Shonto Pete, who allegedly was blasted by a cop outside of a gay bar in town, allegedly for walking up to the patrol car.

There are allegedly a bunch of other innocent victims who have been gunned down by the cops, allegedly.

This allegedly includes a retarded man who wasn't do anything wrong, who bought a Snickers bar and a Sprite. Two girls decided the retarded man was dangerous, and called the police. The cop allegedly walked up behind the retarded man and blasted him.

Welcome to Spokane. And I didn't want to be next on a slab so I left the cops and continued my Friday the 13th without taking two to the chest.

After that, I saw a friend working the door at a bar that I've been to a 1,000 times in the last year, but I've never seen him there.

I hadn't seem him since I left college in 2005. He had dropped off the face of the planet in terms of no internet, no phone, no electricity. He lives in a cabin somewhere that he accesses by mountain bike, hiding from child support enforcement and a witch of an ex-wife who would scream at me when I would answer our shared phone in our dorm room.

It was a good time seeing him, but interesting how you can have such separation of time between two people but act as if nothing has changed.

The key is that you are growing as a person.

Doesn't matter if you are 15, 25, 30, 35 or 93. The moment you start growing, you begin to die.

I had a friend who passed away who was 87 on Thursday the 12th. But I was informed of his death on Friday the 13th. He was a funny guy who I knew from my work, would always talk to me about life and what was going on. He knew himself above all else and was one of those people who made me want to improve myself as a person. I will always remember his laugh which seems to carry on in my mind. Good stuff from a good man.

I had talked to him last week and thought he was just getting old. The moments between us on the phone were shorter. When he and I saw each other last fall, the closer we got to winter, his memory got dimmer, his speech slower. You don't realize how much time you have with a person until they are gone. Everything fades quick at the final moment, unless you are around them 24/7.

It was sad in some respects, but the man appeared to accomplish every goal he had. I remember him telling me last summer that 'if I don't do things when I have the chance, I worry I'll be too old by the time I get around to wanting to do them again.'

Damn good advice. Even for the people who don't like it when I refer to them in the blog.