You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
An 81 year old man killing a 94 year old man.
That’s 175 years of dudes killing or being killed.
You would think after 175 years of life these two guys would have learned something.
After 175 years of living on planet Earth, living through wars and traffic accidents and children being born, you would think that these two guys could have learned to get along. After 175 years of indigestion, and thinning hair, and wives who forget to love you, you think these two old men would have figured out how to turn the other cheek. You would think after this much time, after psoriasis of the liver and degenerative bone decay and uncontrollable flatulence, these two men would have learned something that could have prevented one of them from picking up a metal pole and beating the other one in the head.
YOU THINK?
What did the 94 year old do to provoke the 81 year old? Did he cheat with the other man’s wife? Did he borrow his toe nail clippers without permission? Perhaps he brushed his underarms with the other guy’s toothbrush?
Not like it matters, but the police report indicates the older dude was singing too loudly.
You heard right. Singing too loudly. What is this Ozz-Fest?
Come on, man. How loud can a 94 year old sing? Most 94 year olds have trouble getting oxygen to enter their lungs.
Wheezing too loudly? I could picture that. But singing? Get real!
The police report indicates the two men were roommates at a Southern California Rehab center.
William Leo McDougall and Manh Van Nguyen were both recovering from hip surgery.
Hip Surgery. Not a case of incontinence. They were recovering from hip surgery. Who has time to kill when they are recovering from hip surgery?
Apparently, Leo “Screw Loose” McDougall does. According to the police, he was angered by Nguyen’s singing in Vietnamese.
This sounds like a Twinkie Defense to me.
I don’t know if McDougall had a flash back to a rice patty in Nam or what, but he allegedly grabbed a metal rod from a closet and struck his roommate several times over the head.
When you hit a 94 year old man in the head with a metal pole it sounds like a cantaloupe hitting a marble floor.
THUD.
If I killed a roommate every time he sang a Vietnamese folk song, I’d be in the gray bar myself looking at multiple life sentences.
I could have killed. It would have been easy. My college roommates were brain damaged mongrels who did things that don’t even make sense, but make a man want to wield a shower curtain.
Schultz and Geroux AKA the Scarff Street Derelicts.
These two college roommates barely had a brain cell between them. Leaving them alone for any amount of time was a felony waiting to happen.
I remember coming home one night and not being able to open the door.
What I felt was probably a lot like a Vietnamese folk song.
The door would barely open because of all the glass and debris piled behind it.
Oh oh, I thought to myself, as I walked in, my feet crunching on broken items.
Imagine every beer mirror broken. Every piece of furniture, destroyed. Legs of couches sawed off. Walls with holes punched in them. Windows cracked. Beer bottles broken and turned upside down.
It looked like a tsunami roared through the apartment, but I knew better.
“Burglars,” my roommate Schultzy said, his eyes red from a night of wild debauchery.
I looked at Schultz and laughed. His hair looked like a checker board. In some places it was long and straggly. In other places, it was cut to the skull, in some places so close, blood was oozing from his scalp.
I looked to the counter and saw a dull steak knife.
“You cut your hair with a steak knife didn’t you?”
Schultz burst out laughing.
“How can you tell?”
“What happened here?” I said, trying to control my rage.
“Burglars,” my other roommate, Geroux said. His hair was also cut into a checker board pattern.
I leaned over to pick up a shards of broken glass.
“Yeah, they broke everything,” Schultz stammered.
“The burglars broke everything huh? So why is the stereo still working? why didn’t they steal that?”
Schultz rubbed his checker board hair with an open palm and cast a blank stare at the holes in the walls.
“That’s a good question. I would be asking that question if i was you too.”
“Geroux. You want to offer up an explanation for this?”
“Schultz threw a beer at me,” Geroux whined. “It hit your beer mirror. It broke. then all hell broke loose.”
“That simple?”
“That simple,” Schultz says.
And so it goes. I’ve had my share of roommate issues and I have yet to kill anyone.
Vietnamese Folk Music. Steak Knife Hair Cuts. Sawed off furniture. It doesn’t matter.
It’s too late for 2 old men in a rehab hospital, but it’s not too late for you to realize that discretion is the better part of valor.
And that is crazy!