Wow. I wrote that?
Last night, I got myself a concussion, and the drunken guest who (accidentally) gave it to me as a couch sitter. He told me this really, really sad story. Like ten times.
I know it pretty much by heart now, even though I was smashed and cracked my skull on a tile floor and got kicked out of the bar. Obviously, I was trying to get my pal to shut the hell up by attempting to transcribe his narative when he started to tell the story an eleventh time.
It’s a really sad story, though. Want to hear it?
CC, when he was fifteen, busted his ass to scrounge up the money to buy a Mercury Cougar, a late 60’s early 70’s version. It wasn’t running when he bought it. He spent the best part of a year rebuilding it, pumping every dime he made selling bikes into such things as milled heads, a black laquer paint job, and stainless steel exhaust.
When he turned sixteen, he took his driving test in the Cougar. Then he drove home. On the way, a very elderly man in a giant Oldsmobile station wagon didn’t see him on the road, and gunned his car straight across the street, trying to make a left. He broadsided the Cougar, and I’m not sure about this but I think CC was hospitalized as a result (he’s been hospitalized more than most people).
The insurance assesors gave him the barest minimum fair market value for the vehicle–about what he paid for it when he had to tow it away the first time.
Jeez, man. That still makes my eyes water up a little. My friend has been in a lot more bike wrecks, car wrecks, fights and stabbing incidents, but this incident has obvioulsy marred his heart in a way to which none of the others compare.
Thus, I think the title applies. Let us all bear solemn witness to the Cougar’s Lament.