George Jones

George Jones died today evidently. When I was 14 my Twin City team was in Blacksburg, VA for a soccer tournament. The hotel where we stayed was filled with other teams from all over the Southeast...including girls teams. Some of these young women had caught the attention of myself and Martin Hunt who I was rooming with. Needless to say, there was lots of posturing, giggling and parking lot shenanigans...much to the chagrin of the father of the main girl I had set my sights on. He let us know, in no uncertain terms, that he would bash our faces in if we came around to their side of the motel again. This directive was overruled in my brain by raging boy/man hormones, so about 30 minutes later Martin and I found ourselves in a mad, panicked full sprint through the parking lot, chased by this man. I ended up in the motel lounge...probably pale, out of breath and babbling something about having my face bashed in. Martin was nowhere to be found. Long story short, two hefty male bar patrons escorted me back to my room. En route we encountered the face basher who was scraped up and soaking wet from head to toe. During the chase his portly, middle age-yness had caught up with him and he'd tripped and fallen head first into a mud puddle. I found this rather amusing but was still so terrified by this raging man that I dare not show it. The bar patrons had to physically restrain him from getting to me and they personally assured him that if he touched me he'd have to answer to them. (Note: this was the second time I'd been rescued from certain pummeling by strangers...see my Thunderbirds blog post) His anger then turned to a weird, whimpering southern whine as his focus shifted to his ballcap, which he blamed me for ruining. He held it up for us to see, I swear I could almost see his eyes well up. It simply read, "George Jones".