The Hookers Gave Me Some Disease

Hello, Wifers.

I am sick.  I suppose one should assume that one will pick up some kind of disease at a hooker convention, but still, I was taken off guard.  I am now hacking up a lung regularly, much to the great joy of my co-workers and dining companions.

So last Friday morning I packed up all of my hooker equipment (rug hooking, for the newer readers) and set off in the swagga wagon for Lenexa, Kansas.  It is a seven hour trip from my house to Hooker Heaven, and while I managed to have a mostly uneventful trip weather-wise, I did have one stereotypical Missouri moment.  I need to fill up the tank and get a Diet Coke, so I took the next exit that had a gas station.  Oddly, most of the pumps had a bag over the handle, or a tag on it, but I finally found a pump that seemed to be operable.  I put it in and got back in the van to wait.  I few minutes later, I look out of the window, and the pump says I've only registered about $2.15 of gas in the tank, so at $3.26 a gallon, something has gone awry.  I look up, and there is gas flowing from the top of the hose at the very top of the filling station area, so there is gasoline running down the hose and onto the ground. 

My first thought was "I'm gonna blow this mother sky high."

But then I realized most of the gas had soaked into the snowbank around the pumps, so maybe I had a chance.  I got out of the van, replaced the pump handle, and moved the van.  I walked into the station to tell someone about the flammable liquids pooling around the ground around their gas station.  I looked around the room, and realized something terrible had happened in this town.  I'm going to start a charitable foundation for these people.  I'm going to go all Erin Brokovich on their asses, because they had obviously grown up on a toxic waste dump of some kind.

• Midget?  Check.
• No one with more than 12 teeth?  Check.
• Humpback? Check.
• Mullet as predominant hairstyle?  Check.
• Everyone sitting at a table and smoking eating Funyuns? Check.
• The strains of Deliverance playing in the background?   That might have been my head.

I said, "Hey, the gas is pouring out of the top of the pump onto the ground!"  They all slowly look at me, and the young gal/guy with the mullet said, "Huh."  I said, "So....you might want to shut it down or something."  And they said, "Huh."  And I said, "Okay then...thanks..." and backed slowly out of the door while they all sat and watched me until I pealed the hell out of there.

At the hooker convention, I made a big mistake - I wore black pants at a place where hooker wool was everywhere.  You heard me.  I got Hooker Wool all over my pants.  There are guys who would pay big money for that on the internet.  I made new hooker friends, drove home in seven hours and finished my last hour of the trip on the interstate in freezing drizzle and starting to hack my lungs out.

So I've just dosed on Nyquil for the third night in a row, I might have to join a twelve-step program to quit.  Particularly when I stayed up to watch the Oscars, and then had a Nyquil-induced dream about Colin Firth sending me a tool kit in the mail (for the hooker equipment) and asking me to run away with him, but I told him as much as I would love to, REALLY, he had a lovely Italian/Spanish-type wife and I had Current Husband, and it wasn't meant to be.  I'm hoping for similar Nyquil results tonight.  Wish me luck.