Thanks DOUG...

PICTURE IT: It's 1994 in small town Kentucky. 2 happy-go-lucky black women are on their way to Nashville, TN.....or are they? If you've ever been a fan of "I Love Lucy", welcome to the modern version of that show starring me and my bestie. Let's call it "We Love Drama!" Never a dull moment with us, but this tale of WHOA gave birth to one of our favorite catch phrases: THANKS DOUG....

I attended college in Nashville, TN in 1990. I use the term "attended" very loosely. What I did in reality was meet friends, join a sorority, move in with my boyfriend...and forget that I was enrolled in college! It happens right?? Unsurprisingly, I found myself heading back to good ol' Kentucky after my parents realized how very much of their money I was wasting (no worries, I graduated much later and now I just waste my own money!). What I DID find surprising, at the time, is that my good ol' Kentucky boyfriend had no plans to follow me back home. I mean....how rude of him! Never one to let a bad relationship go, I held on tighter than Rose held onto Jack when the Titanic sank. Considering that we all know how this ended for Jack, hopefully you can get a sense for where this is going.

Alright, skip ahead to 1994. I'm back home in Kentucky and my rude boyfriend (who refused to follow me back to KY) calls at midnight and tells me he wants me to pick him up from school in Nashville and bring him back to Kentucky. To my 22 year old mind, this sounded perfectly reasonable. He was after all the love of my life and why wouldn't I pack up my car in the middle of the night and drive 4 hours to Nashville just to turn right around and drive 4 hours right back home? Though the reasons why I shouldn't were scattered in front of me like a field of daisies, I simply skipped through the field, slid a daisy behind my ear for effect, and gathered the bestie for one of our epic road trips.

Now, you'd think that at least one of us would have the good sense to give pause and I'll give you a few reasons why. First, this guy was a Class A Jerk. I mean, he was pretty useless in the boyfriend department and the fact that he had no concern for my plan to drive through the middle of the night to collect him should have been the pin in his coffin. Second, my car was crap! I had an old Crown Vic with no turn signals and a host of other issues that a 22 year old young woman would simply find annoying (you know, like the check engine light that refused to go off or that oil thingy....so demanding that car). Third, neither I nor my bestie had valid driver's licenses at the time. This is a fact that I would learn quite by surprise later in this story- but a fact it be! Nevertheless, neither I nor the bestie paused even long enough to figure out if we had enough gas to make it. ROAD TRIP ON!!!

I've spoken a little about my boyfriend at the time, Class A Jerk, but it's time to give a little background on bestie's live-in. His name was Douglas and he was nice enough, but no matter how often or long you sharpened his blade that knife wasn't gonna cut! Doug could not read and could barely write his own name (yes, me and bestie know how to pick them people. Jealous yet??). He worked as a handyman because he actually was quite handy...most of the time. Well, bless Doug's heart, when he found out me and bestie were gonna hit the road to pick up Jerk from Nashville he decided to give my old car a once over. As I had informed him that my turn signal lights were out, he responded that this was an easy fix. This should have been our first indication that we needed to keep him as far as possible from the car but, apparently I just think red flags are pretty so I picked up that flag and waved him on with it! An hour later he tells us that he "thinks" we should be good to go (I can hardly see with all the red flags falling but it's so very pretty). So, at around 1am I and the bestie are off to Nashville....or are we?

As we get in the car to begin our journey we both notice that not only do I NOT have working signal lights, but Douglas has completely blown all the dashboard lights out. THANKS DOUG. We both laugh because we know that we should never have expected him to "fix" anything. Oh well, does that deter us???? Of course not. ROAD TRIP ON!!! We drive approximately 22 miles before the ROAD TRIP is officially OFF. As I look into the rearview mirror, I see the dreaded red and blues flashing. Little did I know at the time that our night would end right there.

As the officer walks up to the window and asks me for my license I ask why I was stopped. "You don't have any tail lights. Didn't you know that?” You have got to be kidding me. As I shake my head, me and bestie both look at each other once again and say "THANKS DOUG" while laughing. The officer is not at all amused and I quickly hand over my license. The officer proceeds to walk back to her car to run my info and as we are waiting my bestie tells me "I hope your license is okay because mine is suspended." Um....that might have been mentioned prior to us getting in the car but as I was planning on driving it wasn't the BIGGEST deal. "No problem" I tell her casually because I'm thinking everything is fine with mine. Mine was most definitely NOT fine.

I see the officer walking back up to the car with her hand near her gun. I'm thinking to myself "well that's not a good sign". Next I hear "Ma'am, can you please step out of the car and place your hands behind you?” My first thought is "NO, no I most certainly cannot!!!” But, that is definitely not the correct response in such a situation and luckily I still have the presence of mind to realize that. I step out and ask what the problem is as I am usually a law-abiding citizen. She informs me that I am driving on a suspended license. I had absolutely no idea and asked for what reason it was suspended. She states that it says "failure to appear" and explains that I probably had a ticket I ignored. As I am properly freaking out she appears to take pity on me and turns to my bestie in the passenger seat. "Look, as long as you have your license on you, I'll let you drive and you guys can go." At this point, I felt time stop. See, I know my bestie. She's as honest as they come and even though all she has to do is say "thank you officer" she is NOT gonna do that. I'm going to jail. I look over at best friend and I see her hands shaking. She looks directly at the officer and says "Um, I THINK it's valid." Dammit....we are not headed to Nashville tonight. God love her and her honesty.

The officer hits the top of the roof and tells her to sit tight. Now, I don't know if a lot of you know this but when an officer hits your roof and tells you to "sit tight", YOU ARE GOING TO JAIL. The officer then walks me to the back of her patrol car and has me sit there while she runs bestie's info. Not 5 minutes later, bestie is sitting right beside me in the back of the car. As we both look at the dead lights on the back of my still running crown vic, we see the officer is pulling something out of the glove box. She holds up a butterfly knife and asks if that is ours. IT IS NOT. Doug must have decided that we needed something to protect ourselves on the road and stashed it for our protection. Again, THANKS DOUG smh. As she returns to us in her patrol car she has also procured a bat from somewhere that he also must have stashed just for us girls. He's a gem, a real gem.

As we are now passengers in the back of a police car headed not to Nashville but the local station for processing, we can't help but laugh hysterically. We just kept thinking of all the ways Doug "helped" us on that early morning road trip. He blew out all the lights on my dashboard, blew out my tail lights, and somehow even managed to stash contraband in the car of 2 black females driving through a country town in Kentucky at 1 am. All we could say is.....THANKS DOUG.

The morning ended surprisingly well. In that small police station we simply sat and watched the movie that was playing on their tv and waited for Doug to pick us up. I got my license issue cleared up and both of us got our love lives straightened out. But 27 years later we still crack up whenever a series of unfortunate events plagues us and utter at the top of our lungs: THANKS DOUG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!