I yelled for help for almost ten minutes before finally getting the attention of a young couple making their way to their car in the back of the parking lot.
"HEY! Hey, can you guys help me? Please?"
"What are you doing up there?" the man yelled, standing at a safe distance. I can't say that I blame him for keeping some space between us—we'd only just met, and here I was suspended on a twelve-foot fence, ensnared in barbed wire and bleeding profusely. He had little to fear, though; all I wanted was to get the fuck down.
"I'm trapped. I'm, uh, I'm hurt pretty bad. I really need help. Can you go get someone? Please?"
"Yeah, um . . ."
He stood there in complete disbelief at the scene he had stumbled upon. Here was a nice, upstanding young man taking his best girl out for a nice meal out at Chili's. He probably figured a few hours of dull conversation and some southwestern egg rolls would get him at least a hummer that evening, possibly even laid. I am certain that the last thing he expected—or wanted—to see right then was me caught on the fence begging for help. Wide-eyed and completely in shock, he stood there, utterly useless. The girl by his side finally chimed in. "What are you doing up there?"
"It's a long story. Please, I'm bleeding badly here." I did not feel like going through the entire story with them, and seeing as how my white oxford shirt and khaki pants had become a wet crimson due to various leaks around my body, surely any rational human being would cease asking questions and run—right away—to get some assistance. These guys, however, needed some coaching.
"Does it matter?" I asked. "Can you just go get the manager or somebody? Please?"
Nothing. No response at all. The immediacy of the situation began to become more and more apparent as the barbs from the wire dug deeper and deeper into my thigh and calf. It was one hell of a predicament I had gotten myself into.
I had been working for tips making balloon animals in restaurants for almost nine months at that point. Being a balloon twister was an extremely fun job, one of my absolute favorites i've ever had. The job was perfect for that time in my life. I couldn't do it now, of course—it's fine for an eighteen-year-old working his way through college, but it's extremely creepy when full-grown adults do it. I worked from six P.M, until ten on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights and made enough to pay for college and my extremely demanding girlfriend at the time, Mandy.
In case it hasn't been clear until now, this chick was a real masterwork. She made insane claims on both my time and my money, insisting on spending every waking moment with me at the various shopping malls and department stores scattered around Georgia. That's what made the balloon job so nice—I had no setup or cleanup duties, so getting out on time was no problem whatsoever, which meant I didn't have to hear her complain about my working late. And the customers were genuinely nice to me, which I sincerely needed at that point given the caliber of girl I was dating.
The only downside to the job was the fact that sometimes very large parties with a ton of kids would come into the restaurant and demand to have me at their table the entire time. This wouldn't be so bad if they compensated me for all of my time there, since I might be at their table for an hour or more. These folks meant well, but as a group, they usually tipped about the same as one person at one table, somewhere around three to five bucks. They didn't understand that making giraffes and swords for twenty-five screaming kids who were popping the balloons as soon as they got them in their grubby little paws and demanding replacements for over an hour of my night was worth more than three lousy dollars. I quickly learned to make my way to the other side of the restaurant once I saw a group like that enter the building.
That night there happened to be a group of about fifty—only half of whom were adults—who wandered in at about 9:55 P.M. I had wanted to leave right on time that evening due to the fact that the hot new must-see movie of the summer, Titanic, had just opened, and Mandy was demanding that we see it that night.
Her: All of my friends have seen it! I'm the only one who hasn't!
Me: Two strangers meet and fall in love on the Titanic? It looks pretty stupid.
Her: Well, I think it's sweet. I want to see how they meet and how they fall in love! I bet it's romantic!"
Me: I don't mean to spoil it for you, but in the end, the boat sinks.
Her: Oh, shut up. I don't know what I'm going to do if we don't see it this weekend!
Me: Your heart will go on.
Her: What?
Me: Nothing.
Missing Titanic meant putting up with Mandy's shit. Doing balloons for these kids definitely meant missing Titanic. This logical process brought me to a very clear conclusion.
I peered from across the restaurant at the group. I could see the adults pointing at the various tables I had already visited, telling the children that balloons in the shape of a puppy or kitty cat would soon be theirs.
"Like hell they will be," I said to myself. There was no way I was about to get shanghaied by this group of wide-eyed children and have to face the wrath of Mandy. I knew it would be impossible for me to make it through that horde of demanding six-to-ten-year-olds without having to explain to them that I was leaving for the evening and didn't have time to make them balloons, subsequently becoming a gigantic bastard in the tales they would tell when they got older, and forcing them into a depraved psychosis where they took out a Kmart with homemade fertilizer bombs or beat senior citizens with baseball bats.
"There are only three other exits besides the front—the back exit and the two fire exits—but those have alarms on them," Mike explained to me. He had recently started working there as a server to make a few extra dollars on the weekends, and in his usual Eagle Scout way, he had mapped out the entire place in case of a fire or a hostage situation.
"Ooh, the back exit. That sounds promising," I replied.
"I don't think you can leave that way. The back gate is locked."
"So? Go unlock it."
"Dude, I don't have the key."
"Who does?"
"Eric."
I was screwed.
Eric was the manager of Chili's. Eric loved the attention that the balloons brought to his restaurant, but he hated me and the other balloon twisters with a passion. He had tried several times to teach his waitstaff how to make balloon animals, and he'd asked the balloon service to discontinue my services once he thought he had it all figured out. He called me the next week when a regular customer's child cried her eyes out due to the waiter's inability to craft a fire engine with an extending ladder, and I was back the next weekend as the balloon expert at Chili's.
"Can't you get the key from Eric?" I asked.
"Heh. You try."
I knew that was impossible. Eric wouldn't help me if his life depended on it. Alas, I had no other option. Humbly, I approached Eric and began to beg for release.
"Hey, Eric, open the back gate for me," I demanded.
"Why do you need me to do that?"
"I need to get out of here."
"Go out of the front exit, like a normal human being," he replied.
"I can't. It's completely packed with demanding children and parents who won't take no for an answer. I don't have time to make two hundred balloon animals. I need to go, like, now."
He sighed. "What the hell am I paying you guys for? You're supposed to entertain my customers. All of my customers, even the demanding children."
"My agreement is to stay until ten. It's ten-oh-one. I'm done."
He sighed. "God, you're lazy."
"Fine, I agree with you, I'm lazy," I said. "I also gotta go. Will you open the gate or not?"
He gave me a stern look that implied I should never ever ask him for any favors ever again. "Nope. That gate opens only after-hours. You have to go out the front."
That was simply not an option. I couldn't face those kids and deny them the pleasure of a giraffe or unicorn to their faces. I was much better at slinking out and making them sad by not being there than I was at rejecting their innocent pleas for a pirate hat or motorcycle.
I waited until Eric went into the front of the store to sneak through the kitchen and out the back door leading to the cage, an enclosure housing the garbage bins and grease traps, formed by the building wall and three sides of twelve-foot-high chain-link fence with three layers of barbed wire at the top that were angled outward to prevent someone from climbing in from the outside.
I surveyed the area—the dumpsters were far too large and heavy to push over to the fence, and there were no other stepping stools. My only recourse was to scale the fence and bound up and over the barbed wire, falling a mere fourteen feet to the other side. Compared to the prospect of twenty-five angry children and a very angry Mandy, it seemed like a cakewalk.
"It's not that far to the ground. The fence is really easy to climb. This will be nothing," I said aloud, trying my best to bolster my confidence. I extended my arms and wrapped my fingers around a section of chain links, then placed my right foot in one of the many holes in the fence and propelled myself up. In hindsight, I have to say that my brain hated my body and wanted it to die. That is the only explanation I have for making the decision to try to exit the premises this way.
I scaled the fence in pretty short order. Once I got to the top, I balanced myself on the precipice of the barrier and began the task of moving my feet past the barbed wire. My right hand was planted firmly on one of the support beams that were used to angle the barbed wire outward from the fence; my right foot was posted in one of the uppermost holes in the fence; my body faced down and almost parallel to the ground. I got my left foot over pretty easily. My right took a great deal more effort, as I was supporting myself almost completely with my upper body.
My right shoelace was dangling a bit and snagged on the second tier of barbed wire. I tugged a bit to free it, to no avail. I then jerked hard in an effort to dislodge it from the barb, which sent my right leg up and over the barbed wire. In the process, I lost my balance and landed almost full-bodied on the top of the fence. Gravity then kicked in, sliding me down the angled face created by the layers of barbed wire, back toward the inside of the cage.
Instinctively, I rolled to regain my balance, which thrust me toward the outside of the cage. In the process, my shirt and pants became tangled in the barbs. As I struggled to keep from falling, I reached out and grabbed the barbed wire with my left hand, impaling it. Gravity, all the while, has been undaunted in its task to bring me plummeting to the concrete below. I kicked my left foot back and caught myself in between the topmost and second layers of wire, wrapping my leg almost completely around the second layer and stopping my fall but firmly securing myself in its grasp.
With the weight of my right leg dangling over the wire, my body shifted that direction, leaving my left foot hung in the wire. I began to fall outside of the cage and was saved from dashing myself on the asphalt by the stinging barbs of wire wrapped tightly around my left leg.
My left hand had been ripped open by the barb that had burrowed into it when I began slipping. My abdomen was cut pretty deeply from rolling from my belly to my back on the barbed wire while trying to catch myself, and my leg was in shambles from being tangled up in the wire. I just hung there upside down, caught by one leg on the fence behind Chili's, clothes torn to shreds, and bleeding from several open wounds. This brings us back to the adorable yet moronic couple happening upon and subsequently staring at my limp and helpless form dangling to and fro.
Struggling to make sense of the fact that they stood there motionless, watching someone in mortal peril begging for their assistance, I finally lost my temper. "Hey!" I yelled. "Are you going to help or not?"
I guess it's not proper etiquette to shout at total strangers when soliciting help from them, especially when you are entangled in the most notorious anti-theft measure in the world and bleeding profusely. The guy decided against running into the restaurant to get help and instead pulled out his cell phone and dialed what I could only assume was 911. All I could hear of the following conversation was on our end. He was saying, "Some lunatic . . . barbed wire . . . Chili's . . . bleeding . . . angry . . . PROBABLY A THIEF." He listened for a moment, asked the person on the other end of the line to hold on, looked up at me, and yelled, "The police are on their way. Don't move."
I sighed. "Ha, ha, very funny. Where the hell am I going to go?"
He thought that over, then quickly brought the phone back to his ear, repeating to the operator on the other end exactly what I had said. I imagine she was probably coaching him on how to handle this situation as he ushered his woman toward their car and told her, "Wait here, I'll handle it." He listened to the next set of instructions, nodding periodically in response to whatever advice the operator was giving. I wanted to shout to him that the person he was talking to probably couldn't hear the nuts rattling inside his skull when he nodded, and that he would need to speak up a bit, but at that point, the world was turning purple and I was finding it harder and harder to pay attention to anything at all.
Time passed. Exactly how much, I am not sure, because I started slipping in and out of consciousness. Just as I settled into the inky blackness that surrounded and enveloped me, a very shrill wake-up call brought me to full attention. Three police cars, an ambulance, and a fire truck roared down the street and past my field of vision. I could see the red and blue lights reflecting on the trees and walls behind the building; I watched as the perspective of the lights shifted in response to the angles of the restaurant until they appeared directly in front of me. Several uniformed officers hopped out of their vehicles, guns drawn and trained on me. "Police! Don't move!"
This was fantastic. I stopped struggling so I could lift my head and see what was going on, then went limp and let my arms dangle, squinting against the bright spotlight. I thought, The only thing that could possibly suck more than this would be if it were in front of a whole lot of people who had exited the restaurant to investigate the goings-on outside of the fine eating establishment . . . Well, of all the luck. There they are now.
A huge crowd had formed to watch. There I hung and bled, spotlighted by the police and held at gunpoint. Amid the murmurs and gasps of my adoring public, I could hear a voice ringing true and loud—Mike was making his way forward to explain everything.
"Hey! This guy isn't a criminal, he's a balloon guy! Let me explain it to you! He works here!"
Eric shouted, "He does not work here! He's a contractor!"
Both Eric and Mike made their way to the police officers holding me at bay, because at any moment, I might sprout wings and fly away. A bit of conversation ensued, the result of which found the fire department on a ladder cutting me out of the barbed wire to the applause of the onlookers and the ambulance carting me off to the emergency room.
I wouldn't make it to see Titanic that night. And Mandy was so angry about that fact, she didn't even go with me to the emergency room. I suspect the rage she felt over missing the movie event of that summer contributed to her accustations of my homosexuality to my parents months later.
I was pretty bruised where my leg had been bound by the wire, and there were a few cuts here and there. The cuts on my left hand, inner left thigh, and abdomen were especially deep and required stitches—thirty-seven in all—each wound leaving a permanent reminder of exactly how stupid I am.
Explaining the entire scenario to the doctor stitching me up was a real pleasure. He had to stop the suturing several times as he broke out in hysterics at various parts of my tale. He eventually summoned several nurses standing near the main station outside of the room. "Hey! You guys gotta come hear this!" he exclaimed, asking me to restart my story once they'd entered the room.
Within a few minutes, I became the hit of the ER. Nurses and doctors showed up in pairs, then groups, then flocks to hear the verbal reenactment. I must have told and retold the story at least twelve times that evening. I was embarrassed at first but then grew comfortable with telling the tale to the ever growing audience, knowing that my options were to either relate the story to them directly or let them hear a butchered secondhand account over a carton of milk and a cup of Jell-O in the staff cafeteria.
I didn't know until that day, but some doctors keep a running bet with their colleagues over what will be the oddest story each week. My actions had won my physician fifty bucks in the pool.
"Glad I could be of service, Doc. How about kicking a little of that my way, seeing as how balloon-animal making doesn't come with benefits?"
"Heh," he replied, then walked out of the door.
I instantly went from making a little over one hundred dollars that night, constructing parakeets and pandas out of colored latex, to spending half a grand on my deductible for the emergency room visit—all because I didn't have the stones to disappoint a bunch of kids or stand up to my bitch of a girlfriend. Oh, sneaking out was fine and dandy—disappointing people without having to look them in the eye is no problem whatsoever. After all, I had been doing it to my parents for years. However, place a puddle-eyed second-grader hoping for a red and blue balloon ninja in front of me, or a psycho girlfriend, and instantly, I become a weak-willed jellyfish.
Mandy and I didn't get to see Titanic until the following weekend, and the entire time, she reminded me of how stupid I was for getting into the mess I'd gotten into.
Her: See? This is the kind of crap you pull that ruins things for us! I just wanted us to have a nice night out!
Me: I was climbing that fence for you, you silly bitch.
Her: What did you just say?
Me: Nothing.