Cheese Cubes and firearms

This is song three of my 323-part series.

Song: I Shot the Sheriff

Artist: Eric Clapton

"It wasn't supposed to end like this man," Roger said sitting across from his lawyer for the first time, dressed in his prison uniform. "I just wanted to go get some cheese cubes."

"Roger, why don't you just tell me what happened," said Stan. "Start from the beginning."

Better than Wal-Mart

"Well, it all started 28 years ago when I was just a gleam in my parents' eye. They were high school sweethearts. She was a cheerleader, prom queen and third-runner up for captain of the debate team. He was from the wrong side of town. You know, the side where there wasn't a Target nearby and you had to drive 15 minutes to get there, but there was a Wal-Mart close, but everyone knows that Target is way cooler than Wal-Mart so you made the trip even though you passed the Wal-Mart on your way, but you didn't care, man, you didn't care. You knew that shopping at Target said something about you. You weren't sure what, but you knew that if anyone saw you going into . . ."

"No, no. Skip ahead to the part of the story where you decide you need cheese cubes and ends with you sitting here in jail."

"Ok, ok. I just thought that as my lawyer you would care about my whole story and would need that information to provide me with an accurate defense. I mean, I've watched a ton of Law & Order and they're always getting into trouble because they don't have all of the defendant's back story. Like this one time when Jack McCoy was still the lead prosecutor and not terribly miscast as the District Attorney - I mean, why would they take a great character like Jack McCoy and then drastically cut his part in the show. He never even wanted to be DA, but Dick Wolf, in all his infinite wisdom, made him one. What the hell was that all about? Anyway, in that episode . . ."

"Seriously, just tell me what happened."

"Alright. You see, what had happened was, I was on the couch watching football. I think it was Georgia/Auburn, but it could have been South Carolina against Florida. Maybe it was whatever crappy ACC game was being shown that day. I know it wasn’t a Big East game because I would have turned that off. There’s not a chance in hell I’d watch Big East football. I’d rather be forced to listen to Biz Markie sing about how you say he’s just a friend for 24 hours than watch Pittsburgh play West Virginia. What ever happened to ol’ Biz anyway? I mean, I know he had that hit, but it was more of a novelty song than a real hit. Don’t you think VH1 should do a show about that? Between their reality shows and I Love The 20s, you’d think they had enough left in their budget to find out what happened to him.

Better than sliced cheese

“So I’m watching the game, right, and my buddy Chris says ‘Man, I could sure go for some cheese cubes right now.’ which is like a totally random thing to say because he was eating sliced cheese. I mean, what’s the difference between cheese cubes and cheese slices. Sure, the cubes have more substance, but if you fold the slices in half enough times, it’s like eating a cheese cube, isn’t it? I think it is, but ohhh no, not Chris. He needs the actual cheese cubes. He’s finicky that way. That’s why we call him ‘Cat’ all the time. Well, not really ‘we,’ mostly just me, and I’ve only done it once, but I’m thinking it’s a nickname that could catch on. He didn’t seem to respond when I called him ‘Cat’ but I think if I give it enough time, people will be calling him that.

“So we decide to Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who is going to go get the cheese cubes because there’s none in the house and neither of us want to go because we live on the wrong side of town and we’d have to go all the way to Target to get them. So here’s where the problem starts. I tell him best two-out-of-three, but he doesn’t hear me. At least that’s what he says, but I think he heard me. Granted, there was a commercial with a hot chick on it at the time I said it and Chris is going through a really rough time. You see, his girlfriend had dumped him like three days before this happened. Not so much dumped him as she bought a billboard and had ‘Chris, I hate you’ with a picture of his face on the billboard. That seemed kind of cruel, I thought. I mean, what happened to breaking up through a text message or on facebook like it used to be done. I tell you, man, things are going downhill fast. Back in my day, if you wanted to dump a girl, you sent her a text while she was in class. That way, you knew she couldn’t start screaming at you and make a scene. I hope we can get back to a time like that.

“So I lose the first one because I threw rock and he threw paper. I though rock would win. It always wins, that’s why I always throw rock. And I think Chris knows this because every time we do this, I always throw rock and he always wins with paper. But that’s why I wanted to do best two-out-of-three, see. But he was apparently distracted by the girl on TV and didn’t hear it and refused to go a second time. We start arguing because I’m ok without cheese cubes. I mean, I like them, but I don’t really need them.

“Anyway, Chris and I start arguing, and he starts throwing things at me, I start throwing things at him. I should probably mention here that alcohol may have been involved – both in the imbibing kind of way and in the ‘I threw a beer at Chris and he threw a beer at me’ kind of way. Apparently it got pretty bad because the neighbors called the sheriff’s office to come check on us. But in my inebriated state, I thought it was the cheese cube delivery guy. I mean, that’s a mistake anyone can make. Don’t all cheese cube delivery cars have blue flashing lights on the top of their car and use sirens to get them to their customers as fast as possible?

“It was at this point that Chris dared me to shoot the Sheriff. I told him he was crazy and I was going to do no such thing. Sadly, that isn’t even the craziest thing he’s ever asked me to do. One time we were driving out in the middle of nowhere and we drive under and overpass, and Chris decides it’d be fun to see if one of us could jump from the overpass into the back of the truck. I agree to drive the truck and Chris tries to jump off the overpass. As you can probably guess from the fact that Chris has two broken legs, it didn’t work out so well. Granted, he did land in the truck, but he didn’t account for how fast the truck was going and bounced out. It was kind of funny.

“So Chris hands me the gun and tells me to shoot the Sheriff, which like I said is crazy. But a dare is a dare. Making things worse, he double-dog dared me to do it. And as you know, it’s impossible to turn down a double-dog dare. Besides, he told me if I did it, he’d go get the cheese cubes. So I shot him in the leg. As best I can tell, the bullet ricocheted and hit the deputy because I did not shoot him.”

Next Song: Lodi

Artist: Creedence Clearwater Revival