‘Sh*t Happens’ A mix tape by Chip Kinney

I’m going to take you back to New Year’s Eve, if you don’t mind. I’m at Ziggy’s having a great time with Possum Jenkins and The Mood Cultivation Project. I’m hanging with Bradford “Hinzy” Hines and my cell phone rings. It’s only a few minutes after midnight and it’s a number that I don’t recognize.

So, I look at Hinzy and I say, “It’s a new year. I’ll take a chance and answer it.”

Well, it was someone that I know but I haven’t spoken to for some time. We never went out on a date or anything so I was a little perplexed as to why she would be calling me right after midnight, January 1st.

She said that I was third on her list of people to call… Again, I haven’t spoken to her in some time because I left several messages with her after I couldn’t in good conscience do her a solid. It wasn’t a big favor, but it was something that I couldn’t put my “Stamp of Approval” on. And after getting no responses to my messages, I gave up and erased her number from my cell phone. That’s why I didn’t recognize it when it showed up.

She lost her job and moved away to a different city in North Carolina. She’s also attending some school of some type and that was the reason that I hadn’t heard from her in some time.

Again, being a dumb guy… I don’t know if this lady is interested in going out with me. I get confused a lot of the times by women. I LOVE them to death, but I can’t make heads or tails out of their signals except for “extreme disgust”. That one, I get.

Case in point: I went to dinner with a friend of the female persuasion. We’re knocking back our fair share of barley pops with a buttload of interesting conversation. Yes, I’ve always known that she is intelligent, funny, and attractive. She was packing the “holy trinity” that I’m looking for in a woman. If she liked the Three Stooges with Shemp as her favorite, I could have easily fallen in love.

During our great conversation, she breaks out this on me… “You would be fun to date,” and she tells me this while making eye contact.

Again, when it comes to women, I may not know much but when I hear a woman say this to me I can’t help but think that she’s actually interested in me.

But I just let the comment go and laid back to let it all sink in. Later on that night, more comments like that one were made. At this point, I’m thinking that it’s probably just the beer.

I take her home and pull up in her driveway where we continue our conversation. After ten minutes or so, I consider shutting Roxy’s engine off. When I go for the keys, she tells me that she should say “goodnight”. She leans in for a hug and that’s when I kiss her. She kisses back and another type of conversation starts up. She tells me about the path of destruction that she has left behind and paints a picture of me lying in the wake with a footprint firmly plastered on my heart.

I take it all in and I decided that perhaps she was right. I didn’t need to get into all of this because it could ruin a perfectly good friendship. But, I asked for one more kiss and she leaned inside Roxy and delivered a soft one to my lips.

So, I was a little confused about all of it.

The next week that I saw her, I told her that I had a great time and would love to go out with her again. I got no response. Nothing. She barely talked to me.

When I tried to talk to her about it a few days later, she didn’t want to talk about it at all. The subject has been dropped and forgotten and she painted it up to be MY misunderstanding. I was the ONE that got the wrong idea.

You see… When it comes to women, I live in a constant land of confusion. Right now there’s possibly something going on with a woman, but again, all of the signs aren’t clear. I need women to stand around in orange jumpsuits waving coned flashlights like their guiding a jet on the tarmac. I’m constantly asking my female friends for an understanding and I’ve even asked Weather Dave for his advice. I’m sure Ronie Alexander is getting sick of my little updates and bouncing things off her to see if it will meet with general female satisfaction.

I’m near 40 and I’m starting to wonder why I bother.