You know when something happens and you tell a story and you just have them in stitches. I’m talking laughing until they’re crying or peeing their pants? I have a couple of those. This is the nonsense that you could seriously not believe happened in real life, but they’re true. Here’s an episode I’m sure you’ll get a kick out of.

Episode 15 - What happened to you?

Our main character Calliope having gotten pregnant from a friend of hers, decides to have the baby in the hopes that it will fill the massive void that has been inside her for the first 21 years of her life. Neither she or her friend have an interest in BEING with each other, but Donny decides to be a part of Jonathan’s life.

As a young, unwed mother with issues she does not even realize that she has, she is home, on welfare, living with her mother. Living on the meager funds that welfare provides in NYC is impossible and she sees an ad (or hears about - Calliope can’t remember that right now) a bar on the avenue looking for a barmaid off the books. She has never worked in a bar but figured what could it hurt to check it out. She calls and is told she has to meet with (we’ll call him Gary) and she sets out on her way.

Calliope is in her usual attire adorned with her leather motorcycle jacket and Laura Biagotti glasses. They are prescription sunglasses because Calliope is at a serious sight deficit without them.

As she is walking to the bus stop over snow and ice, she is practically snow blind from all the white shining back at her. As she turns a corner she slips on some ice - does a slide like she’s sliding into home base with her hands out in front of her. She sees the bus coming, grabs her glasses which had flown off her face and gets on the bus to make her way down the avenue.

She enters the bar which is very dark even in the middle of the day, especially when you compare it to outside. She asks the barmaid for Gary and is told that he stepped out and will be right back. She tells Calliope she can take a seat and wait for a bit.

Calliope takes a seat near the front of the bar closest to the door. There’s an older black man there sipping a glass of beer.

“Hello. How are you doing?” he says.
“Great. How YOU doin’?” (Think Joey from Friends, lol)
“What happened to you?”
“What?”
“What happened to your eye? Your man beats you or something?”

This perplexes Calliope because she knows her glasses are very dark and there is no way he can see her eyes. She figures he must be assuming that because he can’t see her eyes. That’s why she’s wearing shades in this dark bar, but again, these are her prescription so she dismisses it. He persists.

“What happened to your eye?”

Now she’s curious. How can he POSSIBLY see her eyes? There’s a mirror behind the bar that goes the whole length of it. She walks the whole length and steps just behind the bar as she flips her glasses up onto her head to look at her eyes and figure out what the hell is going on. She sees nothing. Puts her glasses down and sits at the end of the bar again.

Finally, rather p!$$ed off that this guy told her to come at this time and then has the nerve to not be there, she gives up. (Patience is NOT her virtue.) She says goodbye and makes her way out of the bar towards the bus stop.

As she’s standing there, everything is VERY bright. She goes to push her glasses up so that they will block the sunlight. When she goes to push them up, she puts a gloved finger up to the lens (she has since learned you’re not supposed to do that) AND STUCK HER FINGER RIGHT TO HER EYE!!!!

Apparently, that fall...yeah, it had knocked the lens out and Calliope the catastrophe did not even notice!

I got home and I’m telling my mother this whole story. She’s looking all puzzled, wondering, as I was, what this guy’s problem was and then I pulled out the glasses, put them on and she LOST IT!!! I mean cackling like a banshee.

Now when I tell people that story I tell the whole thing and then pull up a picture to show them. This picture is of me at 18 years old with Jason Newsted of Metallica.