This is not Skippy's neck x-ray and only here for dramatic effect.
In order to keep on the momentum of the last story in regards to Skippy’s ballistic personality I am going to tell the “My neck hurts” story.
Like most of the Skippy stories, this one took place years ago when we were about 19-20 years old. It was Spring Break, one of the most looked-forward-to times of the year when you are a college student. We had our trip planned to go down to Fort Myers to hang with Scooter. On this trip was Mark, Scooter, Jason, Skippy and I. Oh yeah, there was also a rookie to this crew with us, a friend of Mark’s from out at UNLV. This poor guy did not know what he signed up for with all of us.
Jason, Skippy and I all drove down from Cincinnati (just like the Buffett song) in Skippy’s Pontiac Phoenix which was his grandmother’s cast off car. The drive down was pretty smooth, unlike the drive this same crew made out to UNLV the year befor If that seemed like a setup for another story…it was.
So the first order of business was to go to Miami airport and pick up Mark and his buddy. All went well until we tried to exit the parking garage and skippy realized he had lost the ticket. The agent working the booth did not speak a word of English which made the conversation between Skip and her even funnier. To watch Skippy try and explain what happened and to get her to work with us through his crazy hand gestures had us rolling. Andule, andule, burrito, chimichanga, lost ticket, grande nachos. eventually she did give up on us and flagged us forward to let someone who spoke english to deal with us. After paying $20 for a half hour of parking, we were off. It was a little cramped with Skippy driving, Mark in the passenger seat and in the back it was Jason on the left, me in the middle and Mark’s friend on the right. And throughout this story I will be refering to him as mark’s friend as i cannot recall his name for the life of me.
Now Skippy was already a little angry as $20 at that time was a lot to a poor college age guy. So what better time than to throw some gas on Skippy’s smoldering anger. At the time I did not realize what set him off. All I knew was as he was driving, he became enraged and he yelled something and swung his elbow at me. Crack! It landed square on my nose. I felt the anger rise in me immediately from the pain and i swung with and open hand and struck Skip hard in the side of his head and ear. He got so pissed, he screeched the tires and threw everyone around in the car as he violently swerved to the side of the road. And before the car was even stopped he jammed it into park that caused the transmission to make a horrendous noise.
Now Skippy was trying to climb into the back of the seat to kill me and I just grabbed the back of his head and pushed down. In this position he could not get the leverage to make it back no matter how hard he pushed and fought. Now what I remember is hearing Jason cracking up for some reason. Also the look of panic on Mark’s friend who was shocked and scared about what was going on. Now mark, wh0 is used to this sort of thing from us just watched calmly shaking his head, probably still looking at the map to see where we had to go. Finally after a few seconds of holding Skippy and him fighting like a rabid dog to get free i asked him “Why did you elbow me?!” Skippy grumbled out “because you gave me a wet-willy!” Now if you do not know what that is, it is where a person wets their finger and sticks it in someone’s else’s ear. Not too mature, but hey we were still essentially teenage boys. This was also Jason’s favorite weapon of choice to fire Skippy up!
“I didnt do it!” I yelled. “Then who did?” Skippy shouted. Right then Skippy realized that the jackass in the back seat that could not breathe from laughing so hard was the culprit. Also wet-willys were Jason’s favorite weapon of choice to fire Skippy up! He then shouted an obscenity at jason and we were back on the road. All was good again. Except for the poor friend of Mark’s who look like he was suffering from post traumatic stress from the event.
Several minutes later Skippy started to rub his neck and tell us “Man, my BEEPing neck hurts.” “Quit being a baby Skip, and quit whining” Jason chimed in as he chuckled. The rest of the ride to Scooter’s house Skippy complained about his neck hurting. So in an effort to help him with his whining-addiction we implemented a rule that every time he says his neck hurts we get to punch him. Well believe it or not, after several good shots in the arm, Skippy did stop saying his neck hurt for a bit.
But during a boat ride he re-aggravated the injury while going into the water for a swim by falling backwards into the water “navy-seal style” he called it. Upon getting back into the boat he winced in pain. Jason trying to get a reason to punch him asked “What’s wrong Skip?” Skip stated “My…uh…” as Jason got ready to strike “…peepee hurts” He caught himself in mid-sentence so as not to get struck. Instead he opted for the sentence of a little boy, not sure which was worse as we happened to have the video camera on at the time and got it all on tape and still bring it up to him.
The rest of the trip when he complained, he got hit. A little game where we tried to do things to him to make him say “my neck hurts.” It became a past time for us. He was our home-entertainment-system as he called it.
At one point of the trip, being the young boys we were, we decided to have dinner at Hooter’s. Before we even went in we did a little pow-wow without Skippy around, hatching a plan to mess with Skippy. Upon entering the restaurant we chose a table near the back in a corner and proceeded to sit down with the mission of making Skip sit with his back to the restaurant. This way he would get angry because his neck hurt too much to turn around to see the girls in their skimpy shorts and tight t-shirts. We spurred it on by making comments like “Wow, look at her Skippy” and “That blonde is Hot! turn around real quick” and the likes, making him sooo very frustrated that he could not see a thing going on. He pounded his fist on the table and cursed at times. And if you know Skippy, he wanted to look so bad it was killing him. Now you know most of what we said was not even true, but just a way to get a laugh as every time we made a comment on a girl Skippy tried to figure out a way to wrench his neck around see what we were talking about without totally turning around. He just winced in pain. We laughed so hard.
Eventually his neck eased up, but not until after we got home. He complained for weeks about head aches and neck aches, blaming them on me. I am sure still to this day he blames any neck and back problems on me. I know he blames me for his one leg being shorter than the other because of what I did in Missouri to him, he even tried to show me xrays to prove it! That will be yet another story for another time.