Back when the Pistons were tailing off from their Championship in 2004 the former President of the Orlando Magic use to play pick up basketball at MVP. He handed out a bunch of tickets for us to a Pistons playoff game against the Magic. The crew that played at MVP at the time was fairly new to me but I somehow managed to get the invite and it probably had something to do with me arranging for a party bus (it actually had a stripper pole but the downside is the side door on the bus didn’t really work and was probably a major safety hazard) to take us to the Palace of Auburn Hills. Right out of the gate our bus driver rear ended another vehicle on the way to the liquor store to get roadies for the 2 and a half hour ride. No sooner than the driver could get out of his seat did the vehicle in front of us speed off. Either the guy was drunk, didn’t have a license, or both. We headed over to the Palace fully stocked with booze and managed to drink most of it in route to the Palace. A majority of us were loaded as we entered the Palace and to everyone’s surprise a former NFL lineman who was with us was the first one to end up puking, unfortunately it was after he entered the venue. Our ticket provider gave us four good seats near the Orlando bench and the rest were upper level seats, they weren’t terrible but they weren’t awesome. The plan was to rotate everyone out of those seats but due to my over consumption of alcohol I didn’t exactly stick with the plan and had to be escorted out of my seat by one of the other people in our group. On the ride home one of the guys wanted to stop for more beer but the bus driver was resolute and wouldn’t cave to his request.

While I look back on that trip with a degree of fondness, the actual experience was probably akin to fighting in a war, it wasn’t all bad, but most of it was. (one of the 7 readers of this blog was on the trip with me and he is still working with his therapist through the experience) Fast forward to late summer of this year, there is a guy in our golf league who arranges various trips and a trip he had arranged was to the Lion’s Bills game that was this past Sunday. It was the classic case of something that sounds really good at the time but when the time rolls around to actually participate in the event there aren’t many things you would less rather do. I actually tried to get out of the trip by texting the organizer that it was my father in law’s birthday party on Sunday and I should probably bow out if he could find someone to take my ticket. I told Shirley that I was trying to replace myself on the trip (after just having told he I was going on the trip) and she said it sounded like fun and that I should go. I knew bette but let her talk me into thinking it was still a good idea.

We met at the Gravity Park and Ride at noon and I still had questioned my decision not to drive myself, I wanted to save on parking, but in hindsight would have paid at least $500 for parking if it got me out of the horrors of that bus trip. The crew was definitely a mixed bag and not to be a snob, but I am going to sound like one, mostly blue collar guys who probably get fucked up every weekend and some weekdays and that’s what they liver for. There was discussion about a group of them meeting for drinks at Gravity before the bus so I had an inkling already what to mentally prepare for, but nothing could really prepare me for what I was going to experience that day. First of all, the most annoying person in my golf league, possibly most annoying person I have ever encountered, was going to be on the trip. When we boarded the bus he immediately hooked his phone up to the bluetooth on the bus and began playing his music as loud as it would go. He skipped through songs like a flat stone across a lake, with his fist periodically pumping in the air like we were at a rave. Of course he had his hat on backwards, he was the prototypical hat on backwards guy, 99% of hat on backwards guys are intolerable. He also enjoyed randomly doing knuckles for no reason, I don’t like doing knuckles when there is a reason, why the fuck do you keep sticking your fist out, leave me alone.

As we were getting close to Lowell the captain of our trip instructed the driver that we were to stop at every rest stop on the way to Ford Field. Not because we need a bathroom break, there was a bathroom on the bus, but because we needed to get out and smoke periodically. I didn’t realize people still smoked, again I sound like a snob here, but I don’t hang out with people who smoke, it’s a disgusting habit, ok, one of my good friends smokes, and when we were golfing this past spring we were riding together and someone hit a ball under our cart while we were sitting in it and he was holding his pack of smokes, it caused his smokes to go flying everywhere when he was startled by the oncoming golf ball. It was pretty funny, but he’s one of the few people I’d be willing to overlook the smoking thing and still hang out with. Midway between the first and second rest stop two guys snorted some cocaine. Witnessing that may be an every day occurrence for some people, but it caught me off guard and I’m a criminal defense attorney. One of the guys who was doing it has a the torso of someone who is 6’6 and midget arms and legs and he’s missing part of his ear. Why is he so fucked up? Because his mother did drugs while he was in utero, and I guess he’s been addicted ever since. The other guy was the only black guy on the trip and he was wearing a fuzzy Honolulu blue lion’s hat that looked like a top hat but it was fuzzy, it looked awesome on him, but would have looked ridiculous on any of the rest of us.

There was a guy sitting across from me (it was limo style seating) who was wearing big headphones and reminded me of Warren from There’s Something about Mary. He was eating marijuana gummies like they were skittles. He also had a number of the mannerisms Warren possessed and was likely on the spectrum. No one seemed to know the guy so I have no idea how he wound up on the trip. As we were nearing Ford Field the super fucking annoying guy from my golf league, we can call him knuckles, started talking about a tailgate he was invited to at Greyson. Greyson is a high end golf apparel store where you pay $300 for the same golf pants you can get at Costco for $30. He invited the guy next to me who hates him but is more tolerable of annoying people than I am, and he came up with some BS excuse why he couldn’t go with him to the tailgate. Once in the stadium we walked around a bit and our party continued to drink like it was the last day of their lives, or just another day for them I guess, and I continued not to drink. I didn’t see paying $15 for Miller Lite, it’s not good, and getting a buzz on would just exacerbate my problematic circumstances. Once we sat down I didn’t leave my seat, it was a fun game to watch even though the Lions lost and had three more key players go down with major injuries. However, Josh Allen in person is amazing. I don’t think you can fully appreciate the throws he makes unless you are in person.

With the Lions losing, I thought it would be a fairly benign ride home. I figured the loss would take the wind out of everyone’s sails and we could have some peace and quiet on our way back to GR. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Knuckles quickly realized no one else was going to be the Dj so he fired up the tunes, some dip shit took 20 extra minutes to get back to the bus, and a few of the high ons who were thinking ahead chowed down on their soggy Jimmy John’s sandwiches that most of us ate on our way there. Knuckles took it upon himself to try and talk to me even though I had my air pods in, I wanted to ask him “what part of this isn’t telling you to fuck off?” but instead I kept my answers to his stupid questions really short, I got a parting fist bump from him, which I think was an admission of defeat, and I never spoke to him again. Two good friends of mine were on the trip, one of them, thinks of me as a good friend, Kevin Clark, my only friend who smokes, and another guy by the name of Geoff, I am not sure where I stand on his friend list, but we do a lot of stuff together, he may be just tolerating me in the hopes that I quit my golf league (or get kicked out of it again) and he can take my place and become a permanent member of the league instead of just a sub. Why do I mention them? Because they are both laid back and super chill. That’s what it takes to go on a bus trip like I just described. On top of it, Geoff, and Kevin to a degree are incredibly positive. Geoff is the type of guy who will compliment your shot in golf even if it lands in the middle of the pond, my response to a similar shot would be “that was terrible”.

Do I want to be like Geoff and Kevin? Maybe. Am I 50 years old and is there any hope for me changing? Probably not. Two things occurred recently that make me realize I am probably an asshole for life. The first was at a Christmas party where the guy who organized the bus trip and is in my golf league was telling Shirley I’m an asshole, but I’m their asshole (meaning the guys in the league I am friends with) I took this as a good thing, but I’m starting to wonder. The second thing happened while meeting with a client this week. The client asked me how frank he could be with me, I told him not to hold back. He went on to say that he had been researching me and discovered that I am an asshole. So, when you Google my name I guess “he’s an asshole” is the first thing that comes up. I may want to see about that reputation service you can hire to fix negative things about you on the internet. That being said, I have lived here long enough, met enough people, and know that West Michigan is a tight enough knit community, that I am probably always going to be known as the asshole to some degree, my only hope would be either entering the witness protection program and starting fresh or hitting my head and having amnesia like Harrison Ford in that one movie, and actually becoming a nice person. I don’t really have a reason to enter the witness protection plan, but at my advanced age you never know when I may take a tumble and hit my head so there is hope.