The below text is re-printed from my MySpace blog.

Some of you who have known me for a while may remember me making a comment once or twice about how I was once "dumped for a car". This statement is merely the humorous over-simplification of a longer story. Allow me to expound. My Senior Year of high school, I had a classmate in my Drama class named Danielle, who it later became clear had a crush on me. She was indeed very attractive to me, but due to my legendary cluelessness/shyness in regards to the opposite sex, nothing came of it. Needless to say, my lack of forward activity in the matter was, understandably if incorrectly, interpreted as lack of interest. So she quite expectedly moved on to greener, BMW driving pastures. It was not the first time, nor the last time that my own crippling idiocy about how to approach women would lead to ultimate failure. This particular BMW driving pasture happened to be one of my good friends, Tom. As an aside, I was not too long torn up about the situation, because it just so happens that within a month of these events I would meet the girl that I would wind up dating for the next 4 years. Any way, you are all probably wondering why I am telling this story and what possible relevance the title could have. Well, the title IS why I'm telling this story. This ancient, dust covered memory was quite suddenly and very unexpectedly thrust to the forefront of my conciousness last night when I was channel surfing and happened past "Animal Planet". I will pause for a moment, in hopes that you may be wondering what sort of informative nature program on this channel I could've possibly been watching that would cause this all to come to mind. In truth it was not an informative nature program at all, but Animal Planet's own entry into the idiotic world of "Reality TV" called "King of the Jungle". It was not an interest in this show which stopped my surfing, but a brief glimpse of a really cute redhead. I paused just a moment, for one more look before continuing on my quest for interesting TV. When she came on screen again I thought she reminded me of someone, and when they finally showed her up close, face-on, I realized, it was Danielle! I was almost certain of it, and my suspicions were confirmed when someone referred to her as Danielle. So I hit record on the DVR in disbelief, and watched the last 15 minutes of the show, completely weirded out. Has anyone else happened upon someone they used to know/date/almost date while channel surfing? I'm sure it doesn't happen every day.... (originally written 1/23/05)

The reason I'm dusting off this old blog entry is that none other than Danielle herself found me on MySpace last night. We talked via MySpace mail for more than an hour and I just had to tell her I had a blog about her and directed her to it. Her blog, by the way, is also a very entertaining read. She then left a comment on the blog post that was about her, which kind of brought it full circle nicely. Her comment:

"Hi! It's Danielle.  Yep that was me. Love animals.  Very funny that you came across it. The one part that is wrong however is the car I wouldn't know a Honda from a Royce, don't care.  But I love your writing and your blog, good stuff!"

(It took me forever to actually get the hyperlinks for this article and retrieve Danielle's comment due to MySpace's incessant bugginess and "Server is Too Busy" errors. This illustrates, yet again, why I moved my blog over here.)

EDIT: Danielle sent me a video of her on Animal Planet. This is a different show than the one that I saw her on, but still, you get the idea.

Tom and his Cars

While we've touched on the subject, let's discuss Tom and the legacy of his BMW. Said Beamer wouldn't live very long past the events described above. Not long after the Danielle episode, Tom totalled his BMW. I don't remember much in the way of details, just that it was bad and Tom was very lucky to escape uninjured. But this was a mere taste of what the Gods of Vehicular Karma had in store for my friend Tom. After Tom barely failed to kill himself in the BMW, his parents decided a safer car was in order, so they got him a Volvo, the poster car for safe vehicles. As it turns out, this was a very good idea. Tom would also total his Volvo. But what makes the story interesting is not that he merely totalled it, but that he totalled it spectacularly.  Tom and his friend Mike (Not the same Mike mentioned in the new years entry) used to take turns driving to school in the morning. One day, when it was Tom's turn, they decided to try a shortcut, and see if it would save time to fly to school rather than drive. Their mistake:  not using an airplane. So what happened, as it was told to me, was that Tom missed a curve and slammed into an embankment at high speed. Then the car proceeded to flip end over end six times. Six. Later, I was shown a photograph of a tree that the car had flipped all the way over, and that had actually had it's top clipped off. By the car. As it flew OVER the tree. Once the car finally came to a full stop, about a week later, resting on it's roof, Tom and Mike were dangling upside-down from their seatbelts (Lesson, kids: Always wear your seatbelt). Tom and Mike were miraculously unharmed (other than a cut and bruise on Tom's knee from the gearshift). Mike then turned to Tom, while upside-down, and said, "I'm glad this wasn't my car". While this seems, on the surface, to be an excellent punchline to a story that almost wasn't very funny at all, it actually refers to the fact that if they'd been in Mike's car (a Ford Escort) and done the same thing, they'd both be dead. I am not aware of any further near-death experiences in cars by my friend Tom, but he's always had a reputation as "Mr. Instant Karma" because he had a habit of doing stupid things that immediately had catastrophic results and yet somehow surviving unscathed.

Here's to you Tom, may you continue to bring unexpected excitement to our lives.