TOOLBAG TUESDAY

There’s some leeway when it comes to dating outside your religion, I mean region. 

Like if you’re from up north and you’re living and dating in New Orleans, don’t act weirded out by someone drinking before noon.

And if you transplant to South Carolina, just get used to Croakies, they are like those old lady glasses chains, only for sunglasses.

Or if you date someone from Ohio or another state where there’s nothing to do, you’ll have to put up with football being more important than you and your feelings.

LOL

But there are some moves that while statistically are common of a particular region, are NEVER OK.

No matter what area of the world you live in.

This includes...oh, I don't know...cat-calling hookers, drinking while driving (actively drinking a beer while actually driving) and then littering the can on the road.

AmIRight?

Someone please explain this to Kevin.

Kevin, not surprisingly, identifies as being a redneck, or “Regional Southeast.” 

He recently asked my friend Shelby out on a date. They had mutual friends and Kevin had just moved to a bigger city after living in Podunk, South Carolina his entire life.

Shelby said that she’d love to go out with him, but she had a work party and did he want to join?

Sure, he said.

Shelby, a transplant from the Northeast with smart, liberal parents, raised an eyebrow when she got into Kevin’s truck (of course a truck) and saw BULLETS and gun-related paraphernalia all over along with gator teeth and duck feathers from all the animals he’s killed.

“That’s normal, I live in South Carolina now,” Shelby reassured herself as she moved over a large tooth to sit down.

The work party was 45 minutes away from the city, 45 minutes on the interstate mind you, and it was fine for the hour they were there. 

Kevin was very polite to her boss and kept his redneck in check. That is until they got back into his truck.

That’s when Kevin pulls out a cold BEER from a cooler (where was a cooler???) and opens it as he pulls out of the parking lot. 

To drive 45 minutes back on the interstate.

“What are you doing?” Shelby said.

“What? I’m totally fine!” Kevin said, mimicking those drink-and-drive commercials that end in a fiery mess.

Shelby tried to ignore it and his awful country music when Kevin pulled off an exit to get gas. Like most exits between two bigger cities, this one was sketchy and poorly-lit. Shelby waited in the car nervously as he left her alone and went into buy gas.

When he finally walks back out...OMG...WITH A TALL BOY BEER...another beer hahahahaa....he CAT-CALLS two women standing outside on the curb.

“OW OW!” He said as he walks over to his truck. Shelby sat there horrified.

“Why did you do that?” she asked as Kevin got back into the car.

“Because they’re obviously hookers and they need attention,” he said.

?????????

As he peeled out of the driveway, he honked at them, like Shelby wasn't in the car and he was looking for a date or something.

WTF

Then she said Kevin chugged the rest of his old beer....while driving on the interstate...and THREW THE EMPTY CAN OUTSIDE THE WINDOW.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great. She was going out with a litterbug.

A LITTERBUG!

Seriously. Super smart Kevin tossed an empty beer can outside, like that wouldn’t draw attention to a cop or anything. 

And P.S. if he got arrested for drinking...uh...while driving, she’d be stuck alone in the middle of nowhere.

She thought about her hometown, how they would probably burn someone at the stake for littering.

THEN KEVIN OPENED UP THE TALL BOY CAN.

“He was like, cutting people off in traffic,” she recalls. 

Shelby was getting pissed and just wanted to get the F home. According to her GPS, they had 32 minutes left to go.

Then, as if Kevin could read her mind as to what the LAST thing she wanted to do in the whole world was, he took his phone and asks Siri “directions to the nearest bar.”

LOL

The nearest bar!!!

He didn't even ask her if she wanted to go to a bar.

“What!?!?” Shelby said. “Are you serious? Can’t we just wait until we get closer to home?”

“No, it will be fun. These bars out here are CRAZY,” he said. 

After all, he was the local redneck  "expert."

Now, as a local, there’s a difference between a fun place with charm and culture and a place that will scare the shit out of a foreigner.

Guess which one Kevin brought Shelby to.

She says: “We go into this disgusting bar  where everyone looks like they are on meth and the TV is on but it’s all grainy and is playing a show about unsolved murders."

And the worst part: “And the only wine they had was moscato and white zinfidel so I opt out.”

Hahahaha

But Kevin didn’t pick up on her not drinking as a polite "I don't want to be here" gesture, and he orders ANOTHER beer, leaving Shelby to just sit there, scared for her life for the third time that evening.

Once they head back to civilization, Shelby realizes they’ve run out of things to talk about.

“Hey, can I play some music?” Shelby asked, tired of his country music.

“No, you’re songs are too girly, I can tell,” he said.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

WELL...YOU’RE EVERYTHING IS TOO REDNECK, KEVIN.

So...rule of thumb: Don’t scare your date by drinking WHILE driving, cat-calling hookers, littering and bringing her to a meth-head bar.

Write that down, guys.

(I really thought we were trying to impress people, at least up until date five.)

As Shelby explains: “I mean, he was nice at the party, but then I started thinking about what my grandma would think."

“...Or my parents."

"...Or my friends.”

Haha

And that’s when Shelby decided to only date guys from above the Mason Dixion line. 

Or the other side of the Mississippi.

Basically, whatever region he wasn’t.

-Jenny 

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

Maybe it’s because I have a problem with authority, maybe it’s because I’ve never had a positive experience interacting with one, but I could never, ever date a police officer.

No offense.

OFFENSES!

Hahahahahaha
Get it??

Sorry to those upstanding members of the law who bring kids teddy bears and shit.

...But I honestly think cops are generally meatheads on a power trip. 

And they take out all their aggression on people they secretly hate and...sorry, I said no offense(s).

This guy Peter certainly didn’t change my mind about the whole “cops on a power trip” thing.

He and I met during the unfortunate online dating part of my life, and if he had listed anywhere that he was a cop, then our meeting would never have taken place.

No offense.

But as it were, Peter wasn’t just a cop, he was a highway patrolman. On a power trip. He bragged about making something like 700+ DUI arrests in the past year. He got a plaque from the governor and everything.

“I beat out all the other cops!” he said.

“Yea, well, that’s because you worked the overnight shift, right?” I said, no longer interested in the beer I had ordered.

“So?”

“So you beat out all the other cops because you work the overnight shift. More people drink and drive at midnight than at noon, no?”

Hahahahahahahahahaha

(He didn’t like me either.)

We sat there in silence and then I had more questions, as usual.

“So...did you ever give someone a pass because they were sad and crying?” I asked.

“NO WAY,” he said.

And then Peter totally went full-on cliché, on a power trip, where he took out his aggression out on the people he secretly hated.

You know...the “hot girls.”

“YOU KNOW, ONLY THE ‘HOT GIRLS’ CRY,” he said, actually throwing down his fork.

LOL

“I WOULD NEVER LET A HOT GIRL GET OUT OF A D.U.I. OR A TICKET. YOU KNOW WHY? BECAUSE THEY’RE USED TO GETTING EVERYTHING THEY WANT ALL THE TIME.”

LOL

LOL

“Ummm...” I said.

“YOU KNOW...I’D ACTUALLY BE MORE LIKELY TO GIVE AN UGLY GIRL A PASS.”

!!!!!!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

??????

What a super sweet guy.

He wasn’t joking. He was legitimately angry at the crying “hot” girls who get pulled over by an angry state trooper pooper.

We sat there in silence and I could just picture him on duty, in his dumb hat. 

It made me want to cry.

“So...you’re saying you’d give me a ticket, then?” I asked, like a jackass.

"DEFINITELTY. YOU'D DEFINITELY BE IN JAIL.”

UGH!!!!

Waaaaaaaaaaaah

Check please.

No offense.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

In times of crisis, like a hurricane, a tropical storm, or, I don’t know…a 1,000 year FLOOD, it’s nice to have a boyfriend around to protect you and your house; put up boards on the windows and scare away things like spiders.

This is especially true if you're a lady homeowner and don’t have the safety net of calling a landlord to do anything.

As such, if you live in a coastal area, I think this should be a standard dating question to anyone you date for more than three months: If there was a big storm coming, would you watch a Harry Potter marathon...uhh stay with me?

For Leon, that answer was no.

Leon apparently liked to play house with my friend Brittany when it was fun things like dinners and sleepovers, but not when things got scary and real…like A 1,000 YEAR FLOOD.

Brittany bought her first house less than a year ago, and the disaster that was Hurriance Joaquin's butt-debris hitting South Carolina shores earlier this month was the first storm she’d experienced as a homeowner.

No one wants to be alone for that!!

This is what boyfriends are for!!!

As county-issued announcements came that schools and offices would be closed, Brittany panicked and called Leon.

“Can you believe this?? I'm so nervous—the yard gets really flooded when it rains for one afternoon!”

She expected Leon, the guy she had been dating for FIVE months, who spent practically every night at her house, to batten down the hatches with her. 

He spent practically every night there. Eating her food and using her toilet paper (lol ew) and all that. It was also a weekend, and, like most big storms that hit coastal areas, was determined just that Tuesday.

But Leon already had other plans.

Uhhhh

“Yea, I’m going to go to Rock Hill (a few hours inland) with some friends and dodge the storm,” he said.

UM.

What?

“What?” Brittany asked. “What about me? I can’t leave my house!”

“Just text me,” he wrote.

Uhhhh

What??

Text you??!?!

WHO LEAVES THEIR GIRLFRIEND HANGING LIKE THAT??!??

Seriously?? 

JERK.

Brittany hung up and started moving everything out of her carport…alone.

And then the storm came. Relentless rain pounded down for days and days and days and the backyard turned into a complete lake. A rising one.  

Brittany texted Leon a picture of the lake-yard, hoping he’d be sympathetic.  

“It’s coming up” she texted.

Then she stared at her phone for the next HOUR. And then hours. And hours.

Nothing. No response.

UGH

Was he getting flooded, too? Brittany checked the radar for Rock Hill.

No real rain.

And no text back.

NO TEXT BACK!!!!!!

Hours and hours went by.

“What are you doing?” she texted him at midnight.

He wrote back.

“Oh just having some beers with friends,” he wrote.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

C-O-O-L

Brittany ignored him and stared as the water crept up to the patio line.

Two more days passed with the incessant rain and flooding cooping up everyone indoors.

…Which was a great time for Brittany to reflect on things.

Fast forward several days later, when the rain finally subsided and Brittany got WiFi back and looked at Leon’s Instagram account.

Apparently, he didn’t respond to her stressed out flooded out neighborhood photo text, but he COPIED HER PICTURE and POSTED it to HIS account to show the social media world the flooding in South Carolina.

LOL!!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!! LOL!!!!!!!

Ya'll

Really

HE RE-POSTED HER PICTURE (hahahahahahaha) yet couldn’t be bothered to respond to said picture with so much as a, ‘Oh my God are you OK?’ response.

LOL 

LOL\

HE WASN'T EVEN THERE!!

LOSER!!!

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA

(p.s. Another guy abusing social media!?!?!)

The ironic part was all of the “Are you OK??” posts people kept commenting on the photo.

That was supposed to be his line.

...To the photographer of the photo!!!

Yes, it took a 1,000 year flood to bring out Leon’s true colors, and a 1/100^th of a millisecond for Brittany to realize that Leon was no man at all.

So now let's update.

 Here’s the standard dating question to anyone you date for more than three months: 

If a storm was coming, would you leave me all alone and then steal my flooding picture and post it to Instagram as yours without asking if I'm alive?!??

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know what? On second thought, that doesn’t sound like anyone a lady homeowner should count on to scare away spiders.

-Jenny

TOOLBAG TUESDAY

I always hate when I hear about my ex-boyfriends dating new people.

But I should take a cue from my friend who can clearly see the bigger picture:

Me: "Have you heard from Josh?"

Her: "Yea he's dating some new chick."

Me: "You mad?"

Her: "No way...good luck to her watching him smoke weed on his couch all day.

...And having to pay for all his food."

LOL

Hahahaha 

I can totally picture it.

-Jenny