In the words of the CCG--the Crazy Corner Guy--from my old garden apartment (he was an unemployed Keannu Reeves look-alike whose apartment was situated in a mud puddle in the parking lot. He and his family posed like modern day Munsters on its "patio" often), 'I'm kind of in a bad spot.'

Location-wise, he meant. I replied, eyes widening, with a gulp and a nervous giggle. I wiggled my keys just enough so he would remember, in case he forgot, that the parking lot was my intended destination and I silently felt rather sorry (about my whole life ending up here) I had to trample his front yard to get there.

'I'm kind of in a bad spot.'

Little did I know his expression would haunt me the rest of my life. Well, seven years so far. Because I have the potential to be in kind of a bad spot, too. Only it's him saying it when I finally admit it. It's the CCG, as my late brother-in-law coined him. Seven years later, it comes naturally for me to refer to my ultimate emotional pain as me being 'kind of in a bad spot.' I'm ashamed to think it, where he was not.

One dark night his family and he sat outside as usual with cooler, cheap beer, and underage drinking. Their amusement that night came courtesy of the landlord, mother nature, and father time. All the traffic on his lawn, to and from the parking lot, had worn a dirt path--a mud path with all the rain that year--and ditch-like conditions. I was one of the victims who fell in the mud, which was very funny to the CCG and CCG kin--

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Shortly after said night the guy reported liking his location. I never talked to him besides these two times, and it wasn't even talking it was listening--to him sort things out for himself with a stranger. The day he concluded he liked the place developed into him getting loud and mad drunk--off whiskey. He was seen swinging an axe at another (creepy) resident, to which he was hauled off to a suburban jail. My husband happened to give him the whiskey.