Your Honor, thank you for the chance to make a statement before we do the verdict here. I must say, one thing I’ve learned is that when you add in the lawyer’s fees, a cheap motel is not such a deal after all.
See, I was staying overnight at some throwback place and I was so tired from a day on the road that I booked the “honeymoon room,” which meant the toilet was right next door.
It was early the next morning and I was up and restless on Eastern Time. I wanted to do my business, brush my teeth, and hit the highway again. Since it was just me stirring, I figured I could slip over in my boxers and back again nobody the wiser. Which worked on the over part, but as I started to wash my hands, the faucet shot water in all directions and soaked my front to the point I had to hang up the underwear in the window to drip as dry as they could in the time I had.
At which point, a roar and a huge sucking wind swept by the motel and pulled away those boxers and every leaf and hot dog wrapper in town, never to be heard from again.
After a pause to tuck my heart back in my chest and to ponder, I decided that slipping back to my room would be the quickest course, regardless of my airy condition without cover on the “lower forty.” Just as I was stepping out into the hall came the rattle and squeak of a cleaning cart and a maid set to wiping down the guest rooms.
I was surprised at the idea of maid service in that place, let alone the early start, and almost got myself back behind the bathroom door before that cleaning lady stared at me and cocked her head. She had a hurtful look that said she’d seen it all, but wasn’t seeing all that much now.
Standing as I was with my flag unfurled, I wished I knew then what I learned later about the cause of my predicament, and I would have told her, “All of this is because of a couple hundred frogs and a runaway logging truck,” which was only the truth.
As it appears happened, a big herd of frogs had reached the main highway near the motel and needed to cross. They made the ill-fated decision to do that all at once. Things were going pretty well, I suppose, it being so early and the road being a backcountry byway, until a big old logging truck came barreling through, careening at high speed and careless in its direction.
Here’s why. Deke Turnbull, him there in the blue shirt, he was at the wheel, and as a new driver he had his hands full. Seeing as he was driving trucks, he figured he ought to learn how. So, he was taking an audio course on handling big rigs. At that moment, he decided he just couldn’t listen again to the song on Big Country 103 about the bomb-sniffing war dog who was never coming home, and decided to start another trucking lesson instead.
Just as he was glancing down and shuffling through his truck course CDs about to pop one in is when he rounded that fateful corner and spotted, out of the corner of his eye, what looked like black ice across the empty road. He may have wondered as it was the wrong time of year, but regardless the moment of decision was upon him.
That was when he hit that school of frogs dead center. He says what he remembers most was the sound. It had a mix of nine parts squishy with a tad of crunch (not to make the Court queasy) but some of the little critters were being shot up by the front tires and hitting the floor boards and that was too much for Deke’s nerves. He didn’t want to stop in the middle of that croaky horror, but he says he made a high-pitched noise and just floored the brake pedal anyway.
And the old truck buckled on him, it seems, because he heard a loud pop and a ripping snake fart from the air brakes and realized his speed was now up to God and the weight of six big fir trees chained in the bed. So, it was honk, steer, and pray as he rushed through the crossroads, right past the motel, and it was the Wind of Judgment from that big load’s passing that tore my boxers into the sunrise.
Your Honor, I have it from the pale, trembling lips of that driver himself, and you can ask anybody with a clothesline on Route 56, that’s why I was stranded all natural at six AM in a hallway of strangers. You’ll have to take my word on the frog parts, as the little creatures couldn’t be here for death reasons.
And that’s why I’ve entered my plea of “inadvertently naked” and I throw myself under the mercy of the Court.
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