So, a few years ago, I was dating this guy- who will rename nameless to protect the innocent (which later in the story, that phrase will seem ironic). He and I had been dating for a few months and things were going really well. In February for Valentines Day, he had promised to make it really special. He wouldn't give me big details about what the evening would entail, but he hinted enough that I was really looking forward to it. For the first time, in fact, I would be celebrating Valentines Day with someone and not spending the day broken hearted, alone, and resentful.
I digress....On a night a few days prior to Valentines Day, he and I went to the gym together and then went to dinner thereafter. He dropped me off at home, gave me a kiss, and said he would call me the next day. Interestingly enough, though.... the next day came and went with no phone call from him.... then the same the following day, and then again the day after that. I tried calling him a few times and even left a few messages.
I cried on the shoulder of several of my girlfriends not understanding why he wasn't calling me back, wondering what I had done, and saddened that once again, on Valentines Day, I was going to spend it not only alone, but pissed off and bitter. I couldn't wrap my head around why, after a few months of dating, someone would just drop you off, give you a kiss telling you they would call the next day, and then just NOT call the next day. That just seems cruel. I completely understood the whole "unrequited love" thing- believe me... I am no stranger to it... but, seriously... a few months into dating someone, can't someone have the decency to just tell you that things aren't working out or that they "just aren't that into you?" My friends, though, kept telling me that that is just a part of dating. So, I accepted defeat as well as my friends explanation of the events, and sulked through Valentines Day feeling miserable and depressed. That same evening, while sitting at home watching TV and eating bonbons and dumdums and hoho's and any other ridiculously named crap-food, I flipped the channel to the news where they were doing a piece on peanut butter poisoning. Several people had been pronounced dead within that very week due to salmonella-contaminated peanut butter. As it often happens, the wheels in head began turning.... I wasn't rejected for Valentines Day.... my boyfriend was probably a victim of the awful travesty of peanut butter poisoning! I mean, that had to be the explanation- because who would seriously just stop calling someone!?
I spent the next few days trying to figure out how to confirm my hypothesis. Come to find out-- the hospitals are pretty confidential and don't provide too terribly much information over the phone. I tell you this in the event that you are ever in my shoes and are trying to track down a victim of peanut butter poisoning- though I am hoping that Peter Pan has since gotten his shit together. But again... I spent quite a bit of time trying to track down my AWOL boyfriend. I began sharing my struggles with a co-worker of mine, and she offered yet another possibility.... that he could be incarcerated for terrorist activities. Since my boyfriends name remains anonymous, I realize that as an audience, you have no image of him or anything- but the thought of him being involved in ANY kind of terrorist group, or hell, ANY group for that matter beyond Boy Scouts or Toastmasters would have been an extreme stretch of the imagination. She was convinced though that her "alternative" to my peanut butter poisoning scenario was the likelihood. So, to humor her, I went to the JoCo website and looked up people that were currently incarcerated to prove her theory wrong, and get back to finding out where my sick, salmonella-infected boyfriend was. That zany co-worker of mine, though, just had to be right.... As I scrolled down through the list of wife beaters, husband beaters, burglars and robbers, killers and rapists, I saw his stinkin' mugshot! Dammit!
He was in jail on unpaid DUI fines from a few years prior and not for murder or rape or anything "severe," though I think at that point I would have preferred to have found him bed ridden due to a terrible stomach ache induced by peanut butter than to find a picture of him online in a potato sack.
So-- herein lies the moral of this story.... girls, if your boyfriend up and disappears a few days before Valentines Day, don't get your panties in a bunch-- Just go to your local jails website and find your man, and if you don't find him there, don't underestimate the possibility of botulism. :-)
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