My nephew
Not his body, but the one he saw. Flowers' story reminded me.

My nephew is 22, a very smart, kind, funny guy but one of the long-haired-keeps-to-himself-black-trench-coat wearing crowd, so of course people take one look at him and think "Mad Columbine shooter". It was much worse when he was in high school and that's when this happened.

He was with his brother, one of the tight-white-T-shirt-with-cigarettes-rolled-in-the-sleeve crowd, out running errands for their grandmother. They had picked up her dry cleaning, library books, dropped off her packages and were on the way home when they hit a deer. Really hard. Eldest Nephew skidded all over the road and came to rest, nose down in the ditch. He got out and looked at the damage--the deer was killed instantly. The front of the van took a hit, but was drivable. The front light was broken and the bonnet was festooned with deer parts.

"God, what a mess," Eldest thought. "We'd better clean this up before we bring the van back to Grandma. The two of them went to a hand car wash and were industriously scrubbing away when the manager ran out of the office to stare in horror at them.

Reality? Two nice kids trying to spare Grandma the sight of deer guts in her grill.

What the manager saw? Two dangerous psycho teenage hoodlums obviously trying to conceal evidence of their gruesome crime, washing the brains, blood and hair of their hapless victim off the hood of their grim death van!

He kept them there by hinting he had a gun until the cops arrived. Eldest had to explain what the hell he was doing. Both of the cops were hunters (everyone around there is) and recognized deer hair or I think the boys would have been arrested.

That's the Great American Midwest for ya. I guess I should be glad the manager didn't decide to perpetrate some vigilante justice and shoot them both.
(TDub Nunc id vides, nunc ne vides on, Thu 6 Mar 2008, 5:24, Reply)