Chad & Matt's Guide to Life: My Best Friends-In-Law

Technically I have a best friend-in-law already. Gina. Matty’s wife. But she is an unusual circumstance because while she did marry my best friend I knew her before that. In fact, I’ve known Gina longer than anyone else (well, outside of family). Gina has seen me go from fat and pre-pubescent to young and crazy to wild and trampy and now, finally- super cool in the nerdiest of ways! Gina is like my Stonehenge – know one knows how she got there, only that she’s always been there. (Oh Gina! You’re my rock!)

I actually knew Matt and Gina separately in their early days without knowing it. I knew Matt was dating a Gina and vice versa. Actually - before I met Matt - I met Matt in a tattoo parlor. We got our first tattoos next to each other (with a short wall between us) while Gina, my sister, and my mother talked behind us. Then when Matt and I met again it didn’t click with either one of us.

Kooky.

Anyway – I’m getting a new best friend-in-law. Joshy. Josh is engaged to my other bff, Natalie. I’ve known Josh for years and like Gina, he’s a friend in his own right – but with pending nuptuals it’s clear that Josh is totally here for the long haul. This should be interesting because Josh, well . . .

Josh is fucking nuts.

My friend Zahra convinced me to go to their house in the sticks to talk wedding stuff instead of doing what I had my heart set on- drink until I can justify eating my body weight in fried food.[1]

At Josh and Natalie’s house I found a mouse in a bucket in their garage

“Run and tell Josh!” Natalie said.

Zahra told Josh and soon he came skipping outside with unadulterated glee. He grabbed the bucket-o-mouse and went to the side of the house to fill it up with water. Then he timed how long it would take for the mouse to drown while I stood back HORRIFIED.[2] It made me realize that this would be the scene where the Mad Hatter and March Hare shove the Dormouse in a teapot if Lewis Carroll had written Alice's Adventures in Backwoods West Virginia

Later, while I’m fighting both the urge to pass out on Natalie’s couch and the even stronger urge to eat her entire pan of pumpkin bars[3], Josh showed me his arsenal of gun ammo. While he’s playing with a 1911 .45 that weighs more than one of my legs I’m having flashbacks to the mouse and realizing “Torturing small animals? What is that an early sign of? Serial killer? Serial killer with the basement of a postal worker? Aaaaaaahhh!”

When I went back upstairs[4] we eventually found ourselves in the garage again (yes, it’s where the beer is) this time Josh shows up with this telescope thingy that I was using to look at passengers of low flying planes. It didn’t take long for it to click in my head. Guns & ammo? Telescope thingy? Sadistic homicidal tendencies? Of course Josh is my friend! Because I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if he were my enemy!

Now – Natalie has a recurring night terror where she can swear she sees someone on their upstairs landing from her bed and this person is just standing in the shadows watching her. While she’s lying next to Josh, who is laying on top of the amount of protection that can only be rivaled by 40 armed Pinkerton guards.

I think that in some alternate plane of existence, there is a man, standing in his house – unable to sleep because he has a recurring night terror that Josh is waiting in that dark bedroom.