Long time no see

I was going to post this yesterday, but you know how most Mondays go... You go out drinking and the next thing you know you wake up naked on the floor with a jar of peanut butter in your hand and opera music playing on your stereo (Typical Monday if you will). Okay I made up the last part, mostly.

Anyway, I digress. So how was your week so far? Good, good. Me? Oh not much other than finding out that one of my friends that I grew up with was charged with Terrorism and my day at work was rather busy.

YOU READ THAT RIGHT. CHARGED WITH TERRORISM. Actually, this happened a while back, so he pleaded guilty of terrorism for helping support the Taliban last year. Here in Houston. My friend. Well, FORMER friend. You read that FBI... FORMER FRIEND.

So I guess I should back this train way the fuck back and start from the beginning. I have a friend that sent me this link to an alumni site for my high school. I started to enter my information when it asks these arcane questions. What were your school's colors? What was your school's motto? Who the fuck knows that stuff? Um... I know we had blue, silver, and white on our jackets. And motto... how the hell am I supposed to remember our motto from a few... wait a COUPLE... of years ago.

So I start Googling the fuck out of the Internet to look for this information. What do you know? Someone created a Wikipedia entry for my high school. Of course, the dumb asses didn't put in the school colors or the motto. They did have a section of famous people that went to my high school. Oh yeah, we had our share of famous pro football and basketball players. And the last name on the list. My friend. Next to his name: "famous for aiding the Taliban..." blah blah blah.

I was like "what what"! But not the "in the butt" type of way, but just the "what what" type of way. Sorry, Southpark distraction there. Like I was saying... So I start Googling the fuck out of my friend. Surely, this is some mistake. Someone is messing with him because anyone can put anything on wikipedia.

NOPE.

It was true. It was in the Houston Chronicle. It was on all the local news. It was even in the New York Times. Fucking New York Times. In a terrorism sense, it was at the lowest level. A "class C" misdemeanor in the terrorism world, but it doesn't matter. How the hell do you go from a skater punk to terrorist in less than ten years?

So this is the scariest part (looks around). He was arrested in November of 2006. I've known this guy for a long, long time. I knew after high school he converted to Islam. I almost went to his wedding, but something came up and I couldn't make it. My roommate at the time went to his wedding. He even went to UHD and I bumped into him from time to time. We would catch up on times and then trade phone numbers to keep in touch. This was all several years ago. I had lost touch with him for a while.

Then I bumped into him out of the blue. Grocery shopping. We run into each other in the soda aisle. We catch up and he has the long ass beard growing. No big deal I think. I know he is a Muslim. We trade phone numbers and promise to really keep in touch this time. This was around October of 2006.

What the fuck. You know they had to have been on to him by then. They were probably tracking his communication. If I had called him or he called me, where the fuck would I be now? Some dark dank place being "interrogated"? I can guarantee that the US government doesn't have a "safety word" that I can utter to make them stop with the torture like Miss Leatherwhipsalot has with me.

The funny thing is that I thought about calling him last year and earlier this year. I've been thinking about old friends and I freaking still have his number in my phone. How awkward would that have been if I did call?

Me: "Hey man, it's been a while. What's up?"
Him: "Not much. Not much."
Me: "So, you wanna grab some beers and watch the game?"
Him: "I really can't right now because I'm being gang banged in prison at the moment."

That would have been an awkward moment on the phone. Seriously, he was a fucking terrorist. What the fuck is my life coming to? How the hell do you top that one at the reunion? Oh so you make a quadrillion dollars, but did you hear that so and so was a terrorist?