Driving Druggy: A Cautionary Tale

My family has some family friends with some of the wildest stories. Their latest anecdote is too outrageous not to share.

This past summer, after the family went out for a pizza dinner, the son, Red, needed to pick something up from Wal-Mart. Red parked in the lot as far as he could from the store, explaining to the others that he was going to "walk off" his dinner. While the family waited for their son to return, they spotted someone stumbling around the parking lot with a shopping cart. Not only was his gait awkward, they found it odd for someone to be wandering in their direction, hundreds of yards away from the other cars in the lot. When he got close enough, they recognized this individual as the drug-addicted brother of their daughter's new boyfriend, who will henceforth be referred to as Druggy.

Once Red got back, they asked him to go check on Druggy to see if he was okay. Semi-coherently, Druggy explained that he had been shopping with his girlfriend until they got in a fight and she left the store. Druggy proceeded to search all around the parking lot looking at each car in order to verify whether his girlfriend had in fact abandoned him altogether. Friendly folks looking to help this strung out guy in trouble, the family offered to drive Druggy home. Druggy had nothing but two large air conditioners in his cart, which they helped him load into their car.

Druggy couldn't provide an exact address, instead vaguely describing a location. In the process, Druggy passed out in the backseat. Red drove to the sketchy spot, whereupon he woke Druggy up. Was this Druggy's home? He wouldn't, perhaps couldn't, confirm. The family helped unload the air conditioners, but Druggy wouldn't allow them to bring them inside, asking them instead to just leave them on the porch. The family objected, insisting that he couldn't leave such expensive items outside in an unsafe area for people to steal. Rather than relent, Druggy said that he'd be right back before entering the house and closing the door behind him. After waiting five to ten minutes for Druggy to return, the now thoroughly confused family opted to just drive home, leaving the air conditioners out on the porch as initially requested.

Deciding this was just the bizarre behavior of a drug addict, they dismissed the incident altogether, until a couple of weeks later when Druggy was arrested for stealing two air conditioners from Wal-Mart. They were mortified to realize they were unwitting accomplices in the crime. As luck would have it, however, the reason they avoided being implicated in the crime as well was because they had parked so far away from Wal-Mart that they were out the vicinity of the security camera.