super chump

Yelling at people on the side of the road is a great idea, in theory, but it doesn't always work out as well as you had hoped. It may work out for a little bit, but eventually you're going to run into a Super Chump. Super Chump wants to kill you, and goes out of his way to try to do just that. This happened to me and a friend of mine. Obviously, he was unsuccessful in his attempt to kill us, but he gave it a good go.

It all started innocently enough. One day after high school, Dan and I were heading to our employer to pick up our paychecks. Standing on the road on our way was a guy hitch hiking. I saw him up ahead, put down my window, and yelled to him, "GET A CAR, CHUMP!" He switched fingers momentarily. On the way back by, we yelled at him again, but we shortened it to just a strong, "CHUMP!" I thought this was hilarious, so I shared it with my friend, who I went selling ads for journalism class with. We decided that it would be good to implement "chumping" on a grand scale. And we did, and it was fun, and nobody got hurt. We had rules for chumping, too: You couldn't chump someone that was on the job, women were out of the question, anyone walking a child was off limits, the elderly were a medical risk with their old hearts, and then the last rule (added after the following story): no chumping anyone that looks like they just might have a car close by.

Charley and I were out "selling ads," when we drove by a church parking lot. We thought that there would no safer chumping experience than getting someone in a church parking lot during the week. Right? Wrong. We drove by, chumped the guy, and kept right on going. We didn't get far down the road when this guy flies up on our tail. It's the one we just chumped. He's yelling and waving his hands with varying numbers of fingers at a given time. Charley punches it, and his Honda Accord laughed at him. We make a few turns, hoping he'll give up and go back to whatever holy calling he had at the church, but he didn't. He went so far as to ram the the back of the car while we were going 45 MPH.

We decided that we needed to go somewhere very public with lots of people, so we went to Meijer. This did not deter him. He stayed on our tail. He even cornered us, and forced Charley to stop the car. He got out of his car, proclaiming his intention to expletively kick our expletives, while we shrieked our apologies to him through the window. He turned to get something from his car, and Charley took off again. After many more roads, twists, and turns, we ended up on the busiest street in that part of town. It was a four lane road, so he was able to pull up next to us, and he did. He yelled some more encouragement our way, threw something at the car, and sped off. The nightmare was over, but the legend of Super Chump would live on forever.

This might deter some people from ever chumping again, but it didn't stop us. We were stupid. I was stupid. I don't recommend it. This is just another example of me being stupid.