The Curious Case of Manuel Donato

Okay, okay now I have officially heard it all, I will never read another work of fiction in my life because the average shit that goes down everyday is so absurd that making stuff up is pointless and superfluous. There has been another development in the absolute stupidity of Manuel, before I go into this let me give you some background info, My mom met this guy at an A.A meeting in Mesquite, Nevada, little did she know that Manuel is the poster boy for why you never marry someone you met through A.A. Everyone has been trying to figure out why she married this man ever since, so one day I decided to ask her about the whole thing, "where was he living when you met him?" "uh, well, uh he was living in Mesquite," I sensed the evasiveness in this response so I decided to keep the pressure on, "whom was he living with at the time?" "umm, well he was living with his mom." I replied "so the fact that you met an unemployed 45 year old man living with his elderly mother at an A.A meeting didn't raise any red flags?" "Well, um he was working in Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, California, and Oregon." "So basically you're defending him with the argument that before he moved in with his mom he had steady work as a drifter?" " Yeah." I could tell from her demeanor that I had proved my point, so I wasn't going to turn the screws anymore because it's my mom for chrissakes people. Over the next couple of weekends we had been going to Las Vegas to help my youngest sister renovate her townhouse (which is a story in itself) so I wasn't seeing alot of Manuel because he refused to come help (he always complains about how everyone despises him down there) which was fine with me but I think all the solitude was exacerbating his oddness because when I got home from my sisters' house he would have some new idea that he would be obsessing over and would follow me around our house telling me about it. Don't ask me to have a totally rational explanation for this but....he became completely fascinated by...Powerade...what the fuck? One day i'm sitting on the couch watching T.V minding my own goddamn business and here comes Manuel, everytime I see him it makes me feel frusterated, just the way he walks around on his tippy toes pisses me off. So he walks into the kitchen and he's messing around with the sink and I can tell he wants me to notice him or something so just when i'm about to get up and run away he pulls this bottle of Powerade out of nowhere and says " hey jamie have you ever tried this stuff?" I can see right away that it is Powerade because he's holding the bottle with the label prominently displayed like he's shooting a soft drink commercial or something. I can feel my blood pressure going up as he proceeds to sing its praises, then he starts to read the nutrition label on back, the scariest thing about all this is that this man truly believes that I actually give a fuck about how much Potassium is in Powerade, I don't want to be rude to the man because we live together and so I just sit there and take it. Finally his phone rings and I make a break for it and think the worst has passed. One day later i'm sitting out on the porch smoking a cigarette and I swear to god here comes Manuel out of nowhere.....with a bottle of Powerade. It's like one of those old war movies where the GI's are standing around bullshiting and all the sudden they start getting hit by mortar fire and they start taking cover wherever they can, thats how I felt, except I was getting hit by Manuel fire. As I'm sitting there listening to this ape-man try to spread the gospel of Powerade it all starts to make sense. I remembered him telling me when he flunked out of Airborne school that they made everyone drink lots of potassium and electrolytes that came in these little packets that they mixed with water. So since the Army sung the praises of potassium then thats all there was to it "I Manuel, do solemly swear to drink the shit out of potassium in the form of Powerade."