Why I Unfriended Rodney Carrington - A Mostly True Story. (except for the part about being true)

My friend Ned asked me why I unfriended Rodney Carrington. I tried to pass it off that it was because he was a vile racist, or had insulted my mother, but Ned saw right through that, so here’s the real story, as true as I’m standing here.

Rodney showed up at my house one night, drunk, after a half-day bender at the country club in my subdivision. I let him in.

I noticed a blood stain on his golf glove. I offered him a drink and we exited onto the deck - the weather was gorgeous. South wind 5-10 mph, 78 degrees, clear skies. You know, the kind of night you think you’ll always remember but it slips from your mind the first time you have a similar night. Before he had even settled into the wicker chair that we had cleverly come to know as 'Rodney's Chair', he opened up with a story tinged with anger, fear and a little bit of horror.

Apparently, he had killed his caddy and buried him in a shallow grave near the 13th green between two trees and dangerously close to a three foot deep bunker shaped like Hitler.

I mean shit, after hearing the story, the guy honestly had it coming to him. Listen to this: He had recommended a three wood for a shot into the wind with over 200 yards to go and we all know that the MOST Rodney can get out of a three into a light southerly breeze is maybe 185, right? And that’s on a GOOD day. I mean, c’mon.

At first, Rodney (as he tells it) just let it go. And by “let it go”, he berated the guy, insulted his wife, and told him that, by god, Fords suck, and the caddy drove this pretty sweet 2013 F-250 Super Duty Crew Cab with a turbo-diesel V8, a pair of those freakishly long back-up mirrors and some Yosemite Sam “Back Off” mud flaps, but I digress.

Then, before he knew it, he was overcome with rage, fueled by eight Drunk Arnold Palmers, three 50-gauge Cohiba Robustos and a 3.25 ounce pouch of teriyaki flavored jerky. When the caddy wasn't looking, Rodney let him have it with the full force of that three wood right upside the temple. And by “full force”, I mean Rodney clearly could have hit that ball a lot further than he did based on that swing, and so really the caddy was right after all so, good for the caddy, right? But at this point it was too late.

The caddy gave him a look as if to say “who the fuck do you think you…” and then Rodney hit him again. This time square in the crotch and I don’t mean he sliced it a little to the left, it landed right in the middle of the 'fairway' – a direct hit to the jewels.

The guy doubled over in that weird moment that we've all experienced, when the pain hasn't really set in, but we all know it’s about to, and JESUS will it hurt but there’s no way a man can describe it because frankly our voice has already moved into a range only dogs can hear, and besides, our lips won’t form words anyway.

As the guy fell to the ground, Rodney removed his left golf shoe, a FootJoy. (Their slogan is, "The No. 1 shoe in golf," and it's certainly been the preferred choice of top pros for years, even for golfers who are fixin’ to put a beating on their caddy they won’t soon forget.) Well, the cleat opened up the artery right below the chap’s left ear, and all at once, Rodney lost his balance as he swung the shoe (which leads me to believe, once again, that he probably COULDN'T have hit the green with that three wood after all), fell against the guy’s abdomen, and the pressure of the fall caused a gusher of blood to come out of that little bitty hole in the neck of the unfortunate caddy with the Ford F-250.

At that point, Rodney came back into a range of sanity that most of us don’t see for hours after consuming that much liquor.

He panicked. As a weird gurgling sounds came from the mouth of this fella, Rodney knew he wasn't long for this world. So, what to do? As he tells it, he dug through his golf bag and found a divot tool, a real nice ProActive G-Clip 4-in-1 with a picture of Retief Goosen on it and hey, that’s nice to see because that guy hardly gets any respect, being a really decent golfer and a helluva nice guy, but I digress.

Rodney proceeds to use this little divot tool to dig a hole to bury the guy. I don’t need to tell you how long that would take for a normal human being, but at this point Rodney is anything but normal and he had it dug in about 25 minutes.

Then as he was dragging the caddy’s lifeless carcass toward the hole, Rodney tells notices a piece of paper hanging from his pocket so he pulled it out to take a look. It was actually a business card – a real nice one with green shiny grass on the bottom, the kind you’d probably pay fifty cents apiece for at Kinko’s but I’ll bet he got them from Vista Printing because they had a really great deal on them back in mid February as part of their anniversary sale, but I digress.

On the card, the caddy’s Facebook page was printed clear as day. And as Rodney told it, since I was going to probably have to talk to the police at some point in the future, it would probably look good if we both ‘liked’ the caddy’s page. Maybe it would seem like we were real friendly with the guy and would have no earthly reason to beat him to death with a golf club.

While we were discussing it, Rodney put all of this crazy guilt on me for never having friended him. He listed off about twenty other people on my friend list that weren't nearly as good of friends as he was, unless of course, as he put it, we "weren't as close as he thought."

At that point I panicked. He had just told the story of how he bumped off the caddy and I wasn't in the mood to get sideways with Rodney Carrington.

So I friended him.

Then it struck me. What if the police made a big deal of that little friending gesture that happened to occur on the approximate date the coroner had determined that poor caddy had been killed only two clicks east of my house near that Hitler-shaped bunker while caddying for Rodney Carrington?  I would be fingered as an accomplice sure as hell. I can’t have that happen at this point in my life, I have kids and a wife and a pretty clean record except for that night I spent at the St. Charles County jail for public urination.

And that’s why I unfriended Rodney Carrington.

Probably.