Do you like cereal?

Well not me, I almost got killed by a cereal killer about 10 years ago.

The effects of pivotal life experiences, are usually determined by whether or not they physically take place.

Getting murdered is an especially binary life experience.

Luckily I didn't get murdered, but I recently came to a much fuller understanding of how close I may have come, when My friend Adam the hermit described the process of soothing my potential murderer, after I yelled at him to get out of my house. Apparently he had a knife, and that's how I was going to get it. It's possible that I owe my life to marijuana, comfortable chairs, and gentle conversation.
So thank you Adam the hermit, for saving me from Chris the murderer.
Oh, and up yours Adam the Hermit, for bringing a murderer into my house!

So here's the story in a nutshell, before I got the proverbial icing on the cake, 10 years afterwards.

Adam the hermit was renting an apt in the downstairs of my house. He goes to NY to visit his family, and meets Chris the murderer on the bus trip back to New Orleans. Adam the hermit makes friends with Chris the murderer, and brings him home. Before you know it, Adam the hermit, Chris the murderer, Gina the girlfriend, and myself are one big happy family!

Chris the murderer even helped out around the house! I put him to work painting! He fell off the ladder and splashed paint on the neighbors house! Oh... He fell of the ladder and splashed paint on the house on the other side! No big whoop! That one was blighted! He splashed paint inside my window! No big deal! He cleaned it up by smearing it around with the curtains!

What a good guy! I'm not saying he was the perfect house guest, he left the stove burner on. (Drafty house is a safe house) And he left the front door wide open with the key in it for hours.

Actually he did get on my nerves, and eventually I totally lost it, and told him to leave.
He said "He really liked my art", and that he might see me later when I wasn't mad.
(So there's another celebrity endorsement... sort of, if an appearance on Americas Most Wanted qualifies as celebrity)

By the time I came back, he was gone, and shortly after that, my neighbor said she saw him on
Americas Most Wanted.

It had been a pretty gruesome story, buddies hanging out, killed one, chucked him in a creek, ambushed a family, executed them with a shotgun, stole their car, wrecked it right off, then they split up.

We called the FBI to tell them that he'd left the house recently, but they didn't seem concerned.
We were on our way out the door to buy a Walmart shotgun, when the FBI called back to say he'd been apprehended in the French Quarter.