In Dutch With The Wife - Raising Arizona

My name is H.I. McDunnough. All I said was, “Nathan needs some Huggies.”

You see, me and Ed, (that’s short for Edwina) were in a new place in our lives. We had a baby now and “everything’s chaaanged” as Ed put it. I know I’ve got responsibilities, but I guess sometimes we all make mistakes and revert back to our “old ways”.

I pulled over at the Short Stop, a local convenient store, one that maybe I was just a little bit too familiar with already. I told her I’d be out directly, and that she might just stay strapped in. I don’t even think the teenage store clerk made an effort to look up from his dirty magazine long enough to see me walk in and yank some pantyhose off the rack and beam straight for the diapers. “Wake up son.” I said as I walked up to the zit-faced pubescent cashier with a .357 in one hand, the biggest thing of diapers they had under my other arm, and the hosiery covering my whole face down to my neck. “I’ll be takin these Huggies, and whatever cash you got.” Little did I know that the little jerk was pushing the ‘we’re being robbed’ button to instantly signal the police of my presence.

It wasn’t long before my wife Ed could hear the cop sirens getting closer and closer. As a previous officer of the law, she wasn’t very tolerable when it came to things like robbing convenient stores, even though she was surprisingly taken with the idea of breaking and entering and kidnapping. Before he could even load all the money into the paper bag, she was already out of the car, walking around it screaming, “You son of a bitch!” and getting into the driver’s seat.

“You’d better hurry it up, I’m in Dutch with the wife.” I told him hastily. She screamed it again. “Come on now!” I said eagerly, still pointing the gun in his face. And if it isn’t just my luck, she is peeling out of the parking lot just as I’m running out the door. “Honey?” I shout as if that was going to do any good, and what do I see when I look the other way? Just the cops almost flying airborne up and down over the train tracks at the top of the hill.

Bang! The sound of a .45 caliber hand cannon breaks my momentarily dazed outlook by whizzing out the glass door behind me and past my head. That little bastard was shooting at me from inside the store! I have no choice but to take off running as the cops pull in behind me, literally rolling out of the window shooting at me alongside the youthful gunslinger vigilante, who both chase me into the street firing shot after shot.

They managed to catch up close enough to somehow shoot the Huggies out of my grasp. I tried to reach back for them, but it was too late, the cops were creeping up too quickly. I didn’t want to catch a bullet over some diapers so I left them there in the middle of the road.

I ran straight in-between two houses and thought it would be a good idea to hop a 6 foot wooden fence, but on the other side, I found out I was wrong. I had just enough time to lift up the stocking to my forehead when out of the darkness comes a vicious Rottweiler charging at me with no yield. As he neared me I feared for my life, but when he lunged for my face, the chain securing him to the ground stopped him just inches from tearing my nose off. Lucky that I wasn’t dog meat, I ran down the fence line to barely escape a mauling. It was just in time too because as soon as I got over the other side of the fence, that secure chain lifted its anchor from the ground freeing that ferocious mutt.

Running out into the middle of the street usually isn’t the best of ideas, but this time, for me at least, it worked. A local hick was fortunately speeding towards me and had the courtesy to slam on the brakes only a second too late smashing into me with barely enough force to roll me up on his hood and back onto the street like a ragdoll. The kind of thing that doesn’t hurt too much, but your life almost flashes before your eyes because you think you’re done for. I sprang from the road and opened his passenger door.

“Son, you got a pantie on your head.” said the driver. “Just drive fast, kay?” I said, hardly having the words leave my lips, the old coot stomped on the gas pedal forcing me to run alongside the truck and jump in. I tried yelling at Ed when she drove past, “Honey!” but before she could even turn her car around that same kid from the Short Stop was firing mini cannonballs through the windshield, and the driver’s natural reaction to everything just seems to be screaming as loud as he can, so I grabbed the wheel turning it abruptly, and narrowly missed the kid who was in the middle of the road, but out of nowhere, that same dog who was once my nemesis, had gained some other travelling K-9 companions and attacked my teen-aged enemy.

Again the driver can’t seem to make rational decisions so he plays chicken with the police car coming straight at us. I turned the wheel again missing the cops, but they continued giving chase and spraying lead from the rear. “Can I stop now???” screamed the old motorist, and as we barreled toward a house. I agreed screaming, and he screeched to a halt just in the nick of time, launching me from the vehicle into the yard. “Thank you.” I said turning to the man one last time as I ran into the house.

The police continued shooting and attempted to persuade me with their megaphone to come out and reveal myself as I ran from room to room in the house searching for the back door. One officer frantically chased me through the home and through the back door all the way down to the supermarket, with the pack of neighborhood dogs on the trail close behind making their way through the same unsuspecting homeowner’s living room while on TV is a commercial for Unpainted Arizona, owned by Nathan Arizona, and we all know who he is.

I figured, since I was at the grocery store anyway, I might as well find the diaper aisle, so I jogged down past the cheapies and nabbed a pack of Huggies off the top shelf. Bang! Another shot whizzed past my head destroying a pickle jar, and I thought it was about time to get out of there, so I continued my jog down the back aisle dodging bullets and screaming old ladies who hadn’t even bothered to take the curlers out of their hair before coming to the store.

Picking an aisle I thought was a safe one to make my exit in, I encountered that pack of hounds coming toward me at full speed, so I turned around and picked a different aisle, escaping the dogs, but then being rudely awakened by a shotgun blast coming from this store’s clerk. I guess it’s becoming standard to arm your employees who are working the night shift. Almost down to the back of the store again, that same cop was aiming his pistol at me again, so I chucked the package of diapers at him knocking him backwards into a screaming woman who ran into him at full speed with a shopping cart who had now become what the pooches were chasing.

I ran out the back exit to find my wife Ed conveniently pulling up just in time for me to hop in and get a wretched earful. She starts out by interrupting my apology with a swift right to the jaw. She thought if she and the baby were picked up, then they would be an accessory to armed robbery. “It ain’t armed robbery, if the gun ain’t loaded.” I tried to explain. She wasn’t really having it, but she was still listening to me enough to follow my directions when I said turn left and right. “I’m okay, you’re okay, that there’s what it is.”

“I know, but honey,” she said with grief, “I’m not gonna’ live this way HI. It just ain’t family life.”

“Well it ain’t Ozzie and Harriet.” I said putting my foot down, then putting my arm out the door to grab the Huggies that had been shot out of my arms, and left in the middle of the road, that started this whole mess in the first place.