Ollie North and Fawn Hall Hopped-Up On Goofballs.

In my 29 years on this earth, very rarely have I ever been in a position where I'd consider myself to be a victim.
Aside from having to fight off occasional unwanted advances from leggy dames, the only things I've really ever been a victim of are circumstance, slow feet on the basketball court and a double shot from above by a bird with bowel troubles.
All of that changed last month when I found myself swept up in a world of international crime after it was discovered that someone was having an all-expense paid fiesta in Mexico on me.
Our story begins on a quiet Wednesday night in Simpsonville. It wasn't raining, but it looked like it could.
I was home watching a Film Noir movie marathon. I was right in the middle of "Double Indemnity," the great film with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck, when my cell phone started playing that funky little Verizon tune known simply as "Breakdown." I recognized the voice on the other end. It was my wife. She was as frantic as Tom DeLay in an ethics committee meeting. "I think someone is spending our money," she said.
My wife handles the bread and the money in our family. She's detail-oriented. I'm not, which is kind of a strange thing not to be when you're a news editor, but listen baby, enough about me. A crime was being committed and I had to do something about it.
A little quick detective work and some accurate record keeping by the wife led us to discover someone was withdrawing $4,000 pesos at a time from an ATM in a grocery store in Matamoros, Mexico. They also bought some groceries and had a few shots of tequila and dinner with 300 of their closet amigos in what I expect was a nice quiet, out-of-the-way place. I have never been to Matamoros, but I knew the type. Seedy. Like a rotten watermelon.
I was shaken. Stirred. Someone had to pay and it wasn't going to be me.
I phoned up our bank's automated, after-hours hotline and had our account frozen colder than the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs. That was all we could do for the night, meanwhile some punk was walking the beat with wallet full of my Benjamins, or Hidalgos as they say in Mexico.
I tried to sleep that night, but I couldn't. The dog was barking. I thought about how I would buy a muzzle for that beast when I got my money back.
I tried to retrace my steps. How could this happen?
My wife shreds our receipts faster than Oliver North and Fawn Hall hopped-up on goofballs. It can't be her fault. It's never her fault.
Did I do something wrong? In retrospect, it probably wasn't such a great idea to buy those manhood enhancement creams on-line with the debit card. You live and learn in this crazy world.
The next day we went to the bank. We proved we weren't in Matamoros making those purchases and the bank stooges said we'd get our money back. We did. I was impressed. Those bank stooges aren't so bad.
I thought about buying a one-way ticket to Matamoros and tracking down that street tough who took my money, but Hurricane Rita was heading that way, and I didn't want any part of that.
Rita -- there never was a better name for a femme fatale -- would hopefully take back all of the goods bought on our dime. And that would be payback enough for me.