LEWIE: A LIFE EMBELLISHED The Unauthorized Autobiography of a Man Who Probably Should Have Kept His Mouth Shut
I came across this old note today, written on what appears to be a cocktail napkin with suspicious stains. It obviously was an outline for my autobiography, though I’m honestly not sure if these are chapter titles, life goals, or evidence for my eventual commitment hearing.
CHAPTER 1: BORN IN A SNOWSTORM Or: How I Learned That Timing Is Everything and Mine Is Terrible
The blizzard of ’73 wasn’t just any storm – it was the kind of meteorological event that makes weathermen weep and causes hospitals to run out of both coffee and prayers. I chose this moment to make my grand entrance, because apparently even as a fetus I had a flair for dramatic inconvenience. The ambulance couldn’t reach the hospital, so I was born in the back of Sal’s Pizza Delivery truck, which explains both my lifelong love of mozzarella and my tendency to arrive everywhere exactly 30 minutes late.
CHAPTER 2: CRAPPED MYSELF IN GETTYSBURG A Civil War Reenactment Gone Horribly Wrong
Age 7. The annual Gettysburg Civil War reenactment. I was dressed as a Union soldier, complete with authentic wool uniform that itched like Satan’s underpants. During Pickett’s Charge, I experienced what military historians would later classify as “the most realistic casualty of the entire event.” Let’s just say when they yelled “FIRE!” my bowels took it as a direct command. I single-handedly ended the battle three hours early and was banned from historical reenactments in three states.
CHAPTER 3: NURSING HOME LEAVING The Great Escape of Sunset Manor
When Grandpa Joe decided he’d had enough of pudding cups and bingo, he enlisted me as his getaway driver. What followed was a low-speed chase involving a stolen wheelchair, two confused security guards, and the local police who couldn’t figure out how to arrest a 92-year-old man for “aggressive independence.” We made it six blocks before running out of oxygen tank. Grandpa called it “the best Tuesday he’d had since Eisenhower.”
CHAPTER 4: CAESAR My Brief but Memorable Career as a Roman Emperor (Halloween 1989)
I peaked in third grade when my Julius Caesar costume won first place at the school Halloween contest. The victory went to my head faster than cheap wine. I spent the following week demanding my classmates address me as “Your Imperial Majesty” and trying to establish a tribute system based on lunch money and juice boxes. Mrs. Henderson put an end to my empire when I attempted to have Tommy Morrison fed to the class hamster.
CHAPTER 5: ROLLER DERBY MIDGET AUNT Aunt Trixie and the Night I Learned to Fear Tiny Women on Wheels
Aunt Trixie stood 4’8″ in her skates and had the soul of a Viking berserker. Known in the roller derby circuit as “The Pocket Rocket,” she once body-checked a woman so hard that NASA detected the impact on their seismographs. I made the mistake of calling her “fun-sized” at Thanksgiving dinner. I woke up three days later with tire marks on my forehead and a newfound respect for the vertically efficient.
CHAPTER 6: ELVIS AND MY STORY I WROTE ABOUT ELVIS How I Convinced Myself The King Was My Pen Pal
Age 12. I wrote a fan letter to Elvis and somehow convinced myself that the form letter response was actually a personal invitation to become his best friend. I spent six months writing increasingly elaborate stories about our “friendship,” including detailed accounts of midnight peanut butter sandwich sessions and private Graceland tours. The delusion ended when I called Graceland pretending to be Elvis’s “little buddy Lewie” and was transferred to security.
CHAPTER 7: KY, UFO, TORNADO, BIGFOOT The Night I Saw Everything Weird Kentucky Has to Offer
Summer of ’92. What started as a camping trip turned into the most documented supernatural experience in Kentucky history. Within six hours, I witnessed what I swore was a UFO (turned out to be the Goodyear blimp), encountered Bigfoot (actually my Uncle Randy in his hunting gear), and survived a tornado (it was a dust devil, but I was very drunk). The local news interviewed me for three minutes, during which I became an involuntary meme before memes were even a thing.
CHAPTER 8: GRAVEYARD DRINKING AND GOLF Fore! And Also, Rest in Peace
Discovered that the cemetery next to the municipal golf course has surprisingly good sight lines to the 7th hole. What started as casual beer drinking while visiting Great Aunt Mildred’s grave evolved into a full 18-hole drinking game where each headstone became a tee marker. The groundskeeper eventually found me on hole 14, three sheets to the wind, attempting to chip a ball over the mausoleum while apologizing profusely to the residents for the noise.
CHAPTER 9: AROUND THE WORLD AND GRADUATION My Semester Abroad Program That Went Exactly Nowhere
Signed up for a “Cultural Immersion Experience” that promised to broaden my horizons. Instead, I spent four months in what I thought was Prague but was actually Poughkeepsie. The program director had apparently misread the destination and was too embarrassed to admit the mistake. We all spent the semester pretending to experience “authentic European culture” while eating at a Polish restaurant that turned out to be run by a guy named Bob from New Jersey.
CHAPTER 10: DRINKS BEAN SOUP AND COINS FROM NANNY The Inheritance That Changed Everything (Sort Of)
When Nanny passed, she left me her life savings: $47.23 in loose change and a recipe for bean soup that could “cure anything that ails ya.” I spent the inheritance on drinks to celebrate my inheritance, then discovered that the bean soup recipe was actually just instructions for opening a can of Campbell’s with additional swear words. Still, it was the thought that counted, and those swear words really did improve the flavor.
CHAPTER 11: MIKEY THE HAMMER AND HAMPTON My Brief Association with Organized Crime (Accidentally)
Met a guy called “Mikey the Hammer” at a hardware store. Spent three weeks thinking I was being recruited into the mob before realizing he was actually just a carpenter who really loved his job. Our “criminal activities” consisted of building a deck for Mrs. Peterson and installing some very aggressive crown molding. I kept waiting for someone to sleep with the fishes, but the closest we got was Mikey’s koi pond project.
CHAPTER 12: CHICKENS STANDUP My Comedy Career Died at a Poultry Farm
Decided to try stand-up comedy at what I thought was an open mic night. Turned out to be a lecture series at the local agricultural extension office about chicken farming. Spent twenty minutes doing my tight five about airline food to an audience of very confused farmers and increasingly agitated poultry. The chickens were a tougher crowd than I expected. One rooster actually heckled me.
CHAPTER 13: DRUNK CREPE AND CAR SERVICE How I Accidentally Started a Food Truck Business
After a particularly successful night of bar hopping, I convinced myself I was a culinary genius and bought a crepe pan from a late-night infomercial. Started making crepes outside bars at 2 AM for drunk people walking to their cars. What began as drunken food distribution somehow evolved into “Lewie’s Mobile Munchie Service,” which operated for exactly one weekend before the health department shut me down for “egregious violations of basic food safety” and “questionable personal hygiene standards.”
CHAPTER 14: GOODBYE VICKY The Breakup That Inspired a Country Song (If I Could Write Music)
Vicky left me for a guy who owned both a motorcycle AND a steady job. The goodbye note was written on the back of a Denny’s receipt and simply said “Gone fishing. Don’t call.” I spent three months convinced this was a metaphor for something deeper before discovering she had literally gone fishing with her new boyfriend in Alaska. They sent me a postcard of a salmon. It felt unnecessarily cruel.
CHAPTER 15: SECRET POOP FINGER The Incident We Don’t Talk About at Family Gatherings
Some stories are too sacred, too personal, too monumentally embarrassing to share with the world. This is one of them. All I’ll say is: it involved a baby shower, a chocolate fountain, mistaken identity, and a very unfortunate series of assumptions. The statute of limitations hasn’t run out yet, and Cousin Martha still crosses herself when she sees me at Christmas.
CHAPTER 16: GROUP THERAPY AND HONEYBUNS Finding Healing Through Processed Pastries
After the accumulated trauma of the previous fifteen chapters, I finally sought professional help. Joined a support group for people with “unusual life experiences.” Discovered that everyone deals with stress differently – some people meditate, some do yoga, I apparently eat honeybuns. Went through seventeen boxes during my therapeutic journey. The group eventually had to stage an intervention about my honeybun dependency, which led to a second support group specifically for people addicted to gas station pastries.
EPILOGUE: THE NAPKIN THAT STARTED IT ALL Reflections on a Life Well-Embellished
Looking back at this cocktail napkin outline, I realize that either I’ve lived an extraordinarily eventful life, or I really need to cut back on my bourbon intake when making major life decisions. Probably both. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from documenting my adventures, it’s that every life is worth celebrating, especially the spectacularly ridiculous ones.
And if you can’t find the humor in accidentally starting a food truck business while drunk or being heckled by actual chickens, then you’re taking life way too seriously.
The End
(Or at least, the end until I find the other napkin with the rest of my notes…)
AUTHOR’S NOTE: No animals, historical sites, or family members were intentionally harmed during the creation of these memoirs. Several were inadvertently traumatized, but they’ve mostly recovered. Mostly.
