A little bit of everything and a white trash family tale

This will be another ADD post, because there are many things rolling around in my brain today.
First of all, I saw the Johnny Cash movie last night, and it rocked beyond any expectations. Joaquin Phoenix had an eerie resemblance to the late Man in Black, both aesthetically and emotionally. I highly recommend it. I drove home after watching it and thought a lot about it, as I do when I see a movie I either love or hate, and really thought, "Hmm..Johnny Cash took a while to really get his shit together. Should I really be that hung up on my own perceived shortcomings?" I mean, how awesome is the line "There's just something about a Sunday that makes a body feel alone?"
Second of all, having come to a financial crossroads due to being unemployed now for over a month, I am in full acceptance of the fact that I will have to take whatever job I can, as long as it starts as soon as possible. It's almost cathartic I guess, to be as a big a professional snob as myself, to realize that I may be working at a Quik Cash sometime soon, because being charming, winsome, and a social butterfly doesn't seem to pay the bills as it may have at one time. Oh, well.
And lastly, and completely diverging from any sane train of thought, I was thinking about one of the trashiest things I ever witnessed a few days ago and realized that I simply had to write about it, because it's too funny to keep to myself and the select few that have already heard it. Here goes:
In high school, I was friends with people who were somewhat shady. All of my really close friends were basically okay, but there were people on the fringe of our crowd or friends of my friends who were ready for Jerry Springer before there was a Jerry Springer show. In fact, they may have since been on there. I digress.
One day, my friend Melissa was giving me and my friend Jessica a ride home. I had a car, but rarely was allowed to drive to school, so it was always cool when I could ride home with someone. The two of them had been friends before I came to that school, so I was really new to their friendship, but we were getting along swimmingly until this particular day.
Melissa and I stop to let Jessica out at her house, and the two of them began to argue, about what I don't remember, and suddenly, they were both out of the truck, clawing, slapping, pulling hair. (In retrospect, I should've found the closest group of guys and sold tickets, but I wasn't as enterprising in those days)
Anyway, me, not having any personal stake in the outcome whatsoever just kind of sat in the truck, stymied over what to do. I think my best effort was a halfhearted, "Um..guys? Maybe you should stop." Can't imagine why it didn't work.
Finally, the girlfight stopped with Melissa jumping into the truck, crying and freaking out and Jessica yelling at her at the top of her lungs. Well, I wasn't thrilled about being driven home by a panicky mess, but her truck was a stick shift, and I never had redneck initiation into driving such a vehicle, so we tore off, 70 mph down curvy, steep roads in rural Mississippi toward a mutual friend of Jessica and Melissa's, the notorious Jones (names are changed to protect..me) house.
Okay, here's what I know about this family. There were anywhere from 10 to 15 people living in this 4-room house, there was no indoor plumbing, they always had drugs, and therefore, rather unruly parties, and they were all related to each other somehow. Two of the guys were brothers; the rest were cousins, uncles and aunts, I dunno, but I attended one party of theirs where I'm pretty sure a crack pipe was passed around, and there were at least 3 babies being breast-fed at various times by aforementioned crack partakers. Classy stuff.
So, Melissa and I head over to this house so that she can talk to one of the cousin/brothers and presumably get high at the same time. We arrive, she heads off into the back with one of them, and I opt to hang out in the living room with another brother/cousin and his mother, along with someone's 7-month-old baby who is in a car seat on the couch, breathing in more second-hand smoke than some people ever do, let alone an infant..and I start to hear this exchange between mother and son:
Mother: "Curtis, I'm gon' cut myself! I am!
Curtis: "No, you ain't! No, Momma!
Mother: "Baby, I got to; I ain't got no choice!
Curtis: "Momma, don't! I'll punch you out to keep you from cuttin' yourself!
At this point in the dialogue, as I sit on the couch, trying to wave the smoke from in front of the baby's face, they notice that I'm sitting there.
Curtis begins to explain (why, I don't know, because I was perfectly content to be left out of the "cutting conversation) that his mother is on probation and is scheduled to see her probation office that day. Apparently, for medical reasons, like maybe glaucoma, she might not entirely so much pass the required drug test. So, in Momma's infinite wisdom, she decides to cut her arm with a butcher knife so that she will have to go to the emergency room and therefore postpone her meeting with her probation officer. Clearly, it's brilliant on many levels, but Curtis doesn't seem to like the idea. They resume yelling:
"Baby, I'm 'gon do it. Ya ain't gon' stop me!"
"The hell I won't! You do it, and I'll knock you clean out the door!"
Well, really, it goes back and forth for some time, and at times, I desperately wanted my friend to come out of that room so we could leave, and at times, I was sucked into the white trash train wreck and really just wanted to know what would happen.
Here's what did happen. Curtis and Momma came up with a compromise. He would cut her arm in a superficial way, but enough to draw a fair amount of blood and perhaps require stitches. It seemed that Momma had been medicating her glaucoma that very day to the extent that she likely would have lopped off her arm had she administered the knife herself, so they made a compromise.
About 15 minutes before my soon-to-be-ex friend came out of the back of the house that Clorox forgot, Curtis and Momma made their way to the emergency room with Momma's left arm swathed in a bloody towel. The last thing I heard was, "Baby, I feel lightheaded."
I have no idea how their plan turned out, and thank God, I never saw any of those people again after that day, but I often think about the pure love that boy clearly had for his Momma. Because Lord knows if I ever want to get out of a drug test with my probation officer, I want a son who will knock me clear out of the house to protect my safety.