WATCH WHO YOU HANG WITH

One of the perils of hanging out with race car drivers are the groupies who want to hang with them. I'll relate a story:

Tuesday night was what is called "The Front Row" party in an area of Indianapolis called Broad Ripple, think Lower Greenville in Dallas or Sixth Street in Austin, or Five Points in Columbia, S.C. I hung out with some of my coworkers from the track, and after I lost track of them, I ended with IndyCar driver Jimmy Kite, his PR guy Tom and some other folks. One girl walked up to Jimmy and started talking to him when Tom leaned over to me and told me to find Bruce Martin, a motorsports journalist who has taken to calling me "Arni's Army" this week. It seems this girl, hereafter known as "The Staker" doesn't like Bruce much so it's a kin to keeping an owl nearby so other birds stay away.

Well Bruce showed up, but it was after "The Stalker" left. Soon after, Tom, Jimmy, Bruce and I went to another bar and hung out. We had been there about 45 minutes when "The Stalker" found us. The best description of what happened next was related by Bruce, who said "it was similar to the alarm clock the explodes during the Bugs Bunny cartoons."

The Stalker wigged out. She was yelling at Bruce and then Jimmy about being ignored and she was blaming Bruce for driving a wedge between her and Jimmy, who I guess she persumed was her boyfriend. It was funny, although she could have whipped out a pistol and gunned us all down. After she left, Jimmy declared "I'm never touching her again."

I went to check to see if my family's bunny had been boiled.

Lesson for the class: Don't get killed by a race car driver's stalker