Sometimes you get remembered for exactly the wrong reasons. Sometimes it works to your advantage and other times it doesn’t. For example, Ted Kennedy is remembered for his contributions to the U.S. Senate rather than for killing a girl while Tiger Woods will probably be remembered not for being the world’s greatest golfer but for cheating on his wife about 13 times. To a certain segment of our population, I’m remembered for one particularly infamous incident, even though I’ve done a million more memorable things both good and bad.
It was August 2005. I was ready to embark on my last semester of College. The week before classes start back, there’s a week when the Freshmen come in and kinda learn the lay of the land, if you will. This is also when the upper-classmen start coming back to town. Everyone parties in Milledgeville on Thursday nights because most of the school doesn’t have class on Friday. So, the first Thursday back at school is known as Black Thursday. Everyone goes downtown to watch the Freshmen get drunk and then get arrested. It’s like NASCAR. You watch it for the wrecks.
This particular Black Thursday, I think I went downtown about lunch time. So I was good and drunk by 3:00. It was my last semester of college, all my difficult classes were out of the way, and I was in a kick-ass rock band. I left a trail of destruction every time my right foot fell. I did stupid things and I got away with them. Not a bad life.
Anyway, Garr and Jennifer were having a going away party for some friends of theirs. Wiley and Andrew and a bunch of other folks were over at their house swimming and getting drunk. Just the usual. Roman and I had been hanging out together and we decided to venture over towards the party. While in route to the party, we stopped by Andrew’s house, right next door to Garr’s.
Andrew lived in a duplex sort of place. We knew the people that lived in the other part of the house and they sometimes hung out with us. They were cool enough, I suppose. On the porch of the house there was a large plastic owl. It stood probably about 2 feet tall and was really nothing special, just a stupid decoration. I picked it up and was messing around with it when Scott walked out of the house and joined us.
We all headed over to Garr’s and I just sort of assumed the owl belonged to Scott and Andrew because nobody said anything to me about it. I tucked it under my arm and carried it with me.
Aloha Mr. Owl
As the afternoon progressed, we got freakin’ hammered. I mean sloppy-ass drunk. I remember Wiley falling out of his chair once or twice and Scott may or may not have thrown up half a dozen times.
Now, I digress for a moment… Perhaps you’ve seen the beginning of Happy Gilmore, where Adam Sandler’s character humps everything or perhaps this Christoph Waltz gem? I always thought that was hilarious. I’ll get drunk and dry-hump things for the sheer humor of it. It’s all tongue-in-cheek and most people find it funny. Evidently that funny ends once a plastic owl gets involved.
I found our old friend Mr. Owl, walked up behind Wiley and pretended I was humping the owl. Not like going to town on it or anything, just giving it a bit of gentle loving. Somehow, this became the worst thing anyone has ever done ever. Never mind all the unspeakable evils I have seen go down in that house, I get remembered for this, like it was a good old-fashioned kitten massacre.
I added insult to injury by then giving that owl to Garr’s friends as a going away present. Once again, I made an ass of my self by assuming that they wouldn’t actually take it. I was wrong. A couple of hours later, Scott and Andrew’s neighbor showed up wanting to know where the hell his plastic owl was. Uh oh. By this time, I was long gone, so Garr had to track down his friends and get the owl back from them to return to the neighbor.
I was not popular that day.
Author’s Note: I only bring this story up because when the Midget-Town Story was being explained to Garr, he had to be reminded who I was. Unfortunately, this was the one incident that refreshed his memory, from five f’n years ago!
