the other day, while answering questions for our health plan, i was asked if i’d used tobacco products within the last year. slightly disappointed, i’d answered no, i hadn’t. it got me to thinking about a few of the times have i have had a cigarette.. or, as in one case, half a pack of joe camels.. and then lost my voice for three days.

i was spending the summer in oxford, working “downtown” at the uptown bakery (uptown, downtown.. oxford was small enough that they were essentially one in the same). and since i was also working at the outdoor pursuit center, i was pretty pressed for time as i usually had shift at the opc right after i got off from my bakery shift. but my friend m was spending her summer taking classes in mount vernon, just outside of columbus, and i’d long ago promised her that i’d come visit. i also had a friend from school who was spending the summer at home, also just outside of columbus. so, being the multi-tasker that i strive to be, i decided to roll it all into one evening’s trip.

now, if you know of ohio’s geography, you’ll understand the grand ambitions that this was: columbus is a good two and a half/three hours from oxford and mount vernon is another half hour still. tack on the fact that i couldn’t get out of oxford until 4pm and that i had to be at work at 7am the next morning and you have yourself the makings of an epic.

and so i set sail, oblivious to the turbid waters before me. beginning easily enough, i made it to shully’s place in decent time.. say 7/8pm or so. i remember i walked into the door, he and his mother led me in, and shully and i started quoting comedians for some reason. i started on lewis black’s rant against candy corn. i go on, “..And every year since then, Halloween is returned and I, like a–“.. i stopped. shully was frantically motioning with a hand across his neck, cut it off. so i trailed off and he took me aside a minute later. “her father passed away a couple months ago from alzhiemer’s.” sheesh.. good start.

by the time i was ready to part ways with shully for the evening, the hour was already in the double digits and my eyes were starting to get heavy. still, i pushed on through sunbury, centerburg, and was going through lonely mount liberty when i got pulled over for the first time that night. i’d just filled up on gas and, being tired and young, thought that gunning it out of the gas station might help wake me up. of course, i did this right in front of a cop. so when he pulled up behind me, i saw no reason to create a chase and so i just pulled over.. but he was confused. he pulled over behind me.. waited a bit.. then threw on his lights. he came to the window and asked, “is there a problem, sir?” i thought i was supposed to ask that..

but i answered, “umm.. nope.. just thought you were going to pull me over for pulling out of the gas station so fast.”

“oh.. nope, didn’t even notice. that’s why you pulled over..? well, regardless, now that i’m here, i have to run your license and registration.”

..awesome. but nothing came of it, thankfully, not even a warning since i think he was confused about what to warn me about. so i went on through to quaint mount vernon.. met m and we hung out for a bit, talked about what to do for the night, then decided to head over to kenyon college. she wanted to show me the “upside-down tree” and the chapel they had there. now, there’s always an attraction to some type of action, something a little risky and dangerous, even if those two aspects are mostly imagined. so what were we, two good christian kids, to do when, at 1am in the morning, we found the doors were open to nearly all the campus buildings.. with no one in sight.. while school was out..