The following post contains a series of true short stories, also known as graybles in the Adventure Time universe, that occurred over the past twelve years. All of these stories, either in part or in full, were discussed or happened during a bachelor party I attended back in June. Congrats to my best friend, Mike. I hope you enjoy marriage.
I have to begin with a story that happened rather recently — at your bachelor party, in fact. You, our fishy friend who I’ll talk about more in a coming story, and I were sitting at the bar at a local establishment that you (and Fish) had frequented numerous times in college. It was, however, my first time being there, as my college experience was largely devoted to trying to graduate early while working multiple jobs. The three of us were chatting about whatever happened to come up, be that the fact that Johnny Manziel’s CFL team was on TV, the fact that everyone thought the bartender looked suspiciously like one of my ex-girlfriends1, or where else we needed to go that evening before turning in for the night.
This was until an older man walked up to the bar and sat down beside me. His flannel overshirt covered a tattered Mark Martin t-shirt from his Valvoline sponsorship days, though the overshirt seemed out-of-place on a 90 degree day. He flagged down both bartenders and ordered a piece of pizza. The male bartender ran off to grab the pizza while the female bartender attempted to collect payment.
“That’ll be $2,” she said.
“One dollar?” the bar patron asked in a confused tone.
The female bartender shook her head at him as the male bartender sat the pizza down and ran off to help other customers.
“Nope,” she replied, “that’s just on Thursdays. It’s two dollars.”
It was at this point that I notice that the man was fiddling with three quarters in his hand, running them through his fingers. How he was planning to pay for $1 worth of food with $0.75 is beyond me, but I didn’t have much time to think about it, as he put the quarters in his pocket, removed his wallet, and pulled out a credit card.
“Just put it on my tab,” he said.
The bartender took his card at this point, but nearly instantly after she took his card, the man reached out his hand to stop her.
“Wait! No!” he pleaded. “Can I run to the bank?”
“Sure,” she responded. “I’ll keep your pizza warm.”
The older man started digging through his pockets looking for something. He was struggling to stay on his bar stool in the process, leading the bartender to shoot our group some judgmental looks. After 10-15 seconds of searching, the man sat up rigidly straight.
“Actually, put it on my tab and get me a Coors Light. Draft.”
The bartender turned and walked to the register with his card. Meanwhile, the man powerwalked to the back of the bar, presumably to the restroom. We stayed another 15-20 minutes, but we didn’t see him again.
I was only in town for a little less than 24 hours. Yet, despite the short amount of time there, we saw that strange interaction. It’s not like seeing weird things from people who had been drinking was a recurring theme of the time we spent together in college or anything.
Our first year at college was interesting, if for no other reason than the first semester at college was not particularly indicative of what we would end up being either at the end of college or later in life. While I was mostly a shut-in, wallowing in self-pity over the ending of a five year relationship2, you were off making friends and (briefly) trying to join a fraternity. Yet, despite those differences from our future trajectories, that first semester produced a handful of entertaining stories, including this one.
One of the things that our RA during our first year was very vocal about encouraging was the act of keeping your dorm room door propped open if you weren’t sleeping/studying/changing/etc. He had this grand idea of being an entire floor community between his residents and those of the other two RAs on the floor. It worked for all of half of a semester. During that half semester though, we had people floating in and out of our room at all hours of the day and night. One of these people was a guy who we’ll call Ricky. If Ricky was in our room, Ricky was drunk. Usually significantly so. Ricky also liked to ask us for our food or drinks when he came in the room empty-handed, which was more common in retrospect than I think we realized at the time.
There was an evening when the two of us had decided to play either Rock Band or Guitar Hero prior to you going out drinking and me needing to go to bed to go to work3. We had ordered wings from our favorite chicken wing place in Bowling Green, Mister Spots. After being back in town recently and going there, I’m reminded how well their food holds up. They’re damn good wings4. My favorite kind of their wings to get is a wing sauce known as the wiseguy wings. I adore spicy food — the spicier, the better — and these wings make me sweat profusely every time I eat them. They’re not just hot, as they really do taste amazing. But they’re a kick in the face, even when you know what you’re getting yourself into.
Ricky didn’t know what he was getting himself into.
Around 10pm, Ricky stumbled into our room, reeking of cheap beer and vodka. He was stumbling everywhere, slurring his words as he repeatedly asked us for food. He was very intent on wanting one of my chicken wings specifically. I kept telling him that it was a bad idea and that he didn’t want to do that. Ricky was persistent though, so I gave in and handed him a wing. Ricky took a big bite, chewed for five or ten seconds, and produced a thousand yard stare that I’ve never seen before or since. The chicken wing dropped to the ground. In a perfectly understandable, non-slurring voice, Ricky spoke.
“I have made a mistake.”
Ricky shambled off to the bathroom where (we’re told) he had his head under the faucet of the sink for the next 20 to 30 minutes. Ricky never asked us for food again.
For all the weirdness that happened throughout college — and I assure you there was a lot of it, in spite of the fact that I was only there two and a half years — one of the most enduring memories of college was running a radio show with you and Fish. If memory serves, you didn’t join our “staff” until midway through our first semester on air. Even then you were our “researcher” as you weren’t allowed on air unless you became part of the radio organization we were in. You eventually became our third talking head in the spring of that first year, though your primary gimmick was hating Penn State and playing World of Warcraft instead of actually fact checking for us. In spite of that gimmick, you were an integral part of our show, as you helped us to come up with some of the show’s weirdest ideas, including the live wing tasting contest we held on air5.
You also put up with a lot of bullshit from me and (and occasionally Fish) just to go on air with us once a week. There was the time I thought it would be a good idea to trudge across campus during a snowstorm that dropped nearly two feet of snow and closed campus for two days. On the plus side, the closure announcement went out while we were on air, so we got to share the news. There was also a time where you had to run a show by yourself for half of its run time because I was busy taking Fish to the emergency room. Such was life. As a reminder, fish can swim, but they don’t do well on ice.
I was really proud of the work we did with our show. It won our radio organization’s show of the year award in its first year on the air. I’d like to think it was partly because we were funny, partly because we were entertaining, and partly because we weren’t afraid to discuss hard issues. We talked about the Virginia Tech shootings on air just days after they occurred. We called out (and then subsequently got a sternly worded email from the then-President of) the University of Delaware for their repeated ducking of in-state institution (and historically black college) Delaware State. We brought to light concerns with concussions and brain health.
The show had its flaws for sure. We got pulled off air for a week for not clearing our interviews. We had a terribly sexist and cringeworthy hottest college athlete bracket that we managed to drag a then-Sports Illustrated writer onto air to talk with us about6. But ultimately, the show was a ton of fun. It’s not like there’s a reason we sort of revived it for a podcast or anything7.
For the next to last story, I want to recount to my readers the single most memorable story to come out of our time together in college. I use the word memorable loosely, as this story has been pieced together from my memory, fragments that other folks on campus shared with us, and the few bits and pieces I was able to pull from your mind the morning after.
As I mentioned earlier in this post, I worked a lot of weird hours during college and you drank just a bit in an effort to join a fraternity. One early October day was the crown jewel of those two scenarios coming together. You went out to a party on Friday evening, while I worked at the dorm from around 7pm until midnight. You swung by the front desk and chatted for a few minutes when you left for your party at around 930, while my evening went largely quietly at work. After someone unexpectedly called off, I stayed at the front desk until around 2am to help them out before going back up to our room to head to bed. It didn’t take me long to get ready to sleep and with the few weeks I was having, I desperately just wanted to sleep.
I had just finished curling up under my blanket when I heard keys fumbling outside of our door. I leaned up to look and make sure it was you coming in, as after a few failed attempts to stick a key in the lock, I was starting to grow a bit concerned. But after a few tries, you succeeded, only to notice me sitting up in my bunked bed, wide awake.
“Shit,” you said. “Did I wake you, man?”
“No,” I replied. “I just got to bed.”
“That’s good.”
It was at this point, you took a step forward. Said step was subsequently followed by you crashing to the ground face first. You did your best to lift yourself up off the ground, however our university’s insistence of using rocking chairs for the in-dorm desk chairs was not aiding your battle with gravity at this juncture. After a few, struggled filled attempts, you managed to climb into your chair and sit quietly.
The next few minutes brought little excitement. We were still relative strangers at this point, so you asked to borrow a cup so you could get water from the fountain down the hall. How you managed to get the cup, fill it, and make it back without spilling it on the tile hallway was beyond me, particularly considering your fall moments prior. That said, you managed to avoid harming yourself in the process. You drank some of the water and then asked if you could play Guitar Hero, as you weren’t tired.
For those reading who weren’t there themselves, I want to take a moment to explain the layout of the dorm room that Mike and I shared. The room was small — maybe 10 foot deep by 8 foot wide — with a window on the opposite side of a centered door. If you stood in the doorway, my closet and desk would be immediately to your right and Mike’s to the left. Beyond those desks were our beds, both bunked four and a half feet or so in the air, mine again on the right and his on the left. A futon ran perpendicularly below the head of both beds, while a TV was under the foot of my bed and a mini fridge and pantry were under the foot of Mike’s bed. I give this description to help the next two sequences of the story make sense.
Anyway…so after you (Mike) decided you wanted to play Guitar Hero, I rolled over and faced the wall in an effort to not be bothered by the light of the TV. I heard the game go through its loading screens, but before it even got to the start menu, I heard you get up and shut off both your Xbox and the television.
“I’m going to bed!” you announced triumphantly. “Good night.”
You changed clothes and climbed into bed. Within minutes, you were asleep. I curled up more under my blankets and tried to fall asleep, though I couldn’t sleep. I kept feeling like I was forgetting to do something. I had no idea what it could be for a few minutes, but then it hit me. I owed someone — though I have no idea who anymore8 — an email. So I got out of bed, opened my laptop and began writing an email.
The funny thing about mid-2000s laptop computers is that when you booted them up, their screens were so bright that several small planets could conceivably consider them to be suns. I should have saved my email for the next morning. I really should have. But when my Dell White Dwarf 2005 came on, you groggily rubbed your eyes and mumbled at me.
“What time is it?” you asked.
“2:25. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“What time is it?” you asked again, confused.
“2:25. You’re late for class.”
Several years after this event, we both know full well that the other is sarcastic more often than not. We also know that I enjoy messing with my friends. I’m unsure if this was an understood fact at this point in time or if you were just too drunk to realize what was going on. But what happened next set off a chain of events that perplex both of us to this day.
“Oh shit!” you yelled.
With a deftness and agility I’ve not seen you move with at any other point in your life, you bounded out of bed and dove to the floor, landing as you did a half-tuck roll towards your closet. You threw on pants and a shirt, slipped on your shoes, and grabbed your backpack, all before I could realize what was going on. You threw open the door and sprinted out into the hallway, running headfirst into the cinder block wall across from our door. Not stopping your momentum, you barrel rolled hard to the right, taking off down the hallway toward the stairs.
It was at that moment I realized what was going on. Not even bothering to pause and put on my own shoes, I ran down the hall after you, but you were long gone. I made my way down to the front desk and asked one of my co-workers if they had seen you. They had, but you had taken off outside at a dead sprint. I looked out the front door, but you were no where to be seen. So I did the only thing I thought was rational at that point in time — I went upstairs and went to bed. Surely you were fucking with me and would be back in a few minutes.
I went back upstairs and laid down. I expected to see you in a few minutes, but instead, I fell asleep. Around 4:30 in the morning, the door flew open. You were standing in the middle of the door way, water POURING off of your clothes. You stared up toward my bed and spoke with deadpanned seriousness.
“I fucking hate you.”
You crawled into bed — wet clothes, shoes, and backpack all still on — and went to sleep.
The next morning, I woke up relatively early and went to take a shower. When I came back in the room, you were wide awake, your backpack sitting on the futon, but you fully dressed otherwise. I expected you to be furious with me, but instead, you asked me to help you retrace your steps from the night before.
Between me recounting the above story, as well as the eyewitness accounts of a handful of drunken students from the night before, we were able to determine that you did, in fact, run off to one of your afternoon classes. Reports differ as to whether or not you got in the building, however you were for sure sighted near the Thinker statue (below) on campus trying to open a nearby door, presumably for sake of attending class.
As to why you were wet, we’re not 100% sure whatever happened there. The university did have a habit of running the sprinkler system during the wee hours of the morning. There’s no way you would have had water running off of you solely from that though. There is also a lake on campus near the music building. Considering its proximity to our dorm, this makes the most sense, however most other reports of your whereabouts had you on the opposite end of campus. Perhaps it was a combination of the two.
Despite diving into the deepest, darkest reaches of your mind, you’ve never been able to reconstruct any of that night for yourself. It’s a shame, as it was definitely one of the funniest experiences of my entire time knowing you. So why not end with it? There’s a more important grayble to tell.
The final story I want to tell isn’t a particularly funny or long story, but it is a critical one to helping to understand why I’ve devoted a 4100+ word blog post that nearly no one will read the whole way through to the fact that you’re getting married.
My first semester of college was rough to say the least. A lot of that was self-inflicted. It was during that semester that I decided I was going to try to graduate a four-year program in two and a half years. I picked up the aforementioned job with odd hours and started the aforementioned radio show from scratch that semester. It was also the semester that my high school girlfriend and I finally broke up for good.
We’d been in a relationship on life support for the better part of six months when we got to college, but being at college ended up doing us in. We weren’t in the same place in life, as evidenced by the fact that I was a far less mature person than she was at the time. In early October of that year (just one week before the previous story), she and I split up. I spent the better part of that windy afternoon wandering around campus. A friend of mine from high school came up and stayed with us for the weekend because she was concerned for my mental health9. That weekend was the second drunkest I’d seen you, as said friend changed clothes in front of you and you were too inebriated to notice. That’s not the point of this story, but it does amuse me, so I thought I’d bring it up.
My relationship with my high school girlfriend was off at that point, but we stayed lukewarm towards each other over the course of the next few weeks. On a Friday night in mid-November, she called me and we spent the evening sitting in chairs in her dorm’s common area talking. By midnight, we had decided that we were going to get back together. I fell asleep on the futon beneath her dorm bed (as I was sick and didn’t want to get her sick) incredibly happy about how things had changed for the positive — on the day before my birthday no less.
The next morning, she woke me up at six in the morning. She told me that our discussion from the night before was a mistake and that we should stay split up. I was devastated all over again. Beyond that, a bunch of our friends from high school were coming down to visit from Eastern Michigan University. We decided in that moment that it was better that I not be there so that things wouldn’t be awkward and that my cold would be the excuse.
Had the day’s disappointments stopped there, it would have been a shitty birthday, but not the worst imaginable10. The notable thing about this birthday was that it happened to coincide with the Ohio State-Michigan football game. While I detest Ohio State and generally don’t care about Michigan, the Ohio State-Michigan game made the rivalry unavoidable, as all of my friends and family took sides for the game, most of them VERY vocally.
During this specific year, Ohio State and Michigan were the top two teams in the country, meaning their game got moved to prime time for television audiences. This led to everyone I came in contact with all day talking about the game and nothing else. I didn’t hear from a single friend or family member the entire day about anything other than OSU-Michigan. The only birthday wish I got from anyone was from my now-ex-girlfriend, just as I was walking out the door from us breaking up.
You were off somewhere that Friday and didn’t get back until late Saturday evening, so I didn’t see you all day. Just before kickoff, you came back to our dorm room where I was working on a group project for one of my classes with two people who also didn’t care about football. Neither of said people knew it was my birthday, but you did. It was at that point you made the group of four of us11 get up and we walked to the student union and got dinner from Wendy’s for my birthday. We sat at these tall tables over the entrance to the building and marveled at the fact that on any other Saturday night, people would be migrating across campus to go to parties, but that tonight they were too distracted by a sports matchup involving two colleges that they didn’t go to for this to be a thing.
After dinner, we left the union, all walked to the combination Tim Horton’s and Cold Stone to get coffee and ice cream. You left and went off somewhere — I think a party — while I finished the group project. That moment stuck with me. It was the moment I realized that I had found my new best friend. I’ve always been grateful to you for that moment. Thank you.
This story, of course, has a pair of happy endings. You’ve found your new best friend. My hope is that she gives you the happiness you deserve. The other happy ending? Ohio State got humiliated in the national title game that year.
