Day 43: A Relevant Story (almost)

Well it's been a while since my last actual story on here, so I figure that today is as good as any day for it--since as it turns out there's not a ton to do on a six hour flight when you can't sleep. So i'll warn you ahead of time it'll probably get wordy (believe it or not) and it may or may not include multiple tangents and distractions, but it'll get there eventually.

It was a typical Minnesota winter in late December in the pre-cell phone world. A couple carloads full of friends made the trek up to Minneapolis to partake in the annual New Years Bash at another friend's house (we'll call him Greg for sake of anonymity). Every year Greg had a New Year's Party and this year was no different. This was usually the one time of year when our entire group of friends (which amounted to approximately 63.2% of the population of the city of Caledonia) got together for a bash. There were drinking games, yard games, Tecmo Superbowl games, campfires, hot sauce drinking challenges, gratuitous alcoholic drinking, and the notorious dropping of the Woody (sounds derogatory, but I'll come back to this later). There were games of MOOSE^ that devolved into filling cereal bowls with a few ounces of beer and then proceeding to pour Crispix in said bowl as a penalty to whomever might turn out to be the loser of the game (see Paul). Polish golf was played outside in the dead of winter, as well and Bean Bag Toss/Cornhole (or as is known amongst the members of 1839 Cleveland: Brachtung). This festivity started at about 6pm and continued on into the wee hours of the night (wee hours was intentionally selected for its secondary connotation, but we shall not speak of that here...not now...not ever). At some point around the hour of 10 pm one of the house's residents (Hardy) has decided "To Salute" all of "Those about to Rock" and he comes trouncing in from outside, turns off all the lights in the living room, throws on AC/DC and begins to "mosh" around the living room, solo. In the midst of his moshing, he encounters the only source of light in the living room, a lone candle, and decides (correctly) that the only possible way to extinguish this light is to drink its life. So he tips up the candle and drinks the wax down like a milk shake and quashes the light completely...no joke. Not entirely sure how his digestive tract felt the next day but I think its safe to assume that it was a painful recovery.

One of the more well-documented traditions of this celebration was to find Woody, who was usually shirtless and shitfaced by this point, grab a bunch of markers, and write various New Years Eve related quips on him. Everything from: The Ball to Woody is the Ball to Drop the Woody Ball (mostly ball related), to Happy New Year 200_ (fill in the blank, because this happened every year in the 00's) amongst other indecipherable scribblings. Once the writings were all complete on his belly, bald head, etc. and it was nearly midnight, a group of guys would pick Woody up off of the ground and the countdown would begin.

10..9...8...people would gather in the living room just to see what was going on, to the outside observer this looked like it might just be some sort of ritual sacrifice...7...6...5...Paul comes running over to help lift Woody even higher off of the ground...4....3....2....1! The group simultaneously lets Woody go and he falls from 6 feet or so to the hardwood floor with an enormous thud. "HAPPY NEW YEAR!," the group exclaims as Woody rubs his belly to make sure its still there...sure enough it is. Hijinx continue on through the night and eventually everyone wakes up feeling like crap and slowly make their way back home, just as happened on this particular morning.

Myself, the fiance, and six other friends (Ian, Trina, Matt, Jon, Woody) were leaving the following morning and decided to stop off in Dinkytown (nearby neighborhood of Minneapolis) for some post-drinking, hangover nursing Subway. Its about 9 or 10 am when we leave Greg's house that morning, and given that its Minnesota the sun is shining and the air is a crisp -5 degrees. The snow is so cold that it crunches and squeaks beneath our feet as we walk to the frost-covered car. Matt opens the squeaking Blazer door, climbs in and turns the key. The car lurches to life after a few noticeably difficult engine firings, and Matt proceeds to scrape off the windshield while Woody, Jon, and Mandy climb in the car freezing their asses off. Ian, Trina, myself and Alyssa all proceed to climb into Ian's car to the same frigid experience. The point of this, its f*cking cold out.

Twenty or so minutes later we arrive at our destination in Dinkytown, not sure why we chose this particular location (if anyone reading this can remember fill me in), but nonetheless we arrived ready to eat some Subway sandwich. Matt and Ian pulled into their parking spots, which were located in a relatively sketchy spot behind some businesses, figuring its New Year's Day and we're probably good if we're here for only a few minutes. On our walk to Subway we pass by a homeless man who wishes us a Happy New Year and asked us if we had any spare change, and per usual I actually wasn't carrying any cash and I reluctantly relayed that to the man. Actually as it turned out none of us were and we told him sorry as we passed by him and walked into the Subway. Now usually I'll just say I don't have change whether I do or not, but this was one of those "its a New Year, help a brother out" type of moments, where we all wished we did have some but legitimately had none. As we were standing in line ordering our food at the Subway, Matt suddenly realized that he did have some cash and it was substantial too, ten dollars and some odd amount of change. Deciding that it was time to turn over a new leaf, he trudged back outside, found the homeless man and gave him the little bit of cash he had. Everyone thought that was fairly admirable, especially since at the time we all had relatively zero income since we were all in either high school (see Alyssa) or college, or working part-time jobs, so ten bucks was a pretty big deal.

After we finished eating our food we were feeling pretty good about ourselves, Matt feeling the most happy about himself, and we headed back out into the cold, back to the car giving a tip of the hat (or in this case a tip of the winter stocking cap) to the homeless fellow outside of the Subway on our way. So a few brisk frost-bitten moments later we come upon Matt's blazer and Ian's Sunfire. Ian unlocks his car we all pile in. There is still some residual heat remaining from our drive from Greg's as Ian shuts the door and goes to start the car. A moment later, Matt is still standing outside of his blazer and we all just assume he's smoking a cigarette. And a moment later still...We all kind of sit there silently for a moment, realizing what is happening. He locked his keys in the car. It's deathly cold out and New Year's Day, so nothing is open. No one really knows what to do...we think we should call AAA so we can get in the car, that would be the first logical step.

Matt and I realize that there's a Bruegger's Bagels shop just down the road and we can see a phone booth so we head that way hoping to phone AAA or someone to come and unlock Matt's car. As we approach Bruegger's we realize that this place isn't open, nor will it be for the remainder of the day, after all who wants bagels on New Year's Day, right? Motherf*ckers. We stick to our original plan of looking up the phone number and calling somewhere on this pay phone. Only once we approach the pay phone, we notice that the phone book has been long since removed. Well...what now. We decide to call 411 on the pay phone (remember pre-cell phone), I went to dig in my coat and pants pockets...no change. Matt did the same, with the same result. Of course he didn't have any change, he had given it all to the homeless guy outside of Subway just a few minutes ago. "SHIT!" he yelled, "That's what I get for being nice!"

"Calm your ass down," I told him. I picked up the phone and dialed zero hoping I could get the operator to help. The operator tells me that without us paying the toll (25 cents) that there was no way she could help unless we wanted to be transferred to 9-1-1--and naturally we didn't. So there we were, stranded, in the frigid cold, with no cash (and nowhere to get it from) to call a wrecker to come and unlock the car so we could leave. Happy New Year. Matt and I head back to the cars to relay the "good" news. No one seemed too enthralled by the situation, and in fact Alyssa was getting worried because she hadn't been able to tell her parents that we were going to be so late or that we may in fact freeze to death in this very parking lot. Everyone is standing around Ian's car and Alyssa says, "I've gotta call my parents they're going to be getting worried." As she finishes the sentence she pulls out the cell phone her parents had given her for this very reason from her purse. Everyone stands dumbfounded as she begins dialing. We had just spent the past 25 minutes trying to figure out a way to call the wrecking service for a jump without having any cash while Alyssa had a cell phone the whole time!

Needless to say we're all fairly pissed by now, but its taken on a humorous tone; a sort of, "What Else Could Possibly Happen Now" attitude has fallen over the group. So Alyssa calls her parents to relay the situation, and then I borrow her giant phone and make a call to 4-1-1 in order to get the phone number for a tow truck. I dial the numbers with my thickly gloved fingers and give the voice on the other end my city and state. Then they ask, "What is the name of the company you are looking for?" I say I don't know I'm hoping you'll help with finding me a towing service number. She says, "I'm sorry I can't look that up for you but I can give you the number of a towing service if you know the name of it." This goes back and forth for another ten or so minutes before I give up and realize that we're right back where we were to begin with.

A few of the group take Ian's car and head to Woody's dorm (nearby) to get a phone book, but of course after twenty minutes and some more shivering they return empty handed only to learn that the dorms are completely closed down the day after New Year's Eve. Again, after about ten minutes of freezing and brainstorming, Trina notices there's a sign directly in front of Ian's Car.

GOPHER TOWING

WE DO LOCK OUTS!!!!

612-378-2065

So, needless to say we called them, we all felt a new level of idiocy, and we were able to finally get Matt's blazer unlocked and drive back. It all played out like some first-person episode of Seinfeld, maybe it was a lesson trying to instruct all of use to live a better life by paying more attention to our surroundings or something, needless to say whatever the lesson was we were supposed to learn it was most definitely lost on us.

^MOOSE: A drinking game in which an ice cube tray, a bowl, and quarters are used. The bowl is placed at the end of the ice cube tray, filled with beer (or sometimes beers and breakfast cereals) and the quarters are bounced off of the table in an effort to get them in the ice cube tray. If you bounce a quarter into the bowl, and you're the last person to yell MOOSE and put your hands up near your head like moose antlers you get the lucky job of finishing the bowl of beer. If you bounce the quarter and it lands in the ice cube tray on the right side you give that many drinks out (the number comes from the layout as seen below), conversely, if you land on the left side then you have to drink that many drinks. The game continues until Paul fills the bowl full of cereal and nearly yaks on the table when he's the last person to call moose after landing a quarter in said Crispix filled bowl.

Moose Setup