The following statement was provided by Amy (but edited by me so the names are right from my end):

Welcome to the first ever Blog Fest. Amy, (an internets friend of mine whose blog can be found here) and I have both been blogging for about a year, and we've decided to mix things up a little so that more fun can be had by one and all. Fun kicks ass. The idea of Blog Fest (or a blog off,
if you will - although, this is not a competition even though I will so kick Amy's butt) was to take one general, vague topic and each write a blog about it.

Welcome to Blog Fest #1: A College Experience


After talking with a fellow blogger, we decided to both write a story about college. Any story. I have many, but here's the one that came to mind.

It's the spring of 1989. Springtime in the SEC. It was April 28th, a Saturday, and it was a good day to be alive.

(I only know that level of detail because just this weekend I stumbled across some...ummm...documentation of this day).

I was at Auburn University nearing the end of my third year (10th quarter), we had a totally kickass condo, I had reconciled with my high school sweetheart (and now wife of 13 plus years), and we were looking forward to another summer in a college town with a shitty paying job but enough beer and pizza money to have a great time for three months.

Anyway, my three roomates were members of Fraternities (Two were members of Sigma Phi Epsilon and one was a member of Beta Theta Pi), so my opportunities for drinking and band parties were extremely good almost every weekend. It was like friends with benefits. Only without the gratification of guilt-free sex. Of course, guilt-free drunken blackouts with a musical background were pretty fun too...

So, it was Saturday and we were all kinds of fired up because there was a double bill at the Sig Ep house: The Producers were opening for The Violent Femmes. Holy Shit!! Culture comes to Mayberry. Two truly (at the time) big acts coming to our little hick college town. And at a house where I had pretty much free run to do what I wanted...almost like being a pseudo-brother. WAR EAGLE!!

Weighed down by the coolers containing the trainload of beer we planned to drink, we headed out for the show. The other good news was that, due to some snafu in housing, my girlfriend lived in the married students area of campus. It was full of Asian grad students that cooked alot of funny smelling stuff, but it was big with a separate kitchen and bedroom and was about two short blocks from the Sig Ep house.

Our plan was to ride toghether in Robbie's car and park right near the old lady's place. That way, if someone could drive, the car was close, and if no one could drive, we'd either crash at her place or get one of her neighbors to drive us home.

The show was great, if not a little fuzzy in the memory thanks to our binge drinking. We had a great time, and when it was over, about 5,000 people left the Sig Ep house headed for home.

The crowd was so easy-going and satisfied that no one cared that an occasional beer was shook up, opened, and sprayed up and into the crowd, leaving many covered in wasted nectar but happy nonetheless. (For the record, the main one doing this was one of my drunk-ass roomates).

We walked the 100 yards or so to Robbie's car and started taking inventory.

"Alright...who's okay to drive?"

Robbie: safoi poqg asd aioah hrcjexdfvi uj.

Chris: NO WAY DUDE!!

Jon: blah blah I miss Stephanie.

Wife: I don't think that's a good idea.

Me: Uh....nope.

So I addressed the group. "Folks," I said, "I'll mosey down to the old lady's place and see if Kerry or one her other neighbors can drive us home."

And off I went. I left my happy band of totally shit-faced friends. I was walking tall and proud, if not quite crookedly, safe in the knowledge that we'd made the right decision and instead of driving drunk, we'd be getting a sober ride home.

I got to Kerry's place and knocked a few times, and got nothing. It was about midnight-ish, so I figured that they may have been asleep.

I then knocked on another friend's door. Same thing. No answer.

I then figure that Kerry might have been asleep but would still love to drive us home, so Iwent back upstairs and knocked some more.

And that's when I noticed my very pronounced shadow on the door in front of me.

I thought to myself "Why on earth can I see my shadow so brightly and in such a pronounced manner?"

That actually went thru my noodle as "Hey!! What the fuck is THAT?"

I spun around a little defensively and saw...

Dun Dun DUHHHHHHH!!!!

There parked in the middle of the street was Officer Friendly shining his Q-beam on me.

Officer Friendly: "What are you doing?"

Me: "I was trying to ask one of my girlfriend's friends for a sober ride home."

Officer Friendly: "So you're drunk?"

Me: "Uhhh...yeah."

Officer Friendly: "Come down here, boy."

Me: "Ummm....okay."

Now, at the side of his car, he goes from Officer Friendly to Officer Shitass.

OS: "Give me your ID."

Me: "Okay."

OS: "Your birthday's in July?"

Me: "Yep."

OS: "So, you acknowledge that you've been drinking? "

Me: "Why else would I need a sober ride home?"

OS: "And you won't be 21 for a little over two more months?"

Me: "You got it."

OS: "I'm charging you with public intoxication and consumption by a minor."

Me: " But I recognized I was drunk and we decided to find a sober ride home. There are over 5,000 people one hundred yards away piling into cars loaded and hitting the roads, and you've decided to ticket the one guy that decided NOT to drive home drunk?"

OS: "Put your hands behind your back."

Me: "Fine."

So off we went. Me and my not exactly lanky 6'3" frame cuffed and stuff courtesy of the city police.

This is where things went a little shitty.

The cop headed in the opposite direction of the jail, which confused me.

Me: "Why aren't we headed to the jail?"

OS: "I've got some other places to check."

Me: "Why wouldn't you just take me to jail?"

OS: "Shut up."

Me: "mumble...mumble..."

About an hour later, he asks "What station would you like to listen to on the radio?"

Me: "I don't care. Whichever one's playing 'Hurry up and take me to jail.' "

OS: "snicker..."

Asshole.

Meanwhile, that same hour's passed and my beloved was asking "Hey, what do you think's taking him so long?"

My roomates collectively were saying "Awww....he's fine. Fuck this. Let's just go. He's probably walking home or got a ride already."

Of course, my woman knew better. First, I wouldn't walk to get the mail if there was a ride available. Second, why on earth would I bail on the sober ride without telling them? I wasn't blacked out. If I were blacked out, I'd probably have been passed out, and they'd have sent someone else to get us all a fucking ride.

So they all pile in the car and my roommate Robbie drove home. Yes, the Robbie that couldn't see an hour earlier.

I'm not blaming him. We all would have done it. 4,000 other drunk asses doing the same thing at the same time. It's just ironic that while I was wondering why my decision to not drive drunk had landed me in the pokey (or was about to) my devil-may-care roomies were probably offering other drunks rides home in exchange for beer (which it turns out they were actually doing).

Anywho, Officer Shitass FINALLY decided to take me to the jail. Now, it's about 1am following a band party attended by 5,000 people. You can only IMAGINE what the police station was like.

I noticed that there was a brown line painted on the wall all the way around the room at about six and a half feet high, and I wondered why. I soon found out.

It was so full, they didn't have seating for everyone awaiting processing, so the walls in the secondary room were lined with guys facing the wall and their hands above that line.

Nice. Why not drip some water on my forehead, you facist fuckheads?

I got stuck behind the door that led to Gen-Pop (general population for those of you that don't watch OZ) and proceeded to wait while every few minutes getting hit in the back with the pull handle from the door.

At the same time, my roomies and my woman had made it safely to our home after providing rides to two or three other drunk-asses, in exchange for beer.

My beloved immediately grabbed the phone book, hustled upstairs and started looking up the numbers for various jails.

One of my roomates (Chris) came in and asked what she was doing.

She answered: "He's in jail. It's been two hours and even if he was crawling he'd be home by now. I'm not mad. I'm not upset. It is what it is. Now I just want to find out where he is so we can get him out."

Can you even ask why I love this woman so much?

While I was standing behind the door with my hands up waiting for the earlier detainees to be processed, I heard a woman at the desk say "something...something..." and then I heard my name.

"What the hell?" I thought.

Then I heard it again, only she was saying "Phone call for TMLSB!!"

Amazing. The love of my life had found me by phone before the local gendarme had found the time to process me.

She explained that she wasn't mad, she was glad I was okay, and she understood why I was mad at Officer Shitass as well as more than a little jealous of my "walks thru raindrops" roomate.

She also explained that they had told her she could come bond me out at 8am. She was going with Chris and Robby to get the $163 it would take to make that happen Sunday morning and she told me she loved me.

Buoyed by my love for this angel on earth, I happily sat thru being booked, printed, and sent thru the line to pickup my WWII Army Surplus reject blanket and my piece of fabric with about a handful of lint in it meant to be my pillow (folded in quarters, mind you) and followed the nice guard who was leading me to where I would sleep for the evening.

Now, I wasn't scared. I had previously been an overnight guest of the Bay County PD in Panama City, Florida (and fuck you too, Redneck Riviera), so I wasn't a rookie at this. I expected one of those Barney Miller like Lockups with 30 guys in it, including the one guy sleeping all by himself in the corner covered in his own vomit.

Except this was different. I was led to a cell that was like the 20 or so other cells that faced in towards a kind of a small empty room. The cell doors were on the outside of the perimeter. Hopfully you're getting this visual.

Apparently, the drunk tank was full or over-full, so they were throwing our naive asses into cells with actual criminals for the night.

Oh no.

If the cell was a clock, the door was at 6, the toilet / sink was at about 8, the steel bunk beds were at 10, the view out thru bars to other cells was at noon, and the desk area was at about 3.

Here's where I'd also like to offer up a hearty fuck you to the asshole that invented the stainless steel sink/shitter combo. There's nothing quite like the thought of brushing your teeth while your cellmate is taking a big messy prison food shit connected to the same piece of stainless steel.

Anyway, I look up and see a guy sitting on the bottom bunk. I nervously ask his name (which I have since forgotten). He asked if I was one of them drunk college boys. I said I was.

I then asked "What are you in for?"

His reply: "I'm being transferred to Mobile. I'm serving eight to ten years for trafficking cocaine."

Oh no. Oh God no. They've put me in a cell with a guy that's got nothing better to do than practice putting a knife in my ribs or stealing the pure and blessed sanctity of my anus.

He motioned up and said "That's your bed."

Then he did the darndest thing. He offered me a cigarette.

I immediately said "Sure," and then thought "Am I his bitch now? Oh shit. What have I done?"

I jumped down off the bunk to reach for the open pack of Newports and noticed there were only three in there. This guy was giving 33% of the smokes he had. That was quite cool and very unexpected. I offered my sincere and repeated thanks.

About that time some guy started babbling and whining and crying. Actually crying. He then started blabbering about how he was an SAE and if his brothers didn't get him soon...blah blah blah."

I felt like a little trouble, so I started yelling and screaming, calling him the biggest pussy I'd ever come in contact with and told him that was why no one wanted to join his faggoty fraternity.

This elicited a great response from the rest of what I assumed were actual criminals. (Not that being publicly intoxicated as a minor aren't two very serious crimes. Just say no to drugs, kids).

I felt better and was suddenly tired, so I told Michael Clarke Duncan's twin brother that I was going to sleep.

And did I ever sleep. I slept quite a restful sleep in fact, which was extra surprising considering I'd pissed the upper bunk sometime in the middle of the night.

When I was awakened by some asshole shouting my name (okay, it was the guard calling my name because I'd been bonded out, but still) I was crabby and sort of aware of my surroundings but groggy.

Think back to my description of the cell. If I were now exiting, the toilet thingy would be at about 2 o'clock.

As I jumped down, I noticed that Mr. John Coffey was already sitting at the desk (hopefully not waited to beat me to death for peeing on him). I thanked him for the smoke and then promptly noticed feet attached to a body laying on the ground next to and kind of around the back of the toilet.

(sidebar: I don't know about any of you, but I wouldn't like to sleep on the floor around my own shitter, but I can assure you I would certainly NOT like to sleep on the floor next to the toilet in the jailhouse).

I asked my roomie "Hey, how'd he get there?"

He answered: "Well, he was trying to steal your pillow and blanket and weasel you out of the top bunk, so I stood up and recommended that he find somewhere else to sleep. When he said there was nowhere else, I told him to sleep behind the fucking toilet."

Me: "You did that for me?"

Him: "Yeah. Didn't seem right. After all, you were in jail first. Same reason I got my bunk and got to let you have the other one."

Hmmm. Apparently there ARE some laws in the big house.

I finally got out of the cell, thanked the man, and headed for the lobby to find my roommate Robbie and my beloved waiting for me. One had a Mountain Dew and the other had a big bag of breakfast from McDonalds.

The wife said "I'm not mad. I love you. It's no big deal," and my roommate said "I'm only here because you bailed me out when I got busted."

I hugged the wife, high fived the roommate and we headed out to the car.

Oh, one more thing. As if I was even entertaining the possibility of going to court so I could defend myself, the city of Auburn scheduled my court date on the same date and at the same time as my Accounting Final, so there was no fucking way I could do anything except forfeit the forfeitable bond / fine, which is all those cocksuckers wanted anyway.

Hell, if Officer Shitass had just asked me for the $163 bucks, this whole story would be about two sentences long.

Then again, how fun would THAT have been?

Later that day, I returned to the lockup and took that fine gentleman a carton of Newports. I know it didn't change his life but I hope it told him how much I appreciated his generosity.

(Oh, and that paperwork I stumbled across earlier? That was the ticket for PI and consumption by a minor. My dad recently gave me a bunch of crap from my college years including report cards, meal card bills and most importantly....that ticket. Thanks dad).