Walter Knows What's Up

Walter is one of those people with a firm grasp on ridiculous things that come out of my mouth. He seems to pick up on the undertones of a conversation that no one else does.

One time, I asked him why that was. "No one ever picks up on these things," I told him. "No one else realizes how ridiculous I am."

"Sure they do; they just don't tell you about it," he said.

After a breif, nontechnical survey I decided he was wrong. My other friends were all baboozled by my confidence and the stern authority with which I spoke when utter nonsense fell out of my face. I was preaching gosple, and they sopped it up.

"Walter, do you have goals?" I asked over dinner.

"You mean like, 'by the end of this month' goals?"

"No. Like, 'In a year, I'll want this' goals."

"Sometimes I do. Like when I decided I was going to start running every day over 64 degrees, but then I got shin splints. Now I want to read books of the genre blank and blank and learn to play the guitar better." Walter had recently read Crime and Punishment. He was now on to War and Peace, and he had his sights set on Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility. Either or. Eventually both.

"I have no goals."

"Bullshit. You always have goals. Like that time you wanted to make out, and you made that plan. Step 1 b was to devise the plan. Or the second time you wanted to make out, and you had five different plans to get you there depending on his mood for when he came back from spring break."

"Yeah, but those goals were plans. I had a logical process figured out to get me from point a to point b."

"The process wasn't logical," Walter said. "The whole plan, the first time, was to devise the plan."

"No. That was the second step."

"Titled 1b. There was no step two," he said. Walter obviously wasn't as impressed as he ought to have been from the fact that I at least numbered the steps of my plan. No matter how silly it might have been. "That whole plan was bullshit."

"Well, I made out with him, didn't I?"

"Yeah, but not as a result of either plan."

"Fine."

"Besides, you have goals. You just decide you want something, and it's a goal."

"I want to stop being fat."

"You're not fat. But if you were, that would be a goal."

"I was thinking of joining a gym, and I would work out every morning."

"In the morning!? What time would that be?"

"I dunno. Like 5."

"Why don't you just workout at night?"

"Because I don't get home until 730."

"So? It's better than going in the morning."

"But it's not like I can just drive there from the train."

"Why no--oh... no car."

"Yeah. So I'd have to come home, eat..."

"Don't eat. Just go straight to the gym."

"But it'll be easier in the morning because I won't have to fight with John for the shower, and I..."

"But you'll go to bed at like 8pm."

"Yeah, but maybe that's a good thing, because it's not like I have anything to do at night, anyhow. Maybe I'll fight less with my mom and my brother."

"Ooooohh... this is just an elaborate scheme to avoid your family."

"No."

"Yes it is."

"No it's not."

"Yes it is. Those are your only reasons for working out in the morning."

"I have other reasons too."

"They're all just excuses. Fine. Wake up at frickin' four in the morning to avoid your family."

"Maybe I'll just stop biting my nails instead."

"That's a goal too."

"Yeah..." The waitress came by and asked if we wanted appetizers.

"I don't," Walter said.

"Me neither."

"I have big fat thighs," Walter said. "I haven't done any exercise since my shin splints came back." Walter weighed about 115 and was over 6 feet tall.

"Walter. You don't have fat thighs."

"Yes I do, and now you know how ridiculous you sound."

The Ditch You're in... or Happy Birthday to Me

When my mom slams the breaks while driving in the burbs, she throws her arm over whatever is in the passenger seat, be it one of her children, her mother, or her purse. That's her reaction to what she preceives as an impending crisis -- keep the contents of the passenger seat put.

Apparently, I have my own reactionary device -- saying 'hold on' as many times as I can, as fast as I can, until the command becomes backwards and interpreted as 'on hold.' I say apparently, because it had just become apparent to me that this was my reaction-to-crisis.

Z and I were in a ditch. And somehow, despite the 4 inches of snow in the streetside trough, my window was sprayed with long stems of dried, dead grass. My cell had died, and Z's only worked when the window was open.

No sense cooling down the car, I thought. I took Z's phone, and I was pacing around my car, waiting for Triple A to pick up the other line. I lost signal a couple of times, then opened up my door again: "I'm going to go walk by that sign and see where we are."

About 60 feet away was the back of a sign. From its size and shape, I concluded it must be one of those green signs that give you some sense of where the shit you are. 180 miles from Memphis. 17 miles from whatever other city was located outside of Chicago. (Who the hell knows?)

Last thing I saw before that guy cut me off was a huge sign: ADULT. That was in Buckley, but how long ago did I pass that sign? I couldn't tell.

A lady from Triple A picked up, and started asking questions:
- What is your reason for calling Triple A today?
"My car and I are in a ditch."
- What city are you in?
"Well, I'm not sure exactly. I'm on 57 going south, in the west ditch. There's a truck stop about 150 feet north of me, and it's the first truck stop south of Buckley."
-57?
"Yeah, you know... it's the number 57 in a blue shield-looking thing, and there's red on the top of it."
-Interstate 57?
"That's right! Interstate 57.
- What city is that?
"I don't know. The last sign I saw said Buckley. You know, Buckley, Illinois? When going south, after passing that exit, there's a truck stop south of there. We're just 150 feet south of that truck stop." (I started walking back ot the car.)
- What intersection are you at?
"There is no intersection. I'm on the Interstate. 57. South of Buckley."
- What town is that?
"I TOLD YOU, I don't know. Maybe 2-5 miles south of the Buckely exit."
- How far from the road is your vehicle.
"Oh, I dunno. 20 horizontal feet and 10 verticle feet."
- How far is that?
"How the hell should I know? My car is in the ditch! I don't have a calculator! You find the damned hypotenuse!"

I walked back to the car. "They said it could be as long as an hour," I told Z. I gave her the run-down of the frusterating conversation I had with the Triple A woman. About how she kept asking where we were, and I kept telling her all I could think up.

"Well, did you get to the sign?" Z asked. "What did the sign say?"

"Yeah! It said 'Don't get plowed... Drive Safely'!" We both laughed.

"Bastard sign!" Z said.



I had been planning myself a birthday party for quite a while. I invited about 20 people over to my apartment for some pre-gaming and whatnot on a Saturday, which was the day before my actual birthday. My friends and I considered this a big deal. It would be the first time in my entire college career that I had even acknowledged my birthday, more or less celebrated it.

The first unfortunate thing that happened was my old roommate's mother passed away. When I heard the news, I rounded up our other mutal chums and headed for the burbs, a two hour trek from central Illinois. The mother's wake and funeral were combined into one ceremony that was to take place on the Saturday morning that I had arranged my party for. I called all of the guests and postponed my event by a couple of hours, giving me time to attend the funeral, eat dinner, and drive back into Urbana.

While we left on time (5pm) to make it to my apartment by the party's start (8pm), we were set back while tranversing the 6.5 miles of LaGrange Rd. The normally 20 minute dash took upwards of 60 minutes. All of a sudden, our schedule was pushing it.

I say 'we' because I was driving with my good friend, Zaynab. She and I attended the funeral together. I drove her northward with me on Thursday night, and now we were headed back. She was coming to my party as well.

I normally hit the interstate going about 80mph, but it was snowing lightly -- does any other region in America call it 'flurries?' -- and I wasn't entirely convinced that the roads were in tip-top shape. I drove between 65 and 70, reasoning that I had less than 2 hours to get to my apartment and finish cleaning it before people started coming over.

Coming up on Buckley, about 30 minutes from our destination, a car in the right lane, about 5 lengths ahead of me, decided to pass whomever he was following. Instead of speeding up, however, he maintained his 40 mph in the left lane. I didn't slam the breaks. I tapped them. (Z agreed with me later that this is how it happened.)

The car started fish-tailing, we turned at least one complete circle (accounts vary depending on the level of sympathy we could score from our audience) and went front-first into a snowy ditch.

I tried calling my parents from her phone, but they weren't answering. Just before I had left, they went out to a new resturant with my mom's best friend and her husband. That was over 2 hours ago, and they still were not back.

(Dad: What time are our reservations?
Mom: They told me that all of their reservation tables are filled.
Dad: So where else can we go?
Mom: Well, they said that they only allow half of the resturant for reservations. The other half is first come first serve.
Dad: I'm not going to go all the way out there to wait around for four hours before I can sit down at a table!

The conversation continued like that, with my dad becoming more and more ridiculous. Heating up his voice by a degree or so with every slanted word and sentence. Anyway, it was obvious to me, now that I was in the ditch, that the proclamation of the long-ass dinner had come true.)

"Are you going to tell your parents later that we got in this ditch?" Z asked me.

"No," I said, "I tried calling them earlier for advice, but so long as there is no damage and no one's hurt, there's no reason to make them freak out... Unless you plan to sue us."

"I don't think so," she said, laughing. "I'm not going to tell my parents either. It will just make them worry. But I think I'm definately going to start calling all of my friends to milk this situation for what it's worth."

She hopped on the phone, and it was quite a specticle. Our one circle became three, and all of a sudden we braved the ditch in between the north and southbound sides of the interstate and headed into oncoming traffic and then deposited into the next furthest ditch.

I tried my phone again. I had one bar of battery and a wavering one bar of antenna. While I was on Z's phone calling Triple A, I asked her to try calling Bridgette and Kara, the only two commuting any reasonable distance, on my phone to tell them that the festivities are postponed. She had told me that she got through to both of them, but Bridgette was the first.

"WE'RE IN A DITCH!" was the first and last thing I hear come out of Zaynab's mouth while she was talking to Bridgette and I was walking toward the back of that sign.

When I got through again to Bridgette, it wasn't more than 20 minutes from the initial hysteria. She was due at my party in 30 minutes. She couldn't be more than a 10 or 20 minute drive from where we were. I was thinking that she could probably just stop off and hang out with us on the side of the road. Why not? We weren't doing anything. We were stuck in this ditch. However, Bridgette, after hearing that we were caught in the ditch, turned around.

"You're home already?" I couldn't believe it. "You were supposed to be at my apartment in like 30 minutes and you were just starting to leave when I called?... Fine! I'm going back to my apartment and I am having my party anyway!"

I hung up the phone in disgust. "What the hell," I said to Zaynab. "If she called me and said that she flew off the side of the road, I wouldn't have turned around and went home. AND even if I didn't get into the ditch, she would have been hours late to my party. What was I supposed to do? Wait all night for her?"

"You should have told her we spun around four times," Z said as she was dialing her next victum.

"Hey," she started in a raspy, aloof voice. "I got in a big car accident. I'm in a ditch on 57. Yeah, we spun out of control and I think I have whiplash." After 2 minutes, her friend Omar was eating out of her hands. "I'll send someone to get you and drive you home!" I heard him panicking.

I was calling Kara on Z's phone when she got an incoming call. "Kara, I'll call you when we're back on the road again," I said, handing the phone over to Z. It was her sister Nida.

Nida was off and running the second Z answered with her waivering "Hello?" From where I sat, it sounded like someone was fast-forwarding an audio tape while the boom box is still set to play. Nida raced through her account of waiting in line at Best Buy for two hours trying to acquire a new computer. Z burst in with a "Yeah! Well, I got into a huge car accident and now I'm in a ditch!"

"You're in a ditch!?" N responded, followed by the softer, distant yell of Mrs. Kamal, "Ditch!?"

A meek "Bye" followed a few seconds later. "So much for not telling your parents," I joked.

<>We looked at eachother. Only one thing left to do:
"Should we open up one of those two liters in the truck and start eating the cookies?" I offered, and that was that. Here we were, sub-zero temperatures, eating her leftover pizza and my party snacks.

The binge turned into a game, 'who would be the worst person to be in this situation with.'

"You know who would be the worst person to be in a ditch with?" Z provoked. "Liz!"

We laughed. "Worse yet? Matt N.!"

"No! PJ!"

"Hey Z," I began, "Knock knock!"

"Who's there?"

"The Ditch!"

"The ditch who?"

"The ditch you're in!"

About 30 minutes into our fun, an ambulence pulled up. They were just surveying the scene, but I told them that we would be okay. Triple A would be arriving within the next 30 minutes. We called them, and they said they would send someone out.

Next was a tow truck. I talked to the driver briefly, but turns out that Triple A had not sent him. No thanks, I told him, I have a Triple A membership, and so we'll just wait for them.

"Triple A?" The driver said. "Towers around here don't usually work with them because we find that they find ways to not pay people after they already did the work."

I went back into my car, and a policeman showed up. He asked me if we needed help, and I told him no; we called Triple A. He told me the same thing that the tower told me. People in Central Illinois don't like using Triple A because they don't pay the companies after they perform the work.

"You see, it's not fair to the drivers then," the officer told me. "When are they supposed to have someone out here by?"

"Within the next 10 minutes. They said they were sending K&H."

"Okay," said the officer. "I'll circle around a few more times, but if you girls are still here when I get back, we'll have to call another company to get yous out."

I thanked the officer and walked back into the ditch. About 2 minutes later, the same officer had come back. He said he had just called his dispatch and they called K&H. According to them, Triple A had never contacted them at all!

"We put you in for a towing, but they said you might be waiting another 2 hours," the officer told me. "Would you like me to try and call around to get someone out here sooner?"

The person who showed was the same tower I had talked to over an hour ago. He hooked us up, and began surveying the scene. He tapped on my window. "You have a flat back here."

I got out of the car, and sure enough two of my cheap-ass hubcaps had broken clear away, and one of my rear tires was flat. So, while the tower was hooking up my car, I started to clear things out of the trunk. 16 2-liters of soda, baskets of clean laundry, bags of chips, pretzels, and cookies. I dug out the spare. Then I hopped back into my car as he towed us up onto the street.

So, we were on the road, when he started to change the tire. We felt the car being lowered down, and a tap on Z's window. "The spare's flat."

I got out again to see for myself. Sure enough, the tire was flat. I laughed in disbelief. The tower said he could tow us to Paxton, about 10 miles south, and try to fill it back up. "I don't think it's busted anywhere," he said running his fingers along the threads. "I think that the pressure from the car sliding down into that ditch pressed the air out of it. If we fill it up with air, you should be fine."

I went back into the car to tell Z that we had to get into the tower's cab. "Triple A just called," she told me when I opened the door.

"What did they say?" I asked.

"They said they couldn't place our call," she said.

"So what did you say?" I asked, temperature rising.

"I said well thanks a lot! We got someone else to come and get us out of the ditch!" She said. "And then they said, good, tell Janet that we're glad she got out of the ditch."

Well, we got to Paxton and got the tire filled up. Then we were on the road again, laughing at our predicament.

As we were turning on Main, toward my house, I called Jason to come and help us unload. While we were waiting, however, Z and I unpacked all of my stuff. Just as Jason arrived, we went ot Z's house. Jason helped Z unpack and bring her stuff up into her apartment.

Doot Doot Doot doo doo doo do

Walter was calling. "I'm already at your house, where are you?"

When Jason got back into my car, we drove to my apartment, where Walter was waiting in the parking lot. I pulled in and parked.

I only got to the trunk end when Walter started to brush away the grass that was stuck to the entire driver's side and the rear window. I started to cry, and Jason came over to me.

"I just wanted to have a fun birthday, and now my party's ruined," I sobbed.