Tell Me About the Earthworms, George

Two months after George and I married, we relocated to a college town near his office so that I could finish school. George was working an entry level job in a field that was barely related to his degree. I was unemployed but hoping to find a part time position on campus to help with our expenses. To say that we were living on meager means is generous. We only had one car and George needed it for his commute so we had to find a cheap apartment within walking distance to campus in an area where hopefully we would not be raped and pillaged on a weekly basis. For George, the icing on the apartment cake was to find this cheap apartment in an ideal location WITH all bills paid. Yes, he dared to dream the dream.

Because this apartment hunting happened several years ago before the Internet was what it is today, and  because we were in a serious time crunch to get moved before the start of the fall semester, we had to make quick decisions with limited information. So we found our first apartment in our new town and let me just say that it met all of George's expectations but none of mine. I guess you could say that he had a better grip on reality because I felt certain that we could find Barbie's dream townhouse located in a picturesque park setting just on the edge of campus, and of course the rent would be just a small token of George's paycheck. Alas, I'm not sure which rock I'd been living under but I had a rough encounter with Reality, she had that heroin chic look except without the chic.

So our all bills paid close to campus cheap apartment was the stuff of which shanty towns are made. Imagine, if you will a time, when off campus college housing resembled army barracks or better yet, a minimum security prison. Think 1940s but institutional 1940s not Frank Lloyd Wright 1940s. Then picture this same complex about 50 years later with the only improvements being fresh paint in drab dismal colors to camouflage the grime from the previous tenants and the thinnest carpet ever known to man, and now you have our apartment. It, or The Cave as I called it, had cinder block walls which had been painted elephant gray. Now I ask you, if you are going to go the trouble of painting cinder block, why would you paint it gray? The carpet was also the same drab gray and appeared to be original to the building. I won't lie, I cried the day we moved in but I knew this was only temporary. It was only temporary because I would only agree to sign a six month lease. I figured that in six months, we would have time to learn the city and find something better that fit in our budget.

Our ground level apartment held a small surprise for us which we soon discovered after a good soaking rain. You see, while our apartment was technically on the ground level, the parking lot sat just a little higher than our front door and apparently a genius of an engineer designed the parking lot so that the rain runoff would head straight under our front door.The only thing we could do to keep our apartment from flooding was to pile towels at the door to soak up the rain. Well, when the rain subsided and we went to hang the wet towels to dry in our bathroom, we were a little startled to find that our wet towels were now threaded with earthworms. Yes, threaded. The earthworms were half in and half out of the towel and something had to be done. George wanted to throw away the towels but I refused. We were, after all, saving for a nicer place to live and if we threw away the towels, then we'd just have to buy more and surely it would eventually rain again. As a matter of fact, it seemed to rain a lot that fall and each rain brought along a new crop of earthworms. George, who I learned in those first few months of our marriage, does not like earthworms in the slightest and he absolutely refused to touch them. So I made him stand in the bathtub and hold open each towel as I, yes, I pulled each worm free from the towels. There must have been a hundred of those suckers, and I dangled each one in George's face just so I could watch him squirm, and boy did we laugh until I thought we would both pee our pants. 

Yes, that apartment was a dump in every sense of the word, but that is where we began our marriage. While we didn't have much in the way of materialistic things, those newly married months were some of the best times in my life. We were so happy just to be together that all the earthworms in the world couldn't take the joy out of the life we were creating together. It's funny how much less you think you need when you are head over heels in love with someone. 

I Wouldn't Spread That on a Cracker

October invariably leads to Halloween and Halloween always reminds me of one college party in particular. I was a freshman working in one of six campus dining halls. Back then, for the kids working in the dining halls, the dining halls served as our social networking platform. Behind the serving lines, there were friendships forming, people dating, and there were parties...a lot of parties.

So it was October, and the dining halls were all buzzing with the news about the upcoming costume party. This party was being touted as the party to rival all others. It was taking place in two neighboring houses, there was going to be a live band, and hundreds were expected to attend.

A couple of weeks earlier, I had gone out on a date with a co-worker, let's call him Jack (some names have been changed to protect...well, I'll just say it...me). He seemed like a nice enough guy and we'd been chatting for some time, so when he asked me to go see The Last of the Mohicans, I gladly took him up on his offer. Something you should know about me is that I love a good action movie, especially a good war movie. In case you've never seen (or read) The Last of the Mohicans, it takes place in 1757 during the French and Indian War. The first of many battle scenes happens early in the movie, and I guess that Jack may have not really enjoyed war movies because he was very concerned that this movie was going to be too violent for my delicate nature. Please understand that I know Jack was just trying to be a gentleman but after I reassured him for the fifth time that I was fine, I started to suspect that maybe, just maybe, it was Jack who was having a hard time with the battle scenes. There was no way I was letting him drag me out of that movie. That movie which is now my absolute favorite movie. That movie which is based on the literary classic by James Fenimore Cooper (I majored in English). That movie which starred the oh so lovely Daniel Day-Lewis, one of my all time favorite actors. No, I wasn't going to let him out of the theater that easily. When I was dating, I wanted my boyfriends to possess the same qualities I wanted in my husband, and if Jack couldn't man up enough to watch a good old fashioned war movie with me then I was certain we didn't have a future together. So after the movie, the date just grew into an awkward mess. We went to dinner, where he continued to apologize for the movie and then he pulled out a plastic gumball machine ring and got down on one knee (no, I'm not kidding) and proposed marriage, albeit jokingly, nonetheless it was creepy. So that was my first and last date with Jack.

Even after our uncomfortable date, Jack wanted me to go to the infamous Halloween party with him, and although I had told him I wanted to go with my brother and some of our friends, he wasn't taking the hint. Jack decided he would try to persuade me to go with him by coming up with a clever costume idea for us to go as a famous couple. So after thinking on it for a few days, he sprung his great idea on me one day at work. Are you ready for this? He wanted to go as Paul Bunyan and he wanted me to go as....wait for it....Babe the Blue Ox because, as he put it, I was a "real babe." Even now, this makes me laugh out loud and it makes me want to train my boys on how to give a woman a real compliment. Before I could even respond to Jack, my good friend Vince, jumped  in the conversation and said, "Man, you don't ask a girl to dress up like an ox! Get outta here!" So as you might have guessed, I didn't go to the party with Jack but we were friends, so I figured we'd see each other there.

When I arrived at the party, it was already starting to get underway.Some people were hanging out and talking in the first house while a U2 cover band played for a crowd in the other house. Some chose to wear costumes and some did not. As I walked into the first house, I couldn't help but notice an overpowering smell of (I bet I know what you're thinking and if so, you're wrong) peanut butter. Yep...you read it right...peanut butter. There in the center of the living room was some yahoo wearing nothing but denim shorts and a thick layer of crunchy peanut butter all over his body, head to toe. Let me tell you this, not only did he look gross, but the smell of sweat mingling with peanut butter was enough to clear a room, plus he was leaving a peanut butter trail every where he went. It gets worse. As I passed Skippy, trying hard not to get any of his peanut butter on my new sweater, I ran into one of the cooks from the dining hall. Cookie, as I will refer to him here, was not a student. He was probably close to 40 and he was three sheets to the wind. He came over to me laughing hysterically, put his arm around me, and began whispering words in my ear that still haunt me to this day. "I scraped Peanut Butter Guy's back with a cracker and ate it." EEEEEEWWWWWW!!!!

Well of course, I ran back to the area where my brother and our friends were talking and shared the news, and just as we finished laughing, my brother looked toward the door and said, "Who the heck is that coming this way?" I immediately looked in the same direction and saw a guy wearing an actual jack-o-lantern as a mask heading straight for me. "It's Jack," I said. To which my brother responded, "Yep, you sure can pick 'em."

I don't know whatever happened to Jack. I like to think that he ended up with a nice girl who prefers Disney movies to war movies and who loves quirky pick up lines. I can only imagine that Jack asked his Jill to dress up as a thief for Halloween because she stole his heart. As far as Skippy goes, I didn't really know that guy but I'm sure he heard every peanut butter joke in the book for the rest of his dining hall days. As for the party itself, it was nothing short of legendary, but I know the guy who hosted the party was cleaning peanut butter trails for weeks.