Ahhh, Memories of College

An article on MSNBC.com yesterday caught my attention because it was so wonderfully loony, and because wonderfully loony things usually remind me of that wonderfully loony time in my life called “college”.  It seems that a young man decided to take a forklift for a joyride in Fort Worth, Texas.  On interstate 30.  While drinking beer and tossing the empties at pursuing police.  And of course, what would a drunken, felonious joyride be without bringing man’s best friend along for the ride?  Yes, he brought his dog.

Now as a courtesy to you, the reader, I’m going to point out that this is the exact moment in any story I tell that my wife and kids roll their eyes, mutter “Here we go” under their breath, and start daydreaming about anything other than the fact that I am about to recount another of my goofball college stories.  This is because they are ingrates.

I was in my girlfriend’s apartment late one night when her very inebriated roommate came in and announced, “Uhhh, guys?  I really need you to come down to the parking lot with me.  I think I may have a problem.”  And lo and behold, sitting there in the parking lot, taking up half of the parking spaces was a very large, and very stolen dump truck.  Because when you’re very drunk, too tired to walk home and you find yourself next to a construction site, what choice do you have?  None.  You jump in a dump truck, find the keys in the front seat, start ‘er up, drive that puppy across campus and park it in your own parking lot.  Because that makes perfect sense.

So of course we donned gloves and spent 15 minutes wiping down the truck’s interior for fingerprints.  Then we all went upstairs and had some more drinks, because in college stealing is as common as college students.  No big deal, really.  Any time you put a large number of drunken poor people in a relatively small area, shit is gonna go missing.  Here’s an honest to God true list of the first ten things I could think of that I stole in college:

• Traffic cones
• A traffic barrier (you know, those white and orange sawhorse dealies with the flashing light)
• A neon beer sign from a bar (had to unscrew it from the wall while the bar was packed)
• An entire rack of Lucky Strikes from a cigarette vending machine
• A grocery cart
• Four lawn chairs
• A velvet Elvis painting
• A gallon of silver paint
• A large garbage can (the type with wheels attached)
• Three street signs, one for my first, middle, and last name which, now that I think of it, should’ve made it incredibly easy to catch me.

And you know how long it took me to recall all of that?  About five seconds, because it’s common knowledge if you live on campus that if it’s not bolted down, it is officially community property.  That is the attitude.  And although I am now a homeowner with cars, lawn mowers, and a lot of other shit that I’d be incredibly pissed to find stolen, I kind of miss all of that.  It’s fun waking up not knowing what exciting, strange, or utterly useless thing you’re going to be in possession of by the time you go back to bed.  I may be the proud owner of a diving board, or have 173 non-dairy creamers to decorate my kitchen with.  Who knows?  Let’s get drunk and find out!

So I hope the Fort Worth Police do not come down too hard on the alleged forklift-swiping, beer-chugging, DUI-with-dog-loving young man.  He was probably just longing for simpler days when grand-theft forklift was always good for a grin or two.  Plus, I’d like to hook him up with a girl I know who likes dump trucks.