The Couch

It was 4:05. Fifteen minutes until 4:20. I walked up to the entrance of Sadler Hall, pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and removed my Syracuse University ID card. I swiped the card and entered the residence hall. I walked up to the elevator and hit the “up” button and the elevator doors opened simultaneously. I entered the elevator, hit the button for floor three, and waited patiently for the car to lift me up two flights by the use of a cable and pulley. I left the elevator, said hello to John and noticed a lounge couch was missing.

This has happened in the past. I knew where to check. I proceeded to go down the stairs to floor two; Floor Two being our arch nemesis. The couch was in the stairway being carried by three boys from floor two into their lounge. These guys were a bunch of puny assholes from floor two; so I acted like a tough guy. “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked the party of three.

“This is our couch. It has ‘Sadler 2’ written on it,” they said. It did, but when we stole it from them, ‘Sadler 2’ wasn’t written on the couch.

“You just put that there,” I proclaimed. “We are going to get that back.”

I went back up to floor three, walked past my room, and all the way down to Rob’s room. I knocked on the door. Lucas, Rob’s roommate, answered the knock. “Floor Two has our couch,” I informed the four people who were in the room. “Let’s get it!”

I knew to go to Rob because he’s always up for a little action. He only had one question. “How do you know Floor Two has it?”

“I caught them in the process of taking the couch a minute ago,” I explained. Lucas, Adam, Dave, Rob, and I left room 308, walked down the hall and marched down to floor two. I saw their faces; they were scared shitless. Rob grabbed the couch they had stolen two minutes prior. Two of the three deucers (Floor Two calls their floor, “The Deuce,” so I’ll call Floor Two members, “deucers”) who stole the couch jumped on the couch. Rob let go of that couch and began pulling their other couch. A female deucer had been laying on that couch. Rob pulled her along too. This was their only other couch. I think we have their third one also. But that’s because Floor Five stole one of ours. But that’s because Floor Eight stole a couch from Floor Five. It’s a long chain of couch theft.

Rob pulled the couch, with now two girls sitting on it, to the elevator with the help of Dave. Adam held the elevator door open. I’m not sure what Luke did. “This is our couch,” said a deucer. He had a personal vendetta with me for some reason. “You have a couch in your room,” he proclaimed. “No I don’t. You saw last night that I didn’t.”

All right: The night before, I was in my room and the door was knocked. I opened the door and there were three guys from Floor Two. One of them was the RA from Floor Two. He said to me, “I’ve heard you have a couch in your room.” I did have a couch in my room but did not anymore. It was from Floor Five, but it too was stolen. I showed him my room. “…And you have no couch. Sorry.” And he left. Back to the story.

“Four people from your floor have told me that you had a couch in your room as late as two days ago.”

“Well I don’t,” I retorted.

“Where did you put it then?” he asked me.

“It was stolen.”

“Well that’s your problem,” he raised his voice and said.

“No, motherfucker, it’s your problem. Every floor is supposed to have three couches, and this is our third. Go steal another one but not ours,” I exclaimed. As the elevator door closed (in the elevator: four guys and two girls on a couch), the deucer with a personal vendetta against me walked quickly by me towards the stairs. I followed him.

He walked up the stairs to the floor three door and entered the lounge. He walked up to our second couch. One was still missing. It was on the elevator with four guys and two girls. He started pushing the couch towards the door leading to the stairway. I put my foot down in front of one of the couch legs bringing the couch to a halt. He backed up the couch and again pushed it into my foot bringing it’s displacement back to zero. Once again, he backed up the couch, a bit farther now, and tried to run me over with the couch. My foot stopped the runaway couch. “Good job,” I said.

He gave up and began walking back to floor two. He muttered, “Tomorrow: you’ll be missing three couches.”

Being a hardass, I said, “You know what: No we’re not.”

I Wrote A Story

When I had heard our writing assignment to write a story, I, if not immediately then soon after, began writing my story. My pencil wasn’t going fast enough to catch all my mind’s thoughts on paper. There was a problem though: the subject matter. I was writing about marijuana and the times and trials I have had with marijuana. So I was a little worried about that.

At the next class, we were to have a first draft of our story ready for revision. Here are a few comments: “The story itself was a great one. I don’t know if (the) teacher will appreciate it though”; and “Good luck.” But if I didn’t hand in this story, what would I hand in. I didn’t know. But, on Thursday, October 1, at 4:05 pm, I entered Sadler Hall and soon find out a couch in the lounge of Floor Three was missing.

The other story I wrote…

The Phantom Bong

(This story contains explicit usage of marijuana paraphernalia and marijuana, in general. I do not condone marijuana use in any such way and if this subject matter offends you, I deeply regret that, but I believe this story has to be told.)

I have no idea how she didn’t see it. It was there for her to see it. It was right there out in the open.

Joe was sitting on the step leading to the back door of Ryan’s house. He was rolling a joint to top off the massive three-foot bong session we had just endured. The bong was old and dirty now. Ryan had gotten the bong sophomore year, and besides, he was a dirty kid. He was not a cleaner. I’ve tried to persuade him many times to clean it but no, he wasn’t going to clean it. Once he left beer sitting in the bong for two weeks. When we went down to the basement to retrieve the three-footer, it reeked of mildew and fungus. I refused to use it until he cleaned it. So we didn’t use it. Another time, he left it under a pile of leaves for ten days only to find it crusted with dirt and filth. Joe cleaned it that time.

I was standing, holding the bong waist high. Ryan was pacing. He was a pacer; back and forth, back and forth. It was an early spring day, possibly April 4th but possibly May 3rd. I don’t know; it really doesn’t matter. We left school at 12:30, skipping the last few classes to go get high. I didn’t miss much: a pre-engineering course where the teacher showed up less than us. I was wearing blue jeans and a long sleeve shirt. Ryan and Joe were wearing the same. Ryan could’ve been wearing a short sleeve shirt. I began turning the bong in a clockwise motion to pass the time as Joe was putting the finishing touches on the rolling of the anticipated joint and soon enough, all my concentration was focused on the rotating of the bong.

I don’t know what made me lift my head but I did, and my face dropped. She was smiling, smiling at me. Ryan’s mom was smiling at me. I’ve never seen her with a smile that big. “You’re mom is right there,” I said in a monotone voice. Joe and Ryan, at first, didn’t believe their ears, but after I told them again, fear and disbelief were securely established in their mindset.

Our first reaction was to hide the bong. I did a 180 degree turn, holding the bong, to remove it from his mother’s eyesight. Ryan took a few steps up to begin a conversation with his mother. Joe put away the joint, got up, grabbed the bong and moved to the side of the house. Ryan continued talking to his mother through the door. No communication was transferred from Ryan to his mother, so he went around to go inside to speak to her.

While Ryan was inside, Joe and I were joking about Ryan’s pending punishment and discussing the sudden outburst of excitement. We both could not believe what had happened. We were sure that his mom saw the bong and finally caught her son with marijuana and supplies. She’s been so close in the past. But somehow she is oblivious to all. And this time made no difference. She did not see the bong. Maybe it was the glare through the back door window or maybe it was that the blue three-foot bong was camouflaged in my blue Silvertab jeans. I don’t know. We have no idea how long she was standing there. She might have just gotten there and had too little time to see the bong, or been there for seven minutes and seen us hit the bong. We don’t know. Either way, how does she miss a three-foot bong?! We also don’t know if the sun was at a height, at which it’s glare on the backdoor window of 304 Teakwood Terrace, could create a hindsight for a 50 year old woman, eager to find her son with evidence of marijuana smoking, to not see a three-foot bong out in the open.

Ryan exited the house through the garage door and came to tell us that his mom, once again, was oblivious; that she did not see the bong. I soon started a theory that she saw the bong but wanted to wait until a later time to use it against Ryan. Or maybe she was to wait for his friends to not be present so she wouldn’t embarrass him. Because… how do you not see a three-foot bong? Ryan didn’t care, though. For now, all was fine.

OH SHIT!

I rushed to put away the joint I had just finished rolling. Ryan’s face, which was smiling only 10 seconds ago, now had the look of panic. His mother came home a few hours earlier than he had expected.

Jeff was holding the bong. He quickly turned around to hide the bong from Ryan’s mother. I stood up and grabbed the bong from Jeff and went to the side of the house. Jeff followed. Ryan and his mother were trying to talk through the backdoor, which was locked. For that door, you see, you need a key to get out if it is locked. I had the key; or that is what it seems. I have no idea where the key is, but I was the last one to have it. Because of this, his mother was not able to enter the smoking premises.

“Can you believe this?” Jeff said to me as we were standing on the the side of the house watching Ryan bullshit his way out of this one. He’s done it before, I’ll tell you that. His mother is the most gullible woman I know. And his father, who’s a lawyer, falls for his shit too. It’s amazing how naive they are.

Listen: Ryan and I, for Spring Break, went to Myrtle Beach. We also went with our girlfriends. Ryan did not tell his parents that his girlfriend was going. On the way back home, my car breaks down. Ryan was driving. He seems to be the one whose always breaking things. We call his house and while he’s on the phone with his father, Ryan gets caught up in a conversation with his girlfriend, who’s bugging him. He says, “Julia, the motel is right there.” His father intervened, “Julia! Julia’s there?” Ryan proceeds to tell him this: “No. We’re hanging out with a girl in the motel who’s named Julia. Julia Ran…der..storm.” His father’s reply: “Oh, all right.”

“No!” I answered laughingly to Jeff because… I’m stoned. We both could not believe that his mom caught us.

Conclusively…

In terms we can all understand, Ryan’s mother is… never mind.

There weren’t that many differences between the two versions of the preceding story. I now think that Joe and I did have a brief discussion of the goings-on on the side of the house before proceeding to the front of the house. Joe forgot, though, about how it was me to first see the smiling mother eyeing us, while I had a three-foot bong in my hand.

The fact of the matter is: Ryan’s mother did not see the bong or at least hasn’t brought it’s attention to Ryan. That solemn spring day, Ryan talked to his mother and exited the house with a smile. The three of us jumped in Joe’s car, blazed the joint and drove away.