Road Trip!

I'm really not a spontaneous person; I know this will come as a great surprise to many of you, what with all of my talk about paranoia and fear, but it's true. 9 times out of 10 when I get a last minute call to do something, my instincts scream, "No! You're having so much fun just sitting around her, lounging in your pajamas, flipping through the channels, doing absolutely nothing of consequence whatsoever, why ruin that with fun?" Maybe I exaggerate at little. But not much.

One of the few spontaneous things I remember doing was the road-trip to Dallas to see Jimmy Buffett in concert.


It happened early in my Sophomore year. One Friday afternoon Pooh-bear returned from class saying that she had just heard about the Buffett concert, and she was determined to go, whether anyone else wanted to accompany her or not. I told her that I would go with her; I wasn't a super-huge Buffett fan, but I had been friends with Pooh long enough to have some appreciation for his music. While we were planning our escapade, we had two more volunteers to join us; both of them were Freshman with whom I had had little contact at that point: Little Man Stud and the heretofore-unmentioned Soccer-girl.

So, the four of us piled in Pooh's car and headed down; we of course had no tickets, and so were hoping to find a scalper with reasonable prices. Yes, that's right: our plan was contingent on the existence of scalpers. Still not sure what possessed me to agree to this.

We were a ways into the drive when Little Man Stud asked "So, Jimmy Buffett; he sings Brown-Eyed Girl, right?"

Stunned silence.

"I don't think so," we replied, "pretty sure that's Van Morrison."

"He may have done a cover of it," Pooh said.

"Oh."

So, there we were, halfway to Dallas, and Little Man Stud had just discovered that the one song he thought he knew by Buffett wasn't really by Buffett. But we were not deterred; or at least, the rest of us weren't deterred, and Little Man Stud was trapped. Thanks to our impeccable timing we hit rush-hour traffic in Dallas, and were stuck at a standstill while Pooh despaired of making it to the concert on time. We finally made it to the Starplex, the venue which was housing the concert. Traffic was still moving at a snail's pace, and we found ourselves stopped right next to a scalper. We rolled down the window, inquired to his wares, were quoted what must have seemed like an acceptable price, and made the transaction. Then we moved down a few more yards and were greeted with a rather obese white guy yelling at us for buying from “that [racial epithet],” saying that if we had bought from him instead we would have saved us some money. His racist rage was actually pretty amusing.

We finally made it into the parking lot, and moved on into the Starplex. Now, if you're not familiar with the Starplex, there are basically two levels of seating: there’s the nice, assigned, covered seating, and then there's the cheap-ass, sit on the side of a grassy hill if you can find a spot seating. Guess which we got. But we had been prepared for this, and were able to find a relatively good spot on the hillside. We settled in and waited for the concert to begin.

There was a huge smoky haze drifting out of the nice seating, a haze which, when it reached us, had an unusual odor which I, sheltered as I was, was not familiar with, but which the others, coming from larger cities, were; that's right, a good number of people in the crowd were smoking the reefer. At a Jimmy Buffett concert! Who’d have thunk it?

One of my favorite memories was being bumped into by a stumbling drunk girl who got beer all over my Eskimo Joe's sweatshirt. She leaned down to apologize which is when she got a look at my shirt. "Hey, are you from Stillwater?" she slurred. I admitted I was. "Do you go to OSU?" Guilty as charged yet again. "I go to TCU; we played you guys in football!" With each syllable her hands shook, splashing more beer on me; yes, there's nothing quite like being showered with beer from the hands of a Texas Christian University student.

Partway through the concert, the band started playing a familiar, yet unexpected song; Pooh, Soccer-girl, and I all turned to Little Man Stud and said "Hey! You were right!" To which he replied, "What?" Shaking our heads in disbelief we said "Listen to the song!" He looked at us quizzically, but then turned his attention back to the stage, at which point Buffett finally hit the chorus of Brown Eyed Girl and Little Man Stud finally had his moment of realization.

After the concert we were all starving since we hadn't stopped for anything on the way down. We went to Planet Hollywood, which had mediocre food like most theme restaurants, but we had a good time. On the way out I stopped at the gift store and picked up a keychain, which was the standard souvenir I would buy for my mom on any of my trips.

Following our dinner we hopped back in the car and sped home, and I do mean sped. I don't know quite how fast we managed to go, since Pooh's digital speedometer only went so high, and we were still accelerating after it stopped. Ah, to be young and reckless again.

Getting back to OSU pretty late, we all went back to our rooms and collapsed, and woke up early the next morning for Parents Day. That's right; Friday night: road trip to Dallas. Saturday morning: football game with the 'rents.

Pooh and I were very upfront with our folks; the first thing I did when I saw my mom was hand her the keychain and say "Guess where I went last night!" Little Man Stud, on the other hand . . . I'm pretty sure his parents still don't know about our little roadtrip. Not wanting to be disturbed in his sleep, he had turned off his phone's ringer, so when his parents tried to call up to his room to let him know they were there, no answer. His dad went up and banged on his door to wake him up; he told them that he hadn't gotten any sleep because someone kept prank calling him, and that's why he turned his phone off.

So, that's basically the most spontaneous thing I've ever done in my life.

Ever.

Sad, isn't it?