Do You Mind If I Crash Here?

If nothing else, in college, specificity was paramount

The education one earns in college is hardly ever in the classroom. I have to assume that’s true because I was hardly ever in the classroom.

College was a great time in the seventies, but I’m sure all college students say the same thing. It seems the pressure is more intense these days, but that may be because I was oblivious to pressure in the seventies.

But I digress.

During what I think was my sophomore year in college, I lived slightly off campus with three of my friends in an apartment complex that, I have heard, has since burned down. Industrial carpeting can be dangerously inflammable, although putting your cigarette out on it never seemed to have an affect.

We had many friends coming in and out of the apartment all day and all night. We were like Denny’s (or Sambo’s, in our case) without the food, and coffee was never served. But the welcome was the same. No one was ever quizzed as to the time (“Do you know what time it is?!”). If someone came over and we were all asleep, we knew what time it was. It was time to get up, share a joint, and talk about how great it was that LOST IN SPACE was on TV so late at night.

On one particular night, there was an actual knock on the door (we never locked the door). I answered the door, and there standing, swaying, and not looking too well, was Mike (name changed because he had an unusual name and I don’t know if his wife knows this story).

Mike was tall, good looking, and in great shape. Except at that moment. Under normal circumstances, he could crush me like a grape, but I think I had the advantage right then.

“What’s up, Mike?” I said cheerfully. My roommates and I hadn’t gone to sleep yet, so the bong was in use.

Mike’s eyes looked like the American flag. He did not have a balanced mixture of whatever was in his body. “Mind if I crash here tonight, Charley?”

“No problem at all!” I opened the door wider.

He half-smiled. “Thanks.” His knees buckled and the mighty sequoia was felled in the doorway. There he lay; half way in; half way out.

I called out to my three roommates. “Mike is crashing here, tonight.”

My roommates came over to look. “Should we bring him inside?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “He seemed pretty specific that he wanted to crash there.”

“Alright. I’m goin’ to bed.”

“Someone might trip over his legs. Maybe we should bring in his legs just so we could close the door.”

And we did.

The next morning, Mike joined us for breakfast and nothing was said of the incident, because nothing seemed unusual about the incident. Everyone was okay and the piece of chocolate cake remained on the ceiling.

God, I loved the seventies.

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