Guitars, Lost Vans, and Moving… “One Last Drink.”

Graduate School. California. Brewskies and Beach Bonfires. Getting to hang out with my Green Beret buddies I hadn’t seen since the wars started.

Graduate school was glorious, except for the fact that I hadn’t written an academic paper in 12 years, and was stressed out for six months until I learned to write again. But all was in the name of higher learning. And learn I did. I learned how to think, analyze, question, rebuke, discuss, prove and disprove ideas, become creative, and determine truth. And then… I realized I needed to change directions in my life.

The opportunity came when my friend, Jerry, invited me out to go have “one last drink” the night before moving away from the Fairy Tale Land of Academia. Friends, family time, and writing a thesis was over (thesis writing was definitely NOT a fairy tale time). Heading back to BizzaroLand I was used to… deployments in foreign lands, high adventure, and lots of embellished stories… was back in effect.

So out we went. For a drink. Now mind you, the next day I was supposed to help my wife clean the rental house, pack up all the remaining stuff, play zone defense with our kids, negotiate terms with the extremely penny pinching and hard-to-deal with landlord, load everything up in our vehicles with trailer, and then drive halfway back across the country to sign back into the unit.

Jerry drove his van and we pulled into a swanky bar (road-side truck stop) for a drink. One drink led to another, and next thing you know, when we tried to leave, some a-hole had “moved our van.” We couldn’t find it*. So we wandered around muttering about having to walk, and then ended up down at the marina, and had a couple more drinks on Jerry’s boat (he said it was his boat), played the guitar and told lies. We had promised the wife I would be home by 8PM. Well, I got home early, around 7.

AM that is.

My bride was not happy. And neither was my liver. Or head. I was worthless. I sat down on the carpet in the corner of my soon not to be rental house. And waited to die. By the time my wife cleaned the house, took care of the kids, negotiated our safety deposit back, packed up both cars, and fixed the kids lunch, I was feeling good enough to stand up.

And then while driving away, Jerry came running down the road with a guitar in his hand, chasing us and screaming to stop. He pushed the guitar through the back rolled down window of the truck, jammed the guitar across the top of the kids sitting three across, and wished us luck.

Now, I’m a (not so) accomplished guitar player whose wife must be an angel, because when I pick up that guitar to play a tune, she just gives me a knowing smile.

*Later, Jerry found the van right where we’d parked it.