Taken for a ride
One of my friends and I were enjoying a late night feast at the Fleetwood Diner when a scraggly-looking kid approached our table. He said that he had just gotten off the train from Denver and needed to get to class in East Lansing tomorrow.
The Michigan State University student asked us if we could spare a few bucks. One-upping him, we figured we might as well give him a ride and make an adventure out of the night.
Before long, it was past 3 a.m. and we were cruising down I-96 in my friend’s pickup truck, the three of us squeezed a bit too intimately into the front seat. After some of the awkward getting-to-know-each-other questions, it took us only a few minutes to get into the good stuff.
How should one live life? How has Facebook turned personal identity into a constructed mythology? Will technology be the end of community? What is the meaning of life? Am I going to end up in a bag on the side of the highway?
As I walked in to my 9 a.m. lecture half-asleep, I was certain that although I’d have gotten more out of class if I had slept, I learned more from our adventure.
CLIF REEDER
This is my house
Bouncers have a difficult job. I understand that. Dealing with fake IDs and keeping some semblance of peace and normalcy is something that my 6’1″ 160 lbs can’t do. And yet, even in all of my casual bar-going, I feel little but contempt for most of the egregiously-muscled meat heads. Exhibit A: Saturday night, Rush Street.
At the bidding of my girlfriend, she, my roommate and myself stumbled our way to a rather packed and miniscule dance floor where you’re just as likely to bump into the DJ as other dancers. We hadn’t been dancing for more than 30 seconds when a brawny, 5’8″ overcompensating, anger management-bound bouncer came stampeding towards us.
He started screaming about standing in front of the women’s bathroom, barking at us about coming into “his house” and causing a ruckus, and rambling something about fucking us up.
I tried to reason with the man but it was for naught. He only seemed to be enraged more: him a raging bull, myself a crafty matador. He scowled at us for some time longer before attacking another unsuspecting dancer.
A word to bouncers: Some people are idiots. I’m not. Get off my back.
CHRIS GAERIG