Honest Crap, Take 2

It’s cold and snowing here in West Michigan. But last night, the clouds parted long enough to allow the moonlight to bathe the landscape. It was beautiful! The photo of the road was taken last January, but it pretty much looks the same around here this year.

Earlier this week, when I did the original “Honest Scrap” meme, Murf cried foul and challenged me to do it over with things that have happened since I turned 18…. All of these ten "honest" events happened between my 18th and 30th birthdays…

In college, when I didn’t have time to read the book assigned in those “book a week” classes, I’d always read the first twenty or so pages and then speak up at the beginning of the class. Seldom did the professor call on me again.

I once fell asleep in a lecture class. The professor asked a question then directed it to “Sage.” Hearing my name, I sat up and the girl beside me whispered the question to me, and I tried to bluff my way through it, but I didn’t fool the professor.

I got the measles in college. After visiting the school doctor, she called and got me excused from a chemistry exam—this was quite a feat for the professor didn’t believe in excuses. I felt that as a health care provider, she didn't seem sufficently concerned with my peril. She was only concered that I get off campus as soon as possible and that I had not been around anyone pregnant (which, to my knowledge, I hadn't). I got the measles from my brother. There had been an outbreak at his college a few weeks earlier and he was visiting me when he came down with them. Isn't it great the way families share?

I once took a friend into Yesterdays, a private club in Hickory, NC. My friend was African-American and, as we’d come from a business meeting, we were both well dressed (in suits). As I signed him into the club, an over-stuffed bouncer pulled me aside and whispered that I could lose my membership for bringing niggers into the club. This was in the mid-80s. I told him to go ahead and try, that I was sure it’d be perfect grounds for a law suit. He lets us in, but afterwards, I avoided Yesterdays.

The only thing I remember ever buying from a telephone solicitor was the call-waiting option for the phone. I’ve developed the art of quickly saying, “No thanks,” and hanging up. But there was this one occasion when the caller had such a pleasing voice that I started talking and she ended selling me the call-waiting option. This was back when such features were a novelty and the telephone solicitors didn’t speak broken-English.

A week later, I was talking to a woman I’d dated a couple of times when a call came through from another woman I with whom I’d been out with a few times. At that point, I wasn’t dating either of them seriously, but I felt awkward by having both of them “online” at the same time. This, by the way, was long before caller-ID. When I got them both off the phone, I called the phone company and canceled call-waiting.

I think I was 27 or 28 and doing a program for the scouts in a local elementary school when I meet the most adorable young woman. She was an 18 year old college freshman, doing an observation for one of her college classes. I invited her to lunch and was surprised that she agreed. At the restaurant, I was horrified to see two members of my Rotary Club and was so self-conscious of being with someone that much younger than me that I never asked her out again.

Once, when at a meeting near Pinehurst (where I was born), I was with a bunch of guys I worked with at a night club. There was a real good-looking woman on the dance floor and we all enjoyed watching her and her date dance. Right before the club closed, she walked over and said, “Sage? Sage, is that you? I haven’t seen you in like, forever!” Everyone looked at me and I had the deer in a headlight syndrome, trying to figure out who she was. Then she said, “I’m ----, your cousin.” She was in her early 20s and the last time I’d seen her was at our grandma’s funeral, ten years earlier, when she would have been about 12.

Once, after a week long backpacking trip, I found myself staying at the Martha Washington Inn in Abingdon, Virginia. It’s a grand old hotel and I felt seriously underdressed (with only hiking shorts and t-shirts). One of the hikers insisted that we eat in the dining room. I was for going to a more causal place in town, but instead found myself being a part of a group heading to a formal dining room (and hoping they would have a dress code and turn us away or at least make us eat in the kitchen). Instead, we were seated in the absolute center of the room, where folks in sport coats and summer suits could look at the hillbillies that had come to town.

I am normally very honest and will often surprise folks by returning return any overpayment I receive. But I have had my downfalls. One night, while I was staying in a hotel on business, and feeling depressed, I went to get something to eat out a vending machine… I placed the coins in (this was a few years ago as you could get a candy bar for 50 or 75 cents) and not only did I get my candy, I also got my quarters back. So I decided to play the game again, and again, and again, feeling like a gambler at a winning slot machine. I continued till I had accumulated 10 candy bars. I’m sure I’d been more honest had they not been Zagnuts in the machine. Zagnuts is one of my favorite candy bars and are hard to find. The devil must have stocked that vending machine, knowing that I'd be along shortly.