Well as we cruise into the holidays I always like to reflect on the year and all the stuff that has happened. Since I also have trouble focusing for more than 8 seconds, this leads my brain to thinking….wow, what the hell happened this year? So of course my brain starts to wander and I think about all kinds of things. Please note that ALL of this either happens at 3:00AM when I can’t sleep, or around 6:00AM when I am about to shower (that’s for you Patty…come and be my morning PCA…everybody Wang Chung tonight). As my thoughts drift around from 2021, my flux capacitor starts to race at 88 miles per hour and suddenly it’s 1993 and I’m in college and a story hits me that I want to share here and now because it’s funny as hell.
Winter 1993
University of Massachusetts Lowell Campus
North Campus Suites (6-8 of us are there…I don’t remember)
Snowing, around 2AM on a Tuesday or some other weeknight. I know we HAD CLASS THE NEXT MORNING.
Issue: How to creatively solve a problem that just crops up….yes we ALL do this all the time, but perhaps not quite like this:
We are all nestled snug in our beds and I am sure I was asleep. Now it’s college, so the room is not neat, my stuff is everywhere and to be clear to you all: this is BC (before chair). I was still walking albeit with a gait where I would swing my legs out with each step I took and if I caught my toe just right as my foot came down to the ground, I would sometimes stumble and fall. Walls, railings and other people all came in handy as I rambled along, but only handicapped people used wheelchairs, and that wasn’t going to happen to me just yet. Hell I didn’t even have a disabled parking placard for my review mirror in my car because I didn’t want to steal a parking space from some old person who really needed it. (Like Chopper at the apartment Falkin if you’re reading this).
Anyway see what I mean about focus? Yikes. So I am sleeping soundly tucky tuck around 2AM and it’s really cold and snowing heavily outside. Of course the suite is on the first floor of the, dorm so no real worries getting out to my car in the morning for class as long as someone shovels a path (90% of the time the University was awesome about this…the other 10% I had a shovel in my trunk and a friend or two would clear me out…I have amazing friends). OK FOCUS. So it’s 2AM (isn’t that a lyric from an 80’s song?) and suddenly the DAMN FIRE ALARM goes off. After almost having a heart attack, I sit up in the lower bunkbed and the dude who sleeps on top is gone. Like… down in his girlfriend’s room gone. I turn on a light, look for my jeans and socks and shirt and shoes….mind you, having muscular dystrophy does not make me fast. Maybe 3 minutes go by and another suite mate bangs on my door asking if I’m ok and tells me to hurry up to the common room. The common room in the suite is not the way out but maybe my coat is in there because who the hell knows where it is and why can’t I pull my pants on faster damn that fire alarm is loud and if some drunk-ass pulled it I am going to choke them and……uh oh. If I have to evacuate and walk out into the snow I’m screwed. I will freeze and fall. This. Is. Not. Good.
I go into the common room and my buddy Carl is fully dressed, coat and hat with about 8 plastic blue cups in front of him. Over the fire alarm he is yelling/asking all of us: “Cape Codder? Cape Codder? Who wants a Cape Codder for the fire drill?” For those of you that may not know…that’s Vodka and cranberry juice and we drank them…..well…like cranberry juice back then. I started laughing, said yes, and then announced my dilemma of going out in the snow. My pal Jim, who is about 6’4″ squats down, grabs his drink and mine and tells me to put on my coat and get on his back. Here I am in college….sober at the moment…getting a piggyback ride out into the snow in the middle of the night. Lovely. Needless to say we got some strange looks and the R.A. was not impressed. I am happy to say that I didn’t fall, we had plenty of snow/ice for our drinks while we waited AND my behavior led to a now used practice wherein anyone with crutches or a disability reports to a location INSIDE during a fire alarm. Actually, the practice was already in place, but I was too stupid to know about it until that night. Oh well, chalk that up to creative problem solving 101.
Who wants a Cape Codder? Merry Christmas. Where’s the Tylenol?
Patrick moeschen 
Choppah!!!!!