The Storm

Getting caught in a storm is usually something to be avoided. But you can’t always help it. I’ve been caught in a few storms in my life, metaphorically speaking, and I’ve taken my lumps. But other times it all worked out in the end. Except for those painful lumps.

Growing up, I was grounded so often that “OK BUD…YOU’RE GROUNDED!” started to sound funny to me… even with my dad’s index finger inches from my face. And sometimes I did laugh… making everything far worse. But I suppose if I had been simply informed that I was “hereby unauthorized to leave the premises”, I would have tried to negotiate instead. I guess Dad knew that. Once I was caught borrowing his girly magazines (as my mom called them) and was grounded for that. I was sent to my room and while I was perusing through all the other mags I had previously taken from his vast collection, I could hear my mom yelling at him for leaving them around. “David!! You get up there and get rid of those GIRLY magazines or I swear! I swear!!” Oh man… did I laugh. I miss that guy.

Anyway, the storm. In February of 1978 there was a blizzard in the northeast. I can’t remember exactly how much snow we got, but it was enough to close schools and strand cars on the highways and side streets for days. And it was enough to strip off my college roommate’s boxer shorts when he dove off the roof into said snow. Every activity in the area came to a screeching halt. That is, except for drinking alcohol at Merrimack College. My room mates and I, apparently unfazed by mere acts of God or maybe just too stupid to behave ourselves under any circumstances, had enlisted the son of a liquor store owner to deliver unto us as much alcohol as could be transported by numerous trips on his snowmobile. We collected money from other fledgling alcoholics, and before we knew it we had ourselves a four day parDOO! But things eventually (and inevitably) got a bit out of hand. And the Dean of the College was unimpressed to such a degree that he hauled all of us into his office and threatened us with suspension. It was good fortune for me that he didn’t say the word “grounded” or I would have been thrown out of Merrimack College for laughing at the Dean, among all the other things. Our meeting with the dean was not the first nor the last. He told us repeatedly that we would never amount to anything. In fairness, we weren’t exactly model citizens at a college run by Augustinian priests. Eventually all my room mates were either thrown out or they flunked out. I graduated Magna Cum Hardly.