It was a warm summer day (no, it couldn’t have been, school would have been out). Ah, it was a brisk fall day (was it brisk? I can’t remember). Yes, I remember now – it was a nondescript day that happened to fall in one of four seasons and it may or may not have been cloudy. Yes, I think that’s right.
And it was on this nondescript day in the middle of a season that I had just returned from a field trip to who knows where (maybe Dietsch Brothers?) where I had enjoyed (I think) a cinnamon flavored ice cream cone [rather, the ice cream was cinnamon flavored (probably), and the cone was waffle flavored].
Good! Now that we’ve gotten our background info straight, I may begin regaling you with the story of the runaway UF van. I had just stepped down out of the UF van (which, as you may suspect, is about to run away) when I realized that I had left my bookbag in the trunk. Naturally, I went around the back of the van and pulled on the handles to open the door, but it was locked. I rapped on the heavily tinted back window, hoping that my professor would notice and unlock the doors. No sooner had my fist tapped its third tap did the van begin to move away from me. I was a little bit shocked, and in a very brief moment I came to the entire realization that
She’s driving away. She’s driving away with my bookbag in the back and I need that hey where are you going I don’t know where these vans go I have a class to go to come back wait… Damn. Co******ing Mo********ing Fu** Sh** Di** Cu** You gotta be f****** s******* me right now.
Yes, that is what it sounds like when I curse in my head, minus the asterisks to censor the few profane choice words I sprinkle about because the little man in my head that runs the stress management department has Tourette’s. It can take on many different varieties, often ending in a melodic “Go fu** yourself.” But I digress.
Now I am in dire straits, because as that brief diversion into my psyche informed you, I need to get to class. I don’t necessarily need my bookbag for this class, which is Intro to Philosophy, but I don’t know if I will still be able to locate my bookbag if I ignore the matter until after class. The van may be needed for another farce of a “field trip” in mere minutes. And so, my journey begins.
I am standing awestruck as the van pulls away, but I take notice of where it goes. I watch it leave the Mazza parking lot and take a left from the strange cul-de-sac turnabout onto some street which, even if it had a name, I couldn’t tell you. It disappears behind some trees heading what my internal compass tells me is north (though it could have been any direction, my brain just likes to label a reference point). No choice now but to set off after it. I walk down what Google Maps has just informed me is called College Street. How original. As I approach the end of this street I no longer know where the van was headed, but I spot an identical van parked under the awning at BCHS. Before I knew it was the wrong van, my hopes were high. As I approached and peered into the window, I saw not my professor, but a stranger. I asked if they saw a van drive by like the one they were sitting in, but all they could tell me was where such vans go when not in use.
To the Physical Plant! Whatever that is! I start walking in the direction they pointed (I am already too tired to run, and I look like an ass when I run anyway). Now I am making my way past the “north” end of the Davis Street building, but it’s my first semester here so I don’t know if I’m still at UF or if I’ve walked through a portal to an earth-like city on a faraway planet where they still haven’t figured out that school just isn’t any fun. I come to a small grassy area and I can see the parking lot full of UF vans in the distance, just beyond a chain link fence. But I can’t get there, because I have just realized that there is a creek in my way which is a little bit too far to jump. Imagine – no one would have to put up with this story if I’d had the guts to try the leap anyway, landed head first on a sharp rock and sat there twitching as sewage runoff trickled around my profusely bleeding carcass. Well, you’re not that lucky.
Muttering an equally filthy stream of profanities to myself, I turn back and walk the length of a quarter of a football field just to get to the bridge that crosses the creek. I am shaded from the sun which may or may not have been blazing down on me by some tall trees the species of which I would just as soon call “biggus treeus” and move on, but because they aren’t pine trees, I guess they’re oak trees. After crossing the bridge I have to walk another QFF (quarter football field) past a heavily graffitied boulder bearing the graduating year and signatures of some class of people I will never know or care to know. When I finally reach the chain link fence, I can’t see the entrance. All I see is a pile of chopped logs stacked between the fence and an “oak” tree. I didn’t want to make my decision to jump the fence lightly. I surveyed the entire perimeter of the enclosed parking lot, and somehow kept missing the way in until finally I noticed an alleyway between an apartment building and a toolshed that would serve as an adequate entrance. I entered the parking lot, thinking that at any moment I would be spotted and, rather than being helped, I would be captured and severely chastised – maybe even expelled for trespassing. But I’m in it for the long haul. I find the van with the most familiar ID number on the side and squint through the tinted glass windows on the back doors. Yup, there it is. And yup, still locked.
Okay, now is the time to exercise my tenuous grasp on the UF website. I take out my phone and look up the security office. I seem to remember that now it is cold and windy, and that makes me understandably irritated as I get no answer on my first two tries. I need to get my stuff and get out of here. I call again, and I get an answer. I don’t remember who answered, but I am inclined to think it was a girl with a voice that grated my eardrums like a cheese grater grates cheese. Actually, I would have preferred a cheese grater be scraping against my ear.
I get the girl to send help after I explain the situation and provide my student ID number to prove that I’m not some hoodlum who decided that the best way to hijack a van would be to call security and ask them to unlock it. I hate people. Eventually a guy drives up in a golf cart and unlocks the van remotely, and without stopping, turns around, makes sure that I have my bag, and relocks the van and drives away.
No, that’s fine, I wouldn’t like a ride to class. I’m just a student who has travelled the scenic route to nowhere on foot and ended up a half a mile from Winebrenner where I need to be about a half hour ago. But I’m sure you have a window to clean somewhere, Mr. Physical Plant employee, so don’t neglect it on my account.
I have less than fifteen minutes of class left and I the professor is cool, so I want to at least show my face in his class to let him know that I made an effort. I start jogging in short bursts with my twelve-ton bookbag bouncing on my back. I have to look like an absolute moron (more so than usual) running with this thing on my back, hunched forward to balance its weight and try to keep it from slamming into my spine repeatedly. You know what it reminded me of? If you’ve ever seen a piece of flotsam in a lake as waves go by, the flotsam doesn’t get taken along by the wave. It just gets brought to the crest and falls back down maintaining the exact same horizontal coordinates it had before the wave hit it. It’s hard to explain, but that’s what I feel like as I’m running with my bookbag. I retrace my steps back to the Mazza, and from there I know just how to get to Winebrenner. I huff into class on the second floor and flop down into a chair with five minutes to go. I’m sweaty and out of breath and I probably smell like I did fall in that creek, but I made it. I prop my head up with my arm as I decompose on the desk, but I make a visible effort to be attentive to Professor Graves in the only class I liked.
Afterward, on the way home, I was suddenly overcome by incredible joy. I realized that even though in the moment I was stressed and pained and angry, the whole time I had been secretly enjoying the experience. I realized that the ordeal I’d just experienced was something that I covet every day of my life: an adventure. Not the kind with magic and swords or even an antagonist, but the kind you can, if rarely, actually experience in real life. It was a journey filled with purpose and determination and hardship and uncertainty and it was exhilarating. I long for adventures like this; things with purpose and an objective to be obtained; journeying into the unknown courageously just to see what sort of trouble I can find. And while I’ve never found something so grand and fulfilling, I had a taste of it that maybe-cloudy day.