The things Dman's eyes have seen

I'm back, and as promised, here is a tale about my first driving experience. To set the scene:

We lived in Hoffman Estates with a house that backed up to Higgins Rd just east of Roselle Rd. If you're familiar with the area, it is a wide roadway with huge ditches. Back in the 70's, the area was not congested, and Higgins amounted to a county highway with 55 MPH speed limits. Basically cars would zip down it. My parents had a three bedroom ranch with a detached garage and a car port. The yard was decent sized and was at a long distance to the road.

I was quite the rascal, so I am told. My mother had me buckled into a car seat in the rear part of the car. She started the car and left it running in the driveway. The garage door was closed as she was planning to leave. She had to run back into the house to get something. In that short time period, I managed to escape from the car seat and jump into the driver's seat. In those days, the cars had long handle shifters that did not require one to step on the brake to engage. So as any 18 month old would want to do, I shifted the car into drive and it idled away. The car (and me) went clear through the garage as my mom chased after us. The garage door landed on her, and she ended up in the hospital. I continued on my journey out the back of the garage, through the fence, across the east bound lanes of Higgins road and into the ditch on the other side. The car continue to idle along in the ditch until a passerby stopped his car and proceed to rescue me. The guy was a lawyer from Hanover Park.

I have a copy of the August 1975 (not 1976 as I said above) Daily Herald where the events are described in a blurb titled, "tot drives car through garage". It was on page two of the paper. I also liked that the front page of the paper shows a combine harvesting corn in Schaumburg as the area was largely rural back in those days. I drive past our old house on Higgins every day to work. It makes me smile to think of such a strange thing occurring when I was 18 months old. Unfortunately, I have no first hand recollection of the event. My parents have a few old Polaroids of the garage door. I am still proud that I drove and made the newspaper at 18 months old. I thought about reaching out to the lawyer who saved my life. I haven't done it yet.

Next up: A tale of petty crimes and property destruction on campus.

Most crashes involving kids/teens can be traced back to how much practice driving time the kid got before the parent let them drive alone. And most crashes are preventable. Safety guy sees several things your mom did wrong. It was all her fault!

Installment #3. Keeping in mind that these tales are things that I have seen (not necessarily that I have personally done), we'll proceed to a tale of my freshman year at U of I in Champaign (UIUC). I lived on a co-ed floor in the freshman dorms affectionately known as the Six Pack. Specifically I was on Garner's top floor, the 4th. The guys were on one side of the floor, and the girls on the other separated by security doors. It was a lively place. The vast majority of the students were from the Chicago suburbs. In fact, I was always surprised by how many suburban kids went to the school leading to my belief that it was a settle school for many kids. I bring up the suburban comment because the place had the feel of a bunch of young adults that were so sheltered that they did not know how to react in an environment where there is minimal supervision. I was certainly in that camp. I had perfect attendance in high school and missed about 1/3 of my classes the first year at UIUC.

I hung around with a guy from Niles, one from Bolingbrook, and another that was from Oak Park. We did stupid things like seeing who could get the best "souvenir" from the bar. Notably I acquired one of those giants plastic Miller Light banners that advertise a beer special. The plastic banner was 20 feet long. How the people in the bar didn't see us take it down, roll it up, and walk out with it is something of a mystery to me. I had a real stop sign in my dorm room. Someone else had one of those orange and white construction horses with the orange light on top.

As the year went on, there was an increasing number of property damage incidents on our floor. The cost to repair the damages was split among the residents of the floor. I walked into the bathroom one night to see a urinal ripped off the wall. Soon after, a sink also laid in waste on the floor. The final attack on said bathroom was a tear out of the electrical system, which had the effect of us showering in the dark.

Someone decided to attempt to burn down my dorm door. I was at the end of the hallway near the girl's side of the floor, so it was a convenient target. Our common area furniture repeatedly ended up on the ground below. Yes dressers drawers, cushions, chairs, etc. The bulletin board was destroyed by fire. On the day I moved out in May, there was so much unwanted goods on the hallway floor, that you couldn't even see the tiles on the ground. Everything from Cheetos to term papers to clothing lay in waste. The look on the janitor's face is something I will never forget.

And I thought these incidents were unique to our floor. But in a February 1993 Daily Illini article titled "Trash and Burn", I realized that this stuff happened all over campus. The centerfold pictures were telling. Underneath our buildings was a connected set of hallways for the six pack that had pool tables, ping pong, and vending machines. The newspaper article showed pictures of the vending machines being smashed and the candy looted from them. I found it funny at the time.

In any case, the residents would get charges for these damages on their statements. The guys on our floor were incensed because the girls were not getting charged nor were the other floors in the building. Even though you would have nothing to do with the incident, you would have to pay for the repairs. This caused Garner 4 male residents to take matters into their own hands. I can tell you that the logic seemed reasonable at the time- basically, the residents were out to prove that people from outside the building or from other floors could cause damage on our floor. These disaffected youths proceeded to the third floor common area room above the Resident Director's first floor room. The sofa in that room ended up in the bush outside his window, so when he woke up he saw it laying there. These folks were not done. Knowing that the entire building had security doors at each corner entrance, on each floor, and in each area where the girls lived, they decided to create a lock down. The resident broke off tiny pieces of metal paper clips and put them in each lock requiring a key to get in. They told me it took 30 pieces of tiny metal. When someone would stick there key into the lock, it would not go all the way in. Chaos ensued.

The link to the original article no longer works.

It's me again. Hello. Ten days ago I promised a 19th birthday story from down in Champaign. This little story will have some holes in it given the volume of alcohol consumed in one evening. I am not proud of these events, but it was a right of passage for me.

So I started down at U of I at 18 years old, a typical freshman albeit with a lot of college credits upon entry. I come to find out that you only need to be 19 to go to the local bars. Once inside, the alcohol flows freely to all because most of the folks were of legal drinking age. During my first semester down there, I had a cheap ID and never had trouble getting into campus bars. But after winter break, I came back to Champaign as a mature 19 old, now fully legal to enter any bar on my own ID.

My friends from the dorm decided to take me out to the bar for my birthday after winter break. The deal was, they paid for all drinks, I had to drink whatever they bought, and whoever paid for the drink would drink the same thing for himself. It sounded fair- no cost to me and no chance of ordering something nasty because they would have to drink the same thing. However, I think I forgot basic math (even though I was in high level differential calculus) as there were three of them to just me. As such, they could order shots all night, and I was at a 3-1 disadvantage. And as you might expect to happen, I got incredibly drunk. The faint memories that I have as to what happened next were confirmed by lots of laughter from my friends in the morning.

So at some point at this bar, I was sitting up on a counter and began to puke. I puked. I puked again. And again. The entire bar started chanting, "one more time...one more time....one more time." Apparently I obliged many more times. I recall being carried back to the dorm afterwards.

I basically dry heaved all night in my dorm room. I woke about in the morning feeling as bad as one could after a night like that. And there was one last birthday insult to be had. On the dorm floor I was known as the Dominoes Pizza guy. The other boys liked Papa Dells, Gumby's, or Grogs. But I always ordered a large pepperoni pizza with a large drink from Dominoes. It cost an extra buck or two, but it was high class relative to Grogs and the others. Well these dipshits had saved about 20 Dominoes pizza boxes. When I opened my dorm door, the entire doorway was covered in these pizza boxes, so I couldn't get out.

Happy 19th Dman.

Next up: Peoria Bachelor Party

Long story short, my U of I story was me visiting some friends for an IU/Illini football game. I woke up in a pile of leaves at 4am in some random persons backyard. I walked "home" eventually once I found out where I was. This was before smartphones so it was kinda hard. I was told I disappeared after getting kicked out for calling a bartender, "Where's my drink ya fat bitch?"

Oh ya I woke up with only 1 shoe. 

I didn't feel bad about the leaves/shoe. I did feel horrible for being so rude to the bartender. I never treat service people like that. I was very mad at myself for that stupid act. 

"Tuesdays with Drop In"