Was it a sign or just a dumb bird?

Damn, how could we forget that?

 

I call that summer vacation, 1985.

 

My wife and two of her best friends went to Foxwoods four nights before our wedding for a mini-bachelorette party. They took the ferry over early in the morning and drove back late at night. They're cruising along on I-95 (worst road in America) after midnight when the car in front of them swerves. The woman who was driving says "what the fuck?" figuring the driver is drunk or something.

No. He just avoided a dead fuckin deer in the middle of the road. Our friend did not. Splatkathunkplut.

Our friend is freaked the fuck out. My wife and her friend say "Hey, don't worry, it was already dead, nothing you can do about it," figuring she did nothing more than run over flattened roadkill.

Not quite. Two miles later, when they hear ca-clink...ca-clink...ca-clink. They pull over to a rest stop, dreading what they will see. My wife's friends, being great friends, tell her to stay in the car since this is her party and she shouldn't have to pick out deer guts.

The driver looks underneath the car and just about pukes. There's a good chunk of the deer, under her car. Antlers and all (that was the ca-clink sound).

She's in no condition at all to pick deer guts out of the bottom of her car. My wife's maid of honor, a tough take-no-shit tomboy, says no big deal, slides under there and gets rid of what she can.

My wife calls me. "You're going to have to pick me up at [the driver's] house," she says. I say OK, that's fine, but why? We live 15 minutes away. "She ran over a dead deer and we're not sure she's going to be able to make it home."

She made it home, but barely. The truly amazing part? we find out about two months later, at the maid of honor's own wedding, THAT SHE WAS PREGNANT WHEN SHE SLID UNDER A CAR AND PULLED OUT DEER GUTS. She didn't know she was knocked up at the time, found out just before she got married.

To this day, our friend who was driving cannot handle even the mention of the word deer. We drive by a deer crossing sign, we say her name and then my wife texts her as a running joke.

 

I will tell you, once you hit one of those suckers, you drive those road differently.
You look for those beady, reflective eyes.

 

I was at Cedar Point in Ohio when I was 15. I was with my family, visiting my sister, who worked at the park. All day -- or an hour since we walked through the gates -- I'd been craving nachos. That's the one food I'd probably do just about anything to get. Finally, I get a dish of them, and I'm happy.

I'm standing by a potted tree, with my nachos in my left hand and shoveling them into my face with my right hand. I look up to talk to my sister and feel a wet pressure on my right hand. That stupid seagull pooped in my nacho-eating hand. My sister, six years older than me, loved it. I, quite jaded at the world in that moment, did not.

But you know what I wonder today? Did I finish the nachos and then wash my hands or did I wash my hands, then finish the nachos? I sincerely can't remember.

 

At least it didn't poop in your nachos. Might have gotten mixed up with the sour cream ...

 

I thought that's where the story was gonna go. And I just knew that Mikey was gonna tell us he ate 'em.

 

I've never eaten poop before, and it's not on my agenda, either. I did once, however, eat a Triscuit that had been sitting in a bedpan filled with bathroom water that was leaking through my friend's ceiling. I couldn't kiss my girlfriend that night, but I used the $8.50 I made from it to buy us dinner at Taco Bell the next night.

I miss college.

 

OK, there's a bottom to this barrel somewhere.

 

We're there.

 

Whoops.