You ever have one of those days that starts out poorly, and ends up like a Calvin and Hobbes red wagon ride down a mountain? The kind of day that makes you wish you hadn't woken up that morning. The kind of day that encourages a desire to take a few sleeping pills and give life another shot once everyone has forgotten anything happened at all. Notre Dame likes to call them Saturdays.""
I had a party. Just a normal college party, with drinking and prancing and sloppy romancing. Near the end of the night, the atmosphere cooled into a nice core group of friends, chatting and laughing about the dubious contents of the last round of drinks. I yawned and drunkenly proclaimed something about life, the universe and multiplication tables as I stumbled upstairs to my room.
One sleep session filled with disturbing images of enormous, ornery anthropomorphic mushrooms later, I awoke to a splitting headache. I climbed out of bed, wandered to the bathroom, and took some painkillers. On the way back, I stopped in the living room. Something was wrong. Something was out of place. I blinked, bleary-eyed, and made it back to my room where I laid down again.
The phone rang. I ignored it. It rang again, and then a third time before I picked it up.
""Hello?""
""Keaton, will you talk to the police?""
It was one of the partygoers from the night before.
""What?""
""I'm calling the police about last night, and I need you to talk to them since it was your party.""
""What? Why?""
""Someone shit in my truck. I'm going to kill them.""
Full, sobering stop. Brief flashes of memory appeared before me. The last shot of gin. The possum who committed ritual suicide, throwing himself unto the bonfire, possibly as an act of civil disobedience. A couple of my other friends, drunk as skunks, giggling about a truck as they ran downstairs and outside. My stomach lurched and fell into my shoes. My throat turned into the Sahara desert.
""Say that again.""
""Last night, someone took a little break from your get-together and decided to leave his calling card in the bed of my truck.""
""That's bad, isn't it?""
Balancing the phone on my shoulder, I opened the door to my bedroom and walked into the living room, intent on reaching the kitchen and water. My stomach dropped past my feet into the floor below.
The TV was gone.
The TV, my roommates' TV, the big-screen TV that we loved and cherished and offered animal sacrifices to weekly, was gone. The only trace was a comical line of dust around its former position on the stand, and the possum, recently converted from party casualty to sacred sacrifice.
""Dude, I'm going to have to call you back. The TV is gone.""
""But someone shit in my truck!""
""The TV is GONE.""
I couldn't handle it. Last night's dubious drink consumption combined with today's terrifying revelations had rendered me a quivering mass of stress and pain. My liver was up on a soapbox, handing out anti-Keaton manifestos to my other internal organs by the dozen. I was out of ideas. All I wanted to do was sleep - I wished I was simply having a bad dream induced by offering the wrong sacrifice to the dearly departed 36"" Sony.
But reality was harsh, unforgiving, and at this moment smelled of decomposing marsupial. I guess some days, you're the fire, others, you're the possum.
Hours later, the fecal matter disposed of, the TV located (not stolen, just moved) and the possum removed, Keaton finally got some sleep. He swore an oath never to drink drinks of dubious composition again. If you got the Hitchhiker's reference, let him know at keatonmiller@wisc.edu
