Thursday, December 8, 2011

FUNNIEST THING I HAVE EVER HEARD

During my sophomore year of college I roomed with my good friend, Tim Williams. It was the messiest room you've ever seen outside of an episode of hoarders. I'm not exaggerating either. Sadly, I'm really not. I don't think that Tim or I were naturally messy people, but somehow when you put us together we combined to create a room that could only be described as ideal rat habitat. Not that we had rats, we didn't, but there was a smell which originated from that room and which slowly spread down the hall. Everybody complained about it, and I remember our RA encouraging us to clean up our act for the sake of the common good. Tim and I theorized that maybe some left overs from Big Al's had been buried and forgotten somewhere in the room, but our efforts to locate the offending take out box met with failure. We shrugged it off and cracked the window. Eventually the smell improved. As you can imagine, our neighbors loved us.

Anyway, you get the idea, the room was unbelievably messy and cluttered. Clothes, books, boxes, bicycles...you name it... was all jumbled higglety-pigglety throughout the room without even a pretense of order.

One morning I woke up in the pre-dawn hours to the harsh "EINNT-EINNT-EINNT-EINNT" of my alarm clock which I had situated the night before on the far side of the desk. I had strategically placed it beyond easy reach so that I would have to physically get out of bed to turn it off. My theory was that if I could turn off the alarm without getting out of bed I would likely fail to get up at all. On that particular morning I needed to get up early to finish studying for an exam so I had set the alarm for earlier than normal, and further away from bed than normal. When its harsh sound exploded into the room I was filled with concern that I would annoy Tim with the unusually early wake up call so I burst out of bed and moved as rapidly as I could to turn off the offending alarm clock. However I hadn't proceeded more than a few steps before my feet became hopelesly entangled in the knee-deep, higgelty-pigglety pile and down I went with a crash. Without a doubt I would have suffered injury in the fall were it not for a conventiently placed pile of dirty laundry. While I was regaining my feet I glanced up and saw Tim eyeing me sleepily from his bed. He had witnessed the whole thing.

"Short yardage gain," was all he said before rolling over and going back to sleep.

That's the funniest thing I have ever heard. The saddest thing is Tim doesn't even remembering saying it.

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