#1 Caddy Memory... so far

You can catch up on this whole "blog party" thing commemorating the moment my Caddy passed from 199k to 200k miles & turning 20 this year HERE. You can read the 1st 9 of the top 10 memories in the Caddy HERE and HERE.

Actually an old guy stopped me yesterday morning at Starbucks and talked to me for 20 minutes about my Caddy. He was lovin' it. Everybody loves the Caddy! (well, senior citizens at Starbucks anyway)

OK, drumroll... I now give you my #1 Memory so far in the 1st 200k miles of the Caddy...

#1 - 12 guys in the Caddy. I feel like you have to know something going into this memory. The college I went to was not normal. It was crazy. not an understatement... I promise. They would kick you out for ANYTHING! I mean ANYTHING. If you were a person like me... a little on the fun side & like to do some spontaneous, crazy stuff just for fun... there's no way you can go through 4 years & not get kicked out at least once. (I only officially got kicked out once, so I did pretty good.) They just didn't like people who had too much fun. This was the most "dignified" and "straight-laced" place I have ever been in my life! So if you got caught by someone in leadership doing something fun that is kind of different... the upholder of dignification would see to it you never did that again. (They might even add what you were doing to the rule book & it could get named after you!)
Now that you know that, I can go on with my story. We were in these things that were sort of like fraternities. They were mainly for intramural sports & stuff. They did some new thing my senior year in the ice rink = they held a broom hockey tournament with all the "fraternity" teams (like 20). It was just an all day thing. Sounded kind of fun on a Saturday, so me and like 11 guys signed up to represent Beta Psi Delta. (haha, crazy memories just writing that.)

[side note alert: speaking of crazy memories & the ice rink - I've gotta at least mention the sweetest game ever played & I am proud to say that I actually invented it! Soccer on Ice baby!!! Our sophomore year we rented the ice rink out and our fraternity played Soccer on Ice ALL NIGHT LONG!!! It was crazy. Just like it sounds -> You throw a soccer ball out on the ice, run out there in your tennis shoes & play soccer. Craziest thing you've ever seen. Nothing like it. it became a tradition the next 2 years too. (they outlawed it after we graduated!) The very 1st year I invented it, 10 minutes into the game I went straight down on my face & bit it HARD on the ice. Fell straight on my 2 front teeth. blood all over. I couldn't feel my mouth or teeth for 3 days. I was back out there in the game after a 5 minute clean up session though! played the rest of the night. AWESOME memories! (Couldn't eat for a long time & my 2 front teeth started turning black and I almost lost them... got a root canal instead & they bleached them back white for me.)]

We had these broom hockey tourney games all day and when we kept winning we would have about an hour off until the next game. Definitely too long to just sit there and watch a bunch of other fools play hockey with these crazy weird sticks. So we would go back to our dorm. Our dorm was the furthest dorm from the ice rink. I'm really bad at judging distances, but maybe 3/4 of a mile? We were feeling too lazy to walk that far after every game in the Florida heat so we all piled into my Caddy after our 1st game. Everyone knew about the Caddy, of course. they were privileged to get to ride in it back to our dorm.
12 guys on the team though. 1 Caddy. It seats 5 people like a regular car.
Not on this day. We put 12 college guys in the Caddy! I'm not making this up. 4 in the front seat. 4 in the back seat. 4 sitting in the trunk with the trunk lid open! (I wanna say my boys Ethan & Scott were definitely 2 of the ones sitting up front with me. I think. & I don't think Jim was because he had been kicked out a week or 2 before. haha, sorry Jim. had to throw that in.) It was crazy driving across campus like this. I know we were idiots but we felt like pimps. It was a lot of fun for real. Just picture it... 12 dudes in an old blue Caddy. haha.

Anyway, we're driving across campus with 12 guys crammed in my car & 4 of them are sitting in the trunk with their legs hanging out the back resting on the bumper and the trunk lid straight up in the air. All the windows are rolled down with guys shouting stuff to pedestrians on the campus streets.
(I also failed to mention that I had been "almost" kicked out 2-3 weeks before this incident... got pulled out of class to the dean's office which is a very bad sign, pulled out of my room after midnight & moved to another dorm and into the "on deck" room to be kicked out. Anyway, I got out of it, but was on THIN ICE. like the ice that's not even really ice... more like a slushy from 7/11.)

So, again, we're cruising across campus with guys hanging out of the back of my car and we start to meet a new white sedan on the street. It looks eerily familiar. As the car gets closer to meeting us it rolls down it's window and a hand reaches out the window and starts flagging us down to stop the car. As we roll up next to this car, all 12 of us passengers realize that this car belongs to the freaking President of our college. Dr. Horton! oh crap. this guy is like 104 years old and never talks. No one has ever talked to him & you only ever saw him on graduation day. & based on the college he was president of, you assume that he doesn't put up with any crap.
[side note alert #2: Actually I had talked to him once. My 1st day ever as a freshman! 4 years before. how ironic that I would talk to him on my 1st & last days, I thought. As a freshman I walked into the Academic building for my 1st class ever at like 9am or something. I went to the 1st elevator I saw because my class was on the 6th floor. President Horton was standing there in the elevator! What are the chances? I said "hi" and got on & pushed the button for 6th floor. He looked at me, knew I was a freshman, smiled and said "son, I think you're on the wrong elevator." I was thinking to myself "Even the president here is trying to play me & haze me because I'm a Freshman by tricking me into getting off this elevator!" I just laughed and hit the "close door" button. He put his hand in the elevator to stop it and said "No seriously, this is the staff elevator. The student elevators are down there. You need to use one of those." Haha, what a story for my 1st day. Before my 1st ever class even.]

He motioned for me to roll my window down & all sorts of stuff was going through my head... like gunning it with my 4.9 liter Caddy engine... or switching seats with the freshman sitting beside me...
I'll never forget what he said = "Do you know you've got people in your trunk?" After he said that I caught a glimpse of his wife (Beka) in the passenger seat (who is very famous with homeschoolers, btw) and she was laughing like she was at a comedy show. When I saw that I had to assume that everything was gonna be cool. The sarcastic jerk in me took over and it took all the self-control I could muster (which wasn't much) to keep from saying = "People in my trunk? Are you serious? Where did they come from?" But I didn't say that. I can't remember what I said actually. He turned to the guys in my trunk and said something like "Why don't you guys just get out and walk where you're going. That would probably be a lot better idea, don't you think?" I heard a lot of "Yes sir"s... He started laughing too by the end of it & I know I cracked a few jokes, but can't remember what.

The ride back to the dorm with the remaining 8 guys in the car was priceless as we all described how our life flashed before our eyes, etc... and everyone was talking at the same time.
I dropped them all off and was parking my car in my spot... Which just happened to be NEXT to President Horton's parking spot. (I think I mentioned HERE how I got the unbelievable hookups on parking spots each year.) He was actually living on campus because his home got wiped out in Hurricane Ivan. The campus house he was living in was connected to the parking lot where I parked and we parked 10 feet from each other. He was getting groceries out of his trunk when he saw me getting out of my caddy. I swear to you I thought this fragile 104 year old man was gonna drop over dead when he tried to close his trunk! He went to grab the trunk and missed. He started swaying. I was fearing for his life. He walked over to me and said "Starting a little taxi service, huh?" I said "Something like that." He went on to explain how much he didn't want to ruin our fun but just didn't want anyone getting hurt. He was totally genuine about it. We actually had a pretty cool conversation in which he told me if he ever needed a ride anywhere, he knew who to call.


So, that's my #1 all time fav memory. I just wrote these on the fly & there's really probably many more that are better than some of these that I'll remember next week. But the point was just to show how much fun can be had in a junky paid for car!

Again, I'm praying that God would let my Caddy go past 300K and I'll have another party for her. A big one that time & you're all invited. And I hope God allows me to give & give & give so much money over the next 100k miles to further His kingdom & fame & to help those in poverty and suffering... instead of wasting that same $ on a dumb car payment.