It was no different from what thousands of parents do.  Junior wants to go to college or technical school, driven by the parents who say without further education he’ll be living under a bridge.  Plans are made, housing is found (if not on campus, some dung-hole apartment shared with best buds), and the new student gets deposited in the new digs at an institution of higher learning (that is an assumption).  He wouldn’t be there if his friends were not there.

So junior and three of his friends move into this hovel that has a United States Postal address.  And slowly but surely the stories start rolling out.  You are familiar… kegs, Mad Dog 20/20, Boone’s Farm, grain nights, heaving out back, and on occasion, a few tidbits about further education, very few.

So on one evening, and this does not have to be a weekend, junior and his friends are well oiled up, one known as Urge, all partying hard.  The time moves on and Urge heads up to the second floor sleeping quarters, it is early AM.  Urge is always a target.

Unbeknownst to Urge, earlier in the evening, the house Hoover canister vacuum, a behemoth weighing as much as a full size bowling ball, with an operating decibel level of 130+, was strategically placed in Urge’s bedroom closet.  Urge did not deal with hangers.  He liked piles, so the Hoover was easy to conceal under mounds of Urge’s clothes.  To power the beast the vacuum’s cord was connected to an extension cord.  The extension cord was wedged between the carpet and baseboard, out of the closet, and down the stairs into the living room.

The plan:  Wait for Urge to pass out.  At that point the Hoover, in Urge’s closet, would be energized from the living room where his roommates would await the reaction.  At the least, a promise of side-splitting laughter, and at that, they were not disappointed.

Urge is upstairs, out cold.  The roommates plug-in the Hoover’s cord in the living room, and the beast erupts.  They wait for the cussing and footsteps on the second floor, and just as quickly, unplug the vacuum.  Urge is in a stupor, footsteps back and forth, on the second floor, he can’t locate the problem, then silence.  Urge is back in the rack.  The boys are howling. Repeat.  Plug in the Hoover, wait for the reaction, unplug the Hoover, and wait.  More howling.  On the third electrification of the Hoover, Urge is out of bed in a flash, not to be fooled again.  He locates the vacuum under the heaps of clothes in the closet, rips it out of the closet, and the roommates take cover as the Hoover does an aerial, down the stairs, into the family room and front door, accompanied with the appropriate collection of vulgarity.

Late in 2017, about 1.5 decades after the above story, Urge overdosed after a few years of struggling with an addiction. We loved Urge. So kind and considerate.  Funny.  Smart.  So many memories, at our various homes and on vacations. We laud the person he became!  He was a fine person.  His “person” was not defined by the demon he dealt with in those last years.

**** S&E ****