The whir of the blender and Phish blaring over the surround-sound speakers jarred me from my sleep. It was 10 a.m., Saturday
morning in Austin, Texas. I'd been out pounding beers with my roommate and friends downtown the night before and we didn't get home until 3 a.m.
I stumbled down the hallway from my bedroom and rounded the corner into our living room. Smoke lapped out of a blue bong on the kitchen counter. My roommate, Alex, stood in the kitchen with his back to me, making margaritas and groovin' to the music. The morning sunlight fell through
the window onto his gelatinous body. All I could see was an outline of his bald, round head and belly. In my groggy haze, he looked cartoonish - like Homer Simpson or Buddha.
By Chris Crawford, Jayplay writer
"Hey man, I'm just makin's somemargaritasandlistenin'totunes," Alex slurred. "I couldn't sleep I thought I'd get started early I bought some CDs I'm sorry if it's too loud this song rocks what are you doing up?"
What I was doing was experiencing a lifechanging moment, I realized that day I couldn't live like that anymore. It wasn't just Alex who was out of control. I was only a
"What are you doing?" I say. "It's 10 in the morning."
step away from margaritas in the morning. Alex and I had too many things in common.
We both were in our mid-twenties. We both spent our days typing insurance policies, while barefoot and listening to our headphones (We worked at a very liberal insurance company). We both had dropped out of college multiple times and as a result were stuck in a rut. We had grown accustomed to the cycle of working our mind-numbing
jobs during the day and then killing as many brain cells as possible at night. We had become two fat losers lying around like beached whales, high and drunk.
But I had one thing that distinguished me from Alex. I still pictured a different end to my story. I hadn't given up. I knew I needed to try college one last time. Sink or swim, one last shot. But that was a scary proposition, considering my college career so far.
I started at Drake University out of high school in 1993. I finished two years. It was easy — no problem. And then mid-semester in the fall of 1995, life intervened. Most of my friends had transferred after the school kicked our fraternity off campus the year before. My long-distance girlfriend of two years broke up with me after I found a framed picture of her with another guy. Nice. And I was enduring an unrelenting series of illnesses connected to a spleenectomy following a car accident in 1989. So I dropped out. That semester started the snowball of my record-setting line of six dropped semesters that slowly broke my confidence.
One semester at Johnson County Community College, then two more back at Drake and two semesters at St. Edwards University in Austin. Six semesters!
When shit happens, you get depressed and I did. I fell into a deep depression fueled by booze and drugs. January 1996 to the summer of 1999 is still a blur to me. Somehow I got myself together in 1999, met my current girlfriend and moved to Austin in 2000.
But after dropping out of the last semester at St. Edwards and feeling as low as humanly possible, I started working with Alex at Austin Surplus Lines Insurance.
Every day I went to work I grew increasingly numb. I didn't care about anything.
All I could think about was how to escape and for me that meant graduating college. Why was it so easy for everyone else? Had I created a self-fulfilling prophecy that I had to fail?
The day after the margarita breakfast, I told Alex that I had to try school one last time and I was moving back to Kansas. Although I could tell he was sad to lose a friend, he was very supportive. I moved back in the summer of 2002.
I've finished four semesters and some change at the University of Kansas and I'll crack 30 when I graduate in May 2005. I still don't know what's different this time; maybe I'm older and more focused. Maybe I owe my success to a Post-it note I hung above my computer on my desk that reads, "FOCUS." Maybe having the support of family and friends back home in Kansas worked.
But one thing is sure, I owe my change of heart to Alex. During the course of two years, he brought me enlightenment. I saw in Alex what would happen if I decided that my previous failure was a blueprint for my future. Alex's ignorant bliss brought clarity to the world we had muddied up.
10.28.04 Jayplay
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