It occurred to me that I haven't updated this blog in about a month. Unfortunately, my life has taken a turn for chaos, and I haven't been able to write anything worth posting for the last few months, though I have loads of stories jotted down. In the meantime, here's an article I wrote last year for a paper that didn't make it. Hope you enjoy it.

P.S. Some of you may recognize the plot from another story of mine. Yes this is the same story, but this is actually what happened.

DON'T TAKE THINGS FROM STRANGERS

Due to legal implications, the names of the people involved in the following story have been changed.

LA JOLLA - I have, in my time at UC San Diego, endeavored to find the ultimate college story - something so far-fetched and seemingly impossible that you have to believe it. This served two purposes: one, to make my otherwise mundane life seem interesting, and two, to have a really great bar story to tell. With this in mind, I have this story to share.

In my freshman year at UCSD I knew a student named James, who, despite being a fairly good person, had a drug problem. Or at least I referred to it as a problem, he didn't seem to mind all that much. The result of this was that he constantly traveled with large amounts of cash to buy drugs with at a moments notice, and he was frequently procrastinating while high. Which was fairly often. All of this procrastination inevitably caught up to him the day before a midterm, and he found himself cramming at Geisel Library. After a few hours of intense stressing, a random stranger approached him with an offer.

"Hey man! How are you?" said the man whom James had not met before.

"Hey," said James, ever the friendly type.

"You seem stressed, wanna try out this pill? It'll totally calm you down." said the stranger, revealing a bottle of pills. He took one to show that it wasn't poison.

James, having missed the day in kindergarten for the lesson "Don't take things from strangers," was intrigued and said yes. He took the pill from the stranger and swallowed it down. The two of them sat around talking for a while until James needed to go out to smoke a joint.

And here, dear readers, is where we take an aside from our story. For all intensive purposes, the city of Phoenix, Arizona is about 300 miles away from San Diego, making it about a 5 to 6 hour drive, depending on traffic. With this minor detail in mind, we return to the story.

James, whom we left outside smoking a joint, found himself passed out on the floor. Or rather, just passed out, as I don't think he knew where he was. He regained consciousness in a rather loud and windy place. The side of a highway. What had previously been daylight when he went outside for a smoke had now changed to night, and James, still groggy, was being prodded by what felt like a broomstick.

"Hey kid," a gruff voice said, "do you know where you are?"

James looked up to get a good view of his interviewer. A cop.

"Oh great," thought James, his heart beginning to race. Ironically, his increased heartbeat helped him wake up faster and seem more alive to the cop, who had no reason to be suspicious of James, who currently appeared to be the victim.

"Uh...San Diego?" said James, thinking it was a trick question, or a sobriety test.

"You're in Phoenix." said the cop, pulling James to his feet.

James was understandably a bit shocked by this, and looked around to be sure. Sure enough, he was in the middle of a desert, and his cell phone told him it was 7pm. Great, he'd passed out for six hours. He pulled out his wallet. Amazingly, all of his money was inside, and none of his credit cards or ID were taken either. So, for all intensive purposes, the only problem with James' current state was that he was now some 300 miles, in another state.

After checking him out, the cop was nice enough to drive James to Arizona State University, where James had a friend, who, as luck would have it, was traveling to San Diego the next day. James most gratefully gave him all the cash he had on him in return.

And so, at 10am the following day, James returned to UCSD, picked up his backpack and books from Geisel (which had also escaped vandalism, remarkably), and arrived to class in time to take his midterm.

As for the random stranger, James tells me that he's never seen him since.