The Hill Tamed Me

Everyone's done something of which they are especially not proud. We all enjoy telling these stories of mild degridation and pain to others. Well, my web audience, here's a story of mine, a cautionary tale, and one that will hopefully make you laugh a little bit.

First, take a look to your left (not that left, your other left, you goof!) You'll see two views of East Hall at Western Michigan University. East Hall is a grand building with great history and is really a pretty cool place to go and hang out on weekends, staring off the hill towards the city. Short of me recapping all that the buidling encompasses, you could just as easily visit the Friends of East Campus site, where you can see several of the other historic buildings and learn some history thereof.

Seen the pictures, then? Good. That'll help you understand what's going on once I get into the story. Oh, right, the story. Here goes nothing.

That night...

That night John Paul Lohrstorfer and I had gone out somewhere to the far west of west campus. At the time, John-Paul's car was being used by his brother, so we had to make use of a friend to drive. Long story short, our friend got involved in some drama, and we had to walk back to JPs, several miles away.

The walk there was mostly pointless and doesn't deserve much mention, other than it was dewey and wet outside. Like, really wet. My socks were easily soaked while walking through some grassy areas in west campus. At any rate, we were pretty worn out by the time we made it to east campus. At this point, JP suggest a shortcut. So, I walk over to look at said non-shortcut, a deck area with a seven foot drop at the end of it, and I tell him that there's no way we can climb down that.

With friends like these...

Undaunted, we head towards East Hall, and I point towards the stairs which go down the hill and around the football practice area. But JP didn't come over; instead, something much more sinister was brewing in his mind. He looked at me and said, "Charles, how about we go down the hill?" I immediately knew he was crazy. Absolutely nuts.

"No way, JP," I said, "look at that thing. That's got to be, oh, I dunno, four or five stories tall. I'm going to take the stairs, you can go down the hill yourself."

But he wouldn't take no for answer. So he and I argued for a minute or two more, both he and I unrelenting, until he finally said, "Trust me, Charles, I've walked down it before. It's nothing."

Now, I don't know about you, but I feel it a matter of pride when someone pretty much challenges me to do something they've done before. OK, I'm not going to scale Everest if I ever meet Sir Edmund Hillary, but you get the picture. So, I go over it in my mind for a minute and I figure, why not, I'll do it. Besides, the hill really couldn't be all that tall, especially if John-Paul has walked down it before.

So we walk over to the top of the hill. I look down it and I realize there's no way in hell. I mention that to him again. He doesn't listen, though, and he immediately walks forward a couple feet down the hill and turns around and looks at me. Daft as I was, I followed.

The Journey Begins

Walking down the hill for about five or ten feet, everything was really going well. I mean, the shrubs were a bit thick, however, I had a human sheild in front of me. So, ploughing forward, all of the sudden, I fall right backwards on my posterior. "Hmmm...little muddy, I guess," I thought to myself, "I better just keep going." Unfortunately, though, while trying to get up, I reached out to hold on to one of the bits of shrub next to me and ended up cutting my hands on the thorns, which kind of sucked, to say the least.

John-Paul, in front, still, continued on, more or less sliding down the hill, too. I resorted to crab-walking for a good ten feet at a time when I could, and slipping down the hill through the mud when I couldn't. That dew I mentioned before was especially thick on the the wild, bushy hill and wasn't helping me stand up one bit. This went on for longer than I care to remember—in fact, about all I remember of this part was swearing, sliding, and getting caught on thorny things.

Eventually, though, we hit a little plateau in the hill, right where you see the fence for the practice field in the diagram above. WMU ran the practice field fence halfway up the hill with for little sense that might make. After looking around a bit, without any way to get around the fence, we realize we're going to have to jump the fence into the practice field.

Jumping it, and dropping into the practice field end of the hill, JP barely kept his footing. He started going forward and I jumped the fence, hitting the ground pretty hard, sliding forward about four or five feet. The hill here was, well, pretty nasty with wet grass and mud. Luckily, though, the grade of the hill seemed to get a little less steep.

So, without any choice in the matter, really, I kept going, and, well, hit a couple of patches where I ended up sliding, but did finally get to level ground. And, boy oh boy, did it feel good to be able to walk across level ground on the practice field till I realized one thing: We were surrounded by fence.

Argh!

Unlike the fence halfway up the hill, which seemed to be relatively short, the fence at the bottom of the hill around the practice field has to be at least 6 1/2 feet tall ('cause it was about my height). JP immediately tried to jump the fence, but the vertical posts holding the fence up were far apart, and the fence wavered back and forth menacingly. Nearing the top, JP couldn't get his leg over; the fence was far too unstable. He jumped off, back into the practice field.

He looked and, thinking he had no other choice, tried it again. Getting up to the top and swinging one leg over he could barely get any footing on the other end and very nearly castrated himself in the process. Finally, he got a foothold and swung himself over, in a most astonishing feat. I looked at him and said, "I'm going around."

So I walked to the end of the practice field and what should I notice but a wide, double doored gate for WMU's service vehicles. It had a one foot gap between the two doors and a nice chain holding them together about three feet up. So, bam! I jumped on the lock and hoisted myself through the gap in the two fences. No fuss, no muss, no rips in my trousers.

John-Paul looked at me, wide-eyed. "How'd you get out of there?"

"The gate."

The Last Leg

So, wet, muddy, and dog-tired, we saunter the extra block to John-Paul's apartment. We opened the door and sat down. I put down my backpack and we turned on the TV. Trying to recouperate for a minute, what should I hear but this little tiny beeping noise. I first thought it was coming from the TV until I recognized that it was the sound of my laptop.

When I threw my bag open the laptop was on. Not "sleeping" nor shut off. Nope, I must not have put it to sleep when I closed it. The thing was on for the whole trip, disk spinning and backlight on. That laptop took quite a beating from me on a number of occasions, but no more than this occasion...I was supporting most of my weight on that bag when I was sliding down the hill and, luckily, that laptop didn't die.

So, I guess, that's the end of this whole story. I stayed over at JP's that night and I continually berated him once I woke up about his convincing me to go down the hill. And then he confessed something...

"Um, well, Charles. I never walked down the hill before. I lied. I knew you wouldn't go down the hill if you knew I'd never done it before."

Timeline: Two Weeks Later

So, it turns out, not much later, Chancellor Lee, another friend of mine found himself walking from west campus to John-Paul's apartment in incredibly similar circumstances. Now, Chauncey knew full well of the hill story, so I'm sure there's no way John-Paul would have enticed him to slide down that beast, though, JP still insisted that his first shortcut—the one by the deck—was really a shortcut.

I kept telling him it wasn't, and Chauncey knew what I thought about that, too. However, the night they were out and about, as Chaunce explained to me, John Paul took him to the fabled shortcut, and JP walked forward and, before Chauncey knew what was up, he thought that John-Paul had disappeared from right in front of his eyes. Reaching out forward, into the trees and shrubby bits that surrounded him, Chauncey fell.

Turns out I was right all along! There was no shortcut, it was only a seven foot drop of concrete and earth. And, strangely enough, when Chauncey fell, the karma police or Nemesis or someone attacked: Chauncey landed on John-Paul. Whooooomp!

In Closing

Kids: If you ever go to Western and someone offers you some speedy way to head down the hill, assuming WMU has yet to rebuild the trolley, don't take their advice. Take the stairs.

Trust me. I've done it before.

 

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Notes

I took the "Western State Normal School" picture from Western Michigan University's Archives department site. The others are all mine, finally put on the site here when I updated the page in March 2003.

Random Quotation: I'm a nihilist now. --David Lempert

© 2000-2007 Charles D. Mercadal Web page complaints/questions: mercadal@diablonet.net

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