Work can wait; there are keys under the library.

No wonder I’m a writer. God has given me the best subjects. I can’t make this up. Be prepared for a long, journal-style entry that provides nothing but the greatest entertainment.

Yesterday, Matt Howard turned 23. The most ideal way to spend a birthday? At St. Bonaventure University, of course. He picked me up around noon. It was my one day off this week; we had to drive home early this morning so I could get into the office at a normal hour. After a semi-uneventful car ride during which we called everyone within a 100-mile radius to come join us (no one came), we arrived at Townhouse 21, my former residence and the place my wonderful roommate Jennifer was living.

First most exciting part of the day: my (former) apartment was unlocked. Jenny stays across the hall, in 218, but 216 was free and open and utterly depressing. The campus was a creepy ghost town; the incoming freshmen were finished with orientation, so everything was barren.

Jenny, Jordan, Matt and I perused campus, left Denny a note on his door because he wasn’t there for me to thank in person, and we went outside to see the finished library addition. Verdict: eh. More exciting was the fact that the fences were gone. We practiced walking directly from Plassmann Hall to the Hickey, like we could do up until senior year when construction started.

We went into the library to see the addition from inside. A box on the floor advised “Do not open this door or step on this box until 7/12/08.” We decided not to take our chances with stepping on the box, anyway. (Weird?)

As we exited the library, Matt Howard dangled his keys and lanyard in such a way that his keys were essentially walking down the steps. He proudly announced to us that “the keys are climbing down the stairs!”

(This is the same guy who made an extensive YouTube video about moving a treadmill upstairs. You can view it here. He also often gets sad that he doesn’t have a dog of his own, so he creates personalities for inanimate objects. He once had a pet desk lamp that he dragged around by the cord. He took it into Blockbuster.)

As his keys traversed the new ground in front of the building, Matt discovered a small hole in the ground that he thought needed investigating. How convenient, he must have thought, my key-pet can investigate! And he said, “Investigate this hole, keys!”

And he dipped the keys into the hole. When he realized it was a pipe, he yanked the lanyard, which proceeded to catch on the lip of the pipe, and the keys were suddenly gone. All at once we lost our ride home AND our access to everything left inside the car. And we all collapsed in laughter. Like, can’t-breathe-get-a-brain-freeze-sick-to-the-stomach-hysterical laughing.

Security Services, which always proves to be a helpful resource (pah), showed up to stare into the dark abyss with us. “I saw them put that pipe in,” he said. “It’s about 30 feet long. Drains into the basement of the library.” So, once again, we fell over, laughing like never before in the sweltering sun.

Who would think that the closest locksmith who could make new keys is in Derby, NY? Oh well, that was a concern for the following morning. Nothing to do now but get AAA (or “Three A’s” as my grandma calls it) to open the car so we could retrieve our things, and then let them tow the car away.

So after we spent about an hour at Bonafest (where we met a young friar who was friendly, funny and all those other great things friars are, and I discovered my high school homeroom teacher, Brother Jonathan, is studying at the Franciscan Institute at Bona’s all summer), having beer that made my head swim in the sun (and that Jenny couldn’t have since her ID was locked in the car — the beer ticket sellers weren’t buying the “our keys are in a drainpipe” story), we returned to the Murphy parking lot to watch the car be towed away to Derby.

Jenny has smaller arms than the rest of us, so she tried to reach in the half-open window to unlock the car. Inevitably, the car alarm sounded, and we had no way to disarm since, you know, the keys were missing.

The tow truck came, helped us get into the car, then towed it away, thus ending our adventure for the day. We went to Bistro 188 for dinner, grabbed some Seagram’s 7 (straying from gin only for whiskey, of course), and enjoyed a Bonaventure night in the quad..and at the OP…and (i think) at the Hickey Tav. A strange, strange place Bona’s is when 1. school’s not in session and 2. I’m not returning.

I woke up in my bed, in my bedroom, in my apartment. Only my posters weren’t hanging around my head. My blue scarf wasn’t draped over my TV at the foot of the bed. My magenta carpet was somehow missing. Same view out the window, same nail polish stains on the sill, same tacks in the corners of the wall I couldn’t reach. But never the same, never ever. How eerie.

I need B12, a nap, my roommates and Nick Jr. This wave of SBUD just overpowered my ability to laugh at Matt Howard’s folly. An abrupt ending, but I have to call a cute actor.