Sas At It Again!!

This story is really a non-story.... I think.

Last week, the owner of my company (Larry) surprised me with tickets to the Ohio State / USC game. How sweet is that? He bought me a plane ticket, game ticket, paid for the hotel and rental car. All I had to do was come along and show him a good time in my home state. I have to admit I was shocked that he did this for me because just one day prior, he announced that our company will be dissolving at the end of the year. I looked at this as an opportunity to put in some good one-on-face time with the man who would most certainly be starting a new business shortly and I want to ride those coattails. I couldn't ask for a better situation... There isn't a social setting I feel more comfortable at then a big sporting event. I was confident that I would be able to show him a good time in Buckeye land.

Let's just say things didn't go quite as planned.... but I am still employed. This story requires some chronology.

Friday: 11:00 pm

Touchdown in good ole Dayton, Ohio. We rented a car and drove to Columbus and checked into our hotel. I wish we had time to stop by the Ghetto, but we had a busy day to prepare for and really just wanted to get some sleep.

Saturday: 10:00 am

Had breakfast with Mom and Dad. Went well... Mom and Dad were well behaved and didn't embarrass me too much in front of the man.

!2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Drove to Ohio State, walked around campus for a little bit, went to a few bars. Had a couple beers.

3:00 pm

Went to a bar called the Varsity Club to meet my friends Jason (Bodeker) and Nick.

Sometime between 3:30 pm and 4:30 pm

Got ruphied..... that's right ruphied.

4:30ish - 10:30 pm

blacked out.

10:30 pm

When I came out of this black out, I was at a outside the stadium watching the game at this sweet tail gait set-up. There was a huge flat screen mounted on the side of a bus and a bunch of lawn chairs. It looks like people were having fun. Although I was happy Ohio State was winning, I was confused as to why I wasn't in the stadium... which by the way is literally a stones through from this bus. I think I was in some sort of V.I.P. tail gait parking lot. Confused, but powerless, I make my self at home and pulled up a lawn chair and watch the end of the game.

11:30 pm

I look at my phone and realize that something bizarre had happen. From 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm I made over 20 phone calls.... several to Larry... Apparently we had even talked several minutes. But also a couple to my Mom, my Aunt Chris, my friend Tom, my friend Jake, and Julie. I also wrote several text message during this time period. None that made any sense.... mostly just random phrasings of words... or sometime just random letters.

I'll share a few of them....

at 7:50 pm (about 10 minutes before kick off) I wrote this text to my friend Tom, a buckeye fan living in Cali.

"Come on u so 4 up"

Doesn't make sense... but at least I'm using English words.

at 9:45 I had this text "conversation" with my friend Brandon, another buckeye fan living in Cali.

Brandon: "First possession of second half will most likely determine outcome"

Sas: "eBay!0"

Brandon: "Huh???? are you hammered?

Sas: "Go"

Sas: "Go"

Brandon: "O H I O"

I wish I was making this up.... it gets worse before it gets better.

At 10:00, I wrote the following text messages to Larry:

"SSS"
"Pumpkins"
"Pumpkins?"

For those who don't know.... I often referred to Julie as Pumpkins.... so that kinda makes sense.

Speaking of Julie... Here's the text conversation I had with her at 10:15

Sas: "Hi pimpjobs"

Julie: "Must be halftime if you're texting me... and do you realize what you called me?

Sas: "Hmmm"

Sas: "Where?"

Sas: "Sivhbs. Trspp"

Julie: "What language is that?"

Sas: "Lovescpumpkindvlpvrd"

Julie: "You'll need to translate that when you come back"

Sas: "Frappe lodtvtewopuy"

Julie: "You're obviously wasted.... I'll talked to you later"

Now I know what your thinking. Sas got wasted and doesn't remember what happened. That was my first thought too. After the game, when I was by my self trying to figure out what happened, I was so confused. Beyond confused... I simply could not remember anything. But I had all this "proof of life" via my cell phone activity. I never went more than 30 minutes without making a phone call or writhing a text message.... also, there was no evidence that I had been sleeping. No grass stains, or cuts, or bruises from a possible collapse. Actually, the first memory I have, after the blackout, I was standing up and watching the game on tv.... I remember sitting down in a chair only after I realized that I was the only one at the tail gait party. I was missing my hat though.... so it's possible that I did go down somewhere... but it would've had to be brief because of the time stamps on my cell phone indicated a high frequency of "ruphie-dialing".

When I finally found my way back to car, which was difficult because a) I've never been to Ohio State and b) I had just spent the last 6 hours wandering around in a black out, I found Larry sleeping in the driver's seat. I open the car door and woke him up... He looks at me and says "What the fuck happened to me?" I said "You? What the fuck happened to me?" This is where we exchange our memories only to find out that we have none. Larry said he remembers being at the Varsity Club, next thing he knew, he was it the Horseshoe by himself and it's the 3rd quarter.... He says he was missing his hat and he had changed his shirt. But of course, doesn't remember any of this. He also has all kinds of cuts on his arm and just today he came by my cubicle to show me that a huge bruise has developed on his elbow. He says he doesn't remember any of the first half.

I talked to Jason the next day.... ditto. He says he doesn't remember leaving the Varsity Club. When he "came to" he was at a bar all by himself watching the game.... around the 3rd quarter. He has a broken finger.

Nick woke up on porch 3 houses down from the house they were staying at in a student neighborhood.... he didn't see any of the game.


Larry and I talked about this the whole way home and have concluded that the only way 4 seasoned drinkers like ourselves could all blackout like that is if we were drugged. I only remember being at the Varsity Club for like an hour.... that's not even enough time to get backed out even if we were drinking a ridiculous amount of booze... which we weren't.

Kinda scary, but also kinda funny. i would do anything to have a camera following me around for those "blackout hours".

Obviously we were all somewhat functional....

Larry got into the game.

Jason was able to be at a bar without being kicked out.

Nick made it home.... almost.

I apparently was at a tail gait party..... I bet whoever owns that bus, has a good story about this random guy that wandered over to there party.... I must have been polite enough to not get my ass kicked.

The thing is, none of us remember leaving the Varsity Club.... Why did we split up? When did we split? Where did we go while blacked out? These questions have been killing me. It's so weird to not be able to account for 6 hours of your life.... 6 hours!!! That's just insane. If only I was wearing some sort of helmet-cam.

In the end, I guess I'm just happy that I didn't wake up in jail. I'm also impressed that we were able to make our 6:00 am flight out of Dayton.... which is another reason I know it wasn't alcohol.... we had zero hangover.

Just memory loss.