N8

I've been eating fast food a lot this week, and have been talking to an old friend of mine from my high school English class. I also randomly saw two other people from the same English class around town this weekend, and yesterday all of this business colliding in my head brought to mind a memory involving yet another classmate from this famous English class: my friend Nate.

Nate and I were pretty good friends in high school, and one day we went to Wendy's on our lunch hour. We did this because we were mighty seniors who had the all-American democratic privilege of spending thirty whole minutes not in the school cafeteria. Instead of purchasing cardboard milk cartons, we could spend three minutes walking to our cars, five more driving to Wendy's, five and three more minutes to drive and walk back into the school building, leaving approximately 14 minutes remaining to actually eat. Woo hoo! Seniority rules!

As the thirty minutes proved to be a time crunch, and Nate and I got pretty involved in one of our random discussions--these ranged from cookie bars to JFK--over our burgers, we lost track of time. I don't think we actually "lost" track of time, I think we just didn't care. And our English teacher, with whom we had class right after lunch, Mrs. G., she loved us. So we decided we would bring her a Frosty and she would forgive us for being late. So we wasted another five minutes purchasing a Frosty and then headed back to school.

Dilemma. There were attendance police positioned at the school entrances. I don't recall how we dealt with being tardy, but we definitely had a plan to conceal our dessert of bribery. Nate was wearing cargo khaki pants, and he decided to put the Frosty in one of the cargo pockets.

He put a Frosty in his pocket.

This blows my mind to this day, which is why I had to tell all of you about it. Who puts a Frosty in their pocket?! Nate, that's who. His decision to place the Frosty in his pocket was automatic, and this automatic problem solving is, come to think of it, one of the defining characteristics of Nathan.

We got to our classroom, finally, and guess what. We had a sub that day. I remember quite vividly that this particular substitute teacher had drawn a little caricature face of himself on the dry erase board, and written his name underneath. Clearly he was laidback, and Nate and I, caught off guard by this unexpected chaperone, realized quickly that he could care less that we were late. I don't remember learning anything particularly important or relevant to English literature that day... I do remember that half of the Frosty ended up spilled in Nate's pocket.