(I hope no one minds that I am replacing this trip down memory lane with a somewhat edited version, I hope improved):
My room as a college freshman was on the third floor, just above the rear entrance of the dorm. With the onset of the upper-midwestern winter, I realized how lucky this was, an ideal place to be alerted to an occasional stuck. When a student ordered pizza, the delivery van would usually back up to within a few feet of this entrance. During or after a snowfall, I was almost guaranteed a study break announced by a telltale vroom-vroom-vroom whiz-whiz-whiz from the window. You see, the parking lot had a slight incline in front of the door. It was barely noticeable. But with ice or fresh snow on the ground, trying to drive away was likely to prove eventful.
Yet one had to wonder why this happened so often. Did that many delivery boys still need to learn the hard way not to drive up so close to the door? Or did at least one boy kinda not mind a chance to get stuck and enjoy spinning his wheels a little while? Consider: First, they weren't actually his wheels. Second was plausible deniability: he was just trying to do his job, delivering pizzas. Who'da thought anyone would ever have trouble there? Last but not least: if in the end he needed help, dozens of college men were just inside. What more would a randy kid want? Such questions intrigued me, antennae out for any scrap of evidence that someone else in the world might be crazy enough to be turned on by stuck cars.
Naturally I'd immediately race down the stairs hoping to get a closer look. Too often by the time I arrived, it was over. Perhaps someone nearer the door had already pushed him out.
But one night running out the door, I was astonished to find the delivery boy pushing, while at the wheel sat a classmate. Not just any classmate. Brad. Did you ever know a guy you didn't have a crush on but sometimes wished you did/hoped you would/felt you should? Trouble was, I was still looking for close friends less peculiar than myself, and Brad was a bit too weird even for me. But he was fascinating. I admired him more than I let on.
Brad came from an incredibly affluent village way out in New Jersey, and therefore from a prep school. He was quietly devout, faithfully attending the Episcopal church like me (when few fellow students ever darkened a church door). His appearance was unforgettable-- almost heartbreakingly slender, with fiery red hair, eyes like sapphires, an unusually deep voice, and often wearing coat and tie when almost everyone else was in "grubs". He stood over six feet tall, and every inch a young gentleman in the sweetest way: never priggish or judgmental about the crudity all around him, yet not about to compromise his own standards. All this is a mere introduction to his eccentricities. If stuckloving was among them, it would be just one in a long list: why not? As you can imagine, Brad was a frequent victim of ridicule and even bullying from his peers. To all appearances he bore up stoically. But he was undoubtedly lonely and feeling out of place. I was one of the few friends he had. The next year he transferred to another school. I've kicked myself ever since for not being a better friend. He might have stayed.
After Brad finally managed to rock the van up away from the door and onto level pavement and yielded it to its regular occupant, I was dying to ask him what had happened. How had he come to be behind the wheel of a stuck pizza van? Whose idea was it? Had he met this delivery boy before? And was it fun? But alas, I was a coward and let the opportunity pass. Youth is wasted on the young.
Someone better at fiction writing could make a really good story from this: about a pizza delivery boy who'd get his car stuck behind the college men's dorm whenever he could, so that a certain shy, lonely, but drop-dead-gorgeous freshman would emerge and trade places with him in the driver's seat.
