Goodbye Madison, hello middle school bets
Well, it’s official now. As of this past Sunday at noon, I formally became a traveling vagabond. A man with no residence or land to call his own, left to wander this world in search of a place to stay.
Okay, so it’s not as dramatic as all of that. Not remotely. Luckily, I have a family that is more gracious than I deserve, so I won’t have to do the whole “wandering the earth” thing.
All jokes aside, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a bit strange looking around our old apartment one last time, left as bare as it had been the day we had moved in three years ago. It was almost eerie compared to the space I had grown accustomed to.
Apartment no. 3 had accumulated small pieces of its residences during our tenure there. A slow transformation had taken place as furniture, an ever expanding collection of books and movies (mostly my fault), and even a treadmill that turned out to be too big to fit in the closet (not my fault) filled the space. For better or worse, we had made our mark on the place.
But then, in a matter of a week, all of that was undone, packed away in boxes and shoved into a storage shed. The walls, once covered in film posters and homemade decor, were left blank. The cupboards were empty, now without the microwave popcorn and chocolate animal crackers that were commonly found there. In the end, the only true mark we had left on Apartment no. 3 was a couple extra nail holes. It was once again the clean slate we had found three years prior.
I guess that’s the idea. Temporary housing and all. It’s not like I hadn’t moved out of other apartments before.
Still, this time felt different. Perhaps it was the fact that I had lived there longer than any place since my childhood home. Or maybe it was because we weren’t just leaving the apartment, but Madison itself. Probably a bit of both.
As we planned out the rest of our day from our packed vehicles, Mikaela and I noticed painters from the property management company heading into our building. We were the only ones that hadn’t renewed our lease, so we knew they were heading to Apartment no. 3. We were moving on, and Apartment no. 3 and Madison were moving on from us. We returned our keys and then set out to meet some friends for lunch. It was a good time, filled with talk of jobs and wedding preparations. The types of conversations that I once bemoaned having to listen to as my parents spoke to their friends after church or when we were supposed to be leaving someone’s house. I’m sorry, past-self. It seems I’ve become the very thing I swore to destroy. As our meal was wrapping up, I was left with a cup of tartar sauce, meant to be eaten with the fish fry I had ordered. I personally do not appreciate the delicacy that is the mixture of mayo, pickles, capers, lemon juices, and various herbs, and thus had not used any of it. Most of the table agreed that tartar sauce is less than appetizing, though one of my friends disagreed. Knowing him to be something of a contrarian, sometimes merely for its own sake, I attempted to call his bluff, offering him the cup of tartar sauce and telling him to drink it, if he thought it was so good. My friend, being his normal self, said of course he’d do it.
What happened next was a scene plucked straight from a middle school cafeteria. Someone jokingly said they’d give him a dollar to do it, and another agreed. A third person actually got out a dollar bill, and suddenly what had been a mere jest was becoming a very real bet with cash rewards. More money was removed from wallets and the ante was upped when a Lincoln was added to the small pile of cash. Eight dollars were for the taking, if Andrew would back his talk with action.
I’ll say this; you would have had to give me a heck of a lot more than eight dollars to drink plain tartar sauce. Apparently it was more than enough for my friend though. The process was, as you might imagine, a sufficiently disgusting and hilarious sight to behold. Once he had completed the feat, he claimed his prize, perhaps with more pride and satisfaction than a man in his mid-20’s should have in such a thing. I could only shake my head as we made jokes about how clearly the staff had put us in the back of the restaurant for a reason and how we’d have to make sure Andrew’s glass would have to be filled with tartar sauce instead of champagne at our wedding.
Well past-self, maybe I haven’t fallen as far to the dark side as I thought.
And while most of Madison will be moving on without us, not all of it will be. Not the most important parts, at least. Guess I just needed a lunch and a goofy bet to remind me of that.
A C ERTAIN POINT OF V IEW
NATHANIEL UNDERWOOD
REPORTER
