The year was 1981, the place a southern-Indiana Oktoberfest-like event, whose main characteristics were the oft repeated Chicken Dance, a lousy oompah-pah band, and vast quantities of bad beer in a bucket. There were many women present, but none paid any attention to me (I don’t remember this explicitly, but that was the default situation for me and I am quite confident it was true this night as well). It was the start of my senior year of college, and despite over three years of practice I couldn’t hold my liquor worth a darn (a deficiency I have since overcome). And yet in spite of all of these obvious reasons to feel dejected, I had a good time.

For reasons that defy logic, my friend (I’ll call him Z) asked me to retrieve his car at the end of the evening with another friend (nickname: Darth) in tow. The two of us walked the lonely mile through the parking lot and found the car, and my straightforward assignment was to drive it to the fairgrounds gate to pick up Z and whoever he might have picked up. It was a simple task – I had no premonition that things would go terribly wrong.

As we drove through the parking lot, somehow I found myself traveling at a slightly excessive speed. Maybe I was unused to the unbridled power rumbling beneath the hood of Z’s mother’s Dodge Charger. Maybe I subconsciously loathed myself and my excessive geek-prowess, hoping for self destruction. Maybe I was just drunk. In any case, the speed of the car coupled with a patch of wet grass to produce a fishtailing action from the rear half of the vehicle that was stopped only by the unwanted and massive intervention of a nearby tree.

As I mourned the damage and dreaded the undeniably justified reaction of the mighty Z, Darth went back to the fairgrounds to get the others. After what seemed an eternity (time slows for the guilty), a car pulled up with a spotlight shining blindingly in my face. Background note: at college Darth drove a previously-owned law enforcement vehicle for his daily commute, equipped with several of the special features that only cop cars have – a spotlight attached to the driver-side door being one of these. As this large, white towncar pulled up to me with a spotlight in my face, I was less than amused. My delicate psyche, already tormented by the evening’s unfortunate events, was in no mood for Darth’s tomfoolery. I grabbed the spotlight and angrily pushed it away, coincident with a few choice words expressing my extreme dismay and displeasure at Darth’s behavior.

You can imagine my consternation when a deep voice I didn’t recognize politely but firmly said “Sir, please let go of the light.” As my eyes adjusted to the darkness that I was sure would engulf me evermore, I noticed the uniform of the driver and the not-painted-over word POLICE on the side of the car. Damn.

In times of crises, a man acts on instinct. Millions of years of evolution have programmed our unconscious to respond to danger with natural impulses that hark back to our animal origins. I groveled. Much apologizing and promising that I would in no way be driving that night lead to the eventual departure of my blue-clad protector, just as the gang arrived and my real trial began.

That is my story, still fresh in my mind a quarter of a century later. Despite the bad ending, it was an important night for me – the lessons learned have never been forgotten. I have never since chanced driving while under the influence of the devil’s drink. However, twenty-five years of good driving and responsible drinking later, I still have no desire to go to another Indiana chicken-dancing, beer-bucketing, car-sliding Oktoberfest celebration. Call me strange.