How Fast Can You Run With an Envelope of Coins?

It’s one night at the apartment my senior year of college and Gavin and I are too lazy to cook (and probably too under equipped as well–remind me to tell you the story of the ketchup soup sometime).  Gavin was in the nadir of his chickpea hording and I was in the nadir of…um, not wanting to cook at the moment.  Screw the parallel structure.  I didn’t care enough to wrangle with the strangely soft potatoes that had been lurking in the closet all year or the Science Project in a Coffee Machine, but I was hungry.  So Gavin rolls over to the fridge and looks at the Chinese takeout menu that had insinuated its way into our apartment.  You know the one, if you’ve even been in a male college room in the last twenty years.  Nobody knows where they got it from, how it got there, how anyone in this trainwreck had the foresight to get a magnet and stick the dang thing up there, but there it is, awaiting such a moment when one lazy roommate looks to the other and says “Well, I guess we can always get Chinese.”

Bam. Location, location, location.

First problem, we didn’t have any money.  And before anyone says “why didn’t you go to an ATM machine?” first of all, that’s redundant and second of all if we’re too lazy to cook what do you think that chances of walking down to the ATM are?  Nil.  Now hesh up and let me tell this story.

I had some dollars and Gavin had maybe a five.  Enough for three spring rolls.  Not enough to sate our hunger.  Thus we started digging in the proverbial cushions (as we only had a futon with one large bedroll and numerous blankets on top).  A few frantic hide-and-seek minutes later, we have around $20 in small change, which Gavin throws into a large business envelope and then orders a mess of food for us.  A couple different meals, a bucket of rice, probably a handful of fortune cookies too.  We were really hungry.

The envelope is important, see, because it’s raining outside.  Real raining, not “drizzling/misting/barely enough to turn on your wipers” but raining.  Monsoon.  Watch your step because you’re getting pulled away by the storm drain riptide raining.  And we have a paper envelope of heavy metal coins we have to cling to while waiting out on the curb for the delivery guy to arrive.  Maybe this is more trouble than simple Chinese was worth, but let it be marked I commit.

So the situation stands thus: Gavin and I, on the corner of our parking lot, huddling under the one umbrella we own because my awesome Singing In the Rain black walking umbrella was stolen some years prior (still bitter) and the delivery guy is not anywhere.  This is strange–Matrix deja vu suspicion-raising strange.  As anyone will tell you, the delivery guy should have been there before we started digging coins out of our old laundry.  Maybe this guy’s teleporter broke or something, I don’t know.

Ten minutes later, still no sign.  We walk to the other end of the parking lot in case he decided to drive over the grass instead of the only entrance and then BAM someone comes peeling into the parking lot, circles around, and starts driving away.

Aw, hell no.

Remember, we have a absurdly soggy envelope of $20 in nickels and quarters and now we’re booking it after the delivery guy, flailing the arms that aren’t keeping the envelope from massive structural failure in the hope that our dinner doesn’t drive away.  Luckily, he sees us, stops, and we hand over the ungainly envelope with Gavin explaining that there’s “like $20 in there or something, we don’t know, but it’s more than enough.”  The guy just took the envelope (which was really the best thing he could have done, for us at least) and drove off, swearing to get back into delivering pizza where you’re treated with some modicum of respect.

Then we ate our food too quickly and both got stomachaches.