No Ticket

My sister attended the University of Missouri. When it was time to move her to campus, the family did just about everything right. Stockpiled Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons. Bought her a coat that would hold up against the Missouri winter. Built a loft for her bed. Bought a miniature refrigerator and a fashionable red plastic microwave. We did not, however, remember to reserve a truck to transport these items from Memphis to Columbia.

Prince Ali arrived in Jasmine’s city with 75 golden camels. Hannibal marched on Rome with the aid of hundreds of elephants. Genghis Kahn and his Golden Horde swept across Eurasia on the backs of thousands of horses. All of these beasts could have fit comfortably inside of the 25 foot straight truck that my father rented from Ryder at the last minute.

If you get in a wreck on a motorcycle, there’s a decent chance that you will die but it’s somewhat unlikely that another driver will get hurt. But if you get in a wreck behind the wheel of a 25 foot straight truck, you’ll probably survive but the road will be littered with innocent corpses. Yet somehow you must have a special license to operate a motorcycle, and Uncle Sam only required that KC breathe on a mirror in order to rent that 25 foot behemoth. In hindsight, the Ryder employee manning the rental desk probably did not even go that far. He likely took one look at KC’s moving day outfit, which consisted of a red t-shirt and mid-thigh jorts (cut-off jean shorts), and knew that KC was eminently qualified to operate heavy machinery.

Despite rolling up to a campus where she knew no one in a truck that screams, “I BROUGHT MY PONY WITH ME TO SCHOOL!,” my sister managed to make friends. I met some of them a few months later when my dad, my mom and I returned to Columbia to watch Mizzou play Nebraska in football.

The game was on a Saturday morning in mid-season. It takes about six hours to get to Columbia from Memphis, and we had to depart late on Friday night so that I could fulfill my princely duties slanging water for the Houston High School football team. Our plan was to open a vein, fill it with 6 hours of Wallflowers, Hootie, and Phil Collins; get to Columbia about 4 AM; sleep fast; and hurry to the game. We hit the road, and the plan seemed to be going well. Then, about two hours into the trip, just south of Cape Girardeau, KC shattered the southeastern Missouri silence with a sudden, thunderous “FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”

At first I thought Hootie’s uninflected droning of “Ionlywannabewithyouuuu” had finally, after seven years of family trips, broken my father’s will to live. Unfortunately I was wrong. KC had left the tickets to the game in the kitchen.

We turned around. We got the tickets. Ten or eleven hours after we first hit the road, we arrived in Columbia. We slept for a couple hours at the hotel and went to the game. I know that I was very tired at the game because I actually laughed when KC told me for the 76th time that the N on Nebraska’s helmets stands for knowledge. We dozed in the stands, but we were awake long enough to see Nebraska quarterback Eric Crouch embarrass the Mizzou defense with a 105 yard touchdown run. The play was the cornerstone of Crouch’s Heisman-winning season and remains the most impressive athletic feat I have seen in person.



It turns out that ticket misplacement, along with size 8 cranial circumferences and inability to color inside the lines, is a genetic trait that can be passed from father to son. To read about my own ticket problems, click here.