No, Really!

David was made for crises, but he hadn't ever had one, really, so he tried to compensate by creating them. It took me a few times to figure this out, but once I did we got along just fine. David's version of a story was usually the first one I got, and usually wrong.

One day, early in our dorm-mommy/dorm-son relationship, Dave came running into the dorm and said,
"Eddie just got run over by a truck!" Well, of course I reacted as any mother would. Panic-stricken fear.
"What, where, who, when, how?" I sputtered like a frantic cub-reporter. Just then, Eddie himself pedaled his bike up to the front porch and walked into the dorm. Apparently, I hadn't gotten the whole story. It turned out that young Eddie had been "door-tagged". A particularly obnoxious boy from our town's rival school had pulled up beside my two bicycling freshmen, and his cohort had opened the passenger door as the pickup truck passed, knocking the (entirely innocent, it seems) Eddie off of his bicycle. Panic ensued, as Dave hadn't actually seen what happened, and leaned over Eddie, asking him if he were dead, and other useless questions. Everyone was fine. (They still talk about it, though, and I have no doubts it has regained it's first catastrophic proportions.)

Another sterling example of Dave's conversational style came a year later. The boys had all been down to the town caves. They had gone expressly for the purpose of exploring and getting dirty. When they all came trooping back in that evening, Dave says,
"We just about got tagged by a mountain lion."
Having been Dave's surrogate mommy for over a year by that point, I responded with much less concern. (Besides, they were all standing right there.) I said,
"Well, don't bleed on the carpet."
After talking to the other intrepid explorers, I discovered that they had found what might have been some kind of animal's resting place, and some large paw prints that may or may not have belonged to something from the feline family. That's it; not even a whisker, not even a meow.

Dave isn't here this year, and I'd have to say everything has been very calm. I miss him, though. He sure made things exciting; at least, for the first minute or two of every conversation.