IN MY DAY, WE THREW PERSONAL POSSESSIONS OUT THE WINDOW AND WE LIKED IT. WE LOOOVED IT.

I had the coolest day yesterday.

...Highs in the mid-50s with wind chills in the lower 40s.

HA!!

Is that rich or what?!?

No, seriously ... I get to work yesterday and I've got 224 emails or some astronomical number.

So I'm going through them and I see one from Classmates.com.

I figure they're scrounging for money from me again ... "We know you have a free listing, but if you'd just pay for a listing, you could tell everyone your hobbies!!!"

Yeah.

Like I really want to admit in public that I like macrame and making sock puppets in my spare time. There are some things you need to keep to yourself, y'know.

So I check the subject line and it says "You have a message from Dave".

David Lee Roth has tracked me down?!?

I get all excited, smooth my hair down, breathe into my hand to make sure I have fresh breath and double click on the email.

As it turned out it WASN'T Diamond Dave from Van Halen.

Color me disappointed.

Instead, it was an email from legendary prankster and my roommate from my freshman year of college, Mr. Dave Gorman.

I've written about Dave a few times ... most notably here.

I say "most notably" because I couldn't find the other entry.

I haven't heard from Dave since 1981.

That's almost 23 years, kids. Longer than most of you have been alive.

So we get caught up ... I make up a bunch of lies to make my life sound better than it's been and he tells me he now teaches 7th grade science.

You'd think this would make him a nerd, but he's still one of the coolest guys on the planet.

He called me last night and we talked for an hour which normally I'd be a bit pissed about since I'm a hermit and have sock puppets that need making, but in this case I allowed myself to sit and hold a phone to my ear until I was almost arthritic.

He reminded me of some of the wacky stunts I used to pull in college which I didn't remember doing. I get the feeling Dave has me confused with someone else. He's probably been hit by a Pacer or something and was in a coma for several days and then one day he popped out of the coma but was always a bit mentally off ever since.

I didn't ask him if any of that was true. It's just ... you know ... sometimes you can just sense that about people ... y'know?

So anywhooo...Dave says I used to steal knives from the school cafeteria and as we walked back to our dorm, I'd pretend to stab people behind their backs for laughs.

I don't remember doing that.

Also, there was a girl on campus who had to use metal braces in order to help herself walk and I would sneak up behind her and pretend to kick her braces out from under her.

I don't remember doing that either.

The worst part is ... apparently Dave's little brother ended up marrying that girl.

All I remembered were two things ... the prank phone calls we would make and record all hours of the night (decades before the Jerky Boys stole our idea) and throwing Dave's prized possession out a window from the 19th floor of our dorm.

Dave had an old paperback book filled with the Beatles lyrics. It was so old that the spine was nonexistant and masking tape was used to hold it together.

Apparently we were both having a bad day and he threw one of my Playboys out the window.

(I use the generic term "Playboys" so that I don't have to type out "Hot Throbbing Vulvas" magazines. I'm all about precision, don't ya know?)

So I grabbed his Beatles book and sent it sailing out the window, pages scattering everywhere in the wind.

I think he punched me after that.

If so, I owe the crazy bastard a punch.

Anyway, 22 years has healed those wounds that we suffered that day.

Hell ... a six pack that same evening healed the wounds.

But it was good to hear from him again and we plan on hooking up sometime this spring when I visit his little neck of the woods.

Oh yeah ... he told me that his brother Steve became the drummer for the Black Crowes.

Which was ironic because a good friend of mine worked closely with the Crowes as their A&R man. So my good friend worked in conjunction with Dave's brother for several years and we never put that together. We had lost touch for 22 years and all along we had a connection.

(Cue the "It's a Small World" theme)

If that wasn't enough of a shock to your system that left you reeling for one of those things they put on your chest and yell "CLEAR!" ... here's another shocker.

Had the in-laws over this weekend. And it wasn't half bad.

I know ... I know ... Armageddon must be near if I'm making statements like that.

Sure, they were supposed to be here at 4 and didn't get here until 5:30.

Sure, they were popping the tops to my Diet Dr. Pepper cans so rapidly that the cops were called because the neighbors had complained about massive amounts of gunfire in my home.

Sure, they reeked of cheap cigarette smoke that took days to get out of the chairs in which they sat.

But it wasn't half bad.

I say this because FINALLY Andrew didn't get the shaft when it came to gifts.

Y'see ... before Andrew, all the kids in the family got lots of gifts from all the aunts and uncles and grandparents.

Once Andrew came along, it was decided that all the kids get one gift. So even though we'd been buying gifts for the other kids for the last 17 or so years ... now that we had our own kid ... all that stopped.

I was a bit ticked.

I wanted my kid to at least reap a fraction of what I'd spent on the other kids over the years and it looked like that wasn't happening.

But this year, it did.

He made out like a bandit. I can't even begin to list all the stuff he got from the in-laws, but it was impressive.

He did get a Fisher Price Talking Sounds Farm from one aunt. He places the animals in their spots and they make animal noises.

The rooster says "Cock a doodle doo!!"

The Aunt who bought him the gift asked Andrew what the rooster says.

Andrew replied "Cock a doo doo!!"

I interjected.

"Well," I said. "That's what a gay rooster says."

It wasn't that funny, but the in-laws were rolling.

Which reminded me why I usually clam up around them.

They'll laugh at anything.

Except pretending to kick the crutches out from under crippled people.

That's just wrong.