[legion]

I was always the guy in college who talked my friends out of stupid stunts and kept them out of jail.

Where to start...

Two friends were out at the bars in downtown Normal. Our apartment was a short walk (maybe 2/3 of a mile) down the train tracks. As they were walking home, they noticed a freight train on the tracks just starting to pick up speed and heading in the right direction. If it's a short walk, it's an even shorter train ride, right? Well, those things apparently accelerate faster than one would think, and by the time they reached the apartment, they had to jump and role, not gently step off as they had hoped.

***

Cory...

Cory does two things when he drinks, he takes off his clothes, and he wanders off--rarely at the same time (thank God). The second time we went to Jimmy Buffett, we rented a bus to take the group. Cory wandered off halfway through the concert inside the venue. After the concert, we decided to form 3 search parties to look for him. The people who opted not to got settled in and started to remove coolers and chairs from under the bus. We opened one of the doors to the underside of the bus and there was Cory, passed out and asleep.

The weekend before graduation from college, Cory came down to visit. For the first time ever, we were heading back from the bars WITH CORY. We were in the back of my friend Doug's pickup truck. We stop at a red light...and Cory hops out of the truck and takes off running. We found him at 5:00 in the morning running around a baseball diamond miles away with a stop sign--pole and all--running the bases.

A few years later at Jimmy Buffett, we had made it back to the bus after the concert. Cory did not run off this time. I was standing at the door to the bus and suddenly something is thrust into my hands. It's Cory, he says: "Hold this." I then realize I have his shorts and boxers. He then proceeds to go streaking in the open area around our bus with only his shirt on. This presents a problem, so he lifts his shirt like he is doing a curtsy and proceeds to frolic in the field--without any pants on. I later heard that he had been pestering his wife to let him streak. "Can I get naked? Can I? Please? Can I get naked?" Apparently she rolled her eyes and said: "Okay." That's when he handed me his clothes.

The last time Cory came down to visit (about 4 years ago), he was a firefighter/EMT by this point. He had a habit of flashing his badge to bouncers and walking into bars, leaving his friends to wait in line. Often, by the time we got into the bar he had already moved on to another one. So this is how he ditched us that time. (I had tired of Cory's antics by the second time I met him. My other friends thought they were HI-LAR-I-OUS for years.) Cory has this habit of turning off his cell phone when he wanders. We pretty much said screw him and went back to my house. (Other people were finally tiring of his antics too.) He started calling us to come get him--but intentionally confusing directions so that it was a "search". We finally found him. My friend Nick was livid. He left Cory in the back of his pickup truck to sleep off the booze, and it was February.