Wednesday, April 20, 2005

The Jason Stories Part I

The Stories

Everybody has stories. I prefer the funny ones. I was in class the other day and someone mentioned narcolepsy. This word brings back a great story.

Summer 1999- I am 21 years old. I have spent the last 3 months pulling out all the stops to try and buy a house. At this time I am not in school, I am working at The Chop House about 60 hours a week as a bartender, server, manager, and checkout person. Having almost given up on buying a house after being denied by bank after bank, I ask my brother Jason if he wants to go in half with me as an investment opportunity. He decides to come on board, but again even with a partner I am denied a loan.

Having exhausted virtually every option, I finally asked my eldest brother, Jeff if he would be willing to cosign on the loan. To my good fortune he did.

Fast forward to the closing day.

It is a midsummer morning at about 8:00. I struggle out of bed, and drive to the closing destination. It is located in some office buildings, where I don’t remember. Keep in mind my restaurant schedule. I am closing the restaurant as a manger, sometimes not getting out until 2 or 3 am on top of 60+ work weeks with no consistency in my schedule.

Jason meets me there, and we go into the building. We sit down in the air conditioned room and wait the lawyers and seller. They arrive shortly before 9 and then we begin. For those of you who know about closing on a house, it seems you sign your name and no less than 1000 documents. So it begins. The lawyer is seated at the head of the table. I am beside him to his right, and Jason is to my right. Across the table are the other people involved. So, the lawyer starts the process and hands me a pen. He takes each document holds it up, explains it, and passes to me to sign. The problem is I can’t keep my eyes open. I start basically nodding off in this guys face as he is talking to me during each document. Jason becomes aware and has to start elbowing me. A document will go down in front of me to sign and I will feel an elbow to my rib cage and zap out of my sleep and sign. This goes on for half of the documents and then for some reason (I don’t remember why because I was asleep) everyone takes an intermission. Jason and I were left in the room alone. So he starts in on me, “Dude, what are you doing? These people aren’t going to let you borrow this money, you keep falling asleep! They probably think you are a crack head.” I was so loopy anyway this struck me as terribly funny and the laughter started. The laughter encouraged Jason to do reenactments that resulted in more uncontrolled laughter, which lead to more reenactments. The situation got stranger. For some reason there was this dog house inside this conference room. It was some sort of plastic play doghouse, used for like a play or something and inside was a stuffed animal dog. It was in the corner. I have no idea what purpose it served. During a break in the hysteria, I mentioned to Jason that since these folks already think I am either strung out on drugs or a narcoleptic, wouldn’t it be funny if we they came back from there break if I had the dog house out on top of the table, and was inside asleep. Now understand Jason is all business…most of the time. This must have been the funniest thing that he had ever heard because I have never heard him laugh that loud. Of course his laughter caused me to laugh more. As we were finishing our two man laugh party, the crew came back in. Both of our eyes were full of tears and our faces bright red.

The problem now was not falling asleep in this guy’s face, but instead not laughing in it. The struggles of not laughing aloud in this conference room were the hardest thing I have ever done. I could not look at Jason, the lawyer, or the dog house. I had to stare straight ahead and try and concentrate and things that weren’t funny.

I made it through the closing, without the bank reneging on the deal. Afterwards the parties involved made some comments about my behaviors. To this day I can set off laughing hysterics between me and my brother by bringing up this timeless moment.