“What would Jesus do?”
Surely not be giving out rides when it’s not his car…
“Aww! Poor dude really could use a ride…and so what would Jesus do? Jesus would most indubitably tell him, ‘Hop in, Broseph!’, amiright?”
It was Memorial Day weekend back in 2005, and I was kicking it with my best college buddy Andrew at his parents’ home in good ol’ Kismet, Kansas. He had introduced me to the hobby of “High Pointing” where you try to visit the highest point in as many states as possible, and thusly we had decided to take a day trip in Andrew’s mom’s car to go hike Oklahoma’s High Point.
Of course, that meant a ~3 hour little jaunt to Kenton, Oklahoma, home of one of the few topographically interesting features in the state, Black Mesa (see Figure 1).
“Wait!” you say, “That looks like you’re headed to New Mexico!”
And you would be right–as Andrew would say, “The highest point in Oklahoma is New Mexico!” He’s not exactly wrong, either: the highest elevation in the OK state is a hilarious 1000 ft from being in the wrong state altogether (see Figure 2).
Flatlander jokes aside, it’s actually a really lovely hike, and I recommend you plan an entire vacation around it the soonest chance you get. You won’t regret it!
Okay, maybe there’s a slight chance you might regret blowing all your PTO and savings just to get a scenic view of New Mexico rather than going to, say, Paris. But I digress…
I bet you’re still wondering what happened to ‘Broseph’, the dude in need of a ride. Ok, sure, I’ll humor you.
After spending a very Bro-mantic half-day hiking around Black Mesa, Andrew and I were all tuckered out and finally ready to head back to Kismet.2Fun fact: Kismet was one of the names I floated when were trying to name The Younger aka our second daughter. We had stopped in at the first gas station along our route–the trusty Toot N’ Totum in Boise City–to get some snacks and fill up on gas.
That’s when we met Casper, the aforementioned “Broseph.” And while he technically wasn’t a friendly ghost, he was short, scruffy and as white as one–as a ghost, that is.
He had approached us as we were rambling into the convenience store, and had asked us for a ride. In response, Andrew mumbled something along the lines of “we’ll think about it,” but we were mainly just trying to avoid the awkward interaction–because let’s face it, they’re always awkward af–and get back home and get some rest.
However, I made the classic mistake of giving a rat’s ass about what our Caucasian Savior might have hypothetically done, were he in our hiking boots. You can call it having a crisis of conscience, if it makes you feel less sacrilegious; either way my compassionate side had got the better of me, and that’s when I started cajoling Andrew into letting Casper hitch a ride with us.
To my charitable delight, Andrew, with a Slim Jim and Diet Coke in hand, finally gave in: “Fine, whatever. But you’re cleaning my mom’s car out if he leaves a funk and/or stank.”
“You got it, dude!”
I was so excited about actually making it out of my comfort zone and making the world a better place, that the risk of a phantom funk was well worth it in my book.
Outside, I shared the great news with Casper–though even in fulfilling his request, it was still much more awkward than I had anticipated.
“Hey man, which way you headed? You’re welcome to hitch a ride with us if you like!”
“Um, yeah…I’m trying to get to Oklahoma City…”
“Oh. Okay.”
Aww fudge-nuts. Had I just got us in over our heads?
“Oh. Well, that would add…*checks notes*…7 hours to our 3 hour trip, so…”
*awkward silence*
“I guess since we’re headed east and you’re headed east, how about we take you as far as Liberal?3Liberal, a city of modest size in SW Kansas, situated on the border with Oklahoma. It’s no Oklahoma City, but hey, it’s much closer than you are now.”
“Um, I guess that would work.”
“Sweet, well then, hop on in the back and let’s roll out!”
“So Casper, tell us about your life journey…”
While Andrew focused on driving, I took it upon myself to make Casper feel welcome in Andrew’s mom’s car.
Casper went on to regale us with how he had recently spent a year or two down in Florida…as part of the entourage of rapper Ja Rule (see Figure 3)–“just kicking it with Ja” as Casper put it.
Wow, I had never really met anyone who had spent so much time with a celebrity. Fascinating, simply fascinating!
Of course, that also left me with more questions that I probably shouldn’t (and didn’t) ask. Like, “So how does a super-white guy like you get into a guy like Ja Rule’s inner circle?”
Or: “Was this before or after you started living on the streets?”
Or, now that I’ve looked up Ja Rule’s Wikipedia page, “Wait, isn’t Ja Rule based out of New York, not Florida?”
I honestly didn’t think much of these potential discrepancies in the moment, and we carried on conversing about this that and the other.
Twenty or so minutes later of me taking my turn to regale him with some much less interesting stories of my own, Casper got real solemn all of a sudden.
“I haven’t really told anyone this, but…”
“Oh, go ahead. You can tell us…”
“But…I used to be a Spook for the CIA. Of course, I can’t really talk about all the crazy sh*t I did for them…”
“Oh, okay. Cool…”
*moment of silence*
“What’s a Spook again?”
“A spy. I was a spy for the CIA.”
“Oh, okay…”
Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.
This dude must have been a prodigy or something. I mean, he couldn’t have been more than 24 years old, and already he had spent a few years living in Ja Rule’s Florida mansion and had spent multiple years as a veritable Man in Black?!?
I couldn’t believe that I was actually in the presence of a living, walking, hitchhiking legend!
What great fortune I decided to give this dude a chance by offering him a ride…in Andrew’s mom’s car.
It was like…well, it was like kismet…
“Are you out of your ----- mind?!?”
Andrew hadn’t been as gracious to our guest as I would have liked, and had somewhat rudely and abruptly dropped Casper off at the first truck stop we came to as we rolled into Liberal. And as soon as he was out of the car, Andrew had turned his attention to me.
“What are you talking about, man? We just got to share a vehicle with the Most Interesting Man In The World!”
This was the first time that I had noticed Andrew didn’t look like his usual unflappable self.
“He. Was. Crazy. How did you not pick up on that?!? He was making all that sh*t up, and I’ll bet you anything he was schizophrenic.”
“Now that you mention it…yeah, that makes waaaay more sense.”
“I started getting nervous once he started nonchalantly bragging about being so close to Ja Rule.”
“Oh. Yeah…”
“So, what were you thinking, having him sit in the back?!? You should have sat in the back and kept an eye on him. That way, if he decided to murder one of us, you might actually have had a chance to do something about it!”
“Oh. Sorry…”
“Thanks to you, I spent the last hour of that drive just waiting to be stabbed in the back any moment. Pfft! ‘Ja Rule’, my ass!”
We sat in silence during the last little leg of our trip back to Kismet, most assuredly pondering our good fortune to not have been slain by that hitch-hiking little ghost of a man. On the bright side, at least we had a better idea of what Jesus would have done: Jesus would have made his ass sit in the front.
At long last, we pulled into Andrew’s parents’ garage, and as we got out of the car Andrew breathed what I mistook for a deep, deep sigh of relief.
“First thing in the morning, I’m going to need you to help me clean the funk out of this car. Otherwise, one whiff, and my mom will know that we’ve been picking up sassy vagrants4https://youtu.be/Sv_hGITmNuo?t=42…”
…and that’s my story of how we survived an evening with Casper the Fu*king5The ‘*’ is standing in for the letter ‘N’ today, who is out sick with a cold. Crazy Spook.
Happy Halloween, everybody!
P.S. Please enjoy these other Halloween posts from the Point of the Story:
Little Bo Peep Has Lost His…Respect For Mainstream Gender Norms?
Kandy Karma, Part 1 (and don’t forget Parts 2 & 3)
Content created on: 29 October 2021 (Friday)
Footnotes & References:
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