Might I be the first to say that J-term lasts way too long. Even though I go home and work, I find myself with way too much time on my hands. I love being home, seeing family and spending time at home but after a while I found myself longing for days in beautiful OxVegas, Ohio.
To kill time and make myself not be a couch potato all break, I sought out various ways to keep myself from going insane. But after a brief reflection of my break, I found odd commonalities between these three means:bats.
Personally, I am taking this as a sign to drop everything I am doing and become Batman. But for you, it might provide some slight comedic relief. Let’s fly into it.
Creek bed crash
My buddy, Jake, and I set aside a weekend in January with the hopes that we could go rock climbing at a crag in southern Illinois. Lucky for us, an ice storm hit the day before we planned to travel down, making the roads icy but the trees shining like light reflecting off an eye.
I was desperate to get out of town so I made the call to push on despite the likelihood all the climbs would be covered in ice. To our great despair, the roads to the climbs were blocked off. However, I knew a hiking place nearby which has cool rock formations and a cool cave with bats.
As we set out on a journey to the cave of bats, our journey brings us to a river bed. Jake starts walking up a creek bed but mother nature had other plans. Keep in mind, it is 25 degrees outside right now so any plunge into the creek would be rather chilly.
Jake begins to say “I hope I don’t eat shit” before eating shit. I watched him slide down the creek bed and into a two foot deep pool of water. It was so comical I felt like I was watching in slow motion.
I guess the bats told mother nature she did not want to see us.
Nosferatu
One of the redeeming qualities of this long ass break was being able to watch lots of football. God bless the 12 team playoff. But that’s besides the point.
In every single game, a commercial for the vampire movie, “Nosferatu” played. Whenever I peaked at the commercials, I saw what appeared to be a 0.5x close-up of Willem Dafoe whispering, “Nosferatu” in an eerie voice.
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Let me say, this advertising sequence worked because before I knew it, I was in a movie theater watching Nosferatu with a Hinge date I just matched with.
At this point, I am not really thinking much about bats still because if I had a nickel for each time I saw a bat, it would be two nickels which isn’t a lot - but it's weird it happened twice (shoutout Dr. Doofenshmirtz).
Bat attack
My job back is in a very, very old building. Over 100 years old, so naturally all kinds of spooky shit has been reported by staff members. Furthermore, this building attracts critters from all corners of the town limits.
One night, I was closing and I was about to walk into the basement to set the security alarm, a bat screams past my face, sending me straight on my ass trying to dodge the rat with wings.
The bat flapped frantically around our lobby before making a bee-line towards the women’s restroom. I quickly shut the door, hid and called my boss.
Now, I am on the phone with my boss explaining the whole situation. I began to tell her that we trapped it in the restroom before I scream, “...OHHHH SHIT IT'S CRAWLING UNDER THE DOOR.”
The bat was small enough to crawl under the restroom door and back into our lobby to terrorize us. As I run around the lobby from the bat, my co-worker manages to trap it in a box and release it outside.
My break was batshit wild to say the least.
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