Issue 31: Cozy Campfire Stories

Good Morning,

Though it is 80+ degrees daily in Chattanooga, it is officially sweater weather because the calendar flipped from Sept. to Oct. That’s right, it’s fall y’all!! It’s spooky season!! Look, I’m young and hip. If you aren’t, sucks for you. I know when to start getting my pumpkins, listening to Hall and Oats, sipping ciders, and rocking all sorts of layered outfits. This past Sunday was the official day 1 of that type of behavior. 

Personally, I’m a pants and t-shirt year round kinda guy. Don’t get me wrong, I will wear a sweater pretty regularly, I have this baller green suede jacket I’ll throw on when there is a chill in the air, and you better believe I’ll switch the sneakers for some brown leather boots real soon. However, for many this time of year, if the calendar says sweater weather, you wear a sweater no matter the temp. I mean, you can’t spell “sweater” without “sweat”. Now that I am a fashion designer with over a dozen sales, you can trust me to lead you well regarding style. 

You may be thinking, “Seth, aren’t you trying to sell us t-shirts yet you’re telling us to wear long sleeves now? What gives?” Funny you should ask! There is a little trick in the fashion biz we like to call layering. Buy a t-shirt or 7 from Daily Drip and throw a flannel over it. If flannels aren’t your game, an oversized sweater will do the trick. Either way, you want your base layer to be ASAP (as stylish as possible). Also ASAP (as soon as possible) is when you should order the Spooky Tuesday shirt. It will be available through the end of the month. I would like to remind everyone that Halloween does fall on a Tuesday, so it may be a great day to wear the shirt…

You all know me as a strong and confident man. I have opened up my heart and life and let you all read over the last year. I wrote about my breakdown where I tried to improve my life by inputting it into excel and measuring it. I taught you all how to love. I even told tales of my time in a lawless land. However, there is one thing I have been afraid to admit. There is an area of my life where I have been bullied in the past. I love soup regardless of the season. There I said it. Now that it is fall, I can finally stop eating my soup in hiding. Behind closed doors I would soup it up. Sneaking off to my car to eat hot soup in July is a thing of the past because it is a socially acceptable food again! Now that there is no longer soup shame I am free to be me! I can sit beside friends again and enjoy a chicken noodle or even, dare I say, a bisque. 

Ok, we’ve knocked out the sweater and soup talk, time for the spooky stuff. I want to tell you a story. And because this is my newsletter, and I am the writer, editor, and supervisor, there is nobody to tell me I can’t tell you a story. Buckle up buttercups, this one is a doozy. Also, before reading, please build a campfire and gather ‘round it. It will help the ambiance. As you know, I’ve always been a story teller. I know I’ve mentioned in a previous issue that my dad and I used to make up stories to tell each other when I was a kid. I used to tell him stories periodically that were “weally scawy” and would be based in a cave or some other dark setting. See, I’ve always enjoyed scary stories, where there is evil in the dark and safety in the light. Yet I never had any true “weally scawy” story of my own until one night when I was in college where something was waiting in the darkness, and the safety of home and light were all I wanted…

Many moons ago in a place very near to where I am writing this, I went to a Chattanooga Lookouts game. For those unaware, the Lookouts are a minor league baseball team in Chattanooga. The Lookouts do $2 beers on Thursdays. Usually, I was busy on Thursdays for most of my college career, however, a buddy of mine and I happened to be free that particular Thursday and decided to hit up the game. We lived relatively close to one another so he suggested we ride together. I swung by his place to pick him up and we headed to the game. I don’t remember much of the game, not because of the $2 beers, but because it was rather uneventful besides the fact it went deep into extra innings. By the time the game ended, it was just past 1 AM. In all fairness, we probably should have left sooner considering we were still in school, but neither he nor I are the kind of guys to leave a game early, especially a close game like this one was.

After walking back to my car, fighting the minor post game traffic, and dropping my buddy off at his place, the time was somewhere between 1:30-2:00 AM. If you know me, if you really know me, you know I am not a night owl in the slightest. After about 10 PM I start to get very tired and ornery. Despite a fun night of beer, baseball, and bro time, with it being so late, I was beyond ready to be home. As luck would have it, I pulled up to a T-junction just as the light was turning red. I needed to turn left. Normally, at around 2 AM with no cars in sight, I would just run the light. However, I had recently reheard the phrase “character is what you do when nobody’s looking.” I decided that night was the night I was going to prove to myself that I was a man of character and not run the light. Poor decision.

I know it was late, I know I was tired, but man did it feel like that light was taking an eternity to change. I began to take a look around me though I’d driven that road a hundred times. Poor decision number two. To my left, I saw a woman sitting on a bench. It must have been a bus stop, but regardless, I looked away immediately as I was not expecting to see anyone at that hour, especially not sitting outside. 

At that time in my life, I lived in an apartment that had a playground. You could see the playground from our window and I would often see this teenage boy swinging on the swingset around 1 AM. As creepy as that was, I could explain it away as an insomniac kid who enjoyed the peace and quiet of an uninterrupted swing. That said, I couldn’t really justify someone sitting on a bench at 2 AM seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Though I looked away immediately after seeing her, the woman must have thought the briefest of eye contact was enough of an invitation to come over to my car. I was staring straight ahead, eyes locked on the light, but watched her, out of the corner of my eye, pick up a duffel bag and walk over to my driver’s side window. 

Then I heard the faint tap tap tap as she knocked a finger on my window. I looked over at her and she gave a sign to roll down my window. Not to brag, or make myself look like a wealthy elite, but I did have automatic windows in that car. That said, I didn’t want to push the button too hard and have the window automatically roll all the way down, so I barely flicked the button and the window rolled down about a quarter of an inch. Whether she was offended or not I couldn’t tell. Speaking of things I couldn’t tell, when I finally did get a good look at her up close, I couldn’t tell if she was in her 60’s, or if she was in her 20’s and weathered her face. 

After rolling my window down a quarter of an inch, the woman leaned closer and said in a calm voice with a flat affect, “My boyfriend beat me up, my friend lives down the road, can you give me a ride?” This is not one of those scary movie type moments where I foolishly let a stranger in my car. There was something about the way she delivered her line that made it sound rehearsed. I began muttering some excuse about having class the next day and needing to get home all while pleading in my mind for the light to change. She leaned a little closer and with the same calm voice and flat affect said, “My boyfriend beat me up, my friend lives down the road, can you give me a ride?” This time I was more confident in my denial feeling certain this was rehearsed. Yet again she began, “My boyfriend beat…” Just then the light finally turned green and I began to very slowly take my foot off the break and roll forward.

Despite the creepy encounter, I didn’t want to run over someone’s foot. As I began to slowly roll forward, the lady looked at the light, looked back at me, and said five words that still haunt me to this day, 

“You made the right decision.” 

Then she picked up her bag, walked back over to the bench, and sat down again. When I tell you I was wide awake as I drove home at full speed… I don’t know what would have happened if I had let that woman and her bag into my car. I don’t know what would have happened if the light hadn’t changed when it did. What I do know is that story is made up. Didn’t happen. Yes, I’ve gone to Lookouts games and did have a creepy teen who would swing late at night, but the rest was all made up. Remember that as you begin to gather around campfires this spooky season. A little truth mixed into a fictional tale goes a long way for believability. I’m a fan of a story left open ended like the one above. Leave the people wanting more. 

That’s all I’ve got for you crazy kids this week. Get cozy, eat soup, tell tales. It’s fall.