Before I left for the east coast, I lent the Shufflebeer table to Charles and his friend MrAlba. They had wanted to play the night before I left, so I took it over there and told them they could keep it for a while since I was leaving town. Now that I was back in town, and I don't know MrAlba and his roommates terribly well, I wanted to make sure I got it back.

As you know, the best way to get your stuff back in Santa Cruz is to claim you want to use it. I had no real plans for the night, and I was down for some Shufflebeer, so there was no real risk in making this claim. Without hesitation, Charles was in, so we picked up a 30-pack and started filtering through our contacts. We called Mal and Summer, but we got no answer from them all night. Sauce was at another party, all of Charles' friends were out, and the only one who was coming over was Bruce.

Bruce took for f-ing ever to get over here. Charles and I were able to finish two games before he showed up. When he finally did get here, he was wearing all brown, which he pointed out himself, and we laughed at him. His shoes, shorts, and shirt were all the same shade of brown. I should have taken a picture.

All night, we played Bruce and I against Charles and watched Firefly. It was awesome. It was kind of funny to see up close the transformation of Bruce being sober when he sat down and asked some questions about the game to Bruce being drunk and getting on my case to hold up my end of the team. At one instance he rolled for three points, so if I sank my shot for two points, we would have a perfect turn. He looked at me and said, "Cramton, I didn't bring you here to f- this up." After I made the shot, he got all little-kid-at-Disneyland excited and we high-fived quite loudly. Through wide eyes and a huge grin, he let out, "Yeah! And we even got the awesome slap!"

4am rolls around, the 30-pack along with some loose beers I had are dusted, Charles gets a call from some girl, and Bruce wants to go home. So they both leave, and I happily go to bed.

I woke up around 9, which was highly upsetting to me, because I went to bed at 4, and I wanted to sleep till 11 at the earliest. I went to the bathroom, and while I was in there, I heard the message chime on my phone. Already annoyed at my parents before I even picked up the phone, I checked the missed calls to discover Bruce had called me twice that morning, once at 6:20am and once around 9am. Figuring he left something here that he needed for the day, I listened to the message, which was just him breathing. Couldn't help him there, so I threw the phone back on top of my shorts and went to the kitchen for some juice. My phone rang again 45 seconds later, and the conversation is one I will never forget:

Me: Bruce? ... Bruce? ... Bruuuuce?
Him: uh? Yeah?

Me: What's up?

Him: You'll never believe what happened to me.

I seriously thought he was in jail, or outside of the jail, and somehow I was able to help, so he called me.

Him: About an hour ago, I woke up in a ditch.
Me: (After laughing at him) Where are you now?

Him: I'm in the ditch.

Me: Why are you still there?

Him: I don't have any pants

Me: Why don't you have any pants?

Him: I don't know. The real question here is: Do you think you could help me out somehow?

He told me where he was, so I got some shorts and started driving. It didn't occur to me until I was driving that he called me on his cell phone, but claimed to have no pants. There was a story in there somewhere. He was near Twin Lakes beach, and while driving around looking for him, I noticed there were a lot of people out for 9:30am on a foggy Wednesday morning. There was an inordinate amount of cops too. Then in dawned on me that it was the fourth of July, so Bruce had chosen the most heavily pedestrian-trafficked and police-patrolled day to hide in the bushes with no pants on.

I parked the truck and started walking to where he said he was: about halfway between Amsterdam Bikes and where the road turns at the beach, on the lake-side of the road. Once you figure out where this is, you may realize it's not really a ditch so much as it's the bottom of a hill. I can only imagine someone living across the street, eating some eggs in their breakfast nook, only to see me walking down the street with a pair of shorts in my hand, throwing said shorts down the hill toward the lake, another guy wearing a hat covered in dried grass and straw coming up the hill wearing the shorts, then the two of them walking back up the street.

The best Bruce said he could piece together: he didn't want to get hit by a car, so he went to step over the curb and light a cigarette at the same time and just lost his footing (I had found his Zippo at the top of the hill). He ended up in the water, or partially in the water. But he managed to take everything out of his pockets and put them someplace safe, then take his pants off because they were wet.

It started with a 30-pack and ended with Bruce wearing my shorts. That's the only real punch-line to the story.