My adult self is more than a bit incredulous that I could have made such a stupid decision.

How could I have gone and put all that powder up my nose? Even if it HAD been cocaine and not the far more dangerous PCP that it was… a shitload of cocaine up my nose was still waaay stupid.

Especially since my adult self has just been feeling pretty good about how my naive nineteen-year-old self seemed to be making better decisions. Like the decision to help Maria “get rid of Fred”. I mean…. wasn’t I done with just following along with whatever was happening around me? Wasn’t I now making better decisions based on what I saw as the right thing to do?

And didn’t I just help that woman who passed out at the Alice Cooper concert? Sure, I may never know for sure if I did or did not snort that half pill (of what most likely was also PCP) offered by that random guy, but hey… I did a good thing, taking her out of that crushing crowd and making sure she was ok. I made a good decision.

Does the stupidity of THIS decision cancel out those smart ones? Does my well meaning intention to join my friend Allen in his celebration of a long-sought-after success, get completely made to shit when to do so means putting a shitload of white powder up my nose?

Umm… yes, of course it does.

YES of course it’s a good thing that my nineteen-year-old self was making better decisions AND yes, of course it’s still true that my nineteen-year-old self was still bound to make some stupid decisions. Yes/and my adult self still makes an occasional stupid decision.

Like so much in life, these things are better understood by a “yes/and” rather than an “either/or” paradigm. My adult self is just so very incredulous now, when I take a hard look at just how easily I could have died that day. Yes, I could have died… and then what?

I could have died and then no one would have known what to do about my body. See… I still had no ID. No one I knew had any idea where I was from, or how they might get in touch with my parents.

No telling how Allen and his gang would have responded to having my dead body on their hands. Especially after this drug deal gone bad thing, I doubt very much he would have wanted to deal with the cops.

And the Omaha police… ? Remember, this was long before DNA identification. Sure my parents might have eventually hired a private investigator. He might have even been able to track down George Heaton but do you (my dear reader) think HE would be able (or even want to try) to help? Man! It could have been years before my parents found out what had happened to me. If ever.

Shit!

Just writing this today, my adult self is really hoping that my mother never reads this part of my story.

As I think I said a while ago, I have no idea exactly when I made the decision to call my parents and come home. As I write this, I realize that it must have been quite soon after this crazy experience with this most insanely stupid decision.

My adult self is now also revising my thinking on exactly when I left Omaha. I’ve been saying it was sometime in early April but it may have been sooner. Sometime in late March.

I have just one more story about a situation that happened right before I left and perhaps in the writing of that story I’ll find an answer that will suffice. Perhaps not. It’s not a story of any particularly significant event. There’s no “Ah Ha!” moment in which I realize how I needed to go home, save money and go to college.

I’ll get to that last story (which will pretty much wrap up the story of this entire adventure) when this will again have to be…

To be continued…