"Uli, I can't go to jail"...

So due to the somewhat serious nature of my last couple posts I sent an email to my college friends and asked for their favorite Uli story. This was not done out of arrogance. Some of these stories even I am embarrassed about but they are good, so I will share. Most of these stories I have forgotten about because I was either too drunk to remember or I choose not to remember. But once they give me a title they all come back to me. Yup my stories have titles within my group of friends because they are so ridiculous. Almost by unanimous decision upon emailing my friends, “The drive for 30” was emailed back to me. As my former roommate emailed me, “man up and write about the drive for 30.” Due to the ridiculousness of that story I am not prepared to share that story publicly yet. That story took place during the “It’s OK, We’re Seniors Tour.” But really it was the culmination of four years of hard work and drunkenness at the U of A. Anyway the other responses were “golf cart”, “Uli, I can’t go to jail”, and “you disgust me.” All of those titles make sense to me. I chose “Uli, I can’t go to jail” mainly because I alluded to it in another post. This story involves Cardillo, Jim and myself on an infamous Halloween night, 2004.

So Halloween happens to fall on a Sunday. Obviously on Saturday the freaks came out. We all dressed up as whatever (unimportant) and every girl in Albany was dressed as a “sexy” (insert costume here). That’s normal on Halloween at any college. I swear, even pushing 30, women use Halloween as a reason to dress like whores and no one can say anything about it. I’m ok with this. To me the real Halloween that year was on Sunday, October 31st. I decide that we need to go out since it’s the real Halloween. Most people aren’t up for it. But being the beer pressure expert I am, I convince two friends, Jim and Cardillo to come out on a Sunday night. We go to a place called “Michaels” which is no longer in business. The three of us are obviously drunk and hanging out in the bar doing our usual trolling for chicks/getting black out drunk. It’s half empty because let’s face it, who goes out on a Sunday? WE DO. We make our way to the dance floor. We are off to the side making ridiculous comments about the girls that are dancing. For a Sunday the talent there was actually top notch. Hot girls dressed scandalously. It doesn’t get better than that. One girl catches my eye, smoking hot. Or that's how I remember her. She was wearing some kind of black butterfly costume. Her costume is again unimportant other than the fact that it was sexy. If I recall correctly her “pants” were pretty much stockings with underwear over them. I say something about this girl to my friend Cardillo, who is probably one of the best wing men in the history of wingmen. This guy will bring girls to you unprovoked. How can you not love a guy who does this for you? His line for me was usually, “have you met the starting QB for Albany?” This worked A LOT. He couldn’t close for himself (that’s another story) but he could pull some girls for his friends. I love that kid, to this day he is one of my best friends. He did not use this line tonight. Without hesitation he walks up to my target and says something to her in her ear. The “butterfly” immediately walks over to me, puts her arms around my neck and starts grinding up on me. To this day he won’t tell me what he said but I honestly don’t care. We dance for a while but I know it’s not going anywhere; I go back to my friends. After a while, Cardillo, Jim and I decide to leave. We are waiting outside of Michaels a while and realize no cabs are coming. We have no choice but to walk. I didn’t know how far it was at the time but I just Googled it and it’s just about 4 miles back to campus. We start the trek. We decide to stop by Cardillo’s ex-girlfriends dorm, which is on the way, on the downtown campus (not our campus). We hang out for a bit but leave shortly after showing up. I don’t even know why we stopped; maybe we were hoping to run into a sleepover/pillow fight in their underwear. That’s what girls do at sleepovers, right?

Outside her dorm is an unaccompanied campus police car. Since its Halloween we all decide to smash a couple pumpkins on the cop car. Why we did this I still don’t know. I’m assuming it was a combination of drunkenness and just being idiot college kids. Looking back that was such a dumb decision, but we didn’t get caught so whatever. I’m assuming we had some kind of run in with campus police and decided to take it out on that car. The path of destruction has begun. About halfway back to campus we see a for sale sign on someone’s house. I’m not sure who’s idea it was but we decide to move the for sale sign to the house next to it. I think it’s a great prank. I move the sign from one yard to the next. Some old lady starts yelling at us from her window. It’s like 5 am at this point so she was probably up getting her morning coffee. We run and laugh but think nothing of it. Well she called the police. About 5 minutes up the road a police car with his lights on stops and confronts us. The officer tells us the report of 3 large males moving the for sale sign. We obviously deny it. He obviously doesn’t believe a word. He threatens to take us all to jail for trespassing, destruction of property, whatever else. The cop wants to know who did it. At that point this old lady rolls up in her car. Gets out, points at me and starts screaming, “YEAH THAT’S HIM. THAT’S THE GUY WHO STOLE MY SIGN!” She yelled this like 5 times. She leaves. RANDOM. Even though Jim and Cardillo are great friends of mine they are both staring at me, they are softies, I was prepared to keep my mouth shut and go down with the ship. The cop notices this and asks, “Well son, everyone seems to be looking at you.” I continue to deny. I’m not a pussy, or I’m just that stubborn, deny to the very end. Jim then says to me “Uli, I can’t go to jail.” Hence the name of the post and a classic quote. That’s it, my fate is sealed. I decide to fall on the sword. I didn’t really have a choice. I confess. The cop cuffs me and puts me in the back of the car. He tells Jim and Cardillo to keep walking. They continue the trek to campus. The cop comes back to the car and I decide to pull the “listen my dad is a federal agent, is there anything we can work out” card. Yup I’m that guy who does something messed up but gets out of it because the family business is putting bad guys in jail. The cop doesn’t believe me and asks me to call my dad. He frees my hands. I call my dad and wake him up. Yup I called my dad at 5am, I felt like a small child, he’s PISSED but agrees to help me out. I give the cop the phone. After a brief conversation outside the car I get my cell phone back. The cop informs me I have to move the sign back and he’ll let me go. I later paid the price with my dad but who cares, I was free. I wasn’t going to jail. So I put the sign back and the cop lets me go. At this point I am so excited I decide to try and run to catch up with my friends. After a long run I see them. I start yelling “I’M FREE BITCHES!!!!” This became a slogan for us later. They stop and are shocked to see me a free man. We rejoice and hug on the sidewalk. Imagine 3 large football players yelling this in the middle of a busy street, people on their way to work. At this point the sun is coming up. We stop and grab a bagel at a local bagel shop just off campus that is just opening, first customers of the day! We sit and talk about every detail of this amazing night. We somehow dominated the bar, vandalized a cop car, put someone else’s house for sale, made it back to campus, and avoided arrest all in one night. We all go back to our dorms, champions of the night. Just another night in Albany.