Last night being Saturday night (although it could have
easily happened on a Thursday, or Friday, or Sunday, for that matter), the
typical debaucherous, drunken chaos ensued.
Herds of 18-20something year olds took to the streets to shriek, stumble
and smash things in their efforts to drink as much as possible. My morning runs with my dog almost always involve dodging shattered glass, and often avoiding the carcasses of burned sofas, couches, tvs. It is EXACTLY like what you see in the
movies when a sunny, Californian college party scene is portrayed. Well, exactly like that except way more real and way more ugly.
As I was going out to my car this morning, I noticed a
woman’s purse near the front tire of my truck.
To set the scene a little more:
my car port opens onto one of the main thoroughfares in a place called
Isla Vista, aka 'I.V.', aka 'H.I.V.', near the University of California at Santa
Barbara.
So, back to the purse.
I poked at it with my foot and felt that it was full, so it obviously
wasn’t left on purpose. As I knelt down
to open it and look for some identifier, I paused. Why had someone been in the far corner of my unlit, off-street
car port? Being the amateur detective
that I am, I recalled my evening dog walks during Halloween week, when I had
seen more vagina than I ever cared to while girls peed in public, especially in the parks where I take my dog, too drunk to
bother finding a dark corner.
I noticed the darkened spot on the ground near the handbag,
and found myself surprised that I hadn’t smelled it prior to my little
deduction. Now, getting a stranger’s
urine on my hands is high on the list of things I don’t like to have happen to
me on a Sunday morning, so I scooted the bag away from the spot with my foot,
and gingerly pulled out a wallet. Oh
Djenne, you must be missing your credit cards, driver’s license, student ID,
keys, and employee badge. Probably not
missing the half eaten burrito as much, though.
I must be honest. I
debated whether or not to find way to contact Djenne the driveway-urinator for
awhile. But I’m not without a sense of
empathy and my own personal history of peeing in public. I try to do good regularly, and not just for
myself. However, some things are easier
to do than others. I wasn’t able to
find a phone number in the purse, but, once again, those amateur detective
skills paid off and I called her workplace, where they passed along my phone
number to her. She called back within
10 minutes, and 15 minutes after that she was happily reunited with her
questionably clean purse, very relieved and thankful. A win for Djenne and a do-gooder’s victory for me.
Djenne's bag, shortly before she retrieved it.
On the phone when she had called, in a semi-coherent, embarrassed
rush, she had said:
“oh man I’m so glad you found it I’ve been looking
everywhere dude I don’t even know what happened last night…”
Dude, I wouldn't want to know what happened last night even if I could.