It’s another birthday for me as an undergrad at Indiana University. My new girlfriend, super-hot grad student Leslie, has made a surprise announcement that she’s taking me out for an evening on the town. We’re going to dinner, we’re going to the opera, and we’re going to end-up back at her place. It doesn’t get any better than that. We’ve only been seeing eachother a short while though and I’m still alittle nervous-shy around her. Like I said, she’s super-hot, she’s a Grad student, and I’m clearly dating over my head. A fact which my friends (and even complete strangers) are keen to remind me every chance they get.

   This might be my chance to hold my own in the big-time though. The opera is Faust by the German dramatist Goethe. Leslie has to know German ‘cause she’s an archaeology grad student and a bunch of those classic archaeologists, like Schliemann (he supposedly uncovered Troy), were Germans. I happen to know some German myself ‘cause they didn’t offer 5th-year Latin and I finished my high school career with German instead. –And I happen to have read the book and know the storyline anyway. So I’m thinking… I know she’s a big opera fan. She knows I took some German. I can totally rise up to her academic/intellectual level by conversing with her in German about the German things the people are singing during the opera, showing her what a sharp, cosmopolitan boyfriend I am for her to have.

   So she shows up at my door to take me out on our date. We’re strolling across campus, hand-in-hand, when she whips out a giant birthday spliff. Oh, my goodness, yes. It might surprise some of you to know that in my college days I did, indeed, inhale. Leslie lit it up and we passed it back-and-forth, baking our way to the restaurant. By the time we got there (the Hoffbrau Haus I believe it was) we were pretty hungry and pretty thirsty. She had wine with her gnocchi. I had beer with my knockwurst. The dinner conversation was spicy too.

   Gonna be a great fricken night.