What Would Tim Do?

Everyone needs a friend like Tim. Tim was the fearless goofball of our gang. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for a laugh or on a dare. He had a penchant for poor decision-making and an inappropriate response to the precarious situations he invariably found himself in. But, he wasn’t dumb. In fact, his wit was the stuff of legends! In short, Tim was a guy who made you say “He did what!? He said what!? Oh wait, you mean Tim? Oh, okay then, I get it.” Tim was our brilliant fool.

Tim, for his part, thrived on the fuel we added to his fire. He was a sucker for our goading, and his credulity allowed us to lead him down some very treacherous paths. When we were kids it was innocent enough, and it usually involved (fairly) harmless dares. “Hey Tim, I bet if you jumped off the house it wouldn’t even hurt.” “Yo Tim, I bet you’re tough enough to eat that Carolina Reaper pepper.” Inevitably, Tim would roll his ankle and end up in a walking boot or eat the whole pepper, nearly die, and then have explosive diarrhea for a week. He would shrug the consequences off eloquently. “Good thing my shlong is big enough to use for a crutch!” “Comes in hot and screams out hotter!” That was Tim, great with a one-liner. We would laugh, clap him on the back, let him know he was our hero, and then think about what torture we could put him through after he got properly healed up.

You might think mature men would grow out of these behaviors, but if anything, we got worse when we were properly let loose on the world. The year Tim, Gabe, Braxdon, and I all turned twenty-one, we went gambling all night at a casino across the state line in Jackpot, Nevada. After losing all of our money, we found ourselves starving and with a bit too much booze in our stomachs to manage the drive safely home. The casino had a little buffet and diner area where customers could get a booth or sit at the bar. We all took a booth and ordered coffee (the only thing we could afford). As we sat there sipping, we all looked longing at the display of doughnuts that was under a plastic lid up on the counter of the bar. There were three tiers of doughnuts, probably about fifteen confections total, all within view but out of our price range, as sad as that was. We decided that one of us needed some food in his stomach so that he could sober up more quickly and drive us the hour back home. The plan was mine, but it was Tim who executed it so flawlessly.

“Hey Tim, I dare you to go and sneak some of those doughnuts out of that tray when the waitress isn’t looking,” I suggested, knowing that if he got caught he would probably keep his thumbs (unlike most people who try to steal from the casino).

“Bet,” was his simple reply. Then he was out of the booth and up at the bar. He asked the lone waitress on counter duty for a menu, and when she turned her back to grab one, he quickly lifted the lid, snatched a doughnut, and took one small bite. Then he slid it back in without missing a beat, and when the employee returned with the menu she was none the wiser. We sat and snickered, understanding where this game was going. Tim began with the weird requests. He pointed at us and said we needed a coffee refill. While that occupied her, he took bites from four more doughnuts. He asked if she had any horseradish sauce behind the counter. She went to the fridge to look, and boom, three more doughnuts were violated. Cleaner silverware was requested, allergy information was verified with the cook, etc., and each time the poor gal was sent on another silly errand, another two or three doughnuts were nibbled on. Finally, Tim had managed to take a bite from every single doughnut on the whole tray. We, in the booth, were nearly beside ourselves with mirth. Tim was so cool! And just when he couldn’t have gotten any cooler in our eyes, he says, “Well, we're ready for the check. But, before I go, I think I’d like a doughnut. Do ya have any that don’t have a bite taken out of ‘em?”

The waitress looked at Tim askance, then at the tray of doughnuts in confusion - eyes widening with apprehension as they darted from doughnut to doughnut - each with a mysterious bite mark, and then back to Tim in a dawning understanding. And when that shit-eating grin crossed Tim’s face, and little bits of sprinkle and cake crumb fell from his beard, she knew she’d been had, and indeed Hell hath no fury! She smacked him right in the face with the little towel she had been wiping the counter with. We dropped our last couple of bills on our table and ran away like idiots! It was the funniest thing I’d seen in my life. But we knew Tim would one-up himself on our next adventure, so it was all good. I would never tell him so, but man, I wanted to be just like the guy.

Tim was handsome too, so if we told him a girl at the bar was checking him out, he would go and rizz her up. We usually wouldn’t tell him that unless we knew she had a boyfriend in the bathroom who would come and break up the fun. Tim would saunter over, swinging-dick confident and ready to overcome all objections. Then the inevitable hand would land on his shoulder - the John returning from the john - ready to mark his territory in the manliest way possible. Tim would apologize or not (depending on how attractive the girl was, how hard we had sold him on her interest, or how big the dude was), and sometimes Tim would find himself close to an altercation. But in our native Southern Idaho, things like bar fights didn’t really exist, so we were never too worried for him. We knew that Tim would be properly humbled but not physically harmed, we would all have something to laugh about again, and one more story would be added to the life of lore that was our brave and gullible buddy Tim.

Life is always fun and games until the exact moment that it’s not, and for us that came one night when we all went out to the dance club. As much as we loved putting Tim into his constant SNAFUs, we loved trying to hook up with the ladies even more, so playin’ was always the first priority in our young adult lives. This particular Friday night was a hoppin’ affair at Hot Rocks, the only dance joint in little Twin Falls. The bangers were playing, the baddies were out in force, and we buddies were feeling pretty confident. That was, until, we saw Tim lying unconscious in the middle of the dance floor. We all heard the crash at the same time, his body smacking the ground, and turned to see some stocky dude mad-dogging over him, shoulders wide and fists clenched. It was obvious the guy had just hit Tim with a real haymaker, intending to teach him the lesson that Tim had stubbornly somehow avoided learning his whole dangerous and crazy life thus far.

If you think that our first reaction would be to laugh, you have gauged our friendship incorrectly. Tim was a fool, undoubtedly, but he was our fool. No one else was allowed to punish him! That was our privilege! Who did this guy think he was?

Braxdon and Gabe ran over to check on Tim. They grabbed him by the head and shoulders, lifting him gently and bringing him back to consciousness, asking him what had happened. But not me. One of ours had been hurt. It was time for rectitude. Or at least justice with a bit of revenge. It was very possible Tim was 100% to blame for being knocked on his ass. I mean, when you pay for something, you get a receipt. But common sense was never any match for loyalty.

“Somebody stop that guy!” I yelled, trying to keep the perpetrator from escaping the scene of his crime. He was wise to us, however, and had stopped his taunting pose as soon as he realized that Tim was there with three buddies. As soon as Brax and Gabe ran over to Tim, and at the same time I identified this dude as an assailant, he took off for the front door. Understandably, most of the crowd wanted nothing to do with a fracas like this, and so no one attempted to thwart his egress. That left me with a choice, go after him or attend to my friend. Since I loved Tim so much, I chose the former. I hauled ass out that door to go set the universe straight again. Did copious amounts of alcohol fuel this brave decision, you might ask? I will neither confirm nor deny. But I believed it was what Tim would have done for me.

First, I found myself in an honest-to-goodness car chase, the first and only of my life. Stocky Dude had hopped into an old beater Buick, and he was easy to trail because he had one tail light out and because Twin Falls doesn’t have anything that resembles traffic after 10 p.m. Following him was difficult, however, because of the insane speed at which he was trying to flee from me and the fact that I was one more sheet to the wind than I had realized. It’s perfectly possible he drove in a straight line the whole time, but I remember jumping over curbs and screeching around corners. It was intense! You would have thought the adrenaline would have sobered me up a bit, but nah. Try as he did, however, Stocky Dude couldn’t lose me. When I realized where he was going, I wished he had tried harder.

Stocky Dude whipped the Buick into the parking lot of the College of Southern Idaho, the little two-year community college Twin Falls proudly boasts. I followed expertly, only hopping two or three curbs and parking blocks in pursuit. He drove determinedly to the student housing dormitories, jumped out of his car while executing a rolling park, and then ran to a door which he accessed with an electronic key card from his pocket. I was only ten or twenty steps behind him, but the door closed before I could get to it, and I was locked out.

Any sensible or sober man would have given up at this point. It was the middle of the night. I was alone, on foreign ground, mentally impaired, and with no way to enter the hiding place of my enemy. I tugged once on the door, knew it was hopeless, and almost turned around to leave. But then I remembered Tim lying flat on his back, the bruise already forming on his face, and I thought of all of the joy in my life I owed to this friend. I couldn’t leave this unresolved.

So, instead of leaving, I started pounding on the door. Picture the building. It was three stories high, hundreds of feet across, and probably just as deep, and no doubt filled with scores of sleeping students. Pounding with the back of my fists resulted in nothing, so I started putting my shoulder into the door. Lights began to flip on in various windows. Then I started screaming, but in a manly way. Lots of lights started coming on then. Then a light in the hallway came on, and through the glass window on the door, I could see someone coming. Was it my guy? I took a step back, stopped my masculine screaming, and waited to see.

Stocky Dude did come outside at that point, but he wasn’t the first one out. About fifteen other look-a-like fellows piled out right before him, each bigger than the last. WTF? Each one of these guys looked like a duffel bag filled with bowling balls. I began to back up slowly, making my way into the front lawn of the premises. Then just about every other occupant of the dorm, which was apparently coed, came piling out to see what was happening. There were dozens of sleepy-faced chicks and homies, all rubbing their eyes and looking at me with a strange fascination. “Who is this creature, and why does he dare disturb our slumber?”

The last guy out the door came holding a baseball bat, and that was when it dawned on me. Tim’s attacker was a member of the CSI Golden Eagles baseball team, and he had just rallied the whole lineup to come to his defense. By this point, the whole squad had circled around me, the rest of the residents forming a greater circle a few steps behind them. Bat Guy was wielding his weapon like a mean cop with a nightstick, doing that thing where they smack it down repeatedly in the palm of one hand. No one said anything. They were waiting for me to get the clue. I didn’t.

“Just give me that guy,” I said, pointing at Stocky Dude who was surprisingly timid for a guy with one-punch knockout power. He probably figured I was psychotic. “He has an ass-kicking coming!” I declared, with more bravado than I should have been able to muster. It was amazing what some Wild Turkey, a crazy drive, and ludicrous amounts of testosterone and adrenaline can do for one’s self-confidence. Ah, to be twenty-one!

“The only thing we’re gonna give you is a three count to get yer ass outta here!” This was Bat Guy talking now. He was apparently the leader. He probably played shortstop or some cool position like that. Definitely not some lame third-baseman. To accentuate his point, he turned to his team, then to the assembled masses, and then back to me and said, “One.”

Shit was getting real, and under normal circumstances, I would have been scared for my life. But then I thought of Tim again, my hero, wounded, finally beaten, mortal after all. I thought to myself, “What would Tim do?” He wasn’t here to handle this for me. I had to play the Tim role now.

I looked at Bat Guy, glanced around at his teammates, grimaced at Stocky Dude, and then I stared at the crowd and told the biggest lie of my life. “I won’t leave without getting my revenge because I am a ninja!”

The reactions were immediate and varied. The smart people chuckled (so none of those dumb baseball players), others gave shocked gasps of amazement (clearly never having seen a real-life ninja before), while others like most of the ballplayers just began to honestly scrutinize me with their eyes (looking for the sleeper fit I must have been hiding under my jacket, wondering if my threat could be real).

Bat Guy paused for one moment, and then he hesitantly and with much less confidence than a moment before, decided to stick with ‘Plan A’. “Two,” he uttered, barely audible over the side conversations breaking out around him.

“HIYAH!” I screamed in reply, and then I did what any ninja would have done in that situation. I started flipping and leg sweeping and throwing shurikens into the navels of all of my foes! Or, at least, I acted like I did. I screamed like a moron, trying to make the sounds Japanesey. I jumped around like a monkey on hot coals. I did drunken cartwheels, sliced at raindrops with my razor hands, threw my hood over my head, and tightened the strings - completing the ninja look. Everyone was too shocked and enthralled to do anything, and I was too loud to allow any dialogue. Then, at the height of the confusion I had caused, I karate chopped the bat right out of Bat Guy’s stunned hands and actually managed to pick it up, quickly converting it into a bo staff, channeling my inner Donatello (turtle, not painter). This backed everyone up quickly. Then I pinpointed Stocky Dude, screamed some unintelligible and very racist-sounding Asian stuff, and swung my weapons in a graceful one-two samurai arc in his general direction…and I kid you not all fifty-plus people screamed and took off in different directions!

The baseball players, gripped by the delirium of the greater crowd, ran away faster than anyone. Those with their key cards ran to the protection of the dorms, but others just hot-footed randomly off across the campus. Within seconds I found myself alone and unharmed, miraculously.

When I got back to Hot Rocks, I found Tim comfortably recuperating in the arms of a gorgeous nursing student, of course. Braxdon and Gabe had been worried sick about me, and when I told them all that had happened, they didn’t believe a word of it. Tim was the guy who would challenge an entire baseball team to a fight, not me. But when I took them outside and showed them the damage the chase had done to my car, and especially when I whipped the CSI baseball bat out of my backseat, they were appropriately stunned. I was treated to a round of drinks I didn’t need, and I finally had a story to rival the best of my brave buddy, Tim.

So when you find yourself in the most impossible of life’s situations, I would offer up this sage advice. Just ask yourself, “What would Tim do?”