Yesterday, I wrote about dropping my daughter off at college for the start of her freshman year. Today, I’ve been reflecting a bit on my first year of college, which may well take the cake for wildest start to college ever (at least at a Bible College). I was two months in. I had just learned how to do laundry without shrinking my jeans and I thought the scariest part of adulthood was dealing with the grotesque smell of the cafeteria eggs. Then came the night I got held up at gunpoint…for a quarter.
Then it made local news. From there it went to national news. Even Dan Rather reported on it! (I haven’t been able to track down that footage, but see the news clippings below.) For those under 30, having Dan Rather on it was a huge deal; it’s like saying Morgan Freeman narrated your trauma. It’s crazy, too, to think that I’ve been held up at gunpoint multiple times in my life; well, this was the first. (The others happened in Ethiopia.)
Here’s the short version of what went down: A couple dorm mates and I went out to some local cliffs in Carter County, KY, one evening to do a Bible study around a campfire. It was supposed to be one of those innocent, bonding, get-closer-to-God kind of nights. We were trying to get a fire going, then BOOM!, we heard an actual explosion. Not metaphorical. Not emotional. A literal bomb was thrown our direction and went off near us. That, of course, was not on the syllabus or college promos.
Before we could process what was happening, six guys appeared out of the woods (again, see the 3 clippings from newspapers below). One of the guys pointed a gun at us, ordered us to put our hands up, then he demanded our money. Now, I wish I could say I pulled some heroic move, disarmed the guy, and saved everyone. But no, that didn’t happen. I froze. One friend stuttered. And the other had cerebral palsy, so he struggled to even stand and raise his hands.
Literally, all I had on me... a quarter. I reached into my pocket, felt that 25-cent piece, and thought: my life is about to end on a bad joke. I pulled out the quarter and, with a half-laugh and half-apology, offered it to the man with the gun. He didn’t even take it, which kinda hurt a little. Back then, that was laundry money. That was payphone money. It was also like a punchline not landing. I put my life on the line to offer that quarter and he didn’t even take it!
Realizing that most people don’t carry money into the wilderness, and that we were broke college kids, the guys ran off. And we were left standing there, three Bible majors, three college freshmen, with ringing ears and new emotional wounds that would, in time, turn into scars. None of us could believe what just happened. This was definitely not how they pitched Bible college during the campus tour.
Within an hour, we were back on campus and filed a police report. And really quick, it got really real. And it also got really weird. Turns out, several of the suspects were fellow students at Kentucky Christian College (now Kentucky Christian University - I wonder if this whole event was part of the impetus for the name change that happened soon after? An attempt to get away from the bad press?). The others were family members who had come in to visit them. Evidently, they all thought it’d be a good idea to have a gun and make a homemade explosive device on campus. I was just trying to pass my NT Intro class and not ruin my GPA. These guys were playing Breaking Bad: Kentucky Edition.
For the rest of the school year, I was in and out of court. Court! I thought my biggest freshman struggle was going to be writing a five-page paper on Acts. Instead, I was giving testimony in front of a judge while wearing Payless dress shoes (someone also stole my Air Jordan 11s that year; I’m telling you, Bible College can be wild!). I had so many subpoenas, I started taping them to the outside of my closet door. It started as a joke, but eventually they crept off of the closet and onto the wall. My dorm room started to look like a conspiracy theory headquarters.
In the wake of it all, I, along with one of the other guys, was frequently intimidated and bullied. One of the guys who was arrested was a former Marine and, well, getting threatened by him and others wasn’t fun. But we got so tired of it that we just wanted to drop it all. The problem: our buddy with cerebral palsy was out for blood. He was the engine that kept the drama going.
This all came up recently when I interviewed Jerry Morrison, whose Christian rock band, Bleach, actually wrote a song, which you can hear HERE, mentioning this. (The song’s called “Andy’s Doin’ Time.” The band’s lead singer also went to the same college as me and his brother, Andy, was one of the main culprits in this hold-up. I literally did not know about the song until just a few weeks ago! How crazy is that?!)
Looking back, I can laugh now. Sort of. I mean, it’s been 25 years. That’s enough time to process it all, revisit the story, and maybe tap into the nostalgia of it. I mean, who doesn’t wanna remember that time they had to stare down the barrel of a gun?! Who doesn’t want to remember that time they thought they were gonna die for making a bad joke with a quarter?!
But here’s the thing: college changes you. Sometimes it’s in a classroom, sometimes it’s around a campfire, and sometimes it’s when a man with a handgun teaches you that being broke can actually save your life. And I guess that’s something interesting about God, too. In time, God doesn’t just heal all wounds, he turns them into powerful stories. It’s just not a good sign when Dan Rather’s the one telling them. Today, as I reflect on this wild time, I sincerely just hope my daughter’s freshman year is, well, much less eventful.
Wild!!!