1118 wine, women and .... where are my clothes?

I'll be missing my Koinonia meeting today as we have relatives coming by for a visit. I was looking forward to the meeting, as we are studying the book of Genesis. We went through Noah and the Great Flood last week, and this week is the aftermath of the Flood.

I sent an email to the other group members, apologizing for missng today's meeting. Unfortunately, I also made a small joke, but in retrospect I may have offended some of them. So let me share an anecdote with you and maybe they'll understand.

Our group is reading from Genesis 9:18 to Genesis 11:26. In Genesis 9:20-21 it reads "Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent." Reading these two verses took me through a flashback, which I will now share with you.

Twenty-something years ago, I attended college at Cal Poly Pomona, and was staying in the dorms. One night, at the end of a quarter, I went to a party in the dorm complex and proceeded to help a friend consume a gallon jug of Gallo Hearty Burgundy (after which, I swore off of any wine with a screw cap, though I later discovered that fine wines from Canada have screw caps, not corks. But I digress). I faintly remember making it back to my room.

As I woke up, I noted that I had a major headache, that the room was unusually bright and there were female voices talking. I slowly opened my eyes to discover that I was lying underneath the folding counter in the laundry room. The two women in the room were using the counter above me to fold their laundry. They must have sensed my stirring as one of them said, "I think it's awake." The other one replied, "I'll go get Mark," and she left the room. She returned a minute later, followed by Mark, my roommate.

Mark knelt by the table and asked me how I felt. I told him that I was tired and confused. I asked him two questions: "Why am I in the laundry room and where are my clothes?" I had gained just enough consciousness to realize that I was only wearing a pair of boxers. I heard giggling from the counter above me and tried to ignore it.

Mark explained that I had stumbled into the room around 3 AM, and disrobed to crawl into bed. But I was feeling a bit sick so I headed for the communal bathroom down the hall. I made it as far as the laundry room (the bathroom was just one more door along the same wall) and proceeded to unload the contents of my stomach into the laundry room sink. Mark said that I was dry-heaving, so he lifted me onto the countertop, with my head hanging over the sink. The two women froze, as they contemplated what they just heard.

Mark said that he left me there but returned ten minutes later to find that I had climbed off the countertop and crawled onto a low shelf underneath the counter (my finely-tuned senses confirmed that I wasn't lying on the cold linoleum floor). By this time, I was sleeping soundly, so Mark decided to let me sleep there. He cleaned the sink and wiped down the countertop; I heard the women breathe a sigh of relief and continue folding. He had put a note of warning on the door to the laundry room and a request to get him when I woke up.

The women mentioned that the note wasn't necessary as they heard me snoring as they came down the stairwell; they were afraid that one of the dryers had broken a drive belt again. They were relieved that it was only a half-naked guy sleeping under the counter. By this time, I recognized their voices and realized that this "incident" would not be easily forgotten. I later discovered that about 20 other people came through while I was sleeping.

Mark asked if I was ready to go back to the room. I nodded and he told me to stay where I was, and he left the room. He came back a minute later with my bathrobe and helped me get into it, then back to my bed. As my head hit the pillow and I started to doze off again, I remember him saying, "By the way, it's 4 in the afternoon."