Been Caught Stealing
Last night I heard the song "Been Caught Stealing" by Jane's Addiction on my way home from work. I cranked the song up, put the pedal to the metal, and my mind went back to freshman year of college.

Picture it, Bryant College, March-ish 1993. I had a boyfriend whom I met roughly 3 minutes after unpacking my dorm room. He was a junior, and I a freshman. I was a DJ and Marketing Director at the campus radio station, and I was on the track team. He was in a fraternity and on the bowling team. We did our own thing with our own friends, yet we still hung out with each other quite a bit, and had a good time together. It was the perfect college relationship at the time because I didn't feel like I was depriving myself of the college experience like other people I'd seen who were in relationships. I still had my friends, my activities, my life. And he had his. Occasionally our circles would intersect, and that was cool. I'd go out with my guy-friends and he didn't care. He went out with his girl-friends to do things and I didn't care either. There was no jealousy (that I could see), and we didn't stop each other from doing fun things if we weren't interested in that particular activity. Eventually we grew apart and moved on, and I haven't heard from him in something like 5-9 years or so.

He lived with his fraternity in one of the "Greek" dorms. Nice enough guys, except for his roomate. His roommate was a grade A jerk. Jerk ended up getting a girlfriend (How? He was a jerk!) and said girlfriend used to sleep in my boyfriend's and jerk's room. Eventually my boyfriend got sick of always having jerk's girlfriend over at night, so he hatched a diabolical plan to horrify the girlfriend to the point where she would never sleep in their room again.

Boyfriend had cued up "Been Caught Stealing" by Jane's Addiction on his stereo. He went to sleep wearing a pair of glow-in-the-dark boxer shorts that I'd bought for him as a joke. (Picture a pair of red boxers with gigantic glow-in-the-dark hearts on them.) Girlfriend came down to their room to sleep with Jerk. When they were asleep, boyfriend got up and "charged up" his glow-in-the-dark boxers in the bathroom.

He came back to the room, with his glow-in-the-dark hearts illuminated, and pushed "Play" on the CD Player, and cranked it up.

Then Jane's Addiction started up with they distinctive "duhhhhhn-DAH" in the beginning of "Been Caught Stealing." Then the sound of dogs barking in the introduction of the song started up. "Arf arf arf WOOF! Arf arf WOOF!"

Boyfriend jumped up onto Jerk's bed, with glow-in-the-dark hearts all over his shorts, and started barking along with the dogs at the start of the song at the top of his lungs while jumping up and down on the bed.

Jerk and girlfriend woke up very surprised, and very very mad. Girlfriend gathered up her clothes and stormed out of the room, never to sleep down there again.

I wonder if College Boyfriend chuckles to himself when ever he hears that song too? I wonder if he cranks it up in the car and barks along like I did last night?