Doug said he neither condoned nor condemned being taken (blindfolded, mind you) to the middle of nowhere and trying to find his way back home. I told him that it was going to be a tough journey, considering one can never really know how any of the woods around here in lower Michigan are going to treat you. Fine, he said, he was neither impressed nor depressed with this idea. Ok, I told him as I shook my head with a little laugh- he'd know soon enough.
Thursday arrived and Doug had his shit packed: water, a foam bed roll, some granola bars, a little utility knife... you know, provisions. I reminded him half a dozen times that we were ditching him in the forest tomorrow morning. He shrugged, said a snide whatever, and went to bed. I had to silently admit that I was impressed with his nonchalance, but I also know that that very feeling could get his ass kicked in the long run. I guess we'd just have to see.
So Friday came around and, as promised, at promptly five forty-five we stopped by Doug's (he was already sitting out on his porch as if by spite) and tied a cheap bandanna around his eyes while he loaded his shit and himself in the car so he's never really know where he was going. See, the problem with Doug is that he really does know tons of our woods like the back of his hand, so we definitely had to get him out of any familiar counties, as it were, and ditch him outside of his knowledge radius. Doug was comfortable, sipping from a travel mug of coffee, and whistling the theme to 2001 (Also Sprach Zarathustra... I'm a dork)... appropriate, I guess. We found a stretch of forest off a back road that I'd never been to before. They looked dense, overgrown, and I highly doubted Doug would have any clue as to where he was. We stopped, let him out, and warned him that he wasn't to remove the blindfold until he couldn't here the departing minivan anymore. Presumably, he obliged.
So here it is, four months later. I haven't seen nor heard from Doug sense. We've called the cops, let them in on the game we were playing, told them it was, for all intents and purposes his idea. Search parties have been organized, local news stories have been reported... nothing. Now it's Doug's birthday. I don't know what else to say.
