David Harris Gershon

so i had never worn a life-size banana suit until the passover of 1997. now a bit of context that spring has happens every spring in athens georgia as an undergraduate there is something called the twilight criterion which is a professional cycling race for cyclists burgeoning lance armstrongs of the world who on their way to atlanta for a much bigger cycling race come to athens where

Around 10 or 11 o'clock at night, they close downtown and race 400 laps.

Now, it is a drunken festive affair in Athens, Georgia.

It's one of the larger on the calendar.

And invariably, somebody gets drunk and stumbles vomiting into the raceway and causes multi-bike pileups, which means it is absolutely not to be missed.

Unless, of course, you've promised your mother that that evening you would be celebrating Passover.

Because as I soon learned, if you don't, you will be found,

and you will be punished.

Now, I was not going to Hillel, the Jewish student center at the University of Georgia that evening, eating matzah and listening to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt over and over and over again.

Instead, I was with my friends.

We were eating burritos and drinking Bud Light, doing things that you should not be doing on Passover.

And I wasn't thinking about my mother, but it was at that moment we were preparing for the race when

my boss called, John from Ultimate Smoothies, a smoothie bar, which I embarrassingly admit that I worked at, pushing smoothies to pay for my way through college.

So John calls and he says, David, you've got to come open up the shop for me.

And I'm like, John, wait, it's 8.30 at night.

What are you doing?

You can't call me into work now.

And he's like, David, just listen.

I'm late.

I need to come to the store, but I can't get there.