I’m older now.

I think I’m wiser.

I make more money.

I’ve got more experience. I’m more focused. I have career objectives. I eat better.

To the best of my knowledge, that’s all true.

Why then — when talking to an old friend via the telephone over the weekend — could I not help but feel nostalgic for the glory days of high school?

Why, despite what I consider a fairly successful run on the collegiate level, did I long for the days of yesteryear?

Those were the days when I thought the world revolved around Marshalltown High School football, around the relationships I swore would last forever, around all the really dumb/dangerous things my friends and I used to do.

The later struck a humorous cord with my friend. “We really did do a lot of stupid stuff,” he said. Actually, he didn’t say, “stuff.”

So we began to think back, back to a time just a few short years ago when we were wholly different people. We bounced many stories off each other. Some are fit to share, many are not.

This story was way up there (at least we thought so) on the funny/stupid scale:

To say we’d gotten a lot of rain in 1993 is about as accurate as saying Noah took a couple of pets on the ark. Even by March, it had been a wet season — all the better for three idiots driving around on a self-proclaimed “guys night out.” (Translation: We couldn’t get dates.)

To make matters worse, another friend — not the one on the phone — had recently acquired a four-wheel drive vehicle. You can smell the trouble. After an hour of scooping the great Marshalltown loop, we decided to check out a few roads recently taken over by the Iowa River. It didn’t take long to find what we were looking for: standing water.

It looked shallow enough.

“You can make it through there, Ryan. Just go fast,” I told the driver. You’re always braver when it’s not your car.

“I’d do it if I had my car,” my friend on the phone said. Like hell he would.

But Ryan was always up for a challenge. “Hang on,” he said, revving up the sleek black blazer and sending us down a steep hill toward a puddle the size of Ohio.

We never had a chance.

The front of the Blazer hit the water like a ton of bricks, sending a lake over the hood. “Give it some gas,” I said, not knowing why. Ryan, not sure if we were going to live, did.

And the bubbles the exhaust made were some of the most spectacular I’d ever seen. “Cool,” I said.

“Not cool,” my friend on the phone replied, his feet now floating.

Then it got nasty. “What are we going to do?” Ryan asked with hint of terror in his voice.

Naturally, I took control of the situation and gave the only command that I could think of. “Strip,” I said.

We did.

Down to skivvies, no less. And then, since the water pressure was too great to open the doors, we bailed out through the windows into water no warmer than liquid nitrogen.

“You guys push [swim, rather], and I’ll steer,” Ryan said after we had all checked to make sure the shock of the frigid water hadn’t sent us back into puberty.

By “steer,” Ryan meant he’d hang onto the front bumper and do the side stroke while the friend on the phone and I practiced our flutter kicks using the back bumper as a kick board.

Remarkably, after a string of profanity and a bout with hypothermia, we hit dry land. And, with the friend on the phone and I preventing with our backs the blazer from rolling back into the pool, Ryan was actually able to start the engine.

He got the vehicle up the hill and was kind enough to act like he was about to drive away, leaving my friend on the phone and I by the river in all our glory.

He didn’t. And $10 worth of super-suck quarters later at the local car wash, we were ready to tell our parents that we’d spent the whole night watching the Star Wars trilogy.

A good Luke Skywalker fib never fails.

Back on the phone, my friend and I thought how great it would be to go back, knowing what we now know. “We’d never do that again,” he said.

But then we thought better of it. Because even in the face of sheer stupidity, like drowning out a Blazer, we learned something about ourselves, and we’re probably better people for it.

We said we’d likely take on that same puddle again, but next time we’d wear boxers.

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Chris Miller is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Marshalltown. He is editor in chief of the Daily.