Howie
During my freshman year of college in upstate New York I lived on the ground floor of a dorm. I was alone in my room one desperately cold winter night working on animations with my Commodore Amiga computer. Given the frosty weather outside, and my fellow dormmates elsewhere enjoying actual social lives, the entire residence hall was creepily silent.
And from the serene quiet outside I heard a wailing voice in the distance, "Howie... Howie!.. HOWIE!!!" This grew louder and louder, along with footsteps with no fixed tempo crunching in several inches of fresh snow. I tried to ignore it until THUD - something slammed into my window.
I cautiously went over and in one swift motion zipped up the venetian blinds. A strange bro's face, eyes shut, mouth agape, was pressed up on the glass, quickly fogging up due with sweat and breath. His entire body was in fact resting against the giant window. He was wearing a white t-shirt. No jacket. He must have been totally freezing. I yelled, "hello?!"
Upon hearing my greeting one of his eyes opened, and then the other. His eyeballs rolled around until they located me inside, and then he propped himself upright and yelled, "Do you know where Howie is?!" Clearly he was very drunk.
"I don't know any Howie." I shouted back, still holding the string that raises the blinds.
He explained further, "I don't go to school here. I'm just visiting Howie and I can't find him. I think his friends called him House." He said "House" as if the word emerged from deep within his guts.
This still didn't ring any bells and all I could do was repeat, "Sorry I don't know, man." I was an 18 year old idiot and had no idea what to do in this situation. The idea of letting him inside to warm up and maybe make a phone call didn't cross my mind, as I was still a bit startled, if not also annoyed the flow of my creative computing was so rudely interrupted.
Registering my uselessness, the dude retreated from my window and continued his quest. I heard his cries for "Howie" echo through the darkness and eventually fade. I hope he survived the night and eventually found Howie.
A year later I got into the campus jazz ensemble. During one rehearsal one of the sax players, Howie, took a solid solo. Once the tune ended the rest of the horn section said, "Hooouse!" in recognition of his musical prowess. Hunh. I wonder if that's the same Howie that guy was looking for. Well, I never asked and never found out.