2003-04-04
Story that is funny to me, and probably only to me
Ah, the weekend. Praise Jesus. And, I get to leave at 2:00 today because I've gotten here at 7:30 for the past two days, and I stayed late last night. So, are my husband and I going to party like it's 1999? No, we've rented some movies, thank you. Tomorrow, it's supposed to storm all day and night, so we're meeting at a friends apartment for a game night. Game night! I'm such a dork.
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A few weeks ago, some friends of ours had a dinner party, and after several glasses of wine, one of the guests, our friend Brian, decided we should go around the table and each tell a story of a time when we'd gotten really drunk. No, he's not fourteen years old. It actually turned out to be pretty funny, until I realized that I had way more stories than anyone else, and especially more stories that involved brushes with the law. Ha? At first I felt oddly kind of proud and interesting, then I felt a little bit trashy.
My favorite story was from my freshman year of college. (Caution: what follows is a LONG-ASS STORY that might not even be funny to anyone but me.) I had just started talking to Seth, and we had been on a date or two. He went to school about two hours away, so I didn't get to see him very often. He played with a couple bands then, and one of them was playing in a bar about halfway between our two college towns. My roommate Tricia and I decided to go to this random bar in the middle of godknowswhere to see my crush boy/future husband play some crapassed cover songs (like "Possum Kingdom" by the Toadies) at a bar called "Heroes and Friends." I know.
Anyway, of course you can't drive into the middle of Deliverance, Tennessee, without a twelve-pack of beer, so it seemed like a good idea for us to get some, ahem, Bud Ice for the journey. (So klassy, I know. That's why this story never gets told unless I'm already drunk.)
So Tricia and I go barreling down I-24 in her beat-up Honda Prelude, drinking all the way there. Yes, I know. This is bad. This is not something I do now, nor is it something I ever did other than this one time. We get to Heroes and Friends, which looks about like you'd imagine a place with that name to look. We stumble into this fine establishment, and we hear this frat band that Seth is playing with (people always need bass players, it seems) belting out that dumbassed "Possum Kingdom" song (don't think you know it? Read the lyrics . Ah, yes, precious 1996 memories.)
Seth kind of grins at me from on stage. Aside from two grizzled (and probably toothless) old guys at the bar, Tricia and I are the only audience members. One of the Heroes and Friends employees approaches us and asks for our IDs. Problem: Tricia and I are eighteen. Apparently, fine establishments such as this have stringent age requirements. I can't exactly understand what this woman is telling me because (a) I'm drunk off my ass, and (b) "DON'T BE AFRAID! I DIDN'T MEAN TO SCARE YOU! SO HELP ME JESUS!" I just politely nod and tell the woman we need to use her restroom. Tricia and I go into the restroom for God knows how long, mumbling and slurring things like, "What arewegonnado?" Well, all we could do was drive back to our campus. It's not like there were other bars or clubs to check out in Manchester, TN.
We exit the restroom, and the employee stops us and shouts something else to us. Again, I can't hear because "BEHIND THE BOATHOUSE! I'LL SHOW YOU MY DARK SECRET!" and I'm still quite drunk. I nod some more; we apologize; we scream at this woman that it's okay, we understand, and we'll be leaving now (it turns out she was trying to tell us that we could stay if we didn't sit near the bar. Oops? "That's okay! We understand! We'll leave!")
We stumble back into the car, and we drive back down the interstate toward our school. When we get off at our exit, Tricia decides she needs to go to sleep. Um, did I mention Tricia is borderline narcoleptic? So, we pull over at the parking lot of the illustrious Holidome, where we both promptly fall asleep in the ol' Prelude.
Some time later, in my drunken, sleepy grog, I hear Tricia ask "Are you doing that?"
"Doing what?" I ask, and then I hear a knocking on my window. "No dude, that's the policeman outside."
"Shit."
"Yeah."
We sleepily crawl out of the car. Let me take this time to tell you that, while I am told I am a fun drunk, I am also a very, very stupid drunk. The officer asks us where we've been that night (it's about 1:45 a.m. at this point). I blurt out, "We tried to go see a friend of ours play at a bar, but they wouldn't let us in because we're not 21." Tricia just rests her head in her hands. Even deep in her narcoleptic drunkenness, she is more clever than I am.
The officer then asks us if we've been drinking, to which I brilliantly reply, "Well, not that much! We still have a lot left!" I say this as I point to the three or four beer bottles left in the BACKSEAT OF TRICIA'S CAR. I hear a little whimper escape from Tricia.
"Well, it's really cold out here, ladies. You shouldn't be sleeping in your car. Why don't you come on inside the Holidome and you can tell me all about it."
What? That sounds kind of slimy, I know. We figure, hey, he's not arresting us yet; we'll see what happens. Officer Wierdo leads us into the kitchen of the hotel restaurant, where he MAKES US HOT COCOA. Seriously. We sit there for an hour or two, nervously drinking our hot cocoa, until he asks us if we feel like we can make it back to campus. We assure him that we can, and he says we can leave.
"Oh wait," he says. "Before y'all go, there's a party next weekend I want to invite you to."
Tricia and I fidget nervously, and he proceeds to write directions to this party on the back of his business card. Seriously! As he hands the card to us, he gives us a sage bit of advice: "Don't bring normal guys to the party. Cuz normal guys and cop guys don't mesh real well." Well, okay then. "Oh we'll be there; don't worry," we tell him.
We drove back to our dorm and sat and stared at each other for an hour, saying profound things like "Dude" and "shit" and "I know, dude." I still have the card (and the directions to the party. No, we didn't go).
Dude.