Blame it on the A A A A A Alcohol

Way back when I was twenty years old, just beginning my REAL adventures, I made a bad decision.

Major Woopsie Daisey moment!

Can you believe it? After reading this blog so far, I know you all just can’t imagine ME making a bad decision. But alas, it is so. But I had company in this bad decision. As always, I was riding right along side my very own side kick, MacTen when I made this bad decision. And she made it too. And to this day, we are not sure why…

It was a Sunday of all days, and MacTen and I, and a good friend of ours The Mayor, had just finished watching the second part of a VERY long play called Angels in America. If you are familiar with this play, you can immediately sympathize with the length of the show. If you are not familiar, let me just tell you this much: This play is TWO parts in total. Most theatre companies only ever attempt to do one part, because each part is three hours with two intermissions. Of course my college decided to attempt both parts, and they did this by offering the option to watch part one as a matinée and then part two, three hours later as an evening performance, or you could watch part two the following day on Sunday. This play, however long, is brilliant and I encourage you all to see it if the option arises. I saw the six hour show two times during this run, so you can see how committed I am to my trade. Anyway…

MacTen, The Mayor and I, decided that after such a long day in the theatre, we needed to go right home and embark on a ‘Friends’ marathon. (‘Friends’ like the show). And so we did. Believe it or not, this is not the bad idea! The bad idea is yet to come.

Once at my house, The Mayor put on the first DVD and very enthusiastically encouraged us to join him on the couch. Of course MacTen and I were a little restless. I mean, we had just spent an eternity sitting in the theatre. All of the sudden a ‘Friends’ marathon didn’t sound so fun. So MacTen and I came up with a new and improved version of the ‘Friends’ marathon. And this new version goes like this: The Mayor sits and watches ‘Friends,’ while MacTen and I drink. This is where the bad idea starts. Keep in mind it is about 5 o’clock on Sunday and we have class the following day.

Like I said, I was twenty which means MacTen was probably right around eighteen. So needless to say, we didn’t have a lot of options when it came to drink choices. And despite our efforts, no one seemed to be available to get us any alcohol on a Sunday, so we resigned to drink what we had. What we had to drink that day is the beginning and end of the bad idea.

We drank Popov vodka and Mountain Dew…. Code Red.

And we drank it as if it was going to disappear at 6pm. And disappear it did. MacTen and I did work on this vodka. I really, honestly do not know what our plan was exactly. Naturally things get a little fuzzy in this particular memory, but I seem to remember that her boyfriend at the time was perhaps going to bring us something better to drink a little later on and so we figured we better get rid of what we had in the house… something brilliant like that. So we did. We got rid of that vodka in record time. Literally, I wonder if The Mayor did not enter us in the Guinness Book.

As my memory goes, the vodka was completely gone (split between only MacTen and I… The Mayor was quite enthralled with ‘Friends’) in maybe half an hour. And the next thing I know, MacTen and I are beyond wasted and we are sitting on the kitchen floor, refrigerator door open, stuffing our face with left over CPK pizza. And that pizza was delicious, despite the fact that it may or may not have been in the fridge for longer than its expiration date. This was college. People didn’t throw out food just because it went bad.

And of course… everything we did was hilarious. This fact, has never changed I might add. To this day, EVERYTHING we do is hilarious, but it was especially hilarious on this day. And for some reason, The Mayor just could not quite grasp what was so darn funny. I remember him being rather annoyed, if you can believe that! I mean we were being seriously hilarious.

Well, in the midst of all this hilarity, MacTen gets the amazing idea to go to the beach. And clearly, I can not think of a better plan in the whole world. So we immediately petition The Mayor to drive us there. For whatever reason, he does not think it would be a good idea. I guess we must not have explained it well enough, because of course it was a good idea. It was an amazing idea. And we were not about to be thorted by The Mayor just because he was the only one with the ability to drive. No, no. I can’t remember who came up with our next idea, but it too, was amazing. We decided that we would just run to the beach. Now, I lived in Normal Heights in San Diego. If you know where that is, you’re laughing right now. For those of you who need a little more information… we are talking maybe a 15 minute drive on a good day to the beach from where I lived. But alas, this was not going to thort us either and so we set off.

I was wearing a pair of pink sleep shorts and a black tank top and MacTen was wearing something equally as inappropriate for outdoor wear. I wish I had a visual for you. I know there is a picture out there and try as I might, I can not find it. MacTen, help me out if you have it…

Anyway, I digress… MacTen and I burst out my front door and take off down the street. Now, if someone were to actually run from my house to the beach, they would have taken off in the opposite direction as we ran, but that didn’t really occur to us. Believe it or not, I think we knew somewhere in our subconscious that we wouldn’t actually make it to the beach. And that became clear about half a block from my door step. MacTen took a nasty spill. I am talking one of those trips that leads to an awkward run where you are trying to catch up with yourself when ultimately you know you’re just going to fall anyway kind of things. And of course, as soon as she hits the ground, I, who am following way too close, launch myself right over the top of her. Now this… was hilarious. At the time of course. The next day MacTen had a bruise that would put a plum to shame. But at the time… Well let’s just say The Mayor had to come and scrape us off the sidewalk and escort us back inside where he immediately returned to his marathon.

Looking back… it’s really a good thing that he was there. If he hadn’t have been, MacTen and I might be dead.

Well, after the fall, MacTen and I decided to finally give it a rest. I had two rocking chairs in my living room (I have a bad habit of rocking… well, I don’t really think it’s a BAD habit per say, but it is strange and it does rule my life a little bit). MacTen sat in one, and I sat in the other. Usually, that is exactly where I want to be if I am drunk or feeling yucky. My rocking chair. But on this particular occasion, the rocking motion really wasn’t helping matters at all. The rocking was making me think about all the Mountain Dew Code Red and vodka I had consumed… and the pizza… and the running… and well I just didn’t feel good all of the sudden. And no sooner had that thought occurred to me, did MacTen say,

“I think I’m going to puke.”

Took the words right out of my mouth.

“Me too,” I said.

And so we both retired into the bathroom together. We took our respective seats on either side of the commode. Ane we began the art of spitting.

Now, I have to take a minute here to let you all in on something. I do not puke. I do not get drunk and throw up. This strange occurence has only happened to me three times in my entire life. So you can understand how far this Sunday had gone. But if there is one thing I DO do, it’s spit. I will sit there and spit into a toilet all night long. I won’t puke, but I will spit. The relief you get from that purge is never mine… just the anticipatory spitting. And so of course, I expected nothing less when I sat by the toilet on this particular event.

But before I know it, a phone is ringing and then MacTen is gone and then nothing…

My memory stops.

It picks up again an undetermined amount of time later when MacTen had returned and was shaking me. I heard her voice first and I felt her shaking my body around, but I couldn’t see. The thought crossed my mind that I had drank myself blind, but that thought did not last long. No, all of the sudden, my sight was back but I could not explain what I was seeing. It would seem that there was a wood floor growing out of the side of my head. How strange. But of course the longer I pondered this vision, the further I could see. And then I realized that a ways down the hall, which I determine was what I was seeing, was my bed. I was seeing under my bed. How was I seeing under my bed? Where was I?

And before I could figure that out, MacTen sat me up. And now I was staring at the toilet again. I was sitting cross-legged in front of the toilet, just like that. Just like I had been before my memory stopped. Amazing. As it turns out, I had passed out and was laying half in the bathroom, half in the hallway (if you hadn’t figured that out yet).

Unfortunately for all parties involved at that very minute, the jarring movement from laying down to sitting up brought back all those unforgiving feelings of nausea. Of course the saving grace in all of this was that I was already sitting in front of the toilet. All MacTen had to do was heed my very quick warning, pull back my hair, and hold her breath. And out it came. My first puke from being drunk. Code Red.

After I was done, I finally knew what everyone was talking about when they said, “If you would just puke you would feel so much better.”

I felt on top of the world. But MacTen had had enough. She put me to bed, despite my insistance that I was fine and despite the fact that it was still light outside, and her boyfriend came and picked her up. Man, one throw up incident and the party was over! After all we had been through. I guess that part of the night was not hilarious.

Suddenly I was all alone, still hammered, and feeling much better. So I did what any other drunk person would do in that situation. I called everyone I knew, sitting in my bed, and I told them that I had thrown up. I felt like I had really accomplished something, and I really felt like people would want to know about it.

When all is said and done, I think that the major Woopsie Daisey moment in this story was the Code Red. I mean, really?