Day-After Detective

Everybody has drinking stories. Well, most people do anyway. I know that I have my share, and thankfully none have ended up with anyone getting hurt, getting a divorce, or going to jail (as far as I know). This is not to say that, many weeks ago, when I was young and stupid(er), there wasn't a great deal of reckless abandon and mayhem, just that I won't be using this blog as a forum to promote reckless behavior. I'm sure that whoever you are, you'll either have stories of your own, or won't need my help to figure out how to use alcohol to screw up an otherwise perfectly reasonable weekend of fun.

Here's a few things that a little experience has taught me though, so I will share these bits in the hopes that someone may benefit. The rather serious possibility that the only purpose of my existence is to serve as an example for others has crossed my mind more than once. With that in mind, I offer the following:

1) After the first couple drinks, Contrineau = triple sec = orange schnapps. After any more than that white wine= red wine = pink wine, and beer = champagne = anything with club soda. When you get to Listerene = peppermint schnapps, then it's time to stop.

2) The less you talk, the less obvious it will be to everyone that you are plastered. Hush.

3) Breath mints, including Altoids, do not make it seem as if you are not drunk. Instead of stumbling around and slurring your gin-drenched speech all over eveyone, you will be stumblimg around slurring your peppermint-gin-denched speech all over everyone. This does not help in the slightest.

4) If you absolutely must fake sobriety for some reason, then eat some onions, or corn nuts, or other foul smelling food which will make people naturally want avoid your breath. This also has the added benefit of potentially saving you from a night o' lovin' should you get tossed in the pokey for some reason. . .

5) The porcelin at the bottom of the bowl is both colder and nicer than the porcelin at the top of the bowl.

6) If you decide to invite tequila or jagermeister to your party, then the odds that you'll need to review #1-#5 increase dramatically. I was talking to a girl a while back who swears up and down that she was an alcoholic. I asked her why that was, and she replied 'Becuase I drink for the effect, not for the taste...' to which I had to say 'Look honey, ain't no one drinking Pancho Villa for the taste. Put down Nietzsche, let's go party. . .' She didn't bite.

7) Throwing up while on the phone with your parents or a new girl that you have been hoping would call is neither productive, nor endearing. Especially on the first day of college. Especially when you had her convinced that Nietzsche was a load of crap and that you were going to be her new moral compass. Dammit!!!

8) There is a time and place for everything. It's called college.

9) If you're going to pour Bacardi 151 in a bowl that you borrowed (heh) from the college food service cafeteria, set it on the ground, and then light it on fire so that you can toast marshmallows over it with bent-up coat hangers after a double date (while still in your dorm room), then please remember to:

a) figure out where the fire extinguisher is before hand and

b) note that cheap-ass bowls from China do not resist heat as well as that Pyrex from the chem lab does, and will indeed shatter when they get hot. Also, the simple act of a bowl shattering will not extinguish an alcohol fire, no matter how much you run around in circles screaming 'Oh my God, oh my God!!!'

10) If you wake up the next morning and you find some smudgy writing on your hand that looks like 'I (heart) Dana' along with a phone number, and you remember nothing about the night before at all, then consider (before playing 'day-after detective') that:

a) 'Dana' probably gave you a fake phone number to get your sweaty slobbery face as far away from hers as possible.

b) 'Dana', if she did choose option 'a', probably gave you the phone number of her ex-bf who also happens to be involved with a South American drug cartel, and

c) If neither of the above are true, then 'Dana' was that big hairy biker guy who bought your last round of drinks and called your friend 'sugar lips'.

Just wash your hands, and don't call. . .