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Here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, with his Pillow-Sack-Of-Fun…
During that magical year in my life in between getting my undergrad degree and heading off to grad school, I lived in a house with 7 other fine young men. Most, if not all, of these fellas were “upright in the eyes of the Lord.”
One of the things that made this year so ----- magical was my best friend Andrew. Let’s see…I would describe him as “upright–but not exactly uptight–in the eyes of the Lord.” He wasn’t debaucherous by any means, but he did know how to appreciate a little bit of alcohol–in moderation, of course.
He lived just across town, so he would come over to our place after work and hang out several times a week. Since he had taken it upon himself to teach me the finer points of enjoying fermented drinks, he would often bring with him various liquors and spirits for us to imbibe whilst we chilled.
However, he seemed really concerned that he might offend some of the other roommates who perhaps, unlike him, had a different moral perspective on getting drunk on the holy spirits. His solution? Discreetly transport his goods in a plain, unmarked pillow case.
It was such a jolly sight indeed, him showing up at my door in the evening like an adult-themed Santa Claus, Pillow-Case-O-Fun slung over his shoulder.
Of all the fond memories we made together, my 24th birthday was not supposed to have been one of them. We had exactly zero plans for the evening beyond just hanging out and sipping on the booze du jour hiding in his PCOF–which was Vodka on this particular mid-December evening, I believe.
Well, “sipping” may not be the most accurate term. That would imply a small quantity and a slow rate of consumption. Let’s just say that 32-ounce Taco Bell cups were involved.
But don’t get too worried–it was mostly just Mountain Dew, with only about a fifth of the cup’s volume accounted for by the Vodka. We gotta give him some credit: he wasn’t just teaching me to drink–he was teaching me to drink in moderation.
We mostly passed the evening eating, drinking, and being merry in general. And maybe, just maybe, drinking a wee bit more.
But, seriously, while enjoyable, it was perhaps the most unnoteworthy 2-3 hours of my life.
About halfway through Taco Bell cup number two, I noticed that the alcohol was hitting me much harder than expected. I honestly didn’t know where I had gone wrong, because–I say this with a straight face–I had been drinking responsibly.
I sat there for a moment gazing into my cup before commenting to Andrew, “Man, this Vodka tastes oddly strong…”
Andrew paused briefly with a slightly confused look on his face before informing me, “That’s because that ‘Vodka’ is actually Everclear. I was wondering why you were hitting it so hard…”
“Aw, ----- , now you tell me. I had been mixing my drinks based on the assumption that this was Vodka the whole time. Dammit, now I’m drunk.”
“I would be worried if you weren’t at this point–Everclear is double the proof of Vodka. I’m surprised you’re even able to stand,” he said, trying to stifle his trademark chuckle.
*Tries to stand up, sits down immediately.*
“Uh, I think I’ll just sit here at the kitchen table for now…”
Though I was only 24, in that moment I felt wise beyond my years…
“Well, what do you wanna do now, Birthday Boy?” Andrew said, trying not to let my newfound inebriation–and my new-lost ability to walk on my own two legs–kill our buzz.
“Hmm, let’s see…I’ve been needing to re-order checks rather desperately. Since the laptop’s here anyways and I’m not going anywhere for awhile… ----- it. I might as well do that.”
…and I proceeded to do exactly that.
No, strike that thought. I proceeded to attempt to do exactly that.
For the life of me, I could not get all the way through the process successfully, despite multiple attempts. I mean, I knew I was a bit drunk, but not that drunk, for crying out loud.
…or was I? Maybe I was so drunk, that it felt like I was putting in all those number correctly, but in reality I was claiming my bank’s routing number was “1800MIXALOT.” Could it be possible?
I needed a second opinion. Despite being notably less intoxicated than myself, Andrew failed on both of his attempts as well.
There was no way that we were both so drunk that we couldn’t enter in ~20 digits correctly after 6 combined attempts. Or was the Everclear just really that good?
We needed a third opinion, and this time we had to eliminate the alcohol factor. For this task we summoned in Seth, one of the roomies that never drank, so he was guaranteed to be stone-cold sober.
When he failed after 3 attempts, that’s when we all erupted into celebratory cheers–“HUZZAH! We’re not as drunk as we feared! Hip-hip-hooray!”
A peculiar feature about this large house we all lived in was that there were two kitchens–one upstairs where we were, and one on the ground floor–thus naturally splitting us roommates into two seperate, but equal, groups.
It just so happened that all the while Andrew, Seth, and I were quietly celebrating my birthday/not being numerically-challenged-drunk, Zach, one of the downstairs guys, had been babysitting a pair of youngsters that belonged to the Youth Pastor at his church. He was so close to this family, in fact, that the kids affectionately called him “Uncle Zach.”
We had no idea any of this was going on below our feet–and frankly it didn’t matter–until the dad came back to collect his offspring. Zach came upstairs and insisted we come downstairs and meet him.
“Uhhh, no, man, that’s probably not a great idea, Zach, my man.”
I may have been under the influence, but I still had some common sense and better judgement left in the tank.
“Oh, no, it’ll be fine! Come on down before leaves!” Zach was clearly not listening to me.
Since I had stopped drinking over an hour earlier, I thought maybe I could fake being sober long enough to shake his hand and say “pleased to meet you.” I took a few deep breaths and carefully made my way down the stairs, bracing myself along the wall the whole way down.
Thank goodness the other guys were with me, as I was able to keep my speaking to a bare-ass minimum. More than 3 sentences of a speaking, and I’m pretty sure he would have picked up on my, um, “altered” state. I shook his hand, over-enunciated a few words, and kept my eyes coordinated at all times, though that last task took every bit of effort I could muster.
Just a couple of minutes of chit-chat, and we bid the dad adieu and made our way back upstairs to celebrate my Emmy-worthy acting performance. Only this time we behaved like the mature, responsible, grown-ass men that we were and enjoyed shots of straight water instead of that other, confusingly-clear liquid from earlier…
A couple months later, we were all hanging out one Sunday afternoon, when Zach came home from church with an odd experience he had to share with us.
“So after church Eva and Evan came running up to me…”
” ‘Uncle Zack! Uncle Zack! When are you going to be able to babysit us again? Every time Daddy says that you’ve been too busy, and to that, we say Boo!’ “
“They must have noticed the confused look on my face–or maybe just plain forgot what they were talking about–because only two seconds later they took off.”
” ‘That’s straaaaange…’ I thought to myself, ‘I haven’t been too busy to babysit them. And no one has even asked me to babysit since mid-December…'”
We all kinda chuckled because at that point, as we all knew what had really happened.
While my intoxicated numerical abilities were much better than I had perceived, conversely, my inebriated acting skills were much poorer than I had fancied them to be.
“Well, I’m truly sorry to hear that your babysitting gig is no more,” I half-assedly consoled Zach, who was at least taking it all in stride. “But to be fair, Uncle Zach wouldn’t have gotten himself into this pickle if he would have listened to Uncle BJ when he tried to warn him multiple times that Uncle BJ was not so much “Uncle BJ” in that moment as he was “Drunk Uncle.”
He gave me a begrudging grin, on account of the very fair point I just made. This one was probably more on him than me.
But, completely sabotaging Zach’s career in early childhood education aside, I stand by my assertion that that birthday ended up being one of my most delightfully memorable ones ever.
No, strike that–I sit safely at the kitchen table futilely trying to reorder checks by that assertion…
Really, though, the point of the story is, despite their uncanny resemblance, Vodka and Everclear are not “pretty much the same thing.” Only one of those two will get Child Protective Services called on your housemate, so you best figure out most directly which one you’re pouring into that over-sized Taco Bell cup of yours right now…
Content created on: 23 December 2020 (Wednesday)
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