Zima? No, thank you…

Some Twitter pals were discussing Zima earlier today and it got me thinking about a rather amusing story from my teenage years.  My friends still tell this story…and it’s been almost 15 years since it happened.  Did I just say 15 YEARS?  Yes, I did…I need a minute to get over feeling old.  Okay, I’m over it.  Now, back to the story.  It all started one summer afternoon when my friend Amy’s parents were out of town.  Ah…parents leaving town…to be a kid again!  I grew up in a very small town and summer nights without adult supervision were all the reason we needed to celebrate.  If you’ve ever heard Tim McGraw’s “Down On The Farm”, you already have a pretty good idea of the festivities we had planned…right down to our loud friend DAVE! 

When you’re 17 and live in an exceedingly small town, if you manage to find someone over 21 willing to make a run to the liquor store, you don’t let that opportunity pass you by.  You can only raid the parents’ liquor cabinet and replace the whiskey with water/apple juice so many times before they catch on.  I wasn’t much of a drinker in those days, but I decided to fork over some of my hard-earned money and get trashed.  Keep in mind, at 17, I couldn’t fully appreciate the term “trashed” in the sense that I can now.  It appears I also didn’t understand the meaning of the term “overkill” or “enough” either…which is part of what makes this a particularly amusing story.  Hey, my friend Nicole ended the night insisting that the combination of BEER and TANG was tasty, so I wasn’t the only one drinking herself into delirium!

It started innocently enough with my alcoholic beverage selections:  a six pack of Zima, a bottle of Boone’s Farm, Strawberry Hill (that’s right – the cheaper, the better…) AND a 2-liter of Purple Passion.  What a combination, right?  Right.  I didn’t say I was going to spend MUCH of my hard-earned cash on alcohol.  I didn’t learn until much later that mixing different liquors is bad…give me a break, I was only 17!  All I knew was that my getting drunk was imminent and I needed something fruity in order to accomplish that goal.  I hated beer…and still do, for the record.

When our 21-year-old pal returned from the liquor store, he brought with him the “special orders” we’d all placed prior to his departure.  We noticed quickly that there was far more liquor sitting on the table than a bunch of teenagers would ever be able to drink…but that wasn’t going to stop us from trying.  One of my friends innocently said to me, “You’re never going to drink all that…”.  Rather than accepting that statement and logically agreeing, I took it as a challenge, quickly picked up that gauntlet and began to run with it.

Over the next 45 minutes I chugged all 6 Zimas, half the 2 liter of Purple Passion and half the bottle of Boone’s.  While that doesn’t really seem like much, I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a “drinker” in high school…nor did I fully weigh the potential impact of drinking that much in only 45 minutes.  I was on top of the world…it may have been spinning, but I was still on top of it!  As it turned out another friend of ours was also parent-less that night, so we headed to his house for a bit.  Before going any further, I have to tell you his name because it cracks me up to this day – Justin Case.  Nope…I’m not making it up.  I swear.

I must admit that I share the rest of this story with you based mostly on others’ accounts of the evening, with a few bits & pieces that have floated to my memory’s surface over the years.  At some point, my friend Leigh Anne looked at me with utter concern and said, “Are you alright…”.  I don’t think I answered her, but I promptly got up from Justin’s couch and sprinted to the bathroom.  While I don’t recall actually praying to the porcelain god, per say, I do remember propping myself up in front of the sink once I had thrown up all but the lining of my stomach and splashing copious amounts of water on my face…so much so that the entire front of my shirt was drenched by the time I could finally stand up.  Drenched.

I had the wherewithal to lock the door…subconsciously I had the awareness enough to know that I didn’t want anyone to witness the consequences I was about to face as a result of my own stupidity.  I remember my friends on several occasions banging on the door, pleading with me to unlock it…apparently they all believed I was going to pass out cold and possibly die.  I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen, so I just bellowed back through the door that I was “fine” and would be “out in a minute…”.  I’m not sure how long that “minute” was, but I’m guessing it’s a good thing that Justin’s house had more than one bathroom.  The good news is that had I not answered, I’m certain they’d have kicked down the door long before I died.

When I could finally stand (sort of), I managed to make my way out of the bathroom and started venturing outside toward Leigh Anne’s car…but not before someone grabbed me by the shoulders yelling, “Is that puke?” (referring to my sopping wet shirt).  I slurred back, “Nnnoo…iths jus watr…I sthwwear…iths waaather…”.  I do remember that part…and it was pretty funny…I’d have laughed my ass off, had I been able to find my ass at that very moment.  I also have a foggy memory of pointing at a girl on my way out and saying, “I know you…” and then as I turned to walk away I said, “I don’t like her very much…”.  In my drunken state I may have believed I was whispering that statement, but according to later reports, I wasn’t whispering…I yelled it as if I were cheering at a rock concert.  Luckily it was true…I didn’t like her very much and apparently that was the moment I decided to share that bit of trivia with the world.  At that point I stumbled outside…or so I’ve been told.

Even in my drunken state, I knew I’d gotten my friend Leigh Anne in trouble…big trouble.  She had an earlier curfew than the rest of us and she stayed at Justin’s WAY past her curfew to make sure I made it back to Amy’s alive.  I stumbled out to her car, fell into the passenger’s seat, slammed the seat back as flat as it would go and literally passed out.  Even in my semi-conscious state, I could hear Amy and Leigh Anne talking outside the car.  Amy was trying to explain to Leigh Anne where the housekey was hidden so she could take me back to “sleep it off”.  In mid-conversation I sat straight up, eyes still closed, and yelled, “III knnoow whhere it isss…” and then fell immediately back into the seat and passed out again.  I remember that part, too…again…pretty funny.

The whole car ride back to Amy’s house I kept drifting in and out, but I didn’t throw up in her car…which is more than I can say for some of my drunken adult friends since!  Every time I’d wake up a bit I’d say, “I’m sorry, Chipps…I know you’re going to get in trouble for being late…”.  After about the 912th time I said that, she told me to just shut up and go back to sleep.  I can only imagine how annoyed she must have been at me…both for making her late AND for being one of those annoying drunk bitches.  When we finally got to Amy’s, I rolled…yes, that’s right, I rolled out of her car and proceeded to throw up a couple more times around the corner of the house.  NICE!  I did manage to find the housekey…which was hidden in one of several old metal coffee pots in the breezeway between the house and garage.

Amy lived in an old farm house and the stairway up to her room was steep and narrow.  They were stairs you should pay particular attention going up and down even when you’re NOT inebriated.  Rather than being content with passing out on the floor (as if I’d known the difference), I decided my best bet was to make my way upstairs to her sisters’ room.  I remember standing at the bottom of the stairs looking up thinking to myself, “This could go badly…”, but electing to give it a shot anyway.  I grabbed hold of the handrail and up I went…one step at a time…holding on to the rail for dear life…literally pulling myself up using my arms every step of the way.  To this day I don’t know how that railing didn’t come flying out of the wall…I used it more like you’d use a rope to climb up a steep slope than a feeble railing used to keep your balance.

Needless to say, I didn’t tumble backwards down the stairs to my death and made it safely up to Amy’s sisters’ room and into bed.  Hours later I awoke to the muffled sound of bass coming from downstairs.  Nicole, to whom I referred earlier regarding the beer & Tang, came upstairs at some point to check on me and promptly ran back downstairs to send someone else up to see if I was dead.  While I was clearly still drunk, I wasn’t dead…but I passed back out shortly thereafter and didn’t move again until late the next morning.  I was relieved to find myself alive and NOT sleeping in a puddle of anything.  Whew.  I managed to make it through the entire night with no eyewitness to my shame…aside from the water-soaked t-shirt, that is. 

The moral of the story here is that even the smartest teenagers, and YES – I WAS among the smartest AND most responsible of teenagers, can make horrible decisions.  I was lucky not to have suffered any real ill-effects from my poor decision making, but a lot of teenagers aren’t as lucky.  Had I not been responsible enough to know I had no business driving, or had my friends not been there to take responsibility for me, who knows what could have happened.  Had it not been for my friends looking out for me, this story could have turned into much more than an anecdotal coming-of-age tale.  These days the stakes are even higher, as teenagers seem more and more to have adopted the “never gonna happen to me…” attitude that often leads them to tempt fate repeatedly.  We’ve all seen the Dateline specials that feature teenagers binge-drinking weekend after weekend.  We’ve all heard the drunk-driving horror stories and the prom night tragedies.  I was lucky not to have been one of them.

So…if you’re the parent of a teenager, know that who their friends are can be just as important to their safety and well-being as your parenting skills throughout their adolescence!  By the way, I’ve tried drinking Zima several times since then…I still can’t do it.  It was a few years before I could even drink Sprite!