As some of you will remember, I moved to The Netherlands in elementary school and returned to North America halfway through seventh grade a.k.a. the worst time in life to be the newcomer or remotely different. Thus, I was tragically uncool until tenth grade and even then I was only on the periphery of the cool crowd of french immersion.
That’s right….I wasn’t even cool enough to be french immersion cool.
I began to find my calling in my senior year and allowed students’ council and video announcements (link to embarrasing high school video of yours truly) to boost my street cred…or hall cred…or whatever you call it in high school. That year, in the middle of winter, I was invited to my first mainstream in-crowd event: trespassing at the golf course for late night sledding. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?!
I was told that everyone would be drinking and having as much fun as you can in the temperatures I have already complained more than enough about. Up until this point, I had consumed a total of four coolers (I don’t remember what Americans call them…) between three events where I ‘drank’. So what better time to start drinking hard liquor stolen from my brother? WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?!
I filled a water bottle half full with vodka and half full with Fruitopia and started chugging while standing knee-deep in snow at the golf course. It tasted terrible, it set my insides on fire, and I was schlammered before I realized that absolutely no one else was drinking. I was officially that drunk guy. Actually, I was that drunker-than-he-even-knew-was-possible guy. This and this alone is the only reason my friend was able to convince me to slide down the hill with her on the crazy carpet.
A crazy carpet is easily the most dangerous thing coveted by Canadians culture. It’s basically our weapon of mass destruction. If we’re ever threatened by a foreign country, we will send them crazy carpets and the problem will take care of itself.
With no steering, handles that cut your fingers and are designed to push your hands into the ground as you hurtle toward certain death, the engineer behind this was clearly a sadistic son of a bitch who wanted to see innocent people die. Given the amount of alcohol I had consumed, when Katie said to hop on I said “Bokayohahahaha!” or something along those slurry lines.
One more time: WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
Being neither outdoor adventurers or unnecessary risk takers, we shuffled carefully until we went over the slope. After the few moments it took to break the sound barrier, we realized a) that we were picking up way too much speed, b) that we had no way of stopping, c) that out of the entire hill we manage to end up on the one track with a ramp built into it. Well, Katie realized these things – I was too busy laughing and flailing dangerously.
Before I even realized that we had left the ground, my ass was slammed back into the ground and my face into the back of Katie’s head. As my night reached its peak of trainwreckery, I was spotted packing snow up my nose because I thought it was the kleenex that I had dropped, followed by turning off someone’s rap music in favour of what I called “a real jam”: Overprotected by Britney Spears.
Consequently, I was never invited to an in-crowd event ever again. But sadly that’s not where the story ends.
After stumbling into bed, I noticed that my stomach wasn’t feeling very nice. I felt kind of heartburny and terrible. So I did what I usually found to help my heartburn: I drank a glass of milk.
MILK.
Now, I don’t want to suggest that parents should teach their kids how to drink…but C’MON! How did no one ever tell me that in the first 17 years of my life? I projectiled all over the bathroom and then tried to convince my Dad that I had a concussion and THAT’S why I was getting sick.
He pretended to buy it until morning.
He’s good like that.