Originally posted: August 19, 2005
So tommorow I will be thirty years old. Damn. And you know, I’d love to post a long, thoughtful treatise on growing old, maybe pontificate on all I’ve done right, all I’ve done wrong, and whether or not I feel that I’m in the proper place where one should be in life after exiting the roaring twenties. But you know what? That’s not exactly what’s been on my mind lately. No, the only real question I’ve been asking myself this last week is how damn blotto I’ll be on my birthday weekend, and how badly I’ll embarrass myself. I guess that’s as good a sign as any about how I feel about turning 30. In short, to hell with it. Let’s have some more fun.
So, instead of a long-winded soul-search – which I had fully expected I’d do on 30-eve, I think I’ll instead recall one of my favorite embarrassing drunken college tales. And I’ll look forward to doing something equally as stupid tommorow night…
Oh, before I begin, please allow me to mention that I graduated from college top 5 in the Journalism graduation class and had to sit up front with the Dean while I waited to receive my diploma. Not that it means anything, I just think I should probably explain that I was only a drunken beligerent fool two days a week. The other five I spent being a complete and total bookworm. I guess I was kind of like the girl from that 1984 B-Movie, Angel. You know the one I’m talking about, right? “High School Honor Student By Day. Hollywood Hooker By Night.” I’ve always loved a good dichotomy. Anyway, I just felt I should point out that I was quite the responsible young man during those times when I wasn’t the irresponsible drunk idiot like the one in the story I’m about to tell.
My senior year in college I went through a brief cowboy phase. Uhh, yeah, I wanted to dress like a cowboy. So, to satisfy my goal, I wore the exact same t-shirt and jeans combo that I’ve worn all my life. But I walked around in a pair of cowboy boots. As you can see, when I decide to go forward with something, I take it all the way. These boots were hilarious, man, and had some seriously high heels. They were hard to walk in sober, and damn near dangerous after a 12 pack. And one night I was about as sauced as a young man can be, hanging out in my cowboy boots in this cheesy crowded bar in downtown Athens, GA. I was with a couple old pals and this beautiful girl that used to run around with our group. She was one of those girls would always come out drinking with us and hang out all night, and we considered her a friend, but that was probably only because none of us could get her as a girlfriend.
So we’re hanging at this ridiculous bar, and the dancefloor is just jam-packed with sweaty drunk co-eds bouncing to some terrible pop-rap blasting from the speakers. This was one of those nightclubs where, once it got late enough, the bartenders would allow the girls to dance on the bar. And lo and behold, once it hit sometime past midnight, the bartop was crowded with a line of intoxicated girls dancing and shaking their butts and loudly screaming rap music down to their friends on the floor. Our pretty pal decided she wanted to get up on the bar, and the bartenders leaned over and helped pull her up. And then she was up there in that train of idiots, dancing high above the crowd of idiots below. I looked over at my friend. He was thinking the same pathetic insecure college-kid thing that I was:
If this girl is up there on the bar… And we’re down here… How are we supposed to continue to put the moves on her?
We nodded to each other, and decided to do what we needed to do. We walked over to the bar and began to pull ourselves up on top of it.
Now, drunken college kids dancing on a bar is a recipe for disaster, and if I were a bartender, there’s no way in hell I’d let that potential lawsuit occur in my bar. But, even if I did, I’d NEVER, and I mean NEVER, let a guy like me dance on the bar. Hell, the whole room was a blur to me, and I could barely stand on my own, much less pull myself up onto a barstool, then precariously step from the stool onto the top of the bar behind it. But somehow I made it up. I stood there, looked to my left and saw my pretty lady friend shaking and grooving. I looked to my right and saw my pal standing there. Hmm. So there I was standing in a line of idiots atop a bar, being watched by a hundred patrons below me. Ok fine, they were all watching the girls, and not me. But I was in their peripheral, I guess.
Well, now that I was up there, I guess I might as well make the most of it. I began to dance. Hands in fists, shoulders swaying back and forth, knees bending up and down. I was a dancing fool. And I’m sure I attempted a grind or two with the girl next to me. And I was having myself a ball. Sure, my head was spinning, the music sounded like it was being pumped through balls of cotton in my ears, and the bar floor of patrons below was a blurry, shapeless blob. But I was dancing, man. Dancing on the bar! Hoo!
And then it happened. I took a step backwards. Just a tiny one, I swear…
And the heel of my cowboy boot slipped off the back of the bar.
And then the rest of my boot followed.
And then so did the rest of me.
And the next thing I know….
Holy shit. I’m airborne.
I’ve just fallen off this bar.
I’m falling.
Oh man. This is going to hurt.
CRASH!!!
Did I land?
Nope. Still falling.
Oh man, that’s the sound of glass crashing.
Uh oh.
I’ve just taken out a shelf of bottles on my way down.
Boy, I hope that wasn’t the top shelf liquor.
For two reasons.
1. I’d hate myself if I destroyed a bunch of expensive booze
2. If I just hit the top shelf, I’ve still got a long way to fall…
BANG!!!
I landed flat on my back with a tremendous thud. The sound of shattering glass echoed all around me. I laid there for a moment, terrified. A throbbing pain seared it’s way up and down my entire right leg.
Wow. That really hurts.
Just be glad you can feel anything at all, old friend.
Ok. Quick Test. Wiggle the fingers.
Check.
Wiggle the toes.
Check.
Trauma averted.
Fortunately, the fall hadn’t done any serious damage. But now what? I was lying flat on my back, numbed by shock, surrounded by the destruction I’d caused. It was time to cut my losses and get the hell out from behind the bar.
And then I spotted the big burly bald bartender racing towards me. Oh great, the fun never ends in this place. Within seconds he was standing above me, looming down over me, staring at me with piercing eyes. I held my breath. What next, I wondered? Was he going to kick the shit out of me or throw me to the cops? I prepared for the worst.
He held his hand down to me. Reluctantly, I grabbed on to it, half-expecting him to clamp onto my hand, tear my arm right out of it’s socket, and beat the hell out of me with it. Instead, he calmly pulled me up to my feet, and then asked me if I was alright. “Uh, yeah…” I replied. He turned over to the bar, pulled up the top of it where the bartenders enter and exit, and nodded for me to go through it. I looked at it him for a moment, then looked out at the crowd of drunks mingling about – a bunch of cows with such short attention spans that they’d already forgotten about me. I thanked the bartender, then raced through the exit into the crowd and the safety of anonymity.
Almost immediately I spotted my beautiful lady friend amongst the masses. She was staring at me, concerned, as I ran over to her.
“You ok?” she asked.
“Holy shit, I just fell off a bar,” I answered, smiling, having just dodged a bullet. “I’m completely humiliated. Let’s get out of here!”
Ah, the old “I’m humilated. Let’s get out of here” move… Nice one, Bones.
We pushed our way through the crowd, out the front door, and into the freezing cold wind outside. Back then, I hadn’t yet given up on weather, but I wasn’t much into wearing jackets either. The cold blasts of wind hit me harder than the bar floor just had. Shivering, we began to walk in the direction of my house. Which was a good two or three miles away. Now, this would have been a good time to hail a cab, but I was smarter than that. See, if we called a cab, we would have been back at my house in minutes, but of course there’d be nothing to stop my pretty friend from deciding that she was ready to call it a night, and asking the cabbie to go ahead and drive her back to her place. So, I suggested nothing of the sort. And we began to walk.
Man, it was cold. We were trudging through the icy wind, shivering, and we were moving so slow we might have well have been in snow shoes. Soon, we were walking chest to chest, arms wrapped tightly around each other in a desperate attempt to get some body heat flowing. Yeah, I was doing it for the heat. We continued walking this way, feet moving forward, chest-to-chest, like some half-human half-crab monstrosity, for a good twenty minutes. Finally my wonderful glorious house came into view. We were almost there.
Yep. We.
I wanted to lift my hands to the skies and yell, “Well, what do you think about this, world? Yep, ole drunken Bones just fell off a damn bar, just about killed himself, and looked like a complete fool in front of a hundred fellow students. I’m drunk! I’m an idiot! And guess what? I’m about to arrive home safely, and I have a beautiful girl at my side! That’s right, world! Take a look at me! I’m the coolest drunk in the world! I’m the best partier in the world! I’M A LADIES MAN!”
We stepped into the warm house and I breathed a sigh of success. And before I could conjure up another self-serving thought about damn slick I was, she was sprawled out on the couch against the wall, asleep.
Tousche, world.
I plopped down on the couch on the other side of the room, and laid there until I fell asleep.
And so another story has come and gone. And sadly, it’s another story where our protaganist does not get the girl. Nope. Just a massive bruise that covered the entire side of his right leg, from thigh to ankle.
And now back to the present, where I’ll be turning 30 in a half an hour. And do I feel like I’ve lived my life so far the best that I could? Am I where I should be at 30? Ah hell, I don’t know anything about all that. Alls I know is that I’ve got 30 years of funny-ass memories of falling off bars and failing with girls, and they still make me laugh.
And I aim to live a lot more stupid stories for the next thirty years and continue to laugh at myself when I’m 60.
