Gather 'round, chilluns, whilst Granny Lo gets herself a bourbon and tells you all an endearing tale...
The first time I got drunk I was fourteen. I grew up on a farm and my dad was basically an alcoholic, albeit the jovial sort, so beer was a constant in ye olde Frigidaire. He always told me that I could drink whenever I wanted, as long as I did it at home.
So we were bailing straw that summer, and I was part of the hired help ($6.00 an hour, and all the ham sandwiches and beer you wanted--it was a sweet deal). And there was this one guy, Brad... corn-fed, tanned, and about three years older than me. Of course I developed a raging crush on him.
That first night, they all sat around the kitchen drinking, and I asked my dad if I could have... a beer. And he said, with a gesture towards the fridge, "It's in there." And so it was. So I drank one. And then I went in for another. And another. At some point the guys went outside, and I went into the living room and watched Newhart, still drinking. Newhart. I wish I could remember the episode.
It didn't taste as bad as I'd thought, especially after I got the first one down--it was Busch beer, which I now (and then, really) could not stomach--and so I just kept drinking, and my dad kept saying, "It's in there," when I'd ask for another. God, I was soooo cool--and Brad must've thought I was really grown-up. I was drinking with the boys.
I wound up drinking five in something like an hour and a half. I vaguely remember sitting at the table,
right next to Brad, trying desperately to act sober and make conversation. And then, after making quite the a*s of myself, I'm sure, I stood up, mumbled something about seeing them all later, and stumbled into my bedroom. Where I lay down in my bed, expecting to go directly to sleep, 'cause that's what happens when you get drunk, right?
Nope. The room kept tilting from side to side--I lay there on my back, which in hindsight wasn't the best idea, anyway--and after some indeterminate amount of time, I realized that everything was coming up... and it sure as hell wasn't roses. I rolled over and vomited up the entire contents of my stomach (five beers and one ham sandwich) onto the hardwood floor. After it was all gone, I was too weak to move, still hanging over the side of my bed, when my dad comes in and says, "Are ya all right?"
I said, "Yeah."
He said, "Fine, then. Go to sleep. You're gonna clean all that up in the morning."
And so I did--I cleaned it all up and then I went out and did the chores that morning, all while accompanied by a nasty hangover. It was another two years before I drank again, but I've done it a lot since then, so I guess I didn't really "learn my lesson." Well, I did learn
a lesson--don't get drunk to try to impress a farmboy. It'll just end in vomit and tears.
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