Looking back (Chapter 13)

Christmas and New Years have come and gone. Other than some snow, everyone is pretty much looking forward to warmer weather. I think the first sign of warm weather has got to be spring break.

Ah yes, gobs of young people pouring just as much alcohol down their stupid throats as they possibly can, getting into fights, destroying property that is not theirs, having sex with anything that they can have it with (consciousness is probably optional), and just general rowdiness and civil disobedience. They should probably change the name to wholesome family break or something like that.

Years ago I would have been right in the middle of it.

The spring break of my (I guess it was) sophomore year of high school was no different. Myself and three of my friends roll down to Panama City Beach in one of my buddies cars with the tinted windows, rims, and stereo that everyone in the county could hear … at the same time … regardless of where you where in the county … whether you wanted to hear it or not. And my heap.

I remember being so pumped up about it that I think that I smoked a whole pack of cigarettes on the just over an hour drive down. There we are four guys, two cars, about 8 ½ cases of beer, a change of clothes or two each, a couple of hundred bucks in cash each, headed south for the weekend.

We get to the Redneck Rivera, find our hotel, get checked in, and crack open a few. You ever have that feeling that you may want to take things easy because the possibility of an ugly turn is imminent? That feeling came over me like the tide coming in over the sand. Fifteen minutes into being in the room and they are each about four beers down and showing no signs of slowing down and I just knew something, something bad, was on the horizon. I will be dammed if I wasn't right too.

We hang out in the hotel room for a while when two of them, Red and Jay, decided that they want to go rambling. Mark, the other guy who drove and never lets anyone drive his car, didn't want to go so Red and Jay are stuck with using their Jerusalem cruisers to get around. They take off and Mark and I are hanging out in the hotel and talking about what we were going to do over the weekend. After a while I notice the slurred speech which is prelude to an event filled afternoon. Homeboy is about half a case in and feeling no pain when he announces that he needs to use the facilities or as he put it "need to piss". Let me give you the layout of the room, it is a rectangle with two queen beds and a square bathroom that looked to be put in after the fact which was right by the front door, typical cheap beach hotel room. Mark makes his way to the restroom does his business and makes his way back to the main room when he proclaims that he hates the hiccups which he now has a case of. He keeps asking me what can he do to get rid of them and I guess he thought that if he asked me 1,001 times that I may get some sort of revelation and change my answer from "I don't know" to something else. But alas, he was wrong.

It is about this time that Mark is good and hammered and proclaims his hatred for bugs. Okay… not sure what that has to do with anything but good for you homeboy. I was about to find out why he was informing me of this displeasure of bugs existence. He thought he saw one so he balls up his fist and punches the wall and what he "thought" was a bug on the wall. What he actually saw in his drunken stupor was the shadow being cast by the sunlight hitting a nail that was left in the wall and painted over. Ever be around a drunk who has just hurt himself? You would rather have a colonoscopy, which has to be less painful than having to deal with all of the bitching and moaning. Now I have a drunken dude running around the room bleeding all over the place and griping about hiccups and the phone rings. Who in the hell could that be? It is Red and Jay wanting me to come pick them up from a local shop because they are tired. Yeah, I will get right on that. But I get to feeling sorry for them and decide that I would see how drunk Mark was. When he said it was okay if I took his car to go pick them up I knew he was plowed. Mark goes to get me his keys and slips in some of the blood he spilled on the floor and bangs his head on the floor. So now I know that I have to find some way of restraining him so that he doesn't hurt himself. I had to get both of the flat sheets off of the bed, tie them together and use them to tie Mark to the bed. Once I feel that is he not going to be a danger to himself I get the keys and head out the door. When I get to where the gruesome twosome tells me they are going to be waiting for me, they are gone. I go in and ask the clerk if he had seen them and he tells me that they split about 20 minutes ago. Assholes! So back to the hotel I go. When I get there I find Mark passed out, thank god!

I am just hanging out in the hotel room for a while when the phone rings again and it is Jay and Red again, wanting me to come get them none the less. I tell them to stay put and I will go get them but it will be a little while because of the traffic on the strip. By the time I get to where they say they are again they are gone, well F them. No more feeling sorry for them. But I was getting a bit hungry and I did spy a Mickey D's nearby. So I roll over to it where I notice my cousin's car. I find a place to park and go in to talk to my cousin. After talking to him for a while I got some food to go and for whatever dumb-ass reason I wanted a chocolate milkshake. As I make my way to the car I put my milkshake on the roof of the car so that I can get the keys out of my pocket, unlock the door, toss the bag of food in the car, get in and make my way through the parking lot. At this particular location there is a wide shoulder on the road that local law enforcement uses when traffic is heavy on the strip, this is about to come into play in this story. There I am making my way through the parking lot and I notice that a lot of people are looking at the car, I just thought that it was because of the car. So I am just about to pull out into the street when a cop comes hauling down the shoulder and I slam on the breaks so that I don't get in his way. This is when, unbeknown to me, the milkshake that I accidentally left on the roof of the car falls over and spills onto the windshield of the car. Not realizing what it was I said "what the hell kind of bird was that?!" Then I see the cup rolling on the ground. Oh great, I am an idiot. Now I got to find a car wash. Which I did, and now I am on a mission to have this stupid milkshake. I make my way back to McDonalds and take advantage of the drive-thru so that I don't make the same mistake. Now I am happy, have my milkshake, inside the car, and actually made my way back onto the strip. But traffic is heavy so it may take me a while to get back to the hotel, oh well guess I will have to enjoy cruising and cranking up some pirate radio for a while.

During this particular spring break there were cops everywhere, like every eighth mile or so. Really cracking down I guess. So I see one near me, turn down the stereo and try to act cool. He sees me drinking and ask me what was in my cup. To which I replied a milkshake and asked him why he was asking. He said they are looking for people drinking and driving and asked if I would mind if he checked my drink. No, I don't mind and hand him my cup. He opens the lid, looks into it, takes a sniff and thanks me and hands it back to me. Okay, no big deal. So I get a little farther down the road and I see another cop, but this guy doesn't use the same approach. He looks at me and says "What's in the cup boy" to which my pompous ass thought "boy?!" but the part of me that didn't want to get harassed by the cops stepped in and said just shut up and be nice. So I tell him it's a milkshake and that his buddy just checked it. He asked "Do you mind?" and motioned for me to hand him the cup. Which I did and he TOOK A DAMN SIP OF MY DRINK! I couldn't believe it. What an a-hole. Then he hands it back to me. Yeah, like I am going to drink it now. Out of involuntary actions I hold the cup out of the window and the cop tells me that it is a $150 fine for littering. This milkshake deal was not meant to be so I had to let that one go.

I make my way back to the hotel, park the car, and go to the room. But I can't open the door all of the way, like something was behind it. What the hell. Oh god, it is Mark's drunk ass passed out in the doorframe of the bathroom blocking me from opening the door to the room. So I get him up and into the room where I can see that he has started drinking again, pretty heavily I might add. So I get him to sit on the bed and try to clean up when he says "number 7" and trots off back to the bathroom. Number 7?, what does that mean? He says it's the number of times that he has thrown up and lets me know that the substance that I am cleaning up with the towels is barf… damn, thanks dude.

About this time the sun is starting to go down and the social life is starting to heat up. I am sure that Mark is somewhat more sober at this point but still not Red and Jay. As luck would have it, they called the room again, wanting to be picked up again. I let them know that I will get right on it and tell Mark what they wanted. F them was his reply, sounds good to me. But he is hungry now and way to drunk and scared of cops to drive so I have to chauffeur him around. We find a burger joint that he wanted to go to but he insisted that we go in. So there we are standing in line to get our food to go *eye roll* when I notice that the guy working the counter in the line that we were in was handicapped and that Mark "weirds out" about things like that. But we are so close to the register and there is no way that I am going to get in the back of another line to buy food that I am not going to enjoy. No sooner had I realized what was going on when I see Mark get the big eyes and looks over at me. In an effort to keep him from making an ass out of himself and embarrassing me at the same time I tell him "just be cool, just be cool" to which he replied with "don't let him touch my food Sweezey, don't let him touch my food" I reassured him that he wouldn't and that the people in the back are cooking the food and that he was just taking our money for it. We get his food and head back to the car. Drunky Drunkenheimer sitting in the passenger seat of his car with the door open, takes one bite out of his food and then dumps it out in the parking lot stating "dude, he touched my food, I can taste it" What ever, let's just go back to the hotel.

We get back to the hotel and head towards our room when I realize, hey someone is having a party… in our freaking room!!!! I walk into the room where some slack-jaw greets me and tells me to help myself to a beer and points to a cooler, my damn cooler with my damn beer in it. Everyone in the room was drinking my beer. GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM!!! People got pissed when I kicked them out, until I told them that I had called the cops, at which they all thought it was a good time to take off, hmm, wonder why? Just goes to prove that drunk kids are stupid, like I would call the cops to report underage drinking in my room because they were drinking my beer, while I was 16, morons.