Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Is This Beer?!

                So, this is easily one of my favorite stories I’ve ever had the pleasure of being involved in and it’s one that’s been a long time coming for me to actually put down on paper (or internet, whatever).  With that being said, if you dislike this story, then you’re wrong and I hate you because this one is very near and dear to my heart.

                This story starts way back when I was just a wee 21 year-old lad.  My buddy Adam’s family was moving into a new house and there were a few days in which their old house was completely empty but not sold.  Naturally, because we were mature, responsible people we thought this was a great occasion to have a little get-together in the empty house.  Realistically, it was not a huge, raging party; I think at the most we had 8 people there just sitting on the floor of the rec room playing cards and drinking beer.  Contrary to where you may think this story is going, absolutely nothing of interest happened during the larger part of this soiree. Eventually, everyone left except for me, LP and Adam.  That’s where the ridiculousness starts.

                I don’t really recall why it happened aside from the fact that he’s just as much of an idiot as the rest of us, but at one point while we were standing out in the backyard Adam made a stupid face, grunted and tossed his empty beer can backwards over his shoulder, where it bounced right into the house’s half-empty pool.  Let me reinforce to you at this point the pool was half-empty, because it is actually really important to the story.  So important that I drew this artist’s approximation of what it looked like, just in case you are not familiar with the fact that, in a half empty pool, water collects in the deep end (I’m so helpful).


Pictured here: Me being an amazing artist

                Because we were definitely not supposed to be there drinking in the empty house, Adam now panicked at his own actions because he knew his parents would be pissed off at him if they came to the house and found a beer can floating around in the pool so he decided to go into the pool after it.  Because he didn’t want to either strip down or get his clothes wet, he opted to use the tiny ledge running around the pool to try and sidle his way across the deep end and grab the floating beer can without actually submerging himself in the water.   If you’ve never seen someone sidle across a narrow ledge before, let me give you a visual aid:

Adam is always broke, though, so he would not have that many rupees.

                So, Adam crept carefully across the ledge closer and closer to the beer can.  When he thought he was close enough to grab the can, he reached out and immediately fell right the fuck into the water.  To LP and I this was hilarious to see Adam uselessly splashing around in water.  To Adam, it was not as funny because he had just fallen into the pool with his wallet and phone.  And if you look up at the fantastic picture of a pool that I drew, you’ll see that the incline from the deep end to the shallow end was underwater, which meant it was way too slippery for Adam to walk up, but far too shallow for him to swim up, trapping him in the deep end of the pool.  Adam, being stubborn as hell, kept trying to walk up the incline only to hilariously and pathetically slide back down every time.

                Because I’m the kind of quick thinking person who can keep his cool in crisis situations such as this, I immediately grabbed the pool skimmer and held it out for Adam to grab ahold of in hopes that I could use it to pull him out of the pool.  I should, however, point out that while I was smart enough to use this as a tool to pull Adam out of the pool, none of us were smart enough to use this skimmer as a way to fetch the beer can out of the pool.  After several failed attempts and getting nearly pulled into the water myself, Adam was finally dragged out of the deep end of the pool.  He emptied his pockets to find that his wallet and phone were both ruined, looked back and the beer can and decided it was a lost cause; again failing to realize that the pool skimmer I was still holding was a perfectly viable solution to retrieving the can.

                At this point, for whatever reason (likely just being naturally stupid and a little drunk), LP and Adam decide that they’re going to have some sort of ill-advised strong-man competition and disappeared off to the garage to wrestle or measure dicks or something; whatever it was, it left me all alone in the backyard.  As I stared at the can, still floating around the deep end of the pool, I realized that this was my moment to be the hero of the night and retrieve the offending piece of evidence.  But I also knew that I was going to be smarter than Adam and strip down to my boxers before getting in the pool so as not to ruin anything in my pockets or have to spend the rest of the night with wet clothes.  Take note that, again, I was not smart enough to use the fucking pool skimmer to grab that stupid can.  So I stripped down, hopped into the pool and went straight for the can and this is the moment that Adam walked back out to the backyard to find me mostly naked and wading around in the waist deep water.

This is exactly what it looked like, ladies.

                I grabbed the can, tossed it up onto the patio for us to get rid of and asked Adam to help me out of the pool.  He grabbed the skimmer, THAT WE STILL NEVER THOUGHT TO USE TO GET THAT DAMN CAN, and hopped down in the shallow end and held it out for me to grab onto; which I did and then immediately managed to pull him into the water with as I now found myself struggling to get out.  So now we’ve managed to extricate the can from the pool and have replaced it with two idiots (one of them in his underwear) and a pool skimmer, as LP stands up on the patio continuing to drink his beer and tell us, “Good luck getting out of there, dicks.”

                It took a couple of minutes, but I finally managed to jump up, grab the side ladder on the deep end and pull myself up before reaching back and helping Adam out, too.  We were out of the pool, the beer can was out of the pool, at no point did we realize the skimmer would have been useful in keeping us out of the pool and all was basically right with the world again.  I went into the rec room to take off my soaked boxers and put on the rest of my dry clothes (I figured going commando was my best option for the rest of the night) and Adam just gave up because he didn’t have anything dry and decided that he would just be wet forever.  So I walked in to the rec room with my dry clothes and dropped trou right away to exchange my wet underwear for my dry clothes.  No sooner than I had done this, LP absentmindedly walked into the rec room to get another beer from the cooler, saw me standing there ass-naked and quite nonchalantly said, “Uh, see ya later,” and just went home.

                This left just Adam and I there at the house, a little buzzed, varying degrees of wet and getting increasingly hungry.  Of course, the diner in our town didn’t open until 5 a.m. and it was at the point only 2 a.m. so we had some time to kill before we could go get some sustenance; and because we’re not total idiots, we thought we would use this down time to clean up any empty beer cans, boxes, or other evidence of our shindig by gathering up all the garbage and putting it in the trunk of my car then driving a couple of miles down the road to the city pool/fairgrounds and dropping off all the trash in the dumpster there because it seemed like a good idea.  We went back to the empty house and posted up in the rec room, where there was still a TV connected to cable for whatever reason, to hang out for a couple of hours and shoot the shit until the diner opened.

                Unfortunately for us, we both fell asleep on the floor in the rec room while trying to watch TV.  Typically, this would not be a problem, but if this was any sort of a typical situation, this would not even be a story right now.  About 4 a.m. for whatever reason, Adam’s dad comes in, for some reason dressed like he’s going to work at 4 o’clock on a Saturday morning, and starts just absolutely losing his shit at us; I mean, he is PISSED and considering the fact that he has walked in on just 2 guys sleeping on a floor with a TV tuned to Comedy Central and no evidence of a party whatsoever, we are pretty dumbfounded.  As I recall, the conversation (if you can call it that) went something like this:

Adam’s Dad: “Both of you get up! Wake up! Get up right now!”
Adam: “Dad, what’s up?”
Adam’s Dad: “What the hell are you doing here? WHY ARE YOU IN THE HOUSE?!”
Adam: “We were just hanging out watching some TV.”
*Adam’s dad walks over to a wet spot on the rec-room carpet (it’s that indoor-outdoor carpet) from where Adam or myself dripped after being in the pool*
Adam’s Dad: “WHAT IS THIS? *points at the wet spot* IS THIS BEER?!  IS THIS HOW YOU EARN MY TRUST? WITH THIS BEER?
Adam: “Dad, that’s wate….”
Adam’s Dad: “WE JUST SOLD THE HOUSE!!” *Adam’s dad does what can only be described as The Temper Tantrum Kick as he screams this at us*

This. Exactly this.

We started doing our best to wake up and get the hell out of there and through a combination of sleepiness and the fact that his pants were constantly sagging because his string bean lookin’ ass refused to wear a belt, Adam stumbles a little getting up and walking out.

Adam’s Dad: “LOOK AT YOU! YOU’RE STILL FUCKED UP!”
Adam: “Dad, I’m just tired.”
Me: “We’re leaving. It’s not a big deal.”
Adam’s Dad: “You boys better find somewhere to lay low for a while because I’m calling the cops. Ryan I hope you get a DUI!”
Me: “I’d have to be drunk. They can’t just give me a DUI for being chased out of a house.”
Adam: “We’re leaving.  Bye.”

And with that, we got in my car and got the hell out of there.

I think this is what Adam’s dad looked like
as we drove away

                Now the next issue that we faced was the fact that, after this particular run in with Adam’s dad, the last thing we wanted to do was to go to my house and explain to my dad why the hell we were both showing up there at 4 a.m. and where we’d been.   So, instead we elected to just find somewhere in town to park the car and grab a nap while we waited for the diner to open; because nothing was going to ruin our breakfast.  I drove to the KFC parking lot, parked the car and we both took an hour nap because we’re really intelligent and classy people.  We got up from our nap, went to breakfast, then went to the grocery store to buy Lucky Charms, too, because why the hell not and went back to my place to hang out and play video games all day.

                Eventually, Adam’s mom called and told him to come home, so he left.   I stayed inside goofing off the rest of the day until my dad got home and asked me, “Ryan, why is there a trash can in the front yard?”

I have no idea why, but my response to this was to ask my dad, “Is it a big trash can or a little trash can?” as though that would have any bearing whatsoever on me knowing why there is a trash can in the front yard.  Upon going out to the front yard and inspecting the trash can, I found it to be a pretty nice 20 gallon galvanized steel trash can.  The exact trash can that had been out on the patio at Adam’s old house.  Remember earlier in the story when I said that we only drank Bud Light and Bud Select? It seems that Adam’s dad had looked into the trash can after we left, seen one of his own Budweiser cans that he had tossed there while grilling one day, assumed it was evidence of us being up to no good and decided that the best course of action was to drive the trash can to my dad’s house and leave it in the front yard.  What’s even funnier is that the next time that Adam and I hung out, when he got home Adam had this conversation with his dad:

Adam’s Dad: “So how’d Ryan like that gift I left in his front yard?”
Adam: “Dad, you gave him a $30 trash can with your own beer can in it.  He’s pretty happy with it, it’s on his patio.”

                It’s been 8 years since that happened and I’ve been moved out of my dad’s for over half of that time, but that trash can is still out on my dad’s patio, serving as a quiet reminder of this story.


Pretty sure to this day I’ve still never put a Budweiser can in it.


-Ryan

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