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
