How to be a responsible underage drunk

So, because in high school I was not "cool" and didn't like to "drink and drive" and didn't have parents who "let me drink in the basement" and lived in a small town where the bartenders knew I "wasn't 21," I didn't have a lot of opportunities to drink and those I had I didn't take advantage of.

Anyway, so I got to college, which was in the Big City, by Minnesota standards anyway, and I lived in a dorm, so I didn't have to drive anywhere to get liquor, and I knew people with fake IDs and siblings who were over 21 and bartenders who didn't know me from anyone and might have believed I was 21 if I wanted to get a fake ID, which I didn't, but anyway, the point is that I made the very carefully considered decision that drinking was cool and I was cool too and as long as we all went about it in a responsible manner, all things would end well for all involved parties.

This decision was made on a dorm room floor while surrounded by half filled bottles of various liquors dropped off by my friend's sister, who was just tickled that her little brother was taking the plunge into alcohol experimentation, and so gave us many many options to choose from. My roommate and this friend* and I chose vodka as our drink of choice with peach schnapps as our chaser. My friend's sister had neglected to drop off any shot glasses, so my roommate and friend were using small plastic cups, while I chose a measuring cup, which as the night wore on seemed more and more brilliant, as I became more and more convinced of my ability to exert absolute control over my own levels of drunkenness.

This might have been before I decided that I was dizzy sitting on the floor and the chair would be safer. It might have been before we decided that being in the hallway would solve all our problems. It was definitely before everyone on the floor decided that they would join us, including the RA, who was definitely on things besides vodka and peach schnapps.

This obviously set up weeks and months of all levels very controlled and responsible partying, which included:

• Establishing and codifying a ladder of intoxication that began with "buzzed" and ended with "blasted" and had a bunch of other levels in between that I no longer remember,
• Drawing an intricate Drunken Makeout Map with lines connecting all the people on the floor who had made out with each other while drunk,
• Some girl who might not even have gone to our school wandering into my friend's room and trying to steal the liquor, but first trying to cut the screen off the top of the Bacardi 151 bottle and slicing her hand open and then running out into the street before we could even try to help her,
• Wandering into a local band's practice session in the dorm's basement and narrowly saving one of the band member's daughters from drinking a rather large glass of "juice" that was actually about 14 kinds of liquor mixed with just a little Sunny D (that we had brought in with us),

And lots of other stuff, I'm sure. Those were just the most responsible things we did. And I have REMAINED a responsible drinker. Yesterday, one of my very best friends in the world, who we call Sweetbreads**, was in town for a wedding, and we started drinking at three in the afternoon because we're badasses like that. And we passed out at 10:30pm, because we're 30 years old like that.

Wooooooo.




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* Incidentally, I had known this friend since I was eight and he just happened to choose to go to the same college as me, which I didn't find out until a week before orientation. Just a random sidenote.

** In-joke alert: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweetbread