Ghost

Back last fall, there was a super windy morning. The wind was so strong that it was banging all of the doors inside my apartment.

It being morning and all, I was still sleeping. My bedroom door was closed. Bang! Bang! The wind slammed the door back and forth.

"Huh? What? Yeah, what do you want?" I mumble at the door, still mostly asleep, "Who is it, what do you want."

Yeah, I totally lived alone at the time. So awesome.

?

Seriously, what the fuck happened to my elbows?

How do I know it was awesome?

I always know a party was awesome when I wake up drunk the next day with random injuries that I have no memory of.

Good times.

Roll to see if I'm getting drunk

When I was about 15, I joined a youth group called DeMolay. DeMolay was definitely one of the most important influences in my life, for a lot of great, respectable, noble reasons.

Today we'll be talking about one of the less respectable ones.

At the time I joined DeMolay, I was still a little goody two-shoes nerd who's weekend life generally consisted of some late night Chrono Trigger or Starcraft. Joining DeMolay opened up a whole group of people to interact with who were way cooler than I was and also a couple years older.

Shortly after I joined, Dusty, the then current Master Councilor, invited me to a party he was having. I was stoked. I was even more stoked when I arrived and found out it was a real party with a whole bunch of other people that I didn't know - and they were drinking.

My experience with drinking up to this point had consisted of a few sips of beer or maybe a cooler. Dusty and Sean, another member, noticed I didn't bring any alcohol and soon discovered I had never been drunk. As I'm sure many of us have experienced, there's a certain joy in being around for the first time someone gets drunk, so they stepped up.

Dusty started it off with a few beers. After my fourth or fifth beer, I wasn't feeling anything, so Sean poured my a 50/50 mix of a drink that I still love, Crown Royal and Pepsi.

Within a half hour, I was fucking wasted.

I started wandering around the party and ended up down in the basement with the stoners and their bong. Of course, this was offered up to me. My cousin Brad, always my protective big brother, stepped in and kept it away.

A short while later, some random person rolled in. "Is there a Dan here? Your mom's on the phone."

Shit.

So, with my ever impressive quick thinking, I sprung into action. "What time is it?" I said. "10:30" came the reply.

I could totally be asleep by now, I thought. My mom doesn't know there's drinking, I could be asleep. "Tell her I'm asleep." As you can clearly see, my fast feet have always served me well.

"Uh, ok."

A minute or so goes by. "Your mom's coming to pick you up."

Well, I'm boned. Everyone was sympathetic as I waited for the executioner. And that ended my first night drunk.