Week 22 entry...
I have a history of doing rather weird things on a dare.
I guess it's because I just don't calculate the associated odds very well -- where one person would assess a situation and then run away screaming because of the risks involved, I'm there saying "Sure, sounds great! Sign me up."
"Bet you won't eat these foil-wrapped chocolate Easter candies... with the foil still on!"
::munch, munch, swallow::
"There's no way you'd steal a ton of those leaf bags that look like pumpkins and cover the college president's front lawn with them!"
::jump in the pickup truck, start scoping for bags::
These examples are small potatoes, though, in comparison with what I like to call The Event -- a memorable night involving a college bar, a group of rowdy football players, and a drink known as a Screamin' Harold.
I pursued my higher education at a small mid-Western college -- and by 'small', I mean '1500 total students.'. The surrounding town wasn't much bigger; there were perhaps four thousand residents in the area. We had a Hardee's and a Pizza Hut, a few gas stations, two grocery stores, and an intersection at the end of Main Street with a bar on each corner.
One evening, a friend and I had been to two of the 'Four Corner' bars as they were known, but hadn't found the right 'atmosphere' yet (translation: drink specials). Finally, as we walked into King's, we spotted most of the football team hanging out at the dart boards -- our football players could sniff out a good tap pitcher price much faster than they could make a tackle, so we knew this was the place to be.
The football players immediately ordered up more pitchers of whatever tap beer was cheap that night. I don't drink beer, though, so I turned to head to the bar and ask Rusty for something a little better. The guys were incredulous as always when this happened, wondering how a person could not drink beer; it was the holiest of drinks to them, and to shun it was to risk the wrath of God, or so it seemed to hear them talk.
"Hey, I know one way you'd drink beer -- we should get her a Screamin' Harold!" David called out. There was much laughing at this idea, so I asked what a Screamin' Harold was. It turned out to be a particular shot that *no one* had ever managed to drink without grabbing for the accompanying beer chaser, no matter how much the drinker swore they wouldn't beforehand; not even the huge linebackers could stomach it. They were all immediately placing bets as to whether I would even take them up on it, and then if I did, whether I would in fact cave in to the beer chaser or not.
I looked over at Earl, a good friend who would give me an unbiased opinion of the unknown drink. He nodded his agreement with the description of the shot's awfulness, and waved his hand in that 'no way, don't do it' type of gesture people do. For Earl to say no to any type of alcoholic beverage was a strong statement indeed. I couldn't imagine how god-awful a drink would have to be for Earl to turn it down.
"So, c'mon -- you gonna do it or what?" Dave prodded again. All the guys were smiling and shaking their heads, clearly sure in their belief there was no way I was going to agree; if I'd been a racehorse at the track, they would have been pointing to the "250:1" in the Odds column next to my name.
So I thought about it for another moment, looked Dave in the eye, and then leaned in close to say "Make it a double."
If you're going to go, go all the way.
A rush of excitement and anticipation ran through the crowd. Dave sent one of the guys up to the bar to have Rusty produce a double Screamin' Harold and also the 'required' beer chaser. A moment later, I was seated at a table, the drinks in front of me as all the guys gathered around. The Screamin' Harold was this strange light reddish color -- not so much pink as just a weak red color. They again refused to tell me what was in it; that was apparently a big part of the dare. I held it to my nose and sniffed. I couldn't really smell anything alcoholic, but it seemed to burn my nasal passages a bit. How odd, I thought.
With a final glance around at the spectators, I tipped the glass back and drank the Screamin' Harold down. I reached out and set the now-empty glass on the table. Then, very deliberately, I pushed the beer chaser across the table to Dave untouched and sat back in my chair.
The players exploded in cheers and applause, with calls of "Oh my god, can you believe that?!" and "Never been done!" and "She just downed a Screamin' Harold, holy shit!" echoing out as they looked around at each other incredulously. They clapped me on the shoulder, they shook my hand, they promised I would live on forever in the annals of King's history.
Too bad I couldn't understand any of it, seeing as how I'd pretty much ceased to exist on the planet Earth about four seconds after swallowing that horrifying putrefaction of a drink. Turns out a Screamin' Harold consists of just two ingredients: Everclear and Tabasco sauce. Everclear, for any who might not know, is 190-proof grain alcohol -- its alcohol content is 95%. So a double shot was the equivalent of... well, let's just say that on top of the alcohol I'd already consumed before arriving, a double shot was enough to immediately put me into an other-worldly stupor the likes of which I'd never quite experienced before.
Shapes, sounds, light, voices all blended into a single swirling mass. And so I sat there, mutely nodding my head as people continued to congratulate me for quite some time. They assumed I was nodding in agreement with their words, when in reality I simply couldn't seem to determine what my head actually was and whether it was in fact part of my body or not.
After a while, the throng drew back, returning to the nightly routine of darts and beer, followed by pool and more beer. The friend I'd arrived with, who'd been rather quietly sitting at my left through all this, reached out and tapped my arm. I couldn't quite process the sensory input and so I turned to the right. Being a true friend, Lisa didn't tap me again -- she just walked around and sat down on my right so I could see her. I may or may not have thought she was a large cactus at this point, I'm not sure. She said she was going to get me a glass of water, miming pouring a glass, and gently patted me on the head as she headed up to Rusty.
A moment later, Lisa set a glass of water down in front of me, with a pitcher of water behind it. My brain managed to recognize what water was and that more of it sounded better than less of it. So I grabbed up the pitcher instead of the glass and began to drink. Well, not 'drink' so much as 'slop water across my face and down my front', but some portion of it did actually manage to trickle into my throat and make its way to my stomach, so I guess it could be called drinking.
Lisa nudged me and my chair into a corner, the way you might move a potted rhododendron out of the way, and promised me she'd check on me every 15 minutes. I do think she actually kept her promise, even though I could no longer accurately process the passage of time. I just remember there always being water for me (I couldn't seem to drink enough of it) and general inquiring murmurs every so often; I think each time she saw I was still relatively conscious, she marked that off as a "Monitored subject OK" notation and returned to her evening.
Several hours later, I finally began to come out of it. I could stand again, managing to make it to the correct bathroom around the corner without falling down, and could generally interact more like a human again. My friend guided me out of the bar and slowly walked me the three blocks to my apartment. I collapsed forward onto the couch just inside my door, not caring about the books strewn across it. Lisa shook out a throw blanket and draped it over me.
"Bet you'll never do that again," she said, chuckling a little as she flicked off the lights and shut the door behind her.
I could only mumble my wholehearted agreement, drooling a bit on my copy of the Norton Anthology of English Literature as I passed out at last.
This is my entry for the twenty-second week of therealljidol. This was another intersection week, where participants pair with another writer and their entries are tallied together for the final team score. My prompt this week was 'playing the odds'. My partner was the ever-awesome roina_arwen, whose open topic entry can be found here.
As always, thanks for reading!