Give it to me, baby!

When I was in high school, back in the 80s, we didn’t have guns at school or any of that shit. I’m from Tennessee, so YAH, we had guns, but we had sense enough to leave them at home. The big deal at school was wearing mini skirts and dipping Skoal – typically it was skirts for the girls and Skoal for the boys, but you know there were probably exceptions, what with it being Tennessee and all… We also didn’t have ATMs, computers, cell phones, CDs or hardly any technology that is around today. Oh, and we had the REAL MTV, that played MUSIC.

We listened to Southern Rock and Led Zeppelin and we boogied to Funk and our wonderful 80s music. We drank Busch beer, smoked cigarettes, smoked a little dope and got ahold of Wild Turkey or Bacardi on the weekends. The drinking age didn’t get upped to 21 until around 1980, and so many kids were “grandfathered” in that you could basically get in anywhere. So we did. The drivers licenses at that time in TN were made of paper, which also made it quite simple to fake them. So we did. :-)

A few of us had cars, I had a 1979 VW Convertible Bug, like the one in the link, but baby blue with a white top (damn, wish I had it now!). Those bugs were fuel injected, believe it or not. They still had an oil screen rather than filter that had to be cleaned by hand and drum brakes that were a pain in the ass to work on and points that burned out regularly and heat that was straight from the engine. And yes, the trunk was in the front and the windshield washer was powered by the spare tire. :-) Her name was Boomer – no, I have no idea why. Since my birthday was in November, I was one of the first to start driving to school. That made me popular in my group because I was the party transportation.

One night, I was out with Beth, my friend who was a year or two ahead of me in school and Jessica who was in my class and ran wild like I did. We got some Bacardi 151 and proceeded to park our cars in a cul de sac of a subdivision going in out in the country (there were lots of those back then). We smoked and drank, drank and smoked. We turned up the radios in the cars and stumbled around the cul de sac, laughing and cutting up. Jess lost something, I think was the cap off the booze and we sang “Give it to me, baby!” while we looked for whatever it was we were looking for. I was into the Bacardi 151 pretty heavy and I soon blacked out.

From here, it’s the story I heard from Jess and Beth. They said I fell over in the backseat of Beth’s car and didn’t spill a drop of my drink. When I didn’t come to after a few minutes, they tried to rouse me by dragging me around. Then a rainstorm came and they laid me out in the road to see if the rain would bring me to. (I swear this is true!! LOL) In the meantime they were trying to figure out how to get me to Jess’s house and into the bed without all of us being busted for drinking. All would have been fine if Jessica had known how to drive a stick, but she didn’t, so they had to call her dad to come and drive my car to their house since I was still out. From what I heard, it was a baaaaad scene and he was really pissed.

I do have a vague memory of them carrying me through the door at Jess’s house and words being said about the sad state of affairs…

The next day, I awoke horribly hung over, natch, and attired in a night shirt with the proud label: Olympic Drinking Team! There was a picture of this somewhere, but it’s been lost to the winds. I really wish I had that pic now, it was horrible, of course, but DUDE, what a testament to NOT drinking!! LOL

Jessica took the fall for this whole affair and I got off scot free. I have no idea how that happened, but it did and she was pissed at me for a long time afterwards.

I’d like to formally and publicly say “Thank you, Jessica for taking the wrap for my drunken stupor. I really appreciated it, even if I didn’t tell you so at the time!”

And this, boys and girls, is why Angela doesn’t really care for Bacardi to this very day.