It was St. Patrick’s Day, 2005. I was seventeen, a junior in high school. I wasn’t the type that had many friends, and my school was very small and rural (we had a graduating class of 280 or so students). I was more along the lines of ‘that one person everyone knows, but no one really talks to’ back in high school, minus two or three people.
But I digress.
Anyway, so it’s St. Patrick’s Day. There’s nothing to do in our little town, hardly anything interesting ever happens. I’m at my friend’s house (we’ll call her Anna, from this point on), and we’re bored out of our minds. Now, I was never exactly a model child – I had my problems, especially in high school, and I wasn’t the healthiest in dealing with them. Anna, on the other hand, was very straight-laced.
Somehow, I convinced her that doing jager bombs was a good idea (oh, the connections I had even in my small town). This, it turns out, was both the best and worst idea I could have come up with. Anna had never touched a drop of alcohol in her life, whereas I spent most of my teenage years in a drunken haze, rejecting reality and substituting my own. I don’t remember the entire night, but I do remember the trip we made to Wal-Mart (the popular hangout for pretty much every high school kid in the county).
I remember thinking it was the most fun thing I’d ever done, stumbling through aisles, knocking things down, breaking things. Wandering the grocery section and picking out food, only to eat it before we ever got it to the register. Anna was having more trouble with the walking than I was, and we were both giggling like crazy people, but it was a lot of fun. Probably one of my fondest memories from adolescence.
Needless to say, we got caught. Our parents weren’t exactly happy to hear from the cops at three in the morning, but neither of us got into too much trouble. Sitting in the police station for so long was worse than any punishment my mother could have dreamed up (she was never one for punishments, and they never stuck – not even grounding).
It was a bonding experience, a growing experience, and one I’ll never have again, but will always cherish for the memories.