Chapter
Eight
Hangover
– My First Hangover
When
I was twelve years old I was spending a little time on my Uncle’s
farm near Stratford, WI. One of the days that I was there I had been
working in the barn with my cousin and one of the farm hands. I was
helping them scrape manure and mucking out the stalls and throwing in
more straw while they finished up milking for the night. One of the
two of them decided to have a couple of beers and offered me one too.
It was an Icehouse and surprisingly it didn’t taste that bad. I’m
not sure if that was because it actually did taste good to me or if
it only seemed like it because I felt like I was grown up because I
was drinking beer with my older cousin.
Either way, it didn’t last
long. After I finished the first beer he told me to go ahead and
grab another for all three of us. This went on beer after beer until
the twelve pack was gone. But then of course they came up with
another twelve pack, only this time it was Old Milwaukee. I still
don’t know today how I managed to choke down that second twelve
pack with them knowing how disgusting Old Milwaukee tastes. It must
have been the fact that I had one hell of a buzz already. While we
drank the Old Milwaukee we went inside and each got showered up. I
wasn’t really sure what I was getting prepared for but they
mentioned a party at some point.
When I got out of the shower they
gave me a flannel shirt and a John Deere hat to disguise my young
boyish looks to the people we were going to be around. When I left I
was with the farm hand, Bud. He’s like family to me since he’s
my cousin’s age and has been around since I was in diapers. Bud
and I picked up his girlfriend and he asked me if I wanted to go to
the bar with him before the party got started. Of course I was all
for going out to a place that adults hang out at. So we stopped at a
bar somewhere around the area. To be completely honesty, I was
pretty drunk at the time. When we got inside I remember them asking
me what I wanted to eat because I needed to eat something to sober
up. I ended up eating deep friend breaded shrimp and had a beer
before we left there. After the bar we went to another bar where
someone was having a party and it was all-you-can-drink tap beer for
five bucks! I was thinking, who could pass up a deal like that?
Well they said the bouncer at the door was carding people but they
knew him. So Bud’s girlfriend held my hand like she was my
girlfriend and they talked the bouncer into letting me in. When I
got inside and got my cup the bartender asked me what kind of beer I
wanted and I drew a blank. I didn’t know what kind of beer I
wanted so I said Ice House. He told me they didn’t have it on tap,
but they had Miller Lite and MGD. I remember picking one of those
two and I had a few beers while I walked around this place full of
young adults. There were all kinds of people, but they all seemed
like they were staring at me, which they probably were. I mean, a
twelve year old kid in a bar? I’m sure I was a little obvious.
But hey, they never said a word until I was so drunk that I was
passing out at the bar.
Even then the bartender politely tapped me
on the shoulder and said I couldn’t sleep there. He said that
either I sat up and drank a beer or I had to leave. So I slammed the
rest of my beer, asked for another, told him to give me five more
minutes, and laid my head back down. All I remember after that was
my cousin or Bud walking me outside and laying me in the back of
a pick-up truck where I told them to leave me so I could sober up. I
don’t remember a thing after that until I woke up the next day in
the guest bedroom at my Uncle’s house. When I rolled over and saw
the puke on the floor, I knew I had gotten sick.
It was the worst
feeling in the world not knowing what happened for the rest of the
night. That feeling was even worse than the sick feeling I had in my
stomach and the pounding headache I had. I got up and brushed my
teeth before I walked out to the barn to find my cousin so he could
fill me in on the happenings from the night before. When I got out
there all he could do was laugh at me and asked me how I felt. I
told him I felt like shit. He said I probably just needed to get
some more food in my stomach, and that reminded me that I needed to
go back inside and clean up the vomit next to my bed. Even after I
had some breakfast I still felt like that for most of the day. My cousin
told me I should drink a beer and it would make me feel a whole lot
better, but I wasn’t going for it. Either way, I thought I would
have learned something from that night, or more so, the next day.
But the one thing I learned was that hangovers get better and that
the more I drink in life, they stop happening.
Not the best lesson
in the world. I never would have thought I was fueling a fire that
was turning me into an alcoholic.
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