Sunday, November 13, 2005

Drinking Story: Binford Hall Crawl

Guilford College changed its alcohol policies drastically during my four years on campus. When I graduated, you could only drink in public out of a sippy-style cup, and only if you were 21. My freshman year, entire dorms were involved in throwing parties for anyone who could stand up straight enough to drink. Those were good times.

Second semester of my freshman year, Binford Hall had a hall crawl. The "hall crawl" got its name from two things: one, the entire hall got involved; two, you were crawling to the next room by the end of the night.

The fact that this was during the second semester is important due to the fact that I was still on the baseball team at the time, and we had a doubleheader the next day. I somehow talked myself into believing that I could party there until about 12 or 12:30, and be fine to wake up at nine and be on time for batting practice. Nothing else really mattered, I was buried deep on the depth chart at catcher, so it wasn't like I was in danger of having to play.

The party started on the third floor of Binford. One of my friends had tequila shots and margaritas in her room, so of course I have a couple shots and a margarita. Another girl was serving Sex on the Beach. Me, my roommate Adam, and my friend John were all in her room when she ran out of mixers. She threw out all the empty mixer stuff, and headed out into the rest of the party, leaving Adam, John, and I staring at about half a bottle of vodka. The wheels started churning right away. Somebody mentioned that taking the rest of the bottle would be an asshole move, so we decided to compromise and only fill up a red Solo cup with vodka. The vodka went straight back to my room, where we started doing carbonated shots (half vodka, half orange or grape soda, shaken up).

I kept one eye on the clock all through this. It was now around 11pm, still plenty of time. We went back to Binford. The party had since moved down to the first floor. The room we wound up in was chock-full of alcohol. There were four handles of Cuervo on the table, and the bookshelf on the wall was lined with pre-mixed two-liter bottles of Captain Morgan and Coke. Me and my friends set gleefully into the tequila, chasing the shots with the traditional lime, and then with Captain and Coke. Needless to say, that hour flew by pretty quick.

The rest of the night is pretty much a blur. I remember leaving the party, going home, and passing the fuck out. There aren't any other details. Apparently there was a fire drill that night. The jury is still out on whether or not I made it out of the room for that, as Adam didn't make it back to the room that night. I woke up in what would have been plenty of time to make it to batting practice on time, but I had one major issue: I was still drunk. I damn near passed out in the shower trying to sober up a little before I went out there, and wound up being about 10 minutes late. As I said, though, I was in no danger of playing. I spent most of that doubleheader sitting by the water cooler, drinking as much water as my body could take in. Warming up pitchers was a bitch that day. My eyes had issues with trying to see out of the mask while it was on, but had no problem with "seeing" the mask in front of my face after I took it off.

I also had one of the best rounds of BP in my life that day. Go figue.