To be 21 again....
Friday night, I went down to State College to celebrate my friend Steve's 21st birthday. Now I knew going in that I would be the oldest person there, but I figured, "What the hell. I'm not doing anything that night." Besides, its always fun to relive your college days every now and then.
So I get to Penn State, and immediately notice the abundance of attractive girls on the street. I immediately start getting the "I'm getting old" feelings and I realize that I have been out of school for way to long. So I park my car in a parking garage (this will be important later) and start walking to Steve's friend Tom's apartment. With a home football game the next day, the streets at Penn State are alive with excitement. I'm starting to get pumped up as I'm picturing a big party.
I get to Tom's place, the door opens...and there's no party. It's Tom, his roommate, and Steve watching Ghostbusters. Now I guess I understand this. Most of Steve's friends are under 21, so he really can't invite them over, then dump them at midnight when he goes out. So that leaves the over-21 crew, the 3 of us, to wait 4 hours until Steve turns into a pumpkin.
I'd never met Tom's roommate before, but he was cool and we just drank and BS'd for awhile. Steve then decided to start playing "Circle of Death". I'd never played before and I quickly learn that its the most complicated drinking game ever. You lay all the cards face down, and go around in a circle each drawing a card. Depending on the value of you card, you have to do something different, and.....well, its just confusing. Plus, I haven't played a drinking game in about 5 years, and I quickly get bored. It was kind of weird playing with just other guys too, because there is nothing more fun than 1) Getting a girl drunk and 2) Watching a drunk girl do dumb things. Tom and I amused ourselves though by giving Steve the "21 treatment" by making him drink repeatedly and even do a couple beer bongs.
FINALLY, 12:00 rolls around and we head out. Apparantly bars in St. College have some dumb rule about not being allowed into a bar until 26 hours after you turn 21. Others will let you in, but you can't do shots. So, we first went to the Cell Block, which apparently didn't care what we did, because they let Steve right in. The Cell Block was formerly the Crowbar, and it was sad to see it turned into a dance club. I went to the Crowbar a lot and saw some good bands there, and never had a bad time. The Cell Block was cool, but since I don't know many rap songs post-"Ice Ice Baby", it wasn't my scene.
After a little while there, we went up to The Saloon, where the guy at the door played Paint By Numbers on the back of Steve's hands and gave us a 5-minute lecture on not getting him shots. So we got him a monkey-boy pitcher, and watched one of my favorite bands, Velveeta, play. I realized that being in a band in State College is simple because all you have to do is every 5-minutes reference the next days football game, say something bad about another Big Ten school, or start a "We Are..." chant, and everyone goes nuts.
We leave at closing, and I decide that I'm going to spend the night at Steve's. Since the parking meter starts running at 8AM, I figure I'll move my car to Steve's place (about 5 blocks away) and avoid the ticket. So we go back to the parking garage, and low and behold, I've got a ticket. I look at it, and see it's for "Not Parking Completely Between the Lines". At this point, I am livid. First, the spaces are barely big enough to fit a car, and secondly, the car beside me was parked over the line, forcing me to shift a little. And the car beside me didn't have a ticket!!!!
So I get back to Steve's, and get ready to turn in. I'm sleeping on the floor in his room, and just as I'm settling in, I hear him get up, say something about throwing up and run off. He returns a few minutes later, lays down, pulls a garbage can up beside him, and proceeds to puke for a half-hour straight.
Oh to be 21 again....
So I get to Penn State, and immediately notice the abundance of attractive girls on the street. I immediately start getting the "I'm getting old" feelings and I realize that I have been out of school for way to long. So I park my car in a parking garage (this will be important later) and start walking to Steve's friend Tom's apartment. With a home football game the next day, the streets at Penn State are alive with excitement. I'm starting to get pumped up as I'm picturing a big party.
I get to Tom's place, the door opens...and there's no party. It's Tom, his roommate, and Steve watching Ghostbusters. Now I guess I understand this. Most of Steve's friends are under 21, so he really can't invite them over, then dump them at midnight when he goes out. So that leaves the over-21 crew, the 3 of us, to wait 4 hours until Steve turns into a pumpkin.
I'd never met Tom's roommate before, but he was cool and we just drank and BS'd for awhile. Steve then decided to start playing "Circle of Death". I'd never played before and I quickly learn that its the most complicated drinking game ever. You lay all the cards face down, and go around in a circle each drawing a card. Depending on the value of you card, you have to do something different, and.....well, its just confusing. Plus, I haven't played a drinking game in about 5 years, and I quickly get bored. It was kind of weird playing with just other guys too, because there is nothing more fun than 1) Getting a girl drunk and 2) Watching a drunk girl do dumb things. Tom and I amused ourselves though by giving Steve the "21 treatment" by making him drink repeatedly and even do a couple beer bongs.
FINALLY, 12:00 rolls around and we head out. Apparantly bars in St. College have some dumb rule about not being allowed into a bar until 26 hours after you turn 21. Others will let you in, but you can't do shots. So, we first went to the Cell Block, which apparently didn't care what we did, because they let Steve right in. The Cell Block was formerly the Crowbar, and it was sad to see it turned into a dance club. I went to the Crowbar a lot and saw some good bands there, and never had a bad time. The Cell Block was cool, but since I don't know many rap songs post-"Ice Ice Baby", it wasn't my scene.
After a little while there, we went up to The Saloon, where the guy at the door played Paint By Numbers on the back of Steve's hands and gave us a 5-minute lecture on not getting him shots. So we got him a monkey-boy pitcher, and watched one of my favorite bands, Velveeta, play. I realized that being in a band in State College is simple because all you have to do is every 5-minutes reference the next days football game, say something bad about another Big Ten school, or start a "We Are..." chant, and everyone goes nuts.
We leave at closing, and I decide that I'm going to spend the night at Steve's. Since the parking meter starts running at 8AM, I figure I'll move my car to Steve's place (about 5 blocks away) and avoid the ticket. So we go back to the parking garage, and low and behold, I've got a ticket. I look at it, and see it's for "Not Parking Completely Between the Lines". At this point, I am livid. First, the spaces are barely big enough to fit a car, and secondly, the car beside me was parked over the line, forcing me to shift a little. And the car beside me didn't have a ticket!!!!
So I get back to Steve's, and get ready to turn in. I'm sleeping on the floor in his room, and just as I'm settling in, I hear him get up, say something about throwing up and run off. He returns a few minutes later, lays down, pulls a garbage can up beside him, and proceeds to puke for a half-hour straight.
Oh to be 21 again....
posted by Michael at 9:22 PM
1 Comments:
Thanks for making me feel old. I'm reading this thinking I totally understand why the bars in State College have to have all the "no shots" rules. PSU ranked #2 in the nation for party schools. The bars have to protect themselves when stupid just turned 21 college KIDS go out & do 21 shots to celebrate & die, then their parents sue the bar for letting them do the shots. I guess I'm old cause I'm siding with the bars on that one!! Sorry you got a ticket...that sucks & that's just stupid. I'll take your side for that one. You can't ticket someone for parking on or over the line. That could have been a domino effect from 10 other cars. You don't know who started the bad park job so how can you just ticket one person?
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