I don’t know what it is about the holidays and me almost fighting steakheads, but it happened again on New Years Eve. The scenario: I’m at a party in the Art Museum area on the first floor, which has a small outdoor area, one just big enough for a beer pong table. Most of the people at said party are in their late 20s, early 30s. There is also a party going on on the third floor, where most of the partyers are hovering around 21 years old. Well, the upstairs had an ice luge (a block of ice that you can pour shots of liquor down) on their outdoors deck, so some of the first floor revelers made a dash upstairs and began drinking from this luge. Apparently the youngsters weren’t so keen on this behavior. But they seemed pretty friendly overall, and the two sides seemed to get along fine. Then, at around 3 a.m., a young lady and myself were playing another mixed duo at beer pong. Suddenly something dropped from the heavens and went splat on the beer pong table. I looked ahead. It was a jello shot dropped from the third floor balcony. No big deal. We continued to play, but about thirty seconds later a loud crash on the table. Some idiot had thrown a beer bottle. I looked ahead at my male opponent, who we’ll call Nitro, and said, “Let’s roll.” We dashed up the stairs and blasted into the party completely agged out (and, I must admit, a little bit out of breath. I drank a lot of eggnog over the holidays). “What the f***!!!!!” we screamed in unison.
The looks on the youngsters faces was one of bewilderment mixed with just a touch of fear. Not fearful of me, of course, but of Nitro (above, right) who is about 6’3″ and plays rugby. Of course the fact that 2 people bum rushed a party of about 25 people prepared to fight had these kids thinking we were out of our minds, and rightfully so. “Who threw the bottle?” we demanded. Some cute girl who obviously didn’t throw the bottle owned up, in the old “cute-girl-owns-up-because-she-knows-no-one-will-hit-her routine”. So we looked past her and continued to demand that the beer bottle terrorist come clean. But they were tight lipped, and after a bunch of screaming and gesturing, we needed to leave or the whole thing was gonna get awkward. You know how when you almost get in a fight and then the tension comes back down and then there’s not really anything to talk about and everybody just sort of looks around at everyone else? Yeah, well screw that. So we left and went back downstairs.
Now, wouldn’t you know it, two of the bigger guys come back downstairs. But they weren’t spoiling for a fight. They actually came to apologize in that semi-sincere way that drunk 21 year olds apologize for something that they probably did but claim they didn’t do but still want to apologize for in the name of everybody at their stupid party. So we kind of brushed them off. Then somebody (we still haven’t figured out who) yelled, “You guys need to settle this on the beer pong table.” And so, at 3:30 a.m., Nitro and I headed outdoors into the freezing cold to take on these young punks in a game of honor. It was old vs. young, right vs. wrong, good vs. evil. I’ve never been a great beer pong player, but on this night I was deep into a zone, realizing that, in the name of all that is righteous, victory was an absolute necessity. So I came out firing. Plop! Plop! Nitro is a pretty damn good beer ponger, and kept up his side of the deal as well. These young muscleheads (who were playing in short sleeves on a 30 degree night) were simply no match for the wily old veterans, and after the post game handshakes, they slinked back upstairs to their party. No punches had been thrown, but we had proved to be the better men. Within hours, 2008 had become The Year Justice was Served.