Adventures In Drinking Vol: I

So let’s talk about blacked out sleep-walking.

It is vitally important to know if you are a drunken sleep-walker.  I was going to work this into the post a couple of weeks ago about the drunk Colorado State student who was shot but the post started to run a bit.  Here’s the reason I empathize wholeheartedly with Zoey’s Time-Travelin’, Gun Poppin’, Breakin’ and Enterin’ Midnight Blackout Extravaganza:

And also because I should have been shot at least once while blacked out.

When I was 18 or so, I had three friends that were the only ones in our circle that had their own apartment which meant this was the de-facto drinking spot (unless somebody’s parents went out-of-town).  The apartment was in the northern suburbs the Twin Cities.

It was the sort of shitty first apartment that most 18 year old’s have.  Two floors, about six apartments on each floor.  The place smelled like Hamburger Helper and cigarette butts.  Half the light bulbs in the hallway were burnt out.  You could smoke inside.  It was the sort of place that would rent to eighteen-year-olds with no credit history.  The neighbors were the sorts of people that lived in an apartment building that would rent to eighteen year olds with no credit history.  Drifter is not a bad description of the fellow tenants.  A lot of grizzled middle-aged people that worked the pull tab booth at the bar or behind the counter at the Pump and Munch. (Yes that’s a real gas station chain)

Basically it was the coolest apartment I’d ever seen.

We tried to hide from the other tenants for fear they’d figure out what degenerates we were and have us evicted.  I think that says everything you need to know about 18-year-old Himbokal.  Drifters were better tenants.

Now a little background about me.  I sleep-walk under very specific conditions:

• I need to be blackout drunk
• I’ve not gotten blackout drunk and slept at that place before.

It doesn’t happen every time.  But when those conditions are met, the probability skyrockets.  Generally not much happens.  I usually wake up because I’m trying to get out of the room I’m in and I don’t know where the door is.  I walk into the wall a couple of times and then I’m awake.  Occasionally there’s a little shadow boxing.  But mostly I just walk into stuff.

That’s not where I remember this door from.

On this evening, we were sitting around slugging beers.  As far as I remember I passed out on a couch using a sleeping bag as a blanket.  At some point, I cracked an eye open to see that it was morning.  I felt like fried butt-hole.  I turned over and adjusted the sleeping bag.  Some dust fell out of it.

This was interesting but not necessarily cause for concern.  What was cause for concern was that it was a floor mat and I was lying on the kitchen floor.  I had zombie’d into the kitchen and wrapped myself up like a burrito in the floor mat.  I sat for a minute with my eyes closed and tried to decide if I absolutely had to move or if I could just sleep another 20 minutes or so.  I decided another 20 minutes wouldn’t hurt.  I rolled back over.

I saw two people sitting on the couch that I had never seen before.  A kid that was about 15 was slowly working his way through a bowl of cereal staring at me.  Next to him was a wrinkled lady with frizzy brown hair that was probably about 42.  She was smoking a cigarette and also staring at me in the same bemused way that her son was.  They could have been watching Good Morning America.

I tossed the floor mat off and sat up.

“I think you’re in the wrong apartment, honey.”  The lady said and put out her cigarette.  Her soundly mildly bored.  The son continued piling cereal into his face.

“Ah yeah.”  I was completely out of sorts.  I hopped up and not realizing that the apartment would have a similar layout to my friends (for all I knew I was in a completely different apartment building) I walked to their front door and turned left towards their bedrooms.

“You had it right the first time honey.”  The Mom said.

“Oh.”  I went back to the front door and walked out.  I was still in the same apartment building as my friends.  In fact I had woken up in the apartment directly across the hall guaranteeing maximum awkwardness for me on future visits and for my friends every single time they ran into their neighbors.

This incident (besides providing mirth for my friends for years) left me with a lot of questions. How long did they sit there watching me passed out in their kitchen rug.  Did the son step over me to get a bowl of cereal?  Why didn’t they call the police?  Why didn’t they lock their door?  If they had locked their door, why had they let me in?  Why were they so calm?

Thank god they were calm.  The definitely could have pumped me full of lead.  That was full-on breaking and entering.  But for the grace of the Sky-Wizard, I came away uninjured.

And so this post is dedicated to you, Zoey Ripple, and all the other time-travelers out there.  Here’s to not getting a cap busted in yo ass.

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