My First Ten Beers - Mike

I was an incredibly cool high school student.

The setting: Trenton/New Baden, Illinois - A town that couldn't be much more Footloose - surrounded by corn fields, placed completely in a culture void - although I graduated in 1994, I wasn't aware of the Pixies until easily into my third year of college - all we were missing was some religious wackos who didn't want us to dance. As a result, the main source of high school entertainment was drinking. But because underage drinking is illegal, and because stopping somewhere to drink made you a sitting duck for the police, our version of underage drinking was made all the more safe by the addition of driving.

Even in those heavy peer pressure days I was against drinking and driving - an ideal I'd like to say I developed through common sense, but was more likely formed by a healthy respect for what my parents would think. As a result, when my friends began to drink, I was left behind. Well, at least until we had somewhere safe to drink. Enter the clubhouse - a friend's father's wooden shack on the banks of the Kaskaskia River, far from any sort of police presence.

Because I have a horrible memory, I've enrolled the help of my friends to tell the rest of the story -

Gentlemen,

On the beer blog we've got a thing called "my first beer" - I haven't written my story yet... perhaps you recall it. It involved 10 Milwaukee's Bests.

What I'm thinking is that maybe I could get a few recollections from you guys of the event, and see if I remember it correctly. I think I do, but who knows?

My basic memory is: I give you all a bunch of grief about drinking, finally I go drink, and drink everyone under the table with 10 beers. Brent keeps saying "Dude, you're gonna throw up".

Mike

Unfortunately, I don't think I was there. I remember hearing about it ex post facto. Although.. I think it had a 4.

Dave

I was there. It was with Jim B also. We woke up to Mike doing doughnuts in the clubhouse lawn in his truck.

Mike, I seem to remember showing up there early in the afternoon to drop off our beer and chop up a tree that had fallen across the road. I think your bro was with us too.

I pretty sure this was another trip there, but I remember when (girl's name removed) showed up with Todd but then went home with Mark, and Nate smoked some (cigarettes) and had some vodka and threw up for hours while the rest of us jumped through some fire.... There's way more, but this is a work address for some of us.

Good times,
Brent

(Same girl's name as mentioned above) made out with everybody, except you, Mike. I think. She made out with Dave after he barfed behind the bench. I then fell off the bench into aforementioned barf, causing my shiny high school jacket to become quite icky. You drank and drank without a lot of drama or stupidity, somehow. "Enter Sandman" (probably) played softly in the background as Dave crashed out of the tree stand from some fifteen feet above the ground. That may well be the same night I passed out waaaayyyyy too close to the fire and melted my sweet grey Reebok's. Or Reebok; I think it was just one.

Anyway, you slept in the back of your blazer and woke us up with fresh mud donuts, and also, Nate almost died of mixed chemical poisoning. Odds are that Dave probably tore off some or most of his clothes at some point, too. And if memory serves me, there was a heavily armed panda bear patrolling the immediate vicinity in an Apache longbow helicopter.

If we don't do that again sometime before we die, we are not men.
Jim

So there you have it - a story that has it all: underage drinking, promiscuous women, car stunts, drug use, a Metallica soundtrack, people falling out of trees, fire, vomit..

How was your first time? Drop us a line, tell us a story, let us know.